PAST MASTERS 145

Produced and Edited by Terry Walker from short stories in magazines, newspapers and other sources, and all in the Life + 70 years public domain.

2 Dec 2023

Contents

1: Diana The Huntress / Ethel Lina White

2: The Burglary at Berkeley Square / Richard Marsh

3: Gas! / Richard Dehan

4: The Atonement of Chang Feng / Clarence Herbert New

5: The Great Beast of Kafue / Clotilde Graves

6: When Love Went Mad / Arthur Leo Zagat

7: "In Dutch" / Edmund Stover

8: The People Rest / Emile C. Tepperman

9: The Mysterious Camp in the Pyrenees / Clarence Herbert New

10: The Shadow With Bright Hair / C. L. Antrobus

11: The Gold Bar / H. de Vere Stacpoole

12: An Embarrassed Butterfly / Mercy Compton Marsh

13: The Elixir of Youth / Anonymous

14: At Plangeants Locks / Duncan Campbell Scott

15: How 7 Went Mad / Bram Stoker

16: Earth's Holocaust / Nathaniel Hawthorne

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1: Diana The Huntress

Ethel Lina White

1879-1944

The London Magazine, Sep 1910

Roy Glashan's Library 2023

Ethel Lina White

"ANOTHER engagement! I'm sick to death of hearing of them! Brayne to the ginger-haired Ford girl. I thought he was one of your men, Virginia? How on earth have you managed to mull it again?"

Virginia's fingers tightened round the arms of her cane lounge-chair. From the slight contraction of her mouth it was plain that the news had hit her hard.

She was a tall girl, of gracious figure, with greeny-grey eyes, and the tint of the apple eaten by Eve deep-grained in her ripe cheek. A sea-green ribbon was woven in her red hair.

"I leave it to you, partner," she answered, speaking with an effort.

The reply seemed to enrage her companion— a blonde of slight build. In her white dress she looked more youthful than Virginia, and one had to get past the tulle veil that swathed her hat to credit the fact that she was her mother.

"It's appalling!" Mrs. Lake rattled her bangles angrily. "Girls taking advantage of this unusually gay season, and going off like flies in winter, and yet you remain, sticking on my hands like a porous plaster. You seem to start well in the running. It passes my understanding how you let the chances slip through your fingers? Goodness knows, you're old enough to have learned wisdom! You're in your twenty-eighth year."

"That's a most unsporting way of saying a girl is twenty-seven."

"Girl! A woman!"

"Rub it in!" Virginia straightened her figure in the lounge-chair. "Look here, mother— woman to woman, then! Without gloves. Don't you think that I'm as anxious as you are to get married? You don't give me pressing invitations to minister to your old age. I suppose you've settled never to have one. Doesn't all this come harder on me? Give me credit for having tried. D'you know my name at the club? One of your special friends told me— Diana!"

Mrs. Lake looked blank.

"Well, complimentary, surely! A goddess, wasn't she? The sporting one, with the goody-goody character? H'm! Not very appropriate, considering that you're no good at games, and nearly every man in the place has flirted with you."

"It fits me to a hair, my dear mother. The men chose that name well. Diana was a huntress!"

Mrs. Lake took the bitterness in her daughter's voice as a personal slight.

"Quite right, too!" she said. "It's your duty to find a mate. It's the whole scheme of Nature. Really, it's quite impious of you to take that tone."

"All right, I'll turn religious, and grab."

"Then you'd better be quick, for there's not much left to grab," was the nettled reply. "This afternoon, in fact, at the shrimping picnic. I've heard that Kingdom is off next week. He's got a billet in India. Every other possible man is now snapped up, so he seems your last chance this year, and by next you'll be earmarked as a failure. For mercy's sake, take it! It's common talk he's been hanging round Viva Smythe lately."

Virginia took no notice of Mrs. Lake's remark. Her eyes were fixed on the white road outside the bungalow. A man, with dark, carven features, that looked classic under his white panama, was passing in the shade of the trees. His face lit up as he bowed to the ladies on the passion-flower wreathed verandah, and Mrs. Lake noticed that the smile lingered on Virginia's lips after he had passed. Bitterly she regretted the scarcity of men, which resulted in a mere schoolmaster being admitted to their set.

"Are you listening?" she asked sharply. Virginia started.

"Oh, Viva Smythe? But do you think she is a serious rival? She's such a very pretty girl, and Lord Bristol has paid her so much attention lately that she would hardly notice a mere engineer."

"She's sense enough, pretty or not, to realise her goods in the best market. Looks are a perishable commodity. She won't turn up her nose at Kingdom. Not she! Once the fleet goes, she knows she'll be stranded, high and dry, for the winter, on the shelf. Besides, Bristol is simply amusing himself. A mere hanger-on. When a man of his stamp has the pick of the pretty women of the place to flirt with, it isn't likely he will concentrate on one."

"She may be in love with him, though!"

Something in Virginia's voice made Mrs. Lake stare at her daughter.

"I don't pretend to understand you, Virginia," she said, at last. "You can't be a fool. It's against Nature. When I was seven years younger than you, I couldn't count my proposals on my fingers, and your poor father had brains, if nothing else. Why are you a failure?"

Virginia's sole answer was to press her lips together more closely. With an uneasy flicker of suspicion, Mrs. Lake's thoughts flitted to the schoolmaster with the handsome face.

She snorted violently as a protest against such an outrage of Nature, and then went indoors to paint her face with the quintessence of art— her starched, muslin frills whispering spitefully to each other as she moved.

Virginia remained staring at the great wash of peacock-blue ocean that pounded in on the beach in a thick, creaming slab of white foam. She had grown so thoroughly sick of this sun-steeped place— this beauty-spot, dropped on a corner of the Devonshire coast, with its superfluity of women, its scarcity of males, and the competition therefor. No floating population swept through it habitually, to freshen its secluded but sophisticated circles. But in the summer, during the visit of the fleet and the Territorial camps, it broke into a brief but fevered round of gaiety. These were the days of corn in Egypt— the days of marriage and giving in marriage, when the visitors, charmed with the beauty and the unconventional hospitality supplied the capital, and the local girls put in unstinted quantities of sweated labour.

Sick of it all! Virginia recalled Patrick Kingdom's face, with its rounded, determined features, thickly peppered with freckles. A man to be trusted by men and women alike. That way lay freedom!

As she gazed out into the great blue-and-white world, she whispered a word. Her thoughts were on a man, but the name on her lips was none of his. It was her own— "Diana!"

THE beach presented a gay sight that afternoon, as groups of white-clad men, and girls— gay in coloured muslins and flower-wreathed hats—laughed and chatted against the background of dark cliffs.

When Virginia Lake arrived in the company of her mother, a tall man, with slack, handsome features, stopped chattering to a little circle of four or five girls, and lazily surveyed the red-haired Amazon in her sea-green gown.

"Diana looks ripping this afternoon," he remarked to his circle.

Other flannel-clad men might prowl the beach partnerless, but Lord Bristol was never in the position of a poor tiger with no Christian. At the present moment he had collected round him quite a little Sunday-school of the prettiest.

"Yes; got up to kill!" remarked a girl in mauve.

"Good luck to her hunting!"

"When Di 'pics,' Kingdom packs. That's what always happens on these picnics. She'll run the poor man to death, as usual!"

Bristol's languid voice broke into the laughter.

"Girls, girls, leave her a rag! Why have you all such a down on Diana? To my mind, there's something stimulating about a red-haired girl. You never know when she's going to box your ears. I've half a mind to chuck the whole lot of you and take on Di this afternoon."

His lordship had discovered that there was no censorship of speech in this stranded townlet, and availed himself of the name of Liberty, to take liberties. The women, ever since his arrival, in doing their best to spoil a sound-cored nature, had, so far, only affected his manners.

"What if she does chase the men?" Bristol continued. "Very sporting of her. Haven't you chased me the whole morning, Viva? You only ran me to earth at the club because I was due there for a drink."

Viva Smythe contorted her really beautiful features to a grimace.

"Oh, you!" she said.

A belated hamper arrived at that moment, and had a flattering reception. Boats were pushed off, and soon the party was skimming over the sapphire water to the island.

Virginia dipped her fingers into the warm sea. She was seated in the same boat as Kingdom and the schoolmaster, Madder— a tactful arrangement which she had stage-managed herself by shamelessly beckoning the men.

Kingdom ducked his head to get under the shade of her hat.

"Spare me a few minutes, some time, will you?" he asked. "I want to tell you something."

He looked earnestly into her greenish eyes, and Virginia swallowed something in her throat before she answered:

"All right!"

Turning quickly to Madder, she devoted herself to him until they reached the island.

Bristol, who was helping Viva over the slippery, seaweed-covered rocks, turned and watched Virginia as she and Madder scrambled off together.

"Deuced handsome chap, the schoolmaster!" he commented. "Bit unscrupulous of Di to use him in the game. When she's brought Kingdom to the scratch, she'll give him what our American friends call 'the frozen mitt.' "

"Do you mean she is leading him on just to make Pat Kingdom jealous?" asked Viva quickly, a shade of anxiety to be detected in her voice.

"Shade of Kipling! Where were you raised?

"If She grow suddenly gracious, reflect, is it all for Thee?

The Black-Buck is stalked by the Bullock, and Man by Jealousy."

Bristol's laughter reached Virginia, as she probed in a pool for treasures.

"I'm glad someone is enjoying the picnic," she said. "Nice, simple taste. I shall suspect him soon of a secret passion for cold rice-pudding."

Madder looked down at her intently. The fine lines of his face relaxed to an unusual softness.

"Why not?" he asked. "Life's all right. It's the grizzlers who are wrong. Virginia, it's awful cheek on my part, but-well, somehow, from the first, it struck me that you'd missed it. I used to wonder why. This is such a ripping place. And you've everything— perfect health, good looks (excuse me), means, and so on. Lately, I've thought I've hit it. I seem to know what's wrong with you. The truth, now! Don't you need a friend?"

Virginia gave a short laugh.

"No. I need a husband."

She laughed again at the look of dismay that clouded Madder's expressive face.

"I'm sorry. I seem to have blundered. I— I quite thought you were lonely," he stammered. "I've tried to be your friend, as you know, but I fancied that she—"

"She!" Virginia turned quickly. "Do you mean to tell me that you're like all the rest? That you're going to be married?"

Madder nodded.

"She'll be coming here almost directly. Time, too! She's a Sister of Mercy, and has been killing herself in an East London parish— slaving until there's nothing left but starched linen and soul."

Virginia averted her head.

"How delightful!" she said at last. "I'm very glad to hear of your happiness. Only hope it will last! Look at this lovely piece of seaweed— all rose colour and delicate tracery. Up it comes! And now it's nothing but a slimy tangle. Such is life! Well, well, I suppose you couldn't prevail on your fiance to bring along a Brother of Mercy for me?"

Madder stared at the violet sea-line, with sombre eyes. Virginia, looking up, saw the pain in his tightly drawn mouth. She stretched out her hand to him.

"I wish you happiness with all my heart," she said, in a low voice. "Indeed— indeed I do! Forgive me for just now. I didn't mean one word, really. But I seem to have come to a crisis in my life. It's a case of keeping my nerve, and I'm all on wires. I had to let out, or scream. I'm better now. And you've always been a real friend."

Madder's face brightened as he gripped her hand.

"Quite understand," he said gruffly, his thoughts winging to the club gossip. "Nothing like a safety-valve. Glad I've been of some use. Here comes Kingdom, so I'll clear."

His classic features looked slightly knowing, as the young engineer forged his way to Virginia's side.

With the advent of Kingdom, the real interest of the picnic began. The pleasure-makers, so far, had pretended to be satisfied with the simple joys of shrimping, but their sophisticated souls were waiting for the spice of human interest. Scandal was their bread of life, and so hot was the popular excitement that, almost directly, they had the couple on toast. Their every movement was watched from afar, and their expressions commented on by those who passed within easy range.

Mrs. Lake clasped the hand of her chief friend— a pretty, rouged lady— who apparently seemed to own only a Christian name.

"Oh, Dot, here they come! Tell me, for I can't see so far! Do you think she's brought it off?"

Her curiosity was shared by the rest of the picnickers. Virginia and Kingdom were subjected to a battery of furtive glances during the row back to the beach, but they bore the scrutiny with wooden faces.

When tea was finally a thing of the past, and the sun had fallen into the heart of the flaming sea, the party began to break itself into couples for the homeward stroll through the shadows.

Bristol, searching for Viva, whose pretty face gave her first place in his facile fancy, was staggered to see that Kingdom had forestalled him.

He gave a low whistle of pure astonishment as they walked off, Viva's face, lost under the shadow of her wisteria-loaded hat, turned up towards Kingdom.

Wheeling round, he found that he was left alone on the beach with Virginia.

He accepted the change with his usual philosophy.

"What luck!" he said. "First time I've seen you to-day. You have been in such demand. Ripping time we've had. I expect you'll never forget this picnic? As for me, I shall think of it, this time tomorrow, when I'm off for my cruise."

"Your cruise, yes. You must have had a sea-gull's feather in your pillow. But is it really true that you're coming back again?"

"Rather! As you know, I've been pretty nearly everywhere— no ties, and can't stick ordinary society— but I've never struck a spot I like so well as this."

"It's not always so gay. Isn't Viva Smythe a pretty girl?"

"You're all pretty girls here. Ah, well! So Kingdom goes next week, too? Lucky beggar— he may not go alone?"

Bristol lost no time in working round to the point on which his idle curiosity had been aroused.

"No; I should say there would be a captain and crew, merely to look after the boat. It's usual."

Bristol only laughed at the rebuff.

"D'you know, Miss Lake," he said, "when I saw you this afternoon, I thought you looked different, somehow. It was the expression of your eyes. I've seen it before, and it puzzled me where. Now I know. It's the look that every man-jack on the Stock Exchange wears during a critical deal."

Virginia's face had grown a trifle pale, and her voice was ominously quiet.

"Thank you for your interest. So you imagined that I had some big deal on today? Any betting on the result, as is usual in these cases?"

"If there were, I'd lay my money on you, Di!"

Lord Bristol had gone too far. For the first time during his stay, he realised that there was a limit.

He positively quailed as Virginia turned swiftly on him, in white-hot fury.

"What did you call me?" she asked.

"Nothing. I said 'Why?' Only that. Oh, Miss Lake!"

He started to run also; and then, conscious of the ridiculous picture they presented, slackened his pace. He, alone, of all the male picnickers, walked home without a girl.

VIRGINIA was buried under her curtains that night, when she received a visit. Mrs. Lake ran into her room in a muslin wrapper, and with her fleece of yellow hair screwed in curling-pins round her lean face. She stood at the foot of the cot, and clutched the rail with nervous fingers.

"D'you know what I've heard?" she cried shrilly. "That cat, Dot, screamed it from the road as she passed just now. Kingdom has proposed to Viva Smythe tonight!"

"Ah!"

It was almost a sob that broke from Virginia's lips.

"A nice laughing-stock you've made of yourself; it's all over the place already. You've let every chance slip. I see nothing for you now but to marry that wretched schoolmaster."

Virginia forced herself to speak, with stiff lips.

"That wretched schoolmaster, as you call him, is engaged to marry another woman. She is a Sister of Mercy."

"Mercy!" Mrs. Lake unconsciously snatched at the last word. "What! You've lost him, too? Virginia, you're an utter fool!"

When Virginia was left alone, she lay staring, half the night, into the darkness. Apparently the game was ended and lost. Yet her eyes preserved their look of anxious strain. She still faced east.

SIX months later Lord Bristol found himself back in the place— that paradise of good links and pretty girls. He stood at the door of a ballroom, watching the couples revolve, before he himself joined in the whirl. His eyes dwelt approvingly on the dainty gowns of the women, for he had lately been where dress was considered— and was— a mere trifle. He hummed the air of the valse. Although his collar rubbed his neck, it was good to wear evening-clothes once more.

A man hailed him with a shout: "Back again, Bristol? You look fit as a fiddle after your cruise. Nose nicely skinned!"

"Rather! I sloughed my old skin after surfing. The Pacific tossed me up like a pancake, and I was shark-bait many a time, but I put in a clinking time, roughing it. It's great to be back again to slack. Hallo! That's another new face. Pretty girl, too! Introduce me."

"You didn't put off the old man with the skin," grinned Beer, as they stalked the muslin-clad debutante.

Three dances passed before Beer again met Bristol. He noticed directly that some of his lordship's exuberance had fizzled flat.

"Pipped?" he inquired. "What's up?"

Bristol rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Don't know! This is such a slow affair. Not a bit like the thing I've looked forward to lately. Doesn't seem like the dances we had before my cruise. Such a stuffy set! I've danced with nothing but flappers and their mothers. Bread-and-butter and stale crusts. What's become of all the pretty, jolly girls—the Fords, the Duroys, Viva Smythe?"

Beer laughed.

"Ah, you came here in our festive days. All the girls made hay then. Regular clearance sale. All the old stock gone, and nothing but new lines. Viva Smythe is in India, and half the others are either on their honeymoons, or else deep in trousseaux. But there's still one of the Old Brigade left— Diana! By Jove, she looks stunning tonight!"

Beer's admiration was genuine, although his blood was lukewarm after many years of married life. But to Bristol, fresh from the wastes of blue waters, Virginia, as she drew near, seemed a goddess. Her eyes were brilliant with excitement and her copper hair was a flaming glory.

In another minute she was floating round the room with Bristol. After the schoolgirl debutantes, who trod on his toes, it was pure bliss to dance with a perfect partner, and several valses slipped by before they stopped for breath. It was not until they sat in a shaded alcove, under a palm, that Bristol with a guilty pang remembered his parting haired girl.

"You don't know how good it was to see you again," he said, "I was feeling horribly depressed, like a Rip Van Winkle, among all those children. Yet— the last time we met you were thirsting for my blood. And all because I called you a pretty name— Diana. And Diana, I believe, is the same as Pallas Athene— the Goddess of Wisdom."

The speech seemed to amuse Virginia.

"And yet, my mother tells me once daily, and twice on Sundays, that I'm a fool, and a perfect fool."

"Then I, for one, suffer fools gladly. But why does she slate you?"

"Because I'm not Mrs. Johnson, Keith, Harrow, Brayne, Madder, Way, or Kingdom."

"Good heavens! That crew! Not one fit to lace your shoes! It's just struck me. You were right. It was absurd to invent a new name for you when your own just expresses you. Virginia. To me, you are just the girl. The girl."

History repeats itself. When the dance was over, Mrs. Lake, panting with excitement and a tight lace, padded into her daughter's room. Virginia stood in her shimmering white dress by the open window.

"Virginia! I didn't see you the whole evening. Who did you have supper with?"

"Lord Bristol!"

"But— but you had six valses with him. I counted."

"And sat out all the rest. Anything wrong with him? It will be best china and teacake to-morrow, mother, or the nearest we can do as a substitute. He is coming to see me— and you."

"Virginia!" Mrs. Lake's voice skipped an octave. "Don't tell me that you— you have secured Bristol! A non-marrying man. An undreamt-of parti! While prettier girls have had to put up with subalterns and naval sprats! How on earth did you manage it?"

Virginia gave a happy laugh of triumph.

"It was a great game," she said. "It was almost too much for me. Once, I nearly lost my nerve, and let go. Madder saved me then. So much was at stake. It was so awful to remember every year told, and to run the risks of being left— lonely all my life. And it was touch-and-go over Viva Smythe. If Pat Kingdom had not proposed, and cleared her out of the place, I stood to lose all. She was such a pretty girl."

Mrs. Lake's perceptions were keen.

"Do you mean to tell me that Kingdom proposed to you, after all, at the picnic?" she asked. "You refused him? And Viva had him on the hop?"

Virginia looked at her mother and smiled. At that moment Mrs. Lake felt very young and inexperienced.

"Have you noticed, mother, that when a butterfly has a garden of flowers, he flits from one to the other? Shut him in a room with one rose, and he settles on that."

Mrs. Lake gasped as the darkness grew luminous. She thought of the men who had been attracted to her daughter and lost by tactless handling. The Club stories recurred to her— tales of men alarmed by vigorous pursuit, or shocked by sudden exhibitions of temper, fleeing, in pique, or for shelter, to other girls. Now, she seemed to see Virginia in another guise— shadowy and all-pervading— playing the part of Providence or universal matchmaker, under the guise of a neglected maiden.

"Darling!" she cried. "How I misjudged you! You are my own daughter, and a wonderfully clever woman!"

Virginia's face clouded at her mother's praises. She drew away from the embrace.

"No, no!" she cried vehemently. "You are wrong. Do you think I played for money, or a coronet? I played only for Love. I played the great game that Eve teaches to all her daughters, when they love with all their strength!"

She stood up, tall and triumphant, her eyes burning, and the tint of the apple glowing red in her cheek.

It was the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

_________________

2: The Burglary at Berkeley Square

Richard Marsh

1857-1915

Pearson's Magazine Dec 1908

Richard Bernard Heldmann

AS MR. NICHOLS reached the house he paused to look at it. The contemplation of its exterior seemed to afford him some curious sort of satisfaction even at that hour of the morning, and it was long past midnight. His crush hat a little on one side of his head, a cigar in his mouth, his hands in the pockets of his dress overcoat, which was unbuttoned so as to show an expanse of white shirt beneath, he planted himself in the centre of the pavement, and, as it were, stared the house full in the face.

It was her house, the house in which dwelt the girl who had once been all the world to him. Since those days how many things had happened. Then, her father, John Cornelius, was a manufacturing chemist in a small way of business. A discovery he had made in connection with potash had brought about a revolution in his fortunes. Now he was one of England's richest men. His daughter Gertrude had proved herself quite suited to be a rich man's child; at the first sign of a change for the better in her father's affairs she had thrown Tom Nichols over, choosing a pretext for her misconduct which Mr. Nichols assured himself did more credit to her ingenuity than to her candour.

Since then he had heard her name associated with different men; until now, when she was actually to be married at last, in a few hours from this her father's mansion in Berkeley Square to the Earl of Grinstead, who was more than old enough to be her father.

It was sickening, the whole affair; but, then, so much was sickening. When he had first known Gertrude Cornelius she had lived in a small house off the Fulham Road; it was a change to this great house in London's most fashionable square. He had seen in the papers that a great reception was to be held that night, as a sort of prelude to the wedding, at which the wedding presents were to be displayed for the world to admire. Probably the last of the guests had not long departed; only within a few minutes had the house subsided into silence, to wake again at a comparatively early hour, prepared to wrestle with the strain and excitement of an up-to-date smart wedding.

If he had appeared on the scene a little earlier, he, too, might have joined the throng; he was convinced that it would not have been difficult to obtain admission to a reception of that kind. He did not believe that they would have dared to keep him out. The wedding presents? He wondered in what part of the house they were. According to the lists which he had read in the journals they must be of great value. He noted something which had hitherto escaped his eye: a window was open— on the right of the front door. You had only to ascend the steps, climb the brick parapet; it was but a short stride to the windowsill. It was a tall, narrow French window, but there was space enough for a slender man to pass, and Tom Nichols was thin. He was, as was not in frequently the case, in a careless, reckless mood; the fashion in which he had spent the evening had not tended to make him thoughtful. With a laugh, throwing away his cigar, buttoning his overcoat, mounting the parapet, he was through the window, and in the room.

It was only after he had entered that it occurred to him to reflect what he had come for. It was rather dark. It was not easy to make out what kind of room it was, or anything it contained. Feeling in his pocket for a matchbox, he struck a light, indifferent to the fact that it might arouse suspicion if seen from without. As the match broke into flame, his eye was caught by something which lay on the floor.

Picking it up he found that it was a note, written on one side of half a sheet of note paper. He recognised the handwriting; it was from Gerald Drew, the man who had followed him in the affections of Miss Cornelius. Drew had been financially in a much better position than he had been; from that point of view it had been a step upward for Miss Cornelius. But as the family fortunes continued to ascend, the young lady had apparently come to the conclusion that she might do better even than Gerald Drew; so he also had gone by the board. That, however, relations had not entirely ceased between them seemed to be shown by the note which Mr. Nichols was holding in his hand. It began, "My dearest Gertrude," and was couched in terms which Mr. Nichols, suddenly turned moralist, felt were not seemly as coming from a quondam lover to a lady who was immediately to become another's bride. So strong was this feeling that he continued to stare at the note, unconscious of the way in which the match was being consumed, until it singed his fingers. Then he dropped the flickering remnant on to the floor, with an exclamation.

He was again in darkness. The contents of that note had affected him in quite a surprising manner. His impulse was to go back through the window at once, and wipe the name of Cornelius from his memory forever. What a minx the girl must be! To be receiving what practically amounted to a love letter from one man on the eve of her marriage to another! He ought to be thankful that he was well rid of such a creature— yet, somehow, he was not so thankful as he ought to have been. On the contrary, he was conscious of a strange confusion of feelings. He would have liked to have taken Gerald Drew in one hand, the Earl of Grinstead in the other, and, having knocked their heads together, have disposed of them both, in some decent manner, for ever and a day. And then, monstrous though it seemed even to himself, he would have liked to have taken that misguided young woman in his arms and kissed her. To be frank, there never had been a time when he would not have liked to do that.

As, doubtful, hesitating, he stood there in the darkness, all at once there was the sound of a door being opened softly, as by one whose desire was not to be overheard. Before he could move or attempt concealment the electric light was switched on, and there in the sudden radiance stood before him the woman who had so occupied his thoughts –Gertrude Cornelius.

Even in the midst of the amazement caused by her unexpected appearance, and by the consciousness of the very ambiguous position in which she had found him, he was struck by her beauty, She always had been pretty, but this was different. The passage of the years had developed her in a most surprising manner; he felt that he had never seen so beautiful a woman. Tall and stately, yet with something in her beauty which was both sweet and gracious; big, wonderful eyes, into which the sunshine seemed to have strayed and left a smile behind; a dainty mouth, which he always told her had been made for kissing; an exquisite nose, just aquiline enough to suggest that its owner had character; the whole surmounted by a glorious mass of chestnut hair, which crowned her as with a radiant coronal. It was not strange that she had been able to play fast and loose with the hearts of men. Her costume hinted that she had come hurriedly downstairs for some especial purpose. Dainty slippers held bare feet, only a dressing-gown covered the attire in which the maiden slept.

So circumstanced, most young women would have shown signs of perturbation at finding herself so unexpectedly confronted by a man. But Gertrude Cornelius had never, outwardly, been disturbed in her life. Not only was she possessed of a seemingly unfailing courage, Tom Nichols always had been struck by the readiness with which she adjusted herself to the unlooked-for, and by her almost supernatural presence of mind. If for a moment she flinched at the sight of the man in front of her, it was for a moment only. Very quietly, very naturally, she looked him up and down, as if, if anything, his presence rather amused her.

"Tom— Mr. Nichols— pray, what are you doing here?"

She put the question in the easiest of tones. Her self-control was much greater than his. It always had been. At the sight and sound of her he was half beside himself; he would have liked to have said and done a dozen mad things; it was with difficulty he constrained himself to answer with some sort of sense, "That is what I ask myself."

About her delicate lips there was the suggestion of a smile. He felt that, as ever, she read him like a book, that she saw quite plainly the state of disturbance he was in. Instead of commenting on the unsatisfactory fashion in which he explained his presence there, her glance fastened on the note which he had picked up from the floor.

"What is that you have in your hand?"

Something moved him to be brutal. "It is Gerald Drew's love-letter to you— that poor devil of a Gerald."

There was nothing to show that she was disconcerted by his brutality, her manner could hardly have been easier. "I must have dropped it as I left the room; it was to find it that I came downstairs. Please give it to me."

He put his hand behind his back. "Not I."

"Mr. Nichols"

"Miss Cornelius!"

"Is this intended for a jest? You used to have a sense of humour which was peculiarly your own."

"And you? Here's one lover holding in his hand a letter from another lover, while you're to be married to a third lover in a few hours time. Does that not suggest that you also have a sense of humour which is peculiarly your own"

If she winced she hid the fact.

"Am I to understand that you refuse to give me what belongs to me and not to you?"

"Why should I?"

"Why should you, indeed! If you are a person of a certain kind, your being here at this hour admits of only one explanation. Do you wish me to alarm the house, and make it known that there is a burglar on the premises?"

"As you please. If you do I shall communicate the contents of this note to the Earl of Grinstead; from what I have heard of his lordship's character, I doubt if he is a person who will be disposed to marry a lady who receives a love-letter from another man a few hours before she becomes his wife."

"Are your words meant to suggest blackmail?"

"Again, as you please. You spoilt my life, why should I not spoil yours?"

"The life of a man like you is not spoilt by a girl. Men of your type spoil their own lives."

It was his turn to wince. Her words moved him to such anger that for a little more he would have taken her in his arms against her will. While he searched for a retort which would sting, she said, standing in the attitude of one who listens, "Hush! there is someone coming."

Moving rapidly she switched off the light. Returning through the darkness, she took him by the wrist.

"Quick! we must get behind the curtain I expect it is the man who has been sent to guard the presents. He mustn't find you here."

She drew him behind the curtains which veiled an embrasured window. For some moments it was impossible to see who had come into the room. Apparently the newcomer was standing in the open door way, listening, making certain that within all was still and safe. Then a light shone out; it was not the light of the electric lamps, but one which was borne in the newcomer's hand. The person who had entered the room was a girl, as slightly clad as Miss Cornelius, a fact which was revealed by the glow of the electric torch which she carried, and which she had just switched on.

At sight of her, Mr. Nichols felt his companion give a sudden movement as of surprise, and he himself was startled. He recognised in the girl a Miss Overton, Gertrude Cornelius's cousin, whom he had known in the days gone by, and whom he had seen in the papers was to be one of the bridesmaids. What, he asked himself, could the girl be doing there at that hour of the night?

Probably the same question occurred to his companion. He was aware that she was watching what was taking place within the room with such eager interest that she seemed to be holding her breath.

The girl, holding the torch above her head, looked round the room, as if to make still more sure that she was alone. Then, seemingly convinced, she began to move quickly forward, towards a table which Mr. Nichols perceived, for the first time, was covered with a variety of articles of all sorts and kinds.

"The wedding presents!"

The words came from him as if unawares. Though uttered in the merest whisper the sound seemed to reach the girl in the centre of the room. Pausing, she turned and glanced towards the curtains; making a half step towards them, she stood and listened. As if persuaded by the perfect silence that her imagination had played her a trick, she continued her progress towards the table.

It was odd to notice the suggestion of desire which seemed to pervade her whole form as she bent hungrily over it. A greedy look came into her eyes as they passed from one object to the other. Presently, as she leaned right over it, her hand went out; when it returned it held two objects, a necklace and a bracelet. She gazed at them longingly, as if her soul yearned to possess them both. Possibly actuated by a misty notion that discretion might be the better part of valour, she put back the bracelet in its place, and, with the necklace in her hand, began to move towards the door as quickly as she had come. But it was more than Miss Cornelius could endure, to let her go scot free with one of her most cherished possessions. It may be that she had a feeling that if the girl once got away with her booty she might not find it easy to wrest it from her again. However that may have been, as the girl made for the door, Miss Cornelius moved out from behind the curtains, ex claiming, "My pearl necklace, Lily— What are you doing with my necklace?"

The girl gave a little cry of horror and surprise, yet retained sufficient presence of mind to extinguish her torch, an action to which Miss Cornelius replied by switching on the electric light. "You thief!" she cried. "You've taken things of mine before, but it's too much when you try to steal my necklace—"

"Gertrude," stammered the girl, "how— how can you say such things I— I only wanted to borrow it to look at it."

"Borrow it! Yes, I know the kind of borrowing you mean I only let you be my bridesmaid because you begged so hard, and now that I've given you your dress, and everything, this is how you treat me."

If, in the first moment of shock, the young lady lost some of her self-possession, she quickly regained it. She perceived that the curtain from behind which here cousin had appeared was still shivering.

"Who else is there?" she demanded.

"I am," replied Mr. Nichols, and stepped out into the room.

At sight of him Miss Overton laughed; not mirthfully, but a little hysterically, and a good deal maliciously.

"Tom Nichols!" she cried. "Well, upon my word! You talk to me about being your bridesmaid, and you make an assignation, with one of your old lovers in the middle of the night a few hours before you're going to be married! If that really does not beat anything!"

"How dare you say such a thing!— you little wretch! I'd like to beat you!"

"I daresay you would; I daresay you'd like to do a good many queer things, and you do a few. But if you don't take care I'll tell Lord Grinstead that I found you hidden in this room with Tom Nichols at past two o'clock in the morning; and then, unless I'm very much mistaken, you'll never be Lady Grinstead on this side of the grave."

If looks could kill, it is possible that there would have been an end of Miss Overton then and there; but, as they lack that power, the young lady met her cousin's angry glances with a smile which was galling. Miss Cornelius turned to Mr. Nichols with an air which was intended to ex press righteous disdain for he: audacious and predatory relative.

"Will you be so good as to explain to Lily that her charitable surmises are absolutely baseless, and kindly tell her exactly how it was that I came to find you here?"

Mr. Nichols repeated his previous gesture; he thrust the hand which contained the note behind his back. "Why should I?"

Again Miss Overton laughed, even more maliciously than before.

"Exactly, Mr. Nichols, why should you? My dear Gertrude, you get rid of lover after lover, treating them all badly. Why should you expect one of them to treat you well? All men aren't ways utter fools, you know! Take my advice and come to terms. Give me the necklace, and I won't breathe a word to the Earl; but if you'd rather not give it me, I'm afraid you'll never become a countess, dear."

"You— you–" Miss Cornelius stopped short, as if the very force of her feelings deprived her of words. Presently she burst out. "I've half a mind to rouse the house and give you both in charge. Someone's been sent to guard the presents, so I suppose he's somewhere about the place."

"Is he really? How droll Pray, dear, do rouse the house. I'll tell my story, and Mr. Nichols will tell his. and then I fancy that the wedding will be postponed for ever and a day. That will be the drollest part of all."

In his turn Mr. Nichols laughed, as if he found the girl's impudence amusing. He observed:

"I fear, my dear Gertrude, that you're finding yourself in an uncomfortable situation."

"How dare you call me Gertrude!" flamed Miss Cornelius.

Her cousin replied: "My dear, why shouldn't he? He always used to call you Gertrude, and I've heard you call him darling. However, you must settle a little thing like that between yourselves. What I want to know is, are you going to make me this very handsome present? You can't imagine how I shall value it. Nor can you guess how my conscience pricks me; nor how strongly I feel that poor Lord Grinstead ought not to be allowed to go blindly into such a marriage. Nothing can ease my pangs except this necklace. Doesn't your heart move you to make me a present of it, dear?— a thank offering, if I may call it so?"

She held the necklace close to her bosom, as if to show how precious it already was to her.

Mr. Nichols, smiling, glanced from one lady to the other; to his mind in the position there was only comedy. But that to Miss Cornelius there was more in it than comedy her attitude plainly showed. She regarded her offending and offensive cousin with an expression in her eyes which transformed her; one saw that it needed but a little more to turn her into a vindictive fury. While she hesitated, as if uncertain whether it would be better to snatch the trinket, rouse the house, or concede the young woman's impudent demand, a most singular and unlooked-for diversion gave the affair an entirely different complexion.

The curtain which veiled the window next to that in which Miss Cornelius and Mr. Nichols had taken refuge was moved aside, and a man, appearing from behind it, advanced into the centre of the room. Quite coolly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he should be there; and he was quite a presentable-looking person. Probably in the early thirties, tall, well-made, under an open overcoat faultless evening dress, a crush hat in his hand; in his right eye a monocle unattached to any cord— a typical smart man of a London ballroom.

"Pardon me," he remarked in the most colloquial of tones, "if I seemed to interrupt, but I could continue no longer under cover while my most precious bijou was in positive peril. Excuse me, but I really have a better right to that than you."

He had approached close to Miss Overton; with a sudden rapid movement he took the pearl necklace from the astonished maiden's hand, with a little bow which was the pink of courtesy.

"You remember me, perhaps? You, Miss Overton, I never shall forget, nor the charming conversation I had with you in the conservatory, when you gave me such an excellent catalogue of your cousin's wedding presents, mentioning what you considered to be the approximate value of each, laying special stress on the fact that far the most valuable of them was the pearl necklace, the gift of the bride's father. Under the circumstances you can hardly suppose that I will cede it to you, since I am Simon Pure, the professional, the expert burglar; you will not expect that I should allow myself to be beaten at my own game by a mere amateur, even in the guise of a lovely lady. Permit me to introduce myself to you, Miss Cornelius, and to you, Mr. Nichols, and, indeed, also to you, Miss Overton, since the introduction which prefaced our delightful tête-à-tête was not a formal one."

He favoured each in turn with that graceful little inclination of the head.

"My name is Alexander Swayne. By profession I am what Society humorously calls a thief, that is, I seek my own, and take it when I can, no matter in whose possession at the moment it may chance to be. I was among the guests, Miss Cornelius, at your father's delightful reception, uninvited, perhaps, but I was there. I interviewed the wedding presents; observing that there were several among them which belong to the class of article which I am always looking for, I decided, as Miss Overton just now so neatly put it, to borrow them. One obstacle only stood in the way— the excellent firm of private detectives, Messrs. Cayle & Ward, had sent a trustworthy representative to guard them from felonious fingers."

"A trustworthy representative he seems to be," exclaimed Miss Cornelius. "Since there is no sign of him down here I suppose he has gone to sleep in one of the upper rooms."

"Miss Cornelius, you do him an injustice. His name is Macnamara; I know him well; he is a canny Scot; a finer example of the detective you could scarcely wish for. So far from his being, as you mischievously suggest, asleep in one of the upper rooms, at a distance from the treasure it is his duty to safe guard, he is asleep in this very chamber, within a hand's reach of us; allow me to give you the ocular proof."

Moving lightly across the room, Mr. Swayne approached a large Chesterfield couch.

"Come," he said. The trio moved after him, as though drawn by some mesmeric spell. "You see— how you wronged him?— the good man is at his post— asleep." Lying in such a position that, from where they had been standing, he was hidden by the ends and back of the couch, was a huge man, apparently fast asleep.

Miss Cornelius stared at him in not unnatural surprise.

"But he can't have slept through all that has been going on"

"Indeed, but he has. The worthy fellow, supposing that he recognised in me an ancient friend, had with me a little fluid refreshment, which I was careful to flavour with a certain spice which I knew would conduce to a night's sound rest; all three of you have cause to be thankful to me that that spice has worked like a charm. Having managed that a window should be left unfastened, I departed with the other guests, waited until the last of them had gone, and the household had retired to well-earned repose; then back I came through the unfastened window. As I had foreseen, dear Macnamara was already sleeping more soundly than he had ever done before. I was preparing to reap the fruits of my well-laid plans when, to my surprise, confusion, and, I will add, disgust, someone else came through the window which I had inadvertently left open. I hard barely time to withdraw behind a curtain before he was in the room. I supposed that it was a competitor; perhaps one of those pushing, cutting fellows who every day make things more difficult for a gentleman. Had he attempted to lay hands upon my property he would have been taught a much-needed lesson."

Mr. Swayne drew himself up with the air of a man who desires that his manner should convey even more than his words.

"The style, however, in which he immediately struck a common match made it clear that this could be no professional rival. When he picked a note up from the floor, and you, Miss Cornelius, came in, I under stood; you both of you did your best to make me understand. Annoyance at the unauthorised intrusion of a possible rival was exchanged for a deeper feeling. Where a lovely woman is concerned my sentiments are of the finest kind. It pained me more than words can tell to learn that so fair a being could— how shall I whisper it?— be so deceitful; that within a few hours of her marriage to A, coming to look for a love letter from a sweetheart B, she should find it in the hands of a sweetheart C.

"I was constrained to ask myself, how many sweethearts can this dream of beauty have? The shock hurt me more than the presence of a competitor would have done. I had not recovered from it when I was over whelmed by another. The lights went out; the lady and her lover fled to a curtained window next to mine, and there entered the sweet maid with whom I had had such enchanting discourse such a little time before. To my horror the purport of her presence was instantly made plain; she proved herself to be that worst of all competitors— the amateur. Before my very eyes she proceeded to lay hands on my most valuable piece of property; I had had the assurance that it was the most valuable from her own lips.

"Had you, Miss Cornelius, not stopped her I certainly should. To my amazement she bore herself with a coolness which would have done credit to the most experienced practitioner; she even proceeded to turn the tables on her captor, to blackmail the prospective bride. It looked as if she would be presented— presented!–with the only one among the wedding presents which was really very much worth having. Flesh and blood could not stand that, certainly not my flesh and blood. It was impossible that I could continue a statuesque spectator of my own spoliation. I rushed to the rescue, disembarrassed Miss Overton of what— believe me, dear young lady!— would always have been a weight upon her conscience. I think it will be admitted that there stands before you a labourer who has shown himself, in all respects, to be worthy of his hire. Permit me, Mr. Nichols, Miss Overton, and Miss Cornelius, to ask you to withdraw, in order that I may be enabled in peace to bring my labours to a successful issue."

Mr. Nichols laughed; his amusement seemed to have grown since Mr. Swayne's appearance on the scene. There was even the suspicion of a smile in the somewhat strained expression of Miss Overton's features. In Miss Cornelius attitude alone there was nothing to show that she was conscious of there being even the faintest flavour of humour in the air. She glowered at the speaker as if she would, if she could, have wiped him on the instant from the face of the earth. Her tone could hardly have been redolent of more crushing scorn.

"Is it possible, Mr.— I believe you said that your name was Swayne— that you are suggesting that I should, as you put it, withdraw, and so leave you to rob me at your leisure?"

"Certainly— why not?" Nothing could have been more suave than the fashion of the inquiry. Possibly it was its very suavity which caused Miss Cornelius, gasping, to look about her, as if to learn if she was asleep or waking.

"Why not! He asks why not— this expert— this expert burglar!"

She drew herself to her full height, her fists clenched at her sides, her lovely head poised haughtily upon her slender neck, presenting a charming picture of feminine wrath combined with dignity. "Mr. Swayne, you are a professional burglar by your own admission— not that the admission was needed, but you do admit it. I have not much acquaintance with persons of your sort, but as, I should imagine, you are rather out of the common run of burglars, I will treat you in an uncommon way. You are free to leave this room by the way you entered. If you go inside thirty seconds I will consider your attempted felony as if it had never been made. If, after thirty seconds, you are still here, I will alarm the household, and I will take care that you do not escape; as, I have no doubt, you are well known to the police, that will mean penal servitude for you for an uncomfortably long period of years. Now, Mr. Swayne, at once, please! Which is it to be: Do you stay or go?"

Mr. Swayne sighed delicately, as if oppressed by the weight of other people's faults.

"Oh, Miss Cornelius, that one so fair, and false, should be so foolish!" He turned with a courteous gesture to Mr. Nichols. "I do not think, sir, that you need allow yourself to be detained any longer— if your part in the play is finished."

Mr. Nichols, who had been continuously smiling, laughed out again; he was plainly tickled. "Since my part is finished, I'll take your hint— and my exit. I am glad to have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, Mr. Swayne. I trust that I may never hear of your figuring in a more public capacity. The broad arrow was surely never intended to decorate a figure such as yours."

"I am, sir, entirely of your opinion."

"Before I go let me transfer to your keeping this little note from Mr. Gerald Drew; it may serve you as safe conduct."

He held out the half-sheet of paper.

Miss Cornelius, moving quickly forward, snatched at it, but Mr. Swayne was quicker still.

"You coward!" she cried to Mr. Nichols. Then, to Mr. Swayne, "Give me my letter!"

He merely inclined his head, keeping the hand which held the letter, as the other had done, behind his back. Mr. Nichols, moving to the window, paused to say a final word.

"My dear Gertrude–"

"Have I not already forbidden you to call me Gertrude?" flared Miss Cornelius.

"Yet to me you once were Gertrude, and to me also you once were dear; you shall be both for the very last time. My dear Gertrude, when I started on this little adventure I had no idea that it would have such an amusing sequel, nor did I suppose that I should have to thank you for so much entertainment. Take my advice and, as Mr. Swayne phrases it, withdraw; better lose a little to save a deal." He was already half way through the window when he spoke again. "To think that your sins should have found you out in this particular way!— it is so droll!" Even after he had vanished they could hear him laughing.

"Poor Tom," exclaimed Miss Overton.

"'Poor Tom!'" her cousin cried. "Why is he 'poor Tom?' Could anybody have behaved worse than he has done?"

"Yes, dear— you. No matter how badly he behaved to you, he never could behave half as badly as you have behaved to him— and to think that you should have made an assignation with him in the middle of the night before your wedding!"

Miss Overton said this with an air of the demurest malice; the glint of a smile was in the maiden's eyes. If one might judge from her appearance, anger held Miss Cornelius for the moment speechless. Before the moment had passed Mr. Swayne was speaking, with, in his bearing, that ever-present suggestion of delicate consideration.

"One would not wish to place the dots upon Miss Overton's i's— the saints forfend! But, Miss Cornelius, since it might be done, in Mr. Nichols' words, were it not the part of wisdom to lose a little to save a deal After all, you did have a note from Mr. Drew, who writes as if he owned you— here's proof; and in the small, wee hours you did meet Mr. Nichols, and hide with him behind a curtain. What a story for the Earl of Grinstead! I wager the marriage would be postponed. What a scandal! Despite your beauty— which, one admits, is transcendent— what gentleman of position would take such a piece of damaged goods for a wife? For a husband you'd have to look to such as Mr. Drew.

"And then— the charming Miss Overton, your cousin and your bridesmaid, coming, in the silent watches of the night, to steal your wedding presents— what a terrible tale to have to tell of so near and dear a relative!— finds you, in concealment, with a lover. Could one conceive of a story more calculated, on all accounts, to bring into disrepute your family, Miss Cornelius, which yesterday was nothing, and tomorrow proposes to be so much. It is true that your wedding presents are worth something— are worth, indeed, a deal of money, or I should not be here. Therefore, all the more on that account, you'll be the object of universal sympathy should they be stolen. It will be the making of you, my dear young lady, in the social sense; you'll become a heroine, not only for a day, but for the rest of your life; such a catastrophe will crown you with a halo of undying fame. The best people will speak of you as 'the poor, dear, sweet, lovely Countess of Grinstead, who was actually robbed of her wedding presents the night before her marriage. No one will guess that it was the robbing which made you assured of becoming the Countess of Grinstead.

"Then, also, it must be borne in mind that with your father it is money, money, all the way. With a flourish of his pen he'll be able to more than compensate you for your loss: in the full glare of the public eye he'll do it, too, and it will redound to his own honour as well as yours, so that, even financially, your loss will be turned into gain. Do you not now see how relevant was Mr. Nichols' axiom— for a profound axiom, in sooth, it was— that it is better to lose a little to save a deal? The night wanes, the morn approaches. Suffer me to hint that you permit me to bring my labours to their appointed close. Allow me, ladies, to open for you— the door."

With that air of easy good breeding which seemed to be his natural heritage, he stood before them with the handle of the open door held in his hand. Miss Overton smiled modestly.

"I'll permit you," she said. "You've rather disappointed me— if you only knew how I've looked forward to having a pearl necklace of my own!— but you're so droll, I You have my best wishes for a fortunate conclusion of your labours. Should opportunity offer, I shall hope to enjoy with you another tête-à-tête in someone else's conservatory. Good-morning, Mr. Swayne."

"Good-morning, dear Miss Overton. My hopes on the subject of a future tête-à-tête are at one with yours."

Miss Overton passed through the open door, nodding to him as she went. On the other side of it she paused.

"Au revoir, Gertrude darling. I don't know how long you intend to stay with Mr. Swayne; but, after what's happened, if I were you, I'd postpone the task of fascinating him to some later date."

Mr. Swayne waved his hand, as if to convey his approval of the maiden's sentiments.

"Miss Cornelius, your cousin speaks sound sense. Already I am more than half under the spell of your enchantment. Since the night fades let me entreat you not— until some happier moment— to bewitch me altogether."

Miss Cornelius looked as if she could have said a great deal, of an unflattering kind, had she chosen, but preferred to hold her peace. "You— thing!" was all she did say. Ignoring his low obeisance, she went out of the room.

It was some time after when Mr. Macnamara awoke from slumber, Daylight was streaming through the sides of the blinds. He awoke with a shock, amazed to find that he had been asleep.

"My word! Have I been asleep all through the night? I've never done such a thing in my life before. What's happened? My head feels like splitting; it's not because of what I drank last night— I hardly drank anything at all. Someone's been playing me a trick. I hope to goodness nothing's come to the wedding presents." He got up from the couch to look, sinking back again with a cry of dismay. "Good heavens— they've gone!— practically the whole caboodle! I'm done— clean done. Someone's played me a trick indeed. After this I might as well cut my throat, so far as any chance of doing anything at the detective game's concerned. Hullo! What's that?"

His ears caught a sound which came from the direction of the windows. He dropped down, so that, as before, he was screened by the ends and back of the Chesterfield. The sound continued. A blind was being moved as if someone were coming through a window into the room; footsteps came softly, yet quickly, across the carpet. Suddenly, with agility which one would hardly have expected from one of his size and build, Mr. Macnamara, springing to his feet, rushed across the room. The intruder, taken by surprise, made a dash to escape. But he was not fast enough. With his huge hands Macnamara gripped both his shoulders, addressing him as he did so with a few words of kindly advice.

"Stow wriggling, my lad; it's a fair cop. If you take my tip, you'll make no fuss; you'll be sorry if you do."

Mr. Macnamara gave him a little premonitory shake to accentuate his words. The captive was as helpless in his hands as a kitten. He was one of those ill-grown, ill-dressed, ill-fed lads who are familiar sights in London streets— an example of the true gutter-snipe; of the class from which the hooligan comes. Even in the midst of his discomfiture he did not for a moment lose his conversational gift.

"Let me go, governor; I wasn't going to do no harm, straight I wasn't; only I see the window open—"

"Chuck it! I know what you saw; I know all about it. Have you got anything on you with which you can put me out?"

"Not me, governor. You're making a mistake, you really are; I'm not that sort at all. I wouldn't go to do a thing like that, not—"

"What's this?" Unceremoniously interrupting the young gentleman's remarks, Mr. Macnamara, thrusting his hand into one of the pockets of his ragged jacket, produced from it an article which is known in certain circles as a "sandbag." Mr. Macnamara observed his find with critical eyes. "I thought you might have something of this sort upon you, and it's lucky for you you have. You've got to out me with this pretty little plaything of yours, and you've got to be quick about it, too."

"Me out you!" exclaimed the youth, this this time in genuine amazement. "I couldn't no more out you than—"

Lifting the lad off his feet Mr. Macnamara stood him on the Chesterfield. "You'll manage it better up there; you're hardly tall enough to do it from the floor. Here's your bag. I'm going to turn my back to you; when I say 'Now', you out me. Now!"

Confronted by Mr. Macnamara's broad back, the lad brought the sandbag down on his bare head with a rapidity and sureness of aim which pointed to the practised hand. Without a sound the huge man went front forward on the floor, remaining motionless, prone as he had fallen.

"That's outed him enough, I hope, to please him," commented the youth. "He won't trouble about nothing for a bit. Though what his game is beats me. I lay there's more in it than meets the eye. But there's no time for me to stop here thinking."

Moving to the table he began to make free with the fragments which Mr. Swayne had left, and was shovelling unconsidered trifles into his pockets, when the door opened to admit a lady of the housekeeper type. Appreciating the situation on the instant, she began to shout with the full force of a healthy pair of lungs. The youth flew to the window, dropping part of his booty and his sandbag as he went. This time the household was effectually roused. The lady told her story; Mr. Macnamara, when he regained his senses, told his.

He described how a burglar, appearing at the window, he had waited for him to enter; how he had captured him the moment he was in the room; how, while he was still engaged in a furious struggle, a confederate had come upon him unawares, like a coward, from behind, and struck him senseless. There was the open window, the sandbag, scraps of the vanished treasure, even the lady, to prove his words.

Miss Cornelius received the news of the fate of the wedding presents with surprising equanimity. Interviewing Mr. Macnamara, she listened to his story, asking, with a curious smile, when he had finished, "Are you quite sure that you did not sleep, even for a few moments, while you were keeping watch?"

Without waiting for an answer, she walked away, he staring at her with a startled air.

"What does she mean by that?" he asked himself. "I wonder how much she knows."

IT WAS ONE of the prettiest and smartest weddings of the season. When the company had returned to the house in Berkeley Square the bride's father announced, having, possibly, received a hint from his daughter, that he hoped that the Earl and Countess would accept from him a cheque for the approximate value of the stolen presents. On receiving this intimation the bridegroom perceptibly brightened; hitherto his manner had seemed a trifle surly.

As the happy pair were leaving Charing Cross Station for the first stage of the wedding journey, someone slipped an envelope into the Countess of Grinstead's hand; she was standing outside her carriage door. The Earl, at the moment, was at the other end of the station. Opening it she found that it contained a card on which was written, "A wedding present— with Alexander Swayne's best wishes." With the card was the half-sheet of paper on which Mr. Gerald Drew had written the note which had been the cause, in a sense, of the success of the burglary in Berkeley Square. When the Earl returned, the Countess, seated in the carriage, was dropping scraps of paper out of the opposite window.

______________________

3: Gas!

Richard Dehan

Clotilde Graves  1863-1932

In: Off Sandy Hook and Other Stories, 1915

Clotilde Inez Augusta Mary Graves

MRS. GUDRUN'S season at the Sceptre Theatre was drawing to a finish, and the funds of the Syndicate were in the same condition. Teddy Candelish— Teddy of the cherubic smile and the golden mustache, constantly described by the Theatrical Piffer as the most ubiquitous of acting-managers— sat in his sanctum before an American roll-top desk, checking off applications for free seats and filing unpaid bills. Gormleigh, the stage-director, balanced himself on the end of a saddle-bag sofa, chewing an unlighted cigar; De Hanna, the representative of the Syndicate, was going over the books at a leather-covered table, his eyeglasses growing dim in the attempt to read anything beyond deficit in those neatly kept columns. Mrs. Gudrun occupied the easiest chair. Her feet, beautifully silk-stockinged and wonderfully shod, occupied the next comfortable; her silken draperies were everywhere, and a cigarette was between her finely cut lips. Her feather boa hung from an electric-globe branch, and her flowery diaphanous hat, bristling with diamond-headed pins, crowned the domelike brow of a plaster bust of the Bard of Avon.

"Well," said the manageress, making smoke-rings and looking at De Hanna, "there's no putting the bare fact to bed! We've not pulled off things as we had a right to expect.... We've lost our little pot, and come to the end of our resources, eh?"

"In plain terms," said De Hanna, speaking through his nose, as he always did when upon the subject of money, "the Syndicate has run you for all the Syndicate is worth, and when we pay salaries on Saturday we shall have"— he did some figuring with a lead pencil on the back of a millionaire's request for gratuitous stalls, and whistled sadly— "something like four hundred and fifty left to carry us through until the seventeenth."

"We began with as nice a little nest-egg as any management could wish for," said Candelish, dropping a smoking vesta into the waste-paper basket with fatalistic unconcern. "We thought The Stone Age would pay. I'd my doubts of a prehistoric drama in five acts and fourteen scenes that couldn't be produced under an outlay of four thousand pounds, but we were overruled." He veered the tail of his eye round at Mrs. Gudrun. "You and the Duke were mad about that piece."

"De Petoburgh saw great possibilities for me in it," said Mrs. Gudrun, throwing another cigarette-end at the fireplace and missing it. "That scene where Kaja comes in dressed in woad for battle, and brains What's-his-name with her prehistoric stone ax because he doesn't want to fight her, always thrilled him. He said I would be greater than Siddons in it, and, well— you remember the notices I got in the Morning Whooper. Cluffer did me justice then, if he did turn nasty afterward— the beast!"

"When I met Cluffer in the vestibule on the first night after the third act," said Teddy Candelish, "he said he was going home because the tension of your acting was positively too great to bear. He preferred me to describe the rest of the play to him, and jotted the chief points on his cuff before he went. And I grant you the notice was a ripper, but it didn't seem to bring people in; and after playing to paper for three weeks, we had to put up the fortnight's notice and jam The Kiss of Clytie into rehearsal."

"Dad vos a lofely— ach!— a lofely blay!" moaned Oscar Gormleigh, casting up his little pig's eyes to the highly ornamental ceiling of the managerial sanctum. "Brigged from de Chairman in de pekinning, as I told you, as all de goot blays are."

"I wish the Germans had stuck to it, I'm sure," said De Hanna. "It always appeared to me too much over the heads of ordinary intelligent playgoers to pay worth a little damn."

"De dranscendental element—" Gormleigh was beginning, when Mrs. Gudrun cut him short.

"I never cared for it very much myself; but Bob Bolsover was dead set upon my giving the public my reading of Clytie— and, well, you must recollect the effect I created in that studio scene. Mullekens came round afterward, and brought his critic with him, and said that the best French school of acting must now look to its laurels, and a lot more. Mullekens is the proprietor of the Daily Tomahawk, and so, of course, I thought we were in for a good thing. How could I imagine that the creature of a critic would go home and make game of the whole show? Doesn't Mullekens pay him?"

"Ah, ja! Poot dat gritic's vife is de sister of de Chairman agtress dat blayed Glytie in de orichinal Chairman broduction," put in Gormleigh, whose real surname was Gameltzch, as everybody does not know. "Did I not varn you? It vas a gase of veels vidin veels."

"Wheels or no wheels, Clytie kissed us out of three thou. odd," said De Hanna, wearily scratching his ear with his "Geyser" pen, "and then we cut our throats with—"

"With him," put in Candelish, jerking a contemptuous thumb at the hat-crowned effigy of the Bard of Avon.

"You were keen on my giving the great mass of playgoers a chance of seeing my Juliet," remarked Mrs. Gudrun casting a Parthian glance at the worm that had turned.

"But they didn't take the chance," put in De Hanna, "and consequently— we fizzle out."

"Like a burst bladder..." moaned Candelish, who saw before him a weary waste of months unenlivened by paid occupation.

"Or a damp sguib," put in Gormleigh.

"Let's have a sputter before we expire," said De Hanna, with a momentary revival of energy. "Lots of manuscripts have been sent in.... Isn't there a little domestic drama of the purely popular sort, or a farce imbecile enough to pay for production, to be found among 'em?"

"Dunno," yawled Candelish, tilting his chair.

"Who is supposed to read the plays that are sent in?" asked De Hanna, turning his large Oriental eyes toward. Mrs. Gudrun.

"I read some," said the lady languidly, "and the dogs get the rest."

She stretched, and an overpowering combination of fashionable perfumes, shaken from her draperies, filled the apartment. The three men sneezed simultaneously. Mrs. Gudrun rose with majesty, and going to the mantel-glass, patted her transformation fringe into form, and smiled at the perennially beautiful image that smiled and patted back. Suddenly there was a whining and scratching outside the door.

"It's Billy. Let him in, one of you," ordered the manageress.

All three men obeyed, clashing their heads together smartly at the portal. De Hanna, with watering eyes, opened the door, and a brindled bull of surpassing ugliness trotted into the office, carrying a chewed brown paper parcel decorated with futile red seals and trailing loops of string. Lying down in the center of the carpet and carefully arranging the parcel between his forepaws, Billy proceeded to worry it.

"Vot has de beast kott dere?" asked Gormleigh.

"Take it from him and see!" said Mrs. Gudrun carelessly. Gormleigh's violet nose became pale lavender as Billy, looking up from the work of destruction, emitted a loud growl.

"He understonds everyding vot you say!" spluttered the stage-manager.

"Try him with German," advised De Hanna.

"Or mit Yiddish," retorted Gormleigh spitefully.

As De Hanna winced under the retort, Candelish, who had rummaged unnoticed in a drawer for some moments, produced a biscuit. Billy, watching out of the corner of his eye, pricked a ragged ear and whacked the carpet with his muscular tail.

"Hee, boy, hee, Billy!" Candelish said seductively. Billy rose upon his powerful bow-legs and hung out his tongue expectantly.

"Koot old Pillee!" uttered Gormleigh encouragingly. "Gleffer old poy!"

Billy vouchsafed the stage-manager not a glance; his bloodshot eyes were glued upon the biscuit as he stood over the brown paper parcel. Then, as Candelish, throwing an expression of eager voracity into his countenance, made believe to eat the coveted delicacy himself, Billy made a step forwards.... The end of the parcel projected from between his hind-legs.... De Hanna softly stepped to the fireplace and seized the tongs....

"Poo' boy— poo' ol' Billy, then!" coaxed the acting-manager. He broke the biscuit with one inviting snap, Billy forgot the parcel, and De Hanna grabbed and got it. The next moment the bull, realizing his loss, pinned the representative of the Syndicate by the leg.

"Dash— dash— dash! Take the dash brute off, somebody!" shrieked De Hanna.

There was a brief scene of confusion. Then, as Billy retired under a corner table with a mouthful of ravished tweed, "He's torn a piece out of your trow-trows, old man," Candelish remarked sympathetically.

"He might have torn all the veins out of my leg!" De Hanna gasped.

"Den," said Gormleigh, chuckling, "you would haf been Kosher."

But Mrs. Gudrun was deeply disappointed in Billy. "Letting you off for a bit of cloth!" she said. "Why, the breed are famous for their bite. He ought to have taken a piece of flesh clean out— I shall never believe in that dog again!" She swept over to Gormleigh, who was busy disentangling the lengths of chewed string and removing the tatters of brown paper from Billy's treasure-trove. It proved to be a green-covered, rather bulky volume of typescript. A red-bordered label gummed on the cover announced its title:

MAGGS AT MARGATE

A Seaside Farce,

In Three Whiffs of Ozone

"What funny fool has written this?" snorted the manageress.

"De name of de author.... Ach so! De name of de author is Slump— Ferdinand Slump."

"I know the chap, or of him. He's a business man who owns a half share in some chemical gasworks at Hackney, and does comic literature in off hours. He writes the weekly theatrical page of Tickles," said De Hanna, "and—"

"Dickles is a stupid halfpenny brint," said Gormleigh, "dat sdeals all its chokes from de Chairman babers."

"Really? It struck me that there must be some existing reason," said Candelish, "for the wonderfully level flow of dullness the publication manages to maintain—"

"Well, I suppose somebody is going to read this farce, since that is what he calls it, by this Slump, since that is what he calls himself," said Mrs. Gudrun, removing her hat from Shakespeare and pinning it on.

"Certainly. De Hanna, as the Representative of the Syndicate—" began Candelish eagerly.

"Pardon me. As acting-manager," objected De Hanna, "you, Candelish, have the prior claim."

"Didn't you say you were going out of town to-night, Gormleigh?" interrupted Mrs. Gudrun, who had stuck in all her hatpins, and was now putting on her gloves.

"Choost for a liddle plow," admitted Gormleigh. "Dere is a cheab night drain to Stinkton-on-Sea, sdarding from de Creat Northern at dwelve dirty. I shall sleep in de gorridor gombardmend, oond breakfast at a goffee and vinkle stall on de peach to-morrow morgen. By vich I haf poot von night to pay for at de hotel." His bearded lips parted in a childlike smile of delight. "My vife goes not vid me," he said, and smiled again.

"Then take this!" said Mrs. Gudrun, turning Slump's farce over. "Report on it after the show on Monday." And she rustled from the office on billows of silk, attended by clouds of perfume, the despised Billy, and the assiduous Candelish. The stage-manager swore. De Hanna, concealing the solution in the continuity of his tweeds with a bicycle trouser-clip, grinned.

"A little solid reading will steady you down, Gummy, and if my experience of Slump goes for anything— you've got it there. But you'll report on Monday, as Her Nibs ordered. If you've not read it, look out for squalls on Monday night!"

"POTSTAUSEND! Hof I read dot farce!" gasped Gormleigh on the night of Monday. "Schwerlich! I hof read him tvice. Once from de beginning to de end, oond akain from de end to de beginning." His face assumed an expression of anguish, and the veins on his bald forehead stood out as the thick drops gathered there. "I cannot make heads or dails of him.... He is gram-jam with chokes, poot I cannot lof at dem; his situations are sgreaming, poot I cannot sgream. De tears day komm instead.... Dat vork is vonderful ... it should one day be broduced, poot in de kreat National School Theatre for authors oond actors dot de gountry hos not yet founded, to brove to bubils vot is not a farce—"

"Yet I shouldn't be surprised if we did the piece here," said Teddy Candelish. "Slump, the author, has been talking over Her Nibs, and as he would let Maggs at Margate go for nothing down, find three hundred pounds toward the production, and merely take a nominal sixty per cent., the chances are that you'll be rehearsing before Tuesday. Hullo!" for the stage-manager had reeled heavily against him.

"Ich bin unwohl.... It is dose undichested chokes of Slumps I haf hodd on my gonstitution since I read dot farce. Oond now you komm mit anodder," Gormleigh groaned.

"Here's Her Nibs with Slump," said Candelish, with a grin; and Mrs. Gudrun, in the Renaissance robes of Juliet, swept into the green room with a little grinning, long-haired man in an imitation astrachan-collared overcoat over crumpled evening dress— a little man who gave a large hand, with mourning nails, familiarly to Candelish, and nodded cavalierly when Gormleigh was introduced. Slump was to read his play to the manageress and her staff after the performance that night.

Read his play Slump did, and Cimmerian gloom gathered upon the countenances of his listeners as the first act dragged to a close. Slump put the typescript down on the supper-table and looked round; Gormleigh's head had sunk upon his folded arms. Heavy snores testified to the depth and genuineness of his slumbers. The countenances of De Hanna and Candelish expressed the most profound dejection, while the intellectual half of Mrs. Gudrun's celebrated countenance had temporarily vanished behind her upper lip.

"What do you say to that?" Slump asked, quite undismayed by these signs of weariness on the part of his listeners. Mrs. Gudrun came back to answer him.

"I say that it's the longest funeral I've ever been at. Open another bottle of the Boy, Teddy, and wake up, Gormleigh."

"I hof not been asleep," explained Gormleigh.

"I wish I had," sighed De Hanna. "The fact is," he continued, prompted by a glance from Mrs. Gudrun, "that your play don't do."

Slump maintained, in the face of this discouragement, a smiling front.

"Won't do, eh?"

"Won't do for nuts," said De Hanna firmly. "Nobody could possibly laugh at it," he continued.

"It is too tam tismal," put in Gormleigh.

"But if I prove to you that people can laugh at it, what then?" queried the undismayed Slump. He took from a fob pocket-book a newspaper cutting and handed it across the supper-table to De Hanna. The cutting was headed

OZONE AT THE BALL

and ran thus:

"'Will you take a little refreshment?'

" 'Thank you, I have just had a sniff of ozone.'

"Question and answer at the ball given last night in aid of the —— Hospital, —— Square, at the Royal Rooms, Kensington. For, besides champagne, ozone was laid on. After every dance Dr. Blank, head of the Hospital, wheeled about the hall an appliance in which, by electrical action, pure oxygen was converted into the invigorating element of mountain or seaside air, greatly to the purifying and enlivening of the atmosphere of the ballroom."

"My firm supplies the gas used in the treatment of the patients at that hospital," said Slump. "It's a turnover of ten thousand per annum. We're ready to lay it on at the theater, and give the playgoers genuine ozone with their evening's entertainment. As for the farce, I don't count it A1 quality, but I've made up my mind to be acted and laughed at, and I'm going to bring chemistry in to help me. Think what an advertisement for the hoardings: 'Real Ozone Wafted Over the Footlights,' 'Sea Air in the Stalls and Gallery!' "

"By thunder! it's a whacking notion!" cried Candelish.

"Colossal!" exclaimed De Hanna, taking fire at last.

"Poot vill de beoble loff?" asked Gormleigh.

"Ah, yes! Will they stand your farce even with an ozone accompaniment?" doubted Mrs. Gudrun.

"I've a machine downstairs in the stage-door office," said Slump calmly. "Will you try the first act over again— with gas?"

Gormleigh groaned, but the other three nodded acquiescence; and the men in charge of the electrical oxygen-generator received instructions to bring the machine upstairs.

"HA, HA, ha!"

"Haw, haw, haw!"

"Ach, it is too funny for anydings!" This from Gormleigh, rocking in his chair, and mopping his streaming eyes with a red silk handkerchief. "Ach, ha, ha, ha!"

Mrs. Gudrun held up her jeweled hands for mercy. The laughing man who worked the machine stopped pumping, the laughing author ceased to read, Billy the bulldog, who had been grinning from ear to ear, wiped a wet nose on his mistress's gown and sat down panting.

"How the deuce," gasped De Hanna, "can oxygen make a stupid farce a funny one? I can't understand it, for the life of me."

"Because," replied Slump, with brevity and clearness, "that's my trade secret, and I don't mean to give it away. Well, does Maggs go on, or do I take it to another management?"

The general assent was flattering in its unanimity. Maggs at Margate went into rehearsal at the "Sceptre" next day, and in a week was presented to the public. We refer you to the critiques published in the Daily Tomahawk, the Yelper, and other morning prints:

"It seems as though the good old days were come again.... Peals of irresistible laughter rang through the crowded theater as the side-splitting story of Maggs was unfolded. The audience laughed, the orchestra laughed, the actors themselves were infected by the general merriment."

"Mr. Slump is a public benefactor. When 'down,' a dose of him will be found to act like magic. The management's happy notion of supplying the theater with real ozone adds not a little to the pleasure of the entertainment."

And so forth, and so forth. Booking was immense, the box-office and libraries were besieged with applicants eager to breathe the genuine sea air wafted over the footlights at the "Sceptre." The treasury boxes had to be carried to the office at night by two of the strongest commissionaires.

"Slump has a soft snap," said De Hanna, chewing his Geyser pen rapturously as he went over the books. "Sixty per cent. of the gross receipts in author's fees, and we're averaging two thousand a week since we went in for daily matinées. Then the Transatlantic Trust is running the play in New York to phenomenal business, and we've planted it out for the Colonies, while France and Germany—"

"Id vas from Chairmany dat de leading itea of de blay was orichinally sdolen," said Gormleigh, who had blossomed out in new clothes, a red necktie, and a cat's-eye pin.

"Leading idea of the play is the Ozone," said De Hanna; "and as Slump's firm holds the patent for the electro-oxygen generator, and manufactures the oxygen used in the theater—"

"Dey call it bure oxygen, poot it is not dat," said Gormleigh, laying his finger to his nose. "It is a motch cheaber gombound, I give you my vort."

"What?" De Hanna came closer, and his Oriental eyes gleamed. "If that's true, and we could manufacture and generate it for ourselves, we— we could buy up every rotten play we come across— there's heaps of them to be had, Heaven knows— and run 'em for nuts. What is the stuff?"

"It is nitrous oxide," said Gormleigh, "gommonly known as loffing kass— and I hof a friend, a Chairman chemist— dat vill— Hoosh!" He laid his finger to his nose with an air of secrecy as Mrs. Gudrun swept into the office, enveloped in her usual clouds of silk and perfume. Candelish was not with her, but Slump and Billy followed at her heels.

"Of course, it must be admitted, Maggs is a phenomenal success," she was saying, "and we're making money hand over hand; but the part of 'Angelina'— though Cluffer says no French comedy actress of any age or period could act it as I do— does not give me proper opportunities. Mr. Slump thinks with me." She smiled dazzlingly upon the enamored little man. "And he has written a tragedy in blank verse— The Poisoned Smile— which we mean to produce as soon as the run is over." She swept out again with her following, and De Hanna and Gormleigh exchanged a wink of partnership.

"A tragedy in blank verse by Slump.... Phew!" De Hanna whistled. "They won't want laughing-gas for that.... As for us, we go snacks in biz. I'll find the Syndicate and the theater."

"Oond I de blays, de sdage-management, oond de kass. De Chairman chemist friend I dold you of, I hof vith him already a gontract made."

"Perhaps it is a bit shady," said De Hanna punctiliously, "to exploit an idea that really is Slump's property...."

"De chokes in Slump's comic baber he sdole from a Chairman orichinal," said Gormleigh pachydermatously. "It is nodding poot tid for tad!"

_____________

4: The Atonement of Chang Feng

Clarence Herbert New

(as by "Culpeper Zandtt")

1862-1933

Blue Book April 1921

One of a series under the general title "Deep Water Men".

THERE were at least four men on the Melchior Treub, going up from Batavia to Singapore, who stood well with the other passengers because of a basic adaptability and cheerful disposition which made them good mixers in almost any sort of crowd— in short, the kind who invariably come to the top on shipboard, where one either is a good fellow or a crab. For some reason which they could not have expressed, several of the women might have given Harry Bartlett preference over the others. He never talked about the war or the army if he could avoid it; but they generally understood that he had been in one or two of the big actions and had sported two slugs on his shoulder when demobilized. His manner showed breeding; he seemed to have plenty of money, and it was rumored that he was the only heir of a rich Wall Street uncle— in the Javanese ports he had spent it as one does who is used more to spending than counting pennies. The darkhaired Armitage girl had managed to get a shade more of his attention than the others. They were leaning over the port gangway rail, up forward, as the boat ran up Rhio Strait for Singapore.

"I hope we're going to see a lot of you ashore, Mr. Bartlett? Father says he's going to leave us here while he runs up to Bangkok on business. Will you be in the Straits for some time?"

"Why— I hardly know. Blessed if I can find out what's the matter with me, anyhow! When we were demobbed, I didn't feel like settling down to work— it was too much of a let-down. Fact is, I think the majority of us were morbid, we hated to talk or think of what we'd been through— our capacity for enjoyment or keen interest in things was blunted. The old boy was mighty nice when I came back— said what I needed was a long rest— told me to beat it for any place I wanted to go and he'd follow me up with drafts in the larger ports. I took him up on that— headed for South America, then around through the South Sea Islands. Thought at first I could live down there for years— just forgetting, loafing in the shade of the palms, listening to the Kanakas singing and telling their ghost stories. The life began to get me— until a live he-man came along with a copra-schooner, in the Marequesas, and began talking about fellows who had been down there forty or fifty years. Good families at home, educated, but just couldn't get away from it— from the soft moonlit nights, the lapping of water in the lagoons, the echo of surf on the reefs, the living one scented day after another without having really to work at all. So I hiked over to Sydney to see how a little action would feel again. Sydney's one swell little town— I'll say so! But it's different from New York— some. Came along up to the China Sea ports— then Batavia and Sourabaya. And I'll say I've 'eard the East a-callin' here just about as strong as I did in the Paumotus or the Solomons. An old Tahiti woman told me I didn't quite fit into the lazy island picture— that good and bad spirits were always scrapping over my head, that I was due to have pretty rotten luck, sometime, but that if I had a drop or two of chief's blood in me, as she kinda thought, I'd run across a lot of good luck too. She was so blamed serious about it that she got my goat. I've been thinking about her all this morning— blessed if I don't feel as if I were up against a hoodoo somewhere."

"Probably you haven't entirely gotten over the effects of the war— your nerves are still supersensitive. Anyhow— they say there are lovely motor-roads all over the Island, and I hope you're going to show me some of them! That is— of course, if you haven't something of more importance to do. We shall be staying with General Mount's family out in one of the suburbs—  Tanglin, I think they call it... Oh, look! Were going in back of those two islands. If that one on the port side is Pulau Brani, Kepper Harbor is behind it."

AS the boat drew in toward the Koninklijke wharf, they remained leaning over the rail— speaking occasionally, then lapsing into a revery in which vastly different thoughts were busy in the two heads. Bartlett's sense of depression increased rather than gave way to the holiday feeling in the crowd of many different races on the wharf who had come down from the city in motorcars, electric-trams and rikishas to meet friends on the steamer. Eventually he went off down the wharf with his luggage in a rikisha, waving back at them as he disappeared.

Bartlett went to the Raffles partly because most of the people he knew went there, partly for the cosmopolitan something about the place which he liked. And it gave him a pleasant feeling inside when several of the coolies and the clerk called him by name. He had only stopped there once before. Perhaps his tips might have had something to do with it— or the fact that he was said to be a wealthy American. The war had left him with a good deal of cynicism. Still, it was nice to be remembered, even if there were an object in it. After inspecting the room given him, he strolled down to the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation to draw some money for current expenses, thinking there might be also letters addressed to him in the bank's care. He inquired for these before making out his check and sat down to glance over them.

There was none from his uncle, as he had expected— but a long envelope from a firm of lawyers in New York brought back a little of the apprehension he had confessed to Miss Armitage on the boat. He knew of no reason why they should be writing, nor how they had obtained an address where letters were likely to reach him. The letter was comparatively short, considering the amount of unpleasant news it contained. His uncle, it seemed, had died very suddenly of heart-failure after a panic in the money-market which had completely wiped. out his fortune. His real estate and personal effects were being sold by the attorneys to settle the estate, but there was little prospect of there being anything left after all claims had been adjusted. As sole heir, according to his uncle's will, Bartlett was being notified as a matter of form— but that was about all it amounted to.

Scarcely knowing what he expected to gain by it, Bartlett asked to see the manager, and was told that an appointment was customary. Nevertheless one of the clerks took his card— and returned to fetch him into the manager's office.

The interview was a pleasant one— the manager stating that their New York branch had written them of his uncle's attempt to corner the market on certain stocks, and the combination which had been formed against him. It was regrettable, very, but from the information at hand, must have been a pretty bad smash. When asked if there was anything remaining to Bartlett's credit in Singapore, he consulted a slip which had been handed to him by the clerk.

"Three thousand dollars were cabled to your credit with us, Mr. Bartlett, about two months ago. Since then we've paid drafts. from you in various parts of the Dutch Indies amounting to something over twenty-seven hundred. There is still a balance due you of two hundred and ninetyone— gold."

"Phew! Not enough to get me home— unless I go steerage and emigrant-coach!"

"Er— is it necessary for you to return just now?"

"Why— no. I don't suppose it is. My uncle is dead and buried— he had no other relatives who have not sufficient incomes to get along comfortably."

"Then it would seem that your chance of finding an opening is as good or better out here than it would be at home— and you've nearly three hundred to keep you going meanwhile. Eh?"

"I think you're right, sir. Guess I'll take a hundred dollars of that for immediate expenses and leave the rest on deposit. There are a few little things I'll have to square up."

"Er— quite so. I'll have the bills fetched while you're making out a check. This is rather a facer, Mr. Bartlett— I'm sorry! If I can be of service at any time, don't hesitate about dropping in for suggestions."

"That's very kind of you, I'm sure. I feel more cut up over the old boy's death than I do about the money. Army training puts a fellow in condition for most anything— so I'm not worrying much over my end of it. There's plenty to do anywhere, I suppose."

RATHER to Bartlett's surprise, when he got out into the street, he found that the sense of impending calamity had left him. The worst he could think of just then had happened. The rugged face of Silas Bartlett was now among the shadows, a personality he was never to see again in the flesh, and this, he knew, would be a lasting regret for some time. But it presently occurred to him that one cause for his morbidness and distaste for the humdrum details of everyday life had been the fact that income and future were presumably assured. No matter where he might travel, or what adventures he might strike in out-of-the-way places, there had never been any anxiety about money or whether he would get all he wanted to eat. Now, on the contrary, he was free— to starve or freeze, if he hadn't the wit to provide food for his belly and clothes for his back, the wherewithal to pay for shelter in heavy weather when he hadn't built it with his own hands. He decided that the let-up from responsibility after leaving the army had caused much of his mental lassitude.

What his immediate course should be he had no idea. It occurred to him that he couldn't afford to stay at the Raffles; but with a spirit of adventure, he felt that his brains should at least be good enough to provide him with comfortable shelter. He would stay where he was for a while, anyhow— trying to find himself. When his money ran out— well, that bridge needn't be crossed today, or tomorrow. Just to give himself breathing-space, however, he got the bookkeeper to figure up what his room and meals would run to for a couple of weeks and paid the amount in advance. Then he had the Number One call a motorcar of respectable appearance and went out to see Miss Armitage at Tanglin. As some of the other girls who had been on the Melchior Treub were with her, a party was made up to drive around the Island—  with dinner at General Mount's afterward. During the week, he repeated the drive—  twice, then decided it was eating into his resources too rapidly.

Meantime a rumor had been creeping about Singapore that instead of being a wealthy American, he was really about at the end of his rope— which had the effect of making certain former acquaintances decidedly cool. According to their belief, men who were down on their luck usually drifted over the line of self-respect very shortly and had no compunction about sponging upon their friends. Grace Armitage, however, was less of a fair-weather friend than others who had been on the steamer. Few who were not artists would have called her handsome— at first glance. Her features were cleanly modeled but not effeminate— perhaps a trifle heavy in repose. But when they lighted up, it gave her a charm of far more lasting quality than mere prettiness. Bartlett had purposely kept away from her several days when she telephoned him at the Raffles. And when he called at General Mount's an hour later, she took him to a corner of the bungalow veranda screened with vines, and proceeded to clear away possible misunderstandings.

"Don't get scared! I'm going to call you Harry for this once, anyhow! Harry— people are whispering about that you've lost all your money and are up against it. Is that really true?"

"My uncle died six weeks ago without leaving a cent, and I've nothing of- my own— as yet. But just how much I'm up against it is another matter. I'm not worrying very much at present. I noticed that some of the folks have been a little cool the last few days— didn't know but you might be feeling the same way. So I quit coming around."

"I'd consider that— well, a bit insulting if there were not so many mean people in the world. It's not easy to distinguish between them. But I shall expect you to see me just as often as you care to— the Mount's all feel the same way, I'm sure. They like you. Of course I'm sorry about your uncle— awfully sorry. You seemed to like him a lot, and I think you told me he was your only near relative. As far as the money's concerned, I'll be interested in seeing how you'll go at it to get-some of your own. Now come along for a walk through these lovely Botanical Gardens with me! 'There are lots of things I like to do which don't cost anything."

THAT sort of thing makes a hit with any man, whether he happens to be down on his luck or not. It keeps alive some of that faith in human nature which contact with the world— and more particularly such experiences as living through a part. of the German War— almost wipes out. Bartlett didn't impress her as a man down on his luck; but knowing that he must have very little money left, she couldn't make his cheerful bearing harmonize with the facts. Presently, her curiosity— and personal interest— would no longer be denied.

"Harry, it's none of my business, of course, and if you think the question impertinent, why, say so. But I'd like to know what you think of trying first? I know I should be quite at sea if I suddenly found that I had to earn my own living."

"Why, I'm prefectly willing to explain what I'm up to, Grace— only, so far, there isn't much to explain. I've been figuring the proposition over, trying to decide what I really want to do. Of course, I may have to take something I don't want, in the wind-up— but I'm shoving that off as far as I can, because it's a handicap at the start. You see, I've got to get those heavenly islands out of my blood— first. It was probably a mistake to go there. It made office-work almost impossible— innoculated me with too much need of the outof-doors. I've been thinking about shipping, quite a lot— but I don't want to get into a narrow groove where my whole attention will be fixed so close to the ground that I can't see anything bigger if it comes along.

"Leaving burglary or piracy out of the question, a chap with the experience I've had should be able to root out and put through some of the bigger things where real money is made, instead of aiming at a piking game which never pays anything but day's wages. Know what I did yesterday? You'll say it was a fool stunt— I guess anybody would! Got the idea from something I read in a magazine once. Man himself thought I was crazy, at first. There's a chap whose office is over on the Boat Quay— I suppose he'd call himself a merchant— buys and sells whole cargoes at a time— any old cargoes, wrecks, unsuccessful industries— and makes pots of money on the turn-over. Well, I went to him with an offer of thirty dollars if he'd let me sit in his office just one day and listen to the way he talked business with the men who came in to see him. Told him just what my circumstances were and about how much I had left. He doesn't wait more than a minute or two for a snap judgment on anything. Said he'd take my thirty on the understanding that if any really confidential dicker came up, I'd have to get out— that was my risk.

"Last night, I figured that I was ahead on the investment. People came in all day— I was supposed to be going through some old filing-cases in the corner. Only had to get out once— and what I saw of that caller was some education in itself—  reminded me of a German spy we put through the third-degree in France before we shot him. That's about as far as I've got, up to date. Haven't a job— no immediate prospect of one. But I think I'm considerably nearer some understanding of how to make a living, at that."

BARTLETT had really spent more time looking for employment than he admitted— but in three or four instances where he could easily have obtained a twenty-dollar clerkship from his army experience and knowledge of French, he had shied off before asking for it. He thought the confinement would be intolerable and the progress to something bigger too slow. Yet he found his sense of observation becoming sharper every day— caught himself listening to business discussions in the hotel-lobby, studying the manner and appearance of successful men about the city. It was this sharpening of his faculties which led him to overhear, quite unintentionally, a few words between two sea-captains in one of the shipping-houses which made a point of posting marine information upon a bulletin-board in their main office. There were on the board, at the time, weather reports, notices of steamship movements, including Lloyds' reports of those overdue; and one bronzed shipmaster had run his finger down the list until it rested upon the name of a certain cargo-boat.

"See that there boat, Tommy? Lloyds' says she was last spoken off San Bernardino, August sixteenth— an' not since heard from. Waal— my Number One aboard the Rajah, he says diff'ren! He's got a brother who cruises down in them waters an' through the Moluccas in a Malay tradin'junk— saw "this brother in Zamboanga when we touched there comin' up. An' the Chink, he says he passed that boat in his junk, near enough to make out the name on her stern, about thirty miles off Cape Sapey— no'thwest coast of Papua. Said she was under Dutch colors at the time, but he was dead sure about the name. First-off, I was goin' to send in a report to Lloyds'— but shucks! It's the word of a Chink that mebbe don't savvy English letters on a boat much better than I savvy their hen-tracks! The laugh would be on me if the log of some other cargo-boat showed her passin' that spot at the time."

There was no particular reason why this fragment of talk should have impressed itself upon Bartlett's mind, or why, afterward, he should have stepped over to glance at the spot on the list where the shipmaster's finger had left a faint greasy smudge. He hadn't mentioned the name of the steamer, but there was only one posted as "missing" on that part of the list— so the name also remained in his memory, though temporarily obliterated by other things.

BARTLETT was now pretty well into his last hundred dollars— but felt that he didn't want to make a definite move until after he had looked about a little more. So he overhauled his luggage at the Raffles and decided to sell a ruby scarf-pin for which he had paid three hundred dollars in New York. It was only in little streaks of this sort that any inclination toward extravagance had showed. He seldom wore jewelry— but when he did, the stone or the watch had to be a good one. The clerk at  the Raffles mentioned two or three reliable dealers in jewels around the city when Bartlett made a casual inquiry for an honest one— but the Number One Boy afterward approached him in the lobby and said the last one mentioned would prove the more satisfactory to deal with if he wanted to sell anything. For some reason of their own— possibly his cheerful and courteous manner— every Chinese about the hotel liked him. And though he had said nothing to the clerk about selling anything, the Number One understood his situation perfectly when he recommended a certain Chang Feng in the narrower part of Waterloo Road, beyond the Rochore quarter.

When he reached the place in a rikisha, the shop proved to be a small, unpretentious one— with a much larger godown behind it, not seen from the street. The appearance of the place didn't impress him as unfavorably as it might the average American tourist, for he had learned something about Chinese tradesmen since his arrival in the Archipelago. And he at once sensed in Chang Feng an individuality very much out of the common. His over-vest and under-jacket, at a closer glance, were of silk not to be found in the average godown, though the cut was that worn by the shopkeeping caste. The jade button on his black-silk cap was rather pretentious for one not of Manchu blood— and the man's English was amazingly good when he fancied that pidgin would not be understood by his customer.

Chang took the pin over near his single window and examined the ruby through a jeweler's glass.

"When you buy this?"

"January— last year. In New York."

"Ah— yes. Tiffany— I theenk. You pay about three hundred— then. Rubies a little higher now. This is good stone. I give you three hundred an' eighty, gold. Or you come this side when I close shop tonight, I show you other stone allee same look like good as this. Mebbe so you like um. I give you that an' two hundred dollah fo' this.' The Chinaman had been looking at his customer rather closely in occasional side-glances— as if trying to recall a resemblance to some one he knew.

"Would you be willing to give me the two hundred now— and leave the balance until I decide about the other stone this evening?"

"Oh, yes. Can do." He put the pin in some mysterious pocket and laid several crisp bank-notes upon the little counter. "Whatch name?"

"Bartlett— Henry M. Bartlett. Staying at the Raffles."

"You catchee lelative one time— allee same John Ba'tlett— Bos'n side?"

"Why— yes. That was my father's name. We lived in Boston when I was a kid. Did you know him?"

"Yep— savvy um plenty one time. Savvy eyes an' mouth allee same when you look out window."

It seemed almost incredible that the man really could have known his father— and yet, it was pleasant. He was pleased that chance had directed him to Chang's shop. After all, one should see at a closer glance that he was several grades above the ordinary coolie or tradesman. There had been a strong resemblance between father and son.

ABOUT ten o'clock Bartlett got himself into a rikisha and went over to Waterloo Road again. The little shop was closed when he arrived, but after knocking twice upon the closed door, a coolie presently opened it— without unfastening a heavy chain. When the American mentioned his name, however, he was promptly admitted, the door securely barred after he was inside and a rather dim spot-light from an electric torch thrown upon the floor near an inner passage.

"You catchee come-along lat side one time— in godown. See Chang Feng plitty soon."

Bartlett wasn't always successful in getting what a Chinese was trying to convey in pidgin, but he gathered that he was expected to proceed into some other building. For what seemed at least fifteen minutes, in that stuffy darkness, he followed the moving patch of light on the floor—  along narrow passages between mattingcovered boxes, solidly-filled gunny-sacks, piles of camphor-wood cases— until he finally emerged through a narrow door into the softened light of the most wonderfully furnished room he had ever seen. His first glance at the rugs, bronzes, lacquered furniture, gold and satin embroideries, carved ivories and ebony, and onyx tables, gave him the impression of being surrounded by almost priceless things.

At the farther end of the room there was a raised platform with two beautifully carved ebony chairs at either side of the customary guest-table. In one of them sat Chang Feng in a gorgeous over-vest of quilted opaline satin, puffing meditatively upon a silver Chinese water-pipe of a size to rest comfortably in his right hand. Motioning Bartlett to the chair which stood sidewise at the opposite side of the table, he opened a carved sandalwood box and handed him a stick-pin with a ruby which he would have pronounced so nearly equal to his own in value that there was little choice between them. But at a motion from Chang a coolie mysteriously appeared with a black-iron box which seemed to be rather hot. When the man pushed a little slide on one face of it, this proved to be a lantern so constructed that an intense white light— possibly acetylene— came through a circular opening not over a quarter of an inch in diameter— there being no crack or pinhole through which the light escaped in any other place. Chang's English appeared to have improved immensely since afternoon.

"You might wear that stone until your children were grown men before it would be subjected to any such test— which is why the other will possibly answer your purpose fully as well. But— place each of them against the little opening and let the light shine through. See if you can detect any real difference."

With interest born of his appreciation for jewels, Bartlett held first one and then the other stone against the little orifice in the lantern— noticing that the settings were so nearly identical that he couldn't tell them apart save by close inspection. The first showed a clear translucency of excellent color. Off-hand, he would have pronounced it a valuable gem. The second, however, was crystal-clear with the crimson of old wine against the light— markedly different from the other—  and seemed to possess a latent fire of its own.

"I didn't know my stone was really as good as this! Thought the price was rather stiff when I bought it, but they said it was worth the money."

"They dealt with you honorably. Many dealers would have charged more. Mebbeso you like to keep him? Yes?"

"I'm afraid I need the money more than I do a scarf-pin just at present. Guess I'd better have the odd hundred and eighty in cash— but if you're willing to hold it a few months, I'd like to buy it back again—  with interest, of course."

"Can happen. I have inany stones that are worth even more. Now, if you think I may have been temporarily of service to you in this matter— I have a small accommodation to ask in return. John Bartlett would have undertaken it willingly, for the friendship that was between us. I do not doubt that his son will be equally courteous. One of my coolies is standing just outside that door— waiting to say that a man has called to see me and is being detained in the shop until I send for him. I am not positive as to his errand, but reasonably sure— because I have been told where he came from and the sort of men seen in his company by those who sent him to me fifteen days ago. That rug which appears to be hanging flat against the wall really conceals a recess in which there is a divan. From there you can hear every word spoken in this room. I wish you to remember carefully what is said. After the man has gone away, I will give you a chit which I would like to have delivered to a certain most honorable American, telling him also what you have heard. In this matter, I am asking you to act merely as a messenger, it is true— but the service is one I do not care to risk with anyone else—  greater than it appears. As an evidence of my appreciation of your services, I will make the price for your stone four hundred and fifty, gold."

At this point a few words of explanation will give the reader a clearer understanding of what lay in Chang's mind, and its connection with Bartlett. Several years before, in a certain port, the elder Bartlett had, just by chance, saved the expirate's life. Subsequently a number of business transactions had been handled between them to their mutual profit and satisfaction. The Chinese had been certain of the relationship when he saw Harry Bartlett on the veranda of the Raffles one day— and had subsequently learned of his altered circumstances. With the efficient organization he had built up for the carrying out of many secret enterprises, it was a simple matter to have the American directed to his shop when he began to inquire for a reliable dealer in jewels— it having occurred to Chang that his deceased friend's son would be a most opportune selection to carry out what he had in mind. Several months previously— in complete ignorance that Miss Pauline Buckner of the Nawab Line was anything to that Captain Medford who for excellent reasons was more admired by Chinese and Malays than any other man in the East— Chang had contracted, after some haggling with the Rajah of Sikayam, to abduct the lady in Hongkong and deliver her unharmed at the Rajah's palace in the interior of Borneo. It was purely a matter of business— carried out with such thorough efficiency that the young lady was on one of Chang's junks within three miles of the aforesaid palace when Medford rescued her, and the old ex-pirate learned for the first time the outrage he had been committing against one for whom he would have gladly done the greatest service in his power. As Medford had shot the Rajah in a duel, there was no getting square with the Malay for the regrettable mess— though Chang had been cursing his Malay ancestors with system and much burning of paper "cash." But he had been concentrating ever since upon some acceptable reparation which he could make for his part in the affair. And if what had been hinted to him about this bucko steamer-mate who was then waiting in the outer shop for an interview should be anywhere near the truth, Chang thought he had finally come upon a way. Which brings us to the moment when Bartlett hid himself behind the rug as instructed— and the hard-looking sailor-adventurer was admitted to the room.

Moran— whose muscles were even harder than his looks in repose— had sailed the Seven Seas for enough years to make him callous in the matter of surprises. But the appearance of that room, and the imperturbable Chinese who sat waiting for him, brought a low exclamation which he couldn't entirely suppress:

"Some museum, bo! You the guy they call Chang Feng?" (The Oriental features were absolutely expressionless; the basilisk-eyes might have been black diamonds under the drooping yellow lids.) "Huh! No need o' gettin' a grouch! Come out of it— an' talk business! If you don't mind, I'll set down here where I c'n spiel to you!" He pulled the carved ebony chair around until it faced the guest-table — giving, by this act, offense of which he never dreamed. 'Friend o' mine says you're the best jedge o' stones anywhere along the China Sea. Here! Take a look at this— an' say what you think she's worth!"

He took from his fob-pocket something about the size of a hickory-nut which rolled upon the onyx surface of the guesttable with a clear greenish glow which seemed to come from the thing itself. In a very deliberate manner Chang lifted the peculiar black lantern from the floor behind the table and held the green object against the light-aperture.

"That is an emerald which probably has been listed in some collection among the Russian nobility. I cannot recall which one. Some, I believe, have never been photographed— superstition or prejudice upon the part of the owner. Purchased merely for speculation, this stone might bring thirty thousand— if the buyer cared to risk possible claims upon it. You certainly never paid any such amount. Clearly you cannot be the owner— who would sell to a reputable dealer if he disposed of such a gem at all. The emerald was undoubtedly stolen. Still— it is a matchless stone. I will give ten thousand— and take the chances."

"Like hell you will! After just tellin' me it's worth thirty! Oh, well— mebbe we'll dicker a bit after a while. That aint what I reelly came to see you about. This here stone belonged in a collection— you're dead right it did! A whale of a collection! You say it was stole'! All right— let it go at that. Stole' by one o' Lenine's gang—  after cuttin' the owner's throat an' all his family with him! Well, the guy carries 'em in his boots, in his dirty hair, sewed into his drawers— an' gets as far as Vostok. Hell-bent on gittin' outa the country. Gits the master of a British tramp to give him passage to some port, brings his dunnage aboard, hides all but three o' them jewels in a place on that boat where he swore nobody could find 'em but him, cause nobody'd ever think o' lookin' in such a place— an' then he goes ashore f'r a horn or two, the boat not clearin' until next mornin'. Gits plenty soused, naturally,—  drinkin' with me`at the time,— an' just before he's completely out, he spills the dope bout where he's hid the stuff on the boat.

"Me— I puts knockout drops in his last glass, figurin' I'd go aboard. that boat myself— pronto. Before I gits far, I'm wise that the bloke must ha' put somethin' in my drinks— cause I lays down an' goes byby in the gutter. 'Bout next afternoon I comes outa it in some joint an' starts huntin' f'r the bolshevik— steamer gone, o' course! Finds him— an' he tried to start somethin'. We're walkin' up an alley after dark when he slips a knife into me an' I has to do him in. Went through his clo'es an' found the stones he was carryin' around with him— tryin' to sell f'r expenses, I s'pose. Well— fur's I can see, I'm the only feller alive that knows where the bunch o' loot is hid on that there boat. Aint nobody goin' to find it, 'cause nobody aint goin' to think o' lookin' f'r it. Now— you wise me on where that there boat is, today— git me aboard of her, with some feller to help, an' the chance to look fr 'em— then fix it so's we cn git away from her before anyone tumbles— an' I'll split fifty-fifty."

FOR two or three minutes the former pirate, hatchet-man and smuggler, who had looked anything but that for twenty years or more, puffed upon his silver waterpipe in silence. A slight rippling of the beautifully embroidered satin which covered the farther wall of the room was a signal from one of his coolies that the sailor had a weapon in his hand below the edge of table. In this deadly game of Asiatic chess, it was Chang's move.

"What was the name of the steamer— and the owners— at the time?"

"You wanta know a lot before ye say will you go in or not— don't ye, 'bo! W-a-a-I— T'll tell you that much! Try to double-cross me, an' I'll make cat's-meat o' ye before ye c'n leave this here museum o' yourn!"

Moran leaned across the table, his right fist clenching the automatic under it. But without the slightest evidence that he appreciated the tenseness of the situation, Chang placed a box of cigars at the sailor's elbow and struck a match for him. "Thankee!" Puff— puff— puff! "Damn fine tobaccy, this! She"— puff— puff— "was the Clan Bromarty— Trefforth an' Caldwell, owners— South Shields: Now, tell me when she last cleared— an' f'r where? I aint makin' no fool inquiries among the shippin'-houses, ye know— I'm gittin' you to do that fur me!"

Moran was beginning to feel queer around the heart. Doctors had told him that he smoked too much— but he'd never been really scared before. His breath was coming in shorter gasps as he leaned heavily upon the guest-table and waited for Chang's reply.

"The Clan Bromarty left Vladivostok four months ago for Manila and Sydney. Cleared from Manila two weeks later— and has never been spoken since. Posted 'Missing' last month, at Lloyd's— supposed to have gone to the bottom in the Banda sea. Typhoon."

Moran dimly sensed a belief that this was a lie, intended to make him give up all thought of recovering the jewels— and decided that he had better shoot the Asiatic where he sat. But something made it apparently impossible for him to move; and while it settled more crushingly on his mind, he lost consciousness, pitching from the guest-chair to the floor.

"TUCKING up his long under-jacket, Chang very deliberately got up and knelt by the motionless form, going through pocket after pocket, palming the stones in one of them before his fingers were withdrawn, glancing hastily over letters and memoranda, but apparently finding nothing of interest in them. Feeling. of the linings with a touch which had been sensitized by long years of practice, he could detect no scrap of paper within the garments; yet he was positive that Moran had carried with him some key to the hiding-place of the jewels on the cargoboat. Removing the left shoe, he examined it carefully— and presently scratched up an edge of the inner sole with a long fingernail until it could be pulled loose. On the underside of this, several words had been roughly printed with India-ink. Stuffing the strip of leather into one of his pockets, he was lacing the shoe onto Moran's foot again when Bartlett, curious as to the long silence, came out from behind the rug to see what was happening.

"Whats the matter with him— apoplexy?" He had heard no sound of a quarrel or struggle. There was no evidence of a wound.

"More like weak heart-action, I theenk. Sit down for a few moments while I have my coolies prepare a room and put the fellow to bed until he recovers. No! would not advise your trying those cigars! They are too strong for the average smoker. Light one from this other box."

In a few moments a couple of coolies silently appeared, lifted the motionless figure from the floor and carried it out of the room. Then Chang returned with a carefully wrapped and sealed package which he handed to Bartlett.

"There is a motor-ship lying down in Keppel Harbor which has been used by a scientific expedition engaged in hydrographic work for a year or more among the Islands— the Bandarwallah. Recently the leader of the expedition has been taking a marriage cruise on her with his woman, and has just returned. I would like to have you go abroad tonight in a launch manned by my coolies and place this package in the hands of Captain Jim Medford — no one else! He must not open it until he is below, in his after saloon— in the presence of his woman and yourself. Kindly repeat to them, carefully, the talk you heard from this fellow Moran. After that, your service to me is finished. Here is the balance of the money for your pin, and the extra seventy dollars— which completes our business transaction. When my wishes regarding Captain Medford are carried out, you are at liberty to proceed with your own affairs— accepting my thanks and best wishes."

"THERE was something mysterious about Moran's sudden illness— and the Chinaman's caution against smoking the strong cigars. Of course, Moran would recover presently, and was apparently being taken better care of than he had any right to expect. But— suppose— suppose he should noć recover! Suppose the man had been dead when Bartlett saw him on the floor? It brought back a fleeting vision or two of certain war-scenes which he had been trying to blot from his mind. Still, from what he had seen and heard behind the rug, it had been a toss-up as to which of them struck first. Anything Chang might have done was clearly in self-defense.

It was midnight when Bartlett went up the Bandawallah's accommodation-ladder— in a clear tropic starlight which was reflected, here and there, in the nearly motionless waters of Keppel Harbor. The riding-lights of anchored steamers gleamed like fireflies a short distance away. Occasionally a faint echo of music came from the residential quarter of the city where a ball was evidently going on in one of the larger bungalows— but the rows of portlights had disappeared from the liners at their wharves, and except for echoes from the mass of sampans over by Collyer Quay, the port was asleep.

The Medfords had just come abroad and had not yet retired— so Wun Hop was told to fetch Bartlett below as soon as they understood his errand. When Medford had unfolded the many wrappings of soft Chinese paper, he came first to a small and beautifully-carved ivory box in a separate covering— addressed, in painfully neat writing: The Fortunate Woman of Honorable Jim Medford. Beneath it lay a discolored strip of leather upon the under side of which certain memoranda had been inked— the innersole of a man's shoe. Passing the box over to his wife with a puzzled smile, the Captain said:

"There's a story which goes with this—  of course! Perhaps Mr. Bartlett has it? But open your box, Paulie— let's see what sort of shoe-leather you have in that, first."

When the lid was removed, they saw a mass of soft white cotton, upon which lay a magnificent emerald of possibly twenty carats— so beautifully cut, of such marvelous green translucency, that its value could be guessed only approximately.

"Oh, Jim! Isn't it perfectly lovely! But— it can't be for me! Who sent it, Mr. Bartlett— and why?"

"I guess you'll have to give us the story, old chap— if you know it. Er—  just a moment! We might as well be comfortable— hope you're not thinking of going ashore again at this time of night! Wun! Hello, there! Wun! Mix us some mintjuleps and fetch along a few cigars this side! Then put some pajamas in Torrey's room."

It took Bartlett close to an hour, giving them his recent experiences— with the side-lights of his own impressions concerning the various happenings. They listened with absorbing interest.

"Hmph! Every time I begin to think I understand something of Asiatic mental processes, I run across a new slant. You evidently know nothing of old Chang Feng— who looks like an active man of forty-five, yet must be close to seventy— except what you've learned today. But we've had cause to know him a lot deeper than that. From his dealings with you, he would seem to be an exceptionally honest man— of the educated class. Speaks good enough English to have learned it in one of our colleges. Perhaps he did—  who.can say? But for years he was a pirate, a smuggler, hatchet-man— in every part of the Archipelago— likely enough in most of the world's big ports. For the last twenty years or so he has conducted a perfectly respectable business in Singapore and Hongkong, building up a secret organization which probably undertakes a good many contracts that are anything but respectable. He bargained, for instance, with a Bornese Rajah to abduct Mrs. Medford— actually got away with it, as you may have heard— purely as a matter of business and without knowing that I had any interest in her. Now, as this affair is beginning to look, he is evidently making amends to us in some way for what he did in ignorance. You might have slept in his house in perfect safety with all the money he paid you. On the other hand, he evidently killed that sailor Moran, with no more compunction than he would a rat! And I'll bet he did it in some way that had no appearance whatever of murder!"

"You think that too, do you? I had an impression it might be so when his coolies were carrying the man out of the room, but was in some doubt as to his being actually dead, at the time."

"From your story, the man first threatened him, and then came across with the steamer's name— which made Chang dangerous if he decided to double-cross him. I've no doubt that one of his coolies—  hidden somewhere— gave a signal that Moran was fingering a weapon under the table. Is this emerald the one Moran showed him?"

"Why— I think not! Of course, I couldn't see the stone from where I sat in that alcove, because Moran had his back to me. But if you're right in thinking Chang is trying to make amends of some sort, he certainly wouldn't send Mrs. Medford that particular emerald, in the circumstances!"

"THAT'S where you judge from the Occidental viewpoint, Bartlett, instead of the Asiatic," replied Medford. "Consider! Moran was a self-confessed thief and murderer, having no right whatever to the jewel. Of course the bolshevist was too— though technically, ownership of loot taken in actual warfare has been tacitly admitted. Now, Chang is obliged to kill the scoundrel in self-defense— I've no doubt whatever as to that being cold fact. A wandering scoundrel of that type has no heirs. When he's plenty dead, he has no further use for what may be in his pockets. Your Asiatic is a materialist in everything but his religious superstitions. Considering that every great jewel has been soaked in blood during the time since it was mined, one is foolish to feel any great repugnance on that account. At all events, your testimony leaves a reassuring doubt that this may be the same stone, so there's no reason why my wife shouldn't keep and enjoy it, if she can forgive old Chang— which she really did from the start, knowing it was purely a matter of business with him. His people really treated her amazingly well. Now— what do you make of this leather scrap?"

"Haven't the least idea! He did that up while he was in some other part of the godown— I never saw it until you opened the package. What are the words printed on it?"

"Bottom of hollow binnacle-standard — under two half-discs, painted wood."

"Considering this as part of your story—  Exhibit B, as it were— I'd say it refers to the place where the bolshevik hid the bulk of the looted jewels on that cargo-boat, the Clan Bromarty. Unquestionably, Chang went through Moran's clothes with Chinese thoroughness, after killing him, and ripped this from inside his left shoe. To the best of my recollection, he told Moran the literal truth concerning that cargo-boat— I think she was posted as 'Missing' last month. Wait a minute! It's a simple matter to find out." He took down a filing-case from a shelf over the broad chart-table and drew from it the last quarterly list of marine casualties published by Lloyds.' "Ah! Here we are! 'Clan Bromarty— Vladivostok to Sydney via Manila and Thursday Island. Cleared, Manila, August 12th. Spoken off San Bernardino Strait August 16th. Not since heard from.' "

"But— but— if she's gone to the bottom, Captain, I don't see—  What was his object in sending you the secret of where they were hidden! What possible good can it do you— supposing that Chang meant to do you a favor?"

"Well— the Asiatics all know that I and my two friends once recovered over a million dollars' worth of jewels from a steamer lying on bottom in over twenty fathom—  and gave them back to their rightful owner, the Rajah of Trelak: Chang probably assumes that I might have the luck to locate that sunken hulk if I cared to go hunting for it. He doesn't know himself how many jewels there were or what they might have been worth— but Moran's story would imply that they may have been the private collection of some Russian grand duke who was murdered, with all his family. In which case, their value would have been up in the millions, very likely. There is also another possibility which would have occurred to the old pirate. Suppose the Clan Bromarty is still afloat somewhere— not sunk at all?"

"BUT," protested Bartlett, "isn't that impossible— considering how long she has been missing?"

"No. You may not have heard that a gang of Prussians have been stealing boats out here for the last year— until the game got to be almighty serious. H-m-m— that bolshevik had a fairly good idea, hiding the stones in that binnacle-standard! The binnacle itself— that is, the hood, compass and bowl, with their adjusting-gear— is frequently unscrewed in port for readjustment. But unless a new and different one were installed in place of the old one, the hollow iron standard wouldn't be unbolted from the deck-planking— perhaps for years. Then— he cut a disc of board just the inner diameter of the standard where it flares at the bottom, split it in half to go through the narrower top-opening, gave it a coat of dark paint so it wouldn't be noticed. by anyone looking down when the compass-bowl was removed— and put his bag of jewels under it. Well— it's a better proposition than the pot of gold at the rainbow's end— but there seems to be hardly enough to use as a basis in locating her."

"Oh— say! Hold on a minute! I wonder if— Just let me see if I can recollect exactly what those two captains were saying in Sedlar, Phillips and Company's office the other day! They were looking at that same Lloyds' list, tacked up on the bulletin-board— talking about this same boat! I'm sure of that because I went over afterward and looked at the name under a finger-smudge from the Captain's finger. He said that one of his Chinamen had a brother who owned a trading-junk down there in the Moluccas— and that the brother passed this same Clan Bromarty thirty miles west of some cape on Papua, August twentieth— near enough for him to read the name on the stern."

Bartlett was conscious that Mrs. Medford's eyes were boring into him like twin stars from across the table— he thought she was one of the loveliest women he had ever seen, and had the impression that she was fairly crazy over Captain Jim in her own quiet way. The Captain himself was looking at him closely, in a speculative way, as he lighted a fresh cheroot; then he got up and fetched from a locker an Admiralty chart of the Moluccas and neighboring waters, which he spread upon the table.

"Don't happen to remember what cape that was they mentioned, do you, Bartlett?"

"Something that begun with 'S'— Sappy, I think."

"Humph! Sapey! Just about what I've been thinking ever since you gave us the story! That boat never was sunk at all! Captain and crew drowned or murdered—  ship stolen and laid up in one of those blind inlets on the west coast of Papua until they change her rig and paint, and put her in the trade again somewhere under another flag. The Dutch aren't responsible for it, they wouldn't dare— and have no notion of risking international complications anyhow. Well, your bit of information is the missing-link, old chap! It simplifies the whole proposition. We examined six or eight inlets on that strip of uninhabited coast at the time Sam Torrey sank the submarine in one of them— and can undoubtedly find the Clan Bromarty within a few days after we get down there. Probably have something of a fight to get possession if we tackle it alone without the help of a Navy boat— but unless it's a regular rendezvous with a whole nest of 'em, there may not be over three or four aboard of her, as caretakers. Of course, what you've told us brings you into the game! You might have kept it to yourself and managed somehow to get down there on your own hook. Want to go with us on the Bandarwallah, and split whatever we get in three equal shares?"

"I'll go with you like a shot,— and thank you for asking me,— but a third share would be plumb ridiculous! I can't take any credit for happening to remember a chance conversation between two sea-captains— and in the circumstances, telling you of it was the only decent thing to do. You see, Chang Feng meant whatever you got out-of this to be a sort of evening-up for what he did to Mrs. Medford. Because he once knew my father, he thought it likely that I might be straight also— and trusted me to carry out something he'd set his heart on doing, yet didn't want to handle personally. He was under no obligations whatever to me—"

"How do you know that? Looks somewhat as if Chang may have had a double object— possibly some obligation he was under to your father— and deliberately brought you into the affair for your own possible good as well. Eh?"

"Nonsense!" replied Bartlett.

IT was some time after their return to Singapore before Grace Armitage succeeded in getting anything but fragmentary references to that cruise from Bartlett. There would be sketches of isolated occurrences on different evenings— in a veranda-corner of the bungalow her father had leased when he found that his business affairs in the East would keep him there for six or eight months longer. She got, for example, a vivid picture of Pauline Medford in oilskins on the bridge of the Bandarwallah, clinging to a stanchion and bringing her ship safely through a Malay Archipelago typhoon. Until Grace dragged it out of him, he forgot to mention the strategy by which he lured the crew of pirates some distance away, enabling Medford to get possession of the Clan Bromarty in a winding Papuan inlet; but he sketched in broad colors another picture she never forgot— that of Captain Jim in nothing much but linen trousers and a pith helmet, standing upon the forward-deck of the old cargo-boat, blazing into, the mob of pirates with two automatics, as they tried to board him— until his engineer could turn steam into a hose and scald them by the wholesale.

"As far as I was concerned, Grace, it was just a fluke. That sort of thing isn't earning a man's living! It doesn't solve the problem at all! I've got a pot of money— yes; but no thanks to any effort of mine that I can see!"

"Wait a minute, Harry! You'd just had some pretty bad luck— hadn't you? Exactly! Then I can't see anything out of the way in your tumbling into a lot of good luck to even up! Well say the two squared each other. But how about the difference in your point of view? Would you undertake a business deal now with more certainty of success than you felt before— or not?"

"Hmph! From what I saw of Smiley's methods that day I sat in his office, I see no reason why I shouldn't double my money out here in two or three years. Of course, I'll get stung occasionally— good and plenty; but I think I'll win out more frequently than I'll lose. You're going to stick around for a while yet, aren't you, Grace? That'll help a lot!"

_____________

5: The Great Beast of Kafue

Clotilde Graves

1863-1932

Under the Hermés, and Other Stories 1917, (as by Richard Dehan)

I cannot find the original magazine publication data, other than it was published, as were all her early short stories until 1910, as by Clotilde Graves. She later adopted the alternate name "Richard Dehan", and when the story was collected in 1917 the collection was published as by Richard Dehan.

IT HAPPENED at our homestead on the border of South-eastern Rhodesia, seventy miles from the Tuli Concession, some three years after the War.

A September storm raged, the green, broad-leaved tobacco-plants tossed like the waves of the ocean I had crossed and re-crossed, journeying to and coming back from my dead mother's wet, sad country of Ireland to this land of my father and his father's father.

The acacias and kameel thorns and the huge cactus-like euphorbia that fringed the water-courses and the irrigation channels had wrung their hands all day without ceasing, like Makalaka women at a native funeral. Night closed in: the wooden shutters were barred, the small-paned windows fastened, yet they shook and rattled as though human beings without were trying to force a way in. Whitewash fell in scales from the big tie-beams and cross-rafters of the farm kitchen, and lay in little powdery drifts of whiteness on the solid table of brown locust-tree wood, and my father's Dutch Bible that lay open there. Upon my father's great black head that was bent over the Book, were many streaks and patches of white that might not be shaken or brushed away.

It had fallen at the beginning of the War, that snow of sorrow streaking the heavy curling locks of coarse black hair. My pretty young mother— an Irishwoman of the North, had been killed in the Women's Laager at Gueldersdorp during the Siege. My father served as Staats gunner during the Investment— and now you know the dreadful doubt that heaped upon those mighty shoulders a bending load, and sprinkled the black hair with white.

You are to see me in my blue drill roundabout and little homespun breeches sitting on a cricket in the shadow of the table-ledge, over against the grim sterk figure in the big, thong-seated armchair.

There would be no going to bed that night. The dam was over-full already, and the next spate from the hill sluits might crack the great wall of mud-cemented saw-squared boulders, or overflow it, and lick away the work of years. The farm-house roof had been rebuilt since the shell from the English naval gun had wrecked it, but the work of men to-day is not like that of the men of old. My father shook his head, contemplating the new masonry, and the whitewash fell as though in confirmation of his expressed doubts.

I had begged to stay up rather than lie alone in the big bed in my father's room. Nodding with sleepiness I should have denied, I carved with my two-bladed American knife at a little canoe I meant to swim in the shallower river-pools. And as I shaped the prow I dreamed of something I had heard on the previous night.

A traveller of the better middle-class, overseer of a coal-mine working "up Buluwayo" way, who had stayed with us the previous night and gone on to Tuli that morning, had told the story. What he had failed to tell I had haltingly spelled out of the three-weeks-old English newspaper he had left behind.

So I wrought, and remembered, and my little canoe swelled and grew in my hands. I was carrying it on my back through a forest of tall reeds and high grasses, forcing a painful way between the tough wrist-thick stems, with the salt sweat running down into my eyes... Then I was in the canoe, wielding the single paddle, working my frail crank craft through sluggish pools of black water, overgrown with broad spiny leaves of water-plants cradling dowers of marvellous hue. In the canoe bows leaned my grandfather's elephant-gun, the inlaid, browned-steel-barrelled weapon with the diamond-patterned stock and breech that had always seemed to my childish eyes the most utterly desirable, absolutely magnificent possession a grown-up man might call his own.

A paauw*  made a great commotion getting up amongst the reeds; but does a hunter go after paauw with his grandfather's elephant-gun? Duck were feeding in the open spaces of sluggish black water. I heard what seemed to be the plop! of a jumping fish, on the other side of a twenty-foot high barrier of reeds and grasses. I looked up then, and saw, glaring down upon me from inconceivable heights of sheer horror, the Thing of which I had heard and read.

____________

* Bustard

At this juncture I dropped the little canoe and clutched my father round the leg.

"What is it, mijn jongen?"

He, too, seemed to rouse out of a waking dream. You are to see the wide, burnt-out-looking grey eyes that were staring sorrowfully out of their shadowy caves under the shaggy eyebrows, lighten out of their deep abstraction and drop to the level of my childish face.

"You were thinking of the great beast of Kafue Valley, and you want to ask me if I will lend you my father's elephant-rifle when you are big enough to carry it that you may go and hunt for the beast and kill it; is that so?"

My father grasped his great black beard in one huge knotted brown hand, and made a rope of it, as was his way. He looked from my chubby face to the old-fashioned black-powder 8-bore that hung upon the wall against a leopard kaross, and back again, and something like a smile curved the grim mouth under the shaggy black and white moustache.

"The gun you shall have, boy, when you are of age to use it, or a 450-Mannlicher or a 600-Mauser, the best that may be bought north of the Transvaal, to shoot explosive or conical bullets from cordite cartridges. But not unless you give me your promise never to kill that beast, shall money of mine go to the buying of such a gun for you. Come now, let me have your word!"

Even to my childish vanity the notion of my solemnly entering into a compact binding my hand against the slaying of the semi-fabulous beast-marvel of the Upper Rhodesian swamps, smacked of the fantastic if not of the absurd. But my father's eyes had no twinkle in them, and I faltered out the promise they commanded.

"Nooit— nooit will I kill that beast! It should kill me, rather!"

"Your mother's son will not be valsch to a vow. For so would you, son of my body, make of me, your father, a traitor to an oath that I have sworn!"

The great voice boomed in the rafters of the farm kitchen, vying with the baffled roaring of the wind that was trying to get in, as I had told myself, and lie down, folding wide quivering wings and panting still, upon the sheepskin that was spread before the hearth.

"But— but why did you swear?"

I faltered out the question, staring at the great bearded figure in homespun jacket and tan-cord breeches and veldschoens, and thought again that it had the hairy skin of Esau and the haunted face of Saul.

Said my father, grimly—

"Had I questioned my father so at twice your age, he would have skinned my back and I should have deserved it. But I cannot beat your mother's son, though the Lord punish me for my weakness.... And you have the spirit of the jager in you, even as I. What I saw you may one day see. What I might have killed, that shall you spare, because of me and my oath. Why did I take it upon me, do you ask? Even though I told you, how should a child understand? What is it you are saying? Did I really, really see the beast? Ay, by the Lord!" said my father thoughtfully, "I saw him. And never can a man who has seen, forget that sight. What are you saying?"

The words tumbled over one another as I stammered in my hurry—

"But— but the English traveller said only one white man besides the Mashona hunter has seen the beast, and the newspaper says so too."

"Natuurlijk. And the white man is me," thundered the deep voice.

I hesitated.

"But since the planting of the tobacco you have not left the plaats. And the newspaper is of only three weeks back."

"Dat spreekt, but the story is older than that, mijn jongen. It is the third time it has been dished up in the Buluwayo Courant sauced up with lies to change the taste as belly-lovers have their meat. But I am the man who saw the beast of Kafue, and the story that is told is my story, nevertheless!"

I felt my cheeks beginning to burn. Wonderful as were the things I knew to be true of the man, my father, this promised to be the most wonderful of all.

"It was when I was hunting in the Zambezi Country," said my father, "three months after the Commandaants of the Forces of the United Republics met at Klerksdorp to arrange conditions of peace—"

"With the English Generals," I put in.

"With the English, as I have said. You had been sent to your— to her people in Ireland. I had not then thought of rebuilding the farm. For more than a house of stones had been thrown down for me, and more than so many thousand acres of land laid waste...

"Where did I go? Ik wiet niet. I wandered op en neer like the evil spirit in the Scriptures," the great corded hand shut the Book and reached over and snuffed the tallow-dip that hung over at the top, smoking and smelling, and pitched the black wick-end angrily on the red hearth-embers. "I sought rest and found none, either for the sole of my foot or the soul in my body. There is bitterness in my mouth as though I have eaten the spotted lily-root of the swamps. I cannot taste the food I swallow, and when I lie down at night something lies down with me, and when I rise up, it rises too and goes by my side all day."

I clung to the leg of the table, not daring to clutch my father's. For his eyes did not seem to see me anymore, and a blob of foam quivered on his beard that hung over his great breast in a shadowy cascade dappled with patches of white. He went on, I scarcely daring to breathe—

"For, after all, do I know it is not I who killed her? That accursed day, was I not on duty as ever since the beginning of the investment, and is it not a splinter from a Maxim Nordenfeld fired from an eastern gun-position, that—" Great drops stood on my father's forehead. His huge frame shook. The clenched hand resting on the solid table of locust-beam, shook that also, shaking me, clinging to the table-leg with my heart thumping violently, and a cold, crawling sensation among the roots of my curls.

"At first, I seem to remember there was a man hunting with me. He had many Kaffir servants and four Mashona hunters and wagons drawn by salted tailless spans, fine guns and costly tents, plenty of stores and medicine in little sugar-pills, in bottles with silver tops. But he sickened in spite of all his quinine, and the salted oxen died, just like beasts with tails; and besides, he was afraid of the Makwakwa and the Mashengwa with their slender poisoned spears of reeds. He turned back at last. I pushed on."

There was a pause. The strange, iron-grey, burnt-out eyes looked through me and beyond me, then the deep, trembling voice repeated, once more changing the past into the present tense—

"I push on west. My life is of value to none. The boy—is he not with her people? Shall I live to have him back under my roof and see in his face one day the knowledge that I have killed his mother? Nay, nay, I will push on!"

There was so long a silence after this that I ventured to move. Then my father looked at me, and spoke to me, not as though I were a child, but as if I had been another man.

"I pushed on, crossing the rivers on a blown-up goatskin and some calabashes, keeping my father's elephant-gun and my cartridges dry by holding them above my head. Food! For food there were thorny orange cucumbers with green pulp, and the native women at the kraals gave me cakes of maize and milk. I hunted and killed rhino and elephant and hippo and lion until the head-men of the Mashengwa said the beast was a god of theirs and the slaying of it would bring a pestilence upon their tribe, and so I killed no more. And one day I shot a cow hippo with her calf, and she stood to suckle the ugly little thing while her life was bleeding out of her, and after that I ceased to kill. I needed little, and there were yet the green-fleshed cucumbers, and ground-nuts, and things like those."

He made a rope of his great beard, twisting it with a rasping sound.

"Thus I reached the Upper Kafue Valley where the great grass swamps are. No railway then, running like an iron snake up from Buluwayo to bring the ore down from the silver-mines that are there.

"Six days' trek from the mines— I went on foot always, you will understand!— six days' journey from the mines, above where L'uengwe River is wedded to Kafue, as the Badanga say is a big water.

"It is a lake, or rather, two lakes, not round, but shaped like the bowls of two wooden spoons. A shore of black, stone-like baked mud round them, and a bridge of the same stone is between them, so that they make the figure that is for 8."

The big, hairy forefinger of my father's right hand traced the numeral in the powdered whitewash that lay in drifts upon the table.

"That is the shape of the lakes, and the Badanga say that they have no bottom, and that fish taken from their waters remain raw and alive, even on the red-hot embers of their cooking stove. They are a lazy, dirty people who live on snakes and frogs and grubs— tortoise and fish. And they gave me to eat and told me, partly in words of my own moder Taal they had picked up somehow, partly in sign language, about the Great Beast that lives in the double lake that is haunted by the spirits of their dead."

I waited, my heart pumping at the bottom of my throat, my blood running horribly, delightfully chill, to hear the rest.

"The hunting spirit revives in a man, even at death's door, to hear of an animal the like of which no living hunter has ever brought down. The Badanga tell me of this one, tales, tales, tales! They draw it for me with a pointed stick on a broad green leaf, or in the ashes of their cooking-fires. And I have seen many a great beast, but, voor den donder! never a beast such as that!"

I held on to my stool with both hands.

"I ask the Badanga to guide me to the lair of the beast for all the money I have upon me. They care not for gold, but for the old silver hunting-watch I carry they will risk offending the spirits of their dead. The old man who has drawn the creature for me, he will take me. And it is January, the time of year in which he has been before known to rise and bellow— Maar!— bellow like twenty buffalo bulls in spring-time, for his mate to rise from those bottomless deeps below and drink the air and sun."

So there are two great beasts! Neither the traveller nor the newspaper nor my father, until this moment, had hinted at that!

"The she-beast is much the smaller and has no horns. This my old man makes clear to me, drawing her with the point of his fish-spear on smooth mud. She is very sick the last time my old man has seen her. Her great moon-eyes are dim, and the stinking spume dribbles from her jaws. She can only float in the trough of the wave that her mate makes with his wallowings, her long scaly neck lying like a dead python on the oily black water. My old man thinks she was then near death. I ask him how long ago that is? Twenty times have the blue lake-lilies blossomed, the lilies with the sweet seeds that the Badanga make bread of— since. And the great bull has twice been heard bellowing, but never has he been seen of man since then."

My father folded his great arms upon the black-and-white cascade of beard that swept down over his shirt of homespun and went on—

"Twenty years. Perhaps, think I, my old man has lied to me! But we are at the end of the last day's journey. The sun has set and night has come. My old man makes me signs we are near the lakes and I climb a high mahogo, holding by the limbs of the wild fig that is hugging the tree to death."

My father spat into the heart of the glowing wood ashes, and said—

"I see the twin lakes lying in the midst of the high grass-swamps, barely a mile away. The black, shining waters cradle the new moon of January in their bosom, and the blue star that hangs beneath her horn, and there is no ripple on the surface, or sign of a beast, big or little. And I despise myself, I, the son of honest Booren, who have been duped by the lies of a black man-ape. I am coming down the tree, when through the night comes a long, hollow, booming, bellowing roar that is not the cry of any beast I know. Thrice it comes, and my old man of the Badanga, squatting among the roots of the mahogo, nods his wrinkled bald skull, and says, squinting up at me, 'Now you have heard, Baas, will you go back or go on?'

"I answer, 'Al recht uit!'

"For something of the hunting spirit has wakened in me. And I see to the cleaning of the elephant-gun and load it carefully before I sleep that night."

I would have liked to ask a question but the words stuck in my throat.

"By dawn of day we have reached the lakes," went on my father. "The high grass and the tall reeds march out into the black water as far as they may, then the black stone beach shelves off into depths unknown.

"He who has written up the story for the Buluwayo newspaper says that the lake was once a volcano and that the crumbly black stone is lava. It may be so. But volcanoes are holes in the tops of mountains, while the lakes lie in a valley-bottom, and he who wrote cannot have been there, or he would know there are two, and not one.

"All the next night we, camping on the belt of stony shore that divides lake from lake, heard nothing. We ate the parched grain and baked grubs that my old man carried in a little bag. We lighted no fire because of the spirits of the dead Badanga that would come crowding about it to warm themselves, and poison us with their breath. My old man said so, and I humoured him. My dead needed no fire to bring her to me. She was there always...

"All the day and the night through we heard and saw nothing. But at windstill dawn of the next day I saw a great curving ripple cross the upper lake that may be a mile and a half wide; and the reeds upon the nearer shore were wetted to the knees as by the wave that is left in the wake of a steamer, and oily patches of scum, each as big as a barn floor, befouled the calm water, and there was a cold, strange smell upon the breeze, but nothing more.

"Until at sunset of the next day, when I stood upon the mid-most belt of shore between lake and lake, with my back to the blood-red wonder of the west and my eyes sheltered by my hand as I looked out to where I had seen the waters divided as a man furrows earth with the plough-share, and felt a shadow fall over me from behind, and turned ... and saw ... Alamachtig!"

I could not breathe. At last, at last, it was coming!

"I am no coward," said my father, in his deep resounding bass, "but that was a sight of terror. My old man of the Badanga had bolted like a rock-rabbit. I could hear the dry reeds crashing as he broke through. And the horned head of the beast, that was as big as a wagon-trunk shaking about on the top of a python-neck that topped the tallest of the teak-trees or mahogos that grow in the grass-swamps, seemed as if it were looking for the little human creature that was trying to run away.

"Voor den donder! how the water rises up in columns of smoke-spray as the great beast lashes it with his crocodile-tail! His head is crocodile also, with horns of rhino, his body has the bulk of six hippo bulls together. He is covered with armour of scales, yellow-white as the scales of leprosy, he has paddles like a tortoise. God of my fathers, what a beast to see! I forget the gun I hold against my hip— I can only stand and look, while the cold, thick puffs of stinking musk are brought to my nostrils and my ear-drums are well-nigh split with the bellowing of the beast. Ay! and the wave of his wallowings that wets one to the neck is foul with clammy ooze and oily scum.

"Why did the thing not see me? I did not try to hide from those scaly-lidded great eyes, yellow with half-moon-shaped pupils, I stood like an idol of stone. Perhaps that saved me, or I was too little a thing to vent a wrath so great upon. He Who in the beginning made herds of beasts like that to move upon the face of the waters, and let this one live to show the pigmy world of to-day what creatures were of old, knows. I do not. I was dazed with the noise of its roarings and the thundering blows of its huge tail upon the water; I was drenched with the spume of its snortings and sickened with the stench it gave forth. But I never took my eyes from it, as it spent its fury, and little by little I came to understand.

"Het is jammer to see anything suffer as that beast was suffering. Another man in my place would have thought as much, and when it lay still at last on the frothing black water, a bullet from the elephant-rifle would have lodged in the little stupid brain behind the great moon-eye, and there would have been an end...

"But I did not shoot!"

It seemed an age before my father spoke again, though the cuckoo-clock had only ticked eight times.

"No! I would not shoot and spare the beast, dinosaurus or brontosaurus, or whatever the wiseacres who have not seen him may name him, the anguish that none had spared me. 'Let him go on!' said I. 'Let him go on seeking her in the abysses that no lead-line may ever fathom, without consolation, without hope! Let him rise to the sun and the breeze of spring through miles of the cold black water, and find her not, year after year until the ending of the world. Let him call her through the mateless nights until Day and Night rush together at the sound of the Trumpet of the Judgment, and Time shall be no more!' "

Crash!

The great hand came down upon the solid locust-wood table, breaking the spell that had bound my tongue.

"I— do not understand," I heard my own child-voice saying. "Why was the Great Beast so sorry? What was he looking for?"

"His mate who died. Ay, at the lower end of the second lake, where the water shallows, her bones were sticking up like the bleached timbers of a wrecked ship. And He and She being the last of their kind upon the earth, therefore he knows desolation ... and shall know it till death brings forgetfulness and rest. Boy, the wind is fallen, the rain has spent itself, it is time that you go to bed."

_____________

6: When Love Went Mad

Arthur Leo Zagat

1895-1949

Terror Tales, Jan 1935

They Died in Darkness, and other Tales, 2015

Arthur Leo Zagat

1. When Love Went Mad!

EMMA WAYNE'S small hand shook a little as she fumbled her key into the grey door of the ancient Sprool house, and she was shivering inside her thin suit-coat. But it was not only the sharp chill of dusk that had set her quivering. The old dread lay like a leaden lump in her breast, the dread that, as far back as memory went, inevitably had come when the sun's last red rim vanished behind the jagged ridge of Big Tom and night began to fill the valley's bowl.

As in the old days, the circumscribing mountains were tightening the ominous loom of their ring with the withdrawing light, were becoming formless, vast bulks of blue-grey menace; and, beneath the haze blurring their slopes, crawling, eerie things of the night stirred to unholy being— or so whispered the legends of the countryside. To Emma the very hills were endowed with uncanny, motionless life as they thrust gigantic shoulders against the darkling sky like quiescent monsters waiting in silent, age-long patience; waiting till at last their appointed time should come to crush, with one temptuous gesture, the puny human lives scuttering in the valley.

The girl's mouth twisted bitterly. Here she was just as Kurt Tradin had predicted two years ago, returned to the mountains and their gloomy forebodings... The borrowed horse she had tied to the gate down there whinnied, the sound edged with shrill fear. Startled, Emma whirled to it, peered fearfully into the gathering shadows. What on earth was the animal afraid of? Why had it cried out as if it sensed some threat in the unkempt, overgrown garden? Why was Emma herself afraid, not knowing of what? Perhaps because the place was so uncared-for, so desolate. Gram shouldn't have—

But of course, grandmother was dead. That was why Emma had come back, why Milton, the husband she had found in the city that had been otherwise so cruel, was joining her here. The little old lady whose bleared and rheumy eyes had pleaded with her not to go, was dead— and buried. Kurt's letter had brought the tidings when it finally had reached her, its painfully addressed envelope scrawled with the postman's notations that explained its week's lateness. Gram was in the little cemetery above, where the village was hidden by Big Tom's jutting spur, and the old house was empty...

Something slithered along the door, thumped softly. Emma's breath caught in her throat. Tensely, she listened to the thud of her own blood in her ears and— silence. Silence that lay on the hills like a grey shroud, that was a living, tangible thing within the house. Silence that in itself was fear.

The girl bit her lip. "It's nothing," she assured herself. "Nothing at all." She did not realize that she was speaking aloud. "Just— just my imagination." And indeed there was now no sound, inside or out, save for the pud, pud of the restive horse still straining to break free the rein that held him. "I'm a fool to be scared." But why did the brute whinny again, then snort at something she could not see?

This was silly, unutterably silly! Milton would laugh at her when he got here and she told him how afraid she had been to enter the house where she was born. The lock grated protestingly, clicked over. Lucky she had kept that key all these months.

The door opened under the push of her icy hand. Except for a filming of dust the hall was just as she remembered it with its antlered hat rack and the slender, graceful curve of the banisters where the stairs lifted to obscurity above. Light still filtered in dimly through the arched opening from the parlor, spreading ebony shadows on worn Brussels carpeting. Queer shadows! That one for instance, long and angular as if it were thrown by a horizontal box resting on trestles...

Grisly fingers squeezed Emma's heart. Three years ago just such a shadow lay here, and in the parlor Granddad Sprool had been stiff in the coffin by which it was cast. This was the shadow of a coffin— and the sickeningly sweet odor of funeral flowers was heavy in her nostrils!

No! Gram was buried, buried! They wouldn't have kept her here, untended, for the two weeks since she had died! It was just a trick of light and her own taut nerves?

That dark silhouette tapered slightly, just as Granddad's casket had, but it was smaller. Gram had always been shorter than Granddad and the years had shrunk her. Emma licked dry lips, and knew that she must get to the parlor door, that she must look to see what made that shadow. But her legs wouldn't move...

She got them going at last... It was as if the dusty air had suddenly grown thick, viscous, so that she had to push through it with all her strength. She reached the threshold at last, held onto the lintel and pulled herself into the musty parlor. The windows were grey rectangles in the faded wall; under her feet the floor seemed to heave, like the swelling sea. Emma whimpered, far back in her throat. The coffin was there— an ominous bulk in the gloom...

ONCE started toward it she could not stop. She was close to the thing. She was looking down into it, where the half-lid had been removed— looking down at Gram's closed eyes and the almost transparent hands crossed on a bosom of black silk that was terribly still. The old woman's skin was drawn tight over her fleshless bones, so tight that a skull seemed to answer Emma's gaze... They had edged the corpse-dress with a white neck-ruching. And that brown streak across its starched stiffness was the trail of a slimy, crawling thing...

The girl swayed, grabbed at the casket-edge to keep herself from falling. Something gritty crumbled under her hand— earth! Mud had caked the sides and top of the black box, had dried there. And here were the gouged places where the ropes had rubbed that had let the coffin down into a grave where it had not stayed...

A scream sliced through the walls of the house! Another, compact with ineffable terror. Outside, wood splintered, crashed. Across a window's oblong reared the head and shoulders of Emma's horse. A gate-picket dangled from its bridle and banged crazily against flailing forelegs. The brute screamed once more, plunged down and out of view. Galloping hoofs pounded away.

Not knowing she had moved, the girl was across the room, was staring out. A dust cloud thundered down the road, stopped suddenly. The horse reared out of it, whirled in a strange dervish dance. In the eerie half-light a grey, shapeless something clung to the beast's belly, reached grey tendrils for its foam-flecked, out-straining throat. Then the frantic animal was gone around a bend. Only the diminuendo of its pudding hoofs and the shrill panic of its almost human screams were left, coming back to Emma through quivering, affrighted dusk...

Moments later, as night welled up the towering slopes, the girl still stood motionless, flattened against the window as that last awful glimpse had left her. She was poignantly conscious of the preternaturally disinterred corpse behind her, but nightmare paralysis held her rigid and her larynx was sore, rasped by unuttered screams. The faceless Things of the hills had come down into the valley at last, into the precincts of her ancestral home. The drear dread of the mountains was a living, tangible presence in this house where she and the man she loved had hoped to find refuge from a world that had denied them. It was here, here in this room. She felt its chill fingers stroking her spine, its icy breath on her neck. Something was here, something that had brought Gram back from the grave, something that itself had come from that mountainside burial ground!

The vague clatter of hoof-beats impinged on her consciousness. Emma lifted burning eyes to Big Tom's rocky summit across the valley, to the pale ribbon glimmering along his darkening flank. That was the new highway, she remembered, the recently opened macadam trail Milt had pointed out on the map as the way he would come when he had finished the business that delayed him. And on it, miles away, the failing light picked out a tiny moving horse— her horse. Somehow, even across the space between, the girl sensed the incarnate terror flogging that anguished beast, flogging him to insane flight from the horror that clung beneath his belly and fled with him.

The distance-dwarfed steed staggered, fell. A final shrill neigh split the awed hush of the mountain-encompassed hollow. Horrible movement animated the prostrate beast; greyness flowed over it, merged it with the grey road. The pallid mound heaved, sickeningly, for long moments. Then the ash-tinted destroyer ebbed slowly from its victim, slithered into bordering trees. A tawny shape was very still as the up-surge of night's sightlessness engulfed it, and the highway, and the trees into which horror had seethed.

It was as if Satan had set a vaulted black lid over the valley to hide it from God's sight. There was no light in the sky, utterly no light in the broad sweep of the dale. No sound except a faint rustle of wind in the forest cloaking the mountain-sides.

Or was it the wind in the leaves? Grisly fingers plucked Emma's quivering nerves to new apprehension. Was it not rather the slithering advance of the wan hosts that so long had danced as pale, mist-like wraiths on the twilight slopes, unleashed at last to their long-deferred invasion of the lowlands? Loosed by Gram's passing, perhaps; by the death of the pioneer's spouse who first had intruded into this valley and driven them back into the hills... Was that why Faith Sprool had been brought back here from the sanctuary of consecrated ground, that in death they might wreak on her a weird vengeance for the thralldom to which her life had condemned them?...

Oh God! Oh good God! Emma's fingers twisted, interlacing, and her slender frame was a shell brimful with terror. The advancing sound was no longer a dim, just hearable rustle. It was a thrum pulsing toward her, a swift-coming burr momentarily louder. They were coming fast now. Faster. They were coming for her!

Of course for her! She was a Sprool, the last of the Sprools, and she did not know the secret Granddad and Gram had had that held Them back. She had always suspected there was a secret Granddad knew, the haughty patrician in whose leathery visage steely eyes brooded and who held himself and his family so high above the valley-folk. But she had never dreamed that this was it. Why hadn't they told her how to drive back the eerie company sweeping down on her?

A green light-beam scythed the darkness out there, struck the road into livid relief. Vague forms seemed to dart for concealment in the thick bushes of the garden... A gigantic grey shape roared around the road-bend, skidded to a halt. The menacing thrum throttled down to the familiar throb of a motor, and a remembered profile was limned by dim dash-lights.

"Kurt," Emma called. "Kurt!" The name was a sob in her throat as she shot into the hall. She was across the verandah, and running through the garden. "Kurt Tradin!" Briars snatched at her, murky foliage; a low-hanging tendril whipped stingingly across her cheek and some furtive thing scuttered out of her path. "Don't go away, Kurt. Don't."

SHE had reached the car, was clutching its sill with both hands. Gaunt-visaged, somehow older than when he had laid suit to her in the shy manner of a country swain, Kurt Tradin peered at her. His slow smile was tinged with some strange apprehension. "Em. Emma Sprool! Be you all right?"

"Yes— Kurt, why isn't Gram buried?"

"Why what? He half-rose from his seat, shoving toward her. "She was! I see her laid to rest myself, in the graveyard."

Emma's last faint hope vanished. Her nails dug into the auto's steel, her throat worked. Then— "But she isn't. She's in there, in the parlor."

Kurt's lips were ashen. From above the lumping of his high cheekbones wormlike lights crawled in the depths of his shy eyes. "In— the parlor," he husked. "Almighty Godfrey! They knew ye was a-comin', then! Christopher, I'm glad I come out to see if you was here, like I done every dusk the past week."

"In God's name! Kurt! What is going on here?" Kurt's stalwart frame, his big-boned, handsome countenance, wavered in Emma's vision as though a heat-haze screened them. "Who— what knew I was coming?"

The young farmer seemed to have difficulty in forming words; his gnarled hand was trembling. "We— don't know. Whut-ever it is thet's been prowlin' the nights since yer gran-maw was buried. Grey things in the hills thet ain't shaped like man nor beast."

"Grey things!" Emma thought of the anguished horse and the thing that, hanging beneath its belly, had reached gruesome tentacles for its throat. "I saw one! It killed my horse, out here?"

"Yer hoss!" He rapped the syllables out, and a little muscle twitched, once, in his cheek. "They've killed more nor hosses— Gaffer Wilson, an' Ely Trenholm's Iry an' Alice, an' Spad Perkins' hull family when they tried ter get out along Big Tom Highway. Thet's why I bin watchin' fer you to warn you not to stir out o' the house after sundown."

Emma did not hear that last sentence. "Big-Tom Highway— Kurt! Are they— is there any danger on that road?"

He laughed shortly, without humor. "Danger! Thet's whar they was first seen— an' thar ain't ary one got through thar by night fer three days. Spad's outfit was the last ter try. Jed Harker an' me found what was left o' them." Horror flaring in his eyes spoke volumes. "The car wasn't hurt aytall 'cept'n the gas tank was ripped open? We buried 'em quick, an'— " Once more a hesitant, quivering pause. "An' found their graves open the next mornin', open an' empty."

The girl swayed. Her lips parted, but no word came from them. Kurt's smoldering gaze was fixed on her, and his voice was a hoarse croak. "No one's come in or out of Ekwanok by night, since then. Not by night... Though by day thar's been plenty agoin' till thar ain't but a half-dozen families left in the valley... Whoa up, Emmy!" He seemed to notice the girl's state for the first time, grabbed for her wrist just in time to keep her from sliding to the ground as her knees gave way. "What...?"

Emma squeezed speech through her tight throat. "That's the way Milton is coming— maybe tonight."

"Milton?"

"My husband." She recalled that his letter had been addressed to Emma Sprool. "I'm married. Kurt. We had given up our room, had the car packed and ready to start for here, when someone sent for him to audit an account. It meant twenty dollars, the first in months; he couldn't turn it down. It was cheaper than a hotel for me to come by rail to Kingville. No one would drive me here, but I borrowed a horse. Milt said he would leave as soon as he finished— perhaps tonight. Tonight! And he is coming by Big Tom Highway!"

"Your— husband..." The syllables dripped from Tradin's twisting mouth; evidently he had heard nothing else. "Husband." Life drained from his broad-sculptured visage; his eyes were dead things, and his upper lip trembled like a hurt child's. His shoulders slumped. There was something abject about his big frame. Emma had seen him thus once before, when old Jeremiah, her grandfather, had flayed with cutting words the yokel who had aspired to mate with a daughter of the Sprools. "I— Great Jumpin' Godfrey!

Someone had screamed, far down the road. Some thing— for there had been nothing' human about that high-pitched wail of agony. The girl twisted to it, her heart pounding to the anguish, the utter terror in that cry— and it came again. Tradin's hand was on her shoulder, was shoving her away. "Git in th' house, Emmy. Git inside an' keep the door locked."

She jerked away. "But you, Kurt. You..." His face was set, his sleepless eyes ablaze, "Come with me and— "

"Can't," he snapped through tight, white lips. "I— maybe I'll get 'em this time. All week I've been too late. But thet warn't fur away..." Motor roar drowned his voice— faded to let him shout, "Quick, Em. Git inside an' let me go"

His urgency got her started; panic spurred her, and she was hurtling through tangled brush that ripped and fought to hold her back. Her feet thumped on the creaking porch. As the door pushed open before her frantic rush she heard the farmer's car dart away. She slammed the portal. Musty dark swallowed her as she fumbled for, and found, the great bolt and shot it rattling into its socket.

2. The Terror In The Woods

THE mutter of the speeding car died in the distance. Emma moaned. A pulse throbbed in her temple and a steel band constricted her chest. She was alone in the blackness. Outside an unnamable doom prowled, and here within was the cadaver that earth and the worms had rejected. She was not alone! Livid, marrow-melting fear companioned her, breathed on her its icy breath. To stay in this house were to face a hell of terror, to flee into that outer dark peopled by the grey menace a prospect unthinkable. A spasm twisted her slender body and her small fists beat against the door-panel in frantic protest. Why had he let her come here alone? Why had Milton...

New terror clamped grisly fingers at her throat. Milton might even now be climbing the pass, might be entering unwarned the macadam snaking along Big Tom's flank where the grey Things waited. "No! He's still working. Oh, God! Please make him still be working. Please let me phone him not to come." Phone! The telephone was in the parlor; she would have to brush close by the gaunt, terrible casket to get to it!

The girl whimpered as she pushed herself away from the wall. To save her own life she could not have entered that sepulchral chamber, but for Milton— for the man she loved!...

Straight through sightless blackness Emma strode, across the hall, into that fearsome chamber so strangely a sepulcher. Unseen, unseeable entities slid soundlessly from her advance, gathered behind in watching balefulness. The coffin-edge scraped her side to ripple her flesh with crawling revulsion. She sensed the wall before her, groped for the box of the rural phone, the tiny handle of the magneto. Gasped as the wire-whine in her ear told her the line had not yet been disconnected.

A startled man's voice grated in the receiver. "Almighty Godfrey, Mariar. Et's the Sprool house— " The Ekwanok exchange was in Elmer Barmes' kitchen. Then, "Who is— " A click snapped short Elmer's question, clogged the line-sound in Emma's ear...

"Hello," she panted. "Hello..." And knew that she was not heard. In that moment, in that very moment the wire had snapped, somewhere— or malevolently been broken! "Elmer!" the girl screamed, despairingly. "Elmer!..."

The receiver dropped from Emma's flaccid hand. She heard it thump against the wall, dully, heard the tiny rattle of dislodged plaster behind the laths. Her lips formed words they did not utter. "God— help me." God had turned his face from the valley, from her. But— but perhaps Milton would not come tonight. Perhaps his work would keep him so late that he would wait till morning.

She grasped at the faint hope, even knowing that his longing to rejoin her would drive him to complete with all possible speed the task that held him from her. This was their first separation since they had become man and wife— sometimes the fierceness of their love frightened her— and he would be eager to end it... No, at whatever hour he was free he would start out.

Maybe he had started, maybe he was there now, high up on Big Tom. Why had the phone connection been broken except to stop her very warning? But they wouldn't know about telephones, the pallid killers prowling the highway. Of course not. She laughed, but the short sound of her laugh was not pleasant. How silly she was. How silly. The rural wires often went out of commission...

A dim vibration crept to her ears through the darkness, a far-off thrum, the infinitely distant, sound of a coming car. Help was coming— Kurt was coming back to help her! He would take her to the village, to another telephone. Without seeming volition she was again at the window from which she had first glimpsed horror. She peered out, up the road toward Kingville whither Tradin's car had catapulted on its wild chase. Nothing save impenetrable dark.

But that vague burr of a speeding motor still sounded. It pulled her eyes up, up along what she could not see but knew was the slope of Big Tom, up to where the road must be where the horse had screamed and died. A star showed— but that tiny light was too low to be a star— and it was moving! It must be an auto headlight then, the light of an auto coming along Big Tom Highway...

The staring girl's hands closed on the window-sash at either side, while thought stopped and her skull was a void seared by the query she dared not think. Whose car? Oh dear Lord! Who drove that car?

The light split to two tiny specks. Some curve in that far-flung, high road sliced their beams to double dashes of yellow against the dark billow of foliage, one luminant streak canted upward and distinct from the other. Emma's hands clawed, raked down old wood, paint flaking and stabbing into the quick of nails that scraped it. She was answered. Oh merciless God, she was answered!

Those were the lights of Milton's roadster. Unmistakably. He had tugged at that up-bent lamp, trying to straighten it, only this morning...

"Milt!" she screamed. "Go back, Milt! Go back! If you love me, Milt, go back!" He could not hear, of course he could not hear. "Milt!" Why could he not hear? Why could he not sense her anguished soul shrieking its warning to him across the miles? "Milton!"

Steadily the twin beams moved across the vast screen of blackness. They seemed to be drifting infinitely slow, but Emma knew the speed at which they moved. A flash of inner vision showed her Milt's ascetic, dear face bent slightly forward over the wheel, the wind of his passage sweeping his hair back from his high, clear forehead, his brown eyes eager. He would be calculating the minutes still between them. His arms would be aching for the feel of her in their embrace. Her own breasts ached in answer... Dear Mother of Mercy, protect him!

His love was hurtling him on to doom!

Across the vast night that had engulfed the world those tiny lights floated with even pace. Hours seemed to pass and some dim hope stirred in Emma's aching bosom. Kurt was wrong. Perhaps Kurt was wrong. Perhaps the Things in their descent on the valley had relaxed their watch of the highway. Milton was getting through. He must get through. He would.

In minutes now he would reach the place where the horse had died— right there— he would reach and pass it. Of course he would pass it. That would be the test. If Milt passed that spot he would be all right. He would surge down the hill, down into this connecting road that ribboned before the house, would honk his horn for her and she would be at the gate, on his running-board, in his embrace. In seconds now she would know. In seconds. He was almost there. He was there. He would pass—

His lights were gone! In that instant, in that very instant when he had reached the spot where instinct had told her the greatest danger lurked, his motor had sputtered, stopped— and his headlights had blinked out as if a black shroud had dropped over them! As if a shroud— his shroud... The Things had him! The grey Things had swarmed over her husband, her lover...

It was then that madness first probed gruesome lingers into the girl's brain. Glass crashed as she smashed the window before her with flailing, frantic fists. Keen, jagged shards gashed her jacket, her arm, as she clambered through. She was out in the garden, was smashing through tangled, wild shrubbery she felt but could not see. She was across the road, had plunged into thick woods that lifted under her feet, lifted and became the high slope of Big Tom.

She was climbing that slope, blindly, climbing to the highway above. Climbing to Milton, to help him against the grey death. To die with him if he were dead. To die whatever horrible death he suffered. Or save him. That was it, she would save him. She would drive the grey Things away from her lover with the very fury of her love.

The sound of her wild passage was a tumult in the silent forest. She caromed off a black tree trunk, plunged on. A trailing vine coiled around her ankle, tripped her. She slammed down. In the moment she lay gasping something rustled the carpeting of dead leaves, close by. She pulled herself erect, staggered on. The woods tore at her, would not let her pass. Snarling, like some creature of the wild, she fought it, fought through.

The way grew steeper, sapped her strength. She was moving more slowly now, but would not stop. Rock-face rose sheer above her: she found hand-holds, niches for straining toes, inched upward. Her labored breathing, the scrape of her toes against the stone, were the only sounds she made.

But there was another sound in the woods, though she did not hear it. The stealthy sound of a furtive something that slithered through the underbrush...

Her reaching hand found dank earth at the brow of the cliff she climbed. She was up and over, lay panting on its very brink, face down over its edge where the air her laboring lungs needed was unimpeded. She pulled dampness into her aching thorax, fungus-smell, odor of rotting leaves. And another stench— alien, shuddersome— like nothing she had ever smelled. Infinitely menacing.

A patch in the blackness below was queerly lighter, somehow— a patch that moved to the base of the rock she had climbed. It was a pallid, formless shape that moved oddly, flowing like— like the greyness that had ebbed from a tawny still heap that had been a horse, like the grey horror-thing that had seeped into the woods— to wait for Milton. It was climbing now, climbing to reach her, grey-black tendrils reaching for her... Her breathing stopped and an abortive scream retched her throat, was a soundless gust...

She surged to her feet, and was blundering again through tight-laced undergrowth, through ripping brambles and whipping thin branches that lashed at her. Moist mold was slick under her feet: stones rolled, twisting her ankles. The forest was on the side of the noisomeness it had borne, was striving to hold her for that which pursued. God was against her— no, God had forgotten her, had forgotten Milton. God had abandoned them to Satan's spawn.

Emma crashed against an invisible tree-trunk, clung to it, momentarily stunned, saw the weird evil that followed her closer now. It seemed to move so slowly, yet it was closer. Terribly close. She was running again, fleeing the terror. Her clothing was in tatters, her white skin ripped and bleeding. Her body was an intolerable ache, her veins an icy network. But she climbed, climbed endlessly toward where the highway cut through primeval, lush timber, toward where Milton needed her. Milton! Good God! She was leading another of the creatures to him, she was bringing him not help but sure destruction!

The thought halted her, jerked her around to face that which she fled. If it took her, if she gave herself to it, would it be sated? Feeding on her would it be kept from joining the attack on Milt? There it was, an inexorable billow of menace, eddying effortlessly through the tangle that it had cost her so much to penetrate— coming for her with a strange quietude, certain of overtaking her, certain of its prey...

The darkness here was absolute, yet she could see it, see its vague greyness, like a faintly luminous small whirl of mist emanating from the very ground. Against its vague light gaunt boles were silhouetted, trunks springing straight to the sky or twisted by some injury to a frail seedling. By all that was holy, she recognized the grotesque knotting of one gnarled oak! She remembered wandering here in the woods as a child, finding an abandoned loggers' cabin near that U-shaped trunk... A cabin! Was it still there?

Emma twisted, sped away. Ten, a dozen steps and she saw it, a dark, welcome bulk, slab-sided. Saw it and felt a clammy cold touch on her back where jacket and blouse had been stripped away! Her body exploded into a long, terror-winged leap into the musty closeness of the long deserted shelter. Miraculously she found a door and slammed it shut against a soft, squashy bulk.

She heard the soft slither of groping tendrils against the wood, dug heels into the earthen floor and shoved aching, bare shoulders against the barrier to hold it against the sleazy surge of that which sought entrance. She felt the dig of a bar into her back, fumbled behind her and shoved it into a stout, angle iron riveted through the jamb. Then she slid, utterly spent, down along the splintered panel— lay, limp and gasping, at its base.

The fetor of the Thing threaded through still space, a putrescence of something rotting that initially was foul. The sound of its groping was doughy, horribly without stiffness. Clammy-cold as the slimy touch she still felt on her back where momentarily it had contacted her. Somehow blind— as though the sense by which it had trailed her had been not sight but an uncanny attribute of an entity from beyond the Pale. Sliding sound whispering of evil incarnate; livid, quivering evil.

What was that?

Dully, almost beneath the level of hearing, another sound had come out of the forest night, like the shout of a human voice, far off. The Thing must have heard it too, for now it was quiescent, suddenly unmoving. Utter stillness fell— to be shredded by a high, shrill wail that clawed Emma's quivering nerves with gelid talons of new and supernal terror.

The fearsome ululation rose, and died away. And then— realization pulled the girl up to a sitting posture, her icy hand at her frozen lips— that which had groped for entrance against the saving door of her refuge was gliding away. She could hear it— the rustle of its ungainly weight out there— then it was gone.

It was gone and she was safe. But who was it that had shouted, briefly? Who could it be but Milton? No other human was near enough to be heard. He was alive, still alive, crying for help! And the Thing had abandoned its efforts to get at her in response to the weird call of its mate! It was hastening, even now, to join in the attack on Milton.

Awful certainty pulled the staggering, half-naked girl to her feet... Somewhere out there in the gruesome night, her husband was in deadly peril. Somewhere out there— but where? Oh God! Where? The answer flashed on her. She had seen the cabin, where all else had been darkness, had seen it silhouetted against a narrow paling of the blackness. That lighter strip against the gloom could be only Big Tom Highway, the turnpike along which, she had seen Milton's lights drift and blink out, the road from which his cry for help had come. He was near— very near?

It was not Emma Wayne whose slow hand sought the great bar that locked that door against terror and shoved it back. It was the frenetic errantry of a woman whose loved one was in peril, the incomprehensible devotion of the female who would defy Lucifer himself for her mate...

Cold air was about her as the portal creaked open, the dank chill of the night still tainted by the fetor of corruption. She was out in the open, in an oppressive silence that held in its jetty womb muted sounds of a struggle: the heavy breathing of a strangling man; the thumping of tossed, heavy bodies, boneless and horrible.

Emma turned her head against neck-muscles that were taut, resistant bands, saw the pale glimmer of the road, yards away through the trees. Saw the familiar outlines of a cheap roadster against the wan light— and beside it, an amorphous mass that heaved sickeningly, heaved up, settled again!

"Milton!" she shrieked. "Milton!"

The formless, grey-luminant mound seemed to swirl, to break apart. A shape flicked into being at its center, an upsurging figure of a man. Emma glimpsed the pale oval of a face, heard the guttural mutter of a cry in what might have been Milton's voice. Then he was down again under the upheaval of the attackers...

Briars tore at her, unseen branches lashed at her. She was on the road, was leaping toward the struggling mass. She had reached it, was tearing at it with desperate hands, was tearing away handfuls of viscid, doughy stuff that stunk to high heaven. The stuff clung to her fingers, clogged them. Beneath the mound Milton choked and struggled.

A thick, gluey tentacle rose toward her, coiled around her waist. It was dragging her down, irresistibly down into that corruption. She beat at it and her fists smacked into wet, cold softness that gave like wet and sticky clay. She sank into the noisome mound. Its foulness was in her mouth, was clammy against her nostrils. She could not breathe...

Within the maelstrom that was her ego she whispered, "Milton. With you. In death as in life..."

Something screamed through the darkness that swept into her brain...

3. Madmen's Dance

IT ISN'T right, Emma thought petulantly. When you're dead you ought to stop hurting. It was as if she were still in that body of hers that glass and the forest brambles had sliced. Pain seared her everywhere, and her chest was an aching hollow.

"Emma! Darling!" Milton's voice cried from out the depths. "Emma!"

It was all right then; he was in the same place to which she had gone. They would be together through eternity. Something stroked her forehead— it was his trembling hands. Even here they thrilled her. Would the sight of him thrill her too? Emma dared to look.

A green light bathed him, and his face was contorted, anxious. "Milt, dear," she said weakly. "Don't look so worried. Nothing can happen any more."

"Oh God! Oh thank God! You're alive! I thought..."

The girl's lips moved weakly. "Alive? Oh Milt?"

His kisses were cold on her mouth, icy cold. The grey stuff streaking his cheeks was clammy against her.

Another voice said gruffly, from somewhere in the eerie light, "Come on. Let's get out of here 'fore them Things come back."

Past Milton's shoulder she saw Kurt Tradin standing over them, ashen-visaged, gun in hand, looking fearfully into tall shadows enclosing his headlight beam. And Milt had a gun. Matters became real again. She was alive. She was lying in the dust of Big Tom Highway, and her husband was kneeling beside her, holding her in his arms, kissing her.

She pulled away from him. "What— what happened?"

"God, Em, I'm not sure I know. I was pounding along, saw a dead horse right across the road. Braked and got out to pull it out of the way— then my car lights went out and something jumped me from the trees." He pulled an arm across his sweat-wet, white brow, and shuddered. "Something out of a nightmare. It had me down, was smothering me, but I got my senses back in time to fight it off. To try to fight it off. I couldn't get away from it. But it couldn't quite down me either. I think I fought it for hours.

"Suddenly it yelled and another like it lumbered out of the woods. The two ganged up on me and had me down. I was all through when I heard you scream. That was like a jab from a red-hot iron. I pulled away from them for a second, saw you coming, and then they flooded over me again. But I knew I had to lick them then.

"For some reason one of them let go. I pounded at the other. I must have found some vital spot, for the Thing screamed, squirmed away from me. I got to my car, grabbed a gun from the side-pocket, and turned to see both of them vanishing into the woods. You were lying here, more dead than alive. I started for you when there was the screech of a horn, and this gentleman came ripping around the curve."

"This is Kurt Tradin, Milt," Emma said then, dazedly. "I've told you about him. This is my husband, Kurt."

Tradin was strangely expressionless as he turned to her. "Reckoned so. You two agoin' to stay here till the critters come back? Ain't you had enough?" His tone was flat, dead, but little lights crawled in his eyes. Was it fear?

"Right you are." Milt lifted Emma, carrying her up with him in his strong arms. "Let's get going, friend."

He started with her toward the battered flivver.

"Better if we stick together," Kurt rumbled, not looking at them. "Take mine, it's faster. We'll come back an' get your'n in the mornin'— if we live to see the sun again."

Milt hesitated. "What do you mean?" he said sharply. "Why shouldn't we live?..."

The farmer whirled to him, his face livid. "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, ain't you seen enough to know the hand of Beelzebub is heavy on the valley? We're marked for damnation, all of us." His voice broke to shrillness. "An' only the Lord's miracle kin save us. Get her in my car, if you love her. Quick!" His arm jerked so that his revolver was point-blank at Milt's midriff. "Quick! I ain't agoin' to risk my neck for your foolishness."

Wayne shrugged and slid his wife into the back of Tradin's grey limousine, came in alongside her. Kurt leaped for the front, was under the steering wheel. His motor roared, gears clashed, and the forest's dark loom whizzed by.

A vast weariness gripped Emma. She snuggled close against her husband, immersed herself in his strength, the comforting aura of his protection. She had him back. That was all that mattered. She had him safe and with tomorrow's light they would leave here, leave Ekwanok and its valley of dread...

Out there was still the night to get through. The dreadful night. "Where are we going, Kurt? Where are you taking us?"

"To yer own house, quick's we kin get there."

Emma pushed up. "No, Kurt," she groaned. "No!" She was quivering once more with the fear that first had found her there. "That's where the Things..."

"Safest place in the valley," he growled, cutting her short. "Worse in the village."

"But— "

"But nothin'. You'll see." Grimly. "We go through the village."

"What's the matter with the Sprool house, Emma?" Milton interrupted, curiously. "I thought— "

"It's horrible, Milt. Gram's— "

"God! Look at that! The place is on fire!"

The road had dipped, suddenly, and debouched between dark, shuttered houses that were gaunt against a lurid glow from which dancing sparks flew straight upward.

"No," Kurt grunted. "Not th' place." And they were darting through the green Emma remembered as bordered by the staid facades of churches, the white columns of the town hall. But the open space was staid no longer. Great leaping red tongues of a huge bonfire soared avidly from its very center, and, limned grotesquely against it, a ring of prancing, black figures hopped, and gibbered, and howled in wild antics. She quivered in revulsion at what a tall, bearded man was doing. Distracted momentarily by their passing, he turned— and wild eyes glared at them from a face she knew. The incredible scene whipped behind them...

"Kurt," she gulped. "Kurt. That wasn't Dr. Potter. He couldn't— "

"Yep," laconically. "Preacher o' th' First Presbyterian. That's Ekwanok, Em, all that's left. Want to stay there tonight?"

She shuddered. "No. Mother to mercy, no!"

They curved around the jut of Big Tom; the village of the mad was behind. A bridge rattled under their pounding wheels. The car swayed, jounced as the macadam ended. Kurt's green headlight stabbed through darkness again, darkness that blanketed grey terror, but Emma welcomed it. Even the horror of the skulking Things were better than that which she had just glimpsed.

"All them that's sane has went, a week ago," he said.

"All but you, Kurt. Why did you stay?"

"I was waitin' for you," he answered simply. "For you." There was bitter despair in his tone. "You forgot what I promised, but I didn't"

"Oh Kurt!" Emma remembered now the one stolen moment she had given him to say good-bye, their one brief talk after grandfather had forbidden them to see one another. "You'll come back, Emmy," he had said. "Sure's shootin'. An' I'll be awaitin' for you." How could she have forgotten the dreary hopelessness with which he had thrown out his hands, and the dogged determination in his hurt eyes.

"I'm sorry, Kurt," she said. She had really thought herself in love with him, till she had met Milton and learned what love was.

"You shouldn't have risked it," she added.

"Risked!" Still that dulled bitterness. "I belong with them."

"Isn't that the place?" Milton broke in. "There to the left?"

Breath popped from Tradin's tight lips. "Yes." He braked, swerved. His radiator crashed through the broken fence, the car skidded through the garden, nosed the porch and stopped. "Git out an' into the house. Hurry!"

Kurt's urgency lifted them out of their seats, out of the car, and to the door. Milt shoved it open, but Emma turned.

"Kurt," she called. "Kurt! Aren't you coming in?"

"No." He was already in reverse, was surging backward. "Git inside for God's sake."

He was in the road— was gone. Milton's grip was on her wrist, pulling her inside. The door banged shut, and a flashlight beam sprayed the gloom. But for an instant, the girl's mind was tangled with a strange gesture the farmer had just made, a gesture as of final farewell.

"Creepy old place— no wonder you left it." Her husband's voice was unaccustomedly loud and harsh. She jerked to him, reproach on her lips. "Remember where there's a lamp? We've got to have light."

She saw his face dimly. It was infinitely weary, haggard. There were black rings under his eyes. She choked back what she had been about to say realizing the tension he was under. He was as afraid as she, was dissembling, trying to be natural, in order to quiet her. His hand, behind him, had already slipped the door bolt into its socket, and the long whiteness of his flash-beam flickered everywhere, probing the shadows. "There should be one on a table behind the stairs." The light darted there. "Yes— and it's filled."

"Here's some matches. I don't know how to work the thing." He poked the paper folder at her, fumbled it into her hand. But he kept close beside her as blue flame ran around the lampwick, guttered, lifted to a steady glow within the replaced chimney. Yellow luminance shoved back the shadows, Milt clicked off his flashlight, managed a wan grin. "That's better. So this is the Sprool mansion!"

Looking with his eyes Emma saw the curious old-fashionedness of the house, even here in the hall, its threadbare assumption of a dignity it had long lost. In Ekwanok they had always called it The Mansion, had kowtowed to its inmates, even when the patriarch had gone. Kurt had been no exception. His love-making had been a shy, timorous, hopeless yearning for something above him.

"This is the Sprool homestead," Emma assented gravely, while her glance slid to the parlor archway, tried to penetrate its blackness, "where your wife was born and bred."

"What is it?" His exclamation was like ripping silk. "What are you scared of, in there?" He had seen her look, had interpreted it with the sureness of their intimacy. "What's in there?"

"Nothing. Nothing that I'm afraid of." Two could play at that game. "Gram's in there, in her coffin. They— they didn't bury her."

"Good Lord! What were they waiting for? I never heard of— " He started toward the doorway. Emma got her hand on his arm, stopped him.

"Wait," she said. "Time enough in the morning. She— I— don't go in there. Don't!"

He gripped her shoulder, turned her to him, gently, but she winced as pain stabbed down her arm. "Em. You're trembling all over. You are afraid of something in there."

She made her eyes meet his, forced false frankness into them. "There's nothing in the parlor except Gram's Coffin, with her in it. I— I don't want you to go in there because I couldn't go with you. I couldn't bear it, and I am afraid to be alone. Hasn't there been enough to make me tremble, tonight?"

"Poor kid! I'll say there has." The harshness of his tone mellowed, she was close against him and his mouth had found hers. The rasp of his tightening arms on her lacerated, bare shoulders was somehow sweet and she felt his fear-cold lips grow warm, then burn, as the tight embrace fanned the spark of their love to consuming flame. Terror was forgotten in that long moment, fear ceased to brood. There was only the ecstasy of their oneness...

A soft thud behind froze her, the drag of a jell-like mass across wood! Milt pushed her away, crouched, his eyes on the murky entrance into the parlor, his automatic tight-gripped, snouting. Syllables slid from his mouth that was suddenly a straight gash across a humid mask. "Watch it, Em! There's someone in there and I'm going in after him."

4. The Coffin's Message

THE slow slither within the parlor that was a cavern of dread stopped, but Emma's spine prickled to the sensation of a baleful glare from the room's mystery, of fearful eyes glaring as the new menace crouched to match Milt's taut crouch and waited in ambush for his coming.

"No," she squeezed through the invisible fingers of fear clamping her throat. "No. There can't be. There can't..."

Then she remembered the window she had smashed, the gap in their defenses! "Don't Milt. Don't go in there. Please, Milt, don't!"

His eyes flicked to her, flicked back to stare ahead, but she had seen into their lurid depths and was aghast. Milt! No! It couldn't be her Milt's eyes into which she had looked in that revealing instant! His upper lip lifted in a vulpine snarl. He shrugged closer to the ground, lunged into the blackness, leaving behind a low growl, the growl of an enraged dog. Leaving behind a woman whose world had smashed about her bloody head, a woman shaken to the very foundations of her being, utterly alone.

Shot-crash pounded dully to Emma's clogged ears; her dizzy sight was aware only of an orange-red flash that illumined nothing. Muted sounds of a terrific struggle were suddenly cut short, were succeeded by an awesome silence, a silence pregnant with queasy dread. There were furtive noises, sluggish movement, a whispering frou-frou of satin. And again the slow dragging of something that was neither human nor beast. Then stillness again, a stillness as ebony dark as the blackness veiling whatever horror had come to pass in there.

The girl came gradually to awareness that she was clinging to the banisters, waist-high just there, that grave-chill stiffened her limbs and corpse-smell was foul in her nostrils.

"No." she whispered. "Dear God. No."

There was no sound, sepulchrally no sound from the murk ahead. She was mistaken in what she had read in Milton's final flickering glace. She must have been mistaken. Of course she had been. The hands she unclasped from the slender round of the banister-rods seemed to creak, their joints paining. She must go in there. She must go in there to see what had happened to him. What had the Thing done to Milton, to her lover?

Her lover! She recalled the look in his eyes, and shuddered. Was she going mad or...? But she must stop thinking. She had stopped thinking, except just enough to pick up the lamp and make her legs take her toward that parlor door.

The lamplight seemed tangibly to push back a wall of darkness that resisted it. To push back something hidden by the darkness, hidden by and eerily part of it. She was through the archway and the lamp's luminance filled the room, thrusting the darkness out through the gaping, jagged-edge window into the night from which it came. Thrusting the Thing the darkness hid— not thrusting all of it! In mid-air a shadow floated, unmoving...

It was no shadow, it was the coffin, the black casket so weirdly exhumed. The macabre object pulled Emma's look to it, pulled with a shuddersome fascination she could not resist. It seemed to have a message for her, a message of doom.

She fought the gruesome drag, drove searching eyes about the musty chamber, over age-patinaed furnishings long-familiar yet uncannily strange, into far corners, along the scrub-whitened floor islanded by the faded rag rugs Gram's fragile hands had worked. Stiff and decorous the parlor was as ever— empty, stark, staringly empty. Glass splinters still in the broken window were edged with grey stuff. But where was Milton? Oh God! Oh merciless God! Where was Milton?

Was that the message Gram had for her? Would she tell, her old grandmother, stiff and dead in the casket They had not let rest? Gram would help her in her agony. Gram, always so fluttering-kind despite her tight-lipped grimness. She would go and ask Gram where Milton was.

Emma's feet whispered across the floor, and her light grew stronger on the casket, grew stronger and yet somehow was swallowed by the dull black of its grave-smeared sides. Emma was at the coffin side, but her eyes had jerked themselves closed as she reached it. Why did she fear to look into the box where lay all that was mortal of Faith Sprool? Why did she fear to look, save for dread of the message she was strangely aware it held for her?

She— must— know! Still with shut eyes the girl lifted the lamp, so that its rays would strike down, would strike surely down into the uncovered coffin. So. Now she could take one swift look and turn away. Now!

The face that stared sightlessly up at her from the coffin pillow was not Gram's face. Not Gram's! Emma was a statue of stone, gazing down at a drawn, thin-visage, well-conned but somehow utterly strange. It was Milton, Milton whose corpse-hued countenance lay on the white satin. Milton!

Numbed, unbelieving minutes passed. Then the full horror reached her brain, and a scream ripped from her inmost being, shuddered out of that ghastly room, shrieked across the valley and was lost among the night-shrouded trees. Another.

The echoes of those screams were mangled by the mountain-side, were metamorphosed into a shrill laugh. The mountains were laughing at her, the mountains whose lifelong threat had come at length to full fruition. Big Tom was laughing at her...

Emma was laughing too. Shrilly, unendingly. Laughing from a wide-open mouth that drooled, from a body contorted into a backward, spasm-twisted arc. Laughing while icy tears rolled down her face that was a network of tiny, quivering muscles, splashed from a little chin blurred by its tremors, wet a blood-wealed bosom racked by awful sobbing.

Even the stars might have pitied her, in that moment, had they not been shut out from the valley by the lid Lucifer had clamped over it. Even the madmen who danced about the red bonfire in the hidden village, had they heard her.

But there was none here to pity her. None in the desolate house save he who lay so ghastly still, cramped in a box for the dead that was too small for him, and could not hear her laughter or her sobbing for him, for her lover?

Suddenly Emma's crazed laughter shut off, and her sobbing. Quite suddenly as if some grisly hand had twisted a streaming faucet shut. A crafty light crept into her eyes, and the tense rigidity that gripped her body relaxed. The glance she shot around that room was furtive; her free hand came up to her mouth and her forefinger pressed against her lips with sly cunning. She tiptoed out of the parlor, reached the hall, turned to the left where the light of her lamp fell on another door. She was through that door. It closed soundlessly and she was slinking with grotesque noiselessness through a huge room walled with dark oak. A massive table gleamed dully. Round plates were parti-colored circles on Dutch shelving high up. The slinking girl mumbled something inaudible, crossed to the gloomy loom of a carved buffet. The slide of drawer was a barely audible hiss as she pulled it out and fumbled within...

She was returning now, and there was a knife in her hand— a long carving knife whose steel flashed brightly, whose edge was razor-keen. She reached the door, paused irresolutely, looked helplessly from her hand that held the lamp to that which gripped the knife, mumbled again. How to turn the doorknob? She nodded as the solution came to her, set the lamp down on the floor.

They built well in the old days, and Jeremiah Sprool was exacting. No gleam came through the door Emma had closed behind her to shut off light from the forgotten lamp, no gleam at all. Utter, darkness was around her as she moved with the silent sure-footedness of long usage. Utter darkness— in the hall, in the parlor— and in her mind.

After a while there was no sound, no slightest movement in the ancient structure that once was so proud to house the Sprools.

On the porch running across the front of the Sprool Mansion a board creaked to the pressure of a cautious foot. A figure, silhouetted against the one bright window, froze to immobility. Nothing but that oblong of light indicated that the house was anything but a shell enclosing only death. The prowler moved again. Faint clink of metal against metal was quickly hushed, well-oiled hinges made no sound, and the porch was once more vacant.

In the foyer of the years-worn dwelling the tomb-like odor of rotted flowers lay heavily, brooding its conquest. But another scent trailed across that corruption, the warm, charnel taint of fresh blood. The intruder sighed, and infinite weariness was in the brief, quivering exhalation.

"Em," he called in a hushed tone. "Emmy. Whar are ye?" A pause, broken by no answering voice. Then, more sharply, "Emmy Sprool. Don't be afraid. Et's Kurt. Kurt Tradin."

Still no response. Breath hissed from between tightened teeth. Groping feet shuffled, the knob of the dining-room door rattled sharply to the touch of a seeking hand, rattled again as it turned. A vertical bar of light leaped into being, blotted by the farmer's stalwart form. Alarm was in his voice now. "Em— Jehoshaphat!"

The exclamation was wrenched from him as movement thudded, from behind him, from the vaulted dark of the parlor. He whirled— to see a white figure leaping at him, to see a face distorted, glaring eyes, gleaming blade of a knife arcing at him. His arm jerked up before his face, took the slash of the blow, spurted blood. The girl avoided the clutch of his other hand, slashed again. Missed. Laughed shrilly, so that Kurt's flesh crawled. Bored in again.

His teeth gritted. God! He struck at her. She was a wraith, flitting away, out of the beam slitting through the dining-room door. She was somewhere in the dark; the sound of her mad laughter came from everywhere, from nowhere. She leaped at him from the dark, her knife sliced his cheek. He flailed at her, his fist found its mark of soft flesh. And she laughed again. Horribly.

She was gone again in blackness. He followed, reaching out for her, trying to find her. "Emmy. Girl. Whar are ye?"

Cold wind swept in, chilling him. And the great door slammed. Tradin was at it, was wrenching it open. Somewhere out there she crashed through brush, laughing.

"Emmy! Et's out thar! Come back. For God's sake, come back!"

Emma Wayne was crashing through underbrush that ripped her, tore her almost nude body. There was something in her hand— a knife it felt like— a knife whose hilt was slippery with— Oh God!— with viscid, warm blood. An instant ago she had been standing over Gram's coffin, looking down into it, seeing Milt's dead and ghastly face where Gram's should have been.

How had she come here? Why was she running? From what? Why was she laughing— merciful Heavens— why was she laughing so shrilly? Her hand went to her throat, pressed. Pressed the laughter to an end. But she was still running, blindly. There! Now she was standing still, in the dark that was so black it oppressed her, standing still in the frightening night.

Fear was back on her like a flood. Fear of herself, of the creature that dimly she knew she had been— for how long? Fear of the dark. Fear of the madness that stalked the dark. Fear of the Things, the grey and grisly Things to whom the night belonged!

They were here, out here somewhere, and she was out with them! In the house, at least, they could not get at her. Could they not? What was it then that Milton had fought in the lightless parlor? What was it that had killed him, had crammed him into the casket? That had been her fault. Hers. Because she had forgotten the smashed window. But she had waited for It to come back, had— Now what made her think that? The bloody knife? Whose blood was it?

"Emmy." A far-off voice was calling her. "Come back. Emmy."

She turned to the call. She was high up on the mountain-side. Down there, where the voice came from, a dimly yellow rectangle must be the door of the house. It framed a dark, familiar figure. Kurt's. Kurt— dear Kurt had come back to help her, was looking for her. She must go back to him. Quickly.

But she couldn't go quickly. The brambles were thick here, would not let her pass. She was sheathed in pain, every flick of a leaf against her torn flesh was agony. The scrape of rough bark, the tearing of thorns were sheer, exquisite torture. She whimpered with pain, with grief, with the fear that was growing on her again after the momentary relief that had come to her with her glimpse of Kurt Tradin's stalwart form. Every lumping of shadow in the blackness about her was a new threat, every minuscule rustle a new terror. She was on the hillside sloping down from Big Tom's mighty flank, in the thicket where the Things roamed. The grey and grisly Things whose touch was fearful death.

Why didn't Kurt come for her? Why did he stand there, motionless, peering into the night?— But he didn't know she was there, she hadn't answered his call. Her larynx swelled to cry out, her throat rasped with the coming sound.

And clamped on it, choking it back, as there arose before her, right before her, the same shrill, unearthly wail that had summoned the Thing from her cabin refuge to join in the lethal attack on Milt. High, and higher; knife-edged with appalling menace; glutinous somehow despite its shrillness, as though the ululation were being forced through some awful viscidness; it soared— and checked. Checked as earth pounded, as underbrush surged away and monstrous greyness lunged at her out of the night.

5. "Yes, I Killed It."

EMMA screamed, slashed at the Thing with her knife. Instinctively. The blade felt something, something that took its stroke with a queasy softness like no animal, no human flesh; only barely resisting the plunge of the steel. The girl's arm jerked hack for another blow, the knife soughed as it came out of its unreal billet. She slashed again. The Thing towered above her. It was falling on her reckless of her desperate stabs, was overwhelming her with its doughy, putrid mass. She went down under its nauseating bulk. Its noisome lump flowed shudderingly over her, pressing clammy, wet coldness into her nostrils, her mouth, into the hollow between her breasts.

This foulness wasn't real, couldn't be real. She couldn't breathe, couldn't see, but primal instinct— for life, primal clinging to existence, sparked her muscles with a furious supernatural energy. She heaved herself up against the noisomeness, drove her fists and her knees into it. It gave. Horribly it gave and as her back arched in a spasmodic attempt to throw it off it flowed underneath, so that its damp and gruesome chill slimed every inch of her frantic body. Even in that moment, even in the red fury of her hopeless battle, her skin crawled with revulsion and her stomach retched.

The boneless, formless Thing held her clamped in its foul embrace, investing her with its corruption, making her a part of its putrescence. Her lungs pulled, pulled, and could get no air. Searing pain racked her chest. The clayey mass that had swallowed her tightened, tightened an inexorable, crushing band about her threshing body. Anguish burst in her darkened brain, exploded into a blaze of coruscating flame. Yellow pinwheels whirled against velvety black, green meteors darted across their swirl, purple rockets burst and blazed. Burst...

The Thing shrieked, and suddenly let go its hold, so that she slid down, down, into swirling oblivion. Somewhere in vast blackness a tiny glow was an infinitely distant pinpoint. It grew, and as it grew its hard glow faded till it was the phantasmal, pallid, sleeping face of her lost mate. Of Milton! Its eyes opened, and Emma shrieked soundlessly as she saw in those eyes that look, that darting, awful look with which he had left her, to die. Her scream changed the bodiless head so that it wore Kurt's face, drawn, haggard, with bloodshot, sleepless eyes deep-sunk in chasms of weariness. She could not see his body, but she could feel his toil-roughened hand on her shoulder, dragging her out of the fathomless pit into which she had fallen. She could hear his voice too, his muffled voice, calling her.

"Emmy. Emmy. Come back."

Why— didn't he leave her alone— in death? She had been safe then. She had been rid of horror, of nameless terror, of pain. Of PAIN. Of the agony that now scraped her skin with fire; clawed her chest, her entrails. Of anguished knowledge that Milton was jammed, wax-envisaged, into a coffin too small for him. Of the memory of what she had seen in her lover's eyes. Now it was all back. All! God! Why wasn't she dead? Why didn't he let her die?

"Emmy. Wake up."

Her eyes opened. Milton— no, Kurt. Kurt Tradin said, "Thank God!" His bleak face was grey, but not as the Thing had been grey, somehow not. His eyes were tired, so tired, and a muscle twitched at the base of his broad nose. His sleeve was gashed, soaked with clotted blood, and his gun was again in his hand. He was already bending to her, he stooped nearer and his arms slid under her. His strong arms closed about her, lifted her, and as she swung effortlessly up she saw a grey, foul mass, motionless on the ground.

"You killed it," she mumbled.

"Yes," he responded, and his accents were oddly thick. "Yes, I killed it"

She understood now. Kurt had killed the Thing and saved her. Kurt had saved Milton and her before, up there on the Highway. All night, many nights, Kurt had been patrolling the roads, fighting the grey horror, fighting the madness that the Things had brought to the valley, to the village, to Milton. Fighting alone, always alone. Why had not Kurt run away? Why had he stayed here to fight his lonely battle?

He was climbing down, holding her, pushing through the brambles, but he answered her, as though he had read her thoughts. "I love you, Emmy." His tired voice was thick, broken. "I have waited for you so long. So long."

"Hush," Emma said. "You— mustn't." She closed her eyes to shut out the dreariness that made his lined face even more bleak. "Not— yet"

The memory of Milton was too warm, too dear as yet. Even with what she had read in his eyes between them. But later... Kurt's arm cradled her so powerfully, so gently. She was so safe... so... Emma sighed, slid into exhausted sleep.

Kurt drifted through her dreams, padding barefoot along the dusty road from school, carrying her books. Kurt, standing, a dark and somehow lonesome figure at the gate, watching her window whose curtain he could not know veiled her responsive watching. Speaking his love, haltingly, in a quiet dusk that for once was not gloomy with dread. Kurt, in that last scene, that last but one, his ungainly figure bowed, cringing beneath the awful blast of Jeremiah Sprool's wrath. "Marry Emma," the old man roared. "Marry my granddaughter! Put the taint of your blood into the veins o' the Sprools! We're clean, Tradin. We're clean. By Jehovah, you're as mad as the rest o' the valley. Mad as..."

The look on the young man's face had stopped grandfather there. The lifeless look and the blaze in his dark eyes, the lurid, flaming blaze whose agony had stilled even the ancient's unruly tongue. But Kurt turned, blundered blindly out of the house. And the dream ended with grandfather's gigantic figure in the doorway, his voice recovered, shouting out into the night. "Mad, damn you. Crazy. Crazy as a bat."

Emma had not been much frightened by Jeremiah's apoplectic rage; his fits of uncontrolled temper were all too frequent. She had waited for Kurt to return, had sent him messages despite the old man's prohibition. But she had never spoken to Tradin again till he had appeared, unexpectedly, at the station in Kingville, had husked his promise to wait for her, and vanished before she could respond. That incident too, was repeated in her dreams, and then her sleep deepened to a dreamless torpor.

And she woke with a start. Bemused by her dreams and her sleep, she could not for a moment tell the source of the welling tide of fear that seemed to sweep up and over her in that instant of waking. But fear lay on her breast like a leaden, oppressive hand, and the shadows on the papered ceiling at which she stared were dark shapes of brooding menace. She was on the old sofa in the parlor, Gram would scold...

Memory seeped back, distorted, but full-panoplied with horror. Gram was dead. Milton was dead, they were in the same coffin and that coffin was in this room. Kurt...

Kurt was bending over her, it was his hand that was heavy on her breast. Yellow lamplight, glancing at some odd angle across his face made of it a shadowy chiaroscuro that was somehow demoniac. His lips were too full, creepingly sensuous; his nostrils pinched, quivering; tiny lights crawled wormlike in the abysmal depths of his eyes. Emma fought down fright that plugged speech, husked something. "Don't," she meant it to be. "Don't."

Tradin moved, and the girl came fully awake. It must have been a trick of light and shade, the appalling mask his face had been, for it was not like that any more. Contorted by emotion, though— that it was, and ashen with fatigue. But his hand was on her uncovered breast. "Don't," Emma repeated and pushed at it feebly. It fell away. Released, she sat up, became aware that he was kneeling beside her, that he was quivering. That his lips were moving, were dripping passion-slowed words.

"Em. Em darling. I couldn't help it. I love you so."

Weakly, she swayed toward him, toward his reaching arms, though deep within her a warning bell rang shrilly. With Milton so newly dead! She was mad, mad. Her eyes slid over Kurt's shoulder, across the room, appealing to the coffin where Milton lay for help against this madness that ran riot in her veins. Queerly it seemed to rock, to sway on its trestles.

Pale fingers came up out of the grim casket and gripped its edge. A torso jerked upright, rising grotesquely from its ebon depths and Milton's pallid, reproachful face turned toward her. His arm lifted— the arm of a dead man— and his long, bloodless hand clenched, opened, pointed at her in ghastly accusation!

"Milton," she heard herself gasp. "Milton! I?"

Kurt exploded to his feet, blotting the grisly sight from her. "You!" he screamed. "You!" and lunged toward the awakened dead, his great fist lifting, knotting in the lamplight. "Damn you!" That rocklike fist swept down...

Some power outside herself hurled Emma from the sofa, catapulted her from its springs in a catlike leap to the enraged farmer's back. Her shriek was a feline mewl as she raked Tradin's face with the nails of her one hand and swiped at his descending arm with the other— swiped aside that crushing blow to make it land on wood instead of Milton's skull that it would have crushed.

Tradin was thrown against the coffin under the fury of her onslaught, toppled it. It crashed thunderously, wood split. Emma ripped nails again through flesh, gouged for eyes like the wild thing she had become. Kurt ducked forward, suddenly. She flew over his head, crashed among the splintered fragments of the casket. The jagged wood of the smashed coffin ripped her, but its cushions of funereal satin pillowed her fall. Her leg signaled excruciating pain, and she could not move it. She squirmed over to the stamping of feet, to the snarl of battling beasts.

A heaving mass reeled about the room, the two men locked in tearing, primeval combat. Two men— oh God! Kurt was a man, but the other— Milton. What was he?

His slender form was so frail, so weak, against the other's bulk. Ordinarily Tradin could split him in two, tear him apart with those great paws of his that had wrestled so long with the soil. Not now. Not that vibrant, terrible being who had returned from death. Now that creature who bit, and tore, and kicked, was an overpowering, black whirlwind that drove Kurt back, drove him back, across the floor. No human being could stand against that snarling, growling, squealing fury come back from the grave.

The whirlwind of combat struck the wall. Milton— whatever it was that Milton had become— swarmed all over Tradin. But the farmer, at bay, crouched and lashed out with his giant fists. Lashed and landed. Milton was thrown back, was staggered. Suddenly his figure was red with the tint of hell-fire, was wreathed in black smoke, and he hurtled in again, hurtled at the embattled rustic. Resistlessly the revenant drove Kurt along the wall as the long, fluttering shadows of battle were lurid-edged. Emma watching, was rigid with awed horror, with a fear that came from beyond earth. The jagged void of the broken window gaped behind Tradin; in the instant the girl realized that it had been his goal he hurled himself backward through it, was gone.

Milton screeched blasphemy, vanished. Emma was not sure, not quite sure, that he had gone through the window after his victim. But gruesome thumpings came from outside, were succeeded by sudden silence.

By silence that was broken by a strange crackling, here within, by an ominous hiss. Milton had vanished, but a red glare still danced in this parlor where horror had flared to unbelievable life, and edged billows of greasy, black smoke. The stench of burning was acrid in her nose, stung her throat. Good Lord! The place was ablaze! Sometime in the whirlwind, eerie battle the table had been overturned on which Kurt had set the lamp, and spilled oil on dried old wood fed flames like kindling.

Emma sprang to her feet, toppled as agony stabbed her thigh, crashed down to the floor. God! Oh God! Her leg was broken. She could not stand. Could not run to escape the flames!

The fire spread rapidly now, having gained strength while she watched the gruesome fight. The floor was a sea of wavering, leaping orange, and red, and curling, spitting blue. The door was cut off, by which she might have crawled to the foyer and out to safety. Rivulets of flame ran between her and the window. A curtain caught and flared.

Pungent smoke tore at her lungs with its black knives. Heat beat at her, stinging. Long fingers of flame reached out across the floor for her. She beat at them, beat them out with scorched, blistering hands.

But the forefront of the main blaze roared closer, ever closer. And she could not beat that back.

6. Descent Into Hell

ALL across the side and the front of the room, the flames soared, incandescent, their glare blinding. The roar of the fire was a vast surf, the surge of heat from its blaze was a great wave overwhelming the helpless girl. A black pall of smoke eddied along the ceiling, billowed, billowed lower and lower to engulf her, to throttle her. Emma smelled burning hair— a viscous insect stung her scalp— she snatched at the ember— tore it from her head with a handful of her hair. She rolled away from the flames, agonizing to the grating of fractured bone surfaces one on the other— rolled against the furthest wall. Groveled there, mewling, as inescapable destruction crept nearer with cruel tongues.

Emma's skin crisped to the furnace blast beating on her doomed body. She writhed in the searing heat, as a worm will writhe in flame, and her arm flung over, thumped on the hot floor, thumped against something that clinked metallically. She glared at what she had touched, saw that it was the knife she had clutched out there when Kurt had saved her from a more merciful death, red-shining now, reflecting the blaze.

She snatched at the blade, seized it, clutching. The razor edge slashed her palm, reddened with her blood, but she did not feel its pain. It offered a better, more merciful death than the immolation inevitable now in seconds. She pulled the knife toward her, dropped it momentarily to gain a grip on its hilt, jerked the sharp point to her breast. Poised it an instant while she muttered a prayer, for the peace of her soul and of Milton's. Of Milton's that had been brought back to his dead body to save her from unpardonable sin. Then Emma's muscles tensed for the death stroke, and she shut her eyes to take it.

The knife came alive, jerked from her grip. Unbelievably there was someone in the room, bending over her. Someone! Oh God! Horror was bending over her, horror worse than the knife or the flame. A Thing bulky and formless, its grey orange-margined now by the luminance of the roaring blaze.

It had come for her, come to take her for its own hideous purpose, and it was not a being of this earth. No living thing could have come through that holocaust alive? A lumping tendril slapped across her face, a hot crust on it broke, and wet viscidness squashed over her mouth, her nose and her eyes. She felt another tentacle seethe under her, felt herself lifted, as she writhed, feebly protestant, and her broken leg dangled to stab agony up her thigh, her flank. She was crushed into the noisome, viscid humidity of its foul mass. The stuff flowed over her, swallowed her.

The Thing was moving, was carrying her off. Uttermost terror shrieked in every cell of her anguished frame. Better the fire, oh God, better the fire than this! It was carrying her through the flame. She felt the vile stuff enveloping her grow hot to the fire, heard the sizzle of steam. She could not breathe— could not—

The matrix in which she was contained crawled, and somehow her mouth was free, so that air reached her lungs; dank, cold air freighted with corpse-smell. They were out of the fire then, incredibly out, and the Thing was lumbering with her to its lair. Somewhere in the mass a pulse beat, as if it had a heart. A heart that pounded with some strange excitement, pounded with a rhythm of grotesque life. The pud, pud in her ears was the muted beat of a drum of doom.

The ungainly heaving that told her her captor still moved ceased. She sensed that it had come to its journey's end, that it had brought her to its lurking place, was about to work its will with her. Fear ran icy in her blood stream, sapped all vitality from her battered body as with a sucking plop she came free of the Thing's foul substance and knew dimly that it had laid her down on some hard, unyielding surface. Only pain kept consciousness in her: the jabbing torture of her ruptured tibia: the agony of her lacerated, scorched flesh. The thick stuff still adhering blinded and deafened her. She lay unmoving where the Thing had laid her, waiting. Waiting for the ultimate horror.

And a tenuous hope trailed across the quivering blank of her beleaguered brain. Not for herself. For Milton, for her husband who had died and yet was not dead. A hope that his reanimated body had lost the hideous mockery of life with which she had last seen it inflamed. That it was at rest, the body that had been so warm, so near, so dear to her...

Nothing was happening, nothing at all. What was it waiting for, the Thing that had relentlessly pursued her, harried her, that had come through flames to take her? The agony of suspense expanded like a black bubble, bursting her aching skull, till desperation seized her and she drove a fist across her eyes, wiping away the blinding mess.

Above her, redness glowed through a shimmering network interlaced by things twisted, grotesque, reptilian. Bastions lifted darkly about her to support that eerie roof. Where was she? In some black chapel of the damned? In some Luciferean cloister through whose pierced ceiling the reflection of hell's lurid fires flickered restlessly in their eternal dance? Wherever she was, the dull realization penetrated, whatever place this was, she was alone in it. That which had brought her here had departed, on some obscure, revolting errand of its own. She would stay here, it could be sure of that, she would stay here till it returned.

Stay here? Grim humor twisted Emma's dry, cracked lips. Not she. She couldn't walk with this poor shattered leg of hers that hurt so damnably; but she could crawl. On hands and one knee she could crawl. The Thing wouldn't find her here when it came.

Hurry! It may be coming back now, right now. Hurry! Turn over. Bite your lips against the screams that tear at your throat as pain runs like liquid fire through every quivering inch of you, and turn. So. That was the hardest part. Now start crawling. Lift yourself on your pushing-down arms, get your one good leg under you and a start. Never mind that other leg— it isn't any good to you. Leave it. Leave it to mock the Thing. Hurry! That far-off thud may be its gooey footfall as it returns. But make no noise. Be silent as the grave. Stifle those shrieks— they won't ease the pain and may warn the Thing that you are escaping it. Ohhhhh. That was a bad one! Hurry!

Something is dragging behind! Your other leg? Well, you haven't time to pull it off, let it drag. You haven't time, the grey horror will catch you if you stop for that. Hurry! Stop that whimpering— crying won't help you. Stop it. You've gone a yard now, a whole yard. Keep going. Keep going! how long?— Never mind how long it has taken you to crawl that yard, keep going. Hurry!

No, that isn't Gram lying there, ahead, grinning at you. It can't be Gram, she's dead? So are you dead? Don't fool yourself, you wish you were. You couldn't hurt so if you were dead. You wouldn't have to crawl through Hell if you were dead. But hurry!

Maybe Milton will be waiting for you when you are really dead. In Hell? Perhaps. Hell itself burned in his eyes when he looked at you before he lunged into the parlor and died. Stop thinking— and crawl. Hurry! You have forgotten why you were crawling, why you must hurry? Never mind, keep going. Don't turn aside. Don't turn to get past the dark, low, mound across whose end the red light flickers and makes you think its Gram's skull-like face grinning at you. You've reached it now. Climb over it. Climb! Put your hand on it and push over. It's cold, clammy. It has the feel of cold, dead flesh! The brittle bones of its shoulder crunch under your weight and its hand, its dead hand, jerks up and slaps you stingingly across the face...

It is Gram! Oh God! Oh dear God! It is Gram!

Emma— the quivering thing that once was Emma in some far-off time before pain and horror conquered the world— screamed as she stared down into the skeleton mask that still was recognizable as Gram's face. Screamed again, and suddenly was silent. She was lifted on a scarified knee and shuddering arms whose hands rested on the frail brittle corpse of her grandmother and she was silent while her own body chattered in the grip of a gelid ague and the freezing shock cleared the fever-mists from her brain.

As reason came back to her she saw that the vermilion-fretted arch over her was a roof of foliage; that the black bastions were the boles of trees, silhouetted against a sky lurid with reflected flame; that Gram's cadaver, swathed in dark burial clothes, had been decently laid out on a pile of dead leaves.

She shook her head, dragged thought away from the racking pain that possessed her. However the old woman's body had gotten here, it had been treated with a curious respect oddly at variance with the ghoulishness of its being moved at all. This was a clearing in the wood, an opening floored by a great rock that had given sustenance to no seedling. Dimly she recalled it, knew she was not far from the Sprool mansion. The glare in the sky was from the conflagration that by now must have completely engulfed it. The road was only fifty feet down this slope before her the old house was to the right and the village to the left.

Curious— while the whole vault of the sky was aflame it glowed more deeply, more virulently scarlet, to the left— in the direction of Ekwanok— and not from the quarter where the Sprool house was burning. Emma recalled the bonfire around which a mad dance had circled. But that had been completely hidden by Big Tom's shoulder— and now—

Dim, distant thrum of a speeding auto came to her ears, of Kurt's car, running up the road. Then he had escaped from Milton, was still hunting the Things. The one that had taken her from the flames would be coming back for her! Fear's livid hand squeezed her heart once more, and the ghastly need for hurry. She must get away from here, get away! But where?

Down to the road. That was her only hope. Down to the roadside to lie there and pray that Kurt would find her before the Thing did. Pray! What good would it do to pray? God would not hear her. Just lie there and— and hope—

By the time Emma reached the muddy ditch of the trail bisecting the doomed Valley of Ekwanok, she had touched the limit of endurance. The very limit. She lay in that ditch more dead than alive, and gave herself over to the waves of unbearable pain that were a moving tide in her twitching, shattered body.

Barely conscious, she lay, a blood-daubed, naked, shattered shape in the muck of the ditch, and knew that the arching heavens were aflame with lurid glow and the dark bulk of the mountains were monstrous blots against that bloody sky. Their coil was very tight, now, around the valley they had doomed, and the horror they had spawned in the long, brooding years was rampant now in the earth-fold between them.

A spark fluttered from the flames leaping, down there in the valley. Some wanton breeze took it, lifted it high and higher. So microscopic it was that the mountains did not notice it as it soared. But Emma saw it attain the black veil with which Satan had covered the valley, saw it burn a tiny hole in that veil, and go out, its task accomplished.

Prayer needs, Emma thought— if the wee stirring in that dim pulse to which her life had dwindled might be called thought— only the tiniest possible opening to get through to God. "Please, God," she prayed. "Help Milton and me. Please."

A smile brushed her poor, torn lips and, strangely enough, she sighed as if in contentment. Darkness beat against her brain...

The murmur of Kurt Tradin's car was louder, nearer. He was between her and the village, and was coming this way. Thus quickly had her prayer been answered! He was coming, he was coming— what was that curious growling mutter, behind the crescendoing roar of his approach?

No matter. Kurt was coming to save her— No, he couldn't be. He had last seen her in the blazing house, he must think her dead, burned. He wouldn't be looking for her, wouldn't see her in the ditch. She must get out in the road, where he couldn't miss her.

He might not see her in time, might run her over? That wouldn't be so bad. Milton was dead.

She should never had brought Milton here. The mountains had nothing against him, they hated only her. Only the blood of the Sprools.

Emma shut off thought that was madness, was scrabbling again, waking pain again as she pulled herself out of the ditch, out into the road. This was far enough, he would see her here. She couldn't get any farther.

The ground was vibrating now to the pound of his wheels. He was coming, coming fast. That strange mutter, like low thunder, was slightly louder, almost indefinably so. What could it be?

Trees along the roadside lightened, their green virulent. Kurt's headlight was doing that, his emerald headlight. He'd be here in seconds now, in seconds. Agonizingly Emma struggled to prop herself up on an elbow, so that he would surely see her.

It was like green sunlight now, the glare of his light. There was a curve there, twenty feet down the road, and he was coming head on toward those trees, while here Emma was still cloaked by red-tinged darkness. "He'll have to slow down for the curve," she mumbled. "And he'll be more likely to see me." Excitement shook her. "He's slowing down now."

There was the hiss of skidding rubber, the squeal of tightening brakes. The green light wavered, did not sweep along the trees, and motor throb died away. God, oh God! he's stopping. He's turning— he's going back! "Kurt! Kurt!" Her cry, the scream she intended, was a rasping whisper. Her smoke-burned throat could manage no better. She was crawling, crawling in a paroxysm of terror lest he turn and leave her, dragging her injured leg after her. Her tortured progress was infinitely slow, but the light held steady. "KURT!"

Somehow she attained the bend in the road, whimpering, rounded it. Emerald blaze swallowed her. The car was ahead, only steps ahead. Emma fell flat, lifted the ton-weight of one arm, waved. "Kurt."

There was no response from the stalled car. He didn't see her, couldn't hear her. He would turn in a minute now and drive away.

Something threshed on the hillside above her. Emma rolled over to the sound. Something was prowling up there. Her scalp tightened, grisly fingers stroked her spine. The Thing was hunting her! No— it was hunting Kurt. She twisted back to stare at the grey auto, to try to warn him somehow. Realized that the vehicle was empty, that no one was behind its wheel— It must be Kurt on the hillside. He was not about to turn back. He had stopped to hunt the Thing on foot— perhaps had seen one. Of course he had, the one that had carried her off, coming back for her.

Good Kurt. Brave Kurt. He had come to her rescue. But, funny, but she was down here in the road, and he didn't know it. She was down here and she couldn't let him know. If she could get to the car and blow his horn he would know she was there and come down to her.

If she could— Emma was off once more on her Via Crucis, her road of pain. Crawling through dust, scrambling through mud. Hitching her flaming torment along on jerking elbows, on plunging knee. Banging the torture of her broken leg against stones. Till at last the hot smell of grease was in her nostrils, the stench of burned gas, and she passed into the shadow of Kurt's car, high above her.

Followed, then, the fight to get a hand up to the running board, the struggle to lift the torso and rest her breasts on the metal ledge. The dismay at the discovery that the door was closed. The fear, the awful fear, that it was locked. The reaching of cramped, aching fingers to the handle and the agonized instant before a click told her that it was not.

The door swung open, thudding her to the ground. But it was open. Men have climbed Jungfrau, Mont Blanc. So, too, did Emma Wayne climb into that auto. Then she lay gasping, quivering on the smeared floorboards.

All she must do now was get up to the seat so that she might reach the horn-button. She rolled, stretched an arm to the leathery cushion.

And her hand touched clammy wetness, sank into the humid, doughy staff of which the grey, grisly Things were formed!

Here, in this car, in Kurt's car, a Thing hulked on its seat, on its driver's seat. It moved, dropped on her, enveloped her with its shuddersome foulness.

All her fighting, all her terrific impossible struggle, had availed only to bring her straight into the clutches of that which she fled!

7. Mad— Mad— Mad!

THE obscene, semi-solid mass enveloped her with its clammy, chill foulness, folded about her like an ineffably noisome coverlet. It clamped down on her— and gradually Emma was aware that it was lax, queerly flaccid; that, holding her captive, it was oddly lifeless, unmoving.

Nor, and this too was utterly strange, did it crush her with ponderous bulk, as had the one Kurt had killed on the hillside above the mansion. Somewhere the muted crow of a cock beat to her. Was the Thing, then, indeed compounded of some effluvium of the dreadful night? Was it losing its substance with approaching dawn? Would it vanish entirely with the day?

Would it— an agonized cry sounded in Emma's buzzing ears, the thud of hurrying footfalls. The car shook to the spring of someone to its running-board, and the lewd blanket lifted from her. "Emmy," Kurt Tradin lipped. "Sweetheart."

His face was contorted, his eyes black flame. One cheek was pulped, and oozing droplets of gore. He was coatless and his shirt half-torn from a shoulder, hanging in tatters, his arm a mass of clotted blood, and from it the limp Thing dangled. His great biceps crawled as he threw it aside— threw it! Incredibly the grey mass flopped to the seat-back, hung like a cast-aside garment.

Emma's glance stabbed to it, and suddenly she knew! Hysteric laughter burbled in her throat, bubbled from between her torn lips. Kurt's face blazed with a queer light, his arms stabbed to her. "At last! At last, sweetheart, ye're like me. Come, darlin'. Come to me."

Oh God! He was mad, stark mad! That which he had cast aside was a coverall, hooded and plastered thick with putty! He was the Thing, the grey and grisly Thing that prowled the night and killed. He it was who had plunged through the flames and snatched her from them. The thick wet putty of his grotesque masquerade had protected him from their heat and warded the blaze from her. He— His shaking arms slid under her, lifted her, pressed her against his hairy, heaving chest. His thick hot lips slobbered kisses on her face. She beat at him feebly— feebly—

"My dear," he was mumbling. "My dearest dear. Ye are like me, ye are insane. I can see it in yer eyes. At last ye are insane and fit to be my mate." His head went back, he was roaring with laughter, laughter somehow frenzied, somehow mad as the mad night. "The old fool said," he spluttered, "thet I was crazy and not for you. He wuz right, but he ain't right no longer. I've made you crazy as me." He crushed her against his sweaty breast. "Hey, Jeremiah," he bellowed, and the weird echo of his shout echoed hollowly from the everlasting hills. "Jeremiah Sprool! Look! She's mine now. She's crazy and she's mine. Everybody's crazy, ye white-bearded fool, everybody in th' valley. Look at them. Jeremiah Sprool. Damn you," his crazed shouting shrilled. "I'm not the only crazy one now! Everybody's mad!"

"Mad," the fire-reddened slope of Big Tom caught the word and flung it back at her. "Mad," echo delayed came from the hills across the valley. "MAD!" the crazed universe shouted at her. And "mad" whispered the writhing worms in Emma's own skull. Of course she was mad, and all the insane happenings of the night only the ravings of her own delirium, of her own crazed brain that shrieked the horror to her. Mad, mad, MAD.

It seemed to— or was it real?— that redder, more lurid flame glared about her, that the far-off mutter had crescendoed to a wild, imminent clamor. She felt Kurt tense, swing about. She saw— or thought she saw— a horde of fiends, man-form and horrible, flooding down the road toward them— brandishing flaming torches that were chair-legs, and riven table-tops, and the flaring palings of once neat fences. It seemed that Kurt snarled bestially, that a fierce, animal howling came from the onrushing pack as they caught sight of him.

Real! It couldn't be real, this outpouring of demons from a living Hell! It couldn't be real— that Milton— her Milton— loped ahead of the howling pack, an up-ended broom flaunting fire like an orange banner above his head! It wasn't true that Kurt was screaming obscene maledictions at the on-rushing, monstrous throng and that they were responding with mewling catcalls, with squeals like nothing ever heard on earth, with maniacal howls. That she herself had joined the blasphemous choir with thin sounds formed in her throat without mental command.

"Look," Kurt bellowed— or in her waking nightmare she heard him bellow. "Look, Jeremiah! Look at them." His hollow, shouting voice broke into ear-piercing, cackling laughter. "Look, Jeremiah Sprool." And then suddenly he whirled to the roadside, plunged into the brush carrying her.

"Emma!" the apparition that was like Milton screamed, "I'm coming. Hold him— I'm coming."

"Mil— " Kurt's stinking hand clamped over her mouth. She fanged it, tasted salt taste of his blood, but it tightened, stifling her answer. She writhed— agony darted through her, numbing.

"Hush," Kurt mumbled. "Hush darling. We've mustn't let them catch us. They'll spoil everything. Jeremiah sent them after us, and if they catch us they'll tear us apart. Hush."

Close-growing trees closed about them, bushes lashed at them. Red shadows danced through thick foliage, and the rush of the following horde was like thunder in the transmogrified forest. Kurt loped through the woods like a thing possessed, clutching Emma to his heaving breast, and the pursuers gibbered and howled behind them. The jungle-horde bayed down the wind after the fleeing man and his captive, and he was silent now as the grave, slipping through vermilion-flickering, arboreal aisles whose flanking trees tossed black branches to a lurid sky.

"Emma!" Milton howled. "Emma, where are you?"

The girl jerked her head, pain seared her neck-muscles. Kurt's palm slipped momentarily from her lips and she screamed, "Here, Mil— " Her captor snarled as he shut-off her scream, twisted to a new direction in his mad flight.

"Hush, darling," he muttered. "Hush." His snicker rippled her spine with loathing. "Yer Milton is dead. That isn't yer Milton but a devil in his body. I know! I killed yer Milton and put him in his coffin."

Oh God! Oh merciless God! Milton was dead and she a captive of his slayer. Feebly Emma squirmed, reckless of torture, and beat weakly at his breast that was steel-armored with muscle. "Let me down, you fiend. Let me down."

Tradin's tireless stride ploughed through undergrowth on which torchlight danced now more dimly. "Soon dear," he gibbered. "Soon. I've got a bed prepared for us. A nice bed of leaves in th' woods, an' Elmer's akeepin' it warm fer us. Elmer..." Suddenly his voice broke into a heart-rending sob, he shook her in his great arms, savagely. "You made me kill him. You made me kill Elmer. Ef I didn't love ye so much..."

"Ohhh, don't! Who... who is Elmer?"

"Huh!" The madman's twisted, grotesque head threw back, and peals of shrill, maniacal laughter shuddered through the red-edged trees. "Do ye hear, Jeremiah? She doesn't know about Elmer. She never knew about him. But ye did. Ye knew about my poor, crazy brother locked in my house. Hidden thar. But did ye see him tonight? Did ye see how he helped me make her mad? Did ye see how he killed her horse? An' all week, did ye see how he prowled the woods dressed in th' putty suit I made fer him an' scared whut brains they had out o' them others in the village, whilst I pertended ter hunt him an' we waited fer her ter come? Ye said I was like him, Jeremiah Sprool! Well, I am like him, an' so is she. So is yer granddaughter, Jeremiah, like him an' like me. Crazy. Ravin' crazy. A Sprool fit at last ter be th' mad Tradin's bride!"

The whole, horrible affair was clear now to Emma's tortured brain. Love for her had made Kurt mad. Love for her and Granddad's gibe. Tortured by knowledge of the maniac concealed in his home, the man had brooded till his mind had snapped when Gram had died. That was why he had written her, why he had dug up Faith Sprool and returned her coffin to the old parlor, why he had costumed his mad brother as foulness incarnate and set him on to harry her. To drive her crazy, too, so that he might mate with her.

And then he had learned that she already was married, had set out to intercept Milton on the highway, to kill him there. She had spoiled that scheme, but he had returned to the Sprool house and— Oh God!— had succeeded! "I killed him. I killed yer Milton," the doomful words rang in her ears.

Mad and a killer! From his own mouth had come the confession. And she was to be his bride! Wild laughter clawed in turn at Emma's throat. "Milton," she groaned. "Dead or alive, Milton. Save me."

The sound of the pursuers was a far-off murmur in the darkening forest. Kurt chuckled, started to circle. "They can't find us now, my love. They'll never find us now."

This wasn't happening. Reason fled from her and she was again the whimpering, terrified toy of a grisly nightmare. God wouldn't let it happen. Oh please, God. I'm crazy. Please let me be crazy and just imagining this...

"Drop her, you dog!" A dark figure suddenly loomed out of the forest. "Drop her!"

Milton! It was Milton, or the demon in his body! A gleam from somewhere showed Emma the pallid oval of his face, his scarred mouth twisted in wrath, his virulent eyes.

Tradin growled, jerked aside, dodging Milton's impetuous rush, his flailing fist. Stumbled and fell to his knees, and Emma crashed from his arms to the ground as Kurt leaped to his feet. Agony twisted the girl's throat to a scream of pain and horror as the two figures were motionless for a long minute, crouching and splotched with alternated black and lurid red till all resemblance to anything human was gone. "Yer dead," Tradin yammered. "Yer dead!"

"Got you!" Milt's voice was a growl, an animal rumble. "Got you at last. Are you going to take it from me or from your neighbors, Tradin? They know now what you are. They saw the grey Thing in your car when I yelled, and they're after you. They're hunting you down, killer!"

"Ye'd never have cotched me, ye ner th' rest o' yer pack, ef'n I hadn't stopped fer my wife."

"Your wife!" Milton leaped, and Tradin lunged to meet him. The two phantasms closed in snarling, yapping, grunting combat. Emma heard the smack of a fist, saw a hooked thumb gouging an eye. The black whirlwind of battle was suddenly detailless in its hideous, dark swirling as vertigo seized her brain, and nausea retched at her stomach.

Someone screamed. A scream shrilled from the maelstrom pregnant with unutterable pain. The whirling mass split and one of the combatants sprawled headlong. It writhed, screaming, on the ground. Milton! Oh God! It was Milton. Kurt leaped to the kill. His shod foot lifted to grind down on Milton's contorted face.

Emma flung out a frantic hand, gripped an ankle, jerked. Tradin, off-balance, staggered. Milton rolled, threw a hand upward, seized a low branch and pulled himself erect. Hung to the bough, reeling and helpless, as the madman heeled Emma's side and jerked away, crouching to leap again— snarling.

Lurid light burst through screening tree trunks and the as yet distant howls of the gibbering pack surged nearer. Tradin froze. His lean visage turned to the sound. Fear flared into his reddened eyes. Again he snarled, lipping his teeth; whirled; and was gone in the shadows.

The instant's respite straightened Milton. He shouted something, plunged after the escaping madman. Their flight and pursuit threshed through the woods, the tumult dying.

The ground heaved under Emma and she was sliding down a long black glissade into billowing murk like storm clouds at the bottom of an abyss. A screech of awful agony, distant but undulled, held her for an instant, then the rolling clouds took her.

For a timeless period she was free from pain. But even as she floated in the heart of that dark, warm blackness grief was a leaden lump in her bosom, and green-glowing worms crawled in her racked and aching brain.

Something was pulling her out of the cloud. A voice. A choked and inarticulate voice. Someone's arms were around her and her tortured head was pillowed on someone's shoulder.

"Sweetheart."

Terror gripped her again, and she cried out. "Let me go," she sobbed. "Let me go Kurt," and nailed at hard flesh with futile hands, like fluttering wings of a wounded bird, while her eyelids squeezed tight against the madness twisted features she dreaded to see.

"Easy, Emma. Easy does it." Gentle hands held her wrists. "It's Milton, darling. Milton."

It was Milton! She sobbed against her lips, and his dear arms stilled the shuddering of her torn and twisted body. "You're hurt, Em-girl, you're terribly hurt."

"Yes. But—  Oh Milton, are you alive?"

"Yes. I'm alive. I must have a thick head. He sloughed me hard enough to break it in that old parlor where he lay for me. But I only passed out. But I had a damn bad moment when I woke up in that coffin, and hearing him make love to you didn't help my feelings any. Guess I went nuts—  I thought—  Hell—  Your trying to keep me out of that room, even when we heard someone moving around in there, made me think that you knew he was there, that you were going to sneak in there to meet him when you got a chance."

"Was that why you looked at me like that, with hate in your eyes? Oh Milt— "

"That was why. I'm a dog, dear. Forgive me?"

"Of course. Milt—  He got away?"

"No." There was grimness in her husband's voice. "No. He didn't get away. He's— " His head pulled around and he was staring into the darkness whence he had come as a far-off howling made the night hideous. "God! The villagers must have found him and..."

A last poignant shudder shook Emma as the distant ululation rose to a wild, horrible chorus. Milton's arms constricted more tightly about her. "My poor dear. My poor, poor girl."

"Milt," she managed to say. "Take me away from here. Your car is up on the hill. Carry me to it and take me as far away from here as you can."

DAWN found them on Big Tom Highway, Milton's car eating the miles away from horror and the valley where madmen still roamed and red fire still raged. "Milt," Emma sighed. "What's to become of us? We haven't a cent. How are we going to live?"

A smile broke the grimness of Milton's face. "We'll live, dear. I have a job. Johnson liked the way I straightened out his mess so well that he's put me in charge of his accounting department. Fifty a week, dear, and a chance to buy stock in the concern. I was coming only to take you back to New York."

Ahead, a finger of the sun broke through the gloomy trees, and the couple drove into its roseate glow that somehow bathed them, as they chugged through it, with a benediction and a promise.

___________

7: "In Dutch"

Edmund Stover

fl 1910-1912

The Popular Magazine, 1 Sep 1912

THERE WAS NOTHING extraordinary about Bill Ginn's clerk, save a pair of painfully bowed legs.

Mr. Ginn professed to have lassoed "Dutchy"— no untutored tongue dared venture his true patronymic— on Tom Watson's ranch, installing him at once as factotum in his Prairie Plover Hotel in Star Corners. Rancher Watson corroborated this in part. Dutchy, he said, had appeared at his place looking for work several weeks previously, and, being in need of a man, he had given him a position; but it soon developed that the Teuton had never been condemned through Adam's original sin to till the soil.

"He didn't have sense enough to bed the cows," explained the rancher, "so, thinking he'd do for a hotel clerk, I turned him over to Bill."

As the acquisition of Dutchy had taken place soon after Landlord Ginn had sustained heavy loss on a race between his thoroughbred, Riven Rock, and White Raven, the Lenox mare, it was feared by his friends that the financial reverse had weighed too heavily upon the hotel man's mind.

Dutchy was about thirty years of age, of stocky build, and stolid, clean-shaven countenance. On his head lay a premonition of coming baldness, hidden during most of his waking hours under a  German peasant cap. He wore a suit of cheap jeans, whose tight-fitting trousers accentuated the peculiar architecture of his nether limbs. Few English wards tripped rhythmically off Dutchy's tongue, and those who attempted conversation with him could glean little more than that he had been born in Wiesbaden, and had been in the United States only six months. When he endeavored to impart further information speech failed him, and futile stuttering would send him into a rage.

"Sie still!" he snarled, when Mrs, Ida Brown, Star Corners' most persistent gossip, was angling for his life's history. "Don't told me so much a kvestion. Zu viel ist genug."

Thirty times a day thereafter Mrs. Brown expressed her firm conviction that Dutchy was "crazy as a bug," adding the cheerful prediction that ''one of these days he'll break loose and tpurder half the town."

What enveloped Dutchy in an air of mystery from the time of his arrival in Star Corners was the manner in which his antipathy to work corrected the same trait in his employer. For years Bill Ginn— boniface, gambler, trigger manipulator— had been stranger to more strenuous toil than shuffling a pack of cards— save when he engaged in physical argument. On one of the latter occasions, after a busy five minutes' discussion with knives, he had spent many weeks in a hospital; but when he emerged he fared straight to the town cemetery, and did a hornpipe on the grave of his enemy.

Generally, Ginn let the Prairie Plover Hotel run itself, unless the thrifty Mrs. Ginn could spare time from its kitchen to look after affairs in the office; but, after the coming of Dutchy, the landlord put on an air of great energy. He even went twice a day to meet the trains, welcoming prospective patrons and carrying their lighter luggage the two blocks that separated the hotel from the railroad station. Meanwhile Dutchy, his feet upon the veranda railing at the Prairie Plover, would stoically puff at a long pipe while assimilating the news conveyed by a Wiesbaden paper. At times, when Mr. Ginn's enthusiasm was unequal to the tasks which devolve upon a hotel clerk, Mrs. Ginn would meet the trains; but Dutchy never stirred from his comfortable perch on the veranda, nor put aside his pipe, no matter what the stress of official duty.

That any one could so impose upon Bill Ginn was a miracle that Star Corners spent some weeks attempting to dissect. By some the theory was advanced that Dutchy was a distant relative of Mrs. Ginn, whose forbears also had come from the land of Hoch der Kaiser. This the landlord's wife indignantly denied. Other possible solutions were thrashed out, but none proved entirely satisfactory.

As the weeks ran on the plot thickened. Dutchy— note the clearness of Mrs. Brown's vision— developed two manias wholly at variance with his. inherent inclination. One was to race up and downstairs three steps at a time; the other to shoulder a gun and go on long hunting trips. For the latter excursions he frequently selected hours either before dawn or after dusk, when there was no possibility save that— again the words of the seeress—'in the noddle of a fool Dutchman," the feathered game would be awing. Often he would return from these jaunts perspiring as though he had been pursued by a specter, but he was never seen to bring back a single duck or prairie grouse.

As for scurrying up and downstairs, that became a sight so common to Star Corners urchins that after a time it no longer excited their comment. Back of the Prairie Plover Hotel was an out-ofdoor approach to a second-story porch. Day after day Dutchy could be seen negotiating this ascent three steps at a time. Sometimes he continued this violent exertion a full half hour without a pause.

In an isolated prairie town like Star Corners, so eccentric a character would have provided a perennial theme for theoretical discourse ; but eventually the approach of the return field day arranged by the rival sporting men of Star Corners and Lenox diverted the minds of the townspeople. These field days were of semiannual or quarterly occurrence, and had resolved themselves into mere betfests between high-stake gamblers, whose lead was followed by the piking small fry. Every scheme that either clique could evolve for the defrauding of its rival was put into practice. Running horses, wrestlers, baseball players, foot racers were imported, and gradually the competition had resolved itself into one as to which could ~ use the better judgment in employing outside talent and skill in masquerading it under the guise of mediocrity.

Bill Ginn was the leader of the Star Corners sportsmen; Joe Gantz directed the Lenox operations. Upon this twain fell the task of plotting the various coups designed to separate one town or the other from its ready coin. For the approaching field day Ginn had strengthened the Star Corners baseball nine, had brought in a horse from one of the Western circuits to take the measure of White Raven, the Lenox mare, and had under cover a wrestler who, he boasted openly, would prove to be the master of Lon McGrew, the Lenox giant. Hank Elliot and the several other "big-money" betters who were in Ginn's confidence seemed unusually light of heart as the field day drew near. Born of their cheerfulness, a conviction pervaded all Star Corners and its environs that at last Lenox was to be wiped off the financial map.

Lenox had been selected in its regular turn to be the scene of the contests. In the forenoon of the all-important day virtually every vehicle in Star Corners, crowded with male inhabitants of various ages, was wending its way across the ten miles of prairie that separated the two towns. Those unable to obtain seats in the wheeled conveyances started early to traverse the long route on foot; for, though the Dakota Central boasted two passenger trains a day, the one eastward bound did not pass through St Corners until too late to make it Mestni on a Lenox field day.

Hank Elliots automobile had taken on Landlord Ginn and his closest advisers in front of the Prairie Plover, and was about to chug away when an unexpected crisis arose. Dutchy had decided that he would go along.

"We can't take you," declared Bill Ginn angrily. "Who d'ye think'd run the hotel?"

"Ich weis nicht," returnéd Dutchy. "Shtill I go by Lennocks."

"But I tell you you can't go. Now, shut up about it."

"All recht," acquiesced Dutchy, "aber I quit my chob."

Further argument that crescendoed a block up and down the street resulted finally in a triumph for the Teuton, and Ginn, muttering maledictions, made room for him in the car.

Thus the Prairie Plover's clerk got to Lenox that day, and mingled with the crowds attracted thither by the contests. The Lenox baseball grounds occupied a vacant square just off the main thoroughfare, and here all athletic issues were decided.

At one side was a cinder path for the sprinters, and between this course and the baseball diamond a raised platform served as a stage for the announcer, as well as for the Lenox Silver Cornet Band.

Dutchy wandered about at will, seemingly little impressed by the exciting scenes that were being enacted; yet even to his stolid mind it must have been apparent as the day waned that the tide of battle was going heavily against Star Corners.

Black Bess had defeated Ginn's borrowed thoroughbred ; the purchased talent that had strengthened the visiting baseball nine had proved inadequate against that added surreptitiously by Joe Gantz to the Lenox team; the invaders' wrestler was but a weakling in the hands of the giant Lon McGrew. There alone remained the foot race, and the Star Corners small fry were gloomily discussing with one another the slim possibility that Ed Huntley could outrun the trim-built Cantrell, whom Lenox had brought in from nobody knew where. These misgivings fell upon Dutchy's ears wherever he turned, but he gave them little heed.

The last put-out had been made by the Lenox first baseman, and with a seven-to-two score in its favor, the home team had found it unnecessary to go to the bat in the ninth inning. The crowd betook itself from the side lines to the cinder path, where preparations for the race between Huntley and Cantrell were carried forward quickly. Soon the two sprinters appeared upon the course, clad in their running gear, and, after a brief warming-up dash, lined up to await the starter's pistol. Bill Ginn and his lieutenants circulated in the crowd, shouting brazen defiance.

"Even money Ed Huntley can lick Cantrell at a hundred yards— and we've got a man with us 't can beat Huntley."

"Dutchy, you'd better take your boss home," suggested Oliver Kendall, president of the Bank of Lenox facetiously to Ginn's clerk.  "His head has been bumped so hard to-day that he's gone crazy with the heat."

Dutchy grinned understandingly, and tapped his own cranium in appreciation.

But notwithstanding all the noise, the wagering on the foot race was not heavy. Those in charge of the "big money" from Star Corners pinched their wagers to a few random tens and twenties. Where larger sums were offered by Cantrell backers, an argument was precipitated, and by the time the start of the race had been effected Hank Elliot reported to his chief that the fund had been depleted by only a couple of hundred dollars.

The race itself was a farce. Cantrell quickly jumped into the lead, and remained there throughout, running so palpably under restraint that the men of Lenox marveled that even their losscrazed visitors could not perceive the deception. While the victorious home contingent was celebrating the downfall of Huntley, Bill Ginn mounted the band stand,

"Gents," he shouted, waving a handful of bank notes, "your runner has beat our man Huntley, but we told you we've got a man faster'n Huntley. Maybe were wrong, but we think we're right; and, anyhow, we've got the noiseless cash to back our judgment."

"Where is your man? Show him to s,' demanded Joe Gantz, the Lenox generalissimo.

"He's right here, gents," Ginn replied. "Ho, Dutchy!"

The clerk of the Prairie Plover Hotel disentangled himself from the crowd, and mounted the steps of the band stand to a place beside his employer.

"Here he is— look him over," chortled Ginn. "He ain't much for beauty, but I'll bet a thousand dollars he can trim your man Cantrell in a foot race.'

Dutchy doffed his German cap, and grinned vacuously. There was something so ludicrous about his squat figure, the bowed legs accentuated by their tight-fitting jeans, that the crowd guffawed delightedly. Then a stampede toward Bill Ginn ensued. Banker Kendall, after one gloating look at the roll of bills in Ginn's hands, sped with undignified haste in the opposite direction—toward the imposing corner block whose vaults safeguarded his fortune.

Silas Elkins was the official honest man of Lenox— stakeholder alike for host and guest. In appearance he was a replica of all the deacons in the world— tall, gaunt, sanctimonious, hig lamblike eyes matching the soiled gray of his tufted chin. A notebook and a valise were his insignia of office; and, taking his place on the platform beside Bill Ginn, he jotted in the former a notation on each wager, and deposited in the latter the equivalent currency. Never before had "Honest Si" experienced so busy a time as he put in this day; never before had such a speculative frenzy seized upon the men of the two towns.

For fifteen minutes Bill Ginn laid off his "roll" against all comers. His lieutenants foraged for Lenox money in the crowd that packed itself around the band stand. During all the furor Dutchy stood grinning amiably down upon the crowd, and one glance at him nerved many a man from Lenox wavering on the verge of a wager. Filling his long pipe, he puffed contentedly between placid smiles.

At the end of twenty minutes Ginn's taunts were no longer meeting with response. "Call out the runners," directed "Long John" Oliver, the master of events.

"Hold on! Wait a moment!" cried an excited voice. Banker Kendall, carrying a canvas sack, fought his way through the crowd, and mounted the steps to Ginn's side.

"Five hundred dollars that Cantrell beats the Dutchman," he panted.

"You're on," said Ginn.

"Make it a thousand."

"You're on. Any more?"

The banker wilted, and a sudden suspicion turned his gaze to where Cantrell, enveloped in a heavy blanket, was pacing up and down the cinder track.

"If you've got him in the can, Ginn, he'll never leave this town alive," declared Kendall savagely.

"Bring on your Star Corners runner," interrupted Long John Oliver, and stn Ginn led the docile Dutchy down the steps and into the baseball clubhouse used as a dressing room by those engaged in the contests.

When they emerged ten minutes later, what a transformation had been wrought! As Dutchy passed through the crowd a murmur of surprise arose; surprise gave way to consternation, as the men who had wagered on Cantrell looked upon the figure of Bill Ginn's clerk.

It was no longer Dutchy, the ludicrous roustabout, but a stockily built athlete, trained to the minute. On those pitifully bowed legs that showed beneath his running trunks, great muscles bulged against a skin bronzed with tan. Around ankles and instep coiled tiny cords, like knotted angleworms, that expanded and contracted with each spring of his foot. He had put aside his German air and vacuous grin, and those who now looked upon the clear blue eyes and clean-cut jaw wondered why he had seemed before so stolid and ridiculous.

Ginn and his charge moved to the head of the course, and Dutchy waved an imperious hand to the police to clear a way. When the crowd had moved back from the cinder path, he sprinted down the hundred yards in easy, graceful strides. Those mightily muscled legs moved rhythmically as pistons, and the little gnarled cords at his ankles expanded and recoiled with a snappy unison that gave him the appearance of one, treading on springs.

After Dutchy's warming-up sprint and the starter's call to the two runners to toe the mark, Bill Ginn drew his clerk to one side. :

"You know me, don't you?" he asked suggestively.

"Yah— sure— vy ?" Dutchy questioned in turn.

Ginn tapped his right hip pocket. "Because I want to remind you that it's just ten miles to the State line, and if you lose this race you'd better keep right on going till you're across, and at about the same time you'd better be beating the speed record for bullets."

That this warning was wholly uncalled for was apparent five minutes later, when the crack of the starter's pistol was heard, and the two gladiators sprang forward. Before a third of the course had been traversed Dutchy was looking backward over his shoulder and laughing at the straining Cantrell. With those long, graceful strides, that shamed by comparison his outclassed rival's frantic straining, he increased his lead without effort and crossed the finishing line a full fifteen feet to the good.

What woe in Lenox that night! And Star Corners, surprised by the morrow's dawn with its exultation yet unspent, took another holiday, and continued to whoop it up.

Become a hero on the moment, Dutchy graduated from menial to guest in Bill Ginn's caravansary. His familiar chair on the veranda of the Prairie Plover was now graced by a flashily attired gentleman of leisure, whose shirt bosom was haloed by a large, white stone. Patent leather graced the feet that found their cherished resting place on the railing; and to chair and occupant, as to an enthroned joss, the town bowed down in worship.

On the day following the race, Landlord Ginn made his guest a generous offer.

"Dutchy, I'll sell you a half interest in the hotel for your share of the winnings," he proposed. "It's worth double that, but we want to keep you here."

The reformed clerk cogitated this for a time.

"Nein," he replied at last. "I shtick here till der coom-back race— den I go."

"What come-back race?"

At the cost of much effort, Dutchy, explained Lenox— take it from him—  might moan and tear its hair, but it would not give up the ghost over a single trouncing. Even at that moment it was more than probable that Lenox was plotting vengeance— that its emissaries were still-hunting throughout the Middle West for a sprinter fast enough to avenge Dutchy's deed. As soon as they had found him, along would come a challenge for a return match.

"And when they do find him," remarked Ginn shrewdly, "we'll fool 'em. We won't race."

"Ja, ja, aber Herr Ginn, sie verstehen nicht!"

Dutchy enjoyed a chuckle all to himself, then launched into such a maelstrom of speech that Jake Spiegelman, the butcher, was summoned hurriedly to sort out what he was saying.

Confidentially, through the interpreter, the sprinter elucidated. Herr Ginn had been told by the New York friend who recommended Dutchy to him that the latter could outfoot any runner likely to be matched against him in the Western country. But the New York sport had not told all— far from it.

He had neglected to mention, for instance, that Dutchy's real name was Franz Adolf Fogelbaum— a name to conjure with in the old country, for had not its bearer been for five years champion short-distance runner of the German empire, and competed to his honor and glory against the very best sprinters in all Europe?

Much more he revealed concerning himself. If he were only in Wiesbaden instead of Star Corners he could exhibit a marvelous collection of medals and other trophies won before he had entered the professional ranks. There was the Kaiser Wilhelm tankard, for which more than one hundred men, including an all-British team, had competed. And in the preceding year—

Landlord Ginn tossed sleeplessly on his bed that night, haunted by the fear that Lenox, after all, might remain crushed 'neath the ignominy of defeat.

But Dutchy possessed the gift of true prophecy. After three weeks of quiescence, as though appalled by calamity, Lenox awakened, blinked its eyes, and ventured a shrill cock-a-doodle-do. Couched in defiant terms came a challenge from Joe Gantz, who, employing the editorial "we," announced that a fund of five thousand dollars had been deposited in. the hands of Honest Si Elkins on the supposition that one Charley McEwen, sprinter, could run rings around any Dutchman, Swede, or Hottentot that Star Corners might produce, provided Star Corners deposited with said Elkins an equal sum.

Without awaiting the report of "scouts" sent to learn the identity of McEwen— of course, it was argued, the name was fictitious—Ginn called his satellites into conference, and within the hour Hank Elliot was on his way to Lenox to accept the challenge. And when Elliot returned with the information that the Gantz crowd had offered to double the bet, Ginn pinched himself to prove it was not a dream.

There was a withdrawing of funds from the Bank of Star Corners; Rancher Watson hastened the shipment of a trainload of steers to Omaha, though market conditions were far from favorable; war bags came forth from secret repositories, and soon Elliot was scurrying by auto to reach Lenox before Joe Gantz could change his mind. Dutchy himself contributed a generous portion of his recently earned reward, to be wagered upon his own chances.

To add to the general elation, the spies sent into the enemy's country returned with news that the pseudo McEwen was unquestionably a Sioux City sprinter named Caldwell, who, though much fleeter of foot than the vanquished Cantrell, was yet far from being a world beater. A telegram to the sporting editor of a Sioux City daily brought the further information that no runner who could shade ten seconds need have fear of Caldwell.

The signing of. articles for the race took place on a Wednesday, and it was decided to bring off the event the following Saturday. Lenox, as the challenger, exercised its right to have the contest decided on its own course.

Dutchy, no longer put to the necessity of racing up and downstairs, or pursuing phantom ducks before dawn as a training curriculum, underwent a final work-out on Thursday on the Star Corners cinder track. Several hundred men and boys watched him speed gracefully down the hundred-yard course, and three stop watches clicked at ten and a half seconds as he passed the finishing line. It was a marvelous effort, for to the veriest novice it must have been apparent that he had much in reserve.

"See that the Lenox bunch hear about this," Bill Ginn gleefully suggested to Manager Potts, of the telephone exchange. "It can't do any harm—the money's up."

On Friday Dutchy resorted to dieting, and laid aside his pipe. A thin slice of toast comprised his Saturday morning breakfast— the sum total of his gormandizing, he explained, on the day of a race. Throughout the forenoon hours he lolled in his chair on the Prairie Plover veranda, viewing the hegira Lenoxward— a picture of wunconcern that exasperated even the iron-nerved Ginn.

"Dutchy, there'll be twenty thousand dollars riding on you to-day," the landlord remarked.

"Oh, dot ain't such a much," replied Dutchy airily. "Once by der old country—"

"Blast the old country!" exclaimed Ginn, turning away irritably.

But nothing could mar the Dutchman's calm. He watched with unconcern the preparations for his departure in Hank Elliot's auto car; during the ten-mile journey spouted fractured English on the most trivial themes— all save that which was keeping two towns at racking tension; looked with utter indifference upon the throng that jammed the Lenox athletic grounds, crowded every near-by roof, and even hung in clusters at the tops of telephone posts— such sights no longer stirred the blood of Franz Adolf Fogelbaum.

Bill Ginn had timed his arrival in Lenox to insure against a tedious wait. Already the crowd was banked against the ropes that lined the cinder course, and Long John Oliver, with a score of deputies, was striving to hold it back. The new Lenox champion— "McEwen," they still called him, and Star-Corners let it go at that— was on the track, pacing nervously up and down. Dutchy, when he had donned his racing regalia and come upon the course, gave never a glance in the direction of his rival.

Each man in turn sprinted the hundred yards at half speed as a preliminary to the sharper struggle. Then Master of Ceremonies Oliver called them to the starting point.

Bill Ginn laid a hand upon Dutchy's shoulder.

"I hope nothing happens to you, my boy," he said.

"Whatever it happens or didn't," turned Dutchy imperturbably, "I vin,'

There was some "jockeying" for the advantage, but when at last the crack of the starter's pistol sounded, the two gladiators were off to a perfect start. Like a team they raced along the course, each straining to the ultimate of his speed, and neither seeming able to gain the slightest advantage. The crowd watched with tense anxiety their bobbing heads— watched so silently that the footfalls of the straining pair upon the cinder path smote loudly upon the ear.

On toward the finish of the short dash sped the contestants, still racing as a team. But hark! Why that sudden groan of execration— that wild, exultant shout? With the tape only five yards away, Dutchy has stumbled, and been thrown out of his stride. It is too late to recover, and as they flash past the judges, daylight is showing between the pseudo McEwen and the Star Corners champion.

But why do they keep on running? Out beyond the crowd a high-power motor car, already cranked up, is getting under way. For this the two sprinters dash, as though it were the single goal of all their desperate striving. They reach the car, leap upon the steps, and swing into the tonneau just as it springs forward in quick response to its driver's demand.

Dutchy, standing up in the tonneau, waves a hand at the gaping throng.

"Fare ye well, lads," he shouts, in a beautiful Irish brogue. '"We'r-re off to the Shtate line— an' it's only tin miles away."

Bill Ginn pulled up for want of breath after a brief, futile pursuit, and returned a smoking revolver to his hip pocket.

"I'd give a thousand dollars for a rifle!" he affirmed fervently to Hank Elliot, who, puffing and blowing, had been racing at his side. "Look at the thieving cut-throat waving his hand at us."

"Who's that fellow driving the car? I can't make him out," gasped Elliot.

"Huh, don't you know him?" shrilled an urchin voice. "That's Honest Si Elkins."

______________

8: The People Rest

Emile C. Tepperman

1899-1951

Popular Detective, March 1936

"NOW, Mr. Witness, will you just tell the Court and the jury what you saw on the corner of West Street and South Broadway at six P. M. on the evening of the 25th of July? Tell them in your own words."

"Well, Mr. District Attorney, the way I told you, J was standing just outside the pool room, and I seen this sedan come around the corner. Louie Link was just comin' out of his house across the street, and he seen the sedan and started to duck back in his doorway, but a man stuck his head out of the back window of the sedan, and let loose with a typewriter— I mean a tommy gun.

"He sprayed the whole street for about fifty feet on both sides of Louie Link's house, and Louie Link was just about cut in half. There was two kids cornin' out of the grocery store next door, with a bottle of milk, and they got it too. Both of them was killed."

"What happened after that, Mr. Witness?"

"The driver of the sedan stepped on it, and they swung around the corner."

"Did you see the face of the man who fired the sub-machine gun?"

"Yes, sir, I seen it."

"Would you know him if you saw him again?"

"I think so."

"Have you seen that man since the 25th of July?"

"Yes, sir. He's right here in the courtroom."

"Point him out."

"That's him, sir— Nick Marco, the defendant in this case. He's sitting right there at the counsel table."

The earnest young assistant district attorney heaved a sigh. This was the last witness for the People, and though the man's testimony had been positive enough, his reputation was none too good.

"Your witness, Mr. Benson," he said to the suavely smiling counsel for the defense.

Jerome Benson leaned back in his chair next to his client, lids half lowered over his eyes. He knew that a hundred people in the spectators' benches behind him were watching his back breathlessly. Lazily, negligently, he waved his hand. "No questions!"

The judge frowned, puzzled. A buzz of comment rippled through the courtroom from the spectators. Benson always glittered in cross-examination; but in this case he had not questioned a single one of the People's witnesses.

NICK MARCO, the defendant, scowled, said hoarsely out of the corner of his mouth:

"Hey, Mr. Benson! What sort of gag is this? You taking me for a ride? I ain't paying you fifty grand to sit here—"

Benson said, very low: "Shut up. I'm handling this case!"

The young district attorney was plainly worried. One of his investigators made his way quietly through the courtroom, whispered in his ear. The district attorney listened for several minutes, then nodded, addressed the judge.

"The People rest," he said.

Benson arose languidly, while judge, jury and spectators waited eagerly to see how he would open the case for the defense. There could be no doubt that he had some sort of trick up his sleeve.

The lawyer winked at his client.

"It's in the bag, Nick," he whispered.

Then he stepped around the counsel table, approached the bench.

"Your Honor," he said smoothly, with that characteristic air of having his tongue in his cheek, "in view of the fact that it is close to noon, I will ask that court be adjourned for lunch at this time. I find it necessary to interview a witness whom I have not yet met. As your honor knows, I was only called into this case today, and I should like to acquaint myself with this witness' testimony."

The judge nodded. "The court stands adjourned until two o'clock."

Benson said: "Thank you," and walked back to the defense table.

Nick Marco looked up at him anxiously.

"Look, Mr. Benson. You— you sure this is in the bag?" Benson patted his shoulder. "Psychology, my boy— did you ever hear the word? The jury doesn't think much of the state's witnesses; one of them admits he hangs out in a pool room all day, the other is a cokey, and they know it. I could break both of them down in no time, but by not cross-examining them I've convinced the jury I don't attach any importance to them. Now, when I bring in this witness after lunch, they'll forget all about the state's evidence. If the D. A. tries to break him down, the jury will think it's not sporting of him— I left his witnesses alone, and he should do the same for mine. Get it?"

He grinned at the blank expression in Nick Marco's face. "Too deep for you, eh?"

"I guess you know what you're doing, Mr. Benson." Marco glanced around furtively at the bailiff, who sat on his other side. "But what's this witness gonna say?"

Benson stooped, brought his lips close to Marco's.

"Did you know you were a hundred miles from this town on the day of the shooting?"

Slowly a smile spread over the defendant's face.

"I get it." His lips were twitching nervously. "Believe me, I had the willies when that D. A. put his witnesses on." He added fiercely: "You got to get me outta this, Benson!" He passed a moist hand across his mouth. "I'll never let them burn me. God! I get cold all over when I think about walking to the chair with my head shaved and my pants ripped up the legs!"

Benson shrugged. "You'll be forgetting all about it inside of an hour. But not the other half of my fee— don't forget that. It costs like hell to shoot up kids— even by mistake."

He grinned, and sauntered out, fingering the flower in his buttonhole.

THE young district attorney had been watching him closely. As soon as the courtroom had emptied of spectators, he hurried up to the bench.

"Your Honor!" he blurted. The judge set down the glass of water he had been sipping, scowled at him. The jurymen stopped in the act of filing out, attracted by the note of appeal in his voice. Nick Marco said to the bailiff who was preparing to conduct him back to the detention pen:

"Wait a minute, will you? Let's hear what the squirt's got to say."

"What is it, Mr. Anders?" the judge demanded of the young prosecutor.

"If your honor please," Anders said, speaking quickly, breathlessly: "I have just received definite information that the witness Mr. Benson is going to meet for lunch will testify that the defendant, Marco, was in a town a hundred miles from here at the time the crime was committed!"

The judge flushed, glanced at the jurymen, frowned at the prosecutor. "Mister Anders! I am surprised. The defense could claim a mistrial—"

"Wait, your honor," Anders hurried on desperately. "This witness is going to commit perjury. Marco shot those children down callously. But that witness' perjured testimony will be unimpeachable. I am informed that he is a man of substance and standing. Benson is going to prime him on just what to say. I—"

He was interrupted by the outraged expostulations of Benson's two assistants, who had been sitting at the counsel table with Marco. One of them was Tyler, Marco's attorney of record, who had engaged Ben¬ son as trial counsel; the other was a clerk from Benson's office, who had prepared the notes that Benson used.

The clerk was worried, didn't know exactly what to do; his textbooks had never coached him for such an unprecedented situation. But the older attorney exclaimed:

"Judge, I never heard of such a thing—"

From behind him came Marco's frenzied shout: "Hey! What's this— frame-up? Get Benson back here!"

Anders kept on talking, ignoring the interruption.

"Your honor, my investigator tells me that Benson has reserved a private dining room in the Grand Hotel, across the street, where he will interview this witness."

The judge was interested, despite his annoyance. He raised his hand to silence the attorney of record.

"Let Mr. Anders finish, Mr. Tyler. I presume he is sane. The case is a mistrial already, so we might as well listen."

Tyler shrugged, smiled sourly at Anders, threw a knowing look at the jury. Anders went on: "My investigator has installed a dictograph in that dining room in the Grand Hotel. I want you to let the jury listen in on the conversation between Benson and his witness. The People's case will stand or fall by what we hear!"

Marco, who had been leaning over the counsel table to hear better, started to shriek frenziedly.

"You can't do that to me, damn you. You can't. You want to burn me, don't you? I'll never let you burn me!" He turned toward the door and screamed: "Mr. Benson! Mr. Benson! They're framin' us!"

The bailiff and one of the court attendants forced Marco back into his chair.

The judge waited until he had quieted down, then said to the young prosecutor:

"Surely you must realize that you have ruined your case, Mr. Anders. If I should permit such an unheardof procedure it would without doubt be viewed as a reversible error by the higher court—"

THE foreman of the jury, who had M been listening intently, whispered with his colleagues, then raised his voice: "If I may suggest it, your honor, the jury would like to listen to that conversation between Benson and his witness."

Tyler, the attorney of record, said: "Your honor, in behalf of my colleague, Mr. Benson, I object to this procedure. It is so self-evidently contrary to the code of criminal practice that I need not even state my grounds—" He halted as a knock sounded at the door of the courtroom.

Marco shouted: "That's Mr. Benson. Let him in." His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. "They're framin' to burn me, Benson! They—"

The bailiff clamped a heavy hand over Marco's mouth, and Marco bit him, struggled up from his chair. He drove an elbow to the stomach of the court attendant on his other side, got free for a moment, and leaped toward the window, his face twisted into a mask of fear. Before he had taken two steps the bailiff was upon him, assisted by several of the court attendants, and the investigator from the district attorney's office.

It took almost five minutes to subdue him, and at the judge's order he was dragged out of the courtroom through the grilled doorway at the side, which led to the detention pen. During the melee the door of the courtroom had opened, and an elderly man entered, sidled over to Tyler, and handed him a slip of paper, then made his way out.

Tyler read it quickly, frowned, and read it over again. Then he put it in his pocket, watched dispassionately while Marco was forcibly led out, still shrieking.

The judge pounded with his gavel for order. He was at the end of his patience.

"Damn it, Anders," he exploded, "I'm going to have you barred from this court. You—"

Tyler stepped up close to the bench. "If it please the court," he broke in, "I have a suggestion to make. The defense will waive any objection to this procedure. We will agree to be bound by what the jury hears over Mr. Anders' dictograph—" he glanced covertly at the jury to see the effect of his words— "provided Mr. Anders will agree to be likewise bound!"

The judge said, puzzled: "You mean—"

"That I have sufficient confidence in my colleague to feel that he is not suborning perjury. As an officer of this court, I feel that the jury should know everything that bears on the case; therefore I am willing to have them listen in. But if the conversation between Mr. Benson and the witness proves to be bona fide, I want the district attorney to nolle prosse the case."

Anders nodded quickly. "Agree."

The judge hesitated, then shrugged. "As long as the defense consents, I see no further objection. Very well, gentlemen of the jury; you shall listen."

Anders said: "The dictograph is connected in my office, judge. No one will warn Benson— we have a man posted outside the dining room door."

He led the way out.

Across the street, in a private room in the Grand Hotel, Benson was talking to a thin, silver-haired man, over a liqueur that had completed a highly satisfactory lunch.

"Now, Mr. Hedges," the lawyer said, "we can get down to business. I am not going to ask you any leading questions. I am convinced that my client is innocent of that shooting, and I want to hear what you know about it."

"Why," the other man replied slowly, "I know nothing of the actual crime. But I am as certain as I am of my name, that Nick Marco was not in this city on the 25th of July, at six o'clock in the evening."

Benson said: "Go on, Mr. Hedges." He sipped his liqueur appreciatively, waited for the other to proceed.

"As you are aware," Hedges continued, "I am the president of the Midland State Bank of Midland City. July 25th fell on a Thursday this year, and we always keep our banking offices open until eight o'clock on Mondays and Thursdays for the convenience of depositors. Well, I recall distinctly that it was at about five-thirty when this man, Marco, came in to see me. He wanted to open an account with us, making a substantial initial deposit."

"And did he open the account, Mr. Hedges?"

"He did not," the banker stated emphatically. "It so happened that I was familiar with the gentleman's reputation. Our bank is an old one, and our family has run it conservatively for three generations. We do not care to do business with racketeers!"

"I see," said Benson. "Did you tell that to Marco?"

"I certainly did, without mincing words. He could not believe that we would actually refuse to accept a cash deposit, and I finally made it plain to him what my feelings were in the matter. I was alone in the bank, my teller having gone home for supper, and I was rather nervous, glad to see him go at last. He left at about five minutes to six, and though I entertain a deep scorn for persons of his calibre, I must say that he could not have committed this particular crime for which he is being tried today. You see, Midland City is a hundred miles from here."

"Quite so," said Benson in a pleased voice. "And, Mr. Hedges, are you positive— remember, I say positive—that it was Nick Marco himself who was there?"

"Absolutely so. I would not have gone to the trouble of phoning you from Midland City this morning had I not been positive. I never forget a face, Mr. Benson; it is a quality that a banker must cultivate."

"WHAT prompted you to phone me, Mr. Hedges?"

"I disliked very much to see a miscarriage of justice. Whatever other crimes this Marco person may have committed, he is quite innocent of this one. I would feel almost as if I had murdered him with my own hands if I let him go to the electric chair without interfering. How is it that he didn't try to get in touch with me?"

"Marco has been telling me about some bank he stopped in at that day. But for the life of him he couldn't remember the name of the town. He said he had been driving aimlessly for a few hours, had seen the bank open late, and it had struck him as a good place to leave some money in case he needed to draw it out in a hurry some evening. My men have been conducting inquiries among the banks in the nearby towns, but we have confined ourselves to a radius of fifty miles from the city. We had no idea he had driven so far. And besides, I just came in on the case." He sighed. "I almost thought I was licked. I'm sure the district attorney thinks I'm putting one over on him, and it's probably the only time I haven't. Suppose we get over to the court now." They finished their liqueurs, and left.

Outside, Mr. Hedges took Benson's arm. "Listen, Benson," he demanded. "Are you sure I won't get in trouble on this thing?"

Benson shook his head. "Not a chance. You won't even have to testify. The D. A. will have to nolle prosse the case. It's a good thing I have connections in the D. A.'s office that tipped me off about the dictograph. You put up a good spiel."

Hedges asked anxiously: "And— about the other thing?"

"Don't worry," said Benson. "I promised you that I'd square up the shortage at the bank, and I will. I know the examiners. You just sit tight when they come, and they won't notice a thing."

"I'll owe you a lot for that," Hedges said fervently.

"You don't owe me anything. You've paid off in advance with that spiel of yours. I'm getting plenty from Marco."

BACK in the courtroom, the jury filed into the box, slightly bewildered. The judge scowled from the bench, and Tyler winked at Benson, who had entered with his banker witness in tow. Young Anders, the prosecutor, was glum-looking and shame-faced. He hurried over to Benson, drew him to one side. "I'm going to nolle prosse this case," he confided.

Benson raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

"And— Benson. I want to apologize to you. I judged you wrongly. I did a terrible thing—" Benson lifted his hand. "Tut, tut. We've all done terrible things. Don't let it make you feel too bad."

He glanced toward the door of the detention pen. "Here comes Marco. He'll be glad to hear you're dropping the case."

Marco entered, his right hand was handcuffed to the bailiff's left. His head was lowered, and he walked with a shuffling, reluctant step. Benson left the prosecutor, went over to his client.

"Marco," he said, "something has happened—" Suddenly Nick Marco raised his head, and Benson recoiled at the mad light in the man's eyes. Words came tumbling out of him. "I know damn well something's happened!" his voice rasped. "They was too smart for you. They heard you framin' that witness—"

Benson exclaimed urgently: "Shut up, you fool—" but Nick's hysterical accusation drowned him out. "So it was in the bag, huh? An' now I burn! Well, I don't, see! They'll never get me in the chair!"

His right hand flashed to the bailiff's holster, snatched out the heavy service revolver. Before the stunned courtroom could grasp what was happening the revolver roared, belched once, and Benson tottered, an amazed expression on his face. Once more Marco fired, but this time he had turned the muzzle against his own temple. He fell in a heap over the body of his attorney, dragging the horrified bailiff after him by the handcuffs.

And while pandemonium took charge of the courtroom, Mr. Tyler, the attorney of record in the case, quietly tore up the note that had been handed to him by the elderly messenger. Tyler preferred that its contents be not known. The note read:

Agree to whatever the district attorney proposes. I have the situation well in hand. But don't tell Marco; that moron won't know how to act. Benson.

________________

9: The Mysterious Camp in the Pyrenees

Clarence Herbert New

1862-1933

The Blue Book Magazine, Oct 1916

One of a long series of magazine stories under the general heading "Freelances in Diplomacy". This story was subsequently collected in "The Unseen Hand", 1918

THE entertainment at Stalton House in aid of the allied Field Hospitals included dancing in the stately old Tudor ballroom, with "bridge" in the smaller rooms at either side. Among those on the floor, Lord and Lady Trevor had been attracting attention by their perfect dancing of an intricate variation in the Argentine tango— but they were by no means the only celebrities who had temporarily deserted the card-tables for the fascination of rhythmic motion. Statesmen, Cabinet Ministers, foreign diplomats— of all ages and sizes— danced with an absorption that was rather amazing, considering their every-day activities.

A man who had been watching the dancers from a seat behind one of the pillars seemed particularly interested in the military attaché of the Spanish Embassy, Major Don Julio Zacata— who was chatting behind a group of potted palms with the Honorable Chudleigh Sammis, M. P. They were discussing the arrival, that morning, of a German submarine at Baltimore— and the keen-faced American who sat behind the pillar had an impression that the Member of Parliament concurred rather strongly, for a loyal Englishman, with the Spaniard's open admiration of the exploit. The submarine had been lucky— no question as to that— but as a feat of seamanship, her performance was no more remarkable than the crossing of the Atlantic, some months previously, by the five American submarines built at the Fore River yards for England, or that of the English submarines which penetrated the Sea of Marmora after the passage through the Mediterranean and the thickly mined Dardanelles. It was by no means sure, at that moment, that the German submarine would return safely to Bremen. The American was trying to puzzle out some underlying reason for Sammis's affability to the Spanish attaché when Lady Trevor caught a glimpse of his face, in passing, and promptly fetched His Lordship around behind the pillar.

"Raymond Carter! Where in the world did you drop from? We heard that you'd left the American Embassy in Paris four months ago, for a well-earned vacation— but there was no word of you from any one in the States! Did you really go home at all?" He was still holding her hand with one of his and looking at her delightedly as he extended the other to His Lordship.

"Why should I? This thing over here is too stupendous to leave— and some of its most interesting features are not on the firing-line. For instance— your Member of Parliament, yonder, appears to have some pretty good reason for cultivating Major Don Julio Zacata, who is— entre nous— of the Hapsburgs. Oh, he's Spanish-born, all right, and a duly accredited attaché of the Spanish Embassy — but I'll bet a good yellow double eagle that his sympathies are not with England and France in this row! Not by a thousand miles! You could have him recalled upon excellent grounds — but of course you won't. Because he also happens to be a distant connection of Alfonso himself, and you don't want to get that bright young man down on you!"

Lady Nan, glancing round the big hall, noticed that some of the people were observing their meeting with Carter— marking him as an old friend of two celebrities who were known in nearly every quarter of the globe.

"See here, Raymond! Evidently you've been procuring information of value to us— somewhere! If we stand talking here another five minutes there may be people in the house who will suspect the fact. Better go to your club now— and afterward come around to Park Lane."

"H-m-m— is there one of your high-powered motors outside, Lady Nan?"

"Yes. We've grown so accustomed to the unexpected that we never use anything else, now— even for social affairs. In fact, we've disposed of every car that isn't capable of doing ninety miles at a pinch. Ranjeet Singh is waiting outside— we are leaving in half an hour. Two-five-five is our carriage number."

"I'll spot Ranjeet without calling the number and get into the car with my collar turned up— first telephoning Park Lane to send another for Your Ladyship— same carriage number. Then, if Trevor will come out in a few moments and meet me, two blocks up the street, we can watch for that Spaniard when he leaves. Unless I'm guessing wrong altogether, your Member of Parliament will be with him— and they '11 drive off in a car, somewhere, for a private conference. Now— do we understand each other? Good! I'll try to create an impression that our acquaintance is merely casual!"

If any secret agent of Germany was at Stalton House that night— and the Foreign Office assumed this to be highly probable— he undoubtedly contented himself with a close observation of Lady Nan, figuring that secret agents of the British Government were likely to be among the numerous acquaintances with whom she talked at various times. If Lord Trevor's departure was noticed at all, it was assumed that he had left early for a game of cards at his club or had possibly gone to the Admiralty— being one of the most popular Admirals in the service. Carter may have been recognized as having had some former connection with the American Embassy in Paris— but he was one of those artists among diplomats who possess the ability to present such an average appearance as to be easily confused with hundreds of other men of the same complexion, height, build, dress, and manner.

It was raining when he left the house, so his stepping into the Trevor landaulet and driving off up the street attracted no attention. His Lordship came out with]the collar of his mackintosh turned above his ears and his Fedora hat-brim pulled down until they made an effectual disguise. When Major Zacata appeared with the Hon. Chudleigh Sammis, fifteen minutes later, Trevor's motor was drawn up near by, and it glided silently after their car, half a block in the rear.

As Carter had anticipated, the attaché had no intention of going back to the Spanish Embassy in Grosvenor Gardens. Instead of heading west, his chauffeur cut down through St. James's Square and Whitehall to Westminster Bridge, then south into Surrey, along Brixton Road, through Croydon. As the car was starting up the grade to Nore Hill and the Woldingham Downs, the brilliant glare of an acetylene lamp was turned full upon it from the side of the road, and a figure in khaki stepped out to cover the chauffeur with a levelled magazine rifle.

When he stopped, Major Zacata leaned out to ask what the trouble was. The sergeant was polite but firm.

"You'll have to account for yourselves, gentlemen!"

"Si! Si! I am Military Attaché of the Spanish Embassy — an' my frien', he ees Honorable Señor Sammis, the Member of your Parliament! We proceed to the villa where we are guest, near Woldingham!"

"Er— quite so! I should have recognized you at once! I'm Kaiser Bill, myself, don't you know! Might as well stow all that, an' turn up whatever identification you happen to have about you!"

Zacata was furious, but instantly drew a card-case from his pocket as Sammis was producing his own.

"My card! You may also examine my chauffeur's license it you weesh!"

The cards and other papers being apparently satisfactory, the sergeant returned them with a salute.

"These seem to be sufficient, sir; you may proceed! But, if convenient, it would be advisable to do your motoring during the day— any one not connected with the Army is quite sure to be stopped."

Ranjeet Singh had seen what happened in time to throw out his clutch at some little distance back from the pickets, but Zacata had gone scarcely a hundred yards when His Lordship leaned out of the landaulet in the glare of the acetylene lamp, with his hat off, and said, in a low voice:

"On His Majesty's Service, Sergeant! Don't delay us!"

The man recognized his face as exceedingly familiar; the air of command was unmistakable. He was saluting, a little doubtfully, when His Lordship continued, rapidly:

"You've been in this neighborhood several days? Aye? Have you heard of any villa or manor house which has been recently leased to someone in London— either a Member of Parliament or a foreigner?"

"Yes, sir. That's why I allowed that other car to proceed. There's an old house on the top of Woldingham Hill, a mile away from any other one — you reach it by a lane from the turnpike, before it dips down to Titsey. It has the reputation of being haunted— vacant for several years, they say, around here. But a gentleman from London took it during the winter an' spent a good bit of tin putting it in repair. Comes down for the week-ends. Butler and old housekeeper appear to be in charge when he's away."

Thanking him courteously, Trevor settled back in his seat, and Ranjeet took the hill on "high." The brief conversation had taken but a minute — yet the other car was out of sight in the rain and darkness. On the higher ground, Ranjeet turned up his lamps, and all three closely examined the earth at the side of the macadam as they ran along. Presently they passed a spot where tyre-marks in the soft clay showed where a car had turned into an opening through the hedge so narrow that the twigs must have brushed the mud-guards as it went through. Turning off his lights, Ranjeet drew up at the side of the road, a little further along; after which Lord Trevor and the American walked rapidly back to the narrow lane.

After proceeding cautiously for a mile, they came upon a manor house nestling in waist-high gorse on the crest of the Downs. There were lights in two windows upon the ground floor and one at the rear, evidently in the kitchen or butler's pantry. Feeling sure that somebody would have been told to watch the lane, they cautiously circled the place, in the gorse, at a distance of five hundred feet, and approached it from the west. In the darkness they stumbled against something which proved to be a flag-pole— considerably over a hundred feet high, judging by the thickness of the lower mast.

"Hmph! The beauty of the flag-pole idea, Raymond, is that one can never be sure it isn't always used, quite innocently, for the Union Jack or Red Ensign— when the master of the house is in residence— until he makes a most searchin' investigation. I fawncy three-quarters of the country houses in the British Isles have, each, their flag mast! If one were to examine all of them, it would take somedoing— what? Search about, carefully, within a hundred-foot radius, an' see if you cawn't locate a well, or a partly sunken ice-house— something of the sort!"

In a few moments they came upon the wooden hatch of a cistern— evidently piped to collect rain-water from the roofs of the manor house. Removing the hatch and flashing a ray from an electric torch down inside, they saw that the top of the water was about seven feet below the ground-level, and that what appeared to lie a drain— three feet in diameter — opened from the bricks, at one side, directly under the hatch, about two feet above the water. Lowering himself until he could throw his light into this drain, Trevor saw a reel of copper "aerials" twenty feet back from the cistern— plenty long enough to be hoisted to the top of the pole by the flag-halyards— and he had barely shut off his own light when he saw a reflection at the other end of the drain three hundred feet away. To swing himself out of the cistern and replace the hatch was the work of but a few seconds.

"Faith, they're comin' through that drain at this moment, old chap, to string up those aerials an' begin sending. We'd best make a detour through the gorse an' see if we cawn't get in close to those lighted windows at the side!"

The narrow spaces between the Tudor mullions of the windows were fitted with diamond-shaped panes, the lower section opening outward upon hinges and being partly overgrown with ivy. This gave the watchers an excellent opportunity to peer through the leaves without being seen. The room proved to be a spacious library with a low, raftered ceiling and a beautifully carved stone fireplace at one side. Sammis and the Spanish attaché were smoking comfortably in big leather chairs at one side of a massive centre table. Near them a handsome woman was half reclining on a divan, playing with the long ears of a dachshund. Trevor and the American Chargé d'Affaires muttered exclamations at the sight of her.

"Lady Violet Penngwylder, by Jove! Who is also Condesa de Saltaluna by reason of her inherited Spanish estates! There's been a good bit of talk about her carelessness in regard to appearances, you know! A handsome widow cawn't go about, openly, with a foreigner— or any one else, for that matter— without stirrin' up gossip! Well, we've ample time to discuss her later. Just now, we've to hear what they're sayin', if possible! We cawn't pry open one of these windows without makin' noise they'll hear, but I carry a couple of dictaphones in any car I happen to be usin'— so we'll not do so badly in spite of that. Glass vibrates even more than a metal diaphragm, under certain conditions."

He took from his mackintosh pocket a compact dictaphone transmitter from which he unscrewed the protecting rubber mouthpiece — holding the diaphragm flat against one of the window-panes. Then, handing Carter one of the receivers, he placed the other against his own ear, and the tones of the voices in the room were as distinct as if they had been within six feet of the speakers. Sammis had evidently been asking for certain information which the Major was giving him, Lady Violet supplementing it with an occasional remark.

"You ask, my frien', how many of ze men we expec' to 'ave before we bring off ze grran' coup? We 'ave now thirty thousan'. They are scatter' in many pueblos an' cities where nobody notice them. To-morrow, othair steamer weel arrive— ten thousan' more men— who weel scatter as ze othairs. In a few days there weel be in Spain forty thousan' men of German birth — mos' of whom 'ave live' so long in Latin country' that t'ey pass for Spanish or Italian, mos' certainly. In our own organization — w'ich comprise many of ze brigand', we 'ave twenty thousan'. Seexty thousan' ees not beeg army — ver' true — but eetTwill be sufficient for ze surprise an' ze compromise. For to move them, we 'ave more as free hundred box-cars— an' there ees leetle station, ver' quieet, w'ere ze seexty thousan' can be load' in one day. We 'ave secret agent in every station along ze line to cut ze telegraph before we start, an' cooperate with us in taking ze railway buildings."

"Suppose the big strike isn't settled by the time you want to move your men?"

"Look you, my frien'! zose striker' are mostly affiliate' weeth our organization. Ze strrike, he weel not be settle' until we are ready to move! Observe! Ze railway, he ees all tie'-up— everywhere— nozzing ees move' in ze way of trrain. Ze line clear— nozzing in ze way w'en we weesh to run express after express of ze box-car! Ze people beyond ze frontier, they t'ink our strike ees all settle', an' that we move ze goods-train w'ich ave been wait' so long."

"And the Condesa? Where does she come in?"

Lady Violet stretched herself like a lazy cat, smiling.

"I throw a little snuff in the eyes of His Majesty and the leaders in the Cortes. I was rather intimate with the Queen when she was Princess Victoria of Battenberg, and used to get along beautifully with His Majesty. They invite me to visit them frequently. Well, I ask the King whether his country is prepared, in case it happens to become involved in the war. He assures me there is no possibility of such an eventuality— but I tell him a few things I've heard, and suggest the advisability of stocking-up on munitions, at least. Whether he actually orders the War Department to increase the munitions reserve or not, he is bound to see that there really should be a large stock in the country. So, if he learns that a few public-spirited business men among his subjects have made large purchases abroad, in that line, he is more likely to thank and decorate them than to suspect any ulterior motive. Meanwhile, I keep telling him certain confidential gossip I've picked up in regard to the intentions of the Entente toward him in the near future. He doesn't believe it— yet— but he is doing a good bit of thinking, and will be getting more suspicious of the Allies as the months pass. If he happens to hear that certain officers in the War Department have been exceeding their authority, he will not be disposed to investigate too closely."

"Excellent, Condesa! Capital! One can scarcely over-estimate the value of such work inside the Palacio Real!"

The conversation drifted to less serious matters— and the listeners, outside, thought it advisable to -make their escape before any of the household came prowling about. When they were in the landaulet, racing back to London, Carter expected that His Lordship would at once order the arrest of Sammis and the recall of Zacata.

"No; we don't want to stir up their Embassy and strain diplomatic relations between the two countries. You may be quite sure that house was never leased in Zacata's name, or Sammis's, either— not with the chance of that wireless outfit bein' discovered on the place! We'll wait until those three have gone back to London, and then seize the place with everyone who happens to be in it at the time. For six months we've known Sammis to be a Wilhelmstrasse spy, an' have been watchin' him, d'ye see — which has enabled us to make several rather important arrests. I fancy he's no suspicion of the extent to which he has -been constantly under espionage. We'll permit him an' Zacata an' the Condesa to imagine their connection with this house, down here, hasn't been traced at all— an' that we've taken it over because we somehow located the wireless messages from it, I'm beginnin.' to have some inkling as to what may be doin' in Spain— but you can probably fill in a few gaps! What did you discover there?"

"You're familiar, of course, with the various services of the big Spanish steamship line— the Compañia Trasatlantica — and know there are smaller ones more or less affiliated with it? Well, for the last three months irregular chartered steamers, running in some of those lines, have been fetching men from South and Central America to work newly developed mines and other industries in various parts of Spain. They talk Spanish as if it were their native tongue— even some of the local dialects— but I'd be willing to bet that every one of them is either Austrian or German formerly engaged in developing the foreign trade of those countries. Probably few, if any, not in the secret, have noticed that all of them were landed at Barcelona. Some are undoubtedly still in that city— but the majority left almost immediately on trains going north, into the interior. One of our Secret Service men happened to be in Barcelona on another matter, and was just curious enough to keep tally on the rather unusual immigration proposition. He told me that, in two months, over thirty thousand men had come to Barcelona by steamer. Not immigrant families, mind you, but able-bodied men, none over forty-five! He also put me on to another thing which'll bear examination. The two largest arm and ammunition houses in Barcelona, with branches in Toledo, Madrid, and Seville, have been importing ship-load after shipload from the United States, Chile, and Argentina—"

"My word! I rather imagine that's where we overlooked a bet! One doesn't think of munition factories in the South American States, but there should be more of 'em in Chile than any place in the world, because of the immense nitrate deposits there. An' there's metal enough in Argentina to supply a hundred diff 'rent works. Er, what have those comp'nies done with the stuff they've imported?"

"Stored part of the shipments in their own warehouses, shipped the bulk of them to some place in the north of Spain. Of course, nothing has been transported inland since the railway strike began, but there are spur-tracks to each of the warehouses; train after train could be loaded and sent away at an hour's notice."

"Anything else you picked up down there?"

"Yes; but I can't see where it has anything to do with this proposition, unless "

"Aye— unless? What?"

"Unless the Quartermaster General of the Spanish Army, and a number of his subordinates, happen to be in the conspiracy!"

"Know anything about him? Is he connected with one of the Austro-Spanish families?"

"By Jove! I didn't think of that! Yes! Austrian connections straight back — even his mother was an Austrian countess ! And of course, he could easily recommend for promotion other Austro-Spaniards, under him, in his department!"

"But— what's the point? What has he done?"

"He would naturally have the placing of contracts for new army uniforms, wouldn't he? Of course! And if he could get them supplied from the United States more reasonably than they could be made in Spain, it would be a nice little rake-off for him, wouldn't it? With the amount of graft all through the Spanish Government, nobody would pay any attention to the importation of more uniforms than the army could possibly need for the next year— eh? Well, the bald fact is that over seventy thousand uniforms, all grades, and all branches of the service, have been imported from the United States and stored at the regular Government depots of the Q.M.D."

"Are you sure that none of them has been shipped to some place in the north of Spain?"

"That never occurred to me! But there'd be nothing to prevent the Q. M. D. cars being shunted at some junction outside of Barcelona and sent north. I don't just see—"

"What that crowd want of Spanish uniforms? Hmph! I fancy I do I I say, Raymond! This affair is a good bit too serious to overlook! If it were left to Alfonso and the cooler-headed leaders in the Cortes, there'd be not the slightest danger in the world of their bein' dragged into this war! They know that Spain is exposed to hostile attack on every side, an' that the Entente navies could bottle them up— tight— inside of three days. Spain has everything to lose an' nothin' in the world to gain by meddlin' in this "

"Unless—"

"What?"

"Unless the propagandists have lied so convincingly, all through Spain, that the people really believe the Central Powers are bound to win the war and impose their peace terms upon all Europe! In that case, a little material assistance at the psychological moment would be handsomely rewarded in the final settlement — or rather, the Spaniards would be made to believe that it would. Take the case of Bulgaria. Nothing could have been more treacherous and short-sighted than Ferdinand's throwing in with the Germans when he did. He hasn't as yet a realization of what is coming to him in the windup— thinks it was a coup d'etat which is to make him one of the powers of Europe. But in a few months he'll begin to think differently— his people are beginning to wake up, even now. On the present status, however, he constitutes a pretty good argument for the propagandists in Spain. They've watched the opening-up of the Oriental Railway to Stainboul— the joining of the Turkish, Bulgarian, and German armies. It looks as if Bulgaria would get a very satisfactory slice of the pie, and become more powerful. If Spain could render a similar service and get some of the pie for herself — probably the whole of Portugal, at least — the decision to help Austria and Germany would be very popular throughout the peninsula!"

"With a good many, aye! But I fancy a majority of the people love England an' France much better than they do the Teutons. First place, they're a Latin race. When Charles the First— in his minority— made that famous pilgrimage with the Duke of Buckingham, incognito, to visit the Infanta and the Spanish Court, it appealed to the streak of romance in every Spaniard's heart. It's one of the great traditions in Spain to this day. And King Edward, when he also was El Principe de Gales, did a good deal to perpetuate it. He was immensely popular down there. Then again, Queen Victoria Eugenie has made herself loved by the whole nation; and she's an English princess. Alfonso is still in love with her; he himself is one of the best-liked rulers the country ever had. He id of Austrian blood, but he has dev'lish little use for Germany or Hohenzollern ideas. There's one point upon which you may wager a good bit: whatever Alfonso does, he'll have the bulk of his people behind him. Raymond, I'm goin' around to Cap Cerbere on the Ranee, with my biggest cruisin' biplane aboard! I'll have no difficulty in gettin' permission from the French War Office to do all the scoutin' I please along the Pyrenees; in fact, they all recognize the value of my services, an' give me carte blanche. If you care to come along, you'll get a bit of excitement, I fancy; but don't blink the possibility that we may neither of us come back!"

THERE WAS a conference in Park Lane, that night, between Lord Trevor, the Foreign Secretary and Sir Francis Lammerf ord, at which the facts picked up at the manor on Woldingham Downs were thoroughly discussed, and arrangements made to keep the Spanish Embassy attachés under close surveillance. Then His Lordship and Raymond Carter motored down to Southampton, where H.M. Scout Cruiser, S-49 — formerly the deep-sea yacht Ranee Sylvia— lay waiting for them with steam up. Upon the second morning following, she passed Gibraltar, and by midnight was off the boundary between France and Spain. Trevor had been somewhat undecided as to where he might expect to find concrete evidence of the plot, but he now got out a set of the Ministere de la Guerre topographic maps and sat down with Carter in his private saloon, aft, to discuss the question.

"The 'special detail' from the War Department which was handed to me by the captain of that thirty-knot French destroyer, this morning, permits me to do practically whatever I please anywhere in French territory and authorizes me to demand assistance, if I need it, from local forces. But I fancy they've no idea as to what we're up to. Now, I'm almost positive that we'll find what we're lookin' for at this end of the Pyrenees rather than the other—"

"Why so? What's your argument?"

"An expedition by way of San Sebastian would have merely Bordeaux for its objective. It is doubtful if fifty or sixty thousand men could take and hold the city even with the advantage of a partial surprise— but they simply couldn't get there without some warning of their approach, and if they did, they'd merely stop the commerce entering France through that port, which would be immediately diverted elsewhere. But on this end, the mountain boundary comes right out into the Mediterranean, with low land to the north and south of it. In goin' around Cap Cerbere, the railway line actually has to tunnel under promontories in three places, and on the Spanish side there's nothin' but the little pueblo of San Miguel de Culera within eight or ten miles of the border. The place has no communication except by mule-trails, aside from the railway. Back of it are almost inaccessible mountain valleys with altitudes of fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred feet. Zacata said he had German spies in all the French railway stations for some distance north of the border— evidently enough of them to cut telegraph wires and take possession of the railway yards until a battalion could be dropped from the trains at each place. So it won't do for the Ranee to be seen at any of the little ports along the shore "

"Hold on a second I You think this expedition will be aimed at Marseilles— is that it?"

"Not Marseilles itself, because assistance could be obtained too quickly from the naval depot at Toulon. But if they could hold Narbonne, Nimes, and Tarascon, they would cut all communication between Marseilles and the rest of France, tap the great artery which supplies troops, munitions, provisions from the Mediterranean, the Orient, and South America. Of course, the traffic could be switched to Genoa and go up through Mont Cenis. Equally, of course, no expedition of this size couldhold those three connecting points for more than a few days or weeks at the outside— unless reinforced by the Spanish Army. But if the Cortes should suddenly vote to do that— and rush up troops in support — it would create a diversion that might easily change the whole outcome of the western campaign this year."

"Where can you take the Ranee in without being seen by some of those German spies?"

"One of the little indentations directly south of Cap l'Abeille. The railway goes under the mountain, you see, in a long tunnel, and there isn't even a fishing village within several miles of that cove. Looks to me as if it would be an ideal spot to start from in the 'plane."

"H-m-m— your reasoning is pretty convincing; perhaps you're on the right track. You figure, of course, that a German expedition must be camped in some hidden valley or ravine along the southern slope of the Pyrenees— but wouldn't such a camp be liable to discovery if it were located too near the Mediterranean, or the Bay of Biscay at either end?"

"More so than if it were in the middle of the high Pyrenees, of course, but they have no choice in the matter. There are but two railways from Spain into Europe: San Sebastian-Biarritz, on the west; Figueras-Perpignan, on the east. Between them, along the whole two hundred and fifty miles across the neck of the peninsula, there are but four roads crossing the high passes of the Pyrenees, and they are out of the question for infantry or field artillery. Charlemagne crossed merely the low foot-hills at the west end, only thirty-three miles from the Bay of Biscay; the famous pass of Roncesvalles, where Roland and his rear-guard held back the Moors, is but thirty-five hundred feet above sea-level. Hannibal crossed within twelve miles of the Mediterranean, at the east end where the summit of the pass was less than a thousand feet above sea level, though the peaks on either side were over three thousand. But this German expedition— to get moving as quickly as it must in order to have any chance whatever— can't be located more than a couple of hours' march from an entraining platform on the railway. They might use Hannibal's pass and come down upon the little single-track French railway at le Boulou, but it would be impossible for them to collect enough box-cars there without giving the whole affair away. At San Miguel de Culera they can assemble all the cars they please— during this strike, while no trains are running— without its appearing to be anything more than congestion caused by the strike itself. "

TWO HOURS LATER H. B. M. S-49 anchored in the secluded cove which had been picked out by His Lordship on the chart, and as soon as it was dark the big cruising biplane soared up from a runway that had been rigged between the mainmast and the stern. Following the little river and valley to the west of Cap PAbeille, Trevor kept at sufficient altitude to see the stars over the crests of the mountains, rising to nine hundred meters and crossing the Pic du Col del Touro less than a hundred feet above its summit, but a good twenty-seven hundred feet above sea-level. Swinging E.S.E. along the crest— while Carter kept his prism-binoculars upon the black mass of the valleys and ravines below— he flew toward the Mediterranean. In less than two minutes, however, an exclamation from Carter made him swing the 'plane around in a circle.

"By Jove, old chap! There is a camp down there, as sure as fate! The fires have burned low— must have finished their dinner an hour ago — but I can make out the glow of the embers distinctly! The whole outfit is bunched within the space of a mile, up and down the ravine, and a third of a mile across, I should say! From the blackness, down there, I think the ridges are precipitous on each side of them— and the ravine twists like a letter S at the foot, so that nobody can see up into it from below!"

"Can you get any idea as to the number of fires?"

"Keep circling, and I'll try. Five— ten— fifteen— about thirty fires across the width of the ravine— and at least three times that many up and down."

"Say, roughly, three thousand little fires. If you figured only ten men to each fire, that would give you thirty thousand, but they are likely to average nearer twenty. The sun only gets into that ravine for a couple of hours each day; undoubtedly it's very cool at night. I'd say there must be forty or fifty thousand men there, at least— possibly sixty thousand. Look here, Raymond! I've got to know something more definite about that crowd! There are features concernin' that camp which appear quite impossible, don't you know. Can you make out anything which looks like a small patch of clear level ground?"

"Not here! Run down toward the coast a bit!" (In five minutes Carter made out something which looked like a cleared space through his glass.) "Over to the right! Easy! Circle around here, a little lower! That looks like bare ground — fairly level— at the mouth of a little valley! Drop a bit lower! Go down another hundred feet! Turn to the left, and come down in a straight run— against the wind!"

The ground was covered with small stones— interspersed with patches of ragged turf— but the stout rubber wheels sprang and bumped over it until the big 'plane came to a standstill. Hauling it in behind some evergreen trees at one side of the space, Trevor looked at the compass on his machine and started climbing the low ridge to the north. After an hour's tramping they came down into a ravine along the bottom of which ran— to their great surprise— a narrow but fairly smooth macadam road, with a carefully surveyed gradient. As they stood looking at the faint streak which it made in the blackness of the ravine, they heard the exhaust of two motor-trucks approaching. In half a minute they rolled by, the lamps from the rear one showing up with startling distinctness the Spanish service uniforms of the troopers driving the first.

"My word! This is where all those American-made uniforms went to! Clever— deuced clever, don't you know! Faith, I'm beginning to see the whole thing now, Raymond! An' the worst of it is, there's far too good a chance of its succeedin' unless we can do something within the next two or three days!"

"You mean— they'll actually try to invade France in those uniforms!"

"Precisely! The whole affair is planned with a dev'lish lookin' out for details — no question as to that! What seemed impossible to me, when we discovered that big camp, was the feeding sixty thousand men without the whole proposition bein' discovered! I knew that, up to a few months ago, there was nothin' leadin' from San Miguel into the mountains but the roughest kind of donkey-trails. But the first lot of men they sent here undoubtedly built that macadam road through trees an' blind valleys where nobody would be likely to stumble upon it but mountaineers — an' they're prob'ly holdin' every one of 'em that comes along, d'ye see. Then that foxy Quartermaster General states in his report to His Majesty an' the Cortes that he has established a camp in this vicinity for summer manoeuvres, accommodatin' three or four regiments at a time. The uniforms make everything look regular to the people of San Miguel an' other towns in this locality. His commissary sends along a daily quota of food for the camp in military trains to San Miguel — run by the soldiers themselves, of course— an' from there to the camp by motor-trucks. In a country even more rotten with graft than the United States, who is goin'to ask any questions— make any investigation— as to whether he's feedin' ten thousand or fifty thousand men? German agents in America are shippin' the provisions an' munitions through Barcelona, of course. No food requisitions to arouse suspicion! The people along the line see the provision trains go by — but they don't count the cars or know what's inside of 'em. Supposing there is a summer camp of the regular Spanish Army in the mountains, who is there at San Miguel to notice what a frightful lot of canned stuff an' other provisions is bein' transported in those motor-trucks?

"Then comes the crownin' use of the Spanish uniforms! Fifty thousand Spanish troops run up into France concealed in box-cars— train after train of 'em— an' seize the railway junctions— killing a lot of soldiers an' others who resist! How is Spain goin' to disavow such an act? An' keep out of the war, after that? The Trojan wooden horse all over again! It'll be another case of the Goeben an' Breslau!  Turkey had no more idea of bein' drawn into this war than Spain has at this moment! Gad! If it were only possible to discover their magazine, up here— an' they fancy themselves too secure to put a guard about it? My word, Raymond! I mustn't drag you into this— but I mean to have a go at it if it's the lawst thing I do!"

With a forcible remark from Carter that he wasn't there as a tourist, they followed the motor-road— hiding in the bushes when any one approached — until they reached the hidden ravine. Cautiously scouting around it, they came down in the rear of a portable steel warehouse that proved to be the Quartermaster's supply-depot. The sergeant in charge was just locking up for the night when Trevor stepped in— saying that he had a requisition from the General in command of the camp. Suspecting nothing, the sergeant walked back to the rear of the big shack, where an acetylene lamp stood on his desk— as Carter shut and locked the door behind him. Before the fellow could make a noise His Lordship felled him with a single blow— then bound and gagged him. Taking up the lantern, they noiselessly examined the stock on the shelves— systematically arranged in various sizes and ranks— selecting the uniforms of a colonel and major of engineers. Then, making a bundle of their own clothes, they hid it among the low cedars at the back of the warehouse and started walking quite openly through the camp, having overheard the password given by one of the officers in charge of a truck as he passed the outer sentry.

In one of the tents four subalterns were playing pinochle by the light of a single lantern — all getting upon their feet and saluting as the supposed staff officers entered. Trevor addressed them gruffly, in German— but with a twinkle in his eye which softened the tone to some extent.

"Soh, Hauptman! You burn the light after taps— ja! Well — for the moment, we are not so strict — no! This being cooped up, here, is tiresome business! In a few days, now, it will be different— ja! You will allow me to inspect your revolver, please!" (The weapon was promptly handed to him— butt first— and proved to be loaded, in perfect condition.) "Excellent, Hauptman! And the men in your company— you have inspected their rifles and bandoliers, to-day?" (It was a chance shot— but Trevor had amazing luck in getting the information he wished by just such means.)

"Ja, mein Oberst! There are, of course, no cartridges— as you are aware, mein Herr; but they have been drilled in receiving and stowing them quickly, at the magazine."

"Ja! The order was given to avoid the possibility of accidental discharge which might attract attention over the passes. You will come outside, and estimate for me how quickly your company can reach the magazine from their tents, in the event that orders come unexpectedly!"

"Ja, mein Oberst — will you permit that I pace the distance at the regulation step and take the time, by my watch?"

"Do so! We will accompany you!"

This was almost unbelievable luck— and yet— the pseudo Colonel's questions had been quite what he might have been expected to ask.

The steel munition sheds were up a little side ravine that branched off from the main camp about half way, and opened out like an inverted V. From the piles of shells and cases of small-arm cartridges under the sheds Trevor estimated that all of the munitions imported from North and South America had been transported to the camp, ready for the departure of the expedition. When they had accompanied the captain back to his tent, they returned— and walked up to the magazine as if they had business there. A single sentry was pacing back and forth in front of the nearest shed. Upon being asked where the munitions for the Engineer's battalion were stored, he pointed out a shed in the middle of the group, and saluted as they walked back to it by the occasional flash of an electric torch.

Under the Engineers' shed Trevor found what he was looking for— a lot of dynamite sticks, packed in sawdust, and coils of fuse. Making sure that intervening piles of shells concealed them from the sentry, they attached a length of fuse to a heavy stone and suspended it from one of the roof-beams. Tying on another length, two feet above the stone, they led it away outside of the shed, estimating that it would burn about fifteen minutes before it reached the knot and let the stone drop. Then they placed a dozen sticks of dynamite directly under the stone— and went back through the camp. Making their way among the cedars where they had left their clothes, they climbed the steep ridge, and were nearly at the top of it when a dull rumbling of the ground was succeeded by a roar and concussion which dislodged showers of loose rock from the precipitous sides of the main ravine and swept it from one end to the other.

They were thrown to the ground by the force of the explosion, but received nothing worse than superficial bruises. Below, in the ravine, there followed a few moments of deathly silence — then a confused murmur, punctuated with shrieks of mangled and dying men. Little points of light appeared, here and there, as officers ran about the camp with their lanterns to ascertain the extent of the disaster. The shouts of a commanding officer came distinctly up to them as he gave rapid orders to throw out pickets in every direction and arrest everyone leaving or approaching the ravine.

"Faith, Raymond— if we're caught, it's all over with us! We'd best get away from here on the jump— an' without makin' any noise, at that!"

They had marked the place where they first came upon the macadam road by a large boulder, but it was now out of the question to go down in that direction and look for it; so they were forced to get their bearings as best they could, and naturally lost them. At daybreak they knew they must be within a few miles of the cleared spot in which they had left the big 'plane— but thoroughly appreciated the risk of moving in any direction. Toward noon they

cautiously made their way up a high ridge and found themselves looking down upon the powder-blasted sides of the ravine in which the camp was located. As nearly as they could judge, the explosion must have swept the upper two-thirds of it— killing or disabling more than half the men in the tents— and, by studying the contours of the lower hills, they could see where the course of the macadam road must be.

Estimating the point where they came upon it to be about a mile below the camp, they could see, approximately, where they might expect to find the 'plane. For another three hours they cautiously scouted over the lower ridges— gradually approaching their destination.

Once they had a narrow escape— when they came upon two pickets concealed behind some boulders. But Trevor questioned them so vigorously in German as to whether they had seen any strangers in the vicinity, or any footprints, that they had no suspicion whatever. Just at nightfall the two aviators found the cleared spot and their 'plane— but Trevor discovered that, in coming down upon the rough ground, two of his controlling-wires had been snapped in places very difficult to get at without a light. There was nothing to do but tackle the job as best he could, and do it carefully regardless of the time it took. Twice he had to throw a ray from his electric torch upon the frame, at the risk of being seen by the German pickets. At ten o'clock they heard voices on the ridge above them. Half a dozen men appeared to be cautiously descending to where they were at work. Carter listened for a moment— then calmly asked:

"How much longer, old chap?"

"Three minutes— if everything else is in working order! Help me drag the machine out from these trees, so that it's heading across the open ground! I don't know what we're going to strike, out there, but we must take a chance on that! Now, then! Get up in your seat an' be ready to swing those propeller-blades around when I jump for mine!

"If there aren't more than half a dozen, we can probably drop them before they see us!"

"Aye, but their shots might easily put the 'plane out of business, and then we'd be at the mercy of any detail that came runnin' down to their assistance! There i If nothin' else gives way, I fancy we can make it, now! Ready? Let her go!"

Trevor's wonderful muffler silenced the exhaust from the two big motors, but the bumping over the stones made some unavoidable noise. There was a rush through the cedars, down the sides of the ridge, and a dozen crackling shots as the biplane lifted into the air. The bullets came near enough to whistle unpleasantly, but fortunately touched nothing. Inside of an hour the machine floated gently down until its pontoons rested on the water alongside H.B.M. S-49 in the cove at Cap l'Abeille. As soon as the biplane was hoisted aboard the anchor was raised and the cruiser slipped out to sea in the darkness, running south at full speed.

At ten in the morning she lay-to— outside the three-mile limit — off the harbor of Alicante, and His Lordship went ashore in a fast power-launch. To the customs and military authorities he showed credentials as Special Envoy to His Majesty King Alfonso— being promptly sent up to Madrid in a motor capable of doing eighty miles an hour— the railway service being unreliable on account of the strike.

At Biarritz, some years before, Lord Trevor had rendered a service to Alfonso which that bright and grateful young monarch never expected to forget, and Lady Nan held a place among Queen Victoria's most intimate friends. So, as soon as His Lordship arrived at the capital, a royal equerry called upon him with the request that he present himself at the Palacio Real without the formality of securing an interview through Sir A. H. Hardinge, the British Ambassador. As a matter of diplomatic courtesy, Trevor stopped for a moment, on the way, to notify Sir Arthur of his mission and the Royal command, but didn't take that gentleman with him, for reasons which Sir Arthur could easily surmise. As His Lordship entered the apartment in the royal suite where the King was awaiting him, Alfonso dismissed the equerry and his personal aides.

"I presume Your Lordship is the bearer of some important communication, but that can wait until we've talked of more personal matters. I have told Her Majesty of your arrival, and she requests that you will dine with us this evening. Is Lady Nan with you?"

"Not this time, Your Majesty— though she would have been glad to accompany me if I had been at all certain as to my movements. I know she will be more than pleased to run down here at the end of the week if Your Majesties—"

"Send her a wireless at once to do so! Consider yourselves guests in the Casa Real for a fortnight or more. You will brighten us up, and help us to forget this cursed war!"

"It is a matter which concerns the war, Your Majesty, that brings me here at this moment— a rather urgent one, in fact."

"Oh, well! Let's go into it, and get the thing over!"

"With Your Majesty's permission, I will give you an exact account of certain things which have happened during the last five days— mentioning names of which I'm positive, and trusting that Your Majesty will be able to draw an inference as to certain others."

Clearly, concisely, Lord Trevor described his meeting with Raymond Carter, of the American Embassy in Paris, at Station House. He described how Carter had been watching Major Zacata and the Member of Parliament, who was known to be a Wilhelmstrasse spy; their being followed to the lonely manor on Woldingham Downs; the presence of the Condesa de Santaluna, and the work she admitted doing in Madrid; the trip on the cruiser to Cap Cerbere and the night flight over the Pyrenees; the discovery of the big camp — apparently occupied by Spanish troops; Carter's discoveries as to the men, munitions, and uniforms which had been coming into Barcelona from abroad. Then came a graphic description of the terrific magazine explosion, though he was careful not to admit having anything to do with it— and their final escape in the biplane. When he finished, Alfonso sat for several moments in deep thought.

"H-m-m— the Minister of War has duly reported the establishment of a summer camp in that vicinity by the Quartermaster General for the purpose of mountain-campaign and battery practice There has been no discussion about it, because it was assumed to be merely routine work of the War Department. The actual strength of my army, on a peace footing, is less than two hundred thousand men, of which fully three-quarters are regularly stationed in various provinces and islands. So a concentration of fifty thousand men in any such camp as that would require a royal order, ratified by the Cortes— because France would justly consider it a somewhat threatening mobilization on her borders. If you are correct in your estimate as to the number of men up there— the amount of munitions stored in that magazine— your story is proved without question, and I consider that Your Lordship was entirely justified in blowing up that magazine!"

"Pardon me, Your Majesty, I said nothing about my blowing up the magazine!"

"It wasn't necessary! Had I been in your place, I should have done it myself! But we must neither of us admit it. Facts of that sort are too easily twisted until they become dangerous. I say, Trevor, how many will that biplane of yours carry safely?"

"It was built for six men, at a pinch— scouting over enemy lines. After I have carefully overhauled it, I fancy there'd be little risk in carrying four."

"Then I think I will make a personal investigation of this matter. Two of my Cabinet Ministers are Spanish to the backbone— they would cheerfully risk their lives to prevent our being drawn into this war. We'll take them as witnesses, after telling them your story — run up from Barcelona to the bay near San Miguel on one of our own cruisers, and make the flight from that point. You can join us on the Ranee at Barcelona."

The King's plan was carried out next day, the under sides of the big 'plane being painted in yellow and red stripes to fix its identity from below as a Spanish machine. Owing to this coloring, not a single shot was fired as it flew over the camp in the ravine, the German commander taking it for granted that the Spanish Quartermaster General would be able to account for anything seen by the aviators. Had he guessed the identity of the men who could be seen examining the effects of the explosion through their prism-binoculars, he would have brought it down by shell-fire if it had been his last act on earth! As it was, the camp was surprised a week later by several regiments of the Spanish Army which had silently crept up the ridges and covered the ravine with machine-guns from above, before any defense could be made by the munitionless conspirators.

On their return to Madrid, His Majesty made a request of Trevor:

"Er — in regard to the Condesa de Santaluna, would it be possible to get her back in England upon some excuse before you arrest and deal with her? I'd rather Her Majesty would never know of her complicity in this affair— they have always been intimate friends."

________________

10: The Shadow With Bright Hair

C. L. Antrobus

1846-1919

Temple Bar Feb 1903

Clara Louise Antrobus

HALF-WAY UP THE CLIFF, in the shadow of a red rock, two men and a girl looked out on a dazzling sea aa it broke in green crystal on the white beach below; one man sitting beside her on a boulder in ungainly fashion, his hands clasping his knees, and his eyes more often on the girl than on the sea; the other man lying on his back at her feet, his arms under his head, his eyes closed, his whole attitude one of lazy content.

"London," he was saying, "is a prison where they hang pretty things on the walls to distract people's minds from the prison. Some minds are so distracted; mine is not."

"Then why stay there?" asked the man on the boulder.

"I don't. Have I not escaped hither to the magic west? From the Orkneys to the Lizard, from Horn Head to Portland Bill, all is enchanted land and sea; the whole west borders the undiscovered country; Avalon, the Blessed Isles— all are here."

"Do you find the hotel comfortable, Owen?" inquired the girl.

"Thank you, Charlotte, I have not gone there. I discovered that Dowling had established himself in a picturesque little shanty just below here, almost on the beach— you can see the thatohed roof if you look to the right— and I propose to share it with him. The owner dispenses tea and hot lobster to tourists, doubtless with the praiseworthy motive of thinning the population. That he should expect payment for the meal strikes me as grim humour, like Charon demanding his obolus."

"The meal is all right if you take whiskey and water with the lobster instead of tea," said Dowling.

"Or if you take the whiskey and water without the lobster. Well, Charlotte, I have a little chamber there facing the east, and I feel like Bunyan's Pilgrim."

"I am sure you don't," observed Dowling from his boulder.

"Then Charlotte shall be my spiritual guide and instruct me in the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' "

The girl smiled and shook her head.

"I do not think I remember much about it," she said frankly. "Why, how long ago is it since yon read the book?"

"Oh, I never read it. I once heard a lecture upon it."

"Of course," murmured her cousin, "I might have known. People do not read the books of the giants nowadays, they hear lectures upon them. What did the monster say? The lecturer, I mean."

"He made an analysis of Bunyan's works."

"I'll bet he had never read one of them. Shade of the immortal tinker! Has the Pilgrim lived to be analysed? Somebody ought to have kicked the lecturer."

"I took notes at the time, but lost them. I really forget exactly what he said."

"That is quite right," approvingly; "always forget what a lecturer says. It is the next best thing to not listening at all."

"Everyone said he was a very clever man."

"My dear Charlotte, did you ever read the story of 'The Emperor's New Clothes'? Modern cleverness is the Emperor's new clothes." And the speaker closed his eyes again.

"Take no notice of him, Miss Winter," interposed Dowling. "Kenyon is perpetually growling. Leave him to the soothing influences of this gentle coast."

Kenyon opened his eyes. " 'Gentle,' do you call it? ' Soothing? ' I tell you, Dowling, this coast is Phoenician. They came here and remained, bringing their evil worship and their gorgeous life. Look at that jewel sea, glittering with changing oolour like the covering of the King of Tyre; dyed Tyrian purple beyond the belt of emerald, passing into darkest sapphire, with gleams of beryl and diamond flash. Turn your eyes landward, and you have Baal-worship writ large on every tor."

"Sea and land were here before the Phoenicians," said Dowling. "Through the history of this far-western seaboard," continued Kenyon, ignoring the interruption, "runs the glitter of gems, and over it broods the darkness of treacherous crime. King Mark of Cornwall was a decadent Phoenician. A Phoenician of the finest was the lady who presided at that hunting party on the moors, and later stabbed her step-son in the back— the back, you will observe— at Corfe Castle. Who lured ships on the rocks? More Phoenicians. Who kept back the blue ring? Who slew a helpless man for a green one? 'What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?' "

"Anyway, the decadent Phoenicians managed to settle the Armada, winds and waves aiding."

"Oh, the Phoenicians could fight; witness the Carthaginians, who were a Tyrian colony. Besides, there is a mixture of race here as elsewhere— Briton, Dane, Roman."

He picked up a fragment of rock lying by his hand.

"Marble, of course; pinkish-red. Those old Phoenicians knew how to use the splendid materials scattered at their feet. They built palaces of marble with windows of agate. We respectfully polish a few pebbles, vaguely gaze upon them in museums, and live ourselves in— I refrain from describing our present-day dwellings."

"I see nothing the matter with our dwellings, Owen," said his cousin. "Come for a row. There are delightful little boats down on the beach."

"This evening, Charlotte, I will row you to the enchanted isles if you wish. But only grasshoppers and maniacs disport themselves at high noon."

Dowling rose briskly from his boulder.

"You stay here, Kenyon, and continue your meditations on old Hiram's coat, while I row Miss Winter round the Point. We will land there, listen to the Phoenician band on the Tyrian pier, and then row back again. Would you like that?" turning to the girl.

"Very muoh indeed, thank you," springing to her feet; "Owen is laziness itself."

"What you call laziness," protested the culprit, "is merely another form of energy; and I could not be taken to a pier. It would be like dragging a dog past the band; I should sit down and howl."

"Good-bye," responded his cousin. "Shall you be here when we come back?"

"That depends on when you return. But if I have vanished, I shall appear at lunch."

He raised himself on his elbow and watched them descend to the beach, then took up a book beside him, and settled himself to read.

TWO HOURS later Kenyon strolled into the verandah of his aunt's house.

"Where is Charlotte ? " asked Mrs. Winter, glancing up from a letter. " Gone for a row with Dowling," Owen replied, dropping into a chair.

"Why did you not go with them?"

"Why should I?"

"Because you are engaged to Charlotte."

"That is a strong reason for not wearying her with my society. She will have so much of it by-and-by."

"I wish yon would see things in a proper light, Owen. Being aunt to both of you, I feel a great responsibility, especially as Charlotte has neither father nor mother to look after her. I shall speak seriously to her."

"My dear aunt, I beg you will do nothing of the kind. Let the girl have a little freedom. She has been told she would marry me ever since she can recollect anything. Do not make our engagement resemble the stone people hang round a kitten's neck before they drown it."

" But why not be married this summer ?"

"Where is the hurry? When Charlotte wishes to marry me I am quite ready."

"I do not approve of long engagements; and Charlotte has money."

"So have I."

"Oh, I did not mean that Charlotte's money was of any great consequence to you; of course not, you have enough. But it seems best to keep it in the family. Suppose she slips through your fingers? I wish you would stay here instead of on the cliff."

Kenyon shook his head. "My erratic habits would distract you. I like to wander in the small hours as De Quincey did. You would mistake my departing footsteps for those of an arriving burglar. Here come Charlotte and Dowling. Ask him to lunch, won't you?"

"I do not know anything about his family. He is in the civil service, I believe, but that is nothing nowadays. One is told the postman is in the civil service."

"His family is all right, and so is he. He sits under a palm tree like Deborah, and judges the disorderly sons of Shorn. I will answer for him."

The advancing two were apparently in the highest spirits, and Mrs. Winter regarded them with disapproval in her heart. Yet, after all, she reflected, there was no need for her to feel perturbed. Robert Dowling was really extremely pleasant, and if Owen would not exert himself to look after his future wife, why should she, their aunt, harass her mind concerning the matter? So Dowling was invited to lunch, and spent the afternoon on the verandah, teaching Charlotte's dog a new trick. Moreover, he contrived so to ingratiate himself with the elder lady that he stayed to dinner; and the tardy noon, now past the full, had risen from the sea before he and Kenyon left Mrs. Winter's pretty lamp-lit drawing-room for the mysterious gloom and sheen of the world outside.

The night was so still as to seem almost unreal, a vision of phantasmal loveliness. Not the faintest breath of wind stirred in bnsh or tree; the leaves, glistening in the moon-flood, cast motionless shadows of dark jade. From the nnseen foot of the cliff to the dim horizon, stretched the vast plain of heaving water, in colour dusky hyacinth, crossed by a shining ripple of moonbeams. Against the violet blue of the sky, the rocks, vivid crimson by day, showed dull purple, glowing to sullen red where the light smote them. All was silent as a dream, save for the rustle and hiss of the unsleeping sea far below.

"Hear the Midgard Serpent!" said Kenyon as they descended the steep and winding path. "In this place one understands that old myth; one comprehends how it arose."

"Yes," assented Dowling, "the sound is rather curious at this height." He looked seaward, and added— "I'll have a good swim from a boat to-morrow."

"Oh, thou prosaic!"— and Kenyon laughed. "Why, you swim yourself, and well too. What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Merely the destruction of a spider-web of thought. Here is our hut. Blessed fairyland where no doors are locked!"

The cottage where they lodged so overhung the sea that from the window of the little sitting-room a pebble could be dropped into the line of foam glimmering on the beach. Dowling lit a candle and rummaged in a cupboard, while Kenyon leant out over the sill, and wanted to know why they had come indoors at all.

"On such a night, in such a place," said he, "anything might happen. That dim headland, is it the shore of Troy, or the isle of Morgan le Fay?

" 'A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory,

Of calling shapes and beck'ning shadows dire,

And airy tongues that syllable men's names

On sands and shores....' "

"We came in for a drink, for one thing," replied Dowling, "and I don't intend to go out again to-night, it's getting late. Where is the soda-water? Oh, I see. Here, help yourself."

He sat down near the window.

"Yes, it is a lovely night. By the way, I am greatly indebted to Mrs. Winter for the day I have spent."

"I will tell her so. She will be quite ready to give you more such days if you like."

Silence for a few minutes. Kenyon moved away to the table, and Dowling stared out of the window, his elbow on the sill.

"You are an uncommonly lucky fellow," he said suddenly.

"Wherefore this conviction of my luck— not that I deny it."

"I should think not! Your luck is stupendous. Just look at things all round."

"I do look at them, and I admit that I find life fairly satisfactory."

"Fairly!" snorted Dowling. "Even so. The expression is accurate. There is a certain flatness about our ultra-civilisation. Who would not be Faust, to call up Helen of Troy?"

"He didn't."

"Well, never mind. We will suppose that he did see 'the face that launched a thousand ships, and burned the topless towers of Ilium.' Then, coming to our own land, to this very coast, how about Morgan le Fay? We do not hear that she was beautiful, but she must have possessed a strange attraction. Like Hemison, I would fain speak with Morgan le Fay, even though 'deep draughts of death draw nigh my heart.' "

"Why, you ungrateful dog! Here is a charming girl, as good as gold, and as pretty as she is good, ready to marry you, and you are sighing like a furnace over the memory of worthless shadows."

"I am positive they both existed."

"They are shadows now, anyway."

"Shadows that yet stir men's hearts."

"Oh, look here," Dowling got up and searched in the cupboard again, "you need a tonic. This is a liqueur that is warranted to peform miracles of healing. Brown sent it to me from that out-of-the-way place where he is consul, you know. He says it was given to him. My opinion is that he stole it. No sane man would give such stuff away except in his last will and testament. Try it."

"Certainly Brown stole it," Kenyon agreed, after trying the liqueur. "It's a miracle in itself, no matter what its effects may be."

"As for your shadows," resumed Dowling, "they suited the time in which they lived, but assuming that it were possible for you to call up Helen of Troy—"

"Say Morgan. There is a greater witchery in Morgan le Fay. Helen is carried off as a prize, like a beautiful slave. Morgan is no slave. She is a Circe; she has her kingdom; she ensnares and rules."

"Morgan be it, then. Personally I should prefer Helen, as being better looking and better tempered. However, I was about to observe that the idea of either Helen or Morgan le Fay as the mother of a family fairly makes one's brain spin."

"Talking to yon, Dowling, is like being patted on the nose with a brick. Did not Werther's Charlotte go on cutting bread and bntter? Alas! my Charlotte will always cut me bread and butter."

"And very wholesome for you; exactly what you need, my son. I admire Miss Winter. In fact I am strongly inclined to cut yon out and marry her myself, if she will have me."

"You?" Kenyon looked genninely amused.

"Yes, I myself, Robert Dowling. I should make her a better husband than yon will, our tastes are similar. And after all, you have told me the engagement is a family arrangement. I should like to upset it."

"Well, of all the cool—" and Kenyon burst out laughing:

"I am honestly telling you my views."

"Quite so," Kenyon's mirth increased. "My dear fellow, you are adding a deal of interest to the arrangement, and I am grateful. If my cousin prefers you to me, I shall step aside with my usual urbanity, but she has not yet said so."

"I ought to apologize, I suppose."

"Not at alL I am no ogre. Charlotte is free to change her mind if she wishes, and the situation now really interests me. I had no idea it was so triangular."

"I did not intend to say so much, but when you talked of Helen, and bread and butter, and Morgan le Fay, why—"

"I see. I ran up against your feelings; though Morgan haunted the imagination of Europe for centuries, and even now is said to appear occasionally."

"Ah!" Dowling leant back in his ohair and contemplated the ceiling with an expression of subdued derision.

" 'Ghosts may come and ghosts may go,

But I scoff on for ever!' "

"She was seen in Ireland a hundred years ago," Kenyon went on, "and the fishermen hereabouts say she walks here at times, and her presence foretells disaster."

"Stuff! I'll tell you something better than that, something real too. The garrulous old skipper who sits every evening at the top of the cliff declares there are green dawns here. I told him I had seen one in Egypt, but never elsewhere."

"Green dawns here? Impossible!"

"He sticks to it, though, and I am inclined to believe him. He says the green light comes before sunrise, which it does, you know."

"What time of year?"

"Summer, of course. This time of year, during great heat, accompanied by extreme clearness of atmosphere. When these conditions are fulfilled, then comes a green dawn."

"Well the weather is hot enough and clear enough now. I think I will sit up and see what happens."

"Better go to bed and chance it, as I shall. Good-night."

LEFT ALONE, Kenyon took up a book, but presently fell asleep, lulled by the soft, stealthy, ceaseless rustle of the sea beneath the window. The candle guttered and went out, the book dropped from his hand, and he slept on in the darkness of the room with the wonderful luminous night outside. The minutes passed as the stars swung round, till the Bear stood on the northern horizon, and Owen awoke with a start to find the magic of the world had changed. The moonlight still lay on the beach and lit the foam, but its colour was not the white dazzle of the depths of the night; eastward the sky was paling, and the voice of the sea was hushed to a whisper that was well-nigh silence.

"The dawn!" he said. "Now, what colour will it be? I should see it better from the high cliff. Time enough to rouse Dowling if it does prove green."

He went out quietly, dosing the door behind him, and took a steep path to the left, a path that led above the cottage and was in many plaees only a narrow shelf. As he walked onward and upward, around him spread the blue light of dawn. Waking birds fluttered out of the rose-boshes and tangles of dematis that, grey with dew, clung in every nook and cranny. The light grew as Kenyon mounted higher. Was it blue? Surely it was changing as all things became dearer?

He stopped on a rocky ledge and looked seaward. Still the light grew, changing, waxing stronger, and lo! the dawn was green as a laurel leaf held against the sun, green as an emerald! Far below, on the cottage roof, the moonlight shone like spilt gold in the strange radiance. All the air was filled with that green effulgence, a light of a wondrous quality, shadowless, jewel-like, soft, yet brilliant; and it seemed to Kenyon as though he stood in the heart of an emerald.

"Incredible!" he ejaculated. "Most marvellous and incredible!"

"Why incredible?" asked a voioe of singular richness and clearness, that sounded as if it came from an infinite distance, yet was close in his ear.

He turned in surprise to see, standing beside him on the narrow path, a woman in long flowing garments green as the dawn, and with hair the colour of the gold moonlight. Where had Kenyon seen that face, with its wonderful transparency of complexion, the faint rose tint seeming to flicker and die, and fiioker again as the light flame flickers in a nacrous shell ? He could not recall those unfathomable eyes that met his with a look at once mocking and grave. Ah, he remembered now. These were the features of that strange marble called the Bust of Elche; the lines not beautiful— not— he checked the thought, still gazing. There were types of beauty other than the Greek, and here was one totally dissimilar, yet perfectly harmonious and possessing an attraction all its own. Was not the Bust of Elche beautiful? Elche? Of what race was the woman of Elche? Of what race the woman before him, standing massively calm, silently imperious, green-robed in the green dawn? Surely she was allied to that long-passed people whose embroidered sails once caught the sunrise off these shores?

"Why incredible?" she asked again. "It is not so incredible as the folly of men. You might have the peace of earth and heaven, but you destroy the one and throw away the other."

"Doubtless I spoke foolishly," said Kenyon. "I imagined myself alone."

And he looked the curiosity he dared not express. She answered the look rather than the words.

"You have your wish. Do you accept the risk?"

"Yes, a thousand times yes!" he cried, recalling and repeating the words he had uttered the previous night. "What care I for deep draughts of death, if I may but speak with Morgan le Fay?"

He felt no astonishment. He seemed to have known it from the first. He had reached a point where the illusion of time had vanished, and life was one and indivisible. Also, with sudden intuition, he comprehended her who once was Morgan le Fay. Despite her northern fairness, her British birth, her soul had swung back through the centuries to some ancestral Baal-worshipper even as her face wore the lines of his, Kenyon could have fancied the men of that race, strong, unscrupulous, evil, crowding dimly behind her; fierce shadows pointing, whispering, "She is of us— of us!"

Yet not wholly of them; there was a subtle difference, the Christian leaven working.

She made no reply to Kenyon's eager protest, but on her lips and in her eyes, a faint half-mocking smile mingled with the impassive calm as she spoke again of the marvel of that hour before sunrise.

"Such glory of light would not have been strange to the men of the past. They noted these dawns and recorded them; has any man of the present done so? You are in danger of losing the wisdom bequeathed by the dead, while you are reviving their follies and their crimes."

"There is no defence," said Kenyon. "I admit it all. A terrible wave of atavism is sweeping over us; we are becoming positively simian! Yet what can we do? Our world is falling about our ears, the noise of ruin deafens us, the very ground is hot under our feet, and like the bears, we must keep dancing, or whirl, moth-like, into a burning lamp."

"Forgetting the moonlight and the stars. What good remembrance is there in the burning?"

"None, but we have no memory nowadays, and there is the excitement of dodging the flame. After all, the whirling round that brilliant warmth and the subsequent speedy frizzle may be as satisfactory as long safe flights and broken-winged old age."

"Old age is not necessarily broken-winged, nor does it come to all."

"Perhaps not. We moderns, however, are not the only fire-worshippers. That whirling round the lamp has been a recognised occupation of mankind from the earliest ages. Moths were always numerous."

"Yes, they were," she said, looking seaward with brooding introspective gaze. A faded yellow leaf fluttered down from a cranny to her feet, and Kenyon pointed to it.

"Sir Dinar returns! "

"That Sir Dinar?" She picked up the leaf. "I will give him as guerdon to a fisherman. Come!"

The dawn was green as ever as they walked along the cliff path, a greenness not to be described, more luminous than emerald, a colour that was pure light. Far below on the cottage roof the moonlight still lay like spilt gold. Afterwards Kenyon marvelled at his own sure-footedness on that narrow ledge where there seemed barely space for one, with a sheer drop of five hundred feet to the beach; but now in the wonderful dawn he walked securely beside his companion, listening as she spoke of many things, conscious only of her presence. Was it the sea rustling in his ears, or the rustling of the green garments of Morgan le Fay? But the apparently heavy folds seemed to float along the path as though weightless.

"The dawn has changed," she said. "Let us go down to the beach."

He looked round in surprise; no longer was the world one vast emerald. The green light was gone, the yellow moonlight gone also; earth and sea were white-gold, and the dazzling rim of the sun rose above the sea-line.

"You ask what are our aims," he was saying. "Oh, we have none. But give us credit for one virtue, that of meekness. No generation has been so belaboured as ours, and the harder the blows are laid on the more we throw ashes on our heads and proclaim the beating just. Yet sometimes I venture to doubt the justice."

"Then why throw the ashes? Is it that you have no convictions, only moods? Truly the veil is thickening over the face of all nations."

She glanced at him and smiled, a smile swift as summer lightning. "You feel surprise that I should speak thus, but in the long centuries one grows very wise— for others. I myself must needs remain unchanged."

"Who would desire change?" cried Kenyon.

"I myself. But for some there is no place of repentance."

They had reached the bottom of the cliff, where a little boat was rooking on the shingle.

"Row me across," she said.

"To Avalon?"

"Not yet. Row me now to the landing-place yonder across the bay."

To Kenyon the time of that crossing seemed at once brief as a moment, yet age-long. Did he row? Or did he rest on his oars and let the current drift the boat whither she desired? He never knew. And always he looked upon the face of Morgan le Fay, the face of the marble of Elche; while the sun rose higher and the sea took colour from the day. The terrible women of old, TomyriB, Jezebel, Nitocris, did they wear these features of the vanished race ? Were they so fair? But the woman before him differed from these in that she had been born Christian: therefore more complicated, less of the animal, knowing the evil of evil, with finer lines of thought on cheek and brow, yet still the face of the Elche marble. She turned her head to look at a solitary figure on the approaohing shore.

"There is our fisherman." She opened her hand and showed the yellow leaf lying on her palm, adding, with subtle mockery of glance and voice, "And here is Sir Dinar for him!"

"Let me row back?" pleaded Kenyon. "It grows too late, from sunset to sunrise is my hour."

"I will row till we meet the sunset again."

As he spoke the boat grated on the pebbles, a few yards from where a young fisherman was standing. Kenyon sprang out, throwing his shadow, a transparent shadow of dawn, on the beach before him. He turned to assist his companion; she already stood beside him, but before her lay no shadow.

The fisherman, who had put ont a hand to steady the boat, drew back with a seared face.

"You look in vain for my shadow," she said, addressing Kenyon. "I myself am a shadow."

"Near you," he replied recklessly, "all things become shadows."

She held ont the yellow leaf to the fisherman, but he made no movement, and she threw the leaf into the bottom of the boat where it seemed to fall more heavily than a leaf falls; then walked up the sloping beach with Kenyon.

"I myself," she repeated, with that indescribable look of mingled mockery and darkly brooding thought, "am a shadow. Remember, and forget."

For a moment more Kenyon saw her standing by him, the pale gold of the new-risen sun on the deeper gold of her hair, the emerald green of her garments; saw the flickering colour, like a light flame, coming and going in the lucent fairness of her face, that face of the bust of Elche. Then— he gazed at empty air.

There was no one, nothing between him and the cliff that rose skyward sixty yards away. He gasped, stared round wildly, vaguely. He was alone save for the fisherman, who still stood by the boat. Kenyon hurried down to him.

"That lady gave you a leaf. I will buy it from you."

The man pointed to the boat. " 'Tis there," he said. "You'm welcome to it, but witch-money's best thrown back in the sea."

"Why, it is gold!" picking up the leaf. "Pure gold, quite soft. Feel it!"

But the fisherman declined to handle the mysterious thing.

"Well, I'll give you two pounds for it." And Kenyon produced a couple of sovereigns, which were received with surprised thanks and friendly advice.

"If I was you, sir, I'd be a bit careful for a day or two. I've heard that when the lady's seen, there's trouble to come."

"How often is she seen?"

The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"I've heard my grandfather say he see her once, over to Motcombe, forty year back."

Kenyon would have questioned further, but at that moment Dowling hailed him from the top of the cliff, so, telling the man he would see him again later, Owen went up the steep cliff road.

"Did you see the green dawn?" asked Dowling as they met.

"Oh, was that real?"

"Real? Of course it was! Did you think I had turned on the limelight?"

"No," slowly, "I saw it and I have also seen Morgan le Fay."

"My dear fellow, wake up! You're had a dream. I had no notion that liqueur was so strong!"

"It wasn't the liqueur. I tell you, Dowling, I have walked in the green dawn with Morgan le Fay. Did you see me land?"

"Yes."

"Then you saw my companion also."

"No one was with you but the man by the boat."

"No one? Why, that man saw her! What brought you out so early?"

"The green dawn. I happened to awake, and obserring there was something uncommonly odd about the light, I came out to see what was the matter. Extraordinary effect, wasn't it!"

Leaning orer the cliff paling was an elderly man, gaunt, rigorous, regarding Kenyon with intent gaze.

"Was that old Scotch gardener with you?" inquired Owen.

"Yes, he came on the cliff almost as soon as I did, and we discussed the dawn together; I found him very intelligent."

"Perhaps his eyesight may be better than yours, I will ask him; " and Kenyon went up to the old Scotchman. "Did you notice the lady who landed with me?"

"Man," was the reply, "let it rest. Yon was no mortal woman with ye."

"Well, upon my soul!" ejaculated Dowling. "I'll swear I saw nothing."

"Weel, I ken ye didna, for ye said naething. But there she was, and nae shadow to her!"

"What did I tell you?" There was triumph in Kenyon's tones as he turned to his friend. "Here are three of us who saw her, and only one, yourself, who did not."

"Come and have some breakfast, that is what you need." Dowling spoke with decision. "All apparitions can be exorcised by a good meal."

"Why this hurry? The morning is divine."

"So are the fish I am going to fry. Have to cook 'em myself at this hour; nobody else is awake. If the butcher would pull his shutters down I'd get a steak. I'd back a solid beefsteak to knock out all the ghosts that ever glimmered."

"I don't call Morgan le Fay a ghost."

"Call her anything you like, but come to breakfast."

LATER Kenyon told the tale of the dawn, and all that he had seen therein.

"The dawn is all right," said Dowling, "but you don't expect me to believe the rest, do yon? Yonr Morgan was my liqneur."

"The fisherman saw her."

"You say you gave him a conple of pounds for that piece of beaten gold. For half the money he would have seen two or three Morgans— a dozen if you wished."

"How do you account for the gold?"

"Washed ashore from some old wreck, and you picked it up unconsciously, In fact, you have been walking in your sleep. Somnambulism and the liqueur together created Morgan."

"That Scotch gardener saw her. Talk to him yourself."

Dowling shook his head. " Never ask a Scotchman anything unless yon are prepared to believe his answer; which in this instance I am not, most emphatically not."

"There are more things—" began Kenyon.

"Don't," interrupted the other, "don't say it. You'll make me sick! If the author of that observation could have foreseen how it wonld become the pet phrase of every ghost-seeing noodle in Christendom— excuse me, Kenyon— the words would never have been written."

"They are true, nevertheless,and a ghost-seer may be speaking the truth also."

"He may, but more probably he is not. You are not speaking it, though you think you are."

"These matters are simply matters of time," said Owen. "I am too early for you."

"Too late."

"No, too early. I am only telling you things that a hundred years hence everyone will accept without controversy. Had you made a phonograph squeak and gibber a few centuries ago you and it would have burnt together."

"There is no real comparison. A phonograph is a material thing, your statement is immaterial— excuse me again— in every sense."

Kenyon laughed. "I give you up. But so surely as I sit here I have had my wish, I have spoken with Morgan le Fay!"

AT NOON that day a school of mackerel was reported in the bay, yet the fisherfolk stood about on the beach unheeding, talking among themselves of the unknown ill that must needs follow the appearance of the witch lady. It was folly, they argued, to tempt fate after that vision beheld in the dawn by one of themselves. So the boats rocked idly on the ripples, while the sea decked itself in splendour of jewels and purple of Tyre.

In the afternoon, when the land-wind began to blow down from the moors, Kenyon sat under an elm on Mrs. Winter's lawn, with his cousin opposite to him, and a tea-table between them. She seemed a little absent, even a trifle embarrassed, and he did not remember to have seen her embarrassed before.

"I wonder what it means," he reflected. "Dowling, perhaps. We shall see."

"My dear Charlotte," he presently observed, "you look delightful in that hat, and the gown is altogether charming, but are you not mistaking me for Dowling? Here are three lumps of sugar in my cup, whereas I never take any."

She started and flushed. " Oh, I am so sorry, Owen. I must have been thinking of something else."

"Does this 'something' trouble you ? "

"No. At least—" she hesitated, and the flush deepened.

"Well, Charlotte?"

"I am sure we have always been very good friends, have we not?"

"Very," he assented, "and now you wish me to do something. What is it? Consider it done. Anything that pleases you will please me."

"But I am afraid this will not please you."

"Kenyon studied the fresh blooming face before him, and it reddened again under his gaze.

"Suppose I went to the Rockies to shoot bears— for an indefinite time. Would that please you?"

"I am sure you would enjoy it, Owen. You are so fond of wild places."

"I see. And the bears? Would they also enjoy it? "

"I don't know. You say such odd things!"

"At any rate, you would enjoy it; and I could send you a bearskin for a wedding present when you are married; send it, you observe, not bring it."

"I do not wish to hurt your feelings, Owen."

"You don't, my dear cousin. You would really hurt my feelings if you made yourself unhappy by marrying me when you did not wish to do so. There is always enough unhappiness in the world without people deliberately brewing more. Therefore I will presently depart, if not to the Rockies at least to some place sufficiently removed."

"You are very good."

"Not at all. There is no particular goodness in following one's natural bent; I like smoothing things. Evidently I was intended to be a road-mender, I should thoroughly enjoy making the rough places plain. As for those misguided individuals who habitually roll boulders large and small across the path of tired wayfarers, may the fate of Sisyphus be theirs!"

"I have not said anything to aunt," observed Charlotte, and her tone was donbtful.

"Tell her it is my fault, and leave her to me. Dowling and I will manage her," smiling. "Here he comes. Shall I tell him?"

Charlotte cast a startled glance over her shoulder, and fled into the house as Dowling came up.

"Don't look so disappointed," said Kenyon, as his friend's eyes followed the girl's retreating figure; "she will return by-and-by. Meanwhile, I have news for you. My Charlotte has just declined to cut bread and butter for me."

"What?"

"Even so. Her hurried departure was in consequence of your breaking in upon our mutual congratulations."

"Are you speaking seriously?"

"Quite seriously, and so is she. I will do Charlotte the justice to say she thoroughly knows her own mind, and that in itself is a grand virtue. I suppose I ought to feel rather small, and I suspect that I do; yet what would I have ? The inconsistency of human nature! I am free— to follow shadows, a shadow; or to seek a reality of which I have seen the shadow. Reality?— there can be no reality. Only the older, wilder civilizations produced such women as she whom men called Morgan le Fay."

During this speech Dowling wore an air very unlike his usual aspect, the air of a man ill at ease.

"My dear Kenyon," he said gravely, "if I have in any way conduced to this misunderstanding, I can only crave your pardon. I deserve a kicking. I—"

"There is no misunderstanding whatever," interrupted Kenyon. "Charlotte and I understand each other perfectly. She may or may not prefer you, but she has made it dear that she doesn't want me. We remain the best of friends, no more. I admire her good sense in thns settling the triangular situation we discussed last night, instead of letting things drift on to possible misery. And now I think I will have a row; there is just time before dinner. I see my aunt at the end of the road, she will want tea, and Charlotte will reappear at the tea-table; you stay here with them, or aunt will feel dull, and perhaps worry Charlotte."

"I will walk with you to the cliff. By the way, is it absolutely necessary for you to go rowing to-day? I am not superstitions, as yon know, but all these fishermen have given up their mackerel, and there may be unusual currents, or abnormal conditions of atmosphere."

Dowling finished rather lamely, and Kenyon laughed.

" 'Currents?' 'Conditions of atmosphere?' None of these things are the men's reasons for remaining ashore, as you very well know."

"I will go with you."

"I would rather be alone, thanks. There is no risk, and if there were, what then? If, like Hemison, 'deep draughts of death draw nigh my heart,' that is not the worst that can happen to a man. Why so solemn ? All will go well, yon will marry Charlotte, and I shall be the bachelor godfather of your children. Nothing could be more satisfactory."

He glanced towards the distant moor, where in the northwest it rose darkly against the blue.

"The country seat of Bel and the Dragon! Amazing cantrips there must have been on that plateau."

But Dowling was not interested just then in Bel and the Dragon.

"Why not take a boatman?" he urged, as they reached the cliff.

"Because he would not go. Also because I do not want him. Don't worry, old fellow, I shall be back to dinner. Look at the loveliness of that sea! From here it is a plain of lapis lazuli and malachite, with that marvellous shadow of Tyrian purple."

"The purple tint is caused by floating seaweed," said Dowling.

"Man of cold facts which ought to be warm fables, what does it matter what it is? There is the true Tyrian:—

" 'And my soul from out the shadow that lies floating on the floor,

Shall be lifted— nevermore!' "

He went swiftly down to the beach, and Dowling, watching from the top of the cliff, saw him, after a little discussion with a boatman, get into a boat and row away. By-and-by boat and man became a mere speck on the sunlit waters, and mindful of Kenyon's behest, Dowling went back to Mrs. Winter's garden.

OWEN did not appear at dinner, and his aunt and cousin thought he had probably rowed round the Point and stayed to dine with an acquaintance at one of the hotels there; in which idea Dowling acquiesced; for why cause them perhaps needless anxiety? But when he returned to his lodgings at eleven o'clock, and found Kenyon still absent, he spent the next hour in questioning the coast-guard and fishermen as to whether the boat had been seen since the afternoon. At midnight Dowling walked to the Point, and explained matters to a friend who owned a steam launch; with the result that the fussy little craft vainly disturbed the peace of the moonlit coves along the coast till the east began to pale.

Then in the dawn— a dawn not green, but white-gold— the missing boat was rocking gently by the beach whence it had started the previous day, and in it lay Kenyon apparently asleep, but it was the sleep that knows no waking.

That morning the fishing boats went out into the bay, for the unknown ill was now known, and men could go about their business in security.

FIVE YEARS LATER, Dowling was showing to a friend a cabinet of curiosities he had picked up here and there.

"That?" he said, as his friend noticed a small leaf delicately modelled in gold; "yes, it is old, I believe. What do you think of the workmanship?"

"The leaf is extraordinarily heavy for its size, must be pure gold, looks like it. The workmanship is wonderful Where did you get it?"

"Could you imagine Hiram of Tyre made it— the workman, I mean; not the king?"

"Why? Did it come from some old tomb? It is undoubtedly very ancient—"

"It came from the sea-shore down west. There is a singular story connected with it. Not that I believe a word of the tale, the whole thing is preposterous. It concerns a cousin of my wife's; dead, poor fellow! I knew him well; delightful companion. Sit down, and I will tell you how the leaf came into my hands."

So during the half-hour before dinner, in an evening of late autumn, firelight and lamplight shining on the leaf of yellow gold lying on the table, Dowling related that strange happening in the green dawn of a past summer.

"Of course," he finished, "the appearance was a mere hallucination of poor Kenyon's. His mind had been dwelling on old legends, and he simply got up and walked in his sleep."

"Was he a somnambulist? " asked the friend.

"No, never. But how else is the wild idea to be accounted for?"

"You say that you yourself saw the green dawn?"

"Oh yes, the dawn was green enough, green as grass; I am positive, though, that Kenyon was alone."

"Yet the fisherman and the Scotch gardener both saw her."

"The fisherman saw two pounds, one for each eye."

"And the Scotchman?"

"Well, his name was Mac-something or other, and those Highlanders have a trick of seeing visions."

"I own I am impressed by the fact of those two men having also seen her."

"Saying they had seen her," corrected Dowling.

"And the leaf of gold; how do you explain that?"

"Easily. Kenyon picked it up unconsciously in his sleep, while wandering along the shore. No doubt it had been churned up by the sea out of sand depths into which it had sunk ages ago from some Phoenician galley."

The friend thoughtfully turned the leaf over and over.

"Whereabouts did you say the place was?"

"Three miles from Motcombe," and Dowling described the hamlet.

"Then if one went down there in the summer, one might possibly see a green dawn?"

"Certainly, the conditions of atmosphere being favourable; great and continued heat, with clear skies."

"But not the 'shadow with bright hair?' "

Dowling shook his head. "A dream, no more—as I said at the time."

"Nevertheless, despite your unbelief, I am resolved to go there this next summer, and as I have some Highland blood in my veins, I shall hope to see, not only a green dawn, but also the shadow, Morgan le Fay."

"I wouldn't risk it," said Dowling, looking rather serious.

"Oh, so you do believe the story?"

"No, I don't, but poor Kenyon's death has given me a dislike to these superstitions. Such things occasionly work themselves out, as it were. Kenyon died from heart failure, the result of over exertion in rowing. I hardly think, however, that he would have remained out at sea so long had he not been possessed by his belief in the reality of his dream."

"The Shadow brings a darker shadow— yes, I see. Yet I will risk it— next summer I will risk it!"

__________________

11: The Gold Bar

H. de Vere Stacpoole

1863-1951

Blue Book, April 1934

Henry de Vere Stacpoole

THE sun was setting to the tonking of church bells, the smell of Spanish cigarettes and the occasional notes of a guitar. There were other smells and other sounds, but less important, less racy of the city of Sulphurous Pleasures and of the Plaza del Sol.

I think that is still the name of the great square near the cathedral, where the vultures strut and waddle, and Perrira's cafe, if it still exists, casts the shadow of its awning on the marble-topped tables, at one of which this evening Carlin was seated smoking a panetela and taking in the other guests; men in Panama hats, bearded men; Mexicans all the way down from the border, extraordinary Jews, Christians no man could place, a few store clerks from the business houses of the city, and Perrira's pet monkey— a spidery brute that went about from table to table on the lookout for drinks and cigar-ends.

Carlin was not a bit happy; it wasn't so much that he was down, if not out, as far as money went, or that he was disappointed in the business that had brought him here: it was just the crowd at the tables; their unknown types depressed him, these men remote from his world as Martians, or the vultures strutting in the plaza, or the monkey. He was surrounded by a loneliness more desolating than the loneliness of the desert or the sea.

A man came along pushing his way between the crowded tables, big and burly, with a jovial red clean-shaved face, hat tilted back, and an unlit cigar between his teeth; He was looking for a seat, and seeing Carlin's table and an unoccupied chair, took it with half a word of apology and drummed on the table with his fingers for the waiter. Then, without preamble, and as though he and Carlin were old acquaintances, he struck up talk:

"Hot as a stewpan, aint it? It's the flagstones take the heat, and let it out— Say, what are you havin'? Have one on me? What have you been havin'? Gin and tonic. Hi, there, Antonio Alonzo what's-your-name, two gins and toniques— same as the gentleman has been havin'; pronto, look alive-o! Darn, yellow slug— it's the same with all these Jack Spaniards; they want windin' up."

He lit his cigar and tilted back in his chair. He had been here three days trying to do some business, and failing; the Spaniards were so slow and cautious, they'd sniff a proposition and turn it over till there was no life left in it, and then they'd tell you to come back tomorrow; his name was Simon Dare, home town Quincy.

Carlin concurred in all this gentleman said regarding the city and its ways and its folk. He too. had been trying to do some business with regard to a mine; he had come with letters of introduction from Silbermeyer of San Francisco to the president of the Trentino Company, had wasted nearly a week, only to find there was nothing to be done.

"Cost me five hundred dollars to come, reckoning the hotel expenses; and it will cost me another to go back," said Carlin.

"Well, it's lucky you have the five hundred dollars to take you back," said Dare. "Many a chap has been stranded here with less an' had to work his way out of the durned place through the fo'-c'stle. Funny, me meeting you, and us two in the same fix. Me? I'm going to El Paso down the coast tomorrow. I'm going to mule-back it; it's only a three days' ride, and if you'd like, to hire a mule and come along with me, I might be able to put you in the way of something at El Paso. I'm going on along there about a concrete proposition— if there is nothing doing, you could ship from there cheaper than here. There's always coasters going up north from El Paso besides the regular mails."

It seemed to Carlin that there might be something in this: he liked the other, and was hungry for friendship; and when Mr. Dare proposed that they should go and dine together at the Cafe Madrid, each paying his own expenses, he fell in with the idea at once.

THE Cafe Madrid was,— perhaps still is,— one of the finest on the South American seaboard. There is a lot of money spent there, but it is unconventional in some ways; for instance, to dine there, you are not necessarily expected to wear evening clothes, as at the Presidio. Many of the guests did, and Dare as they ate pointed out several well-known figures at the different tables. That man with the pointed black beard was Alvarez, the banker; and the fellow with the girl who was wearing a flower in her hair, was Lopez, the chief man of the Peruvian tobacco company; he was married, but the girl was not his wife. The man at the table beyond, dining all alone, was Gomez; he had a funny history (commercial), but he was not alone in that peculiarity.

It struck Carlin that if his companion had only been four days here, he had a pretty wide and extensive knowledge of the inhabitants, but he did not remark on the fact or give it a second thought: this jovial and warm-hearted man had captured his fancy— so much so, that presently he began to talk about himself, his past and his prospects. He had been pretty unfortunate in business in Liverpool, England— trading in timber till the MacLarens had gone bust and knocked him completely off his feet; he had been forced into bankruptcy, but managed to pay his creditors ten shillings on the pound, and. had got his discharge— when an aunt died and left him money which was enough to clear himself with the creditors and leave a few hundred over.

"But see here, man," cut in Dare, "hadn't you got your discharge?"

"Yes," said Carlin.

"Then what in the nation did you want paying your money to those guys for?"

"What guys?"

"The creditors. Your slate was wiped clean."

"Maybe, according to law," said Carlin, "but not in my mind. I owed them the money just the same, discharge or no discharge; it was like a grit in my eye. Besides, I wanted to feel that no man could call me a bankrupt."

"Well, you take the bun!" said Dare. "And after you'd paid them—"

"I heard of a chance in San Francisco; five hundred wasn't any good for starting again in Liverpool, so I pushed out. It was five hundred and fifty really, and the fifty brought me across. I started in shell in a small way, with the man who had asked me to come out; and we were getting along all right when the bottom dropped out of shell. There was a slump in mother-of-pearl— it had gone out of fashion somehow or another, and the wharves and godowns were crammed with shell. We cleaned up just on the margin with no debts, only our money lost. That was eight months ago, and I got a job and saved enough to come down here .after this mine proposition which has turned out a dud."

"Well, it aint every day you meet Probity in a pair of breeches," said Dare. "Here's my respects to you! All the same and without offence, I'm thinking you'd make more money in Barnum's show as an exhibit of Virtue than you'll make in Frisco in a business way; but that's your lookout. Well, what do you say about El Paso tomorrow?"

CARLIN had been turning this business over in his subconscious mind, and had decided on it: it was as cheap to get back to San Francisco from there as from Lima; and according to Dare, there was the possibility of some business turning up.

"I'll come," said he. "There's only the question of my luggage. It only amounts to a suitcase and a rug. Still, you  said we'd have to go on mule-back—"

"Could you get your stuff into a couple of saddle-bags?" asked Dare.... "That's right— and you say the suitcase isn't worth more'n a few dollars, so you can buy another at El Paso. You're staying at the Bolivar? Well, I'll tell you, I'll call there for you tomorrow sunup, and take you to Gomez's yard. He's the chap that hires and sells horses and mules. You'd better buy, and sell again at El Paso— won't cost you more than twenty dollars."

"Right," said Carlin.

A LITTLE after sunrise, Carlin having paid his hotel bill the night before, they were at the yard where Gomez buys, sells or lets for hire, horses, mules, burros, anything with four legs that can be ridden or driven, bar oxen. Half an hour later they were on the outskirts of the city heading north, the mules going well and the sun hot on the land and on the great beach that runs from Lima and Callao to Truxillo and beyond.

Gomez had not only supplied the mules, but for an extra few dollars their old saddles and trappings, water-bottles and a couple of bundles of dried grass to be held in reserve for the animals. The night before Dare had bought some provisions; and they would be able to get stuff on the way, except in the region of the sands. Dare had spoken of this region of the sands, and Carlin had got it into his head that it was just a short bit of desert to be crossed. But the sands when reached disclosed themselves not as a desert to be crossed but a beach to be held to. On one side the Pacific falling in ruled and rhythmic breakers, an occasional sea-bird flying in the blazing light above the spindrift and spray; on the other, dunes and levels of sand, an occasional vulture floating in the blue far above. Behind vanished Lima and Callao; in front the sands and sea-foam consumed in the far distance by a haze where all was lost.

Occasionally, it is true, they came upon an oasis where sea-grass put up a fight for life and where the mules could have a feed and so save the bundles of fodder; and occasionally they came upon a stream of fresh water that had worked a runnel for itself, the last remains of a river that had traveled for hundreds of miles to find the sea.

All the same, the waterless Sahara would have had a less depressing effect on the mind of Carlin than this blinding beach with its eternal thunder, fume and desolation. Nothing ever came here from the sea except driftwood brought south by the current; nothing from the land except the wind from the far mountains, nothing from the sky but the vulture in the blue yet ever ready to drop.

Once Carlin, looking up attracted by a remote cry, saw a condor with motionless wings, yet moving with speed toward the distant hills; and once, far ahead, they saw the ghost of a city in the gauze-blue distance— a mirage that might have been Lima, Truxillo, who could tell— before it flickered and went out, leaving the desolation untouched, a desolation so complete that one might have imagined no other travelers had ever trodden this coast road to the city of El Paso del Sur.

Before noon on the second day of their journey, however, they met with another traveler who had been waiting the chance of their coming for days, weeks—possibly months.

THEY had made a detour to avoid a patch of dangerous sand that Carlin's mule avoided. Dare's mule, defective some way in smell or instinct, would have kept on; and they were talking of this difference in the animals when Carlin's eyes were attracted by something ahead, white like a spread of mushrooms or the contents of a laundry-basket tossed here and there. When they reached the spot, they found bones; a spread of bones strewn over a space twice or thrice the area of an ordinary dining room floor.

"Only one man and a horse," said Dare, pointing to a human skull and the skull of a horse. "It's the vultures have spread them—torn off the clothes; look at those rags." He dismounted and picked up the human skull. The parietal bone on the left side showed a hole; the bone on the opposite side was nearly blown away. The owner of the skull had been shot.

"Murder or suicide," said Dare. He went to the skull of the horse and examined it. "Murder! " He nodded. "It's been shot too— look at the forehead bone. First the man, then the gee to stop it from tellin'."

"He might have shot it first, then shot himself," said Carlin.

"Might, but not probable."

Carlin went to an old saddle that was lying among the bones and tossed it over with his foot; then he turned to a brown saddle-bag lying near it and turned out the contents: some clothes, a linen coat, a pair of socks, a waistcoat wrapped round something heavy and hard. He unwrapped it, and a block of yellow metal as big as a brick fell on the hard sand with a thud.

Dare picked it up.

"Gold!" said he. "Good gosh! A gold bar, by all that's lucky."

"Gold!" said Carlin. "You sure?"

"Yep. Feel of it— smell it!" Dare handed it over, and Carlin with the weight of it in his hand, felt a thrill never before experienced. It was like touching Fortune herself.

They sat down on the sands to talk of this business, the bar between them. It was Carlin's find, but he would not have found it had not Dare brought him along on this traverse. "We'll go half and half," said he. "The only bother to me is if the chap has been murdered—"

"Yes?"

"Well, isn't it up to us to give information ?"

"Good Lord! " said Dare. "It's Peru —besides, it's maybe a year ago, maybe more. I couldn't tell the age of these bones at first, but I can guess it now; they're dried out. Look!" He picked up a rib and snapped it. "They've been sanded over and sanded over, them and the trappings; a wind up from Chile would cover them, same as you shook sugar over a puddin'; a wind down from Ecuador would strip 'em again; that's the way of it. I reckon they have been more than half the time hidden; that's why the bag hasn't been tampered with. Besides, any spigotties traveling along here wouldn't have touched this place, anyhow. Superstitious. They have a saying: 'Where one man falls, another may trip,' or somethin' like that. But we aren't superstitious, are we?"

He picked up the bar and fondled it, feeling its delicious weight; then they rose and stowed it in Carlin's saddle bag, and rode on their way, still talking of the matter.

DARE was undoubtedly right. They had struck an old story, and telling it to the Peruvian authorities would not do much good. What could they say? "We found the bones of a man and a horse in the sands on our way here, and we think there may have been foul play: the bones were very old."

That story would not move one cocked-hatted gendarme to raise a finger in the matter, much less a foot.

If they told about the gold, there would surely be endless trouble, to say nothing of the fact that it would be taken from them. No, their course was clear; either say nothing about it, or fling the thing away.

"I know a chap at El Paso," said Dare. "He'll give us two-thirds of the value in coin. We've got to lose a bit over it, anyhow, and that won't hurt us much, since we paid nothing for it."

At sunset they made their camp by simply hobbling the mules.

It was windless weather, and as they ate their supper seated on the warm sands, they had for companion the Pacific Ocean breaking only a hundred yards away, the sinking sun looking at them over the water and gilding the mountains of Peru, above which the western sky was deepening and darkening with the rising night.

Carlin took the first watch; for the mules, even though hobbled, could not be left unattended; when half the night was through, he awoke Dare, lay down with his head on a sand pillow, and was asleep at once....

When he awoke, the stars were near gone and the east beginning to get light.

He found himself alone.

Dare was gone, and one of the mules. Carlin's saddle-bag, which had contained a few clothes, some provisions and the gold bar, was gone. He had dropped to sleep with it lying beside him, and it was gone. He rose to his feet.

The beach away north and south was visible in the strengthening daylight.

Nothing moved on it or gave sign of life except the waddling white-gray form of a gull.

The mule was standing near by with its head down. It was unhobbled. Well, the thing was clear enough. Dare had played a dirty trick and made off with the bar— a damnably dirty trick, for he had unhobbled his companion's mule, trusting that it would wander away leaving Carlin without food and depending on what water he could get on the beach.

The big burly good-natured-looking man had suddenly turned into this. Only among human beings is such a metamorphosis possible.

CARLIN went to the mule, standing head down as if tired, and took the bridle. A long piece of cord was tied to the bridle-ring and lay trailing on the sand; it was the lead which Gomez had supplied in case one of them wished to go on foot and turn his animal into a led mule.

It was clear enough that Dare had not contented himself with unhobbling the animal; he had taken it off with him, leading it. Yet here it was, returned. What was the meaning of that?

Had he released it, or had it broken away from him?

Having found that the food in the saddle-bag was untouched and the water-bottle still half full, Carlin mounted.

The sun's brow was just rising above the horizon, lighting the sands, and Carlin, as he sat in the saddle before starting, followed with his eyes the hoof-marks visible on the sand.

They told the whole story:

The hoof-prints of Dare's mule showed striking down toward the sea edge to get to the harder sands, the hoof-prints of the led mule close and a bit behind. Carlin followed.

On the hard sands the prints pointed north toward El Paso. That was enough; he turned north, and letting the mule take its own gait, rode along by the singing sea, the rising sun on his right cheek, and on his left side the stalking, far-flung shadow of himself and his mount, like the shadow of a man on a dromedary.

AS he rode, he turned things over in his mind.

They might have been worse. His money was intact, simply because he had it in his pocket; it would have been impossible to have taken it without awakening him; he had food enough, and water and a mount. What would have been his position if the mule had not returned to him? By what miracle had it returned? Had Dare released it for some reason, or had it broken away from him? Even if so, why had it returned?

He could find no answer....

But half an hour later, feeling hungry, he stopped, dismounted, and undoing the strapping of the saddle-bag, put his hand in and felt something hard and heavy that was not the tin of sardines or bread he was searching for. He took it out: it was the gold bar.

There was nothing strange in the business. He had put it there yesterday evening, strapped the bag and gone to sleep with the bag beside him. Dare had simply slung the bag where it belonged and gone off, leading the mule. So fixed had been Carlin's mind on the loss of the gold and Dare's evasion, that he had not divided the idea of the gold and the robber. He had never dreamed that the bar might still be in the saddle-bag; his subconscious mind had showed it in the personal possession of Dare. Well, here it was, anyhow, miraculously returned; and so excited was Carlin, that he put it back into the bag and did up the strappings again without bothering about food. His hunger had vanished for the moment; and mounting again, he rode on.

Gold had him in its miraculous power. The bar of yellow metal, back in his possession, gave him strength. It seemed to him that the energy of ten men had suddenly been injected into his veins.

The filing was his. Dare, after what he had done, could have no claim on it. He visualized a meeting with Dare, and what he would say to him, and if need be do to him, should they meet; he strained his eyes ahead on the chance of sighting him; but in the distance before him lay nothing but the sands and the long white line of the foam of the sea....

He had fallen into a reverie, from which he was suddenly aroused by the mule coming to a halt.

Right in front of him lay something on the sands. It was Dare's hat. He could not be mistaken, for its owner had plucked yesterday a sprig of sea-lavender and stuck it in the band— and there was the sprig. Carlin urged the mule forward, but the mule refused to move; it seemed afraid of the hat. He got down and leading it by the bridle, brought it forward a few steps, but it backed and plunged and set its legs, sweating and - evidently in fear. Then Carlin knew: The sands just beyond the hat were slightly paler than those on his side. He picked up a piece of coral rock lying by his foot, and flung it just beyond the hat. It was swallowed almost instantly, as though thrown into water, and the greedy quicksand as it closed on its prey, pursed up and settled like a small mouth smacking its lips after a bonne bouche.

Now the whole thing was clear: Dare, riding in the dark under the last of the stars, had blundered on this place. His mule had no sand sense; but leaving that aside, the darkness alone would be accountable for the disaster.

The led mule had broken away and returned on its tracks to the camping-place. That was all.

Yards, maybe fathoms, under that yellow sunlit surface lay the man who had betrayed his friend, left him maybe to starve, for a piece of gold; there to lie till the Last Trumpet— if ever that sound could reach him in such a place.

IT was seven weeks later, into the office of Mr. Silbermeyer in Fourth Street, San Francisco, that Carlin came.

"That business," said Carlin, "turned out no use. I've come back. I haven't much left after paying my passage; but on the ship I met a man who has put me up to what I believe is a good thing: it has to do with nitrates. I want a thousand dollars to go into it, and I want you to lend me that thousand—here's my security."

He took the gold bar from his pocket and handed it over.

SILBERMEYER took the thing and handled it and fondled it and felt its delightful weight. He was worshiping— worshiping the only god worshiped by all men in all times honestly and devotedly.

"I found it by an extraordinary accident on the seacoast away down in Peru," said Carlin. "It is mine entirely. No one else has any claim to it— you must take my word for that,"

"Your word," said Silbermeyer, "is as good as your bond. I know all about that Liverpool business, and I know your record here. Yes, I will lend you a thousand dollars on it."

"There is only one thing," said Carlin. "It must remain in my possession, where it will be just as secure as though locked in your safe; and you have my word that should this venture fall through and the thousand dollars be lost, I will return it to you. All that sounds funny; but you will understand it when I say that this thing to me is more than a mascot: it is strength and energy— it is gold. I could sell it to lots of people ; but then I would have to part company with it, and it is my partner. We are Carlin, Gold & Co.; and the very touch of my partner, the knowledge, even, that he is in my pocket or my safe, at my side, even though he is pawned to you, will give me pep and kick and success."

"He is your mascot?"

"No, any old thing can be a mascot— yes, in a way a mascot, but the greatest of all mascots. Gold!"

Mr. Silbermeyer laughed. He understood.

"Here," he said, "take your partner. Yes, I will lend you a thousand dollars oh him. I put him into your integrity as I would put him into my safe: you will succeed. Pay me whenever you like."

Three months later Carlin paid him hack; that was on June 1st, 1909.

On January 2nd, 1933 (last year), Carlin, the fourth richest man in the State of California, had Fontenelle, a high official of a national bank, to dinner. The two men were old and fast friends, and after dinner, and warmed by a bottle of priceless Tokay, old Mr. Carlin— he was sixty-six— told the story of the gold bar to his companion. He told it fully, and for the first time: told of the meeting with Dare, the finding of the bar, the death of Dare, the loan from Silbermeyer. "And this is it," said he, getting up and unlocking a safe that stood in a corner of the room, a safe so cunningly constructed that a burglar carelessly— or indeed in any way— handling it, would first be shot, then electrocuted, to the sound of bells ringing all over the house. He took from a bag of violet velvet the precious bar, and handed it to Fontenelle— who weighed it, examined it, took it to the window and pondered over it, and then, while Carlin was helping himself to a cigar, took a knife from his pocket and scratched it. He came back from the window, and putting the bar on the table, sat down.

"You said Silbermeyer lent you a thousand dollars on that bar?" asked he.

"Yes," said the other, lighting a cigar. "Well, he didn't, really: he lent it on your character, on your known honesty, Carlin— that's what he lent it on. Otherwise he would have had it tested. The thing is a dud— one of the old gold-bricks swindlers used to palm off. I've seen 'em before— solid lead with ten dollars' worth of plating on it."

THE old gentleman took this badly.

It was not the shattering of a mascot that troubled him, for a dud brick would be just as good, in the strange world of mascots, as a bent sixpence or an elephant's-tail hair. What worried him was the disturbance of his sense of values. Gold appeared to him suddenly, and rightly, as having no value except in the world of imagination; it seemed to him, and rightly, that if all the gold in the world were turned suddenly into lead, it would not matter a button, so long as men imagined the lead to be gold; and this, by extension, seemed to apply to all property values.

The fact, pointed out to him by Fontenelle, that his fortune was not founded on a lump of lead, but on the gold of his commercial integrity— since Silbermeyer would not have lent a penny on the brick without testing it, had it been brought to him by a doubtful character— this fact left him cold; it did nothing to counteract the unpleasant feeling that all wealth is of the nature of a dream. An unpleasant feeling— at least for a multi-millionaire who has labored to earn his millions.

_______________

12: An Embarrassed Butterfly

Mercy Compton Marsh

fl. 1911

Cavalier, July 1911

The only known story by this otherwise unknown author.

MARCIA struggled into consciousness and looked round rather blankly. Then she realized that it was not the whir of the rising bell that had wakened her, but her father's hearty voice calling through the register. She heard her youngest brother stumbling sleepily down the stairs.

The old dog was barking frantically at a noisy wagon as it rattled by. The young dog was yelping joyously at everything in general and nothing in particular.

From the barn-yard came her older brother's voice, shouting to the "hired man" that the hogs were out again.

Marcia shivered at the homely sounds, and thought of the young instructor in biology. She remembered that she had gone to sleep the night before thinking of him. She knew that she would go on thinking of him the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning all the rest of her life.

She fancied his awakening in his own home, the home of culture and refinement "back East"; the home of thick rugs and soft hangings and well-trained servants—

"Marshy's got her diplomy at last, has she?" rasped the hired man as he strode cheerily away after the erring hogs.

Well-trained servants! What— oh, what— would he think of the hired man? Oh, she was glad— glad that he would never see it all. It had been hard to make him think she did not care when her heart was breaking for love of him. But she could not let him come to her home. Better he should go away grieved, thinking her frivolous and heartless, than to come and know the truth.

"Marcia, girl," called her father, "do you feel like you could come down and help mother a little? We are late this morning."

"Yes, father. Right away."

Marcia fought to make her voice cheerful. She sprang out of bed and began to dress quickly. Dear father! Her heart smote her in a sudden passion of love and loyalty. She stumbled over her unpacked trunk and took a fresh blue calico dress from her closet.

How many weeks ago her mother had ironed it with loving care and hung it there to wait her coming. They should never guess, she cried fiercely to herself, that she would have anything different, never, never.

She ran lightly down the back stairs to the kitchen, buttoning her dress as she went. The cheerful sputter of ham and gurgle of coffee greeted her as she opened the door at the foot of the stairs. Her mother looked up happily from the oatmeal she was stirring.

"Did you rest well, daughter? You don't know what a joy it is to have you home again."

Marcia went to set the table with a lighter heart. She gasped a little at the sight of the red table-cloth. She had forgotten there would be a red table-cloth. Then she thought remorsefully of the weary hands that ironed the table-cloths.

"I dare say I'd use newspapers or a pine board if I had as much to do," she said to herself. After all, it was home— home, where she was loved and wanted. She shook hands almost cordially with the hired man.

In the busy weeks that followed, Marcia slipped back into her old place. The strange aloof, out-of-place feeling gradually wore away.

She found herself actually interested in the daily egg harvest, and positively delighted over Brindle's new calf. The old house, brightened by little touches of her deft girl's fingers, began to assume for her once more a cheery, homelike air.

She began to realize that some of the old furniture was good. The living-room really had quite an air, with its big easy-chairs, and the large reading-table always heaped with books and magazines. And the diningroom was not bad, since the work of her strong young arms made snowy table linen possible. Marcia surveyed it almost approvingly as she rested in the big Morris chair, one sunny July noon, while dinner waited for the tardy "men-folks." She didn't know but she might almost have let him—

Her idly roving gaze fell upon the closed door across the hall, and she sat up with a jerk. She had forgotten the parlor—the unspeakable, unthinkable parlor! She could see it plainly, even through the closed door. She could almost tell the number of red roses in every square yard of the velvet carpet.

"They seem to fairly jump up and hit you when you open the door," thought Marcia. And the gaily garbed chairs; she counted them off on her fingers— two red ones, two green ones; the rocker, brown; the reception-chair, pink and brown; the sofa, bright blue.

Now, why couldn't they have all been in one color, or at least in harmony?

But the chairs and the carpet were not the worst. Marcia gave a little groan that was almost a sob as she thought of the worst. Perhaps something had happened to them. Perhaps even her mother's fond admiration had tired of them.

She walked quickly into the parlor. She closed the door and stood leaning against it, still holding the knob in her hand.

They were all there, and two new ones she had never seen; portraits, portraits, portraits; double rows of them— there was not wall space otherwise— precise, mathematical rows; their cords were all the same length; they were all the same distance apart from each other.

Portraits of aunts and uncles and cousins, of grandfathers and grandmothers, of herself and her brothers at all ages and stages; ghastly things in black and white crayon; atrocious things in colors; staring, glassy eyes, unnatural mouths!

Marcia covered her face with her hands, and thought of the beautiful old oil-paintings the instructor in biology had told her of, which hung in his ancestral home.

The clatter of voices and heavy boots on the back porch reminded her that dinner must be served.

" 'The table must be laid, the meal must be served, though "portraits" stalk through the house.' "

Marcia varied the quotation, smiling rather grimly as she hurried back to the kitchen. Her older brother was talking rapidly to his mother in an eager undertone.

"And you know, mother, what it is to try to board at Carter's. He's an all-right fellow, too. I talked to him a long while down in the pasture. And the poor fellow's in the deuce of a mess trying to board over there. So I just brought him home to dinner.

"I thought maybe you could put him up while he's here; there's the spare room. And he wouldn't be a mite of trouble; he's gone all the time hunting specimens. He's a—"

"So you're a bug-man," the hired man's voice, muffled by soap-suds, floated through the open window. "Marshy, she's real interested in them kind of things since she's went to college."

Even before she heard the answering voice, in a blinding flash Marcia knew— knew with the certainty of an inexorable fate— that the bug-man was John Alexander Wentworth, M.S. She turned away dumbly. She patted her hair before the little mirror over the kitchen wash-stand, and was vaguely glad she had put on a fresh dress after the morning's work. All the time she was wondering what she should do when she had to greet him, for she was sure not a sound would come from her aching throat.

"AND to think you're one of Marcia's teachers." Her mother's tired voice brightened in delighted welcome. "I should say I am glad Tom brought you home. To think he never knew who he was bringing! You must just stay right here. We'll be more than glad to have you; won't we, daughter?"

Marcia flushed and smiled, and under the table pressed her mother's hand in a wave of tender affection. Dear mother, she was so proud to have him know her. Who wouldn't be proud of such a mother. If she only would not take him into the parlor—

"Pass the bread," said the hired man, as he dropped his steaming bulk into the chair beside the bug-man and drained his glass of water in one deafening gulp.

John Wentworth thanked his lucky stars for the good fortune that had befallen him and proceeded to make the most of his opportunities. But he was sorely puzzled by Marcia's moods.

Sometimes she met his ardent wooing with a wistful tenderness that was almost a confession of her love; sometimes she avoided him till he scarcely had a word with her for days. To Marcia life had become one tense, all-absorbing effort to keep him away from the parlor.

She noted in terror her mother's growing liking for Wentworth. If she liked him, she would take him in there; that was the greatest favor she showed an honored guest.

Obviously, Marcia thought, the only safe thing was to keep her mother from liking him, and to this end she bent all her energy. She criticized him scathingly and unccasingly. She seized upon every little individual trait and held it up to ridicule.

Her mother was distressed.

"Why, Marcia," she argued reproachfully. "I never saw you take such a dislike to any one, and why you should to this young man is beyond me. I'm sure he is as likable a young fellow as I ever saw.

"And even if you can't like him, daughter," she added in gentle reproof, "remember he is our guest. And for my part, I think we are not showing him proper courtesy in not opening up the parlor."

The evenings were the times Marcia most dreaded. Her father and the boys were disappointed that she refused them the music they had so long looked forward to when Marcia should come home; but the piano was in the forbidden room.

Wentworth added his insistence to the nightly plea, and Marcia fell to devising schemes to keep them entertained out of doors. She made a porch light out of a big lantern, and dragged out table and chairs, an inviting place for cards and checkers. She arranged enticing nooks on the lawn with hammocks and easy chairs. She began to breathe almost freely when two weeks had passed safely.

She noted with proud pleasure the genuine liking that grew steadily between Wentworth and her father and brothers. If mother only would not like him too well.

Marcia sang softly and happily to herself one hot Sunday afternoon as she brushed her hair carefully and put on a fresh white gown. She had surrendered to her heart. Good-by to foolish fears, and more foolish pride. She would seize her happiness.

The next time he tried to tell her— and he would tell her any time she would let him— she dimpled radiantly at the halffinished thought.

She tripped lightly down the stairs, still humming softly to herself a snatch of college song. The house was wrapped in its Sabbath stillness. Her father dozed in his chair on the shady porch.

Down in the hammock Tom was absorbed in a book. Her younger brother wandered disconsolately about snapping chips at wildly clucking chickens.

Marcia wandered into the hall, following a faint hum of voices. Through the open parlor door floated her mother's voice, complacent, happy.

"And this is Marcia when she was ten— the one in the big gilt frame. It's taken from the one I showed you in the large album, you know."

Marcia turned and sped noiselessly through the house, across the yard, through the pasture gate, on down to her shaded nook beside the creek; there to throw herself on the rocky bank and sob till she lay quiet from sheer exhaustion. For she was still very young, and very foolish. A long time after— hours, she thought, or maybe years— she sat up abruptly at the sound of a quick footstep.

"Marcia!" cried the bug-man. "Crying?"

He did not stop to press his suit, nor to beg her sweet permission. He simply sat down on the big rock beside her and drew her to his arms, and quite boldly and brazenly kissed her quivering lips.

"Now," he commanded, "tell me all about it— everything. What has been the matter with you all this time?"

And Marcia, without so much as questioning, without stopping to reason why, told him.

"And even the frames are the worst frames that ever were!" she wailed. "And, oh, what must you think; you who— why, you're laughing—"

"Oh, Marcia, Marcia, you funny child!" he gasped, and leaning back against the rock he laughed till he struggled for breath. Marcia's lip quivered, and he sat up, instantly serious and tender.

"My dear little girl," he said gently, "how many kinds of a prig do you think me? What possible difference do you think it could make to me whether you had a parlor at all, or lived in a one-room sod house? And as to the pictures, dear, no matter if they are not what you would choose, don't think of that. "Think of the love they represent. Think of the tender heart that cherishes every poor likeness for love of the one it stands for. So you see the spirit of the parlor becomes a beautiful thing, the spirit of love and home.

"And now we are going home," he ended gaily, drawing her to her feet. "And we are going in and sit on that blue sofa, and I am going to adore every picture that has you in it.

"And then we'll wake up that silent piano to celebrate our happiness in the unspeakable parlor."

________________

13: The Elixir of Youth

Anonymous

The South Australian Chronicle, Adelaide, 26 Dec 1891

The custom of the Christmas creepy story seems to have faded, but it was very popular in the 19th and much of the 20th Centuries.

RIGHT in the midst of the Harz Mountains dwelt an old, old man. The foresters who earned a scanty living, and the hunters of wild animals, sometimes, but very rarely, caught a glimpse at him, but never had they had the hardihood to follow him and ascertain where he lived.

Those who had seen him knew that his once powerful frame was nearly doubled by age, and that his snow-white hair and beard fell almost to his waist. They saw also that he always carried a large knotted stick with which he aided his footsteps and with which, perhaps, he would have protected himself against prying invaders. Nobody, however, had dared to interfere in any manner with the hermit, as should anyone chance to cross his path in the deep heart of the forest one glance of his eye— which the foresters described as singularly blue and fierce— would deter the rash intruder and send him off quickly in an opposite direction. This much, however, they had time to notice— the old man always carried a bundle of herbs and plants, and appeared to be eagerly seeking for others.

Hans Veldt, famed as a skilled hunter, had indeed once, coming upon him unawares, heard him mutter—

"I must find it, I must find it, or it will be too late, too late."

With the last words his voice had rung out in a mournful wail, and Hans Veldt, scared, had crossed himself after the fashion of Paulo the Papist, who had once visited him, and who declared that if one crossed one's self and invoked one's patron saint, the Evil One himself would be powerless; and hurrying home with all speed to his hut on the banks of the Weser, startled his fair daughter, who was sitting in the doorway quietly plaiting her long fair hair, by a recital of what he had seen and heard.

Now Liesel was, like most girls of sixteen, full of curiosity; and as she listened to her father's account she determined secretly to penetrate deep, deep into the mighty forest, find the old man's abode, and speak to him if possible.

"What can he live upon? The poor old man!" she reflected, knitting her fair young brow. "He cannot bake bread, because he cannot grow corn or rye; and he cannot have meat, because surely he is too old to hunt. Wait till the morrow comes, and my father is safely away— I will go."

The next morning Hans started earlier than usual, taking with him a good stock of ammunition, with which he filled his bearskin pouch. He also told Liesel to put up more than an ordinary day's supply of bread and venison, as he was going a long distance, and might not return that night.

"Be sure you fasten the door securely against the wolves at night," was his parting injunction, "and don't linger about after nightfall."

Liesel promised, and joyfully watched her father out of sight; for the adventure she had in view was an entirely novel one, as her father rarely permitted her to wander far into the woods unless in his company.

Arraying herself in her stoutest short homespun dress, and securely plaiting and tying her long fair tresses lest they should become entangled in the thickets and brambles of the dense forest, Liesel set off, taking care to provide herself with a small basket of food.

For some hours she pressed through the forest, stopping now and again to gather rare flowers and mosses which pleased her. One lovely white flower which she discovered quite by accident delighted her most. She had come upon a narrow track whose moss- grown path was wet and slippery from the recent rain, and she had suddenly slipped down a steep incline whose almost precipitous side was covered with bushes and brambles, forming a cool, deep, dark hollow, like a well, at the base.

When she had got over her fright, and sitting up looked around her, the gloom and mist were so intense that for a few minutes she could see nothing. Then, her eye becoming accustomed to the dull light, she saw gleaming in front of her a few large white star-shaped flowers growing on a small plant whose leaves were spike-shaped.

"Oh! how pretty!" said Liesel. "Lovely little blossoms; it is a shame to pluck you, but I must have two of you. Let me count— one, two, three, four, five, six, seven of you, all growing on the one plant; I will not take all of you, pretty dears, but let me have just two, because I never saw anything so lovely before."

Then, as she carefully gathered two on their long stems, she took off her large rush hat, which she had plaited for herself, and stuck the flowers in the front of the brim.

"How you gleam and flash, you darlings! You must be like those precious gems that father tells me of, and that fine ladies wear in their hair and on their hands and arms. Father saw one of those ladies once, and he said she flashed like the stars. You will be my jewels, pretty flowers. And now, farewell, sweetest, prettiest blossoms. I will mark this spot so that I may return and find you here yet once again."

Laboriously climbing the steep ascent down which she had slipped so swiftly, Liesel arrived very much out of breath at the summit, and looked about for something with which to mark the spot.

Strong and supple, she quickly broke down a young sapling, and stripping it of its outer bark made it look in the bright sunshine like a gleaming silver wand. This she stuck deeply into the soft soil at the top of the incline, and taking the bright ribbon from her neck bound it securely to the top of the sapling, where it fluttered in the breeze like a gay little flag.

"Oh! that will do," said Liesel. Like many girls who live much alone, she had formed the habit of talking to all things— to herself, to the birds, to animals, and even to the funny little brown fish and frogs which sometimes came to the margin of the river. Thus she was happy in the midst of her solitary surroundings; for the hunters' huts were few and scattered, and intercourse between them, or the foresters, was very rare.

Only once a year Hans carried skins to the great town, which to Liesel's imagination was a veritable fairyland, for her father had never taken her with him. She, losing her mother when a mere baby, had grown up like some fair young flower— alone, and almost unseen by human being, save her father and an occasional hunter or forester, who at very rare intervals might visit their hut.

So now, Liesel tenderly stroked her bright red ribbon which she was leaving fluttering on the peeled wand, and said softly— "Don't think I do not value you, dear ribbon. I will not desert you. I will come once more and take you again. You are merely guarding the lovely flowers which I shall come for one day, if not to pluck, to look at; for oh! ribbon, they are so lovely. See, here are two of them in my hat. Now you have seen their beauty you will not mind guarding them."

Through the forest, on and on, pausing to look at the track of wild beasts and little forest animals, startling many of the latter from their lairs, and causing them to scuttle away as fast as their four little legs would carry them. Liesel would have liked to have caught them, stroked them gently and talked to them. It pained her greatly that they should fear her.

"Why do you run away, little creature?" she asked, as a stoat fled from her with every indication of alarm, "Liesel would never hurt you."

She came presently to an open space whose green velvety- looking sward and canopy of grand trees delighted her. She sat down and rested awhile, thinking of the lovely flowers which were in the brim of her hat.

"I must look at them again," she said, "how fresh they keep. I wonder what flowers they are?"

Liesel was not entirely ignorant. Her father could read, and he had taught her when she was quite a little thing. On each of his visits to Coburg he had brought her a book, so that now she had quite a little library. Among the volumes was an old work on botany, which he, noticing her love for plants and flowers, had bought for her, knowing the pleasure it would give her to study it. And many and many a weary day had Liesel beguiled in comparing the plants and flowers she found with those mentioned in her book.

"There is no flower in my book at all like this," she thought, and then put on her hat and jumped up.

"It must be getting late. I must be quick if I want to find my old man of the woods. What a funny little path leads from here. So narrow that I shall almost have to press through it; and the trees are growing so thickly on either side as to form quite a wall."

They were, indeed. The trees and undergrowth on either side the narrow path formed a wall of impenetrable thickness, whilst arching and meeting overhead they kept almost every ray of light out. Liesel could not see the end of the path, and was almost afraid to venture into it.

"Suppose it should lead me to a wild beast's den," she thought, "I should not be able to get away from it."

She was, however, of a curious and enquiring disposition; and her curiosity overcame her timidity in this instance, as presently her wish to know what lay at the end of this dark passage led her on. She almost had to grope her way. Indeed, she would have had to do so, the passage became so dark and narrow further on, had it not been for a faint radiance like starlight which seemed to shine in front of her. On and on, until suddenly her arm was grasped and a deep hollow voice murmured in her ear—

"Stay! Are you myth or spirit that thus you come, bringing me that which for many years I have labored and toiled and searched!"

Trembling with fright, Liesel saw in the faint radiance which seemed to enfold them the figure of the white-haired white- bearded old man whom she had come out to seek.

When she realised that it was he, and nothing more fearful who had thus suddenly stopped her, she said calmly enough:

"I came to find you, sir; but, alas! I bring you nothing, unless indeed you will share the bread and meat I have in my little basket."

"What want I with bread and meat? If you speak of such gross things you must be mortal, girl. Think you that I care for bread and meat, which sustain life but for a short time, when you have with you a portion of that which if I can but obtain the whole will give me life, life! youth, youth! and health!"

His voice rose almost to a shriek as he pulled her after him for some distance, entering at length a small cavern dug out of the side of a hill, which appeared to terminate the dark walk. A rude light swung from the roof; and Liesel saw that the earthen floor had been beaten hard; and that a bundle of leaves in one corner served the hermit as a couch. There was nothing else; not a pot nor pan, not a vestige of covering to guard against cold or chilly nights; not a trace of food, except bundles of herbs and roots, which almost covered one side of the cave. A great pity filled the girl's heart, and she turned on the old man a look of tenderness.

"Poor old man! and so you really live here all alone, and like this?" she said softly.

His eyes— keen, fierce, blue ones, Liesel noticed— were fixed in an eager gaze on her hat.

"Girl! where did you get those flowers?"

He almost snatched off her hat, and carefully, reverently, removed the glistening star-like blossoms.

"I found them," she answered, simply and wonderingly.

"You know where they grow? Quick, girl!"

The veins in his temple stood out like whipcords, and he glared at her like a wild beast as she said—

"Yes."

"Lead me there quick. Lose not one second. A little longer— a little longer and it would have been too late. Come."

Still carefully holding the flowers he had taken from her, he motioned her to lead the way. Like one magnetised she obeyed, and swiftly and silently led him through the dark passage, the open glade, and along many a tortuous winding path. Once indeed it seemed as if her memory failed her, and she looked about her in perplexity. But the old man seizing her hand and looking deep into her eyes cried—

"I command you to lead me to the spot whence you gathered these flowers."

Then once more she led him— without doubt or wavering led him to the spot where she had planted the peeled sapling. There it stood, white and tall, with its little crimson flag fluttering in the breeze.

She stopped at this, and the old man, gazing wildly round in search of the blossoms, cried out:

"The flowers!— the flowers!"

"They are down there," said Liesel, pointing into the dark depth.

The old man groaned. He knew he could never get them.

"Girl, you must pluck them... Though to do so will bring ill luck in the future, I know not how or in what way. But the flowers plucked by any other hand than mine.... Say, how many were there growing?"

"Seven."

"'Tis the number. Go at once since I cannot, and remember if you but crush one of the remaining five I will kill you."

Liesel did not hesitate. She knew she must obey, and looking at the track she had made when sliding down previously determined to go down now in the same manner, and was soon slipping down with the same velocity as previously.

Once in the dark depths of the hollow and waiting a few minutes she saw again the gleaming starry flowers. Sighing a little she plucked them one by one.

"Poor plant!" she said. "I cannot help taking all your treasures."

Very carefully she held the five blossoms and toiled slowly upwards until at length she stood beside the old man.

His face, seen as she saw it now in the full light of the sunshine, shocked her. It looked so old, so worn, so dying. Yes, that was the look. She had seen it once on the face of an old hunter who had died in their hut.

She was frightened as she put the flowers into his hands, which seemed now so feeble.

He took them, his white lips murmuring feebly—

"To get them now! and too late— too late— I can never return to the cave."

Then a sudden light gleaming in his eyes, which alone seemed to retain their vitality, he said—

"I will. It shall not be too late. Girl, as you hope for mercy, show mercy to me now. Help me to return to the cave, and then do as I bid you."

Not one thought of rebellion came to Liesel, Looking at him with her large dark eyes filled with tears she saw that he needed help, and willingly she gave it him, although she knew that by so doing she would not be able to return home that night. Full well she knew how dangerous it would be abroad in the forest after sunset; for then its wild and fierce denizens prowled forth seeking what they could devour.

How long and wearisome that return seemed. The old man had made her take off her hat and carefully place all seven blossoms in it.

"Fool! fool!" he muttered, "to carry the flowers. My age and feebleness might have robbed them of their virtue, but as yet they are undimmed; they do not droop."

Thinking to please him Liesel said—

"If they wither soon I will return and pluck you some more. The plant may flower again a week or two hence."

"Only once in a thousand years," he muttered feebly, as he leant heavily on his staff and followed her.

How slowly they went. To Liesel even it seemed an age, and at length, before they entered the narrow dark way, the old man was leaning heavily on her shoulder as well as upon his staff.

He kept his face turned from her and said—

"The dying breath— the dying breath of age will blight them. I must not breath upon them."

For this reason he crawled rather than walked in front of her when they entered the narrow path. Many times he stumbled, and would have fallen had not Liesel upheld him; and each time he cried—

"The flowers! the flowers! take heed of the flowers."

There they bloomed, fresh and fair, as Liesel could tell from the soft radiance they shed around them.

At length the old man and Liesel were in the cave. Tottering to the wall he took from a small cavity a tiny earthenware pipkin in which were a few grains of crimson powder.

"Take this flint and tinder," he gasped, "and light the fire which is there prepared. It has waited many years."

Dry sticks were carefully laid one across the other between two stones, over which lay a couple of small bars. Liesel soon kindled the dry fuel, and then obeying the old man took the flowers one by one from her hat, and removing each blossom carefully from its stem, placed them in the pipkin with the powder.

Then from a phial which he took from his bosom the old man poured a little liquid into the pipkin, from which smoke immediately arose. Gasping, "Place it over the flames, and when it boils bring it to me," he lay back panting and laboring for breath, his eyes watching her every movement with a pathetic eagerness.

"Spill but one drop and it is futile," he murmured. "Directly it bubbles bring it here."

Earnestly Liesel watched the contents of the pipkin, from which a strange odor arose slightly confusing her senses. She saw the first bubble rise, then the second. Instantly it was one mass of bubbles. Slowly and carefully she lifted the pipkin, and placed it beside him.

"Five minutes," he murmured; "Five minutes to wait. A life time. Aye, perhaps the ending of a life before that life-giving potion can be raised. I cannot do it. My hands are feeble, shaking. Girl! come hither, and when I tell you carefully, gently place the bowl to my mouth. Another second yet to wait. Another. Now!"

Her senses reeling with the odor which filled the cave, Liesel struggled to his side, and raising the pipkin to his lips heard him murmur—

"And now for another lifetime in the heyday of youth and health which nothing save accident can cut short."

The bowl was at his lips; Liesel saw a film come over the fierce blue eyes, but the resolute will conquered, and he drained the potion to the last dregs.

With a gasping sigh Liesel dropped the bowl, which fell shattered into a dozen fragments; and overcome by the pungent odor which filled the cavern, fell back unconscious.

ii

WHEN she came to herself the fire had burnt itself down into soft white ashes, and she saw the figure of the old man stretched on his couch of leaves. Something in the attitude struck her, and she approached softly. The rude lantern of bear's fat and dried rushes shed its pale light full on the face of the sleeper.

Was he asleep? Liesel touched his forehead softly. It was icy cold; so were his hands. His eyes were wide open, glassy, and staring.

"Alas! alas! he is dead!" cried Liesel, "and the flowers, which must have been some kind of medicine, have failed to keep him alive. Poor old man! when it is daylight I will go home and bring father to bury him. He cannot be left like this."

Then with reverent steps she withdrew softly and sat near the narrow opening of the cave, waiting until she should see light appear at the end of the dark walk, which would, as she knew, herald the return of day.

Poor child! The wild beasts lurked in front of her in the forest; and behind her lay a dead man. Her blood curdled at the thought, and she could not refrain from shuddering and occasionally looking behind her. But neither sound nor movement came from the still occupant of the couch of dried leaves.

At length, after what seemed to the waiting girl years, a faint streak of light showed itself, and then she knew that day had dawned. Rising from her cramped position she fled swiftly away; then paused; and returning, collected an armful of brushwood and placed it carefully across the opening of the cavern. "Wild beasts might come," she said.

Then swiftly she turned homewards. No danger of losing her way, for every footstep seemed familiar as she made her way through the glade, and on and on till she came once more to the peeled sapling. She decided to let it remain there until she brought her father back with her.

To make sure of not missing her way to this spot as she went along she blazed large trees at intervals with her little knife she always carried in her pocket.

Oh! how weary she was before she came once more to familiar landmarks. The huge pine tree under which she often sat and studied botany in her own crude fashion; the slippery rock with its little trickling waterfall, near which she so often gathered ferns and mosses; and here at length was the river, and there her father's hut; and yes, here was her father, still carrying his rifle and wearing his shot belt, hurrying in alarm to meet her.

"Liesel, where have you been?"

"In the forest, father."

"You must have started very early. It is not safe."

"Father, I have been away a day and a night."

"Then as they returned together to the hut and she prepared their simple meal she told him of all that had happened.

"And oh, father!" she concluded, "come back with me and bury the poor old man. I cannot bear to think of him lying there."

"Say no more, Liesel. Of course we will do so; but wait until you are rested, you look white and weary. Go to your bed, my child, and try to sleep awhile."

For three hours Liesel slept the sleep of one utterly exhausted and then woke bright and refreshed, ready and eager to get off with her father, who while she slept had been sorting the numerous skins he had brought home with him and had also made ready their midday meal.

Liesel ate very little, so eager was she to set out, and presently they went forth. The sun was shining fiercely, and even in the depth of the forest they felt its intense heat, although its rays could not reach them. The Harzwald is seen at its best at this time of the day, and Liesel could have revelled in its beauty and the companionship of her father but for the thought of the old man whom she had left stretched stiff and stark in the cave, and to whom they were hastening to give decent burial.

"Saints forbid," said Hans, "that the elves or gnomes should have meddled with him; they are thick about here."

"I saw none," said Liesel, creeping a little closer to him. "And, oh! father, if I had thought of them I should have been dead with fright."

"You were doing a good action, Liesel; and they rarely interfere with the good and pure. But it was a risk; they are very tricky sometimes."

Ere long they came to the peeled wand, and Liesel, pointing down the steep incline, said— "That is where I slipped down twice."

"And came up again. That is the wonder, it is as steep as the side of a wall. I should say, Liesel, that yours was the first human foot that has ever trod the soil down there. But come, you must not linger. Can you find your way to the cave from here?"

"Yes, I could not miss it."

And on they went, coming at length to the glade and the narrow dark pathway leading to the cave. They walked down this in reverent silence, but when at length they reached the cave the brushwood which Liesel had placed at the entrance had been pushed aside and not a trace of the old man was to be seen, save his heavy staff, which stood in the corner.

"Gott im Himmel!" ejaculated Hans. "It is as I thought, the elves have taken him."

"Oh, father! father! perhaps wild beasts."

"Not so; there would be tracks; there are none," said Hans, carefully peering about. "Not one. It is as I said, or perhaps he belonged to the Evil One and he has carried him off. The oil is exhausted in the lantern, Liesel, and if we don't go at once we shall be in total darkness; besides, we can do no good."

They retraced their steps, the mysterious disappearance of the body of the old man haunting their minds, and almost in silence made their way home.

iii

THE next day Hans went forth as usual, but on his return in the evening, contrary to custom, he brought a stranger with him; a young and handsome man, whose tall figure and well-knit frame pleased and delighted Hans.

The stranger had hailed him in cheery, joyful accents and had begged to join him in the chase. Together they had tracked a wild boar and slain him, and now at Hans' urgent invitation the newcomer, who was strangely reticent as to who and what he was and whence he came, had accompanied him home.

Liesel stood at the door awaiting her father's return. The last beams of the setting sun fell on her and lit up her fair young beauty with an almost ethereal radiance.

Hans saw the perceptible start which his companion gave as he caught sight of her and that his wonderful blue eyes almost emitted sparks of light.

"My daughter," Hans said briefly, and this formed the only introduction between the two.

Liesel felt a strong repugnance to the newcomer. His eyes haunted her. Where had she seen them before? Ah! they were the exact counterpart of the old hermit's eyes. Perhaps this youth was a relation— a grandson perhaps— or a great grandson, as he did not appear to be more than nineteen. He gave his name as Paul, and with that they had to be satisfied.

Three days sped and still he lingered, going with Hans every morning and returning with him in the evening. Hans had provided him with a rifle and a knife, and he proved himself a mighty hunter. So much so that Hans pressed him to remain with him and join his fortunes to his; but Paul refused, urging that he must go to Coburg. He wanted, he said, to mingle with his fellow- creatures and fight and battle his way among them. What could Hans be thinking that he kept a beautiful girl like Liesel cooped up among the forests and mountains, when by taking her to a large town she had only to be seen to marry some rich man who would keep her in luxury. "But," he added tenderly, "it is as well. She is a tender little blossom and would perhaps wither in the glare of pleasure. Never fear, Hans, I will return—  return to thee and Liesel."

Liesel turned away.

"Impudent!" she muttered. "What care I if he never returns. I hate his eyes; they make me shudder."

"And now for life and pleasure," said Paul as he took his farewell, "I will return again."

iv

MONTHS passed and they had seen nothing of him; but new pleasures and new interests had crept into Liesel's life.

Her father had brought home with him one evening, in the same manner as he had brought Paul, a young fair hunter, who seeing Liesel had loved her and she in return gave him all her first pure affection.

They, with Hans' full consent, were betrothed; and though his visit to Liesel were rare yet life was now one bright unclouded happiness.

And then one day Paul returned— Paul the same, and yet not the same. There was a weariness and forlornness in his manner which touched Liesel. The world was very different to what he had imagined it, he said. Times and men were changed, and the only happiness to be found was in the solitude of the mountains and forests.

Hans welcomed him heartily, but Liesel felt vaguely unhappy. Neither she nor Hans told Paul of her betrothal to Adolph as yet. Something else intervened. Hans was so curious and intent on hearing all he could about the great world, particularly the price of skins, with which information Paul accurately furnished him— that Liesel's betrothal escaped his memory. And Liesel herself was of too modest and retiring a disposition to speak about anything which concerned herself.

By degrees she noticed that Paul's eyes— the eyes which she dreaded— constantly watched her; that no word, no movement of hers, however slight or unimportant, escaped his notice. He forestalled her when she would have drawn water from the river, and in a hundred little ways showed her that he loved her and that she filled his mind.

This, of course, made Liesel very unhappy, and she determined to ask her father to tell Paul of her betrothal to Adolph.

"If you wish it," said Hans, "particularly as his visit draws nigh again."

That evening Hans told Paul and was troubled and pained at the white, drawn look which came over his face, but he said nothing.

The next day while hunting Hans remonstrated with Paul on the reckless manner in which he was behaving. "If I had not settled that she bear she would have settled you," said Hans. "What has come over you, Paul?"

"Once I thought that life and life alone was worth everything; that to breathe, to feel oneself young, strong, and active was all that could be desired. But of what use is life when a disease fills the heart and mind? When one would give that life many times over for one kind word, one kind look?"

"Poor lad," said Hans, "is it thus with thee? Take heart! There are other maidens as fair and as good as Liesel. Loth though I am to part with thee, yet it is better that thou shouldst go; and maybe thou wilt soon find another maid who will return thy love. Adolph comes this day, perhaps, and it would grieve me sorely if you two lads should quarrel over my Liesel."

A dark scowl swept across Paul's face and his hand instinctively sought the knife at his belt. Hans saw the action and shook his head, muttering "No, no, lad. There must be no bloodshed. Liesel is Adolph's betrothed by reason of their love."

v

A WEEK after this conversation Adolph arrived and Liesel could not hide her joy. The sight of the lovers in their united affection was gall and wormwood to Paul, and he went moodily about, scowling and scarce speaking a word.

Hans feared that mischief was brewing and once more kindly but firmly entreated Paul to leave them, although he told him it "went against the grain" to do so, as it reflected on his hospitality.

The days sped by, bringing their accustomed duties and pleasures to Hans, Liesel, and Adolph. Alas! there were no pleasures for Paul. He spent sleepless miserable nights and moody profitless days. At length there came a day when by some chance Hans, while hunting with his two companions, became separated from them. Paul and Adolph were thrown together. They were tracking a brown bear. It had led them a long and circuitous chase, but at length they could tell they must be getting close to its lair. It was at no very great distance from Hans' hut, and Adolph spoke with horror of its proximity to Liesel.

"She often wanders alone in the forest," he said.

"Whom do you mean by she?" asked Paul sulkily. He had been filled with murderous thoughts against Adolph from the moment of finding himself alone with him.

"Why, Liesel— my betrothed."

"Your betrothed," said Paul sneeringly. "There are other men in the world besides you."

"Yes; but my Liesel cares for none of them. She only cares for me."

"It's a lie," thundered Paul, springing upon him. "Defend yourself if you can, for you or I must die."

"Paul!" exclaimed Adolph, warding off his attack. "Are you mad? I have no cause of quarrel against you."

"But I have with you," shouted Paul, his blue eyes blazing with wrath. "But for you Liesel would have loved me, and now— and now— life is not worth living."

Before Adolph could prevent him he had raised his hand swiftly and pierced his own side with his knife.

Adolph knelt beside him as he lay on the turf. The blood welling from the wound was fast staining its emerald hue with a dark purple color.

"Paul! Paul! what have you done? Help! Help! Hans! Hans!" he shouted, loading his rifle rapidly and letting off two or three charges in quick succession— a signal agreed upon in case of need.

Hans, who had been unsuccessful and was returning homeward, was on the spot in a very short tune. His horror was great at seeing Paul, who was now almost speechless but conscious. In answer to Hans' terrified questions as to whether they had fought he shook his head. Adolph explained rapidly as they quickly made a litter for the fast-dying man.

Tenderly they carried him home, and as the sun was setting, in at the open door, white and tearful, Liesel met them.

Paul feebly stretched his hand towards her, and as Hans held a flask to his lips he revived enough to whisper!

"Liesel, I am dying. Life was not worth living without love— your love; there was only one woman's love worth gaining— Liesel, bend closer. It will be death this time. Do you remember— the cave— do you remember— " His voice died away; the feeble grasp of his fingers relaxed and silence reigned in the little hut, for Death, the King of Terrors, had forced an entrance.

WHEN Liesel in after days, a happy wife and mother, told Hans that Paul had by his last whispered words to her confirmed the suspicion which she had always had— that his spirit had once inhabited the worn-out frame of the old, old man who had been known as the Hermit— Hans laughed and pinching her cheek softly said—

"Happiness has turned thy brain, Liesel. If the Hermit could have gained a new lease of life, and such life and youth and health as poor Paul had, do you think he would have forfeited it all after one short year? No, no. The Hermit was spirited away by elves or gnomes, who, as you know, haunt these parts."

"Never mind," said Liesel under her breath; "I know what I know." He spoke of the cave, and he said— "Life was not worth living without Love."

____________

14: At Plangeants Locks

Duncan Campbell Scott

1862-1947

Ainslee's Magazine Feb 1902

Duncan Campbell Scott

The author was a Canadian career civil servant, poet, and author.

WE were seated in the linden shade at Plangeant's Locks, on the Rideau Canal, with our lines in a bass pool. The whole world seemed half fallen asleep to the lull of the water escaping through the waste weir. Sometimes its sound seemed a joyous expression of freedom from the toil of lifting and lowering like a slave in the Canal Locks, sometimes like a murmur at its idle lot, as it lapsed beyond the channels of commerce, passing even a stone mill whose water wheel had so long been thrown out of gear that the lever for that purpose had quite rotted and dropped away. The lock behind us was full of cool deep shadowed water, covered with flat flakes of foam, as delicate in outline as the surface of that flower called "Queen Anne's Lace Handkerchief." Against them one might see the bass veer by.

Upon a little rise the lockmaster's house was covered with oak shadows. Terrace above terrace from the lock were tiers of pansy beds, clumps of sweet William, and the discs of hollyhocks in distinct gem-like colours hanging like little bucklers on their shafts of sage-green. The sense of these things hidden from view was present in the dark wall of trees that bordered the clear shore of the fishing pool. Amid the green started the blossom of an acacia, so heavy that the branches bowed to the water. Each bloom lived once in clear air, and again in clear water, the whole mass, substance and reflection, forming a hemisphere of green lit with the lustrous lantern-like heads of flowers. Only at times the light wind blurred the under half of the picture and brought over its ghost in a faint perfume recalling the fragile scent of lemons. When the odour ebbed and the water-half of the picture came again, an oriole flashed across and up, quenching in the dense shade the fire of his vivid wings.

I was lapsing into a state harmonious with the charm of the drowsy atmosphere when my companion touched my arm recalling me to the responsibilities of the rod. His voice sounded ancient, as it was; and far off, although he was at my elbow.

"Don't 'ee let the bait float low, there be always Lieutenants asnuzzling about in the mud."

"And what may Lieutenants be?" I inquired, raising my frog into a zone of safety.

"Lieutenants? That's a name we have hereabouts for eels, because they take things as doesn't belong to them. Lieutenants for short, Lieutenant Ansteys for long. Although I don't suppose there be more'n two or three people about here, and those very old, that could tell 'e the rights of that story."

I encouraged him to proceed, and rather than look directly at him I watched his shadow in the water. There he was mirrored, the round, small, resolute head, with the grey hair and moustache cropped close; the face almost without wrinkles, and brown as if stained with butternut juice. There was the colour from a faded red coat; over his breast it was barred with stripes of ribbon that marked the places for medals won at Alma and at Balaclava. As he talked I watched all the movements of pipe-filling and the wreathes of smoke that passed above his head out upon the shining breast of the pool.

ALL THIS HAPPENED in my father's time. In his day he was the master at Plangeant's Locks, and after wandering half over the world I came back to be the master, and now my son takes the place. So you see it goes from father to son. It happened when the canal was a-building, years ago, in 1828. The work was done by the Royal Engineers, and the Sappers and Miners, and on the way from Kingston to Bytown, as Ottawa City was first called, there were many men of all sorts from as high as lords' sons to as low as a Scotch pick-man or an Irish hod-carrier. Roll them all up together in your mind, they were a rough lot, and at times there were strange doings. But you could pick fine gentlemen out of the pack, and honesthearted coarse men as ever breathed life's breath. Two of the fine gentlemen were Major John and his brother Captain Cavendish Lancegaye of the Royal Engineers, and one of the honest-hearted was my father. He was handy man to Captain Lancegaye, who picked him out from the list, and the old Colonel, Strauben was his name, let him serve as if the Captain was an officer in his own regiment. The Major and his brother were fast friends, as were David and Jonathan; and they were nephews to Lord Plangeant, sons of his own younger brother. That's how this bit of the world came to be called Plangeant's Locks, as you will see in the end. The Major was heir to the title, as Lord Plangeant had never married.

Now there was hereabouts a quarry for stone and out of it came the pieces for these locks and others, the stone being easily got and of a very good kind. Over the quarry-men was one called McKenzie Maxwell, a man from the other side of Scotland somewhere, a tall, burly, knowing-looking sort of person, my father used to say; just the sort to beat down a lot of wild fellows who had come up from the ends of the world to meet there in that unheard-of place to do a little stone-quarrying. But the story is not so much of McKenzie Maxwell as of his daughter Maraquita, although the stubborness of the man was a part of it.

My father used always to begin to describe Maraquita Maxwell, and as often his thoughts would out-measure his words and he would end in confusion. She had her beauty and her name from her Spaniard mother. My father could get as far as her eyes that were as brown as these water-pools, and her dark piled-up hair, blue black like spruces in shadow, but her mouth and the shape of her face, and her expression of conquering everything, he failed upon. Somewhat he had to say plainly about the way she held herself, and the manner of her walk, that was the cause of all the love that was stirred up by her. Another cause of it was that she was slave to her step-mother, a low woman, and a vile spoken one that rises up into a quarrel at a word. Maraquita looked forlorn with all the second brood of Maxwell brats about and under her proud feet, and it galled all men who saw her waste patience upon such.

Now it was Major John Lancegaye who had charge and oversight of this section of the works, and under him was his brother, my father's master, Captain Cavendish Lancegaye, and under him was a Lieutenant, Lieutenant Anstey. (Unconsciously at the mention of the Lieutenant I again raised my bait, which during the narrative had sunk into dangerous depths.)

My father believed that they were, the three of them, in love at the same time with Maraquita Maxwell, although there was nothing at all to prove that his master, the Captain, had been overcome by her, nothing whatever to prove it at the time. They all knew her and saw her in her father's bit of a place back from the quarry on a knoll, for each one of them was passing back and forth inspecting and superintending the works. But he who saw her the oftenest was the Lieutenant who had charge of the stone, so to speak, and its transport.

There was no manner of doubt that the Lieutenant was in love with Maraquita Maxwell, and there was also no manner of doubt that she hated him. But yet he had some peculiar influence over her. He had risen from the ranks and was of no very good family. A heavy, tall, forbidding-looking person he was, strong beyond all belief, and with a tongue that would thrash and wheedle; the one as well as the other. There was one real uncanny thing about him and that was the way his eyes were set in his head, too far apart for nature, and the colour of them a stone-green. My father would say the dear Maraquita was the contrast to him in every way, and she fled away from him when she could, fawn from panther. Only at times, in Maxwell's bit of a house, there was no fleeing, she had to sit in the glitter of his eyes. It was then she changed under his power and sat as if mazed with her hands in her lap.

If the Lieutenant was ugly there were no handsomer men anywhere than the Lancegayes, only about Major John there was the oddity that one of his eyes was blue and the other hazel.

Well, it happened in the autumn of the year in September month, that Major Lancegaye came up to make an inspection of the works. He had with him a fine party of friends, and among them was the chaplain, Todhunter of the 41st, and Captain Cavendish and my father. After a day or two they parted, the Major with his party went to report himself to the Colonel at By Town, and the Captain went back to Kingston, my father with him. And so far as any one seemed to know, there was nothing happened at that meeting out of the ordinary; but there was, as you shall soon hear. It was toward the middle of November, with the ice not yet taken, when my father happened to come here with some instructions for the Lieutenant, and as his luck would have it, he arrived just in the nick. The whole Maxwell establishment was in a perfect storm. Mrs. Maxwell was in high voice that morning, and her words were like a cloud of hornets. She was calling Maraquita. every vile name under the sun that is applied by one low woman to another woman when she thinks that other is not all she should be. Maraquita was as quiet and cold as one of those same frosty mornings, neither answering yea nor nay, and her father was as bad and strong against her. Just as they were at the worst in walked Lieutenant Anstey.

"What is all this about, Maxwell?" he said.

"It's trouble that has come to a respectable family," answered Mrs. Maxwell, taking the words away from her husband. Anstey looked at Maraquita, and my father saw her shiver and try to sit down. The Lieutenant handed her a chair and whispered something to her, whereupon she was quiet and said not a word. Then spoke Anstey, standing up ugly and strong, and my father heard his very words:

"If I have wronged your daughter, Maxwell, I will make amends. I will make her my wife."

"Is this true, Maraquita?" said Maxwell. "Should this man be your husband?"

Poor Maraquita glanced up and eyes quivered and misty look came over them, and she dropped her head. She seemed all abroad.

"Huht! the jade has never a word to say when a gentleman wants to make her an honest woman," cried Mrs. Maxwell.

"Close your mouth," said Maxwell sternly. "Lieutenant Anstey and I will settle this between us."

And out they walked and off into the air. My father could not stand hearing Mrs. Maxwell's abuse any longer, and away he went deep in his own thoughts. But after that night he had something more to think of. He was to go back to Kingston the next morning and at dusk he was down at the shore pitching his canoe with an Indian that had come with him. They had a handful of fire to warm the pitch, and there were many stars in the sky. Suddenly some one bent over him and he saw the half of Maraquita's scared face.

"Soldier, for the love of God and the love of your own women folk, take me away from here. They will make me marry a man I hate."

My father was a gallant man.

"Indeed; I shall do that," he said. "Be you here before daybreak to- morrow and we'll have a good start of them at sunrise."

"May God bless you," she whispered.

But as she went away my father saw Anstey's figure up against the cold north sky on the edge of the over-hill. In the morning he waited until sunrise, and he thought he heard a call or scream, but Maraquita never came. When my father got to Kingston he told Captain Cavendish what had happened. He just walked the floor night after night.

"I will never believe that of Maraquita Maxwell!" he said over and over again, but after a week he sat down and showed no sign. It was maybe in ten days that my father was here again to see Lieutenant Anstey hammer at Maxwell's door to be driven off like a thieving dog.

One of the women told him: "Aye, it is ever like that; some say he and the daughter are married, some say no; but whether or no, neither bite nor bed does Anstey have in the Maxwell house."

It was true. My father knew no more then but that Maxwell, now he had had his rash way, would have it further; and listening to Maraquita's pleadings, would not let Anstey so much as look upon her.

That winter set in with hard frost without snow, and the lakes were strong ice from shore to shore. So what should Major Lancegaye do but skate from the Ottawa with his friends, all except the chaplain. When they got here they rested. Major Lancegaye asked Maxwell for the news, and Maxwell answered him very civilly, for he respected him.

Then the Major asked for Maraquita. "We've had a wedding since you were here, Major."

"Yes!" said the Major, smiling. "I shall have to drink the bride's health."

"Then it will be Maraquita's!" said Maxwell.

"You're joking, Maxwell," said the Major, choking in his speech.

"Not at all; she's married to Lieutenant Anstey."

The Major fell down on a bench by the door as if he had been shot.

"Tell me about this, Maxwell, man. I cannot understand you."

"That's the plain fact!"

"But a clergyman?"

"Well, there was no clergyman within eighteen miles of here, so according to law we drove over to Mr. Peter's, who is a Justice of the Peace."

"I fear there has been some terrible mistake, Maxwell!"

He got so far but had no further chance for questions or explanations, for Lieutenant Anstey crowded in at his elbow. "What is that you say, Major?"

"I was not speaking to you, you damned sorcerer," cried the Major, jumping to his feet.

"I heard what you were saying. It was an insult to my wife, Major Lancegaye."

The Major did not wait to hear more. He was a proud imperious young man and he struck the Lieutenant a peeling blow across the face with his skate-strap.

"You shall pay for this dearly," said the Lieutenant, touching his face where the buckle had marked him.

"As you please, and when you please."

There had been several officer friends of Major Lancegaye's who had come near, hearing the quarrel, and they now began to interfere with the Major and tell him that he could not fight.

"Gentlemen," he said, quite calm and collected, "this is no ordinary quarrel, so great and deep is it that no rank shall stand between us."

Then there was a great to-do about weapons, as no one there had either pistols or swords. It happened that there was near Maxwell's house a tool shed and against this there were several hammers of the kind the workmen used to tap the wedges when splitting the stones.

"We'll fight with these," said the Major, swinging up one of the sledges.

"Certainly," replied the Lieutenant, "you have chosen the weapons."

They went down into the quarry where there was a level place and there they fought it out. The Major whispered to some of his friends:

"I am going to knock this bully's brains out, but if anything happens to me, give Cavendish my love and remind him that I always said he would bear the title."

Well, in this sort of a duel the Lieutenant had the advantage with his long reach and his height. But the Major was as valiant as could be. They had many rallies and counter strokes, till at last the Major made a terrible blow at Anstey's head. The force was so great that when it missed Lancegaye fell forward a little, and the hammer nearly dropped from his hand. Then Anstey shortened his grip and gave him a jab behind the ear and broke his neck; yes, broke his neck. There he lay as dead as dead.

"I'll call you to witness, gentlemen," said Anstey, as pious as a deacon, "that this quarrel was none of my picking."

But no one paid any attention to him, as they tried with all their arts to bring Major Lancegaye back to life. My father heard all this afterwards, just as it was told Captain Lancegaye. He used to say he never saw a man grieve as his master did. There was his dear brother killed by a scoundrel, and him baulked of all sudden revenge for there was another General Order at once against all manner of duelling. So he had to brood upon it and bide his time.

As weeks went on he seemed to feel remorse for something that was very heavy upon him. My father used to hear him muttering as he walked the floor:

"Never, never, so help me God. I shall never accept."

It seemed to be something in regard to the lands and titles of Lord Plangeant; but, although my father was close in touch with his master, who often asked for his advice, he could not rightly make out what it was that so bothered him.

As the winter wore on the Captain became so dejected that he applied for leave of absence to visit England. You must know that letters kept coming addressed to the Major from those who did not know he was dead. Captain Cavendish would not open them but laid them away one by one in a drawer in his cabinet.

"You should open them every one, sir," my father said time and again; "you should read them, sir, there may be business of importance to attend to, and you should answer to it." But no,— Captain Cavendish only shook his head.

"You're wrong, sir," my father would say, "if you will pardon your obedient and faithful servant for saying so."

It was in the month of March one day when my father was called in to find the Captain seated at his desk with a lot of letters before him. He was as pale as a lily.

"I have at last taken your advice," he said, "and I wish I had done so before; will you tell me what you think of that?"

"I will do so, sir, thanking you for your confidence in me," says my father.

"I value your advice," said the Captain, "next to no live man's. Let me have it."

The letter was from Lord Plangeant to the Major who had asked his permission to marry, as that was the old custom of the family. The Earl gave it in very gracious terms, and said he would have Edendene put in order for the Major and his bride. There was one amazing sentence.

"If Miss Maxwell is as beautiful and good as you describe her, your old uncle will be the first to ac- knowledge it, as he is the first to wish you well." My father did not know whether to believe his eyes or not. "What do you think of that? Tell me what I am to do?"

"I think," said my father slowly, "that for more reasons than one it is a damned shame that it wasn't the other way round and that the Major had broken that devil's neck."

Only he put it much stronger than that.

"I think with you," said the young man with a groan. "What am I to do?"

They saw it all perfectly clear how the quarrel had come between the Major and Anstey.

"You can do nothing just now."

"So it seems to me, You're a wonderful man."

But my father used to tell me that he always tried to say what he knew his master would think, and then if necessary draw him on from that. The Captain was pacing up and down when he stopped suddenly and struck his heel on the floor.

"Do you realise this?" he cried.

"I do," said my father.

"Well, let's hear what you make of it."

"The woman that your brother (as gallant a gentleman as ever said his prayers) would have married is now married to as vile a bloody villain as ever smoked with the devil."

Only he put it much stronger than that.

"That's it," said he. "That's the way I think of it."

"And you tell me she's—"

"They say so."

"My God, what a fate. Look upon this picture and then upon that!—"

He sat him down and hid his face in the bundle of opened letters. As he said nothing more my father left him; and he said nothing more when he was at dinner, but he looked grave and worn, and chose but a morsel or so.

In the middle of the night my father heard him call and went into him. The poor young man had not gone to bed. He looked haggard and tormented in the light of the candles that were burned nearly into their sockets.

"Do you realise this; tell me do you know what this means?" My father went over it again while the Captain paced the room and bit his fingers, and when my father was done he stopped and looked at him.

"No," he says after awhile, sadly, "there is more than that, much more than that!" He sat down and threw himself along the table. "I understand, sir, God help you!"

"Try to realise it, you cannot, man!"

"Ah, sir, you find yourself now in the position the Major was in when he fought that day with the villain Anstey."

For my father now discovered that he loved Maraquita.

"By God," he cried, "I'll kill him. He shall not escape me!"

"So, but at present you will get to your bed, or he will be the death of you also."

It was just three days after that when the post came in and there were many letters from England for Captain Lancegaye. My father laid them out for him and he read them during breakfast. He seemed to be much exercised by the contents of several, particularly one in a large stout blue envelope. He kept muttering, "Never, never!" under his breath.

After an hour he called in my father.

"Pollock!" he said, "what think you of this?"

It was a letter from a lawyer firm, out of the big blue envelope telling him that Lord Plangeant was dead and that he had succeeded to the title and estates.

"I think you are to be congratulated, sir, and without sorrow, for Lord Plangeant was full of years and weary of it all."

"Oh! Pollock," he cried out, "I cannot accept it; I am unworthy of it."

"You may think so," said my father, "but the next of kin is hardly more worthy!"

"I'll tell you plainly why I am unworthy. When you came to me, Pollock, with word of John's death, the first thing that I thought of was that I was now heir to the title!"

"That was bad, sir. It was low and bad!"

"No cad could have done worse," groaned the young man.

"That is true, but there is deep vileness in the heart of every man, and you sorrowed afterwards!"

"I was broken-hearted, but that will not wipe out this inward stain, Pollock."

"There is plenty of time to decide; I would take a day or two! You may be in haste now, but that wouldn't bring the old Earl alive again!"

"Think it over yourself, Pollock, and let me hear what you decide!"

"Thank you, sir, I will," said my father.

Nothing more was said upon the subject that day. Early the next morning he went in, according to his custom, to open the shutters in the Captain's room; when he turned about the young officer had his hands under his head and was wide awake.

"Your Lordship's bath is ready!"

"Pollock!"

"Yes, my Lord."

The young man sprang up in bed and tried to say something. And from that day onward, to the day of his death, he was Lord Plangeant.

There had been some delay in granting the Captain's leave of absence, but shortly afterwards it was granted and early in May he prepared to set out for England. My father was, of course, packing his belongings, when one morning in his cabinet he came upon the drawer where the dead Major's letters had been put, and in it were yet three or four.

"Did you open all the Major's letters, my Lord?"

"I believe so, Pollock. Don't 'my lord' so much."

"It is necessary for you to get well wonted to the sound of it. There are several letters here unopened."

"Then open them, Pollock, and hand them to me to read."

My father did so; to two of them he paid no attention; the third gave him a changed face.

"A letter from poor Todhunter," he said, "and only the other day we were reading that he had died of ship's fever in Quebec. My God! what have we here?"

He handed the papers to my father. It was a letter from the Chaplain, Todhunter, who apologised for not having sent the inclosure sooner; he hoped that the Major would soon hear from Lord Plangeant, and that all was well. The inclosed was in a separate envelope addressed to Mistress John Lancegaye. It was her certificate of marriage to the Major, dated September twentieth, 1828!

"Here is a to-do!" said Lord Plangeant. "What think you of this, Pollock?"

"It's damned bad, sir. Maraquita is a fair bigamist, and against her will somehow I dare swear."

"Her child, if a boy, might be... eh, Pollock?"

"True, my Lord, when born he might be rightful heir to the title."

"And I would be no longer Lord Plangeant?"

"True, my Lord."

"It strikes me, Pollock, I'm no more 'my lord' than you are."

"There is some room for doubt; the other marriage now— who is to prove that the child—!"

"I shall never believe that of Maraquita Maxwell," he said fiercely. Then after a pause he added, looking up sharply, "How many months, Pollock?"

My father counted on his fingers up to eight! Lord Plangeant whistled softly.

"Tell me, what do you think I should do?"

"I should go there and see for myself. No one knows what has happened. If there is any doubt whose the child is, my Lord, you have but to keep this paper. The Rev. John Todhunter is dead; the secret is between us."

Two days after that they were here in the dusk of the evening. Lord Plangeant sent my father up to Maxwell's to reconnoitre. When he came back Maxwell was with him.

"It is all right, my Lord," he said. "All right?"

"Aye, Maxwell, here, will explain."

Maxwell stood up tall between them, his bonnet in his hand. "My Lord Plangeant," he said, "until Anstey killed your brother, the Major, I did not know that he was true husband to my Maraquita. She had vowed to him, my Lord, that she would tell no one until he had received word that his uncle was willing he should marry. She kept her vow."

"But, Anstey—" broke in Lord Plangeant impatiently, "I want to hear—"

"My Lord," said Maxwell, "I had force and he had witchcraft, and between us we married the maid. But he was never husband to her; no, it was one thing to protect my daughter's good name, as I thought I was doing, and another to force her to live with Anstey. That she never could do, and I stood by her. When I found out the truth, although Maraquita has nought to prove it, I did not know what to do, being an ignorant man."

"By God," cried Lord Plangeant, breaking away from my father and throwing back his cloak, "I shall kill him— this fellow Anstey, before I go farther."

"Some one has done that for you!" said my father, taking off his cap."

"Cheated of revenge also!" cried Lord Plangeant. "Who has slipped in here?"

"God Almighty. Anstey took to drink, my Lord, and the other night he fell into one of the quarry pits and knocked his brains out."

Lord Plangeant went apart and wrapped himself in his cloak and thought upon it all, and so did my father. Then he waved Maxwell to one side.

"Pollock," he said, "what would you do if you were in my place?"

"My Lord, I should first make sure of myself— whether I was in love with the lady— then— "

Lord Plangeant started up and was half up the hill to Maxwell's.

"My Lord, rashness is no valour here. You must remember that a marriage with your dead brother's wife would not be legal in England."

He came back sadly.

"Then there is nothing to be done."

"Destroy the evidence!"

"There is no villain here so exquisite as that."

"Unless Maraquita would do it!"

"What?"

"Burn the certificate."

"No one could suggest it."

"She will argue maybe after this fashion, if a rude soldier may think what is in a woman's head. She may not love you now, let that be. You are to offer her marriage and with that goes a sure title, and you may be certain she has often thought of that in her pride. The child she bears may be a boy, well and good; and if that comes to pass you hand her the very paper that will overset your claim. She will think then of your generosity. But it may be a girl, and then, at best, she is dowager countess and a pensioner upon your bounty. By her marriage with you, my Lord, she would gain much surely: her registered marriage with Anstey is in the past, her standing and issue is secure. You trust her and hand her the certificate; she trusts you, and burns it."

"I could not suggest such a thing, Pollock."

"Make your honourable offer, My Lord; leave the rest to Maraquita."

"Poor John!" he said as he walked up the hill to Maxwell's house, "Poor John!"

My father watched through a little window into the Maxwells' living room while he was waiting. There they sat and talked. Maraquita kept her dark eyes downcast, and was folding and unfolding a paper, when my father saw her raise it and slowly and deliberately set it on fire in the candle flame. It fell down in ashes. In a few minutes Lord Plangeant came out to my father.

"Go," he said hurriedly, "to Kingston, bring the Rev. Stuart with you; we shall leave here to- morrow morning, and we shall be married where we meet."

Two evenings after, they met at the third portage. My father said he could never forget the beautiful Maraquita, as she stood there and was married to the Lord Plangeant in the light of the camp fire. She was shrouded in a military cloak belonging to the Major (her first husband, so to speak) with two silver lion's heads for clasps, and each lion had one eye a sapphire and the other a topaz. It had been given him by the old Earl, and the jewels were a play, so to speak, upon the Major's eyes, the one being blue, and the other hazel.

Not more than three weeks after that the little Lord Edendene was born, and the Almighty had given Lord Plangeant a sign of Maraquita's honesty, for when the baby's eyes cleared, they were his father's, one blue and one hazel.

That was long years ago, and I would not be telling you now this family secret, but that Maraquita had no more children and Lord Edendene died unmarried, so the title went to another branch of the family.

HIS VOICE had hardly ceased when the mirror of the pool into which I had been looking, unconsciously, was shattered. My line gyrated furiously, sending ripples crossing each other in all directions. I felt a series of mad jerks that made my arm tingle to the shoulder.

"There," I heard a voice saying, "a Lieutenant sure enough. I told ye to keep the bait afloat, they be always asnuzzling about in the mud."

__________________

15: How 7 Went Mad

Bram Stoker

1847-1912

In: Under the Sunset, 1882

Abraham Stoker

ON the bank of the river that flows through the Land there stands a beautiful palace, where one of the great men dwells.

The bank rises steep from the rushing water; and the great trees growing on the slope rise so high that their branches wave level with the palace turrets. It is a beautiful spot, where the grass is crisp and short and close like velvet, and as green as emerald. There the daisies shine like stars that have fallen, and lie scattered over the sward.

Many children have lived and grown to be men and women in the old palace, and they have had many pets. Amongst their pets have been many birds— for birds of all kinds love the place. In one corner is a spot which is called the Birds' Burying Ground. Here all the pets are laid when they die; and the grass grows greenly here, and many flowers spring up among the monuments.

One of the boys that had here dwelt had once, as a pet, a raven. He found the bird, whose leg had been wounded, and took it home and nursed it till it grew well again; but the poor thing was lame.

Tineboy was the youth's name; and the bird was called Mr. Daw. As you may imagine, the raven loved the boy and never left him. There was a cage for it in his bedroom, and there the bird went every night to roost when the sun went down. Birds go to bed quite regularly of their own accord; and if you wished to punish a bird you would make him get up. Birds are not like boys and girls. Just fancy punishing boys or girls by not letting them go to bed at sunset, or by preventing them getting up very early in the morning.

Well, when morning came this bird would get up and stretch himself, and wink his eyes, and give a good shake all over, and then feel quite awake and ready to begin the day.

A bird has a much easier time of it in getting up than a boy or a girl. Soap cannot get into its eye; or the comb will not stick in knots of hair, and its shoe-laces never get into black knots. This is because it does not use soap, or combs, or shoe-laces; if it did, perhaps it also would suffer.

When Mr. Daw had quite finished his own dressing, he would hop on the bed and try and wake his master and make him get up; but of the two to wake him was the easier task. When the boy went to school the bird would fly along the road beside him, and would sit near on a tree till school was over, and then would follow him home again in the same way.

Tineboy was very fond of Mr. Daw and he used sometimes to try to make him come into the schoolroom during school-hours. But the bird was very wise, and would not.

One day Tineboy was at his sums, and instead of attending to what he was doing, he kept trying to make Mr. Daw come in. The sum was "multiply 117,649 by 7." Tineboy and Mr. Daw kept looking at one another. Tineboy made signals to the bird to come in. Mr. Daw, however, would not stir; he sat outside in the shade, for the day was very hot, and put his head on one side and looked in knowingly.

"Come in, Mr. Daw," said Tineboy, "and help me to do this sum.''  Mr. Daw only croaked.

"Seven times nine are seventy-seven, seven times nine are seventy-nine— no ninety-seven. Oh, I don't know— I wish number 7 had never been invented," said Tineboy.

"Croak," said Mr. Daw.

The day was very hot and Tineboy was very sleepy. He thought that perhaps he would be able to do the sum better if he rested a little while, just to think; and so he put his head down on the table. He was not quite comfortable, for his forehead was on the 7, at least he thought it was; so he shifted it till it hung right down over the edge of the desk. Then, after a while, somehow, very queer things began to happen.

The Teacher was just going to tell them a story.

The scholars had all settled themselves down to listen; the Raven sat on the sill of the open window, put his head on one side, closed one eye— the eye nearest the school-room— so that they might think him asleep, and listened away harder than any of them.

The pupils were all happy— all except three. One because his leg went to sleep; another because she had her pocket full of curds and wanted to eat them, and couldn't without being found out, and the curds were melting away; and the third, who was awfully sleepy, and awfully anxious to hear the story, and couldn't do either because of the other.

The schoolmaster then began his story.

How Poor 7 Went Mad

"The Alphabet Doctor— "

Here he was interrupted by Tineboy, who said—

"What is an Alphabet Doctor?"

"An Alphabet Doctor," said the schoolmaster, "is the doctor who attends to the sicknesses and diseases of the letters of the Alphabet."

"How have Alphabets diseases and sicknesses?" asked Tineboy.

"Oh, they have plenty. Do you never make a crooked O or a capital A with a lame leg, or a T that is not straight in its back?"

There was a chorus from all the class, "He does. He does often." Ruffin, the biggest boy, said after all the others, "Very often. In fact always."

"Very well, then there must be some one to put them straight again, must there not?"

None of the children could say that there was not. Tineboy alone was heard to mutter to himself, "I don't believe it."

The schoolmaster began again—

"The Alphabet Doctor was sitting down to his tea. He was very tired, for he had been out attending cases all day."

Tineboy again interrupted, "What cases?"

"I can tell you. He had to put in an i which had been omitted, and to alter the leg of an R which had been twisted into a B.

"Well, just as he was beginning his tea a hurried knock came to the door. He went to the door, opened it, and a groom rushed into the room, breathless with running, and said—

" 'Oh, Doctor, do come quick; there is a frightful calamity down at our place.' "

" 'What is our place?' said the doctor."

" 'Oh, you know. The Number Stables.'"

"What are the Number Stables?" said Tineboy, again interrupting.

"The Number Stables," said the Teacher, "are the stables where the numbers are kept."

"Why are they kept in stables?" said Tineboy.

"Because they go so fast."

"How do they go fast?"

"You take a sum and work it and you will see at once. Or look at your multiplication table; it starts with twice one are two, and before you get down the page you are at twelve times twelve. Is that not fast going?"

"Well, they have to keep the numbers in sables, or else they would run away altogether and never be heard of again. At the end of the day they all come home and change their shoes, and get tied up and have their supper."

"The Groom from the Number Stables was very impatient."

" 'What is wrong?' said the Doctor."

" 'Oh, poor 7, sir.'"

" 'What of him?'"

" 'He is mortal bad. We don't think he'll ever get through it.'"

" 'Through what?' said the Doctor."

" 'Come and see,' said the Groom."

"The Doctor hurried away, taking the lantern with him, for the night was dark, and soon got to the Stables."

"As he got close there was a very curious sound heard— a sound of gasping and choking, and yelling and coughing, and laughing, and a wild, unearthly screech all in one."

" 'Oh, do come quick!' said the Groom."

"When the Doctor entered the stables there was poor No. 7 with all the neighbours round him, and he was in a very bad way. He was foaming at the mouth and apparently quite mad. The Nurse from the Grammar Village was holding him by the hand, trying to bleed him. All the neighbours were wringing either their hands or their necks, or were helping to hold him. The Footsmith,— the man," explained the teacher, seeing from the look on Tineboy's face that he was going to ask a question, "the man who puts the feet on the letters and numbers to make them able to stand upright without wearing out,— was holding down the poor demented nuummbeer."

"The Nurse, trying to quiet him, said:"

" 'There now, there now, deary— don't go and make a noise. Here comes the good Alphabet Doctor, who will make you unmad.'"

" 'I won't be made unmad,' said 7, loudly."

" 'But, my good sir,' said the Doctor, 'this cannot go on. You surely are not mad enough to insist on being mad?'"

" 'Yes, I am,' said 7, loudly."

" 'Then,' said the Doctor blandly, 'if you are mad enough to insist on being mad, we must try to cure your madness or being mad, and then you will be unmad enough to wish to be unmad, and we will cure that too.'"

"I don't understand that,'' said Tineboy.

"Hush!" said the class.

"The Doctor took out his stethoscope, and his telescope, and his microscope, and his horoscope, and began to use them on poor mad 7."

"First he put the stethoscope to the sole of his foot, and began to talk into it."

" 'That is not the way to use that,' said the Nurse; 'you ought to put it to his chest and listen to it.'"

" 'Not at all, my dear madam,' said the bland Doctor, 'that is the way with sane people; but, of course, when one is insane, the fact of the disease necessitates an opposite method of treatment.' Then he took the telescope and looked at him to see how near he was, and the microscope to look how small; and then he drew his horoscope."

"Why did he draw it?" said Tineboy.

"Because, my dear child," said the Teacher, "do you not see that by right a horoscope is cast; but as the poor man was mad the horoscope had to be drawn."

"What is a horrorscope?" said Tineboy.

"It is not horrorscope, my child; it is horoscope— a very different thing."

"Well, what is horoscope?"

"Look in your dictionary, my dear child," said the Teacher.

"Well, when the doctor had used all the instruments, he said, 'I use all these in order to find the scope of the disease. I shall now proceed to find the cause. In the first instance, I shall interrogate the patient.'"

" 'Now, my good sir, why do you insist on being mad?'"

" 'Because I choose.'"

" 'Oh, my dear sir, that is not a polite answer. Why do you choose?'"

" 'I can't say why,' said 7 'unless I make a speech.'"

" 'Well, make a speech.'"

" 'I can't speak till I am set free; how can I make a speech with all these people holding me?'"

" 'We are afraid to let you go,' said the Nurse, 'you will run away.'"

" 'I will not.'"

" 'You promise that?' said the doctor."

" 'I promise,' said 7."

" 'Let him go,' said the Doctor, and accordingly they put a piece of carpet under him, and the Footsmith sat on his head, the way they do when horses fall down in the street. Then they all got clear away, and the Footsmith got away too; and after a long struggle 7 got to his feet."

" 'Now make the speech,' said the Doctor."

" 'I can't begin,' said 7, 'till I get a glass of water on a table. Who ever heard of any one making a speech without a glass of water!'"

"So they brought a glass of water."

" 'Ladies and Gentlemen— ' began 7, and then stopped."

" 'What are you waiting for?' said the Doctor."

" 'For the applause, of course,' said 7. 'Who ever heard of a speech without applause?'"

"They all applauded."

" 'I am mad,' said 7, 'because I choose to be mad; and I never shall, will, might, could, should, would, or ought to be anything but mad. The treatment that I get is enough to make me mad.'"

" 'Dear me, dear me!' said the Doctor. 'What treatment?'"

" 'Morning, noon, and night am I treated worse than any slave. There is not in the whole range of learning any one thing that has so much to bear as I have. I work hard all the time. I never grumble. I am often a multiple; often a multiplicand. I am willing to bear my share of being a result, but I cannot stand the treatment I get. I am wrong added, wrong divided, wrong subtracted, and wrong multiplied. Other numbers are not treated as I am; and, besides, they are not orphans like me.'"

" 'Orphans?' asked the Doctor; 'what do you mean?'"

" 'I mean that the other numbers have lots of relations. But I have neither kith nor kin except old Number l, and he does not count for much; and, besides, I am only his great-great-great-great- grandson.'"

" 'How do you mean?' asked the Doctor."

" 'Oh, he is an old chap that is there all the time. He has all his children round him, and I only come six generations down.'"

" 'Humph!' said the doctor."

" 'Number 2,' went on 7, 'never gets into any trouble, and 4, 6, and 8 are his cousins. Number 3 is close to 6 and 9. No. 5 is half a decimal and he never gets into trouble. But as for me, I am miserable, ill-treated, and alone.' Here poor 7 began to cry, and bending down his head sobbed bitterly.''

When the Teacher got thus far there was an Interruption, for here little Tineboy began to cry too.

"Why are you crying?" said Ruffin, the bully boy.

"I am not crying," said Tineboy, and he cried away faster than ever.

The Teacher went on with the story.

"The Alphabet Doctor tried to cheer poor 7."

" 'Hear, hear!' said he."

"7 stopped crying and looked at him. 'No,' said he, 'you should say "speak, speak," it is I that should say "hear, hear."'"

" 'Certainly,' said the Doctor, 'you would say that if you were sane; but then, you see, you are not sane, and being mad you say what you should not say.'"

" 'That is false,' said 7."

" 'I understand,' said the Doctor, 'but do not stop to argue the point. If you were sane you would say "that is true," but you do say "that is false," meaning that you agree with me.'"

"7 looked pleased at being so understood.

" 'No,' said he— meaning 'yes.'"

" 'Then,' continued the Doctor, 'if you say "speak, speak," when a sane man would say "hear, hear," of course, I should say "hear, hear," when I mean "speak, speak," because I am talking to a madman.'"

" 'No, no,' said 7— meaning, 'yes, yes.'"

" 'Go on with your speech,' said the Doctor."

" 'No 7 took out his handkerchief and wept."

" 'Ladies and Gentlemen,' he went on, 'once more I must plead the cause of the poor ill-used number— that is me— this orphan number— this number without kin— '"

Here Tineboy interrupted the Teacher, "How had he no skin?"

"Kin, my child. Kin, not skin," said the Teacher.

"What is the difference between kin and skin?" asked Tineboy.

"There will be but a small difference," said the Teacher, "between this cane and your skin if you interrupt." So Tineboy was quiet.

"Well," said the teacher, "poor 7 went on— 'I implore your pity for this forlorn number. Oh, you boys and girls, think of a poor desolate number, who has no home, no friends, no father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, son, daughter, or cousin, and is desolate and alone.'"

Tineboy here set up a terrible howl.

"What are you crying for?" said the Teacher.

"I want poor old 7 to be more happy. I will give him some of my lunch and a share of my bed."

The Teacher turned to the Monitor.

"Tineboy is a good child," he said, "let him for the next week learn 7 times 0 up, and perhaps that will comfort him."

The Raven, sitting in the window, winked his eye to himself and hopped about with a suppressed merry croak, shook his wings, and seemed hugging himself and laughing. Then he hopped softly away, and stole up and hid on the top of the book-case.

The Schoolmaster went on with his story.

"Well, children, after a while poor 7 got better and promised that he would get unmad. Before the Doctor went home again all the Alphabet and Number Children came and shook poor Number 7's hand, and promised that they would be more kind to him in future."

"Now, children, what do you think of the story?"

They all said that they liked it, that it was beautiful, and that they too would try to be more kind to poor 7 for the future. At last Ruffin the bully boy said:

"I don't believe it. And if it is true I wish he had died; we would be better without him."

"Would we?" asked the teacher, "how?"

"Because we would not be troubled with him," said Ruffin.

As he said it there was a sort of queer croak heard from the Raven, but nobody minded, except Tineboy, who said:—

"Mr. Daw, you and I love poor 7, at all events."

The Raven hated Ruffin because he always threw stones at him, and he had tried to pull the feathers out of his tail, and when Ruffin spoke, his croak seemed to mean, ''Just you wait." When no one was looking Mr. Daw stole up and hid in the rafters.

Then presently school broke up, and Tineboy went home; but he was not able to find Mr. Daw. He thought he was lost, and was very miserable, and went to bed crying.

In the meantime, when the school was locked up empty, Mr. Daw came down from the rafters very, very quietly— hobbled over to the door, and putting his head down, listened; then he flew and scrambled up on the handle of the door, and looked out through the keyhole. There was nothing to see and nothing to hear.

Then he got up on the Master's desk, flapped his wings, and began to crow like a cock, only very softly, for fear he should be heard.

Presently he went over all the room, flying up to the big sheets of multiplication table, and turning over the pages of the books with his claws, and picking up something with his sharp beak.

One would hardly believe it, but he was stealing all the Number Sevens in the place; he picked the Seven off the clock, rubbed it off the slates, and brushed it with his wings off the blackboard.

Mr. Daw knew that if once you can get the whole of any number out of a schoolroom no one else can use it without asking your leave.

Whilst he was picking out all the Sevens he was swelling out very much; and when he had got them all he was exactly Seven times his natural size.

He was not able to do this all at once. It took him the whole night, and when he got back to his corner in the rafters it was nearly time for school to open.

He was now so big that he was only just able to squeeze into the corner and no more.

The school time came, but there was no Master, and there were no Scholars. A whole hour passed; and then the Master came, and the Ushers, and all the Boys and Girls.

When they were all in the Master said—

"You are all very late."

"Please, sir, we could not help it," they all answered together.

"Why could you not help it?"

They all answered at once—

"I wasn't called in time."

"What time are you called at every morning?"

They all seemed about to speak, but all were silent.

"Why don't you answer?" asked the Teacher.

They made motions will their mouths like speaking, but no one said anything.

The Raven up in his corner croaked a quiet laugh all to himself.

"Why don't you answer?" asked the Teacher again. "If I have not my question answered at once, I shall keep you all in."

"Please, sir, we can't," said one.

"Why not?"

"Because—"

Here Tineboy interrupted, "Why were you so late Sir?"

"Well, my boy, I am sorry to say I was late; but the fact is, my servant did not knock at my door at the usual hour."

"What hour, sir?" asked Tineboy.

The Teacher seemed as if he was going to speak, but stopped.

"This is very queer," he said, after a long pause.

Ruffin said, in a sort of swaggering way, "We are not late at all. You are here and we are here— that is all."

"No, it is not all," said the Teacher. "Ten is the hour, and it is now eleven— we have lost an hour."

"How have we lost it?" asked one of the Scholars.

"Well, that is what puzzles me. We must only wait a little and see."

Here Tineboy said suddenly, "Perhaps some one stole it!"

"Stole what?" said the scholars.

"I don't know," said Tineboy.

They all laughed.

"You need not laugh, something is stolen; look at my lesson!" said Tineboy, and he held up the book. Here is what they saw—

- 1 are— — 2" 14 — 3" 21 — 4" 28 — 5" 35 — 6" 42 — —" 49 — 8" 56 — 9" 63 — 10"—0

All the Scholars crowded round Tineboy to look at the book. Ruffin did not, for he was looking at the school clock.

"The clock has lost something," said he, and sure enough it did not look all right.

The Teacher looked up— for he was leaning with his head on his desk, groaning.

"What is wrong with it?" he asked.

"Something is missing."

"There is a number out; there are only eleven figures," said the Teacher.

"No, no," said the Scholars.

"Count them out, Ruffin," said the Master.

"1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12."

"Quite right," said the Teacher, "you see there are twelve. No there are not— yes there are— no— yes— no, yes— what is it all about?" and he looked round the room, and then leaned his head on the desk again and groaned.

In the meantime the Raven had crept along the rafters till he had got over the Teacher's desk; and then he got a good heavy Seven and dropped it right on the little bald spot on the top of the Teacher's head. It bounded off the head and fell on the desk before him. The instant the Teacher saw it he knew what was wanting all the time. He covered over the Seven with a piece of blotting Paper. He then called up Ruffin.

"Ruffin, you told me that something was missing— are you sure?"

"Yes, of course."

"Very well. Do you remember that you said yesterday, that you wished a certain Number had died in a madhouse?"

"Yes, I do; and I wish it still."

"Well, that Number has been stolen by some one during the night."

"Hurrah!" said Ruffin, and he threw his book up to the ceiling. It hit poor Mr. Daw, who had another Seven in his beak ready to drop it, and knocked the Seven down. It fell into Tineboy's cap, which he held in his hand. He took it out, and stooped and petted it.

"Poor 7," said Tineboy.

"Give me the Number," said Ruffin.

"I shan't. It belongs to me."

"Then I'll make you," said Ruffin; and he caught hold of Tineboy— even before the Master's face.

"Let me go. I'll not give you my poor Seven," said Tineboy, and he began to scream and cry.

"Ruffin, stand out," said the Master.

Ruffin did so.

"Seven times seven?" asked the Master.

Ruffin did not answer. He could not, for he had not got a Seven.

"I know," said Tineboy.

"Oh, yes," said Ruffin, with a sneer; "he knows because he has a Number.''

"Forty-nine," said Tineboy.

"Right," said the Master; "go up, Tineboy."

So Tineboy went up to the top of the class, and Ruffin went down.

"Seven times forty-nine?" asked the Master.

They were all silent.

"Come, answer!" said the Master.

"What is it, yourself?" said Tineboy.

"Well, my boy, I am sorry to say I cannot say. Dear me, it is very queer," and the Master put down his head on the desk again, and groaned louder than ever.

Just then Mr. Daw took another seven and dropped it down on the floor before Tineboy.

"Three hundred and forty-three," said Tineboy, quickly; for he could answer as he had another Seven.

The Teacher looked up and laughed loudly.

"Hurrah, hurrah!" said he.

When the third Seven fell the Raven began to swell.

He got seven times as big as he was, so that he began to lift the slates off the roof.

The Scholars all looked up; Ruffin had his mouth open, and Mr. Daw, anxious to get rid of the Sevens, dropped one into it.

"Two thousand three hundred and one," Ruffin spluttered out.

Mr. Daw dropped another Seven into his mouth, and he spluttered out again worse than ever, "Sixteen thousand eight hundred and seven."

The Raven began hurling Sevens at him as fast as he could; and each time he threw one he grew smaller and smaller, till he got to just his natural size.

Ruffin kept spluttering out and gasping numbers as hard as ever he could, till he grew black in the face and fell down in a fit just as he had come to "Seventy-nine thousand seven hundred and ninety-two billion, two hundred and sixty-six thousand two hundred and ninety-seven million six hundred and twelve thousand and one."

Suddenly Tineboy woke up, and found that he had been dreaming with his head down.

____________________

16: Earth's Holocaust

Nathaniel Hawthorne

1804-1864

Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine May 1844

Nathaniel Hawthorne

ONCE UPON A TIME— but whether in the time past or time to come is a matter of little or no moment— this wide world had become so overburdened with an accumulation of worn-out trumpery, that the inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a general bonfire. The site fixed upon at the representation of the insurance companies, and as being as central a spot as any other on the globe, was one of the broadest prairies of the West, where no human habitation would be endangered by the flames, and where a vast assemblage of spectators might commodiously admire the show. Having a taste for sights of this kind, and imagining, likewise, that the illumination of the bonfire might reveal some profundity of moral truth heretofore hidden in mist or darkness, I made it convenient to journey thither and be present. At my arrival, although the heap of condemned rubbish was as yet comparatively small, the torch had already been applied. Amid that boundless plain, in the dusk of the evening, like a far off star alone in the firmament, there was merely visible one tremulous gleam, whence none could have anticipated so fierce a blaze as was destined to ensue. With every moment, however, there came foot-travelers, women holding up their aprons, men on horseback, wheelbarrows, lumbering baggage-wagons, and other vehicles, great and small, and from far and near, laden with articles that were judged fit for nothing but to be burned.

"What materials have been used to kindle the flame?" inquired I of a bystander; for I was desirous of knowing the whole process of the affair from beginning to end.

The person whom I addressed was a grave man, fifty years old or thereabout, who had evidently come thither as a looker-on. He struck me immediately as having weighed for himself the true value of life and its circumstances, and therefore as feeling little personal interest in whatever judgment the world might form of them. Before answering my question, he looked me in the face by the kindling light of the fire.

"O, some very dry combustibles," replied he, "and extremely suitable to the purpose— no other, in fact, than yesterday's newspapers, last month's magazines, and last year's withered leaves. Here now comes some antiquated trash that will take fire like a handful of shavings."

As he spoke, some rough-looking men advanced to the verge of the bonfire, and threw in, as it appeared, all the rubbish of the herald's office— the blazonry of coat armor, the crests and devices of illustrious families, pedigrees that extended back, like lines of light, into the mist of the dark ages, together with stars, garters, and embroidered collars, each of which, as paltry a bawble as it might appear to the uninstructed eye, had once possessed vast significance, and was still, in truth, reckoned among the most precious of moral or material facts by the worshipers of the gorgeous past. Mingled with this confused heap, which was tossed into the flames by armfuls at once, were innumerable badges of knighthood, comprising those of all the European sovereignties, and Napoleon's decoration of the Legion of Honor, the ribbons of which were entangled with those of the ancient order of St. Louis. There, too, were the medals of our own Society of Cincinnati, by means of which, as history tells us, an order of hereditary knights came near being constituted out of the king quellers of the Revolution. And besides, there were the patents of nobility of German counts and barons, Spanish grandees, and English peers, from the worm-eaten instruments signed by William the Conqueror down to the brand-new parchment of the latest lord who has received his honors from the fair hand of Victoria.

At sight of the dense volumes of smoke, mingled with vivid jets of flame, that gushed and eddied forth from this immense pile of earthly distinctions, the multitude of plebeian spectators set up a joyous shout, and clapped their hands with an emphasis that made the welkin echo. That was their moment of triumph, achieved, after long ages, over creatures of the same clay and the same spiritual infirmities, who had dared to assume the privileges due only to Heaven's better workmanship. But now there rushed towards the blazing heap a gray-haired man, of stately presence, wearing a coat, from the breast of which a star, or other badge of rank, seemed to have been forcibly wrenched away. He had not the tokens of intellectual power in his face; but still there was the demeanor, the habitual and almost native dignity, of one who had been born to the idea of his own social superiority, and had never felt it questioned till that moment.

"People," cried he, gazing at the ruin of what was dearest to his eyes with grief and wonder, but nevertheless with a degree of stateliness— "people, what have you done? This fire is consuming all that marked your advance from barbarism, or that could have prevented your relapse thither. We, the men of the privileged orders, were those who kept alive from age to age the old chivalrous spirit; the gentle and generous thought; the higher, the purer, the more refined and delicate life. With the nobles, too, you cast off the poet, the painter, the sculptor— all the beautiful arts; for we were their patrons, and created the atmosphere in which they flourish. In abolishing the majestic distinctions of rank, society loses not only its grace, but its steadfastness—"

More he would doubtless have spoken; but here there arose an outcry, sportive, contemptuous, and indignant, that altogether drowned the appeal of the fallen nobleman, insomuch that, casting one look of despair at his own half-burned pedigree, he shrunk back into the crowd, glad to shelter himself under his new-found insignificance.

"Let him thank his stars that we have not flung him into the same fire!" shouted a rude figure, spurning the embers with his foot. "And henceforth let no man dare to show a piece of musty parchment as his warrant for lording it over his fellows. If he have strength of arm, well and good; it is one species of superiority. If he have wit, wisdom, courage, force of character, let these attributes do for him what they may; but from this day forward no mortal must hope for place and consideration by reckoning up the moldy bones of his ancestors. That nonsense is done away."

"And in good time," remarked the grave observer by my side, in a low voice, however, "if no worse nonsense comes in its place; but, at all events, this species of nonsense has fairly lived out its life."

There was little space to muse or moralize over the embers of this time-honored rubbish; for, before it was half burned out, there came another multitude from beyond the sea, bearing the purple robes of royalty, and the crowns, globes, and scepters of emperors and kings. All these had been condemned as useless baubles, playthings at best, fit only for the infancy of the world or rods to govern and chastise it in its nonage, but with which universal manhood at its full-grown stature could no longer brook to be insulted. Into such contempt had these regal insignia now fallen that the gilded crown and tinseled robes of the player king from Drury Lane Theater had been thrown in among the rest, doubtless as a mockery of his brother monarchs on the great stage of the world. It was a strange sight to discern the crown jewels of England glowing and flashing in the midst of the fire. Some of them had been delivered down from the time of the Saxon princes; others were purchased with vast revenues, or perchance ravished from the dead brows of the native potentates of Hindustan; and the whole now blazed with a dazzling luster, as if a star had fallen in that spot and been shattered into fragments. The splendor of the ruined monarchy had no reflection save in those inestimable precious stones. But enough on this subject. It were but tedious to describe how the Emperor of Austria's mantle was converted to tinder, and how the posts and pillars of the French throne became a heap of coals, which it was impossible to distinguish from those of any other wood. Let me add, however, that I noticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the Czar of Russia's scepter, which he afterwards flung into the flames.

"The smell of singed garments is quite intolerable here," observed my new acquaintance, as the breeze enveloped us in the smoke of a royal wardrobe. "Let us get to windward and see what they are doing on the other side of the bonfire."

We accordingly passed around, and were just in time to witness the arrival of a vast procession of Washingtonians— as the votaries of temperance call themselves nowadays— accompanied by thousands of the Irish disciples of Father Mathew, with that great apostle at their head. They brought a rich contribution to the bonfire, being nothing less than all the hogsheads and barrels of liquor in the world, which they rolled before them across the prairie.

"Now, my children," cried Father Mathew, when they reached the verge of the fire, "one shove more, and the work is done. And now let us stand off and see Satan deal with his own liquor."

Accordingly, having placed their wooden vessels within reach of the flames, the procession stood off at a safe distance, and soon beheld them burst into a blaze that reached the clouds and threatened to set the sky itself on fire. And well it might; for here was the whole world's stock of spirituous liquors, which, instead of kindling a frenzied light in the eyes of individual topers as of yore, soared upwards with a bewildering gleam that startled all mankind. It was the aggregate of that fierce fire which would otherwise have scorched the hearts of millions. Meantime numberless bottles of precious wine were flung into the blaze, which lapped up the contents as if it loved them, and grew, like other drunkards, the merrier and fiercer for what it quaffed. Never again will the insatiable thirst of the fire-fiend be so pampered. Here were the treasures of famous bon vivants— liquors that had been tossed on ocean, and mellowed in the sun, and hoarded long in the recesses of the earth— the pale, the gold, the ruddy juice of whatever vineyards were most delicate— the entire vintage of Tokay— all mingling in one stream with the vile fluids of the common pot house, and contributing to heighten the self-same blaze. And while it rose in a gigantic spire that seemed to wave against the arch of the firmament and combine itself with the light of stars, the multitude gave a shout as if the broad earth were exulting in its deliverance from the curse of ages.

But the joy was not universal. Many deemed that human life would be gloomier than ever when that brief illumination should sink down. While the reformers were at work I overheard muttered expostulations from several respectable gentlemen with red noses and wearing gouty shoes; and a ragged worthy, whose face looked like a hearth where the fire is burned out, now expressed his discontent more openly and boldly.

"What is this world good for," said the last toper, "now that we can never be jolly any more? What is to comfort the poor man in sorrow and perplexity? How is he to keep his heart warm against the cold winds of this cheerless earth? And what do you propose to give him in exchange for the solace that you take away? How are old friends to sit together by the fireside without a cheerful glass between them? A plague upon your reformation! It is a sad world, a cold world, a selfish world, a low world, not worth an honest fellow's living in, now that good fellowship is gone forever!"

This harangue excited great mirth among the bystanders; but, preposterous as was the sentiment, I could not help commiserating the forlorn condition of the last toper, whose boon companions had dwindled away from his side, leaving the poor fellow without a soul to countenance him in sipping his liquor, nor indeed any liquor to sip. Not that this was quite the true state of the case; for I had observed him at a critical moment filch a bottle of fourth-proof brandy that fell beside the bonfire and hide it in his pocket.

The spirituous and fermented liquors being thus disposed of, the zeal of the reformers next induced them to replenish the fire with all the boxes of tea and bags of coffee in the world. And now came the planters of Virginia, bringing their crops of tobacco. These, being cast upon the heap of inutility, aggregated it to the size of a mountain, and incensed the atmosphere with such potent fragrance that methought we should never draw pure breath again. The present sacrifice seemed to startle the lovers of the weed more than any that they had hitherto witnessed.

"Well, they've put my pipe out," said an old gentleman, flinging it into the flames in a pet. "What is this world coming to? Everything rich and racy— all the spice of life— is to be condemned as useless. Now that they have kindled the bonfire, if these nonsensical reformers would fling themselves into it, all would be well enough!"

"Be patient," responded a stanch conservative; "it will come to that in the end. They will first fling us in, and finally themselves."

From the general and systematic measures of reform I now turn to consider the individual contributions to this memorable bonfire. In many instances these were of a very amusing character. One poor fellow threw in his empty purse, and another a bundle of counterfeit or insolvable banknotes. Fashionable ladies threw in their last season's bonnets, together with heaps of ribbons, yellow lace, and much other half-worn milliner's ware, all of which proved even more evanescent in the fire than it had been in the fashion. A multitude of lovers of both sexes— discarded maids or bachelors and couples mutually weary of one another— tossed in bundles of perfumed letters and enamored sonnets. A hack politician, being deprived of bread by the loss of office, threw in his teeth, which happened to be false ones. The Rev. Sydney Smith— having voyaged across the Atlantic for that sole purpose— came up to the bonfire with a bitter grin and threw in certain repudiated bonds, fortified though they were with the broad seal of a sovereign state. A little boy of five years old, in the premature manliness of the present epoch, threw in his playthings; a college graduate, his diploma; an apothecary, ruined by the spread of homeopathy, his whole stock of drugs and medicines; a physician, his library; a parson, his old sermons; and a fine gentleman of the old school, his code of manners, which he had formerly written down for the benefit of the next generation. A widow, resolving on a second marriage, slyly threw in her dead husband's miniature. A young man, jilted by his mistress, would willingly have flung his own desperate heart into the flames, but could find no means to wrench it out of his bosom. An American author, whose works were neglected by the public, threw his pen and paper into the bonfire and betook himself to some less discouraging occupation. It somewhat startled me to overhear a number of ladies, highly respectable in appearance, proposing to fling their gowns and petticoats into the flames, and assume the garb, together with the manners, duties, offices, and responsibilities, of the opposite sex.

What favor was accorded to this scheme I am unable to say, my attention being suddenly drawn to a poor, deceived, and half-delirious girl, who, exclaiming that she was the most worthless thing alive or dead, attempted to cast herself into the fire amid all that wrecked and broken trumpery of the world. A good man, however, ran to her rescue.

"Patience, my poor girl!" said he, as he drew her back from the fierce embrace of the destroying angel. "Be patient, and abide Heaven's will. So long as you possess a living soul, all may be restored to its first freshness. These things of matter and creations of human fantasy are fit for nothing but to be burned when once they have had their day; but your day is eternity!"

"Yes," said the wretched girl, whose frenzy seemed now to have sunk down into deep despondency, "yes, and the sunshine is blotted out of it!"

It was now rumored among the spectators that all the weapons and munitions of war were to be thrown into the bonfire with the exception of the world's stock of gunpowder, which, as the safest mode of disposing of it, had already been drowned in the sea. This intelligence seemed to awaken great diversity of opinion. The hopeful philanthropist esteemed it a token that the millennium was already come; while persons of another stamp, in whose view mankind was a breed of bulldogs, prophesied that all the old stoutness, fervor, nobleness, generosity, and magnanimity of the race would disappear— these qualities, as they affirmed, requiring blood for their nourishment. They comforted themselves, however, in the belief that the proposed abolition of war was impracticable for any length of time together.

Be that as it might, numberless great guns, whose thunder had long been the voice of battle— the artillery of the Armada, the battering trains of Marlborough, and the adverse cannon of Napoleon and Wellington— were trundled into the midst of the fire. By the continual addition of dry combustibles, it had now waxed so intense that neither brass nor iron could withstand it. It was wonderful to behold how these terrible instruments of slaughter melted away like playthings of wax. Then the armies of the earth wheeled around the mighty furnace, with their military music playing triumphant marches— and flung in their muskets and swords. The standard-bearers, likewise, cast one look upward at their banners, all tattered with shot-holes and inscribed with the names of victorious fields; and, giving them a last flourish on the breeze, they lowered them into the flame, which snatched them upward in its rush towards the clouds. This ceremony being over, the world was left without a single weapon in its hands, except possibly a few old king's arms and rusty swords and other trophies of the Revolution in some of our State armories. And now the drums were beaten and the trumpets brayed all together, as a prelude to the proclamation of universal and eternal peace and the announcement that glory was no longer to be won by blood, but that it would henceforth be the contention of the human race to work out the greatest mutual good, and that beneficence, in the future annals of the earth, would claim the praise of valor. The blessed tidings were accordingly promulgated, and caused infinite rejoicings among those who had stood aghast at the horror and absurdity of war.

But I saw a grim smile pass over the seared visage of a stately old commander— by his war-worn figure and rich military dress, he might have been one of Napoleon's famous marshals— who, with the rest of the world's soldiery, had just flung away the sword that had been familiar to his right hand for half a century.

"Ay! ay!" grumbled he. "Let them proclaim what they please; but, in the end, we shall find that all this foolery has only made more work for the armorers and cannon-founders."

"Why, sir," exclaimed I, in astonishment, "do you imagine that the human race will ever so far return on the steps of its past madness as to weld another sword or cast another cannon?"

"There will be no need," observed, with a sneer, one who neither felt benevolence nor had faith in it. "When Cain wished to slay his brother, he was at no loss for a weapon."

"We shall see," replied the veteran commander. "If I am mistaken, so much the better; but in my opinion, without pretending to philosophize about the matter, the necessity of war lies far deeper than these honest gentlemen suppose. What! is there a field for all the petty disputes of individuals? and shall there be no great law court for the settlement of national difficulties? The battlefield is the only court where such suits can be tried."

"You forget, general," rejoined I, "that, in this advanced stage of civilization, Reason and Philanthropy combined will constitute just such a tribunal as is requisite."

"Ah, I had forgotten that, indeed!" said the old warrior, as he limped away.

The fire was now to be replenished with materials that had hitherto been considered of even greater importance to the well-being of society than the warlike munitions which we had already seen consumed. A body of reformers had traveled all over the earth in quest of the machinery by which the different nations were accustomed to inflict the punishment of death. A shudder passed through the multitude as these ghastly emblems were dragged forward. Even the flames seemed at first to shrink away, displaying the shape and murderous contrivance of each in a full blaze of light, which of itself was sufficient to convince mankind of the long and deadly error of human law. Those old implements of cruelty; those horrible monsters of mechanism; those inventions which it seemed to demand something worse than man's natural heart to contrive, and which had lurked in the dusky nooks of ancient prisons, the subject of terror-stricken legend— were now brought forth to view. Headsmen's axes, with the rust of noble and royal blood upon them, and a vast collection of halters that had choked the breath of plebeian victims, were thrown in together. A shout greeted the arrival of the guillotine, which was thrust forward on the same wheels that had borne it from one to another of the bloodstained streets of Paris. But the loudest roar of applause went up, telling the distant sky of the triumph of the earth's redemption, when the gallows made its appearance. An ill-looking fellow, however, rushed forward, and, putting himself in the path of the reformers, bellowed hoarsely, and fought with brute fury to stay their progress.

It was little matter of surprise, perhaps, that the executioner should thus do his best to vindicate and uphold the machinery by which he himself had his livelihood and worthier individuals their death; but it deserved special note that men of a far different sphere— even of that consecrated class in whose guardianship the world is apt to trust its benevolence— were found to take the hangman's view of the question.

"Stay, my brethren!" cried one of them. "You are misled by a false philanthropy; you know not what you do. The gallows is a Heaven-ordained instrument. Bear it back, then, reverently, and set it up in its old place, else the world will fall to speedy ruin and desolation!"

"Onward! onward!" shouted a leader in the reform. "Into the flames with the accursed instrument of man's bloody policy! How can human law inculcate benevolence and love while it persists in setting up the gallows as its chief symbol? One heave more, good friends, and the world will be redeemed from its greatest error."

A thousand hands, that nevertheless loathed the touch, now lent their assistance, and thrust the ominous burden far, far into the center of the raging furnace. There its fatal and abhorred image was beheld, first black, then a red coal, then ashes.

"That was well done!" exclaimed I.

"Yes, it was well done," replied, but with less enthusiasm than I expected, the thoughtful observer, who was still at my side— "well done, if the world be good enough for the measure. Death, however, is an idea that cannot easily be dispensed with in any condition between the primal innocence and that other purity and perfection which perchance we are destined to attain after traveling round the full circle; but, at all events, it is well that the experiment should now be tried."

"Too cold! too cold!" impatiently exclaimed the young and ardent leader in this triumph. "Let the heart have its voice here as well as the intellect. And as for ripeness, and as for progress, let mankind always do the highest, kindest, noblest thing that, at any given period, it has attained the perception of; and surely that thing cannot be wrong nor wrongly timed."

I know not whether it were the excitement of the scene, or whether the good people around the bonfire were really growing more enlightened every instant; but they now proceeded to measures in the full length of which I was hardly prepared to keep them company. For instance, some threw their marriage certificates into the flames, and declared themselves candidates for a higher, holier, and more comprehensive union than that which had subsisted from the birth of time under the form of the connubial tie. Others hastened to the vaults of banks and to the coffers of the rich— all of which were opened to the first comer on this fated occasion— and brought entire bales of paper-money to enliven the blaze, and tons of coin to be melted down by its intensity. Henceforth, they said, universal benevolence, uncoined and exhaustless, was to be the golden currency of the world. At this intelligence the bankers and speculators in the stocks grew pale, and a pickpocket, who had reaped a rich harvest among the crowd, fell down in a deadly fainting fit. A few men of business burned their day-books and ledgers, the notes and obligations of their creditors, and all other evidences of debts due to themselves; while perhaps a somewhat larger number satisfied their zeal for reform with the sacrifice of any uncomfortable recollection of their own indebtment. There was then a cry that the period was arrived when the title-deeds of landed property should be given to the flames, and the whole soil of the earth revert to the public, from whom it had been wrongfully abstracted and most unequally distributed among individuals. Another party demanded that all written constitutions, set forms of government, legislative acts, statute-books, and everything else on which human invention had endeavored to stamp its arbitrary laws, should at once be destroyed, leaving the consummated world as free as the man first created.

Whether any ultimate action was taken with regard to these propositions is beyond my knowledge; for, just then, some matters were in progress that concerned my sympathies more nearly.

"See! see! What heaps of books and pamphlets!" cried a fellow, who did not seem to be a lover of literature. "Now we shall have a glorious blaze!"

"That's just the thing!" said a modern philosopher. "Now we shall get rid of the weight of dead men's thought, which has hitherto pressed so heavily on the living intellect that it has been incompetent to any effectual self-exertion. Well done, my lads! Into the fire with them! Now you are enlightening the world indeed!"

"But what is to become of the trade?" cried a frantic bookseller.

"O, by all means, let them accompany their merchandise," coolly observed an author. "It will be a noble funeral-pile!"

The truth was, that the human race had now reached a stage of progress so far beyond what the wisest and wittiest men of former ages had ever dreamed of, that it would have been a manifest absurdity to allow the earth to be any longer encumbered with their poor achievements in the literary line. Accordingly a thorough and searching investigation had swept the booksellers' shops, hawkers' stands, public and private libraries, and even the little bookshelf by the country fireside, and had brought the world's entire mass of printed paper, bound or in sheets, to swell the already mountain bulk of our illustrious bonfire. Thick, heavy folios, containing the labors of lexicographers, commentators, and encyclopedists, were flung in, and, falling among the embers with a leaden thump, smouldered away to ashes like rotten wood. The small, richly gilt French tomes of the last age, with the hundred volumes of Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant shower of sparkles and little jets of flame; while the current literature of the same nation burned red and blue, and threw an infernal light over the visages of the spectators, converting them all to the aspect of party-colored fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scent of brimstone. The English standard authors made excellent fuel, generally exhibiting the properties of sound oak logs. Milton's works, in particular, sent up a powerful blaze, gradually reddening into a coal, which promised to endure longer than almost any other material of the pile. From Shakespeare there gushed a flame of such marvelous splendor that men shaded their eyes as against the sun's meridian glory; nor even when the works of his own elucidators were flung upon him did he cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance from beneath the ponderous heap. It is my belief that he is still blazing as fervidly as ever.

"Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious flame," remarked I, "he might then consume the midnight oil to some good purpose."

"That is the very thing which modern poets have been too apt to do, or at least to attempt," answered a critic. "The chief benefit to be expected from this conflagration of past literature undoubtedly is, that writers will henceforth be compelled to light their lamps at the sun or stars."

"If they can reach so high," said I; "but that task requires a giant, who may afterwards distribute the light among inferior men. It is not everyone that can steal the fire from heaven like Prometheus; but, when once he had done the deed, a thousand hearths were kindled by it."

It amazed me much to observe how indefinite was the proportion between the physical mass of any given author and the property of brilliant and long-continued combustion. For instance, there was not a quarto volume of the last century— nor, indeed, of the present— that could compete in that particular with a child's little gilt-covered book, containing _Mother Goose's Melodies_. _The Life and Death of Tom Thumb_ outlasted the biography of Marlborough. An epic, indeed a dozen of them, was converted to white ashes before the single sheet of an old ballad was half consumed. In more than one case, too, when volumes of applauded verse proved incapable of anything better than a stifling smoke, an unregarded ditty of some nameless bard— perchance in the corner of a newspaper— soared up among the stars with a flame as brilliant as their own. Speaking of the properties of flame, methought Shelley's poetry emitted a purer light than almost any other productions of his day, contrasting beautifully with the fitful and lurid gleams and gushes of black vapor that flashed and eddied from the volumes of Lord Byron. As for Tom Moore, some of his songs diffused an odor like a burning pastille.

I felt particular interest in watching the combustion of American authors, and scrupulously noted by my watch the precise number of moments that changed most of them from shabbily printed books to indistinguishable ashes. It would be invidious, however, if not perilous, to betray these awful secrets; so that I shall content myself with observing that it was not invariably the writer most frequent in the public mouth that made the most splendid appearance in the bonfire. I especially remember that a great deal of excellent inflammability was exhibited in a thin volume of poems by Ellery Channing; although, to speak the truth, there were certain portions that hissed and spluttered in a very disagreeable fashion. A curious phenomenon occurred in reference to several writers, native as well as foreign. Their books, though of highly respectable figure, instead of bursting into a blaze or even smoldering out their substance in smoke, suddenly melted away in a manner that proved them to be ice.

If it be no lack of modesty to mention my own works, it must here be confessed that I looked for them with fatherly interest, but in vain. Too probably they were changed to vapor by the first action of the heat; at best, I can only hope that, in their quiet way, they contributed a glimmering spark or two to the splendor of the evening.

"Alas! and woe is me!" thus bemoaned himself a heavy-looking gentleman in green spectacles. "The world is utterly ruined, and there is nothing to live for any longer. The business of my life is snatched from me. Not a volume to be had for love or money!"

"This," remarked the sedate observer beside me, "is a bookworm— one of those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are covered with the dust of libraries. He has no inward fountain of ideas; and, in good earnest, now that the old stock is abolished, I do not see what is to become of the poor fellow. Have you no word of comfort for him?"

"My dear sir," said I to the desperate bookworm, "is not nature better than a book? Is not the human heart deeper than any system of philosophy? Is not life replete with more instruction than past observers have found it possible to write down in maxims? Be of good cheer. The great book of Time is still spread wide open before us; and, if we read it aright, it will be to us a volume of eternal truth."

"O, my books, my books, my precious printed books!" reiterated the forlorn bookworm. "My only reality was a bound volume; and now they will not leave me even a shadowy pamphlet!"

In fact, the last remnant of the literature of all the ages was now descending upon the blazing heap in the shape of a cloud of pamphlets from the press of the New World. These likewise were consumed in the twinkling of an eye, leaving the earth, for the first time since the days of Cadmus, free from the plague of letters— an enviable field for the authors of the next generation.

"Well, and does anything remain to be done?" inquired I, somewhat anxiously. "Unless we set fire to the earth itself, and then leap boldly off into infinite space, I know not that we can carry reform to any farther point."

"You are vastly mistaken, my good friend," said the observer. "Believe me, the fire will not be allowed to settle down without the addition of fuel that will startle many persons who have lent a willing hand thus far."

Nevertheless there appeared to be a relaxation of effort for a little time, during which, probably, the leaders of the movement were considering what should be done next. In the interval, a philosopher threw his theory into the flames— a sacrifice which, by those who knew how to estimate it, was pronounced the most remarkable that had yet been made. The combustion, however, was by no means brilliant. Some indefatigable people, scorning to take a moment's ease, now employed themselves in collecting all the withered leaves and fallen boughs of the forest, and thereby recruited the bonfire to a greater height than ever. But this was mere byplay.

"Here comes the fresh fuel that I spoke of," said my companion.

To my astonishment the persons who now advanced into the vacant space around the mountain fire bore surplices and other priestly garments, mitres, crosiers, and a confusion of Popish and Protestant emblems with which it seemed their purpose to consummate the great act of faith. Crosses from the spires of old cathedrals were cast upon the heap with as little remorse as if the reverence of centuries passing in long array beneath the lofty towers had not looked up to them as the holiest of symbols. The font in which infants were consecrated to God, the sacramental vessels whence piety received the hallowed draught, were given to the same destruction. Perhaps it most nearly touched my heart to see among these devoted relics fragments of the humble communion-tables and undecorated pulpits which I recognized as having been torn from the meeting-houses of New England. Those simple edifices might have been permitted to retain all of sacred embellishment that their Puritan founders had bestowed, even though the mighty structure of St. Peter's had sent its spoils to the fire of this terrible sacrifice. Yet I felt that these were but the externals of religion, and might most safely be relinquished by spirits that best knew their deep significance.

"All is well," said I, cheerfully. "The wood-paths shall be the aisles of our cathedral, the firmament itself shall be its ceiling. What needs an earthly roof between the Deity and his worshipers? Our faith can well afford to lose all the drapery that even the holiest men have thrown around it, and be only the more sublime in its simplicity."

"True," said my companion; "but will they pause here?"

The doubt implied in his question was well founded. In the general destruction of books already described, a holy volume, that stood apart from the catalogue of human literature, and yet, in one sense, was at its head, had been spared. But the Titan of innovation— angel or fiend, double in his nature, and capable of deeds befitting both characters— at first shaking down only the old and rotten shapes of things, had now, as it appeared, laid his terrible hand upon the main pillars which supported the whole edifice of our moral and spiritual state. The inhabitants of the earth had grown too enlightened to define their faith within a form of words, or to limit the spiritual by any analogy to our material existence. Truths which the heavens trembled at were now but a fable of the world's infancy. Therefore, as the final sacrifice of human error, what else remained to be thrown upon the embers of that awful pile, except the book which, though a celestial revelation to past ages, was but a voice from a lower sphere as regarded the present race of man? It was done! Upon the blazing heap of falsehood and worn-out truth— things that the earth had never needed, or had ceased to need, or had grown childishly weary of— fell the ponderous church Bible, the great old volume that had lain so long on the cushion of the pulpit, and whence the pastor's solemn voice had given holy utterance on so many a Sabbath day. There, likewise, fell the family Bible, which the long-buried patriarch had read to his children— in prosperity or sorrow, by the fireside and in the summer shade of trees— and had bequeathed downward as the heirloom of generations. There fell the bosom Bible, the little volume that had been the soul's friend of some sorely tried child of dust, who thence took courage, whether his trial were for life or death, steadfastly confronting both in the strong assurance of immortality.

All these were flung into the fierce and riotous blaze; and then a mighty wind came roaring across the plain with a desolate howl, as if it were the angry lamentation of the earth for the loss of heaven's sunshine; and it shook the gigantic pyramid of flame and scattered the cinders of half-consumed abominations around upon the spectators.

"This is terrible!" said I, feeling that my check grew pale, and seeing a like change in the visages about me.

"Be of good courage yet," answered the man with whom I had so often spoken. He continued to gaze steadily at the spectacle with a singular calmness, as if it concerned him merely as an observer. "Be of good courage, nor yet exult too much; for there is far less both of good and evil in the effect of this bonfire than the world might be willing to believe."

"How can that be?" exclaimed I, impatiently. "Has it not consumed everything? Has it not swallowed up or melted down every human or divine appendage of our mortal state that had substance enough to be acted on by fire? Will there be anything left us tomorrow morning better or worse than a heap of embers and ashes?"

"Assuredly there will," said my grave friend. "Come hither tomorrow morning, or whenever the combustible portion of the pile shall be quite burned out, and you will find among the ashes everything really valuable that you have seen cast into the flames. Trust me, the world of tomorrow will again enrich itself with the gold and diamonds which have been cast off by the world of today. Not a truth is destroyed nor buried so deep among the ashes but it will be raked up at last."

This was a strange assurance. Yet I felt inclined to credit it, the more especially as I beheld among the wallowing flames a copy of the Holy Scriptures, the pages of which, instead of being blackened into tinder, only assumed a more dazzling whiteness as the fingermarks of human imperfection were purified away. Certain marginal notes and commentaries, it is true, yielded to the intensity of the fiery test, but without detriment to the smallest syllable that had flamed from the pen of inspiration.

"Yes; there is the proof of what you say," answered I, turning to the observer; "but if only what is evil can feel the action of the fire, then, surely, the conflagration has been of inestimable utility. Yet, if I understand aright, you intimate a doubt whether the world's expectation of benefit would be realized by it."

"Listen to the talk of these worthies," said he, pointing to a group in front of the blazing pile; "possibly they may teach you something useful, without intending it."

The persons whom he indicated consisted of that brutal and most earthy figure who had stood forth so furiously in defense of the gallows— the hangman, in short— together with the last thief and the last murderer, all three of whom were clustered about the last toper. The latter was liberally passing the brandy bottle, which he had rescued from the general destruction of wines and spirits. This little convivial party seemed at the lowest pitch of despondency, as considering that the purified world must needs be utterly unlike the sphere that they had hitherto known, and therefore but a strange and desolate abode for gentlemen of their kidney.

"The best counsel for all of us is," remarked the hangman, "that, as soon as we have finished the last drop of liquor, I help you, my three friends, to a comfortable end upon the nearest tree, and then hang myself on the same bough. This is no world for us any longer."

"Poh, poh, my good fellows!" said a dark-complexioned personage, who now joined the group— his complexion was indeed fearfully dark, and his eyes glowed with a redder light than that of the bonfire; "be not so cast down, my dear friends; you shall see good days yet. There is one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without which all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all; yes, though they had burned the earth itself to a cinder."

"And what may that be?" eagerly demanded the last murderer.

"What but the human heart itself?" said the dark-visaged stranger, with a portentous grin. "And, unless they hit upon some method of purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will reissue all the shapes of wrong and misery— the same old shapes or worse ones— which they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to ashes. I have stood by this livelong night and laughed in my sleeve at the whole business. O, take my word for it, it will be the old world yet!"

This brief conversation supplied me with a theme for lengthened thought. How sad a truth, if true it were, that man's age-long endeavor for perfection had served only to render him the mockery of the evil principle, from the fatal circumstance of an error at the very root of the matter! The heart, the heart, there was the little yet boundless sphere wherein existed the original wrong of which the crime and misery of this outward world were merely types. Purify that inward sphere, and the many shapes of evil that haunt the outward, and which now seem almost our only realities, will turn to shadowy phantoms and vanish of their own accord; but if we go no deeper than the intellect, and strive, with merely that feeble instrument, to discern and rectify what is wrong, our whole accomplishment will be a dream, so unsubstantial that it matters little whether the bonfire, which I have so faithfully described, were what we choose to call a real event and a flame that would scorch the finger, or only a phosphoric radiance and a parable of my own brain.

End

Table of Contents

1: Diana The Huntress / Ethel Lina White

2: The Burglary at Berkeley Square / Richard Marsh

3: Gas! / Richard Dehan

Unnamed

5: The Great Beast of Kafue / Clotilde Graves

6: When Love Went Mad / Arthur Leo Zagat

7: "In Dutch" / Edmund Stover

8: The People Rest / Emile C. Tepperman

9: The Mysterious Camp in the Pyrenees / Clarence Herbert New

10: The Shadow With Bright Hair / C. L. Antrobus

11: The Gold Bar / H. de Vere Stacpoole

12: An Embarrassed Butterfly / Mercy Compton Marsh

13: The Elixir of Youth / Anonymous

14: At Plangeants Locks / Duncan Campbell Scott

15: How 7 Went Mad / Bram Stoker

16: Earth's Holocaust / Nathaniel Hawthorne