RISKING LIFE FOR THE MOVIES

By ROBERT STERLING YARD

MY little daughter is a movie fan—or would be if her mother would let her. I really believe she would sit out the pictures five nights a week and keep it up indefinitely.

"Margaret," I asked her the other day, "why do you love the movies so? You used to think Maude Adams greater than the Czar of all the Russias, yes, greater than the Kaiser; but now it's the Queen of the Movies for you. Why is this?"

"Oh, Daddy," she exclaimed rapturously, "it's those lovely thrills!"

When Pauline, chased by gipsies, jumps wildly from a crag eighty feet sheer into Saranac Lake, or Kathleen, by almost superhuman quickness, eludes the leap of the infuriated leopard, or Rose and Judith slide down the human chain a scant half-second ahead of the collision on the trestle above, then Margaret attains the ecstasy of her emotion. Of the ten to twenty million persons said to attend the motion picture theaters of the United States and Canada each day, probably five millions, like Margaret, find excitement their chiefest reward. Possibly half of all moviegoers are under twenty. But the love of thrills knows no age.

That is why moving picture producers strain invention and expense accounts to the utmost to crowd their screens with exciting and dangerous climaxes, why the price of thrilling scenarios that are also clever is continually rising, why actors and particularly actresses who combine with high camera availability the physical courage to take showy risks are priceless possessions.

I ASKED a celebrated producer recently whether, in the rapid rise into the domain of art that is now the almost spectacular feature of motion picture progress, the thriller was likely to disappear.

"Never," he replied, "so long as man is man. The love of excitement is of the tissue of human nature. Are exciting novels unpopular because their workman-ship has attained a high degree of artistry? Do thrilling melodramas lack patronage because nowadays they are better written and better acted? No; human nature improves, but never changes. The most cultivated people in America are beginning to patronize motion pictures; but I do not notice any failure of enthusiasm over the exciting spots. When Neptune's daughter fights her mortal victim in the ocean's depths, and the defenders of Cirta fling the attacking Romans headlong from the lofty walls, the best audiences in America buzz as joyfully, if not so noisily, as the five-cent crowds on the riverfront over the murder of Muggs in the counterfeiters' den."

There is no gainsaying that the current runs very swiftly toward better things. 'Three years ago producers successfully offered the public, as one of them expressed it, "any old thing"; but they cannot do that now. The public is getting more exacting every day. Wonder has given place to criticism. The runaway balloon must dangle on its anchor not a stuffed dummy, but the actual hero. The lion really must charge the heroine. The villain actually must fall from the really frightened, really plunging mustang.

"We still retain in our contracts," said Jesse Lasky, "the clause protecting the actor from anything dangerous to life and limb; but it is seldom, almost never, nowadays that producing companies are held liable. There is a zest about the production of a motion picture play, a community of purpose, a general desire to make it an artistic success, that sweeps the actor along to self forgetfulness. The spirit of common accomplishment possesses all, and we find our hero declining our suggestion to have a made-up cowboy do the wild ride for him, or a professional athlete take his place in the fall from the rocks. He is all for doing it himself?and hang the risk! Very few are hurt. In the beginning it was the custom to pay actors five dollars a fall, whether in practice or before the camera. But the modern actor disdains that sort of thing. He is out for the highest artistic results. It is the new spirit."

THE movie man, however, though he has a thousand imaginations continually active for him, usually fails to produce on the screen the most thrilling of all the scenes enacted in this new and dangerous profession; namely, those which are accidents. Two actors fighting for the camera on the edge of a precipice in a sensational two-reeler called "The Angel of the Gulch" stumble in their enthusiasm and roll, clutching and agonizing, over the edge to apparently certain death a hundred feet below. The merest chance of a treetop and a bit of soft ground saves them. Had a camera been trained to the fall, how sensational, how scientifically valuable, perhaps, might have been the record of their terror!

The narrowest escape, as well as the most thrilling, perhaps, of these unplanned perils concluded the making of the film for "Neptune's Daughter." Herbert Brenon, to whom had been assigned the planning and direction of this ocean novelty, chose Bermuda for the scene of operations because of the wonderful clarity of its water. He planned a ten-foot cubical tank for the subsurface scenes, with a front of glass an inch and a half thick, and the floor and back copied from the adjacent sea bottom. Fish, great turtles, and seaweed from Bermuda waters were to lend reality. The camera was to be inclosed in a black-lined structure facing the glass side. The lighting was to be sunshine from above.

When the glass arrived from New York it proved to be only seven-eighths of an inch thick. The director of the Agar's Island Aquarium, who had charge of the tank's construction, thought it too thin to stand the strain. Mr. Brenon, himself an expert swimmer, decided to play the under-water part with Annette Kellermann, who was the heroine, rather than ask a professional actor to risk the possible bursting of the tank. There were many under-water scenes, which they practised again and again with as little disturbance of the water-cube as possible, and when the camera began its work Mr. Brenon had each scene taken twice to make sure of it.

But the final scene, in which the mermaid, after a fierce struggle in the depths with the mortal whom she had dragged over the high cliffs (itself a thrilling and dangerous feat), succeeds in stretching him drowned upon the bottom, was not enacted twice.

Just as the mortal relaxed himself in pretended death he heard what sounded like a rifle shot. In spite of the leaden belt that enabled him to hold the bottom, he felt himself irresistibly swept away. Involuntarily he gasped, and found he breathed air. Realizing that something extraordinary had happened he called out: "Miss Kellermann, are you all right?"

He saw her run toward him and suddenly recoil, hiding her face in her hands. Then, though he had no sensation of pain, he knew he must have been injured and mutilated.

The glass front of the tank had burst. Mr. Brenon had been swept fifteen feet away and had been fright-fully and dangerously slashed with broken glass. For weeks his life was in the balance, and more than sixty stitches, fortunately now well covered with clothing, leave him the most mutilated man I have seen alive. Miss Kellermann came off with a cut foot. The film was miraculously saved.

HAD the camera caught the accident, it might have secured the greatest of all the thrillers?though after all, perhaps, no greater than the play of "Joseph in the Land of Egypt" would have proved had the camera man calmly ground out his reel instead of pulling his revolver and shooting the trained lion that had re-fused to keel over and look dead when stabbed by a hypodermic needle loaded with "dope." The animal, merely infuriated by the sharp sting of the needle, had leaped with deadly purpose upon a defenseless actor.

Another scene that the public would have appreciated was cut out of the films when Cecile DeMille and his group of actors and critics sat in the projection room of a studio in Los Angeles and watched the first showing of "The Virginian"; for, when the Virginian rode into mid-river and rescued the Yankee schoolmistress from the stagecoach, Miss Kingston was shown bounding, not into Dustin Farnum's arms, but first upon his shoulder and thence with a mighty splash face down into the water. The screen watchers exclaimed excitedly; but there was Miss Kingston among them to prove that she had not been hurt by her spectacular flight. She explained that Mr. Farnum's horse had shifted his position. Immediately afterward the screen showed a repetition of the scene, in which Mr. Farnum made a perfectly satisfactory catch.

Farnum himself had a fall when playing James Carstow in "The Squaw Man." He was to tumble into a crevice in the ice, from which he was to be rescued by the Indian wife and cowboy. Choosing what seemed

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to be a shallow bowl in the glacier, Farnum toppled into it as naturally as possible?and came to a stop twenty-five feet below! Had the camera been posted to catch so great a fall, it would have produced a genuine thrill.

Such instances are so frequent as to cause no great sensation. The rough nature of the country in which motion pictures are often made, together with the energy and self-forgetfulness with which actors usually throw themselves into the play, makes anything like carefulness really difficult. It certainly was carelessness of a high order that left the elevator fifteen feet down the shaft into which one actor was supposed to fall. He took it for granted that it would be lowered just enough to hide him from view. "The luck of the movies," as they say in the studios, kept his bones intact.

HOWEVER exciting these chance happenings may prove to the actors, the great objective is, of course, the thrill to be imparted to the spectator. Nowadays faking is impossible in any important respect. The actors know what is expected of them. Almost unvariably the thrill on the screen can be counted upon as having produced several times as great a thrill in the actor.

In spite of the evidence of their senses, many persons still doubt the genuineness of the perilous talcs of the screen. Such doubt nowadays is usually baseless. Mere physical courage is one of the commonest of qualities, and exists as abundantly among actors as among people of other occupations; whereas ability to fake the dangerous feats, which arc the ones most frequently doubted, would mean, in most cases, ability beyond practical realization.

An acquaintance who viewed the movies with good-natured distrust was rudely undeceived one summer afternoon. She was seated under trees at Sound Beach on Long Island Sound. A motorboat dashed by at sensational speed. People aboard appeared to be quarreling. Suddenly a young woman was flung overboard, and the boat sped on.

My friend scarcely had time to scream before an aeroplane appeared in apparent pursuit. It was making great speed and slanting downward toward the struggling girl. It swung round in narrowing circles until it hovered directly over her, lowering a knotted rope, which she grasped. Then it moved up and onward; but a moment later lowered the girl again to the water, where the motorboat was waiting to pick her up. She was rushed ashore, where my astonished friend, formerly a trained nurse, took prompt charge of the unconscious, nearly drowned victim. It took an hour to restore the movie actress. Later, when my acquaintance saw the film, she was disappointed. It thrilled the audience, but for her it was not half so exciting as the reality. It was with distinct relief that presently she discovered that this was a scene from a peril play for the movies, and later had the pleasure of visiting her new acquaintances at the studio. After this practical experience she is ready to believe everything, no matter how extra-ordinary, that she may see on the screen.

HIGHLY sensational peril pieces such as this have been seen only for the last three or four years. Previous to that anything that moved, however pointless, seemed to interest such audiences as could be got together.

It was in those days that the exaggeration of speed still observable in the cheaper class of films became characteristic of screen pictures. Producers believed that wonder was the bait. Since the people craved motion, let them have it in plenty. Screen characters walked the streets at race-track speed, made love breathlessly, bolted their meals at a rate that must have made doctoring the most profitable occupation of Movieland.

When something more than mere motion was demanded the peril era began. It seemed impossible for producers to credit the public with appreciation of anything except violent extravagance of some sort. Cowboys and professional athletes were hired to do hair-raising stunts worked into any thin thread of story. Motion picture companies began to keep zoos of wild animals, trained to appear far more ferocious than they really were.

This period has not yet passed, notwithstanding that within the last year ART in capital letters has entered the motion picture domain. Nor will it ever wholly The movie man fails to produce on the screen the most thrilling scenes en-acted in this new and dangerous profession,— its own accidents. pass; though it will express itself in ever higher forms. Pauline's Crudest Peril is no different at marrow from the war scenes of Cabiria. The one is the baldest possible appeal to the excitement of physical danger; the other is an artistic and successful effort to reproduce a historical episode in spirit if not in fact. Both of them succeed by thrilling their audiences to the heart.

ONE of the earliest peril scenes was "What Happened to Mary." Its vogue was immediate; though little happened to Mary that compares with_ some of the thrillers of today. It found its climax when Mary, pursued by enemies, escaped from the seventh floor of a city hotel by descending hand over hand a rope made of bed clothes. Of course a substantial knotted rope was concealed within the rope of torn linen; but there subterfuge ceased. Mary Fuller, who has since then become a veritable Queen of the Movies by reason of talents other than hair raising, actually climbed out of this seventh story city window and swung herself clear, with nothing but her courage and her unaccustomed hands between her and destruction.

When I asked her the other day what motive was strong enough to warrant this terrifying risk, and how she felt swinging over the stone-paved height, she said simply: "Well, of course I did not realize how dangerous it was. The previous numbers had been so successful that I was wild to do something bigger. Then my director was so exasperatingly sure I never would dare that I wanted to show him. So I just did it. The only sensations I remember coming down were occasioned by the street crowd looking up at me. I hated that so that my only thought was to get down as quickly as I could."

No reply could be simpler, honester, more feminine; but its most remarkable quality is a negative,?the entire absence of physical fear.

MARY FULLER'S later career was not based upon her fearlessness; but there are screen actresses of extremely wide popularity who stake everything upon it. Many well known to movie fans from ocean to ocean subordinate all other qualities to this. A class of peril players has developed in the motion picture drama; a class as distinctive as that of emotional players, for example, on the legitimate stage. This comparison is vital; for, with the masters and mistresses of the peril drama fearlessness is not mere culture, any more than is emotional quality, with its greater practitioners, imitation. With both it is a matter of positive endowment, of original temperament.

When Pearl White, for instance, was required to leap from a cliff into Saranac Lake in one of the earlier episodes of "The Perils of Pauline," she faced a new experience. It was enough to daunt an accustomed diver,—a sheer fall of eighty feet,—but it did not seem to trouble her, although she did not know how to swim, much less to dive. Eluding the grasp of her pursuers, she flung herself off the edge with entire confidence. Unfortunately she did not fall well. She turned in the air and struck the water, eighty feet or more below, flat on her face, starting a chorus of echoes. To strike the water thus, even from a few feet, is necessarily a painful experience. From such a height it is highly dangerous. Boats waiting just out of camera range dashed instantly for her. She was lifted out quite helpless,—breathless, gasping, suffering. When she was somewhat recovered her director said: "I am sorry we lost that picture, Miss White." "Lost the picture?" she cried. "Why?"

"Because the boats had to push in and pull you out. We had to move quick to save you at all. Saving the girl cost us the film. Perhaps tomorrow or next day you'll feel sufficiently recovered to try it again. What do you think?"

"Well," she said slowly, "if it has to be done again, I think I'd rather do it now and have it over with." Half an hour later she mad,: the leap again.

That kind of courage is native and temperamental. Miss White's other exploits, many of them, are in kind. Anyone of ordinary will, of course, could ride the breeches buoy over stormy surf; but it requires a different quality to descend a rope hand over hand from a captive balloon above the Palisades of the Hudson.

Once, by the way, when this company was enacting an automobile accident near Keyport, New Jersey, a film was spoiled through no assignable fault. The villain was shown pinned under an automobile, which had been carefully and laboriously overturned in the ditch. When writhing in his best style amid the frantic antics of the rest of the company, with the camera man grinding industriously, a car dashed alongside and pulled up short. Out leaped a businesslike, bearded little man with a valise in his hand, who hustled into the picture,

Continued on page 13

FLOWER OF THE GORSE

Drawings by W. Berger

BY LOUIS TRACY

CHAPTER II. (Continued)
The Feast of Sainte Barbe

CERTAINLY, even among experienced yachtsmen, there would not be lacking those who might have regarded the Hirondelle's present voyage as a piece of folly. There is no wilder coast in Europe than the barrier of shaggy rock that France opposes to the ocean from St. Maio to Biarritz. At Finistere, in particular, each headland is not a breakwater, but a ruin. During heavy storms the seas dash in frenzy up a hundred feet of shattered cliff, the Atlantic having smashed and over-thrown every slicer wall of rock ages ago.

Of course the adventurers were not facing a No. S gale. That, indeed, would have been rank lunacy. But the estuaries of the Aven and the Belon, joining at Port Manech, were sending down no inconsiderable volume of water to meet a strong wind, and the opposing forces were waging bitter war. A mile farther on a channel ran between the mainland and a group of rocks called Les Verres. There the tide and wind would not be so greatly at variance, and the partly submerged reef would lessen the force of the sea; though the only signs of its existence were a patch of high-flung spray and a small tower, with a black buoy, at its eastern extremity. This was what Peridot had called the "inside passage." To the landsman it was a figure of speech. To the sailor it meant seas diminished to half their volume as compared with the "dirt" outside.

The Hirondelle raced through the turmoil at the bar as though she enjoyed it, and, once the islets were to windward, the journey became exhilarating. None of the four people on board displayed the least concern. Indeed, they reveled in the excursion. When their craft swept into the sheltered cove at Le Pouldu, not without a tossing on another bar, and was brought up alongside the small quay, their flushed faces and shining eyes showed that they looked on the outing as a thoroughly enjoyable one.

THEY were ready for an early luncheon too, and did full justice to the menu. Afterward, while Ingersoll planned his picture, Yvonne and Tollemache strolled along the right bank of the Laita to the ham-let of Le Pouldu.

The girl told her companion of the singular coincidence that brought her father an unexpected commission by that morning's post; but Tollemache pooh-poohed it.

"You're becoming almost as superstitious as these Bretons," he said. "It's high time your father took you to New York for a spell. Spooks can't live there since the automobile came along. They don't like the fumes of petrol, I fancy. But these silly Bretons appeal to a saint or dread a devil for every little thing. One stained-glass proposition can cure rheumatism in a man and another spavin in a horse. It's unlucky to gather and eat blackberries because the Crown of Thorns was made out of brambles. You can shoot a wretched tomtit; but you mustn't touch a magpie. If you want to marry a girl, you pray to Saint This; if you're anxious to shunt her, you go on your marrow-bones to Saint That. I'm fond of Brittany and its folk; but I can't stomach their legends. Look at that pin-dropping business at Sainte Barbe's well! Poor Madeleine couldn't get a pin home to save her life, whereas everybody knows that she and Peridot will make a match of it before this time next year."

Yvonne did not like to hear her friend's amiable weaknesses exposed thus ruthlessly. "If Homer nods, a poor girl who has watched ever so many love affairs since A. D. 235 may surely be forgiven an occasional mistake," she said.

"Has she been at it so long? What is the yarn?"

"Please don't speak so disrespectfully of Saint Barbara. Because she wanted to marry someone whom her father didn't approve of he imprisoned her in a tower, and when she was converted to Christianity beheaded her."

"The old rascal! Did the other fellow—the one she liked—climb the tower? Perhaps that accounts for the rings."

"It is possible. I have no doubt men were just as foolish seventeen centuries ago as they are today."

"Thanks. That personal touch helps a lot. But, supposing I asked your father to sanction—"

"If you will apply the moral, I must remind you that I am to refuse my first offer. But don't let us talk nonsense. It is time we made for the harbor."

"Crushed again!" murmured Tollemache, assuming an air of blithe indifference. He was only partly successful. Stealing a glance at Yvonne, he noted her heightened color and a curiously defiant glint in her blue eyes. Unconsciously she quickened her pace too, and Tollemache interpreted these outward and visible tokens of displeasure as hostile to the notion that had sprung into thrilling life in his mind that day at Le Faouet, when he peered down into Yvonne's agonized face as he was clinging like a fly to the wall of the tower.

"She regards me as a silly ass," he communed bitterly, "and not without good cause. What place do I fill in the world, anyhow? God created me a live-wire American, and the devil egged me on to spoil clean can-vas. I'm little better than a hobo, and she knows it. Well, I'll swallow my medicine."

"I say, Kiddie," he cried aloud, "you needn't go off in a huff just because I was talking through my hat. Wait till I light a cigarette."

Though he was not sure that the bantering protest had deceived her, she pretended that it hail; so the object aimed at was achieved. But Tollemache was of the tough fiber that regards no sacrifice as worth while unless it is complete.

"If you knew the facts, Yvonne, you'd never get mad with me when I talk about marrying anybody," he went on. "Why do I live in Pont Aven all the year round? Because it's cheap. Last year I earned three hundred and twenty francs for three pictures. At that rate of progress any girl who married me would jolly soon starve!"

Yvonne remembered the famous three. Two were portraits of the oleograph order, in which Tollemache had shamelessly flattered his sitters. For these he received the three hundred francs. The twenty were paid for a sketch of a new villa which the builder wished to send to his mother-in-law! Still, she allowed herself to be surprised.

"Of course I knew you were only joking, Lorry," she said. "And while we are on the subject, I may as well tell you that I shall never leave my father. What you say about your means is rather astonishing, for all that. How can you possibly hire autos and live as you do?"

"Oh, I don't," he explained, with a sudden grimness of tone that she had never heard before. "My father pays all bills,—living expenses, tailors, and that sort of thing, you know. The moment I marry without his approval I revert to my pocket-money allowance."

The girl knew they were trenching again on a dangerous topic. She was so exquisitely sensitive that she felt the imminence of some avowal that it would be bet-ter, perhaps, not to hear.

"What does money matter if we are happy?" she cried cheerfully. "And our small community in Pont Avon is a very united and pleasant one, don't you think?"

"Topnotch," said he. "There's Ingersoll, coming down from the front. Bet you fifty centimes he has washed in a little gem—something I couldn't touch if I tried every day for ten years!"

"Dad is really very clever," agreed Yvonne, momentarily deaf to the irony of the words. "I often won-der why he has remained in our village eighteen years. People say he would soon find a place in Paris or New York. Sometimes I fancy that my mother's death must have distressed him beyond measure. He never speaks of her, even to me. Perhaps he can't bear to revive sad memories."

"I can understand that," said Tollemache. "I believe I should go dotty if married to a woman I really loved, and I lost her."

Yvonne darted into a shop to buy caramels. She had to escape somehow. When she emerged one side of her face was bulging, and she held out a cardboard box. "Take one," she gurgled. Not yet twenty, she was sufficient of a woman to play a part when it suited her. By the time the two had joined Ingersoll they were boy and girl again, and the curtain, lifted for an instant on a tragedy, had fallen.

Tollemache, searching for some commonplace re-mark to relieve the tension of his own feelings, noticed the drift of smoke curling from a cottage chimney.

"What has happened to the wind?" he said.

"It has veered to the southeast, Monsieur," answered Peridot.

"I thought something of the sort had taken place, but was so busy that I did not pay any heed," said Ingersoll. Then his forehead wrinkled reflectively. "Southeast from southwest," he muttered. "On a rising tide that change should kick up a nasty sea. Is the return trip quite safe, Peridot?"

"The sea will be a trifle worse, Monsieur; but we'll travel on an even keel."

"And be swept by an occasional wave from stem to stern?"

"I've heard of such things," grinned Peridot.

"And very uncomfortable things they are too. Yvonne, you must decide. Shall we take the rough passage, or hire the hotel auto?"

Yvonne rounded her eyes at her father, and stepped on board the Hirondelle.

He laughed. "That settles it!" he cried."' Of Christian souls more have been wrecked on shore than ever were lost at sea.' But I warn you, my merry adventuress. Before half an hour has passed you may be ready to cry with honest old Gonzalo in 'The Tempest,' 'Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground; long heath, brown furze, any thing,' obviously having the coast of Finistere in his mind."

THE behavior of the maritime folk of Lc Pouldu showed that there was an element of risk in the voyage. Knots of fishermen watched Peridot's preparations with a professional eye, and spat approval when he cast loose a small jibsail. A few carried interest so far that they climbed the seaward cliff to watch the boat's progress across the Basse Persac and Basse an Hiss, the two nearest shallows on the homeward line across the Anse du Pouldu.

The Hirondelle passed the bar of the Laita quickly and safely. A sea that would have smothered her in churning water broke within a boat's length. After that escape she made a drier passage than her occupants expected. Site was abreast of Douelan, and Yvonne was listening to the thunder of the Atlantic on the black reef that stretches from Kerlogal Mill to Les Cochons de Beg Morg, while her eyes were watching the changing bearings of the church spires of Moelan and Clohars, when a shout from Peridot recalled her wandering thoughts.

"There's a steam yacht out there making heavy weather," he said.

Ingersoll had evidently noted the other vessel al-ready, because he had gone into the cabin?not the cubbyhole of a sardine boat, but the hold converted into a saloon, fitted with a table screwed to the deck, and four comfortable bunks—and reappeared with a pair of binoculars. From that moment all eyes were fixed on the newcomer.

At a guess she might be coming from Brest to Lorient, because it was safe to assume that her Captain was not a fool, and he must have started the day's run before the change of wind. It must be remembered that the very conditions that helped the five-ton Hirondelle were the worst possible for the sixty- or seventy-ton stranger, hard driven into a head sea whipped by a fierce wind. She had shaped a course outside L'Isle Verte, and was well clear of the Ar Gazek shallow when first sighted by those on board the Hirondelle. The tidal stream was running strongly there, and Yvonne with difficulty repressed a cry of dismay when the yacht's bare masts and white funnel vanished completely in a cloud of spray.

"If that fellow has any sense, he'll turn while he is

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able, and make for Concarneau," said Peridot, as the spume dissipated, and the stricken vessel's spars came into view again.

"Perhaps he doesn't know this coast. Can we signal him?" inquired the girl.

"He wouldn't take any notice of a fishing boat. The skipper of a ten-centime steam yacht thinks more of himself than the commander of an Atlantic liner. Of course he should make Lorient tonight—if he under-stands the lights."

The self-confident Peridot seldom qualified his words: now he had twice spoken with an if. Yvonne hauled herself forward, and joined her father and Tollemache.

"Peridot thinks that the vessel out there may get into difficulties," she said. "I suggested that we should signal her; but he says she would pay no heed."

"What sort of signal?"

"To turn back—Concarneau for choice."

"Let's try, anyhow. Lorry, you'll find a codebook in the chart locker, and flags in the one beneath. Look for 'Recommend change of course' or something of the sort, and the Concarneau code letters. Get the necessary flags, and we'll run 'em up."

Peridot, who missed nothing, understood Tollemache's quick descent into the cabin. His shout reached father and daughter clearly:

"They're signaling from the Brigneau station already. It'll do no harm if we give him a tip too."

During the next ten minutes the situation remained unchanged, save that yacht and fishing boat neared

each other rapidly, the Hirondelle traveling three kilometers to the yacht's one, while lines of flags, each identical—whereat Tollemache winked at Yvonne and preened himself—fluttered from signal station and mast. The yacht disregarded these warnings, and pressed on.

Ingersoll was watching her through the glasses; but Yvonne's keen vision hardly needed such aid. "They must have seen both signals," she said. "There are two men on the bridge. What a big man one of them is! Can you make out her name, Dad?"

"No. I've been trying to; but the seas pouring over the fore part render the letters indistinct. You have a look. Mind you brace yourself tight against that stay."

He handed her the binoculars, and Yvonne lost a few seconds in adjusting the focus.

"The first letter is an S," she announced. "There are five. The last one is an A. Oh, what a blow that sea must have given her! It pitched on board just beneath the bridge. Why, what's the matter? She is swinging round!"

The girl was sufficiently versed in the ways of the sea to realize that no shipmaster would change course in that manner, nor attempt such a maneuver at the instant his craft was battling against hundreds of tons of water in motion.

"Gars!" yelled Peridot excitedly. "She's broken down—shaft snapped, or propeller gone!"

At once the fierce and thrilling struggle had become a disaster. The yacht was drifting broadside on, utterly at the mercy of wind and tide. Unless a miracle happened, she would be ground to matchwood on that rock-bound coast within a few minutes. Unhappily she had gained considerable speed in the direction where destruction awaited her before her crew could let go the anchor. The agonized watchers from shore and boat knew when a fluke caught in some crevice of the rocks buried twelve fathoms deep, because the vessel's bows were brought up against the sea with a jerk. Then she fell away again. The cable couldn't stand the strain. It had parted.

"Good God!" groaned Ingersoll. "Every soul on board will be drowned before our eyes!"

Yvonne could not speak. Neither could she see. She was blinded with tears. The suddenness of the affair was appalling. At one instant she bad been following a fascinating fight between man and the elements, a fight in which man was gaining ground yard by yard. Now by some trick of Fate man was delivered, bound and crippled, to become the sport of savage and relent-less enemies. She heard her father shouting to Peridot: "Bear a couple of points to port. They may lower a boat."

"No use!" came the answer. "Better crack on. They'll strike on Les Verres. We may pick up one or two in the channel if they wear life belts."

Tollemache had leaped down into the cabin. He was out on deck again now, bare-headed, having discarded oilskin coat and sou'wester. A cork jacket was strapped round his tall, alert body. If any life could be snatched back from the abyss, Tollemache might be trusted not to spare himself in the effort. In that moment of stress the cheery, devil-may-care American artist had become a calm, clear-headed man of action. He looked almost heroic, standing on the sloping deck forward, with one sinewy, brown-skinned hand clasping a mast-hoop, and the other thrust into a pocket of his Norfolk jacket. By a queer trick of memory Yvonne was reminded of her fright when she saw Lorry clinging to the rings of Sainte Barbe's tower. He had come through that ordeal unscathed.

Would he conquer in this far more dreadful test? There he could depend on his own taut muscles and iron nerve. Here he was at the mercy of circumstances. Still, it was helpful to see Lorry's fingers clenched on a ring. Somehow it seemed to offer good augury.

CHAPTER III. The Wreck

THERE were brave hearts too on board the vessel now seemingly doomed to utter destruction. Each of her two masts carried canvas, and when the cable parted a ready command had evidently sent the crew racing to cast loose both sails from their lashings. But the very trimness and tautness of everything on board proved the yacht's final undoing. Knives were brought into play, and the foresail was hoisted within a few seconds. The yacht answered her helm promptly. There seemed to be a real chance that she might haul into the wind and clear the black fangs of Les Verres, in which case she would either run into the small estuary at Brigneau, or at the worst beach herself on the strip of sand there.

At that moment the occupants of the Hirondelle saw her name, the Stella, and they were on the point of breaking into a frantic cheer of relief when the unlucky craft crashed into a submerged rock, swung broadside on, and was saved from turning turtle only by another rock which stove her in amidships.

"Ah, Les Verres have caught her! I thought they would. God ' help those poor fellows!"

It was Peridot who spoke, and the mere fact that he had abandoned hope sounded the requiem of the Stella and all her company.

Then indeed her plight was like to have passed beyond human aid. She was lodged on the outer fringe of an unapproachable reef, whence a rapidly rising tide would lift her at any minute. Being built of steel, she would sink forthwith, be-cause her bows were crushed and plates started below her load line. She carried four boats; but, with the ingenuity of malice that the sea often displays in its unbridled fury, the two to port were crushed to splinters when she heeled over, and those to starboard, swinging inward on their davits, filled instantly, since the waves poured in cascades over the hull, as though the mighty Atlantic was concentrating

Continued on page 14

ZENOBIA DIGS UP
A LATE ONE

Drawings by F. Foster Lincoln

BY SEWELL FORD

AND first off I had him listed in the joke column. Think of that! But when I caught my first glimpse of him, there in the Corrugated gen'ral offices that mornin', there was more or less comedy idea to his get-up; the high-sided, flat-topped derby, for instance. Once in awhile you run across an old sport who still sticks to that type of hard-boiled lid. Gen'rally they're short-stemmed old ginks who seem to think the high crown makes 'em loom up taller. Maybe so; but where they find back-number hats like that is beyond me.

Then there was the buff-cochin spats and the wide ribbon to his eyeglasses. Beyond that I don't know as there was anything real freaky about him. A rich-colored old gent he is, the pink in his cheeks shadin' off into a deep mahogany tint back of his ears, makin' his frosted hair and mustache stand out some prominent.

He'd been shown into the private office on a call for Mr. Robert; but as I was well heeled with work of my own I didn't even glance up from the desk until I hears this scrappy openin' of his.

"Bob Ellins, you young scoundrel, what the blighted beatitudes does this mean?" he demands.

Naturally that gets me stretchin' my neck, and I turns just in time to watch the gaspy expression on Mr. Robert's face fade out and turn into a chuckle.

"Why, Mr. Ballard!" says he, extendin' the cordial palm. "I had no idea you were on this side. Really! I understood, you know, that you were settled over there for good, and that—"

"So you take advantage of the fact, do you, to make e president of one of your fool companies?" says Ballard. "My imbecile attorney just let it leak out. What do you mean, eh?"

Mr. Robert pushes him into a chair and shrugs his shoulders. "It was rather a liberty, I admit," says he; "one of the exigencies of business, however. When a meddlesome administration insists on dissolving into its component parts such an extensive organization as ours?well, we had to have a lot of presidents in a hurry. Really, we didn't think you'd mind, Mr. Ballard, and we had no intention of bothering you with the details."

"Huh!" snorts Mr. Ballard. "And what is this precious corporation of which I'm supposed to be the head?"

"Why, Mutual Funding," says Mr. Robert. "Funding, eh?" comes back Ballard snappy. "What tommyrot! Bob Ellins, you ought to know that I haven't the vaguest notion as to what funding is,?never did,?and at my time of life, Sir, I don't propose to learn!"

"Of course, of course," says Mr. Robert soothin'. "Quite unnecessary too. You are adequately and efficiently represented, Mr. Ballard, by a private secretary who has mastered the art of funding, mutual and otherwise, until he can do it backward with one hand tied behind him. Torchy, will you step here a moment?"

I was comin' too; but Mr. Ballard waves me off. "Stop!" says he. "I'll not listen to a word of it. I'd have you know, Bob Ellins, that I have worried along for sixty-two years without having been criminally implicated in business affairs. The worst I've done has been to pose as a dummy director on your rascally board and to see that my letter of credit was renewed every three months. Use my name if you must; but allow me to keep a clear conscience. I'm going in now for a chat with your father, Bob, and if he mentions funding I shall stuff my fingers in my ears and run. He won't, though. Old Hickory knows me better. This his door? All right. Thanks. Hall, you old freebooter! In your den, are von? Well, well!"

At which he stalks into the other office and leaves Mr. Robert and me grinnin' at each other.

LISTENED like you was in Dutch for a minute or so there," says I. "Case of the cat comin' back, eh?"

"From Kyrie Ballard," says he, "one expects the unexpected. Only we need not worry about his wanting to become the acting head of your department. To-morrow or next week he is quite likely to be off again, bound for some remote corner of the earth, to hobnob with the native rulers thereof, participate in their games of chance, and invent a new punch especially suitable for that particular climate."

"Gee!" says I. "That's my idea of a perfectly good

boss,—one that gives his job absent treatment."

I thought too that Mr. Robert had doped out his motions correct; for a week goes by and no Mr. Ballard shows up to take the rubber stamp away from me, or even ask fool questions. I was hopin' too that Ballard had gone a long ways from here, accordin' to custom. Then one night—well, it was at the theater, one of them highbrow Shaw plays that I was chucklin' through with Aunt Zenobia.

EH? Remember her, don't you? Why, she's one of the pair of aunts that I got half adopted by, 'way back when I first started in with the Corrugated. Yep, I've been stayin' on with 'em. Why not? Course our little side street is 'way down in an old-fashioned part of the town; the upper edge of old Greenwich village, in fact, if you know where that is.

The house is one of a row that sports about the only survivin' specimens of the cast-iron grapevine school of architecture. Honest, we got a double-decked veranda built of foundry work that was meant to look like leaves and vines, I expect. Cute idea, eh? Bein' all painted brick red, though, it ain't so convincin'; but stragglin' over ours is a wistaria that has a few sickly-lookin' blossoms on it every spring and manages to carry a sprinklin' of dusty leaves through the summer. Also there's a nine-by-twelve lawn, that costs a dollar a square foot to keep in shape, I'll bet.

From that description maybe you'd judge that the place where I hang out is a little antique. It is. But inside it's mighty comf'table, and it's the best imitation of a home I've ever carried a latch key to. As for the near-aunts, Zenobia and Martha, take it from me they're the real things in that line, even if they did let me in off the street without askin' who or what! The best of it is they never have asked, which makes it convenient. I couldn't tell 'em much, if they did.

There's Martha—well, she's the pious one. It ain't any case of sudden spasms with her. It's a settled habit. She's just as pious Monday mornin' as she is Sunday afternoon, and it lasts her all through the week. You know how she started in by readin' them Delilah and Jones yarns to me. She's kept it up. About twice a week she corners me and pumps in a slice of Scripture readin', until I guess we must be more'n half through the Book. Course there's a lot of it I don't see any percentage in at all; but I've got so I don't mind it, and it seems to give Aunt Martha a lot of satisfaction. She's a lumpy, heavy-set old girl, Martha, and a little slow; but the only thing that ain't genuine about her is the yellowish white frontispiece she pins on over her own hair when she dolls up for dinner.

But Zenobia—say, she's a diff'rent party! A few years younger than Martha, Zenobia is,—in the early sixties, I should say,—and she's just as active and up to date and foxy as Martha is logy and antique and dull. While Martha is sayin' grace Zenobia is gen'-rally pourin' herself out a glass of port.

About once a week Martha loads herself into an old horse cab and goes off to a meetin' of the foreign mission society, or something like that; but almost every afternoon Zenobia goes whizzin' off in a taxi, maybe to hear some long-haired violinist, maybe to sit on the platform with Emma Goldman and Bouck White and applaud enthusiastic when the established order gets another jolt. Just as likely as not too she'll bring some of 'em home to dinner with her.

Zenobia never shoves any advice on me, good or otherwise, and never asks noisy questions; but she's the one who secs that my socks are kept mended and has my suits sent to the presser. She don't read things to me, or expound any of her fads. She just talks to me like she does to anyone else—minor poets or social reformers—about anything she happens to be int'rested in at the time,—music, plays, Mother Jones, the war, or how suffrage is comin' on,—and never seems to notice when I make breaks or get over my head.

A good sport Zenobia is, and so busy sizin' up today that she ain't got time for reminiscin' about the days before Brooklyn Bridge was built. And the most chronic kidder you ever saw. Say, what we don't do to Aunt Martha when both of us gets her on a string is a caution! That's what makes so many of our meals such cheerful events.

You might think, from a casual glance at Zenobia,

with her gray hair and the lines around her eyes, that she'd be kind of slow comp'ny for me, especially to chase around to plays with and so on. But, believe me, there's nothin' dull about her, and when she suggests that she's got an extra ticket to anything I don't stop to ask what it is, but just gets into the proper evenin' uniform and trots along willin'!

So, that's how I happens to be with her at this Shaw play, and discussin' between the acts what Barney was really tryin' to put over on us. The first intermission was most over too before I discovers this ruddy-faced old party in the back of Box A with his opera glasses trained steady in our direction. I glances along the row to see if anyone's gazin' back; but I can't spot a soul lookin' his way. After he's kept it up a minute or two I nudges Aunt Zenobia.

"Looks like we was bein' inspected from the box seats," says I.

"How flattering!" says she. "Where?"

I points him out. "Must be you," says I, grinnin'.

"I hope so," says Zenobia. "If I'm really being flirted with, I shall boast of it to Sister Martha."

But just then the lights go out and the second act begins. We got so busy followin' the nutty scheme of this conversation expert who plots to pass off a flower-girl for a Duchess that the next wait is well under way before I remembers the gent in the box.

"Say, he's at it again," says I. "You must be makin' a hit for fair."

"Precisely what I've always hoped might happen,—to be stared at in public," says Zenobia. "I'm greatly obliged to him, I'm sure. You are quite certain, though, that it isn't someone just behind me?"

I whispers that there's no one behind her but a fat woman munchin' chocolates and rubberin' back to see if Hubby ain't through gettin' his drink.

"There! He's takin' his glasses down," says I. "Know the party, do you?"

"Not at this distance," says Zenobia. "No, I shall insist that he is an unknown admirer."

By that time, though, I'd got a better view myself. And—say, hadn't I seen them ruddy cheeks and that gray hair and them droopy eyes before? Why, sure! It's what's-his-name, the old guy who blew into the Corrugated awhile ago, my absentee boss—Ballard!

Maybe I'd have told Zenobia all about him if there'd been time; but there wa'n't. Another flash of the lights, and we was watchin' the last act, where this gutter-bred Pygmalion sprouts a soul. And when it's all over of course we're swept out with the ebb tide, make a scramble for our taxi, and are off for home. Then as we gets to the door I has this sudden hunch about eats.

"There's a joint around on Sixth avenue," says I, lettin' Aunt Zenobia in, "where they sell hot dog sandwiches with sauerkraut trimmin's. I believe I could just do with one about now."

"What an atrocious suggestion at this hour of the night!" says she. "Torchy, don't you dare bring one

---

of those abominations into the house—unless you have enough to divide with me. About four, I should say." "With mustard?" says I.

"Heaps!" says she.

THREE minutes later I'm hurryin' back with both hands full, when I notices another taxi standin' out front. Then who should step out but this Ballard party, in a silk hat and a swell fur-lined overcoat.

"Young man," says he, "haven't I seen you some-where before?"

"Uh-huh," says I. "I'm your private sec." "Wha-a-at?" says he. "My—oh, yes! I remember. I saw you at the Corrugated."

"And then again at the show tonight," says I. "To be sure," says he. "With a lady, eh?"

I nods.

"Lives here, doesn't she?" asks Ballard.

"Right again," says I. "Goin' to call?"

"Why," says he, "the fact is, young man, I—er—see here, it's Zenobia Hadley, isn't it?"

"Preble," says I. "Mrs. Zenobia Preble."

"Hang the Preble part!" says he. "He's dead years ago. What I want to know is, who else lives here?"

"Only her and Sister Martha and me," says I.

"Martha, eh?" says he. "Still alive, is she? Well, well! And Zenobia now, is she—er—a good deal like her sister?"

"About as much as Z is like M," says I. "She's a live one, Aunt Zenobia is, if that's what you're gettin' at."

"Thank you," says he. "That is it exactly. And I am glad to hear it. She used to be, as you put it, rather a live one; but I didn't quite know how—"

"Kyrie Ballard, is that you?" comes floatin' out from the front door. "If it is, and you wish to know any-thing more about Zenobia Hadley, I should advise you to come to headquarters. Torchy, bring in those sandwiches—and Mr. Ballard, if he cares to follow."

"There!" says I to Ballard. "You've got a sample. That's Zenobia. Are you comin' or goin'?"

Foolish question! He's leadin' the way up the steps.

"Zenobia," says he, holdin' out both hands, "I humbly apologize for following you in this impulsive fashion. I saw you at the theater, and—"

"If you hadn't done something of the kind," says she, "I shouldn't have been at all sure it was really you. You've changed so much!"

"I admit it," says he. "One does, you know, in forty years."

"There, there, Kyrie Ballard!" warns Zenobia. "Throw the calendar at me again, and out you go! I simply won't have it! Besides, I'm hungry. Torchy is to blame. He suggested hot dog sandwiches. Take a sniff. Do they appeal to you, or have you cultivated epicurean tastes to such an extent that—"

"Ah-h-h-h!" says Ballard, bendin' over the paper bag I'm holdin'. "My favorite delicacy. And if I might be permitted to add a bottle or two of cold St. Louis—"

"Do you think I keep house without an icebox?" demands Zenobia. "Stop your silly speeches, and let's get into the dining room."

SOME hustler, Zenobia is, too. Inside of two minutes she's shed her wraps, passed out plates and glasses, and we're tacklin' a Coney Island collation.

"I had been wondering if it could be you," says Ballard. "I'd been watching you through the glasses."

"Yes, I know," says Zenobia. "And we had quite settled it that you were a strange admirer. I'm fright-fully disappointed!"

"Then you didn't know me?" says he. "But just now—"

"Voices don't turn gray or change color," says Zenobia. "Yours sounds just as it did?well, the last time I heard it."

"That August night, eh?" suggests Mr. Ballard, suspendin' operations on the sandwich and leanin' eager across the table.

He's a chirky, chipper old scout, with a lot of twinkles left in his blue eyes. Must have been some gay boy in his clay too; for even now he shows up more or less ornamental in his evenin' clothes. And Zenobia ain't such a bad looker either, you know; especially just now, with her ears pinked up and her eyes sparklin' mischievous. I don't know whether it's from takin' massage treatments reg'lar, or if it just comes natural, but she don't need to cover up her collar bone or wear things around her neck.

"Yes, that night," says she, liftin' her glass. "Shall we drink just once to the memory of it?"

Which they did.

"And now," goes on Zenobia, "we will forget it, if you please."

"Not I," says Ballard. "Another thing: I've never forgiven your sister Martha for what she did then. I never will."

Zenobia indulges in a trilly little laugh. "No more has she forgiven you," says she. "How absurd of you both, just as though—but we'll not talk about it. I've no time for yesterdays. Today is too full. Tell me, why are you back here?"

"Because seven armies have chased me out of Europe," says he, "and my charming Vienna is too full of cholera to be quite healthy. If I'd dreamed of finding you like this, I should have come long ago."

"Very pretty," says Zenobia. "I'd love to believe it, just for the sake of repeating it to Martha in the morning. She is still with me, you know."

"As saintly as ever?" asks Ballard.

"At thirty Martha was quite as good as she could be," says Zenobia. "There she seems to have stopped. So naturally her opinion of you hasn't altered in the least."

"And yours?" says he.

"Did I have opinions at twenty-two?" says she. "How ridiculous! I had emotions, moods, mad impulses; anyway, something that led me to give you seven dances in a row and stay until after one A. M. when I had promised someone to leave at eleven. You don't think I've kept up that sort of thing, do you?"

"I don't know," says Ballard. "I wouldn't be sure. One never could be sure of Zenobia Hadley. I suppose that was why I took my chance when I did, why I—"

"Kyrie Ballard, you've finished your sandwich, haven't you?" breaks in Zenobia. "There! It's striking twelve, and I make it a rule never to be sentimental after midnight. You and Martha wouldn't enjoy meeting each other; so you'll not be coming again. Besides, I've a busy week ahead of me. When you get settled abroad again, though, you might let me know. Goodnight. Happy dreams."

And before Ballard can protest he's bein' shooed out.

"You'll take luncheon with me tomorrow," he calls back from his cab.

"Probably not," says Zenobia.

"Oh yes, you will, Zenobia," says he. "I'm a desperate character still. Remember that!"

She laughs and shuts the door. "There, Torchy!" says she. "See what complications come from combining hot clogs with Bernard Shaw. And if Martha should happen to get down before those bottles are removed—well, I should have to tell her all."

TRUST Martha. She did. And when I finished breakfast she was still waitin' for Zenobia to come clown and be quizzed. I don't know how far back into fam'ly hist'ry that little chat took 'em, or what Martha had to say. All I know is that when I shows up for dinner and comes down stairs about six-thirty there sits Martha in the lib'ry, rockin' back and forth with that patient, resigned look on her face, as if she was next in line at the dentist's.

"Zenobia isn't in yet," says she. "We will wait dinner awhile for her."

Then chunks of silence from Martha, which ain't usual. At 'seven o'clock we gives it up and sits down alone. We hadn't finished our soup when this telegram comes. First off I thought Martha was goin' to choke or blow a cylinder head, I didn't know which. Then she takes to sobbin' into the consomme, and fin'lly she shoves the message over to me.

"Wha-a-at?" I gasps. "Eloped, have they?"

"I—I knew they would," says Martha, "just as soon as I heard he'd been here. He—he always wanted her to do it."

"Always?" says I. "Why, I thought he hadn't seen her for forty years or so. How could that be?"

"We-we-well," sobs Martha, "I—I stopped them once. And she engaged to the Rev. Mr. Preble at the time! It was scandalous! Such a wild, reckless fellow Kyrie Ballard was too."

"Whe-e-ew!" I whistles. "That was goin' some for Zenobia, wasn't it? How near did they come to doin' the slope?"

"She—she was actually stealing out to meet him, her things all on," says Martha, "when—when I woke up and found her. I made her come back by threatening to call Mother. Engaged for two years, she and Mr. Preble had been, and the wedding day all set. He'd just got a nice church too, his first. I saved her that time; but now—" Martha relapses into the sob act.

"The giddy young things!" says I. "Gone off on a honeymoon trip too! Say, that ain't such slow work, is it? Gettin' there a little late, maybe; but if there ever was a pair of silver sixties meant to be mated up, I guess it's them. Well, well! I stand to lose a near-aunt by the deal; but they get my blessin', anyway."

As for Aunt Martha, she keeps right on thinnin' out the soup.

THE MADSTONE

MOST persons, especially those in rural districts, have seen so-called madstones. Frequently physicians are asked whether there is actually any virtue in these stones. Their answer is that they do possess some value, but that they would be of still more value were their limitations understood.

There is no particular variety of stone or substance that may be designated exclusively as the madstone. Many madstones, so called, have been examined, and it has been found that but few of them were, geologically speaking, identical.

Madstones, it appears, act on the same principle that blotting paper does when absorbing ink, and there is nothing that makes a better one than baked pipe clay. A new clay pipe, costing a cent, cannot be excelled by any madstone, no matter how much it may be "cracked up." The action can be clearly demonstrated by placing a common dry red brick in contact with the margin of a puddle of water, and observing what capillary attraction will accomplish.

In order to be efficient, therefore, the prime requisite is that the stone shall be porous and show strong adhesive and absorbent qualities. There is nothing mysterious about the true madstone. Some have appeared to be concretions, either vesical, renal, or biliary, that were found in the bladder, kidney, or liver of some animal. Those from the deer are supposed to be best.

When a person is bitten by a dog supposed to be mad, and the porous stone is applied to the wound, the blotting paper action begins, and the blood saliva from the mouth of the animal and whatever poison these fluids contain will naturally, by capillary attraction, be absorbed by and into the substance applied, whether the madstone be the madstone of the superstitious or not.

There is no truth in the statement that if a stone sticks the wound is poisonous, and that if it does not take hold there is no venom present. If the stone be clean and dry, it will adhere when moisture is within reach until the stone becomes saturated. For example, a new brick will absorb one pint of water. After the venom has been taken into the circulation the mad-stone is worthless; but as the victim is usually filled with whisky at the time the stone is applied the spirits may counteract the effects of the poison.

HUMOR OF THE SCHOOLROOM

HIS HIGHEST AMBITION

MANY of the teachers attending a recent teachers' convention at Portland, Maine, had good stories to tell. One young and rather pretty teacher from Lincoln County told the following:

"It has been my custom to encourage discussion of subjects outside the lesson papers, and along this line I one day spoke of ambitions. After I had set before the class the desirability of having high aims I asked my pupils what each planned to be. One wanted to be a doctor, another President, another an aviator, an-other an electric car motorman, another an engineer on a railroad, and so on around the class, until I reached Tommy.

"Tommy is a bright, handsome youngster of seven years, and I was expecting him to want to be someone of great importance in the world. I was puzzled to find him plainly much embarrassed. He didn't want to tell me his ambition, but finally asked if he might whisper it to me. Much interested, I gave him permission, and he trudged up to my desk. Even there he hesitated.

"'Come, come, Tommy!' I said somewhat impatiently. 'Tell me what it is you want to he in life.'

"He raised himself on tiptoes and slipped one arm about my neck as he whispered, 'Your—your husband!'"

TEACHER WAS FOOLED

AT a German recitation the class was asked for the German forms of English words. "What is the German for lawyer, Tommy?" asked Miss Jones of my neighbor.

The German for lawyer is pronounced Ahd-fo-kaht. Although Tommy and I had studied this lesson with great zeal the night before, we could not recollect the word. So Tommy stammered very sullenly:

"I fo'got."

"Good!" said Miss Jones, first to Tommy's astonishment, then to his amusement as he saw the point, and finally to his delight, because he avoided getting a zero.

E. F. M.

ASKED FOR INFORMATION

THE minister visited the Sunday school class one Sunday afternoon, just after Christmas, and unrolled a beautifully colored chart depicting the Flight into Egypt. "And," said he, using the pointer, "the angel said unto Joseph, 'take ye the mother and child and flee into Egypt.' Isn't that beautiful, Children?" asked the minister. Here you see Joseph, the angel, the Mother, and the Child. In the background is Egypt."

Before he could go further a small voice was heard inquiringly, "Where's the flea?"

M. J. P.

LOOKED BAD FOR PAPA

WILLIAM'S uncle was a very tall, fine-looking man, while his father was very small. William admired his uncle, and wished to grow up like him. One day he said to his mother:

"Mama, how did Uncle grow so big and tall?"

His mother said, "Well, when Uncle was a small boy he was always a very good boy, and tried to do what was right at all times; so God let him grow up big and tall."

William thought this over seriously for a few minutes, then said, "Mama, what kind of a boy was Papa?"

A PRACTICAL REFORMER

DOROTHY'S mother is a suffragette of advanced type. Dorothy is a dear little girl in a primary grade, but somewhat inclined to copy her elders. One day her teacher received a note from the secretary of the school board, but waited until after class to read it. Dorothy returned for some books, and caught tears in the teacher's eyes (the latter had been denied an increase in salary upon which she had based large hopes), and said: "Why are you crying?"

The teacher laughed and said, "The naughty old school board isn't nice to me!"

Dorothy took hold of the teacher's hand with both hers and said very seriously, "Don't you cry any more. When we get the vote we women will correct such things!"

SPINAL COLUMN DEFINED

THE subject for the hour was physiology. I was explaining the nature of the spinal column to a class of twelve-year-olds. After finishing the discussion I said to a little Irish boy:

"Now, Michael, what is the spinal column?"

Scratching his head thoughtfully for a minute, he smilingly replied, "Well, Ma'am, 'tis the thing that runs up and down your back. Yer head sits on one end, and you sit on the other."

V. F. C.

SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUN-ISHED

A TEACHER asked her school to use the following words in sentences: Attired, aniline, canopies, and cellar.

These astonishing answers were given: "I am attired at I don't know what to do."—"l fish with a hook aniline. "—"She asked fora canopies, but he wouldn't cellar anything."

RARE BIRDS

HOW did Columbus know he was nearing land?" asked the teacher of United States history.

"He encountered floating seaweed and saw birds in the air," answered Willie, reading from his book.

Up went Harry's hand.

"Well, Harry, what is it?"

"Miss Page, what kind of birds are saw birds? I never heard of them before."

HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE

IT was recess. Two small boys were having a somewhat rough struggle, and when one received an unexpected hard blow he exclaimed:

"If you don't look out, you'll end up in a place that begins with H and ends with L!"

A passing teacher, hearing the remark, scolded the boy severely for what he had said.

"Well," replied the boy, after a pause, "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about. I only meant hospital."

SAMMY PROTESTS

IT was up in old Vermont. One day the teacher was telling his history class of the greatness of Great Britain and France. "Why," said he, "Great Britain has so much land that the sun never ceases to shine on it. Let's call her the Sun. France is the land of politeness, Children, where all the little boys tip their hats to the girls. She isn't so large as Great Britain; so let's call her the Moon."

Little Bobby Cole and Jeanne Jarvis sat with heads erect, eyes sparkling, drinking in the words. Bobby

was English, Jeanne was French, and both were proud of their respective countries. However, all the children were not so interested, especially Sammy Allen, a typical little Yankee, who was diligently searching a Sunday school book. Not finding what he wanted, and appearing to be unable to restrain himself any longer, he blurted out:

"Yes, Sir; but George Washington told the Sun and the Moon to stop right dead still, and I betcha they did too!"

ART CRITICISM

THIS artist," remarked the teacher at the conclusion of the drawing lesson, "painted many other beautiful pictures, which were hung in the galleries of Paris. Now I want you little boys and girls to write me a composition about this great painter."

One of said little boys wrote, "The artist painted many beautiful pictures, for which he was hung on the gallows in Paris."

N. M.

ROARING ALL THE WAY

HAZEL was the pet of the class, pretty as a picture, and as stupid in lessons as she was attractive in appearance.

"Hazel," said the teacher, "we had a lesson on the earth's axis last week. Now what is the earth's axis?"

"The axis of the earth," replied Hazel, "is a menagerie lion, running from the north pole to the south pole once in every twenty-four hours."

MUSIC BY THE PECK

AT the beginning of a musical exercise was the sign 3/4.

TEACHER: "What does the number 3 tell us?"

PUPIL, (age 7): "There are three quarts of notes in a measure."

IT COULDN'T HEAR. ANYWAY

TEACHER: "The bones of a person or animal separated from the skin and flesh we call a skeleton" (shows picture of skeleton). "Have we bones in our ears?"

PUPILS: "Yes, Ma'am."

TEACHER: "Then why doesn't a skeleton have ears?"

LIZZIE: "Because it doesn't need any."

MRS. M. J. S.

IN THE NATURE CLASS

THE nature lesson was to be on nuts.

TEACHER: "John, you may tell me three kinds of nuts you know."

JOHN (without hesitation): "Doughnuts, peanuts, and forget-me-nuts."

EMBARRASSING QUESTIONS

A YOUNGSTER in my Sunday school class, on being assured that God was omnipotent, asked after some hesitation, "Teacher, can He make a stone so heavy that He can't lift it?"

And I had "yes" framed for the answer before I saw the point.

Another instance served to embarrass me more completely. It was when a visitor, one of the church board, was talking to the class. A rather tall, thin man he was, rather addicted to physical culture, perhaps more theoretically than practically. He was telling the class that to care for the body was to nourish the soul. He was getting enthusiastic when he exclaimed:

"Ten years ago I was a gaunt shadow of a man. I saw that unless I did something for my health I could not live very long. So I took to exercise. And what do you suppose has wrought this great change in me, Children?"

Just then the most impish member of my class leaned forward and inquired, "W'at change?"

M. J. P.

THE INTERNATIONAL BABY

Drawing by Walter Biggs

BY HAPSBURG LIEBE

THEY lived on the Big Laurel and the Little Laurel (the latter-named mountain, by the way, is the bigger). The Dunbars had come from somewhere in Virginia, immediately after the close of the Civil War. They were a people who had given their hearts and their hands to Robert E. Lee's army. The Ledworths were native North Carolinians. They had been Unionists, blood and bone and brain, during the lamented conflict between the North and the South. The Dunbars of the Little Laurel and the Ledworths of the Big Laurel had never been friendly. The spirit of the Civil War had not died in them. But they did not resort to fighting until old Jasper Dunbar said to old Absalom Ledworth across the creek that ran between the two mountains: "The thing that whupped us was this: Lack o' money; the death o' Stonewall Jackson at the hands of a fool; and the lowdown Southern men who fit for the No'thi-o' which you was one!"

Whereupon Absalom Ledworth lifted his long rifle and shot a drop of red blood from Jasper Dunbar's left ear. This opened the feud. The two factions fought on sight after that. The losses were sufficiently great to prevent the number of either side going above forty. Some thirty bare, brown, crudely lettered, and upright slatestones, divided about equally on the two mountains, still bear certain, grim, pitiful evidence of that very bitter feud.

One day Buck Ledworth, son of the chief of the Led-worths, met and fell in love with the daughter of the chief of the Dunbar side—and found that his feeling was reciprocated. It was but natural. He was good looking, only twenty-four, and as strong and as brave a man as ever planted a foot on any mountain; she was slender, willowy, gentle, mild, and the prettiest young woman he had ever seen. She agreed to marry him if he would build their cabin on the creek, midway between the two factions, and help her to try for peace between those factions. Buck was not long in seeing matters in their true light. So they were married, and soon after they went to housekeeping in a little cabin on one bank of Blackfern Creek.

But the result of the union was that the couple were cast out, utterly cast out, by their respective peoples. Their names were never mentioned in the households of their parents. They were looked upon as worse, in-finitely worse, than dead. If even their own mothers, both good-hearted women for all their high-strung natures, sympathized, they were not permitted to make the slightest exhibition of that sympathy.

So Buck Ledworth and Sadie lived their first two married years as much alone as though they were marooned on a far-off island. There was, however, this benefit: Their exile endeared them to each other beyond any power save death to separate.

Then there came a sweet little stranger to the cabin on the bank of Blackfern Creek,—a buy, a cooing, laughing, dimpled boy, and the lonesomeness was lessened greatly. And Buck Ledworth proudly opened the new family Bible he had bought for Sadie and wrote in a big, uneven, scrawling hand:

robert E lee u S Grant ledworth
borned
by the grase of god
on aprel the twenty 19 and fore

TWO weeks passed, and evening of a fine Sunday came. Buck Ledworth sat in the doorway; in his lap he held his first born as tenderly as though it were a baby angel instead of flesh and blood. Close behind him, with an old pieced quilt about her shoulders, with her pale face triumphant and her brown eyes filled with the glory that God Almighty gives to young mothers, sat Sadie the Peaceful.

Buck tickled the little one's chin with a big forefinger, and smiled when his efforts were rewarded by a bit of crowing laughter.

"It's the finest young 'un I ever seen!" he declared. And it was.

Sadie too smiled. Then her eyes saddened. She looked pensively to where the golden sun Was sinking into the freshly leaved treetops above the crest of her own home mountain. "But—but even our own mothers," she said with an air of hurt, "hain't never been to see it."

"No," granted Buck, sympathetically, "not even them."

"I wonder if they know it, Buck?"

"A course! Granny Templin tells everything she knows, don't she? She couldn't keep a tongue in her head, if it wasn't fastened thar good and tight. A course they know it!"

Buck let anger into the tone of his voice. But he was not angry for his own sake. For himself, he could bear anything. The thing that pinched so hard was the fact that Sadie was hurt. Then an idea came to him suddenly, and he rose, his stalwart figure seeming almost to shut the light from the doorway.

"Listen here, Sadie!" said he. "See what you think o' this here plan: S'posen I take the baby up to my mother, and show it to her, and tell her its name is U. S. Grant? "T'won't be no lie. I wouldn't tell no lie, Sadie, as you know. And then I'll take it up to yore mother, and show it to her, and tell her its name is Robert E. Lee. And if they hain't got enough heart in 'em to love it, sech a baby as this is, they can all go to the dev—"

"Buck!" cried Sadie. "You promised me you'd never talk rough no more. S'posen the baby hears you a talkin' that a way, won't he want to talk that a way too? If you want to try yore plan, Honey, go right ahead. I'll set here and wait for you. Now take my old shawl, Buck, and kiver up Robert E. Lee U. S. Grant good, so's he won't ketch no cold in the night air."

SO Buck wrapped another covering about his baby, and marched determinedly and fearlessly across the creek, and up the rugged, stony mountainside toward his people. At a familiar, rambling cabin he stopped in a quandary. If he was to halloo, would they not shut the door and bar it against him? He decided that he would go right on in, as of yore. He stepped through the narrow gateway, and walked quietly up the guttered path. An old blind dog came toward him, wagging its tail and whining affectionately, and he was glad that he was thus remembered. Then he stepped up, opened the door, and crossed the threshold.

His two brothers, his sister, his father, and his mother were eating their evening meal by candlelight. They turned their silent, wondering faces toward him, and he tried hard to smile. His mother spoke very quietly: "What you got thar, Buck?"

Buck went to her and knelt beside her. With proud and trembling fingers he took down a part of the shawl from his baby's face. "The finest baby in the world," said he. He shot a quick glance toward his iron father. "Its name," he said, "is U. S. Grant."

The mother in old Jane Ledworth was fully aroused at the sight of her first grandchild. She stooped, put her arms about the little one, and took it into her lap. "B'ess 'im 'ittle soul!" she crooned?and then she looked defiance straight into the frowning eyes of her husband.

Buck's eyes filled. He covered his face with his big hands, and bent his head.

But his victory was not yet to be won. There was the sound of boot heels scraping on the rough board floor, the sound of a chair being kicked backward and into the yawning, empty stone fireplace.- Buck went to his feet and dragged a sleeve across his wet eyes, that he might see. He faced his Yankee father, who was as white as paper and staring hard at him. Old Ledworth advanced a little.

"You git that thar half-rebel out o' this here house,

---

you low-down disgrace to the name o' Ledworth!" he blared hotly. "And be quick about it, or I'll throw you out! D'ye git me?"

"Why, Pap!" protested Buck's mother.

"Be 'shamed!" said Buck's sister Julie.

"Shet up!" snapped old Absalom Led-worth, without taking his gaze from the son he had cast out.

Buck took the baby back into his arms, and his mother let it go very unwillingly.

"Git out o' here!" and Absalom Ledworth went toward Buck with clenched fists.

"If you wasn't my pap," Buck declared hoarsely, his face as white as that of his father, "I wouldn't leave a piece o' you as big as my hand!"

At this Ashburn and John Ledworth rose from their places at the table. They too were pale and trembling.

"It's hard to listen to that, Buck," said Ashburn jerkily.

"It's a da— that is, a sight harder to have to say it," retorted Buck. He turned to his mother and Julie. "The latchstring o' my house is always a hangin' on the outside to you two," he said. "And now goodby to you."

"Hold on thar!" Mrs. Ledworth put a hand on the nearest shoulder of the out-cast. "I'm a goin' with you. I'm not a goin' to live with no sech a pack as this. Will you let me?"

"Shore!" repeated Buck.

The three went out into the night, leaving a very much surprised masculine trio staring after them, and started for the little cabin on the creek. Old Mrs. Ledworth took her grandchild from her son's arms, and carried it as though it were the last, the very last, baby in the whole world.

When they reached Buck's little home they found glowing in the dark doorway the triumphant face of Sadie the Peaceful. A pair of white arms went toward them?and it was hard to tell just who those arms were for. When she closed them they were filled very full, and old Jane Ledworth kissed her tenderly on the forehead.

"Buck!" called Sadie joyously, hopefully. "Buck! Put another wrappin' around the baby, and take it up to my mother!"

SO Buck found another shawl for Robert E. Lee U. S. Grant, and set out for the home of his mother-in-law. The way was farther than he had thought, perhaps be-cause the Little Laurel was bigger than the Big Laurel, and it was the mountaineer's bedtime when he drew up before Jasper Dunbar's cabin. He saw with a glad throb that a light still burned within the main room. As he had done at his father's home, he entered without hallooing, for fear of the barred door. He found Jasper Dunbar, his wife, and their three grown sons sitting round an empty fireplace,?a habit they had acquired during the (lays and nights of the winter just gone. The four Dunbars looked sleepily toward him. Then they recognized him, and the sons and their father went to their feet angrily.

"Howdy," said Buck, shifting the bundle in his arms. He went to his mother-in-law's side?for he knew the heart most likely to open to his child—and knelt there. He swept hack the shawl, and showed to old Sallie Dunbar the dimpled, sleeping face of his baby.

"It's mine and Sadie's," he said, his big, black eyes looking into the old woman's face with a great appeal in them. "And we've named it Robert E. Lee."

Sallie Dunbar leaned forward, her eyes shining so much that they made him think of his own Sadie's eyes. An old and blackened clay pipe dropped to the floor with a loud clatter. The two old hands, mannish and strong for all their age, took up the priceless bundle, and pressed it against the good Southern heart.

"B'ess 'im 'ittle soul of 'im!" crooned she. "'Im shore do look like our Sadie used 'o look! Buck Ledworth, I wisht I may drap dead right whar I'm a settin' at if this here hain't jest the finest young 'un I ever seen!"

"His name," repeated Buck, glancing toward Jasper Dunbar, "is Robert E. Lee."

"I'd a been kind enough, and enough of a human bein'," clipped jasper Dunbar, reaching for a rifle, "to never a give sech a God-blessed name to a blasted half-Yankee. Now, Buck Ledworth, if you don't want 'o he interduced to eternity in short order, you git yore low-down self and that thar half-Yankee young 'un out o' my house!"

"Why, Pap!" cried the old woman shrilly. "Why, cain't yoh see that Robert E. Lee looks like pore little Sadie used to look? Why, cain't—"

"Looks like nothin'!" roared Jasper Dun-bar, cocking his rifle. "The blamed thing looks to me like a piece o' fat meat half tied up. Buck Ledworth, you better make yoreself sca'ce!"

"You be 'shamed o' yore old fool self,

Jasper Dunbar!— reproved Sadie's mother. She was quivering throughout her whole being. She pointed a forefinger like a weapon toward her unreasonable and irate husband. "You old fool, with one foot in the grave, hain't you got no sense, nohow? Jasper Dunbar, thar hain't many crimes any greater'n jest a bein' a fool. Mark my words, and see if they hain't the truth now. The fools' cawner o' Torment is a goin' to be crowded wuss'n any other part. And if you hain't keerful, you're a goin' to be set up on a stump as a masterpiece o' the Old Scratch's work. I'm a goin' home with Buck, what I am, and if you don't like it you can jest help yoreself! So let's go, Buck, Honey."

Thus did the little cabin on Blackfern Creek get another occupant. And the wives of the chiefs shook hands, promising to forget, that they might together worship at the shrine of the most wonderful baby in the world.

SIX years passed. The Dunbars and the Ledworths had not fired a hostile gun (luring that time, although they very religiously kept to themselves and refused to be on friendly terms. The mothers of the couple on Blackfern Creek, together with Julie, still lived with and worshiped Robert E. Lee U. S. Grant. And the boy was now all that his babyhood had promised, all that his adorers had hoped his boyhood would be.

The feud could not die, of course, a natural death. It had to have its final clash.

And that final clash promised to make up for the six uneventful years. It came about like this:

One day Jasper Dunbar and Absalom Ledworth, the chiefs, met on neutral ground; which is to say, at a little store down among the foothills. Ledworth, now dim of eye, did not recognize his old enemy. He spoke very cordially:

"Fine mornin', hain't it?"

Jasper Dunbar's eyes had not suffered so much from the passing of the years. He stopped in his tracks, shot our a heavy, bearded jaw, and told Absalom Ledworth that he was a liar. Ledworth saw his mistake. He shook with rage. He clenched a gnarled fist and touched his enemy's nose.

"You go home," he jabbered, "and git all o' yore low-down kind together. I'll go home and muster my men. We'll meet in the fo' part o' the day tomorrow, down thar a half a mile below Buck's house, and fight another Battle o' Bull Run."

"Count on me!" roared the other. "We'll be thar. And we'll turn Blackfern Creek red with yore nasty, stinkin' coward blood." He stamped away like a mad ox.

Absalom Ledworth spent for ammunition all the money he had brought along for the purchasing of sugar and coffee. Then he hastened to his home mountain, and the Ledworths began to make every possible preparation for a third Battle of Bull Run.

EARLY the following morning seventeen stalwart, strapping Ledworths, grim and silent, with ready rifles under their arms, crept toward the creek. Old Absalom, with a jug in his hand, led the way?he fancied he could see better, and that he was shrewder, When that old black jug was within easy reach. The seventeen were very careful. They did not expose their persons: they kept always behind a tree or a stone.

When they had reached a thick group of big hemlocks, which stood some fifty yards from the stream, they stopped. They looked across and into the Dunbar domain, and saw nothing; then they looked toward a six-year-old boy who stood watching the dashing waters of the creek. And they noted that the creek was swollen to twice its usual size by rains the night before.

"That's Buck's boy," said old Absalom to himself. "Somehow I feel like I'd like to see him lost, acause I hain't no idee I'll ever have another chanst—"

John Ledworth, standing at his father's side, had heard. He leaned out from behind the big trees as far as he could, and called down to the lad.

"Hey thar! Come up here!"

The boy turned and looked toward the group of hemlocks. John Ledworth called to him again. The boy began to move up the mountainside wonderingly. The watchers saw the sunlight glinting in his hair; soon they could see that the bridge of his nose was freckled. Old Absalom motioned. The boy went to him, stopped, and smiled a very nice smile.

"Did you want 'o see me, Mister?"

Old Ledworth started. His own grand-son didn't know him! He felt queer. He

---

reached for the jug, took out the corncob stopper, and drank a swallow.

"I wouldn't do that," said the boy.

"Why?" asked the Ledworth chief.

"Acause the Good Book it says, 'Wine is a mocker, and strong drink is ragin'," was the ready answer.

"Who teached you that?" queried Absalom Ledworth.

"Mother—my mother."

"She did?"

"Yes, Sir, she did." The boy nodded emphatically. "Say, what're you fellows a goin' to do with all o' these here guns?"

"Kill Dunbars," snapped John Ledworth.

"Kill Dunbars!" repeated the boy. It seemed that he couldn't believe it. "The Good Book it says as plain as daylight, 'Thou shalt not kill."'

"Who teached you that?" asked Absalom Ledworth.

"Mother—my mother."

"You say she did!" laughed the grand-father bitterly, with an oath.

"Yes, Sir, she did. And the Good Book it says, 'Thou shalt not take the name o' the Lord thy God in vain,' too. So what makes you do it?"

"Who teached you that, Son?"

"Mother, she did." His wide open eyes were shining with pride.

"The blank she did!"

"Yes, Sir, she did. And the Good Book it says—"

"Oh, shet up!" broke in old Ledworth.

A DEAD silence settled down upon them. The grandfather looked absently toward the rushing creek below. That the boy's mother, one of the heathen, had taught that boy those things—how could it be? Something not at all favorable to a third Battle of Bull Run began to gnaw at the stout old heart. But he pushed it off with a muttered oath, and turned back to his grandchild.

"You don't know who I am, do you?"

There was no hesitation about the little fellow's answer. "No, and I don't want to, acause you drink, and you cuss, and you want to kill people! I'm a tryin' to grow up good, like my pap. My pap he's the finest feller ever was. I never seen him drink a drap, and I know he don't want to kill nobody, and—I—I never heerd him cuss but jest one time. A dogwood wedge slipped out of a log, and hit him plumb smack squar' on the nose, and he says, 'Damn that wedge!' And then he gits down on his knees, and says jerky like, 'Lord, I wisht I may die right here if I meant it!' He told me and Mother that he was awful, awful sorry; and he said for me to never say nothin' like that, and I never have. Say—was you ever sorry when you'd been right plumb mean?"

"I never was," Absalom Ledworth was forced to admit. "Son, I'm yore grandpap on yore pap's side o' the house."

A light came into the boy's eyes. He knelt beside his paternal grandfather, and put a tiny, sunburned hand on the old man's arm. "I know now why you all is a goin' to kill the Dunbars," he said. "Grandpap, it hain't right. Them thar Dunbars is fine folks. I've been a slippin' off from home and a goin' tip to see 'em for a long time, and I know 'em. Jim Dunbar he can jump a ten-rail fence, and wiggle his ears, and out-run a boss. Little Bill Dunbar he can whistle like a train, and crow like a rooster, and bark like a dawg, and myow like a wildcat. Aleck Dunbar he can chin hisself on a pole sixteen times, skin a cat back'ards and for'ards, and hang ten minutes on his toes —but that ain't what I want to say.

"What I want to say is that my mother is a raisin' me up to be a preacher, so's I can make friends o' her people and you people —and that's my life's work done cut out. Now I don't want to be no preacher, Grand-pap. I want to be a good man; but I don't want to be no preacher, acause I want to be jest 'zactly like my pap, and my pap he hain't no preacher. Don't you see, Grandpap—if I could jest make you and the Dunbars friends right now, I wouldn't have to be no preacher!"

Absalom Ledworth laughed boisterously. The boy's countenance fell.

"Well, if I have to, I have to," he said with youthful desperation. "Old man, you hain't got long to live in this world. Do you believe you'll go to Heaven when you die?"

"I don't know," said Absalom Ledworth.

"You know you're a goin' to die, don't you?"

"A course."

"Well—what're you a goin' to do about it?"

"I don't know."

Again there was silence. The poor, misguided old man felt weak now. His one grandchild, there before him, had just flung into his teeth the one question that had ever bothered him. Yes, he knew too well that he was soon to pass on, soon to give an account for the deeds done in the flesh. He hung his almost white head, and his eyes were misty.

John Ledworth saw that his father was weakening. He shook the old man roughly. "Are you here to act a fool, or are you here to fight a third Battle o' Bull Run?" he said scornfully. "Take a look out acrost the valley and see what you see!"

Absalom Ledworth wiped his eyes with his palsied, knotty fingers, and looked. He saw a Dunbar dodge back behind a big poplar; he saw the ends of three rifle barrels glint in the morning sunlight. The enemy had come!

THE child of Sadie the Peaceful saw his grandfather's face go ashen with a re-turn of the old, old bitter hate. He grasped at the one idea that presented itself.

"Wait!" he exclaimed. "Don't you all shoot until I come back. I'm a goin' over thar and ax the Dunbars if they'll be willin' to shake hands and be friends if you all will. Now don't you all shoot afore I come back!"

Before a restraining hand could hold him he was flying down the mountainside. The two clans watched him with bated breath—even the determined and grim John Ledworth. They saw him go to the bank of the swollen creek and halt there. Then they saw him race for a treetrunk that spanned the roaring, turbulent stream, mount it, run like a squirrel along its slippery body, stumble, claw wildly at nothing—and fall twenty feet and disappear into the seething torrent below!

The Dunbars showed immediately that their love for him was greater than their fear of death by the bullets of the Ledworths. They left their rifles, and hurried down to the stream. More than one of them went into the water and swam after the little figure, which was now on the surface and now under.

Suddenly Absalom Ledworth went to his feet, and there was no rifle in his hands.

"Down thar, every soul o' you!" he shrieked. "The man who stays ahind I'll kill!"

Even John Ledworth went.

It was Absalom Ledworth who recovered the slender, wiry little body. He ran ahead like a young man, and like a young man plunged into the wild waters. He held to a stone that lifted its rugged nose into the air, and with the other hand caught the swiftly moving boy. And the man who rescued Absalom Ledworth from his perilous position in midstream was old Jasper Dunbar—he did it with a long grapevine. Formerly old Ledworth would have sworn wickedly at even the thought of accepting a favor at the hands of old Dunbar; but now?the baby hands were feeling at his heart now, and when he came out of the water with his grandson in his arms he seemed grateful to the man who had thrown the grapevine.

But the spirit of the Civil War was not yet dead. Absalom Ledworth put the limp body down on the ground and made as if to turn away. An exclamation from old Dunbar, who had knelt beside the child, caused him to turn back.

"My God!" was what Jasper Dunbar said, and it was a cry of agony; for in his secret soul he had loved the boy.

"What?" asked Absalom Ledworth, before he could catch his tongue.

"He's dead!" Dunbar pointed to the rag-like figure, to the youthful face, silent, but still sweet and hopeful.

The two old men stared at each other. The two sides stared at one another. They were not men of the water; they knew nothing of rolling a supposed drowned person over a barrel, and moving his arms to restore respiration.

"Shall this boy's life work he for nothin'?" whispered old Dunbar. "He's died for us—blood o' his own blood, flesh o' his own flesh—and it's a whole life's work to die for somebody else!" He held out his hand toward Absalom Ledworth, and tears were streaming down his gray, seamed cheeks.

Absalom Ledworth turned his old eyes toward the sweet, hopeful, youthful face. Two sentences—long-forgotten sentences—flashed into his brain. They were "A little child shall lead them," and "Greater love bath no man—"

He took Dunbar's hand and shook it. The dove of peace had alighted on what had promised to be a battlefield. The enmity of forty years was ended.

NO man of them spoke. John Ledworth took the limp body up and put it over one of his herculean shoulders and set out up the creek. The others followed silently, soberly, some of them walking as men partly blind.

Buck Ledworth met them at the door. Both he and Sadie seemed to know before they were told. Sadie took her boy into her arms, and sank to the floor, a light that was not like a light of earth on her fine, dark face. Buck put one hand gently on her head.

"It is the will o' the Almighty!" he said.

Then he turned to the crude little center table that his own hands had made, and opened the family Bible he had bought for his wife a few years before. With a pencil he wrote in big, scrawling letters on the Deaths page:

robert E lee u S Grant ledworth
dide
by the grase of god
on julie the thurd 19 and ten

When he had finished he turned hack to Sadie the Peaceful. He saw the arms of his son steal up and go about the mother's neck! Oh, it couldn't be so! He knelt beside his wife, and looked, praying in his heart and with his lips—and saw that his son was smiling! For carrying a body across a herculean shoulder is about equal to rolling it across a barrel.

Buck Ledworth turned to his people and to his wife's people. He saw that they saw.

"Well," he said, and somehow his voice was terrible, "are you a goin' to let this make any difference?"

For answer the Ledworths and the Dunbars shook hands again.

AUNT DICEY'S SKEPTICISM

BY ADELE STEINER BURLESON

A BIG blue norther shook the board house, and the red light over the prairies was fading into yellow as Mary seated herself close to the leaping flames of the post-oak fire.

"Now, Aunt Dicey!" she announced. "What, Honey?" queried the old negress, shifting the burden of white flannel on her lap and stopping the monotonous swing of her low rocking chair.

"Hoodoos!" came the answer in a mysterious half whisper.

"Hoodoos! Good Gawd, Chile, what you talkin' 'bout?" exclaimed the old negress, scandalized.

"Why, I thought all colored people knew about hoodoos," answered Mary in real amazement.

"Miss Ma'y, you knows dat I's white folks an' dat I doan believe in no sech foolishness."

"But your friends—"

"Miss Ma'y, yo' maw ken tell you dat Dicey nebba runs wit' no low-down hoodoo trash."

Mary hastened to recognize Dicey's en-tire respectability and oneness with the white race, and then fell to listening to the shudder of the house in the beat of the wind, and the ghostly tapping of a coral honey-suckle against the windowpane. There it waved in anachronistic beauty, a real "hant" from summer.

From time to time Dicey looked fearfully toward it. At last she said in a cautious voice, "Honey!"

"Yes, Dicey," encouragingly.

"Ef you doan nebba tell nobody, Honey—" "Yes —no, Dicey," eagerly.

"You done promise?" solemnly.

"Yes, Dicey," and the girl placed her hand coaxingly on the bent old figure.

"Well, den, Miss Ma'y, dis ve'y old woman foun' a hoodoo wunst!"

Mary's look of sympathetic interest lost itself on, the whites of Aunt Dicey's eyes.

"An' fo the Lo'd, Miss Ma'y, it were human bones and human h'ar wrop up in flannel red as hell fiah an' all sewed up in a li'l silk bag!"

Mary gave an exaggerated shiver.

"An' when my husband see hit he say right sof', 'Dicey, dat's a hoodoo. Some black debbil's tryin' to work de Goofa on us,' and I drap it like hit was a live coal."

Mary's look of horror crossed Dicey's vision.

"Yes'm, dat's sho what I done," said the old woman, with stiff pride in her own act.

"An' I taken me a leaf fum ole mistis' Bible an' pick dat outrage and carry hit out an' de muskeet an' bery hit."

"But, Dicey," said Mary insinuatingly, "if there was no harm in it and you don't believe in hoodoos—"

"I nebba fools wid de debbil, Miss Ma'y," interrupted the negress, casting another glance of caution around, "an' I done git on my knees right dar, an' I gits on 'em every night, an' prays tuh de good Lo'd tub purteck ole Ike an' ole Dicey fum sech debbil's instrumen's."

WORTH WHILE FOLK: A Wise Judge

THERE was a wise Judge once who lived and administered justice, not in Bagdad in the days of Harun-al-Rashid, nor yet in Jerusalem with Solomon, nor in Rome with Justinian. His court was in Plymouth County, Massachusetts; a long way from the Rock, to be sure, but with the ideals grounded on that rock his working hypothesis for hearing causes and settling their issues. Here is one thing he did:

In the city where his court is located is a large foreign population. Each of the different nationalities has its own particular characteristics and its own way of sinning; some of them most shocking to refined American senses, but really very little worse than some Puritan derelictions that ancient history records. This Judge had one particular people—the Lithuanians—decidedly upon his heart. They would fight among themselves, and to such frequent disastrous effect that the Judge's docket was crowded with their assault cases.

The wise Judge had a probation officer as wise as he was. He had tackled drunkenness and nonsupport and such cases, besides being a big brother to every naughty boy in town. But he was scientific—he had charts graphic enough and colored well enough to gladden the heart of the most finished graduate of any social welfare school. But better than his charts were the records they told,—of homes rebuilt, families reunited, and of men and women who had found themselves, and then the boys and girls. The Judge talked it over with his probation officer.

The Judge invited a half-dozen or so of the leading Lithuanians of the colony to his home for dinner one evening. Of course his probation officer was there. The Judge and his assistant told them how silly a way to settle quarrels it really was: how much better it would be to avoid the quarrel in the first place. They explained how this constant fighting was giving the whole colony a bad name. Finally, when the problem was put up to them, they shouldered it as lustily as their friends fought their pitched battles.

A public meeting was arranged. All the Lithuanians turned out. The chief men spoke, the probation officer spoke, and finally the Judge spoke. He explained even more fully than he had at his dinner table how bad a name the colony was getting. He appealed to their community and national pride. He impressed upon them the fact that the chain was only as strong as its weakest links.

RESULT: Then and there a society was organized with a name that as nearly as its English equivalent will translate it is "The Order of the Weak Links." For the honor of their group, for their national good repute, they agreed to take care of their weak links.

They did too. If any misguided Lithuanian felt a desire to fight, he remembered the staid fathers of the colony and their attitude toward that gentle amusement. If he, after all, persisted in fighting, he rarely got before the Judge—these fathers in Lithuania in Plymouth County attended to the matter summarily.

The charts of the probation officer show a steadily descending line marking a clear and incisive subsidence of this particular wave of crime—except for one brief moment when the line shot up as abruptly as a Washington monument against the horizon.

When the I. W. W. came to this city of the wise Judge, the Lithuanians with the rest of the unskilled workers broke out in a brief frenzy of revolt, with its attendant riot of assaults and batteries. Their clean record as well as the even line of the chart was violently changed. But mark the sequel! The confidence that the wise Judge had inspired in them asserted itself. They felt that the kindly interest that had interfered to save them from their own impulsiveness could be depended upon to look after their interests with their employers. Another wise-hearted man, a Y. M. C. A. man, had come into their lives, and he said, "Leave it to the Judge—he'll get more for you than the I. W. W. will." They left it to him, and they did get more than they dared hope. 'There was no friction or rioting or tumult about it either, after the first settling down.

And yet there are some who will say when they read this story that this Judge has lowered the dignity of his office and belittled the majesty of the law. If you think so, go to Brockton and talk to those Lithuanians. Then get George Paine, the probation officer, to show you his charts and tell his wonderful story of the decrease of crime, and, better yet, of the increase of happiness in the community. Then go into Judge Warren A. Reed's court and spend the day with him. You will decide he knows men and their hearts and their wives' and children's hearts. You will decide he knows the law too,—the statute law of the Great and General Court and the divine law of life and love.

—William Horton Foster

THE TOY RAILWAY AT EATON

THE Duke of Westminster owns, at Eaton, an odd sort of railway. It was built in 1896 for the purpose of conveying coal and other supplies to Eaton Hall from the Great Western station, four miles away; but it is now also used as a passenger line to transport the Duke's guests from one part of the estate to another.

The gage of the Eaton road is only fifteen inches. The rolling stock, comprising two engines and fifty trolleys, "wagons," and passenger coaches, is constructed on a proportionate scale. The original cost of the road is said to have been thirty thousand dollars, and it is now operated at a weekly expense of twenty-five dollars.

RISKING LIFE FOR THE MOVIES

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dropped on his knees before the victim and cried excitedly: "I'm a doctor! Here! What's the trouble?"

Tableau!

ONE of the most exciting effects yet shown appears in a recent episode of this same series. Pauline's enemies plot to destroy the car in which she and her lover are competing in a great international auto-mobile race. The details of the race are literally terrifying, and the audience at the time I saw it was greatly stirred. At some of the sharp corners and narrow escapes persons here and there half rose to their feet. There were two or three minor disasters, and the climax showed a racing car caroming from a rock at full speed and rolling entirely over. The occupants were pinned beneath. It was tragedy.

"Ah!" cries the doubter triumphantly. "You won't pretend that this was not faked."

But it was not faked. It is a record of a French race of several years ago, in which there were numerous accidents and two deaths. The film was shown in the news service at the time, and now parts of it have been cleverly interpolated into one of the Pauline episodes. In similar manner a steeplechase climax has been introduced into another, showing five horses upset at a jump and a jockey killed. This is being sensational with a vengeance!

There are many of these peril series nowadays,—"The Trey o' Hearts," "The Million Dollar Mystery,"—the billboards show new ones every day. The sequence idea is proving extremely profitable, each thrilling episode advertising the next in order. Considering the feats attempted daily in this competition in perils, it is surprising how few and how slight are the accidents. The ""Trey o' Hearts" company carries a physician and surgical equipment as part of it: regular service; hut so far the job seems to have proved a sinecure.

Like the doctor in the automobile accident, the innocent bystander is forever in traducing a wholly unlooked for class of dangers. Edward Abeles was carefully aiming a revolver at a farm hand in "The Making of Bobby Burnit" when he was set upon by a stranger who, coming round the corner, thought he was just in time to prevent murder. The stranger was athletic, and his club was hard and heavy.

In "The Girl of the Golden West" Nouse Peters, as the road agent, strides into a saloon near Bisbee, Arizona, and demands a "drink on the house." But, between the time the arrangement was made with the saloonkeeper and the taking of the picture, a cowboy had sauntered in who knew nothing about the plan. So when Peters blustered in a few moments later with his rough demand, Mr. Cowboy resented his tone with such vigor that the movie hero found himself in a serious fight not in the play.

Hobart Bosworth, in the guise of a gips in Jack London's "Odyssey of the North," was arrested in the outskirts of Seattle, and had difficulty in proving his identity. Max Figman, thrown from the runaway coach in "The Man on the Box," struck a traffic policeman in his flight, and was promptly arrested and fined twenty-five dollars by a Los Angeles police justice. The charm of the unexpected is part of the actors' compensation.

HISTORICALLY the motion picture drama follows closely the development of the stage, but at amazing speed. Already it has rushed through the Bowery melodrama period into accomplishments some of which may fairly be called artistic

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and cultivated. When Adolph Zuckor, with the persistence of the dreamer who believes in his dream, won Sarah Bernhardt before the motion picture camera he shoved progress a quarter-century forward, and today his organization has a dozen followers. A new company with ideals backed by sufficient capital was born since I began to write this paper, and I hear today of another coming. Next month, no doubt, there will be still another.

This new era does not despise melodrama. It plays it to better purpose. Its perils are naturally less sensational than those of the older school, but they will stir their audiences as deeply.

Up to this writing d'Annunzio's historical drama "Cabiria" is commonly agreed to be the highest accomplishment of the motion picture stage. It was done in Turin by an Italian company, at an expense that was obviously a record. Many of its most striking effects were obtained at the personal risk of one or many of the actors; but not one was inserted in the play because of its danger, —a difference characteristic of the new era.

In the total range of film pictures I sup-pose nothing has been done that is so truly a thriller as one of the scenes in this same "Cabiria." The storming of the walled city attempts to reproduce with some approach to historical truth the rude warfare of the ancients, and this manifest sincerity renders all the more thrilling the savage spear thrusters that the swarming scalers hurl from the battlements. As these walls are shown to be sixty feet or more in height, the desperate backward falls of these men, heads down, hands and legs flying, are geniunely hair raising. It is this touch of realism that completes the illusion.

Of course it is apparent that these falling men must he caught in some special manner. One American producer expressed the belief that they could fall safely only into water. As a matter of fact they were caught in nets similar to those stretched below trapeze performers in circuses. Only one serious injury accompanied the photographing of this scene,?when a warrior falling headlong from the parapet struck another scrambling from the net.

"Cabiria" was produced secretly behind locked gates. Its elaborate realism astonished the motion picture world. In these swift days who knows when some new production, now perhaps gestating in secret, will establish for the peril picture a place as far again ahead?

A PLEASANT TIME

IT was Thursday afternoon, and the housemaids were in great evidence on one of the trolley cars. Presently one of them came in and took her seat, and at once discovered an acquaintance sitting opposite her. Leaning across the aisle, she said:

"Hello, Annie! Where you livin' now?" "Oh, I'm workin' away out in the subu'bs now."

"Ain't it turrible lonesome out there?"

"No, not a bit. You see the house is on a corner, and there is a church on the next corner, and a fire engine house on the opposite corner, and a police station on the other corner. Yesterday there was a funeral in the church, and the fire engine was called out three times, and two men was run into the station, all in one day. Then the couple I lives with don't git along very well. So, take it altogether, there's plenty doin' all the time, an' I never git a bit lonesome."

FLOWER OF THE GORSE

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centrating all its venom on that one tiny adversary.

The marvel was that no one was swept overboard. Nothing could have saved the men on deck had the Stella lurched to her beam ends without warning; but the fleeting interval while she was being carried round on the pivot of her fore part enabled them to guard against the expected shock. Nine figures were visible, two standing on the port rails of the bridge, and the others on the deck rails, every man having braced his shoulders against the deck itself. Masts, funnel, and upper saloon were practically vertical with the plane of the sea, and the hull quivered and moved under the assault of each wave. Yet the very injuries that would swamp the vessel instantly when she rolled into deep water now gave her a brief lease of life. The rocks that pierced the hull held her fast. Her plight resembled that of some poor wretch stabbed mortally, who breathes and groans in agony, only to die when the knife that causes his distress is withdrawn.

THE horror of the sight brought a despairing cry to Yvonne's lips. "Peridot, Peridot, can nothing be done?" she shrieked, turning to the Breton sailor as though, at his prayer, the sky might open and Providence send relief.

The boat was now nearly abreast of the wreck, and running free before the wind. The girl's frantic appeal seemed to arouse the three men from a stupor of helplessness.

"Look out, everybody!" shouted Peridot. "We're going head on."

It was a dangerous maneuver in a heavy sea; but fortune favored the Hirondelle in so far that no mountainous wave struck her quarter as she veered round. All were equally alive to the possibility of disaster. Ingersoll, though he uttered no word till the boat had reversed her course, was almost moved to protest.

"We are powerless," he said, coming aft to make his voice audible. "Even if some of the yacht's people are swept clear of the reef, they will be smothered long before they drift in this direction. The thing was so unexpected that none of them has secured a cork jacket, or even a life belt."

"There is one chance in a hundred, Monsieur," said Peridot, speaking so that Ingersoll alone could hear. "The point is—will you take it? You and Monsieur Tollemache would agree, of course. Will you risk Mademoiselle's life as well?"

"A chance? What sort of chance?"

"I know every inch of Les Verrés. A little inlet, not much longer than the yacht, and perhaps forty feet wide, runs in from the south just where she lies. Her hull and the reef itself form a breakwater. We can make it, and get a line aboard."

"Then for the love of Heaven why wait?"

"One moment, Monsieur. We have yet a second or two for decision. You see how the wreck lifts each time a sea hits her. The tide is rising. If she shifts when we are in there, goodby to the Hirondelle!"

The eyes of the two met, and Ingersoll wavered, but only as a brave man takes breath before essaying some supreme test of hardihood.

"My daughter would never forgive me if she knew I chose the coward's path," he said. "Go ahead, Peridot! Tell us what we have to do, and it shall be done."

A cheerful chuckle was the Breton's answer as he thrust the tiller over to port and sent the boat reeling on the starboard tack. Once she was fairly balanced, he began to bellow instructions.

"Within a couple of minutes I'll put her head on again, and we'll drift alongside the ship yonder. Monsieur Ingersoll and Monsieur Tollemache will each take a sweep, and fend the after part off the rocks. Mademoiselle will remain for'ard, and be ready to drop the anchor as a last resource if I find the tide running too strong for the sweeps to hold us back. Leave the rest to me!"

THE Hirondelle quickly reached the position from which the Breton judged it possible to drop into a natural dock, the existence of which he had learned when catching lobsters and crabs. Wind and tide carried the boat swiftly backward. At first it seemed that she was simply rushing to destruction, and every eye was bent on the swirling maelstrom toward which she was speeding, rather than on the stricken yacht. Even Peridot's face paled beneath its bronze, and he had a hand uplifted as a warning to Yvonne to be ready instantly with the anchor, while Ingersoll and Tollemache were standing, each with a long oar couched like a knight's lance, when the Hirondelle swept past the bows of the wreck: only to be checked immediately by a backwash from the higher part of the reef.

"Dieu merci!" sighed Peridot, jubilant be-cause his faith was justified. "Keep her steady now, mes amis, and with God's help we'll succeed!"

A tremendous sea dashed over the Stella, and for one appalling moment it appeared that she must roll bodily into deep water, and involve the Hirondelle in her own ruin. But she settled again, with a rending of her framework and inner fittings that was sweetest music in Peridot's ears, since it meant that she was becoming wedged more firmly on the teeth of the rock, and, owing to her construction, possessed no natural buoyancy to be affected by the rising tide.

Already he had a coil of rope in his right hand, and was yelling orders to the crew of the Stella. The noise of the seas pounding on Les Verres was deafening; but a hoarse cry from one of the men on the bridge penetrated the din: "No comprenes! Heave away!"

So they were English or Americans—which, none could tell.

Tollemache sent back an answering shout, "Haul in twenty feet of the rope when it reaches you, make fast, and throw hack the loose end. You must get across as best you can. No time to rig a safer tackle."

"Aye, aye, Sir!" was the reply.

"Heave away, Peridot!"

THE resourceful Breton awaited a momentary lull in the wind. Then the heavy coil was flung, and fell into the hands of one of the men on the bridge. As he was securing it to a stanchion, his companion, he whose gigantic stature had first caught Yvonne's attention, climbed into the tiny wheelhouse, and reappeared almost immediately, carrying a woman in his arms.

"Fools!" said Tollemache, meaning, no doubt, that men might, if they chose, venture their lives in fair fight against the storm gods, but they had no right to subject a woman to the ordeal.

Evidently some fierce dispute was being waged on the Stella. The other man on the bridge, who turned out to be the Captain, had thrown hack the rope to Peridot, and summoned all hands to gather near. Now he was urging the big man to intrust his inanimate burden to one of the sailors, but met with the most positive refusal. Every second was vital, and Peridot blazed into annoyance.

"Gars!" he roared. "If they waste time, I'll hack out!"

The commander of the yacht, however, was well aware of the greatest peril that threatened now; so without more ado he steadied' the giant while the latter raised the woman's body to his left shoulder, grasped the double rope in both hands, and lowered himself into the water.

The passage was not really difficult. The ropes were fairly taut, and the distance between the two craft not more than sixteen feet. Indeed such a Hercules in physique might well regard the task as a mere nothing, and he set out with quiet confidence.

ALL at once Peridot uttered a yell. "Hold tight, all hands! Here's a tidal wave!"

The monster whose coming the fisherman had feared all day was upon them before Tollemache could translate the warning. It broke against the Stella's hull, and literally dashed solid tons of water on the Hirondelle and the hapless pair now midway between the two vessels. During some seconds the stanch sardine boat seemed veritably to have foundered. Even in the convulsive and choking effort needed to cling with the strength of desperation to the nearest rope or stay, her occupants were aware that she sank appreciably beneath the sheer weight and fury of that tremendous sea. Then their blinded eyes emerged intc blessed daylight again, their lungs filled with air, the flood subsided, the Hirondelle rose, trembling like a living creature, and the wave boomed away across the half-mile of channel to tear ac the rocks of Finistere in a last paroxysm.

When Peridot swept the water from his eyes he looked for the Stella; but that unfortunate little vessel had only been driven still more tightly into the jaws of the reef, though a great gap showed to starboard amidships. She was breaking in two.

"God be thanked for that, at any rate!" he muttered.

Then, having ascertained that his own people were safe, he looked for the colossus he had last seen clutching the ropes. The ropes were there; but man and woman had

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vanished. Something bobbed up in the spume and foam close to the Hirondelle's side. He leaned over and grabbed a huge arm. With one powerful tug he drew a body half out of the water. It was the man; but the woman had been reft from his close embrace at the moment when some chance of safety seemed to have come most surely within reach. His sou'wester cap had been wrenched off, and, even when hauling the limp body on board, Peridot knew that his quickness of eye and hand would avail naught.

He held a corpse in his grasp. The top of the unfortunate man's skull was visibly flattened, and the gray hair was already darkened by an ominous dye. In all likelihood the wave struck him when least prepared, tore his fingers from the ropes, and (lashed him head foremost against the Hirondelle's timbers.

Peridot was no sentimentalist. He did not waste a needless sigh over the fate of one when the lives of many were trembling in the balance. Even when he was placing the body at Yvonne's feet, where it would be out of the way for the time, he peered up at her with a grim smile.

"Two gone, Ma'm'selle," he said; "but with the help of the Madonna we'll save the rest!"

A SHRIEK from the girl's lips and an expression of terror in her eyes told him that some worse tragedy was imminent. He turned, and saw Tollemache leaping into the vortex that raged between the stern of the boat and the nearest rock. The Breton guessed instantly that the young American had seen the drowning woman. Leaving the Hirondelle momentarily in charge of Ingersoll and Yvonne, he raced aft, and seized the sweep that Tollemache had dropped. Simultaneously his friend's head rose above the maelstrom; for the cork jacket bore Lorry bravely. He was clasping the woman's apparently lifeless form with one hand, and battling against the sea with the other when the long oar was thrust within reach, and he too was drawn to the side.

Peridot's gray-green eyes sparkled as they met Tollemache's brown ones, gazing up steadily from the swirl of waters.

"You are all right?" he said, seizing the woman's arms.

"Why not?" said Tollemache. "Lift her aboard. Don't bother about me."

Ere Peridot had laid the dead or unconscious woman by the side of the man who had already given his life for her sake, Tollemache was on deck again, and lending a hand to the first sailor to cross by the ropes. The survivors followed rapidly, and the last to leave the Stella was her Captain.

Ten men were rescued,—five sailors, including the master, two stokers, an engineer, a steward, and a passenger. The last. two were in the saloon when the vessel struck, and had crawled on deck as best they could, the passenger having sustained a broken arm, and the steward a sprained ankle.

It was obvious, from the measures taken to safeguard the injured pair, that they were in urgent need of attention; but Peridot knew that the lives of all still trembled in the balance. So he bawled to Tollemache: "Get the lady below, and as many of the others as you can pack in. During the next few minutes I want none but sailors on deck. Gars! Be quick about it too! No, don't trouble about that poor fellow. He's gone!"

ALREADY he had cast off the ropes that formed the precarious bridge. Tollemache told the shipwrecked crew what the Breton had said, and they obeyed with the readiness of men who were aware of the paramount necessity of prompt action.

The Stella's Captain had already summed up the new problem facing the Hirondelle, and issued his orders with decision. He and a sturdy deckhand helped Tollemache and Ingersoll with the sweeps, which were now to be used as oars, while the others carried the woman to the cabin, and helped their disabled shipmates to make the descent.

Yvonne, though unwilling to leave the deck until the next ordeal was ended, felt that she ought to sacrifice her own wishes to the need of a sister in distress; but Peridot settled the matter by bidding her take the tiller.

"We can't get back to the inside passage on this wind. If we tried it, Les Verres would catch us," he said. "We'll forge out a bit with the sweeps. When clear of the yacht we'll be just clear of the reef too. When you see me begin to haul at the sail put the helm hard over for the seaward tack. We're going outside. You understand?"

"Perfectly," she said.

To be continued next Sunday

A DEATH BLOW FOR RIGG'S

PERHAPS you are one of the many unfortunate mortals who suffer from loose teeth. Perhaps the dentist has told you that your gums are receding, and that you need to be looked after, thoroughly and painfully, at least every six months. Maybe the dentist has gone a little farther and told you the trouble was Rigg's disease, or he has been a little more scientific and called it pyorrhea. They are all the same thing; but the dentist doesn't usually go in for the scientific name unless your teeth are getting wabbly.

And maybe he has told you that for this disease there is no known cure. If you are one of those who have escaped Rigg's disease, you are mighty fortunate; for you are one of the five people out of every hundred that are immune. But what was true six months ago is not true today. Dr. Barrett and Dr. Smith of the University of Pennsylvania have discovered an absolute cure for Rigg's disease, a cure that makes loose teeth tight.

The plain truth about the importance of this discovery would read like the most extravagant exaggeration ever put forth by manufacturers of patent cures when the sky was the limit. Nowadays the patent medicine men are curbed a little at least, and the mantle of extravagance has been appropriated by those who tell the truth about them.

The simple fact is that the discovery which gives Rigg's disease its death blow is so big, so important, so far reaching in its results, that it can't be exaggerated.

Dr. Edwin F. Bowers tells about it in our next SUNDAY MAGAZINE, and it is one of the most cheerfully sensational articles that we have published. There is nothing mysterious about the remedy itself. It is a standardized drug,—one of the forms of ipecac, to be exact,—and any dentist or physician can administer it.

THERE are other interesting features in our next issue, as for instance THE KING'S TEST, in which Annie Hinrichsen tells a story that shows how little human nature changes.

THE next instalment of Louis Tracy's FLOWER OF THE GORSE introduces a most astonishing incident, one that threatens to break up the placid life of the dwellers at Pont Aven for good and all; and also it shows how feeble are man's attempts to keep a secret from a woman.