One Minute with the Editor

Where Will All the Money Come From?

EVERY time you draw your breath several thousand dollars is being shot away to Europe. Every week of the war costs the contending nations millions of hard earned dollars.

Where is all the money coming from to pay for this awful struggle?

Mr. Burton J. Hendrick answers that question in a very interesting article next week.

When She Said "Yes"

WE had an idea it would be interesting to get together a lot of pictures from the movies showing the beautiful lady in the act of saying "yes" to the hero who can't live without her.

If you're interested in that sort of thing, you will find it double page of these pictures next week.

"The Brown Eyes of the Law"

WE like the stories of Holworthy Hall. All his heroes have plenty of money, all his heroines are pretty, and usually the story turns out the way it ought to. He wrote "Two in a Tent," if you remember; and next week there's another story of his which we think is even better; he calls it "The Brown Eyes of the Law."

"Behind the Bolted Door?"

TWO weeks from to-day we begin publishing a mystery story entitled "Behind the Bolted Door?"

For real thrill and suspense we haven't seen anything like it for years.

President Wilson is said to like detective stories better than any other kind. He certainly ought to like this.

What Causes Sleep-Walking?

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

WHAT causes sleep-walking? If an article has been hidden while one has been sleep-walking, how may it be recovered?

Sleep-walking is a form of self-induced or auto-hypnosis, and is practically identical with the somnambulism induced by hypnotic suggestion. The suggestion usually arises in a dream, in which certain actions are prompted by the subconscious mind of the individual, and subsequently performed by him.

Psychologists are quite certain of this, for most frequently, by an effort of concentration, the sleep-walker can remember the dream that "started him off."

Somnambulism is most generally confined to children, or to the youthful in other words, to those happy people who still preserve illusions. It does, however, accompany a neurotic disposition, or some nervous disturbance, such as hysteria, epilepsy, "fits" or nervous headaches. Or it may result from any great stress of soul, or mental agitation. The classical example of Lady Macbeth is an instance of this.

The antics of sleep-walkers are a never-failing source of wonder to those who may observe or study them—although the marvelous and hair-raising tales told of their exploits in negotiating sheer heights, and risking life and neck in some feat totally impossible to them in the waking state, must he taken with a saving grain of salt.

Also, the uniformly accepted belief that no accident ever befalls a somnambulist, unless he be suddenly awakened while in the performance of some blood-curdling exhibition of aerial gymnastics, is entirely fallacious. Numerous deaths from accident to sleep-walkers testily to this.

It is true that the sense of touch is greatly augmented during this peculiar state, although the sense of sight is usually in abeyance. In fact, most, frequently the eyes of a somnambulist, are closed, and when they are not they might as well be, for all the information they convey to the sleeping brain. The sense of pain is also suspended, and innumerable bruises furnish proof that. These sleep-walkers strike against furniture or otherwise injure themselves much more frequently than they are given credit for.

The muscular system, however, is usually intact, and permits the victim of somnambulism to do some extraordinary, and annoying things. One of the most annoying and disconcerting of these is the hiding of articles while sleep-bound. The victim who robs himself in this way generally has no recollection as to where he hid his plunder. To all intents and purposes, he might just as well have been robbed by an outsider—so effective has been his emulation of Raffles and Arsene Lupin.

Propensities of Sleep-Walkers

THERE is only one way to uncover the treasure trove, unless one accidentally stumbles upon it, and that is to make the subconscious mind—the mind that was at work while its possessor was asleep—what it did with the treasure.

This can be done by placing the sleep-walker in a hypnotic condition—or even thoroughly relaxed and semi-conscious a condition is considered sufficient by many psychologists—and questioning him as to his actions during the period in which he was somnambulistic.

The mind that directs his answers has all the memory of these actions, and the information it gives can be depended upon as accurate. To men like Dr. John D. Quackenbos of New York, or Dr. Boris Sidis of Boston, these experiences are not at all infrequent.

Therefore I would urge the lady who played a joke upon herself while subconscious to permit a psychologist to place her in a quiescent condition and put a few leading questions to that subconscious intelligence.

And, while he is about it, he might give her some suggestions which will forever cure her of the habit of sleep-walking. This is the quickest and surest way of preventing a recurrence of the distressing and annoying occurrence.

Each week Dr. Bowers answers the most interesting question. Next week: "Do Swollen Tonsils Cause Rheumatism?"

A Life-Saving Corps of Mermaids

By C. L. EDHOLM

THE fat man ought to have known he was swimming out too far—but you know how foolishly fat men act sometimes. He got farther and farther away from the shore, when suddenly, without warning, there came a breaker that completely tossed him over, knocking every bit of breath out of his overtaxed lungs. The fat man went down once—twice; his past life began to unroll itself before his smarting eyes; he gasped, choked, and knew no more.

Five minutes later he opened his eyes to discover a beautiful girl seated beside him on the beach, vigorously fanning him back to life. The thought occurred to him that he must have died and gone to his reward, and he wondered what he had ever done on the earth to deserve a future life like this.

What had really happened was this: At the moment when the fat man's head disappeared for the second time, a young woman, clad in the kind of bathing suit that life-savers wear, struck out from the shore, starting in his direction with long. powerful strokes. As his head bobbed up for the last time, she reached his side, turned him on his back, and towed him, red-faced, limp, and helpless, in to shore.

All in a Day's Work

YOU have read of such rescues before, of course, and in every case the rescued one promptly offers his fair rescuer his heart and hand. Not so in this case. In the first place, the rescuer wouldn't marry a fat man under any circumstances. In the second place, pulling people out of the surf is her regular business. She is Miss Aileen Allen, of Ocean Beach, Los Angeles, holder of the "rough-water" championship for southern California, and captain of the first woman's life-saving crew in the United States.

In Sweden there are a number of women's professional swimming clubs, and from these Miss Allen conceived the idea of organizing the best girl swimmers of her vicinity into a life-saving corps to do duty on Ocean Beach. On the warm shores of the Pacific pretty nearly every girl swims, so that a championship in that section means something real. Miss Allen's championship record made it natural that she should be the leader of the crew. She chose as assistant organizer Miss Dorothy Burns, the short-distance champion of the beaches. Eight other girls were selected for their swimming ability, making a rescue corps of ten.

Two old ladies came down to the beach one afternoon and ventured timidly into the water. They had no notion of taking

chances: they kept very close to the life-line, and shrieked a little as each wave approached. But a surf-boat, driven by a reckless driver, dashed past the two old ladies, hurling its spray in their faces. They screamed, and in their confusion released their clutch on the life-line. A moment later they were being tossed headlong out to sea. Men on the shore dashed toward them, but the girls of the life-saving crew were quicker. In less time than it takes to tell, each of the two old ladies felt a strong young arm thrown around her, and they were dragged, sobbing and disheveled, back to shore. This episode, quickly following the fat man's rescue, silenced the critics of the girl crew.

No Adventures So Far

EVEN the best and safest bathing beaches occasionally develop what is known as a "tide-rip"—a vicious under-tow that grips the most powerful swimmer and draws him under. A little girl was swimming strongly at Ocean Beach, when the sharp eyes of the life guards saw her head disappear. Miss Allen, the captain, and Ivy Crosthwaite started for her together. It was fortunate that there were two of them instead of one, for the girl was in the grip of a "tide-rip," and was struggling desperately. The two rescuers themselves were caught in the undertow; but, bit by bit, their strength and skill began to win. An inch at a time, the life guards dragged themselves out of the circle of the "tide-rip" and into stiller water, where a boat picked them up and took them, almost exhausted but victorious, to the shore.

Yet Captain Allen says:

"We haven't really had any exciting adventures at all. And probably," she continues, "we never shall have any. You see, our work is chiefly preventive. We try to warn bather's in time, so that they won't get themselves into a fix. And all romantic stories to the contrary, a woman would rather be pulled out of the water by another woman than she would by a man."

"What would you do if a drowning man were to imperil your own life when you attempted to save him?"

Miss Allen smiled significantly.

"Don't you worry about that," she said. "Why, I could hit you a blow that would put you quietly to sleep in an instant; or, if you were attempting to wind your arm around me in a way that would drag me down with you, I could give your arm a twist that you wouldn't forget in a month. You needn't worry about my safety; I know exactly what to do."

A Picture That Might Have Cost My Life

ONE can not appreciate, unless he has lived in India the extent to which religious zeal and enthusiasm may be carried.

The Bombay Presidency is about as large as New York, Massachusetts, and Maine in the first six months of my tour as a member of a medical commission sent to India to study bubonic plague, 1,600,000 persons died of plague alone in State. We discovered a prophylactic serum which rendered one positively immune; but we could not get the natives to use it, for religious reasons.

In the preparation of this serum we used pepsin and beef broth. To the Hindu and the Mohammedan the pig is unclean; while the Buddhist would not take the remedy because animal life had been sacrificed to obtain the pepsin and beef bouillon. Rather than sacrifice their religious principles they preferred to die.

The Jain, perhaps the most extreme of all these sects, shows his regard for animal life by wearing at all times a small screen over his nose and mouth, so as not to inhale minute insects; and he has knife-edge soles on his sandals, so as to reduce to the lowest possible degree, the chance of treading on any living thing.

It is this same religious temperament that causes these devotees to inflict the most severe punishment on themselves. I have seen men, covered with filth and dirt, rolling along the roads, having been months on the journey and having come in this manner thousands of miles.

Another method is for the religious man to stand erect, throw himself on the ground, draw his feet up to the spot his forehead touched, then stand erect and repeat this performance over and over, until the holy place he has obligated himself to visit is reached.

I once made a photograph that would have cost me my life had the mob of religious enthusiasts discovered me taking it.

The penitent in my picture simply suspended himself head downward over a fire for a period of six hours. During the entire time he was carrying out this self-inflicted penance he prayed aloud, and when finally cut down, excepting the blisters from the burns, seemed little the worse for his terrible experience.

He had as a companion a saint whose picture I could not get, but whose penance consisted in breaking bricks and stones by smashing them against his forehead and chin.

—Dr. W. E. Aughinbaugh.

My Experiences in Shaving John D.

I WAS John D. Rockefeller's barber for ten years. I am proud to say it. I am fifty-two years old, and am about to retire and lay aside the brush and razor after thirty-five years at my trade.

One day, fourteen years ago, as I was ready to close my shop on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, I received a message summoning me to Mr. Rockefeller's house early the next morning. He lived then in his old mansion at Euclid Avenue and East Fortieth Street. I was told to be at Mr. Rockefeller's door precisely at seven o'clock in the morning, and I was careful to be on time. He insists upon punctuality, for he is punctual himself.

After that I continued to shave him daily, during the three or four months he stayed in Cleveland every summer, until about four years ago. He didn't need me after that. Everybody knows he wears a wig now, for he has lost his hair, and he no longer requires shaving.

I never talked to Mr. Rockefeller unless he was talkative. Mostly he seemed preoccupied, anxious to be alone with his own thoughts. Of course, he had retired from active life; but at that time he was busy planning the details of his big Forest Hill estate.

He had a mustache in those days, and I flatter myself that I shaved him well, trimmed his hair and kept his mustache in perfect condition. Often he would talk to me of my business.

"Thomas," he would say, "do you save your money?"

I had to confess in those early days that I had not laid much aside.

"You must do so, Thomas," he would say severely, "for there may be rainy days."

He never offered advice about investments, but these words stirred me and gave me the inspiration to save. Now, at the age of fifty-two, I am comfortably off, and can retire from my old barber's trade.

John D.'s Favorite Joke

OFTEN Mr. Rockefeller would joke and tell me little stories. His favorite, I think, was of the little girl who had a boil on her neck and the doctor asked her if she ever had a boil before. She said "Yes," and the doctor asked, "Where?" "Why, in Ireland, sir!" she replied. I always laughed, and he seemed very pleased.

Once he drew aside a curtain to a room off his bedroom, and showed me a big table entirely covered with money—

brand-new greenbacks. It was pay-day for all the employees at Forest Hill. He smiled and said: "Thomas, they say I'm good at raising greenbacks! Look at that—right out of my garden!"

For every seven-o'clock trip I made to shave Mr. Rockefeller he paid me one dollar. And each fall, when he left for New York, he presented me with a check for twenty-five dollars.

I have cut the hair of the late William McKinley, before he became President of the United States; I have trimmed the whiskers of President Rutherford B. Hayes, and have worked over millionaires, famous men, senators and other statesmen. But, of them all, I would rather be known as John D. Rockefeller's barber.

He Brought Them All Up by Hand

IT began when the very small (even for seven) Russian boy named John Volkoff was absent from school a whole week. When he returned he did not come alone. In his arms he carried Anna, the baby, three months old; on his back he bore Sarah, not quite two; and at his feet toddled two brothers, one of whom carried a flour-sack containing a bottle of milk for the baby and some black bread for the others.

Young Volkoff's explanation was to the point:

"Father died; mother is at work in a laundry. Peter is too little to look after the baby, so I brought them all to school with me."

The children were given the run of the halls while John went to his classes. At recess he hurried out to take care of the baby. During the noon intermission he gathered his brood around him in the playground and gave them their midday meal. When school was dismissed in the evening, he took them home, after obtaining permission to bring them with him the next day.

One Monday, several weeks later, John brought his family to school in a wagon. The wheels, no two of which were mates, had been contributed by some neighbors; the box-bed came from a grocery store; and the connecting parts had been gathered from the highways and byways.

Morning after morning for six years this little procession wended its way to the school building, and night after night returned to the home. There were accidents and sickness, dangers and delays; and John has grown from a child of seven to a young man of thirteen. His two brothers are now in school, and the baby is no longer a care; but John still holds himself responsible for their welfare. He earns a good part of the living in the evening after school, on Saturdays, and during the summer vacations.

In the meantime, the Los Angeles Board of Education has been thinking. Through the mediation of the principals and the Department of Home Economics, they have established in this school, and in the other neighborhood schools in the city, penny lunches. For one cent, at any of these schools, a child can now obtain a bowl of hot soup and a roll, or perhaps hot cocoa, spaghetti, or cooked vegetables.

Now There Are Day Nurseries

THEN, also apropos of John Volkoff, the Board of Education has established day nurseries. Now many children bring their little brothers and sisters to the school nursery, where they are fed, bathed, and dressed in clean clothes by a regular attendant. At night they are turned over to their youthful guardians, and sent home to their working mothers.

The comment of young Volkoff, reformer, upon the whole situation is a terse one.

"It is hard work raising a family when you are poor," he says. "I shall never raise another one."

Bill Makes Good with the Queen

Then let us sing in accents sweet
Of Belgium's noble Queen,
Whose kindly acts have proven her
To be a her-o-ine.

SO runs the last of ten stanzas "To Belgium's Noble Queen," composed, written, and mailed to the royal lady herself by "Buckskin" Bill Smart, mostly of Circle X Ranch in Cottle, King, and Dickens counties, Texas, U.S.A.

Six feet two inches without his boots,—when he is without them, which is only to be measured and sometimes to sleep,—Bill Smart, besides being known as the "Poet of All Outdoors" in his home country, is also school-teacher, cowpuncher, and president of the Buck Creek Literary Society.

But, to return to Belgium's no-bul Queen, "Buckskin" Bill read in a belated Fort Worth paper about six months ago of the dispossess notice served on Albert and Elizabeth of Belgium.

Then Bill Got Mad

"I was that het up about it," says Bill, "so clean mad all through, that I just had to write a poem to show 'em how I felt. I sent that same poem, after I had read it to the Lit'rary Society, by buckboard express to Paducah, there to be mailed to the Queen. Well, I guess it reached her all right, for in about two months 'long came this letter, which same has brought me trapesin' all the way from Texas to New York."

The letter, which is addressed to "Monsieur Bill Smart, Paducah, Texas, U. S. A.," has caused Bill "a sight of trouble." More than that, it has threatened to cast the first blot on a hitherto unblemished 'scutcheon.

Not that there's any harm in it when you know how to take it—but there's the rub. Not a soul in the cow country, from Amarillo to Abilene, could do more than read the superscription. "Frenchies" are scarce in a cattle community, and those Americans who had boasted of their ability to negotiate the menu of any big Eastern hotel now found their accomplishments vain.

It is hard for a "Texan" built like Jess Willard, with boots that impede traffic on Broadway, known on account of those boots as "Buckskin," to be given a foreign title just because his soft heart led him into verse at the recital of a lady's woe.

"Mounseer" is an ugly name to a cowpuncher, while for a school-teacher and a poet and the head of a Literary Society, to have a letter so addressed, the contents of which he can not decipher, means shame and derision in the Panhandle.

In his dilemma, Bill brought his letter to New York, determined on a translator,

and his first peaceful moment since its arrival came when he learned that it road like this:

Bill Smart is ready now to go back to Circle Ranch and rope and brand that Mounseer title. But before he returns he is sipping delicately of the joys of city life.

A Pair of Socks

By ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

Illustrations by Henry Raleigh

THE bunk-room of any big city fire-house is a place of wit and a habitat of humor. But in the house of "347 Engine" almost every man was a humorist. And for Christmas the aunt of first-grade fireman George McKinney, better known because of his size as "Big," sent him his annual pair of home-knit gray wool socks.

George McKinney, or Big, was a long-limbed, steady-living, earnest-minded ex-Minnesotan. It was his Aunt Matty McKinney, of Owatonna, Minnesota; who sent him the socks. In winter every fireman needs good warm socks. He needs them especially for his "night socks," the pair he gets into when he returns to bunk half frozen and must warm himself to sleep in three minutes because in half an hour he may be dressing "on the rail" again. And Big's pair were genuine, old-time country socks. If you have been raised right you will know what that means. If not, there is no use trying to tell you.

THEY came in a shoe-box, and they very nearly filled it. They were four-ply throughout. In the matter of mere external form, the toes, of white, came to a kind of point. And the heels, also white, sloped slightly backward like the stern-sheets of a motor-boat. But on the inside those toes and heels ended in veritable buffers of wool. The side-ribbing of the ankles was at least a quarter of an inch thick. So, too, were the uppers, which terminated, moreover, in four heavy rows of gray and white, for ornament.

And, as usual, every man in the bunk-room gathered around to admire.

"Pretty soft, what? Pretty snug?"

"An feel of them forward compartments!"

"The heft of them, too!"

"Say, how much do you think any wise one would make who'd put socks like that on sale in the Department?"

"About a million a year. Big, you're sure the lucky man."

"Well," said Big, "Y' see, we're a family that's kind of generally always favored our feet. An' what with the amount of pleurisy an' pneumonia that's goin' round—"

"Sure."

"Skates" McCoy and Connie Tinker had now come up. Skates and Connie were 347's natural leaders, or, if you prefer, its chief humorists.

"Aunt Matty again?" asked Skates.

"That's right."

"Well," said Tinker, "with our folks it was Grandma who was the sock-knitter. And an everlastin' blame industrious old girl she was. Just one dang' sock after another! And of course the more of us grandchildren kept a-comin', the faster she had to speed. We used to wonder what she died of. But, jinks, when I think back about it now!"

By then Big had removed his pair of flimsy and effete New York socks, and with infinite comfort had put on the new ones.

He stood up, and, padding around a little, let his toes spread and extend Minnesota luxuriously into the wool. The Minnesota McKinneys were not a people who talked much about their emotions. But, "By gee," he said, "I want to tell you, a man can get a heap of pleasure out of his feet."

"Nothing to it!" said Skates. "Nothing to it. But, sho, I'd have taken it that you'd be keeping these for your night socks."

"An' I sure am! But I thought I'd anyways get the feel of them now for an hour or two. Or maybe, the way it is, I'll just keep them on and not change my feet tonight at all."

He did not. But about midnight, oddly enough, he dreamed that he was changing them. It was a very vivid

dream—vivid enough, in the end, to waken him. But he was awakened strong sleeper and—save to the gong—awakened, as it were, only in sections. When the first part of him was awake he realized that it was not he himself who was removing those socks. Around the foot of his cot a whole clump of figures seemed to be swiftly and nightmarishly at work. By the time he fully realized that his socks were leaving him, they were wholly gone. And, with one manifold cackle of joy, half an engine company ran tumultuously for cover.

Some two minutes later the door opened from the officers' quarters and revealed the figure of Captain William Kerrigan, commanding. The captain of 347 Company was three things: First, a very brave and capable fire officer; second, a notable lady-killer—despite himself, perhaps, for he was a very handsome man; and, third, he was an extremely poor sleeper—he had never really recovered from his first months of "fireman's insomnia." He likewise experienced all the poor sleeper's pleasure when needlessly aroused. At the present moment, he could see nothing in the bunk-room, for the night light had been turned out. But he could hear. Cots were now overturning three a minute, while from beneath them came chokings, kickings, throttled cries.

"Yes?" he said, as one who knew his company. "Yes? And what's the particular kindergarten business now?"

There was silence. Then, sorely, from Big:

"That's all right, fellers. I reckon I can finish this up to-morrah."

But if, by finishing it up, he meant recovering his socks, he was wrong. In point of fact, as a first step toward what was to follow, by eight o'clock they had been sent out in Connie Tinker's private wash-bag to a local laundry.

Not, however, that Big was allowed to know it. In his fiercely confident belief, they were still somewhere in the bunk- room. And he put it up to every man in turn. For their part, the majority of 347 Company professed their entire ignorance that any such socks had ever existed.

"Socks? Whaddy-a-mean, socks?"

"I never seen no socks."

"Say, bo's, Big has lost his socks."

"Why, he's wearin' his socks!"

"Yes, but he says he had another pair."

From Skates and Tinker—who of course, as always, had been the managers of the affair—alone came expressions of sympathy and a desire to help him in his search.

"Aw, come on, now, sports," Skates would say. "A joke's a joke. I can see blame' well that one of you has got them. And you know what old Big here said about pleurisy and pneumonia."

"Sure," Tinker would support him. "Say, give 'em up. It feels to me like it was goin' to go to zero before mornin'. Have a heart, now, have a heart!"

After which they would take each other aside, and Skates would say: "Sweetheart, did you hear us tellin' it to him?" And Tinker would answer: "Yes, dearest; and did you hear the low, hellish laughter as he replied?"

BY the second day, too, a new species of torment had been invented.

Billy Swope told of having, the night before, mysteriously found a pair of very fine gray wool socks. It had not, at the moment, occurred to him that they might be Big's. In fact, it had not occurred to him that they might be any one's. Accordingly, as a matter of course, he had put them on himself. And in the morning, shortly after he had taken them off, they had no less mysteriously disappeared.

On Wednesday morning, "Horse" Traubel confessed to having had the same strange overnight experience, while Thursday it was the turn of Bucky O'Hara. And strike them dead if any one of them had ever had the first notion that those socks belonged to Big!

By then Big was about as angry as it is possible for any Minnesota McKinney to be. But by then, too, there was no occasion for any further dreams. For those socks had now come back from the laundry; and, for the time, first-grade fireman George McKinney goes out of it altogether.

IN one sense, in fact, it is only now that the real story begins. Big's annual Christmas gift had not been taken with the idea of creating any particular happiness or unhappiness for him. What the assembled humorists of 347 Engine had greatly desired to do a year ago they had braced themselves up to now. Two days later that pair of fine, home-knit wool-yarn socks came through the mails a second time. And this time they were addressed to Captain William Kerrigan.

They were contained in an expensively ornamental cardboard box which, on the dresser of Connie Tinker's admirable sister Minnie, had once contained lace frilling. And the same bright and efficient young school-teacher had, indeed, assisted Jimmy and Skates throughout. It was her idea to wrap Aunt Matty's Christmas gift in soft, heliotrope-colored crepe tissue-paper. And on the bottom of the box, thanks also to Miss Tinker's collaboration, written on very fine heliotrope-tinted and perfumed note-paper, there lay a poem.

The socks, in all their excellence, have been described already. Enough that for a fireman's purpose the commander of 347 Company had never before seen any

---

to equal them. As for the poem, not one man in five hundred thousand has ever had poetry written to him; and what Captain Kerrigan read was the following:

The Captain read, and read again. And as he read he felt an inward glow.

The lines about the rescue of the child were plainly an allusion to the act that had won him his meritorious-service medal. And the glow increased. As for the poetry itself, well, he didn't pretend, of course, to be any professional judge of that; but, if this wasn't the real thing, he had never read any that was.

He turned again to the socks.

A woman of the ordinary sort would have sent silk ones, with fancy-work embroidery. These socks came from a woman who used her head. She had remembered that she was providing for a man and a fireman. She had asked herself what would be his greatest need. And she had hit it. No one could have hit it closer.

Another thing: She had knit those socks herself. The words, "How sweet the toil for such a man," proved that. And not less clearly did the box and the notepaper show that she herself was the sort of woman who wears silk ones. The Captain had his feminine ideal; and, if he had never put it into so many words, he realized now, almost with a start, how nearly you would come to it by saying it would be the kind of woman who could write a poem like that, and with the same hands knit such a pair of socks. She might be old, of course; but neither box nor note-paper looked like it. More than all, when a woman has come to feel as the poem showed she felt toward a man, before she has even had a chance to speak to him—

He examined poem and box and wrapping-paper for any possible clue to an address. There was none. But, in all probability, she would write again. Once more he read the poem. And then, carefully putting back the socks into their heliotrope-scented nest, with the poem on top of them, he locked everything away in his private drawer.

IN such January weather as New York was then experiencing, had he been like many men he would have put those socks on when next, in Big's phrase for it, he "changed his feet." But it seemed to him that to do so would be a kind of sacrilege.

"Oh, sweet the thought in danger's hour . . .. Like Heaven-sent succor from the skies . . . One dauntless man: his name—brave name—is K.......n."

During the three days following, as he answered alarms, lines from that poem came into his thoughts a hundred times. He had a sense, too, of her watching him—at a small fire in the West Side apartment district he could almost feel her eyes upon him. If they were, very likely she was looking to see if he was wearing those socks. Yet, somehow, he still could not bring himself to put them on.

And, when he did, it was not of his own volition. But on Wednesday five "wet" fires came in succession. This meant a draft on wardrobes to which even firehouse facilities for the washing and drying of socks were unequal. For instance, Big—now gloweringly walking the bunk-room with his hand against every man—was reduced to a pair through which his toes protruded like the keys of a pianoforte. And Captain William Kerrigan of 347, though possessed of the very finest feelings, no longer had any choice. He unlocked that private drawer, took out those gray wool socks, now sweetly odorous of heliotrope, and drew them on.

With trouser ends drawn aside, he was still contemplating them with a soft and amorous pleasure, when, to report for door duty, Big himself came in.

When Big saw those socks he recognized them. And, for further confirmation, there was the Captain's instant flooding color, and the almost galvanic jerk with which he swung both feet around and thrust them under his desk.

Certain things, however, even when plainly beheld, still remain incredible. And, in point of fact, it was the Captain who found his voice first. One would have said, too, that he was trying to assume the tone of one who has never heard of such a thing as socks—who, indeed, does not wear them.

"Well?" he said lightly—"well?"

"Cap," said Big, breathing on it, "I've got my respect. I know my Department rules. And there's no officer in this Department that I'd follow sooner an' fur-der—"

"Well," said Kerrigan. "Get to it, got to it."

"Them socks!" cried Big. "Them socks!"

If the Captain's movement before had been galvanic, it was now convulsive.

"What? What do you mean, socks?" (Which was exactly what they'd all said.)

"Cap, you know mighty well what I mean. I didn't expect to find you wearin' them, though I guess by now you'd be the only man in the house that ain't. But I know my own socks—yes, an' even when you've sprinkled perfume on them. An', by gee—"

Over the face of Kerrigan there had come a species of pallor.

"See here," he said. "Listen to me. I don't know what you're talkin' about, see? And, if I've got to tell you, these socks I'm wearing were a present to me—a present from a lady."

"Yes, I betcha they were—I betcha! An' I know fourteen more of the same stripe! An' if you'll just tell me which particular lady it was, I got a punch here for her kisser that'll drive her whiskers—"

"Get out of here!" cried Kerrigan. "Get out, see? Get out!"

And he thrust Big through the door.

THE Captain had thrust Big out. But, at best, that could be only a postponement. There are incidents which show at once that they have merely opened.

He locked the door. And first he examined the socks. They were the same, and yet, somehow, they were not the same. He opened the drawer, took out the poem, and read it again. Somehow, somewhere, there was a note in it he had not felt before. He put the paper to his nose and smelled of it. What before had been perfume seemed now to have become scent—and strong scent. Much more, while a fire-house with fifteen men in it will, normally, put into circulation at least a certain amount of sound, throughout all 347 there was absolute silence—one would have said the silence of listening and expectancy.

He felt a middle hollowness, and with it a need of air, of outside air, if it was only so much as might be had by a swing around the block. And, getting into his shoes and coat and uniform hat, he started for the stairs.

Big was keeping a fixed watch and ward at the bunk-room door.

"Cap," he began, "I've got my respect, an' all I ask—"

"Go—go to blazes!" shouted the Captain, and pushed by.

He pushed by, and down the stairs, and out. But, even as he went, Big again caught the odor of heliotrope.

When any officer is the offender, no fireman private, however great his burden of wrong, can be expected to decide upon his proper course at once. But when, far from offering either restitution or apology, that officer added new insult,—when, lost to all shame, his Captain could thus go by him wearing the socks themselves,—decision became easy! With jerking speed Big got into his own uniform coat and hat. And by the time the Captain had reached the end of the block he was close behind.

Hearing his steps, Kerrigan halted and swung around. But he, Big, knew what was due the uniform. The street was no place for a Department argument. More than that, all he sought—but that he was going to have—was those socks. Shutting his ears to all invitations to advance farther, he waited till the Captain was ready to go on again.

As they were returning along the other side of the block, again the Captain infuriatedly halted. But again Big waited doggedly till he started on again.

And if, in theory, Captain William Kerrigan returned to his engine-house knowing exactly what he knew when he left it, in point of fact he had the feeling that he had nothing more of importance to learn whatever.

EVERY second man in the company was now, without any apparent reason, standing or sitting about near the foot of the stairs.

"Gettin' colder, Cap," said Jimmy Tinker.

"By heaven," he answered, "if it's you two that have had your hands in this—"

"Lord, Cap," said Jimmy, "I don't know what you mean."

But to his Captain the final and conclusive proof was that no one asked. And his anger had now mounted to the point when a man begins to talk to himself in a kind of whimper.

He plunged into his room again. "Sure—sure! And could you beat it?" He got out the poem, and again he looked at it. "That's me. I'm the Heaven-sent sucker, all right! And I swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker! That name, that name, is Kerrigan!"

He tore the paper across, doubled it together, and tore it again.

"I won't send them up to Headquarters. I'll take them down cellar. And I'll take them one by one!"

Again he doubled the pieces of paper together and again he tore them across.

"No, by George, I'll take them all—together!"

It was then that Big once more pushed the door open and came firmly in.

"Cap," he said, "where I come from, one gent wouldn't wear another gent's socks. But I've got my respect. There's no officer in the Department I'd follow sooner an' furder, an' I've took time to think this thing out, your side an' mine. But, any way I can figger it, when it comes down to socks it's man to man. I've come peaceable, an' if you're willin' to take them off yourself—"

Kerrigan could not speak; he could only make a pass at him.

"Cap—" began Big again. But this time he was allowed to get no further.

Yet, even then, in the very moment of combat, he still gave proof that he desired only to avoid all needless violence. He did not strike, and he dived low. His business was merely with those socks. And, as he and his Captain rolled on the floor, he got the first shoelace undone.

"I'm here peaceable," he panted, "but I've been waitin' a long time to get this chance. An' now, by-y gee—"

Clang!—Clang! clang!

The gong circuit had begun to register. And in a fire-house the gong stops everything. "1—1-2—1—2—3—347 rolled." And the combatants came down the brass pole almost on top of each other. For a moment they still clung together. Then they jumped to their respective riding posts.

The Captain rides on the ash-pan of the engine, with the engineer. Beside him, ready, hang his rubber coat and fire hat. But his rubber boots are with him only if he has been in a position to catch them up as he leaves his room. Not having been in such a position in this case, Captain William Kerrigan still wore only his shoes, one of which was nearly off, with his trouser ends half way to his knees. And from his post on the tender, a few lengths behind, an exhibition of soft and woolly gray could still be seen by Big.

"Nor I don't let them out of my sight now," he swore—"not till I have them off!"

The trouble was in the basement of a big, many-tenanted loft building. And, so far, there seemed to be nothing but a great cellar full of superheated smoke. The fire itself might be anywhere in a two-hundred-foot labyrinth of connecting passageways and store and service rooms. It was after seven, and all were empty.

Engine 340 was covering the front. It was for 347 to stretch in and find fire from the rear. Traubel and Johnny Canavan and the two O'Haras had begun to throw off and couple up. Skates and Tinker and Meehan and Billy Swope caught the first hose lengths and rushed them back through the alley. As Kerrigan started after them, Big followed directly at his heels. And few members of 347 Company were thinking of either fire or cellar.

The supporting truck company had already smashed away the area gratings and rammed in that rear basement door. The hot smoke was coming out in swirls and eddies. The Captain crooked his hand at Swope and Meehan to take the nozzle. He knew that Big was there. He saw, he felt him there. He was trying not to see him.

But a fifty-pound nozzle pressure alone means a "pull-back" of a hundred and thirty pounds. And every ten feet of water-filled "2%" adds its sixty pounds more in dead weight. For a long carry-in, such as a big cellar fire will almost always give you, the men at the nozzle can be only the van-guard. To "lighten up," at the end of the first fifty-foot length there must be at least two more. Next behind Big were Skates and Tinker. And them Kerrigan had to take. Seeing himself thus disregarded, Big set his teeth and chose a position midway between. That also the Captain saw. And, "By—the—Lord!" he began. But, again, all private matters must be left till afterward. And Kerrigan jammed his helmet down and plunged in with his nozzlemen.

ALMOST any big, smoky cellar fire may, for the fireman, be a nasty one. Because of the lack of outside light he must work in almost pitchy darkness. And the low ceiling and absence of ventilation force him to "eat the smoke" from the start. But, in the smoke-eater's own phrase, "the line will take you in." The spreading stream will, for a time, sweep the worst of the heat and smoke before it. And, with prickling eye-balls, nozzlemen Swope and Meehan, their Captain beside them and Big a few paces behind, drove their way up this passage and down that, through this door and back again through the next, till at last they began to make out, high and to the right, the red flush and glow that they were seeking.

With a gasp, they put the stream at it.

Instead of a sudden hissing blackness where the red had been, there came a douche of water in their faces. It was their own, thrown back by an unseen partition dead ahead. And because that partition did not reach to the ceiling, the fire showed above and behind it.

"There'd ought to be a door to it," said Meehan, "in back of us somewheres."

And bearing away first to the right in that smoke-choking maze, and then to the left, they set out to find it.

But, just about then, something queer began to happen to those two men at the nozzle. Their line began to be a great deal heavier than it had been before. And while, now, they did not feel the heat and smoke so much, both began to feel oddly sleepy.

At which moment Kerrigan began to have the same sensations. And his sixteen years of fire-fighting told him what they meant.

"Meehan!" he cried hoarsely. "Swope! We're getting gas!"

In every basement of any consequence:. for every tenant above there is at least one gas meter. Altogether there may five, eight, a dozen, all with soldered connections. And usually they are hung in a clump near the ceiling, where in case of fire the heat will soon be greatest. In time, even though no flame be near, tile solder begins to melt and the gas poll forth. If it lights at once, well and gee' But sometimes, because of the spray from

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the streams, as firemen believe, it is incredibly slow to light. It "mats" down to the floor and mixes with the smoke, and gas so mixed can not be smelt. In a cellar filled with smoke the fireman knows the gas is there only when he goes down "doped"—knocked out by it. As a result, gas fires have, indirectly, rolled up a record of dead firemen that can never be totaled. And it is here that this story begins to be a different kind of story altogether.

"Meehan! Swope! Back your line out! And do it quick!"

NEITHER answered. And now, as they crouched, both were swaying drunkenly. Kerrigan himself possessed the shoulders and the "bellows" of a hammer-thrower; and a hundred mettle-testing hours had taught him how to breathe. But as he caught those two nozzlemen, and swung them about, and thrust them toward the door, the one thing he was telling himself was this: He had five men in there—the fire was every moment swinging in on them—already he could hear its snore and snapping on their flank—and not one of the five might guess in time what it was that was hitting him. He had five men in there, and perhaps not half as many minutes in which to get them out.

But Swope and Meehan seemed to be moving now. And he could push on to the next man, who, as you may remember, was Big.

Because of the doublings of the pipe,

Big and Skates, and Tinker as well, were farther from the entrance than were Swope and Meehan. They were likewise nearer the gas meters. And Big, for his part, had reached that point in gas-poisoning when he realized how much easier it would be to keep his mind on his real business in that cellar if he could get down on the floor with the pipe and kneel on it—when the fingers of some one struck into his collar, flung him around, and began to pitch him violently toward the area-way. A moment later he knew, somehow, that it was the Captain, too, who was the author of this new outrage.

It had taken Kerrigan only a moment to see that Big, at any rate, would have be taken all the way out. And when next first-grade fireman George McKinney was conscious of anything, Johnny Canavan and Henry O'Hara were jerking him up the area steps.

As for his Captain, by then he was telling himself, gaspingly, that it had taken him twice too long to get the first man out; the fire was coming fast, and in that midmost cellar labyrinth there were still four more. But he knew his way. He had a fireman's instinct for a road once traveled, even in the heart of darkness. And, even when the smoke-belch is volcano-like there is always a current of half-breathable air along the floor, which you can get by going on hands and knees.

They came to Swope and Meehan first. They were lying across each other and across the pipe—which was just as well. For, the moment their weight was taken from it, the twenty-five pounds of brazen nozzle must, under the pressure, become simply a great flail-like threshing bludgeon. He twisted his fingers into the collar of the man who was uppermost. And, two minutes later, Big, now sitting blinkingly beneath an electric light on the coldness of the asphalt, saw, first, that the Captain was again in that smoke-filled, spark-flecked area; and, next, that Canavan and O'Hara were pulling Meehan out. This being so, he, Big, knew that there was something he should be doing, but he could not seem to make out what.

Kerrigan plunged back in. O'Hara and Canavan tried to follow him; but, five yards inside that Gehenna of heat and murk, they had lost him utterly.

Yet, once he reached those inside rooms, there was light now; for the gas itself was afire. A first swift, rumpling puff had burned up what was loose. Then the "flash" had run back till there was only a huge, plumy flare by the dangling meters. But the heat seemed to have doubled, trebled, quadrupled. In the seconds that followed, he took what he knew well there was little likelihood that any man could take again and live.

Another minute, and Big, his head clearer now, again beheld the Captain's blackened mask show through the area smoke. And this time he had Swope with him.

There was froth now about Kerrigan's mouth, and his eyes were staring. And some one was trying to hold him back.

"You've done your go. You can't make it again—the thing's sure death!"

"Death? Hell!" And he fought himself free. "Ain't they my men? Ain't they my men?"

Again Canavan and O'Hara tried to follow. And again they lost him. They could only send back strangled shouts for another line, for lanterns, for a light.

AND it was then that first-grade fireman George McKinney, better known as Big, again entered into it. He had not as yet recovered all his senses, but he recovered enough. And, in fire as in battle, even as the spirit of the leader speaks to the man, so does the spirit of the man, if there be any consciousness in him whatever, surely make its answer.

He, Big, had been in there! He too knew where they were, where Skates and Connie Tinker were. His helmet still lay beside him, and he got it on. There was something he had to settle with the Cap—and Skates and Connie had been in it, too. But he could remember what that was later on.

He fell the last three area steps. But he would have to do the most of it crawling, anyway. The thing he must give mind to remembering now was just what turns he had taken when he had gone in there before. And, as you may recollect, save for a certain pair of gray wool socks he would never have been in there at all.

But, led by his fireman's instinct, or by the Providence of the sleep-walker, he found his way. It could have been of little use to try to follow the line. For, with nothing now to hold it down, the line had got away. The pipe was "snaking": it was throwing itself in circles, in great writhing movements. But he did not need the line; he could find his way without it.

As for the heat, above him and ahead in that choking, swirling blackness, the smoke had now begun to turn to fire. But in the next doorway he met the Captain—crawling and dragging Skates. In a moment he had made his grip on Skates's other side, and they were taking him out together. They could keep their faces almost against the floor. From time to time they could dip them into the water now awash on it. And they reached the area and its blessed cold air again at last.

The Captain barely entered it. Before Skates had really left his hands he had turned and was on his way back once more for Connie Tinker. And in another minute Big, in his turn, caught up to him.

BY that time, under the pull-back of the pressure, the pipe-head had jerked itself fifty feet nearer to the entrance. The great snake, coiling and looping in the darkness, twitched their knees from under them, threw them on each other. But the icy water at least gave them the strength to face the heat. And it now seemed to beat on them in gusts. It was baking through their helmets and melting the rubber of their coats.

To get Tinker they had to pass through the striking radius of the pounding, lashing nozzle itself. Tinker lay protected from it by a pile of packing-crates. But, as they made fast and started out with him, the pipe-head struck them side on, and rolled all three in one sloshing, tumbled heap. It left Big with a broken collar-bone, and the Captain with two fractured ribs. But neither of them knew of that till afterward. Like two agonized ants tugging at a water-sodden fly, again they set their faces forward.

The whole ceiling now appeared to be afire. The sparks came like chaff from a separator. But along the floor there was still air which could be breathed, and water to dip their faces into. And to Big, leading, after the first moments the worst thing was Tinker's weight. It was gradually becoming immense, awful, a matter of tons. But he kept on. And once more the gray-pink cave-mouth of the area showed itself ahead.

THE boys had another stream on now. They sent it over his head, driving back a part of the smoke, and he saw that he was dragging Connie alone! Even the strongest of fire captains must reach his end sometime.

"Turn me loose!" he cried thickly. "Darn yeh, turn me loose!"

He flung in, throwing himself forward on all fours like an animal.

"An' me doin' him dirt," he told himself, "because—because—"

His mind could not seem to find out why, for it was no longer thinking for him.

Why, really, did he go back in? And did he expect to get the Captain out? He could not have told you. He knew only that he had to reach him—to be with him. The heat was terrible—not to be borne; he was forced to close his eyes merely against the glare of the fire. But his hands and his knees had been given their orders, and they kept on. Dully, inarticulately, unreasoningly, his soul sang that song of "Captain, my Captain!" which has carried men beyond themselves since the world began. When, too, he had all but given up, the spray from the threshing hose descended upon him like the waters of Paradise.

And, this time, the rest of the company were able to follow with the new line, and with a search-light. When they reached him, his body so completely covered Kerrigan's that at first they could see only the one. But the Captain was there. And, in those last seconds, they got them both.

TO administer first aid after combined gas-and-smoke poisoning, you stretch your man on his back, prop his shoulders with his rolled coat, seize his tongue, and begin to "flap his wings." And when four are all being wing-flapped together it is a spectacle of little dignity. If you are seeking the emotions properly inspired by heroism, you had best wait till later, when you visit the hospital. In his initial moments of recovery the hero may not act as he should at all. Not infrequently he regards his first-aiders as confederates in aggravated assault, holds all onlookers to be little better, and does what he can to get to his feet and make a fight on it. Also, his memory is irregular; and he says things that no one can understand.

As Connie Tinker and Skates McCoy lay waiting for the ambulance, they had nothing whatever to say. Captain William Kerrigan and first-grade fireman George McKinney had been stretched out foot to foot, with only a lantern between. And almost at the same moment both insisted on sitting up. Their faces had been sponged at least half clean, and therefore they could recognize each other. But, if the Captain recognized any one, he did not show it. In fact, he was not as yet aware that he had been assisting at a fire. His eyes were directed downward. One of his shoes was open and apart. From within, mired, soggy, ash-smeared, yet unmistakable, there bulged a heavy roll of fine gray wool. And, putting both hands to that unlaced shoe, he made it plain that his one purpose and desire in life was to get it off.

All of which, too, was plainly seen by Big. His memory was at least not quite so defective as the Captain's. He knew there had been a fire. He was not prepared to say that he had taken part in it himself, but he knew the Captain had. He had the very clearest recollection of the way he had got out Swope and Meehan. Likewise he knew quite well why the Captain was trying to remove that shoe. And, stooping over, he sought earnestly to arrest his hands.

"That's all right, Cap," he said, "That's all right. You're a man—see?—a man. An', by-y gee, you can keep them socks!"

The Girl of the Nutmeg Isle

By BEATRICE GRIMSHAW

Illustration by Harvey T. Dunn

LET me tell what had happened. Gore, as I said, stooped down to enter the forecastle. There were no men inside it, and the crew, sitting up on the forecastle-head, were some distance away, and apparently busy in the most peaceful fashion with their bamboo pipe. They took no notice of him, or of anything else, until he had finished his search, and was bending to come out again, with his face turned toward the deck. Then, with a leap so quick that it seemed as if he had suddenly made two people of himself and appeared in two places at once, one of them reached the break of the forecastle, and struck at the back of Gore's skull with an iron belaying-pin.

Quick as he was, I was a shade quicker. I had my automatic pistol out of my belt before the blow fell, and I aimed on the rise of the barrel. It missed fire.

One thinks quickly in such moments. I had time to remember Red Bob's warning against the use of these pistols in equatorial countries while I was tearing at the magazine and striking the breech in one frantic effort to knock out the jammed cartridge. Then I felt a revolver pushed into my hand, and seized it without waiting to look where it came from. I took the length of the deck in three jumps, saw Red Bob lying insensible on the planking, and shot the native who did it clean through the head. Then I seized Gore by the legs, and began to drag him toward the side of the ship where the boat was. I had one arm round him and Isola,—I don't know how she came to be there,—and I pushed her behind me as I backed to the side of the ship.

"Get over!" I yelled.

I had to yell, for the six savages—Bo, our own man, among them—were howling like devils let loose from hell. Four of them had got tomahawks, which they must have looted from the trade goods in the hold and kept hidden; the other two, including the one who had knocked down Gore, were armed with iron belaying-pins from the rail. While Isola was climbing down into the boat, I kept the savages at bay with the revolver she had handed me: but it had only five shots loft, and there were six men!

I WAS conscious that something was happening besides the mutiny; it did not, however, make much impression on me, even though I felt a sudden fierce clap of wind and rain strike the schooner and heel her over, and though I was drenched through in an instant, as if I had been dipped in the sea. I was too much engaged with my six New Britainers, who—wise fighters that they were—were rapidly spreading themselves out into a fan shape, with the intention of scattering my fire and no doubt of surrounding me.

I got two of them in two shots, and missed the third because the schooner, at the moment of my pulling the trigger, gave a fearful leap, like a wounded horse. I had not had time to aim before we all were flung to the deck by a crash that shook every timber in the Cecilie; and that was instantly followed by a torrent of sea-water washing from end to end. The ship recovered a little after the shock, rose slightly, and seemed to shake the water off her decks, as a dog might shake itself. But again she staggered, beat herself on the cruel reef that we had struck, and smothered the waist and forecastle in foam.

"We've struck! She's dragged—" I cried, I do not know to whom, for Isola was in the boat below, and Red Bob was still lying without life on the deck, rolling to and fro like a corpse. The lash of the gooba almost knocked me down again as I rose. Rain was coming straight along through the air like a river lifted off the ground. The calm lagoon had become a mass of beaten foam, and the palm trees bent to the gale like fishing-rods when a fish pulls from below. The four New Britain natives, terrified by the disaster that they had brought on themselves (we learned afterward that they had been preparing a rapid getaway by severing almost through the moorings) began to jump up and down on the deck and cry out pitifully. They even attempted to rush the boat, while I dragged Red Bob over the bulwarks; but I dropped the first with one of my two remaining cartridges, and the rest, warned by his fate, kept off. The mutineer spirit was all out of them now. They saw they were wrecked, and know that no swimmer could live in that sea.

I never knew till weeks afterward how much thinking I did in the few seconds occupied in getting Gore up to the gunwale of the boat and heaving him in. It was not plain to me then why I beckoned to one of the mutineers to accompany—but I did. It was the recreant Bo, as it happened, and he seized the chance eagerly. Over into the boat he went, lowered it down with me, and launched it into the white, boiling, battering see, below the ship.

WE were barely able to fend her off from the hull, for the doomed Cecilie was rolling terribly; but we got safely away, and pushed off into the storm.

It was already abating. These New Guinea storms are short and sharp. The rain was passing, the palm trees lifting up their battered heads a little, as we pulled over toward the shore. By the time we reached it the worst of the gooba was fairly spent, and the waves that ran up the strand were slackening in their fierceness, so that we beached the boat without much trouble. But where was the Cecilie? She had disappeared completely—sunk in the deepest part of the lagoon, gone to the bottom with the five mutineers in her. There was nothing to

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While She Makes Schoolhouses He Makes Dresses

IF you have a play that you want becomingly dressed, take it to Will Barnes of New York; but if it's an office building you are looking for, Alice M. Durkin of Durkin & Laas, "contractors and builders," is a good person to see.

Some of Miss Durkin's most distinctive work can be seen in New York public buildings, as she has to her credit four Public schools in the Bronx, two large business buildings in lower Manhattan, and wing G of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Miss Durkin declares there is a wide field in this line for women.

"Contracting and building," says this very alert person, "is a matter of using your brains, that is all. There is no reason why women should not turn builders of houses as well as designers of gowns. Many people think that if one is a contractor and builder, she is never found without hammer and nails. Of course, this is not the case, any more than it is with the architect. A contractor must know good work in building when she sees it, thoroughly understand values, and thoroughly study building materials, building sites, kinds of buildings, expenses, and climate.

She Learned in a Contractor's Office

"OH, yes; I am out watching the work as it goes on. We have our foremen, and they their workmen; but one can not shift personal responsibility.

"I watch the progress of structure from the time the foundation is laid until it is complete for the tenants; and one of the great joys of this business is watching the building come from chaos to a finished, clean structure.

"I did not receive my education in this direction in school; that is practically impossible. I grew up in the work in a contractor's office, and twelve years ago I felt capable of balling out for myself. At that time Mr. Laas and I formed this partnership. I am happy to say it has proved a success.

"It does not seem possible to me that any woman who is businesslike and conscientious need ever complain of unfair treatment from men competitors. It has been my experience that if you are up to the minute in fulfilling your obligations, the men are only too glad to aid in every way, and there is little or no professional jealousy. When a person, man or woman, is slack, then things are different. People have little toleration for inefficiency. If one is business-like, prompt, efficient, there is no reason why building and contracting should not prove a good occupation for any one."

He Designs Costumes for Plays

IF one perhaps seeks relaxation from the contemplation of the stern realities of a builder's life, one may find it in the tapestried studio of Will Barnes, costume designer.

One corner of Mr. Barnes' studio is filled with book-shelves, on which one finds nothing but volumes dealing with clothes.

"The business of play-dressing," says the artist, "I can tell you, is no sinecure. It requires hard study and close attention to details. You will find that men and women who are successes in designing gowns for society would be failures at things theatrical.

"Yes, frequently I have to shop for materials. This is a part of the designing, for one must know what colors he may work with before he can produce the color-plate, and he must also have a knowledge of fabrics. Managers usually set a limit of expense, and for this it is necessary to keep up with the market, know prices, grades of materials, widths, and the most effective way to handle them.

"It is absolutely essential to know how to draw—to be able to draw a figure for the plate that looks like a man or woman. The lack of this knowledge is the reason why many people wishing to enter this field make such failures.

"Color comes next. If a person has not a good eye for coloring, for arranging given groups on the stage so that they will be harmonious from the 'front,' it is useless for him to try costuming of this sort. I have sometimes worked for days getting just the right effect for one dress.

"There is a great deal more in making the pretty little sketches from which the theatrical costumers work than people realize. It is strange to me that so few women go into this work; it would seem eminently suitable for

them. Yet I am told that Miss Durkin is a successful contractor and builder. I marvel how she does it, and beyond a doubt she wonders how I, a man, can dress plays. There you are. But I am sure that we each equally enjoy our different kinds of work."

He Swam from the Atlantic to the Pacific

IN the latitude of Chicago it takes some four days to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the very fastest trains. Wendell Greene, champion long-distance swimmer of the Canal, is one of two pioneers who swam from ocean to ocean. It took him twenty-six hours and four minutes.

When he asked Colonel Goethals' permission to make the trip, the twenty-year-old youth put it up to the Governor of the Zone that the job of swimming from sea to sea was one that ought to be done to celebrate the linking of the old oceans. So the order went forth that young Greene and his swimming companion, J. R. Bingaman, were to be let through the giant locks and aided by a patrol.

Never in the history of the world has there been such a swim. The boys at first used a modified crawl stroke, varied occasionally with a trudgen when the former tired them.

Starting in the mouth of the canal, at sea-level, the youngsters were lifted through the locks at Gatun, Pedro Miguel, and at Mira,. flores. Gatun Lake, surrounded by a dense jungle, full of little floating islands made of turf, formed one extreme in. banks. Going through it there was the strong current of the Chagres River to fight, and, unfortunately for their efforts at fast time, a strong wind also against them.

The triumph of Colonel Gorgas, medical man of the Zone, is reflected in Greene. Since he was fourteen years old his home has been at Panama, yet he was able to swim the forty-six miles without physical injury.

Looking Down on Our Navy

Beautiful Children in the Movies

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This Is Your Country

Some Hoop-la for the Boss

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Frank Snapp

I MUST say it wa'n't such a swell time for Mr. Robert to be indulgin' in any complicated love affair. You know how business has been, specially our line. And our directors was about as calm as a bunch of high school girls havin' hysterics. Jumpy?

It's this sporty market that had got on their nerves. You know, all these combine rumors—this bunk about Germany buyin' up plants wholesale, and the grand scrabble to fill all them whackin' big foreign orders, with steamer charters about as numerous as twin baby carriages along Riverside Drive. Why, say, at one time there you could have sold us ferry-boats or garbage-scows, we was so hungry for anything that would carry ocean freights.

And, of course, with Old hickory Ellins at the helm, the Corrugated Trust was right in the thick of it. About twice a week some fool yarn was floated about us. We'd sold out to Krupps and was goin' to close; we'd tied up with Bethlehem—oh, a choice lot of piffle!

A few of them nervous old boys, who was placid enough at annual meetin's watchin' a melon bein' cut, just couldn't stand the strain. Every lime they got fed up on some new dope from the Wall Street panic peddlers they'd come around howlin' for a safe and sane policy. The other mornin' a bunch of soreheads showed up before nine o'clock, and held an indignation meetin' in front of my desk.

"Where is Old Hickory?" one of 'em wants to know.

"About now," says I, "Mr. Ellins would be finishin' the last of three soft boiled eggs. He'll show up hero at nine-forty-five."

"Mr. Robert Ellins, then?"

"Say, I'm no puzzle editor," says I. "Maybe he'll be here to-day and maybe he won't."

"But we couldn't find him yesterday, either," comes back an old goat with tufts in his ears.

"That's away he has these days," says I.

NO use tryin' to smooth things over. It's Mr. Robert they'd been sore on all along, suspectin' him of startin' all the wild schemes just because he's young. What they was beefin' specially about today was because of a tale that a Chicago syndicate had jumped in and bought the Balboa, a freighter that we was supposed to have an option on.

I was standin' by, listenin' to the general grouch develop, when into the private office breezes Mr. Robert, himself, lookin' fresh and chirky, his hat tilted back, and swingin' a walkin'-stick. When he sees me, he springs a wide grin.

"Torchy, you sunny-haired emblem of tired luck!" he sings out. "What do you think? I've—got—her!"

"Eh!" says I. "The Balboa?"

"The Balboa be hanged!" says he. "No, no! Elsa—Miss Hampton, you know! She's mine, Torchy; she's mine!"

"S-s-s-sh!" says I, noddin' towards the other room. "Forget her a minute and brace yourself for a run-in with that gang of rag-chewers in there."

Does he? Say, without even stoppin' to size 'em up, he prances right in amongst 'em, free and careless.

"Why, hello, Ryder!" says he, handin' out a brisk shoulder-pat "Ah, Mr. Larkin! Mr. Busbee! Well, well! You too, Hyde? Hail, all of you, and the top of the morning! Gentlemen," he goes on, "I—er—I have a little announcement to make."

"Humph!" snorts old Busbee. "Have you?"

"Yes," says Mr. Robert, smilin' mushy. "I—er—the fact is, I am going to be married."

"The bonehead!" I whispers husky.

Old Lawson T. Ryder, the one with the dewlaps, he puffs out his cheeks and works that under jaw of his menacin'.

"Really!" says he. "But what about the Balboa? Eh?"

"Oh!" says Mr. Robert casual. "The Balboa? Yes, yes! Didn't I tell some one to attend that? A charter, wasn't it? Torchy, were you—"

I shakes my head.

"Perhaps it was Mr. Piddie, then," says he. "Anyway, I thought I asked—"

"Here's Piddie now, sir," says I. "Looks like he'd been after something."

He's a wreck, that's all. His derby is caved in, his black cutaway all smooched with lime or something, and one eye is tinted up lovely. In his fist, though, he has a long yellow envelop.

"The charter!" he gasps out. "Balboa!"

And, by piecin' out more jerky bulletins, it's clear that Piddie has pulled off the prize stunt of his whole career. He'd gone out after that charter at lunch-time the day before, been stalled off by office clerks probably subsidized by the opposition, spent the night hangin' around the water-front; but by bein' on hand early, closed the option barely two hours before it lapsed. As he sinks limp into a chair he glances appealin at Mr. Robert, no doubt expectin' to be decorated on the spot.

"By George!" says Mr. Robert. "Good work! But you haven't heard of my great luck meantime. Listen, Piddie. I am to be married!"

I thought Piddie would croak.

"Think of that, gentlemen," cuts in old Busbee sarcastic. "He is to be married!"

But it needs more'n a little jab like that to bring Mr. Robert out of his Romeo trance. Honest, the way he carries on is amazin'. You might have thought this was the first case on record where a girl who'd said she wouldn't had changed her mind. He nudges Lawson T. Ryder playful in the short ribs, hammers Deacon Larkin on the back, and then groups himself, beamin' foolish, with one arm around old Busbee and the other around Mr. Hyde.

Maybe you know how catchin' that sort of tiring is? It's got the measles or barber's itch beat seven ways. That bunch of grouches just couldn't resist. Inside of five minutes they was grinnin' with hint, and when I finally shoos 'em out they was forinin' a committee to shake each other down for two hundred per towards a weddin' present.

I FINDS it absolutely no use tryin' to get Mr. Robert down to business.

"When does it come off?" says I.

"Oh, right away," says he. "I don't know just when; but soon—very soon."

"Home or church?" says I.

"Oh, either," says he. "It doesn't matter in the least."

"Maybe it don't," says I, "but it's a point some one has to settle, you know."

"Yes, yes," says he, wavin' careless. "I've no doubt some one will."

He was right. Up to then I hadn't heard mueh about Miss Hampton's fam'ly except that she was an orphan. But it ain't three days after the engagement got noised around that a cousin of Elsa's shows up, a Mrs. Montgomery Pulsifer—a swell party with a big place in the Berkshires.

Where was the wedding to be? And the reception? Not in this stuffy little hotel suite, she hopes! Why not at Crag Oaks, her place near Lenox? There was the dearest little ivy-covered church! And a perfectly charming rector!

Then Sister Marjorie is called in. Sure, she was strong for the frilly stuff. Mrs. Pulsifer's country house would be just the place. Only, she had an idea that their old fam'ly friend, the Bishop, ought to be asked to officiate.

"Why, to be sure!" says Mrs. Pulsifer. "The Bishop, by all means."

And the first thing Mr. Robert knows, they've doped out for him a regulation three-ring splice-test with all the trimmin's, from a gold-braided carriage caller to a special train for the Newport guests. And, him bein' still busy with his rosy dreams, Mr. Robert don't get wise to what's bein' framed up for him until one Saturday afternoon out at Marjorie's, when they spring the program on him.

"Why, see here, sis," says he, "you've put this three weeks off!"

"The bridesmaids' gowns can't be finished a day sooner," says Marjorie. "Besides, the invitations must be engraved; and there is the organ to be installed, you know."

"Organ!" protests Mr. Robert. "Oh, I say!"

"You don't expect the Lohengrin March to be played on drums, I hope," says Marjorie. "Do be sensible! You've been best man times enough to know that—"

"Great Scott, yes," says Mr. Robert. "But really, sis, I don't want to go through all that dreary business—dragging in to the wedding march, with every one looking solemn and holding their breath while they stare at you! Why, it's deadly! Gloomy, you know; a relic of barbarism."

"Don't be absurd, Robert," says Marjorie. "You'll be married quite respectably and sanely, as other people are. Anyway, you'll just have to. Mrs. Pulsifer and I are managing the affair, remember."

"Are you?" says Mr. Robert, letting out a little growl.

I nudges Vee. "The groom always takes on that way," she whispers. "It's the usual thing."

SUNDAY afternoon I gets a 'phone call from Mr. Robert askin' me to meet him at Miss Hampton's apartment, and he adds that he's decided to duck the whole Crag Oaks proposition and do it his own way.

"How about Miss Elsa?" I asks.

"She feels just as I do about it," says he. "She will tell you so herself."

And she does, when I gets up there.

"I think it's the silly veil to which I object most," says she. "As if any one ever did see a blushing bride! Why, the ordeal has them half scared to death, poor things! And no wonder. Yes, I quite agree with Robert. We have decided that our wedding must be a merry

---

one. That is why, Torchy, we have sent for you."

"Eh?" says I, gawpin'.

"You are to be best man," says Mr. Robert, clappin' me on the back.

"Me?" I gasps. "Ah, say!"

"Your Miss Verona," adds Elsa, "is to be my only bridesmaid."

"Well, that helps," says I. "But how—where—"

"It doesn't matter," says Mr. Robert. "Anywhere in the State—or I can get a Connecticut or New Jersey license. It shall be wherever you decide."

"Wha-a-at?" says I.

Mr. Robert chuckles.

"As best man," he goes on, "we appoint you general manager of the whole affair; don't we, Elsa?"

"With full powers," says she, smilin'.

"We'll motor out somewhere," adds Mr. Robert. "You and Miss Vee take the limousine; we will go in the roadster. If Marjorie and Ferdie wish to come along, they can join us in their car."

"How about a dominie?" says I. "Do I pick up one casual along the road?"

"Oh, I forgot the Reverend Percy," says Mr. Robert. "He's consented to quit that East Side settlement work of his for a day. You'll have to take him along. Now, how soon may we start? To-morrow morning, say?"

"Hel-lup!" says I. "I'm gettin' dizzy."

"Then Tuesday," says he, "at nine-thirty sharp."

"But say, Mr. Robert," says I, "just what—"

"Only make it as merry as you know how," he breaks in. "That's the main idea; isn't it, Elsa?"

Another nod from Elsa.

"Robert has great faith in you as a promoter of cheerful affairs," says she. "I think I have, too."

"That being the case," says I, "I got to live up to my rep. or strip a gear. So here goes!"

WITH which I breezes out and pikes uptown to consult Vee.

"Did you ever hear anything so batty?" says I.

"Why, I think it's perfectly splendid fun," says Vee. "Just think, Torchy, you can do anything you choose!"

"It's the choosin' that's goin' to bother me," says I. "I'm no matrimonial stage-manager. I don't even know where to pull the thing off."

"I've thought of just the place," says she. "Harbor Hill, the Vernon Mark-toys' place out on Long Island. They're in the mountains now, you know, and the house is closed; but—"

"You ain't thinkin' of borrowin' their garage for this, are you?" says I.

"Silly!" says she. "Mrs. Markley's open-air Greek theater! You must have seen pictures of it. It's a dream—white cement pergolas covered with woodbine and pink ramblers, and a wonderful stretch of lawn in front. It would be an ideal setting. She's a great friend of auntie's. We'll just wire her for permission; shall we?"

"Listens good," says I. "But we got to get busy. Tuesday, you know. What about eats, though?"

"There's a country club only half a mile away," says she.

"You're some grand little planner," says I. "Now let me go plot out how to put the tra-la-la business into the proceedin's."

I had a hunch that part would come easy too; but by Monday noon my total contribution was that I'd hired a band. It's some band, though—one of these fifteen-piece dance-hall combinations. I left word what station they was to get off at, and 'phoned for a couple of jitneys to meet 'em. For the rest, I was bankin' on my luck.

AND right on schedule we makes a nine-thirty get-away—three machines in all; for, while Marjorie had thrown seventeen cat-fits when she first heard that Brother Robert had renigged, she shows up with Ferdie at the last minute. Catch her missin' out on any kind of a weddin'!

"But just where, Robert?" says she, "is this absurd affair to take place?"

"Haven't the least idea," says he. "Ask Torchy."

So I names the spot, gives the chauffeurs their route directions, and off we booms across the College Point ferry and out towards the far end of the north shore. The Reverend Percy turns out to be kind of a solemn, serious-minded gink who'd been in college with Mr. Robert. Accordin' to his tell, them must have been lively days.

We hadn't more than whirled in through the stone gate of Harbor Hill than I begun to scent complications. For there, lined up in front of the house, are four other machines, with a whole mob of people around 'em.

"Why!" says Vee. "Who can they be?"

"Looks like some one had beaten us to it," says I. "I'll go do some scouting'."

COURSE, one close-up look is all that's needed. It's a movie outfit. I'm just gettin' hot under the collar, too, when I discovers that the gent in charge is none other than my old newspaper friend, Whitey Weeks. I'd heard how he'd gone into the film game as stage director. And hero he is, big as life, in a suit of noisy plaids.

"Huh!" says I, strollin' up. "Ain't this my old friend Whitey Weeks?"

"Well, well!" says he. "The illustrious and illuminating Torchy! Don't tell me you've just bought the estate!"

"Would it matter to you who owned it," says I, "if you wanted to use it bad?"

"Such cruel suspicions!" says he. "Sir, my permit!"

He's got it, straight enough—a note to the lodge-keeper, signed by Mrs. Vernon Markley, and statin' that the Unexcelled Film Company was to have the courtesy of the grounds any afternoon between the 15th and 25th.

"You see," explains Whitey, "we're staging an old English costume piece, and this Greek theater of Mrs. Markley's just fits in. Our president worked the deal

for us. And we've got to do a thousand feet between now and five o'clock. Not in the same line, are you?"

And he glances towards our crowd, that's pilin' out of the cars and gazin' puzzled towards us.

"Do we look it?" says I. "No; what we was plannin' to pull off here was a weddin'. That's the groom there—my boss, Mr. Robert Ellins."

"Bob Finns!" says Whitey. "Whe-e-ew!"

"Mrs. Markley must have forgot," says I. "Makes it kind of awkward for us, though."

"But see here," says Whitey. "A real wedding, you say? Why, that's odd! That's our stunt, with merry villagers and all that stuff. Now, say, why couldn't we—Let's see! Do you suppose Mr. Ellins would mind if—"

I got the idea in a flash.

"He won't mind anything," says I, "so long as he can be married merry. He's leavin' that to me—the whole act."

"By Jove!" says Whitey. "The very thing, then. We'll—But who else is this arriving? Look, coming in, two motor-buses full!"

"That's our band," says I.

"Great!" says Whitey. "Rovelli's, too! Say, this is going to be a bit of all right! Have him form 'em on between those cedars, out of range. Now we'll just get your folks into costume, let our company trail along as part of the wedding procession, and shoot the dear public the real thing, for once. What do you say?"

Course, considerin' how Mr. Robert had shied at a hundred or so spectators, this lettin' him in on a film exchange circuit might, seem a little raw; but it was too good a chance to miss. Another minute, and I'm strollin' over, lookin' bland and innocent.

"Any hitch?" says Mr. Robert. "Have we got to the wrong place?"

"Not much," says I. "Didn't you tell me to go as far as I liked, so long as I made it merry?"

"So I did, Torchy," he admits.

"Then prepare to cut loose," says I. "This way, everybody, and get on your weddin' clothes!"

FOR a second or so Mr. Robert hangs back. He glances doubtful at Miss Hampton. But say, she's a good sport.

"Come along, Robert," says she. "I feel sure Torchy has planned something unique."

I didn't dispute her. It was all of that. First we groups the ladies on the south veranda behind a lot of screens, and herds the men around the corner. Then we unpacks them suitcases of Whitey's and distributes the things. Such regalias, too! What Mr. Robert draws is mostly two colored tights, spangled trunks, a gorgeous cape, peak-toed shoes of red leather, and a sword. Maybe he didn't look some spiffy in it!

You should have seen Ferdie, though, with a tow-colored wig clapped down over his ears and his spindle shanks revealed to a cold and cruel world in a pair of faded pink ballet trousers. For the Reverend Percy they dug out a fuzzy brown bath-robe with a hood, and tied a rope around his waist. Me, I'm dolled up in green tights and a leather coat, and get a bugle to carry.

HOW frisky a few freak clothes make you feel, don't they? Mr. Robert begins cuttin' up at once, and even Ferdie shows signs of wantin' to indulge in frivolous motions, if he only knew how. When the ladies appear they sure look stunnin'. Miss Hampton has on a fancy flarin' collar two feet high, and a skirt like a balloon; but she's a star in it just the same. Sister Marjorie, who's a bit husky anyway, looks like a human hay-stack in that rig. And Vee—well, say, she'd be a winner in any date costume you could name.

Meanwhile Whitey has posted his camera men in the shrubbery, where they can get the focus without bein' seen.

Say, I don't know how them early English parties used to put it over when they got together for a mad, gladsome romp on the greensward, but if they had anything on us they must have been double-jointed. For, with Mr. Robert and Miss Hampton skippin' along hand in hand, Vee and me keepin' step behind, a couple of movie ladies rushin' the Reverend Percy over the grass rapid, and the other couples with arms linked, doin' fancy stops to a jingly fox-trot—well, take it from me, it was gay doin's.

And when we'd galloped around over the lawn until we'd hunched for the weddin' picture in front of this Greek theater effect, the Reverend Percy had barely breath enough left to go through his lines. He does, though, with Mr. Robert adding' joshin' remarks; and we winds up by givin' the bride and groom three cousin' cheers and peltin' 'em with roses as they makes a run through the double line we forms.

Yep, that was some weddin', if I do say it. And the sit-down luncheon I'd ordered at the Country Club in Mr. Robert's name wa'n't any skimpy affair, even though we did spring an extra number on 'em offhand. For the boss insists on goin' just as we are, in our costumes, and luggin' along all the movie people. The reckless way he buys fizz for 'em, too! And, by the time the party breaks up, Whitey Weeks is so full of gratitude and enthusiasm and other things that he near bubbles over.

"Torchy," says he, wringin' my hand fraternal, "you have given my company the time of their lives. They're all strong for you. And say, I've got a thousand feet of film that's simply going to knock 'em cold at the first-run houses. Any time I can—"

"Don't mention it," says I. "Specially about that film. The boss don't know yet that you had the camera goin'. Thought it was only rehearsin', I guess. All he's sure of now is that he's been married merry. And if he ever forgets just how merry, for a dime he can go take a look and refresh his mem'ry, can't he? But I'm bettin' he never forgets."

Hup!

By MARY BRONSON HARTT

Illustrations by August Henkel

SIGNORINA TOTTINI was afraid—and the tiger knew it. But she was not afraid of the tiger: she was afraid of Bill.

As she tripped into the arena to the throbbing roll of the kettledrums, and stood gaily bowing and saluting smartly with her whip,—a natty figure in frogged military coat, scarlet tights, and high varnished boots,—she had been for an instant vaguely aware of the familiar sight—the shabby folk crowding the tent outside the liars, the gray-brown billows of the ancient canvas top, the vivid blue of the tent-poles, the hissing arc-lights, the faded uniforms of the blase band; of the familiar animal scent, half beast, half human; and even, above the blare of the brass, of that indeseribahle pandemonium of illogical sounds that meant a good night at the amusement park.

Then of a sudden her senses focused sharply, as with a shock her eyes locked glances with Bill's. For there he sat, down yonder on a hard bench in the center of the third row, large as life and glowering like a thunder-cloud.

Under her make-up she felt the color surge. If only the Hessian boots would rise to her ears, or the abbreviated scarlet coat stretch down to her toes!

Then the signal sounded, the clanking cage door grated aside, the band struck up the swift, measures of the Horse Trot, and his Majesty the tiger came slinking in.

OF course the tiger knew nothing of Bill, and cared less; and yet, without raising his evil eyes higher than the shiny Hessian boots, he was aware of something awry. The boots were not taking their accustomed firm base for the litte figure in scarlet. Some accent of imperious control was wanting from the stamp of the Signorina's small foot, some bite from the crack of her whip.

"Hup!" ordered the Signorina, tapping a perch on the side of the cage.

The tiger snarled.

"Hup!" The whip crackling viciously round his ears enforced the command. Habit was strong. The tiger's muscles gathered for the spring. "Hup! Hup!"—with the old peculiar lift in the voice. This time Rajah leaped.

The Signorina stroked his great, striped paws testingly with the butt of her whip. Then for an instant she posed, the whip held across her knee, under the splendid beast's perch.

Rajah yawned in regal indifference. Nobody noticed a light of sinister interest that flared for a moment in his sullen eyes as he looked down on the girlish figure beneath him. Nobody, that is, except Bill.

For Bill was doing mental acrobatics—trying desperately to reconcile the litte scarlet tiger-tamer with Annie Alullin, the prettiest waitress at the Lightning Lunch. His mind had flown back to an evening, three years before, when Annie had told him it was all off between them.

"Say, Billy," she had said, dropping the black fringes over those light gray Irish yes, as she nervously polished the counter and rearranged the plates of pie, "you know that swell thirteen-dollar flat you was showin' me over last Sunday out to Roxbury? Well, don't take no lease of that—not on my account. I'm—I'm not thinkin' of gettin' married as much as I was. I like you fine, Bill, but I guess it's in my blood. I ain't never told you, but my mother was in the business with a circus, workin' a bunch of performin' lions. Say! she had Bonavita chased clear under the table! The show people that comes here to feed have been after me this long while. They say I've the trick with animals, and I guess I have, all right, all right. They want to put me on with a trained tiger. I was round to the arenar again las' night after the show. Rajah's gettin' used to me. I've been in the cage twice already, an' he acted fine! I'm real sorry, Bill. But I guess marryin's too slow for me. I've got to have somethin' that takes nerve."

And Bill, in his helpless pain and anger, had only wanted to hurt her as she was hurting him.

"Nerve!" he had jeered savagely. "Aw, fade away! Them show animals are all doped. You have to punch 'em to make 'em roar. You think you want to show yer nerve. 'Tain't nerve yer so crazy t' show—it's yer shape! What if yer mother was a show-woman? You can be respectable!"

And then Annie's eyes blazing as only Irish eyes can, and Annie's voice with an edge on it: "You—you—lobster! I wouldn't marry you now,—not if I had to sweep the street!"

HE had not seen her from that day to this. And here she was, "showing her shape" at the biggest show on the beach. It was hard to tell which looked uglier, Bill or the tiger.

Uglier, that is, in spirit. The tiger was clearly the handsomer animal. When Bill cooled down enough to take note of the proceedings in the arena once more, Rajah was being made to do spectacular stunts on the back of a superb milk-white Arabian charger. And a sight it was to see the lithe, tawny-striped creature leap through tinseled hoops and bound on to high perches at the compelling word of a slender girl in scarlet.

Bill felt an odd pain somewhere about the heart as he watched, noting involuntarily, how her girlish softness, the appealing curves of cheek and chin, the piquant lines of the profile, triumphed over the hardening mask of her make-up. He felt a great need to summon wrath and scorn to the defense of his manly fortitude.

Although a heavy wooden saddle, almost a platform, protected the horse's back from the claws of the great cat, and his neck and ears were armored with a singular spiked harness, the sensitive animal shivered all over every time the tiger dropped down upon him, his pink nostrils widening with fear.

"Huh!" growled Bill, addressing the inan on his right. "'What's that fool horse shakin' about? There's nothin' to be afraid of. That tiger's doped!"

"Doped, is he?" the man almost shouted, turning on Bill.

Then he seemed to think better of his violence, and fell to studying Bill as if he were a strange animal, narrowing his eyes offensively.

"I suppose, now," he said in Bill's ear, "you know all about tiger-taming. In the business yourself?"

Bill missed the heavy sarcasm. He didn't look at the man, or even in the uncertain light he might have made out the frogged military coat and knee-boots, and the whip, held furled, so to speak, in the powerful hands.

"Well, no," Bill replied simply. "I'm a telephone lineman. But I ain't easy kidded. If them show animals was real dangerous, there'd be a roof to that there arenar!"

He pointed triumphantly to the top of the performing-cage, where the great bars were bent downward and inward in a circle of murderous prongs.

The man seemed hugely entertained.

"Well, you know, a tiger isn't a—telephone lineman," he chuckled. "He can't shinny up a perpendicular iron rod, nor he can't jump in the teeth o' those prongs, neither."

A BURST of applause interrupted them.

The litte trainer haying brought the horse episode to a close with a flourish and a pose that openly begged for hands, the cage door slid aside to let the nervous steed escape, his hoofs echoing on the boards of the passage.

And now Rajah rested majestically on a pedestal at the back of the arena, watching with those smoldering eyes of his the preparations for his final act.

As stage "supes" passed them to her through the bars, the Signorina skipped about, arranging the parts of a long inclined plane up which Rajah was scheduled to propel himself, balanced on a big ball. If there was one thing more than another that, Rajah objected to, it was waltzing on a ball.

"Say, what's got into the kid?" Bill heard his neighbor muttering. "She's flustered. That's the third time she's had to move her props!"

It was Bill's turn then to take a good look at the mall at his elbow; and now, by the reflected glow from the stage, he easily discerned the keeper's togs.

The man met his abashed glance indulgenty.

"Yes, that's my tiger. I broke him in. The kid, there, only works him. You see, the public likes to watch a girl fooling

with a brute like that. But you're wrong about tigers, Mister. This ain't no pussy-pussy business. I can snuggle up to Rajah when he's feelin' right; but then again—there's some of his work!"

He stretched out his left hand. Even in the dimness, Bill, bending over it, saw the twisted purple sear that seamed its back from thumb to forefinger. His wincing look traveled from the wound to the smooth cheek of Signorina Annie's Mullin, at that moment playfully admonishing Rajah with lifted forefinger to sit up and be a good little tiger and down his best.

SHE was ready, now, for the climax of the act. The band, which had been drizzling indifferent melodies, as if tunefully snoring in its sleep, woke up and began to shake out thrills.

The Signorina drove Rajah to a perch high up on the side of the cage; and then, while the band dramatically held its breath, she rolled the great ball to the center of the arena, tapped it commandingly with her whip, stepped to one side, and dared the tiger to leap.

As usual, Rajah took a deal of daring. The Signorina's foot and the Signorina's whip executed a perfect fusillade of cracking and stamping before the great beast could lie nerved to his work.

Then the graceful leap, the flash of black and yellow, the splendid curve of the lithe body through the air.

Miss Mullin had got well into her stride now. As Rajah leaped, she was conscious of a thrill of pride that Bill should be there to see how easily her will dominated the great, powerful brute. Show her shape, indeed! She guessed he'd see some nerve, too, before she was done with him.

Not too fast, Signorina!

Was Rajah, too, indulging in vain-glory, underestimating the difficulty of his time-honored best trick?

His marvelous cat's muscles braced to land elastically, all four paws bunched together on the curving surface of the sphere, Rajah missed his aim by an inch. His fore paws, indeed, reached the ball. His hind paws struck the stage with a force that jarred every nerve in his body.

Then Rajah was mad! Spurning the ball violenty from him, lashing his strong tail in short, angry twitches, his ugly jaws set in a snarl, he turned to wreak his temper on his trainer.

"Look out!" came in a thrilling undertone from the lips of the man at Bill's elbow. The keeper strained forward as if to project his authority inside the cage. Bill's heart hopped up into his mouth.

BUT at the first sign of active insurrection a change passed over the Signorina with the whip. She seemed to add inches to her stature, to be possessed of an invincible and dangerous calm. Her eyes opened wide and glowed with a strange fire. Her whip no longer cracked. When the lash flew out now, it sought and found, not empty air, but the tiger.

"H-up!" she ordered, tapping a pedestal, her voice low, with plenty of "punch" in it. Rajah, long used to respond to the mastery in that voice, half turned to obey, then wheeled again, snarling.

The girl shifted the whip, menacing the rebellious beast with the heavy butt. He cringed, but struck savagely at the descending weapon. The girl advanced on him fearlessly, stamping her foot. The beast gave ground, half cowed before the authority that seemed to radiate from every line of the slight figure. Still he made no move toward the pedestal.

Driven back by blows and obloquy, the tiger, in his fury of rage and pain, dashed against a hurdle supporting the inclined plane, bringing down the frame.

The accident might have quelled Rajah—did, for the moment, send him sprawling with a sharp sting in a bruised shoulder. But the debris, falling between him and the indomitable litte trainer, afforded him a temporary shelter from her whip.

Well now for Annie Mullin had her

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mind been single for Rajah, as Rajah's evil mind was clear of all thought save of her. In that psychological fraction of a second when she should have pushed her advantage with eye and tongue and sheer compelling force of will, one swift thought of her old lover looking on flashed through her mind. And in that fraction of a second Rajah leaped.

But not for his pedestal. Clearing the fallen framework with one magnificent bound, he launched himself straight for the scarlet shoulders of the trainer.

She was quick, but the tiger was quicker. Swift as light she darted aside, and her whip flew out to catch the first force of the impact—else there would be no story to tell. The whip cramped the style of Rajah's leap. But one of his great paws caught in the cloth of the trainer's scarlet-coated shoulder, and the two went down together.

INSTANTLY the place was in wild uproar. Women shrieked and covered their faces. Men swore. The crowd near the cage fell over itself in its haste to get farther back. A guard rushed out and began to prod Rajah furiously, but ineffectively, through the bars with a prong on the end of a long polo. The band, which might have saved the day, forgot orders and stopped playing. The trainer mall in the third row started madly for the door leading to the back of the cage, fighting his way over chairs and through the screaming, struggling crowd.

And Bill? Bill went off automatically. As the tiger sprang, he started by the shortest cut to Annie

A foot on a bench, a strong hand on the bars, a rest for the toe of his boot on the edge of a projecting hurdle, a knee on the horizontal of the cage, a clutch on one of Rajah's high perches, a mighty pull to the top of the incurved bars, and the big lineman balanced for the drop into the arena. Down he came, like the block of a pile-driver, directly at the tiger's back. At the smashing sound, Rajah, whose nerves were in fiddlestrings at the general uproar, gave back a bit in panic; and Bill, gathering himself up from his fall, saw Annie's white face crushed against the great brute's cruel paw.

At that a perfectly uncalculating fury possessed him. Rushing on Rajah as he might on a dog that was worrying a cat, he landed a terrific kick on the tiger's nose with the toe of his heavy boot. Almost at the same instant he snatched the barbed pole from the open-mouthed guard outside the cage.

With a roar of agony, the tiger started up, loosing his hold on the girl. For the second he was too much hurt and astonished to do more than gape at his sudden assailant. Then, uttering a deep feline curse, he dashed at Bill to demolish him.

Bill shortened his weapon and stood his ground.

Meeting a grim reception at the point of the prong, Rajah retired to the side-lines to consider his injuries. His cringing manner said obsequiously: "I guess you have me floored." But Bill saw the lust of murder in his furtive eyes.

Covering the yellow brute with eye and prong, Bill began to edge, inch by inch, toward the spot where the little trainer was lying. Confused admonitions reached him from the guards, keepers, and amateurs outside the cage. The crowd apparently had recovered from its panic. Bill was conscious of excited murmurs and of a frantic hanging somewhere behind the cage, and of the band, coming to its senses, feebly beginning to blare. Resolutely he shut out the sounds. Eyes and ears were for Annie and the tiger. Would the keeper never come?

Warily edging along, he at length reached Annie's side. Seizing a moment when Rajah was busy sympathizing with his bruised nose, he stooped, snatched the limp figure from the floor, and swung it swiftly behind him, holding it with a tense left arm.

HE wasn't a second too quick—for the tiger was coming back. Stealthily now, like the big sneak he was, he came crawling, belly to the boards. His eye followed the iron point. Plainly, he was in two minds about flinging himself on that again.

Shifting the stick, and watching the beast maneuvering for a chance to get past it, Bill felt a sickening doubt as to how long he could keep up a one-armed fence with the brute, burdened with the weight of an insensible girl.

He reckoned without the Signorina. His heart turned fairly over in his breast

when he felt the unconscious figure shift in his grasp. Was she slipping from him? Then two arms began to steal weakly round his waist! The girl still leaned full upon him, her head against his shoulder; but she would hold herself.

And more. From one nerveless hand, as it came round into Bill's range of vision, there dangled the trainer's whip.

Bill took the cue. Leaving Annie to cling as best she might, he grasped the prong in his left hand, the whip in his right, and gave it a mighty crack.

"Hup!" he ordered—as nearly in Annie's style as he could. "Hup! Hup!" then imperiously tapped it on a pedestal.

Rajah paused and looked at him in surprise. "Well, what do you know about that?" he seemed to be saying. He made a short rush at the pretender, snarling horribly.

Somehow, Bill didn't mind his snarls nearly so much as his furtive crawling. He threw every atom of command he was capable of into his voice and the stinging crack of his whip.

"I will make him mind!" was singing in his brain. "I will! I will! I will!"

Over and over again he flattered him-self that Rajah was beaten. Then back he came, spitting and snarling and making ugly passes at the whip, trying to run in under Bill's guard and get at his legs.

His mechanical instinct told Bill that if nee he could force Rajah to mount his pedestal with all four powerful legs bunched under him, he could risk a dash for the door of the cage; for the tiger would be in no position for an effective spring.

Over and over again, man and beast footed it round the cage, the man never quite losing the upper hand, the beast never thoroughly cowed. Big drops of perspiration began to trickle down Bill's face. His throat ached with growling out orders, his arm with the incessant snapping of the whip. He began to feel that while this might be fun for the tiger, there were limits.

Rajah, too, appeared to think it appropriate to bring things to a climax. He gathered himself for a savage rush.

Whether or not Bill's hold was weakening, the tiger got in a blow on the shaft of the stick that nearly paralyzed Bill's arm. His hideous snarling came almost in Bill's face. A dreadful confusion blurred his brain.

Annie! Would the brute get Annie, after all?

At that instant a streak of fire flashed out from under Bill's right elbow, along with an ear-splitting report. Annie had answered.

When Bill fairly came to from the shock, Rajah was disgustedly trying to wipe away the smoke and powder of a blank cartridge fired full in his face. He was a stunned and chastened tiger.

And now it was Annie's voice, low, throaty, weak, but incisive, that ordered "Hup!" and Annie's hands on his shoulders that drew Bill gradually backward toward the door of the cage.

But it was all she could do. Bill's foot had to give the signaling stamp, his arm the urgent crack of the whip.

Rajah swore a little, chewed on the sulphurous taste in his mouth and eyed the pedestal askance. Once more, "Hup!" cried Annie desperately. It was the last order left in her.

"Aw, well, what's the use?" snarled Rajah. And slowly, sullenly, he got up on his perch.

It was Rajah's own keeper who slid open the cage door and caught Annie as she fell. He was as white as his collar, and panting. He eyed Bill as he might a ghost.

"Thought she was gone, sure!" he gasped. "Door into the passage was locked, and it took me a week to break it in. The door guard ran away. How the devil did you get in here?"

BUT Bill had no words to waste. Jealously taking Aunie's limp figure into his own arms, his eyes on the torn shoulder of her trainer's coat, he began to stride excitedly along the passage.

"Bring us to a doctor!" he demanded wildly.

And then, as the girl's eyelids began to flutter, he stooped his mouth to her ear.

"Me brave Annie—me brave Annie!" he whispered. And the girl closed her eyes again with a satisfied sigh.

Serving 100 Dinners from a 4x4 Foot Kitchen

IT is all very well for your wife to feel proud of her ability to prepare dinner for eight in that kitchenette of hers—but consider the dining-car. Its kitchen isn't nearly so large—in fact, it is nothing but a culinary cubby-hole; and yet, it is so systematic in its workings, so efficient in its broiling and baking and serving, that it can turn out each hour more than fifty elaborate meals. And the up-to-date American dining-cars, remember, for all that their kitchens are only four by four feet, with a square yard or so of pantry thrown in, must be prepared to deliver to the particular traveling public a very wide range of variety in delectable dishes. Anything from Apollinaris to champagne, from a sardine to a roast fowl, is likely to be wanted en route; so the latest type of diners must be prepared to let you run the gamut of succulency.

The Last Word in Kitchen Efficiency

HOW the railroads of the United States serve their sixty thousand meals per day from these compact, snug little kitchens on the diners is an interesting tale. The reign of efficiency begins when the car is stocked for the day's run. The meats, for instance—it would never do to be obliged to carve portions of beef and chicken while in the rush of the meal hour. So, before the car leaves, its refrigerators are stocked with an estimated number of portions, cut according to a specified size and neatly wrapped in waxed paper. This eliminates practically all carving in the diner. Even in cutting cakes and pies efficiency holds sway. Precise instructions cover the dissection of every pan of pastry taken aboard.

In the tiny kitchen and its adjoining pantry, where the three or four chefs are busy, space is at a high premium. Charcoal broiler, ovens, and open range stove are wedged in on one side. Flanking them are heat-proof refrigerators for the perishables. Overhead the water-tanks hang low, not far from the methodically arranged china closets.

Turn about cautiously in the narrow aisle, and you find yourself facing the sinks used for dish-washing, and beside them the "kitchen table" of the diner—quite the largest expanse in the whole room: it is perhaps two feet deep and a yard and a half wide! Fruit, berries, and ice-cream, as well as a mighty store of linens, wines, and silverware, are tucked about in lockers and chests either in the pantry or in another corner of the car. While underneath, completing the scheme of extreme space economy, reserve ice supplies are stored in specially constructed bunkers.

You can't be prodigal with room when you have to serve a hundred people at a single meal.

It is part of the efficiency plan of the dining-car that only a barely sufficient supply of provisions be carried. But this does not mean that the diner ever runs out of strawberries, for instance, in the month of May. The steward in charge keeps a sharp eye on the larder, and if he thinks he will need any extra supplies he wires ahead to the diner coming toward him, or has the necessary food bought immediately at the next city and held till his arrival.

"But what if a steward finds he has an over-supply of perfectly fresh, delicious fish? Does it have to be thrown away?" you ask.

Indeed, not—and here is where one of the very cleverest efficiency ideas ever evolved comes into play. It is employed upon more than one big railroad. When the steward sees that his delicious brook trout, say, are not being ordered very much for breakfast, he writes upon the printed luncheon menu, in attractive red or blue ink, the following magic legend:

Special—Delicious Brook Trout, Broiled.

The point is, of course, that the dining-car steward is enough of a psychologist to know that this will direct attention to the dish and will promptly reduce his supply. It is an extremely effective way of conducting a catering service efficiently, for it prevents the waste of perishable foods which twenty-four hours later, perhaps, the railroads would not allow to be served from their traveling restaurants For the dining-cars, as well as the big hotels of the country, have a particularly strict sanitary code.

The "Pantry One-Step"

THERE are other efficiency schemes that influence the contentment of the traveler who dines en route. Did you over notice the waiters on the big Eastern roads as they hurry back and forth from the pantry to your table? They don't merely walk, nor just run—they have a sort of efficiency dance-step.

It is a fact that on one road—a road that serves some eight thousand meals a day in its hundred-odd cars—the waiters are deliberately coached in that the road officials sometimes call the, "pantry one-step." It had been found that, in the rush and swirl of serving many dinners on a car traveling sixty miles an hour, the waiters could make, better time and maintain a firmer balance if they employed that particular shuffle in getting around the car. lt made for efficiency in the diner, and straightway it was adopted.

Here is more of

The Girl of the Nutmeg Isle

Continued from page 8

be seen, where the schooner had lain ten minutes before, except a raffle of foam breaking on a reef, and one round black head fighting the waves. It did not fight long.

"S'ark he catchum," yelled Bo through the wind, as the black point disappeared.

I watched, but there were no more.

When I turned round, Red Bob was sitting up on the beach, very wet and sandy, feeling his head. His fingers were red when they came away.

"Did they get the ship?" he inquired with perfect coolness, taking a dripping handkerchief out of his pocket and tying it round his head. "I don't remember after some one knocked me over."

"She dragged, went on the reef, and sank," I said. "They must have meddled with the cable."

"You all right?" inquired Red Bob of Isola, who was sitting on the sand beside him.

"Yes," said Isola. "I've got no clothes," she added, "except these."

"Tie that knot for me, will you?" said Gore. "Crew all gone?"

"All except Bo; I brought him along," I said.

"Right. We'll want him before we're through. I hope the boat wasn't lowered stern foremost and the stores spilled."

"Stores?" I asked. "She was got down all right."

"I don't," said Gore, "allow boats to be kept unprovisioned in any ship that I command. That's common sense. We have two beakers of water, a keg of beef, a ten-pound tin of biscuit, a pound of tobacco, pound of tea, packet of matches sealed in tin, compass, and box of quinine."

"Then we can make for the nearest settlement?" I suggested.

"We can. The gooba seems to be over."

Here Isola, to my astonishment, burst out laughing.

"I can't—can't—help it!" she said hysterically. "It seems too absurd! We've been shipwrecked—and all sorts of awful things have happened—and here we are sitting under the palm trees, talking like a tea-party."

"What way do you think we ought to talk?" asked Red Bob. "I've been shipwrecked before, and it was pretty much the same as this. Do you expect people to say 'Gadzooks' and 'By my halidome' because they've been spilled out of a ship?"

"Me want my kai-kai," observed Bo, by way of diversion.

"Do you realize, my friend, that you did your best to commit piracy and murder half an hour ago?" demanded Gore. "Do you understand that you ought to be hung, if there was a tree on the island that one could hang you to—cocoanuts having no hangable branches?"

"Me wantum kai-kai," repeated Bo.

ONLY people who have been through like adventures will believe me, I suppose, when I say that all three of us burst out laughing at the New Britainer's cool demand.

"He's quite right; it's near tea-time," commented Gore. "You go catchum cocoanut plenty quick!

"Never," he advised us, "let anything interfere with your regular meals if you can help it—not even a shipwreck. Bo, you go and catch plenty crab when you finish. We'll make you earn your living, you scurvy brute!"

"Me no brooss," complained Bo as he moved away, apparently wounded by the epithet.

Everything we had on was wet through, and there was no possibility of sun-drying for to-day. But Gore, with the matches out of the boat and wood from underneath a fallen palm, had a fire going before long, and we dried ourselves at that as well as we could. He declared his wound was nothing; and Isola, when she had examined and washed it carefully, gave it as her verdict that the bone was not damaged. By the light of the fire we sat down to feed, looking I suppose, very like an ordinary picnic party; and afterward Bo was made to dig a big hole in the sand for shelter from the wind.

"There'll be no more rain to-night," said Gore; and he was right. It was a fine night of stars. The lagoon was as still as a marble tank in a palace. As we lay in the shelter of the pit, protected by the sails of the boat, we could hear the fish leap in the water and the ripples talking strangely on the sand. Isola, at her end of the shelter, seemed to rest quietly; but once in the night she sat up suddenly, made as if to throw back the long hair that she had shorn away, and cried out: "Paul, why did you kill him? There's blood on your hands!"

I watched her, but did not answer, for I saw, that she was talking in her sleep. She sank back on the sand in another moment, and her eyes closed again. There was a night-bird hidden among the palms. It waked up and cried, for a little while, in a complaining, bitter tone. Then it was silent; and the ripples whispered strange, wicked secrets to each other on the beach, and the sea breathed deep, outside the barrier reef. I thought the morning would never come; but it came at last, low and red among the trunks of the palm trees, and our castaway life had begun.

"NEU KÖNIGSBERGSHAFEN is the place," said Red Bob, as we sailed in our little boat out of Schouten's ill-starred lagoon, leaving the bones of the Cecilie and the bones of her destroyers lying side by side at the bottom of the sea. "With a fair wind, we aren't three days from the coast of New Britain: wrong coast, of course—not the settled side; but it'll do at a pinch. Neu Königsbergshafcn is a settlement, or rather a plantation, where we can refit and get provisions. After that, if there is no ship likely to call, we could go on to Rabaul, round the head of the island; and if we wanted to get Mrs. Ravenna away without any bother, why, she'd only have to get herself up à la Malay again for a couple of days."

"Who lives at Neu Königsbergshafen?" asked Isola.

"Beyer—rather a good friend of mine. He grows rubber and copra and a bit of coffee. Very lonely place; no other white man for fifty or sixty miles—but as pretty a spot as you'd like to see. Beyer has a wife; half-caste woman, but a decent sort. She'll look after Mrs. Ravenna. You'll be a little cramped running down to the coast," he said, turning to Isola with a kindly smile, "but we'll do our best for you. There's no man alive who wouldn't do his best, and a bit more, for such a plucky girl as you."

"She is brave," I said proudly—somehow, since Gore's talk about possibilities of breaking the marriage, I had felt more than ever that I had an actual right to be proud of her. "She's as good as another man in the boat."

And, indeed, it was useful to have a third hand to steer, or to help with the sails when necessary. Bo, a house-boy pure and simple, proved of very little use. With the amazingly brief memory of the savage, he had quite forgotten the part he had taken in the mutiny, and we chose to forget it too, since we thought he might be valuable to us in many ways while coasting along New Britain.

We rigged up a little shelter for Isola, and did our best to make her as comfortable as circumstances permitted during the voyage. I do not really think she felt the boat journey to be a serious hardship. In the first place, it was not long—we were extraordinarily lucky in the matter of wind, and, the yawl proving a good sailer, we sighted the coast of New Britain in two days and a half. Further, she had been accustomed for many weeks to roughing it in our company.

Gore and I ran the boat in turns, gave out the rations, and kept a lookout for sails, of which we saw—and expected to see—none.

As for Bo, he spent his time between sleeping at the bottom of the boat and begging for tobacco, of which we gave him little, not knowing how long it might be before we could get any more.

About the middle of the third day a long blue cloud arose in the horizon, and for the second time—but under what altered circumstances!—we approached the coast of the great island of New Britain. Coming on it from this side and in such a way, one realized its size better than one did from the steamer approach to Rabaul.

"Is it settled pretty well?" I asked.

"Bless you, no," said Gore; "nor explored. Nothing known about the natives in the far interior, except that they are brutes."

We ran in and on toward the great island, the boat flying under all sail as if she were as hungry for the land as we undoubtedly were.

"What a parrot-colored place!" was Isola's comment as we ran into Neu Königsbergshafen Bay.

She was right. The wondrous blue of those rounded hills was parrot blue; the green of the lawns and the forests and the springing palms was just that vivid powdery green that one sees on a parrot's wings. The bay itself was paved with still water in color like a huge emerald, and the coral-sand shore curved about it, white as a crescent moon.

"It is very, very pretty, but not so pretty as my 'Banda Neira,'" observed the girl, looking with wide dark eyes at the scimitar-shaped beach, and the tall, leaning palms that hung over it.

"Master, be good place this, but plenty bad boy he stop along here," declared Bo, raising himself from the bottom of the boat to look about him. "I no savvy that fellow bushman stop here. I too much fright along him."

"By and by you too much fright along me; hold your tongue," was Gore's reply.

I could see he did not want to alarm Isola unnecessarily. Bo squatted on the gunwale, holding on with his black toes like a monkey, and stared hard at the place as we went up. He was chewing tobacco, and the spat and spat continually in the water, with a vigor that seemed to be the expression of some unspoken feelng.

There was a little pier of piled white coral rock built out into the deepest part of the bay. We ran the boat up to this, tied up, and most thankfully disembarked. Even two days in an open boat is enough to stiffen the limbs and weary the mind with a feeling of confinement.

The rocks up to high water were covered with fine edible oysters. Bo was anxious to stop and sample them, and we told him he might do so: we wanted someone to stay with the boat while we vent up to the plantation. New Britain natives are terrible thieves, and it was ten to one we might find all movables taken out of the yawl if we left her without a guard. So we gave Bo a tomahawk for protection, and charged him not to let any of the plantation boys approach the boat.

"Of course, they're tamed and civilized boys on a plantation, more or less," aid Gore; "but I wouldn't trust them near my stores."

WE left the pier behind, passed through the belt of cocoanuts that circled the bay, and came out on a most lovely avenue of shorn grass, bordered by

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magnificent flowering trees. There were coral trees, like bouquets of scarlet geranium, forty feet high and fifty feet across; kapok trees, with flowers like golden stars, and hard brown pods upon their branches, bursting open to show the silky white cotton within. There were frangipannis, and mangos, green as nothing but a mango tree can be.

The walk up to the house was a pretty long one, and we had time to notice, as we went, that the place seemed to be holidaying, for not a boy was at work on any part of the plantation. The shining rows of coffee bushes looked rather ill- weeded. Somebody had carelessly abandoned hoes and clearing knives here and there among them, and the iron was red with rust.

Among the star-shaped avenues of rubber, radiating out toward the horizon every way one looked, there was no one busy tapping the trees; no small white metal cans were hung against the trunks, filling up with milky latex. The door of the copra house was shut; a great heap of unopened cocoanuts was piled up against it. And still there were no boys.

I began to feel that there was something about this I did not altogether like.

We walked up to the house, a neat little wooden bungalow with an iron roof, hidden away in a cluster of mango trees. Here, at least, it seemed there was some one, for the door was open, and fowls were clucking and strutting about in a pleasant, homely way. Gore took a step aside, and cast a look at their feed-dish. It was empty and scraped, and the water-trough had not a drop in it.

"Wait a bit," he said, and carried the trough to a tank. The fowls gathered about him, clucking wildly. He filled the trough, and they fought with one another to get at it. He stood watching them narrowly.

"How kind you are to animals!" said Isola, looking at him with simple admiration. "Do you think," she went on, putting her hand up to her head, which was covered by a hat of rudely plaited palm leaves, and looking down at her stained and tattered dress—"do you think Mr. Beyer's wife will be able to spare me some clothes? I feel such a disgraceful object that I'm almost ashamed to go in and ask her!"

"Suppose you don't," said Gore, catching quickly at the suggestion. "Suppose you stop here for a minute with Corbet, while I go up to the house and tell the Beyers we're coming. Then, if you feel very badly about being seen by strangers in such a state, I'll bring you down a dress."

"Thank you," said Isola. "How kind you always are!"

"Stay here with her," said Gore, throwing me a glance.

I STAYED. We sat down on the edge of the trough,—for our legs felt shaky after the days in the boat,—and I tried hard not to remain silent. I tried to talk about everything—about the avenue, about the pretty situation of the house, about the bright blue hills behind, about the fowls.

Isola kept breaking in with remarks about Beyer and his wife—what they could give us in the way of clothes and food, whether there would be a schooner along presently; but I talked fast, and answered nothing.

Presently Gore came out on the veranda and walked down the steps. He seemed out of breath, as if he had been doing hard work.

"Lord, I am hot!" he said, and made straight for the tank, where he ran water over his hands and arms for quite a while. Then he came up to us.

"I'm sorry to say," he said, "the Beyers aren't here. They seem to have gone away."

"Gone! Where to?" asked Isola disappointedly.

"I can't say. Gone for good, I should think."

"Gone home, you mean?"

"I suppose so," said Gore, without looking at her. "Yes, I should think they have. The place will no doubt be taken over by some one else. It's disappointing; but people are apt to come and go suddenly in these places. It isn't as civilized as your Banda Neira."

"What are we going to do?" asked Isola.

Her pretty pale face was a shade paler. I could see how she had counted on this little oasis of civilization, though she was too plucky to complain.

"Borrow a few things and get back to the boat," answered Gore. "You can come in, if you like. The house is almost all locked up."

I thought I had heard his feet tramping through more rooms than one while we were waiting outside; but I made no comment.

I felt that Red Bob was anxious to have a word alone with me, and all my wits were engaged in getting it. Isola walked up the path to the house, pausing now and then to admire the bushes of flowering plants that had been set on each side of the path. I stepped aside for a minute, and asked:

"What is it?"

Gore, with his eyes narrowed till they looked more than ever like a cat's, told me in a word; and the sunlight of the glorious day seemed to die out in horror as he spoke:

"Beyer and his wife and child have been murdered. Must have been done about a week ago. I got the bodies into a back room, and locked the door. She needn't suspect anything. Take some clothes and food, and come as fast as you can lick down to the beach. I'm going to see if the boat's all right. We oughtn't to have left her, but one couldn't guess—Keep Isola out of sight of the avenue. If the boat's all right, she need know nothing. Don't delay."

To be continued next week

Making Game of Guineas

GUINEA FOWLS are becoming quite fashionable nowadays. The ordinary speckled variety is to be found in the best markets of all the large cities, and is used extensively in restaurants and hotels to take the place of game, which is yearly becoming more scarce.

The pure white variety has become popular with people who have country homes in suburban districts; for the birds, with their white plumage and bright red heads, are ornamental and attractive, and improve the appearance of the lawn. Though small, they don't scratch, as do ordinary chickens, and so can be given the freedom of the garden at all seasons of the year.

My stock began with a trio, from which we raised thirty-two the first summer. We sold four pairs, when six months old, for a dollar a pair; used eight pairs on our own table; and kept eight for stock.

They are naturally extremely shy and suspicious of strangers, but readily succumb to patient coaxing; and, their confidence once gained, they become friendly and devoted, guarding the place with the watchful care of a good watch-dog; in fact, so far as the poultry is concerned, they are more useful, for they seem to possess intuition of the hawk's approach, and their shrill cry frightens the chicken-thieves more effectually than a gun.

A trio of the ordinary speckled guineas costs about two dollars, the pure white perhaps three—not more. They should be purchased in the fall or winter, so that they will have time to become perfectly familiar with their surroundings before nesting time. They need no special house, all that is necessary for their comfort being a roost high up in a shed. If left to themselves they take to the trees, and would probably freeze in very cold weather. So the safest plan with new birds is to cover the front of a shed with two-inch wire netting, tacking it up lightly, so that it can easily be removed at the end of two or three weeks, when they have become accustomed to their new quarters.

While they are prisoners, feed the trio two or three times a day—just a little mixed wheat and cracked corn night and morning, and at noon about half the quantity of grain, with a little chopped meat or ground bone alternating with vegetables. All this food should be cut quite small, or the guineas will not eat it. Like other birds, they must have a constant supply of sharp grit and fresh water.

Guinea fowls begin to lay during the first warm days in April. As it is their instinct to be very secretive about laying, some patience and diplomacy are necessary to locate their nests. The place usually selected is a hollow spot on the ground near the root of a tree, or a fence-post well screened by brush. Don't attempt to approach it while they are in sight. Go away, and return later armed with a long-handled spoon. The eggs are almost the color of the earth, and are often covered with fallen leaves. Be very careful not to touch the nest with your hand. Guineas seem able to scent the human hand about the nest. Remove with a spoon all the eggs except three. The guinea will not miss them if three are left in the nest.

Twenty-five Days' Incubation

WHEN you have stolen fifteen eggs, get a box a foot square, turn it on one side, and across the bottom of the open front nail a slat, behind which place a nest of soft hay. Stand this nest (box inside) in another box, two and a half feet long, with sides a foot or more deep. Make a cover of wire netting for the large box, to open like a lid. Scatter sand on the floor, nail a small drinking-pan in one corner, and you have a safe, rat-proof coop for Biddy and the eggs. Another reason for the outer box is that baby guineas are apt to get lost, become chilled, and die, if not protected.

It takes from twenty-five to twenty-six days to incubate guinea eggs. The brood coop to be used the first two weeks should be on the same principle as the nest boxes, and even when they are on the grass run the greatest caution should be exercised to avoid anything like cracks or crevices in or around the sides.

Two Schools a Day for Them

When school is out at four o'clock in New York City, Tom, Dick, and Mary go off to play; but the Chinese boys who have sat beside them go home for their other books, and start right off for school again. This time it is a Chinese school, and they are kept busy until eight o'clock, learning to read and write their fathers' native language and reciting the principles of the great Confucius.

Each Chinese lad brings to his second school copy-books, ink-pads, and broad ink-brushes a foot long. Until five-thirty they copy the difficult Chinese characters and signs. Then they have an hour's recess fro supper, after which they return to school and read to teh teacher what they have written. To write Chinese a boy must memorize two thousand signs. He must recognize at least four thousand in order to read books understandingly. To acquire a good working knowledge of the language, from five to ten years of study are required.

Said Master Chen-Yen (the third boy from the right in the font row):

"Like English the best, easy to learn and speak, all nice letters and syllables, can spell and write out each word from sound as spoken; but in our Chinese can to write sounds to show meaning, have to draw signs, very hard and slow to master.

"Getting along fine in English, can read, speak, write, and figure; expect to go back to Shanghai by and by, to do business in English for papa's export store."

Seventy Back Yards Equal One Park

IN Baltimore there were seventy back yards running around the four sides of a vacant lot. Each back yard had a high fence around it, and the vacant lot was used by all the seventy families in common as a playground for the youngsters and a dumping-spot for tin cans. No one had ever thought that it could be put to better use. It was just a vacant lot, that was all, fit for cans, bird cages, and cantaloup rinds.

Then, one day, the rumor went around that a real estate company had made an offer for the vacant lot, planning to erect a factory or a garage or a livery stable—rumor was not quite sure just what. Immediately consternation reigned in the seventy abutting houses. Something must be done. Then arose one wise man who said: "Let us organize a stock company, issue, shares that will be sold only to ourselves, and with the money that we secure in this way buy the vacant lot and turn it into a park."

This arrangement proved popular, the money was raised, and the seventy householders began the work of transformation. No outside labor was employed. When water-pipes were needed for a fountain, one of the householders, a plumber, donated the pipes and laid them; when flowers were wanted, a florist householder came forward.

And the big job of leveling, grading, tearing down back fences so that each house abutted directly on the park and not

on a separate back yard, was done by all.

On gala occasions, such as Fourth of July, the park is decorated and exercises held, in which all of the seventy families join. On other days it is the meeting-ground for mothers, the playground for the older children, and the common nursery for the babies. Each householder pays two dollars a year for the upkeep of the property, and no one may sell his stock except with the permission of all officers; so there is no fear of speculation or unwelcome interference from outside.

Putting the Thing Through

OF course, the Baltimore miracle didn't happen quite as easily as it sounds. Some of the seventy folks, the livest of the lot, had to put in hard evenings of canvassing and persuading. There were plenty of people careful to point out that they never had heard of such a thing being done anywhere, and plenty of others with most excellent reasons why a scheme like that would never work.

But the dread intentions of the real estate company formed an argument that even the most pessimistic couldn't get round. Moreover, there was one element of the community that had known all along what it wanted—a good place to play in!

The park has done more than merely to add to the property value of the seventy houses. It has given each of the several times seventy children an appreciation of what public spirit means. Any buy who would throw a tin can in "our park" would be dealt with severely by the other boys; it must be the finest, cleanest place in town. And it has turned seventy mothers and fathers who were strangers to one another into neighbors of the very best kind.