"No Room in the Inn"

DID you ever stop to think of the tragedy of the little hotel at Nazareth, in Palestine—the "inn"?

The parents of Jesus of Nazareth knocked at its doors, and could not come in. It might have sheltered the greatest event in the history of the world—the birth of Jesus: and it lost the chance.

Why? Why was Jesus of Nazareth born in a stable? Because the people at the inn were vicious or hostile? Not at all. But the inn was full—every room was occupied by people who had money to pay and who must be served—it was full of Business.

There was "no room in the inn."

We know men whose lives are like that inn.

"Arnold's heart is broken," said one man to another recently; "his son is a failure and a fool."

"What can you expect?" the other answered. "Arnold has not given his boy a minute's time for ten years."

Arnold thinks he is a good father: he often told his friends that he is working night and day in Business for his wife and boy.

As a matter of fact, his Business is working him. There is no room in his life for anything else. And his son is a fool.

"You had quite a taste for literature when you left college, didn't you?" we asked another man.

"Oh, yes," he answered sadly; "but I had to give all that up. A man can't be in Business and find room for anything else."

"I hear Simpson's wife has left him," we heard a third man say; and his companion replied:

"She got tired spending her evenings along probably. You know, Simpson always says Business comes first."

In a little village church-yard in England there is this inscription:

Here lies Peter Bacon, born a man and died a grocer.

Take care that it be not written over you, "Born a man and died a Business man." Make good; but do not sacrifice, in making good, the gifts of life that are best.

Take care this year to have time for something besides Business—for your family, for good books, for an occasional hour when you merely walk under the stars and think.

For in Nazareth, two thousand years ago, there stood a little inn. And, behold, it was so full of Business that the greatest event in the world knocked at its doors and could not come in.

"I Suffer from Heartburn"

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

I am a constant sufferer from heartburn. Can you help me? E. L. S., Maryland.

HEARTBURN, accompanied by acid eructations and flatulence, may originate in a variety of causes. It is a symptom of a general condition, and may be due to an excess of the normal stomach acid (hydrochloric), fermentation of fats and starches, nervous dyspepsia, a dilated stomach or one lacking in tone, or a number of other causes.

The only man capable of telling exactly what these are is a physician competent to give a "test meal" and take it away again for examination. If the stomach contents contain more than two tenths of one per cent. of hydrochloric acid, the heartburn is due to an excess of this acid. In this case dilute hydrochloric acid—on the principle of taking a little of the hair of the dog that bit you to cure the nervous shock resulting from its bark—given before meals in small doses, will usually correct the condition.

In the form of heartburn caused by a too free secretion of hydrochloric acid, the gnawing, burning sensations—for all the world as if one had swallowed a red-hot potato—together with the water-brash and gaseous eructations, do no usually make their appearance until from one to three hours after eating. With the usual form of acid fermentation, the trouble begins as soon as the fermentation can get to work—which is about the time the owner of the trouble has finished eating. Another point that is worth remembering is that, with excess of gastric acid, the symptoms are usually relieved by eating—in other words, by diluting the stomach contents with more food. In fact, one of the best methods of treating the trouble is to feed it out of existence—giving it food, a little at a time, early and often. Sometimes an exclusive milk diet and a rest are sufficient to overcome the acidity. It goes without saying that, in any case of acid-dyspepsia, milk, eggs, meat, and green vegetables are preferable to starchy and sugary articles. And also that spices, condiments, and highly seasoned foods of any kind should be shunned.

If the acidity arises from fermentation, abstinence from all fried foods, together with a rigorous limitation of pastries, sugars, starches, and tea, should be practised. Strange to say, a little crisp bacon is usually very readily "taken care of"—in fact, it is surprising how delicate a stomach has to be before it can no longer tolerate good breakfast bacon.

Beer and alcoholic drinks have the same soothing effect upon an acid stomach that a red rag has on a black bull; and for this reason, if for no other, should be tabooed.

Liberal indulgence in water,—cool but not iced,—on the contrary, is almost indispensable.

Bicarbonate of soda, because it develops carbonic acid gas on contact with acid, should be avoided. Milk of magnesia, or some other harmless alkali, should be used instead, in quantities as advised by the family physician.

Olive oil, if it be pure and bland, is particularly valuable in almost every variety of "sour stomach." it should be taken in dessert-spoonful doses after meals—as often as the symptoms of discomfort seem to demand it.

If the acidity results from nervousness, a course of sedatives, an allopathic dose of "rest cure," a little "mental science," or any régime calculated to relieve this trouble, should be indulged in.

Heartburn is not a difficult condition to cure—once you make sure of the cause.

Boy, Page Mr. Diogenes

By WALT MASON

Here is the gentleman for whom the late Mr. Diogenes was looking with his lantern. He is Bert Walker, who runs a paper in Osborne, Kansas. Not long since the Governor appointed him to the State Board of Irrigation; whereupon Bert began publishing pieces in his paper saying that Board is a fake and out to be abolished—his own job as well.

BERT WALKER'S won a wide renown; his pen is certainly a charmer; he edits, in a Kansas town, a paper called the Osborne Farmer. For years he's dished up gems of thought which touched upon all matters human; with kindly wit and wisdom fraught, they made a hit with man and woman.

Anon he tackled politics, knocked roorbacks higher than a steeple, showed up the in-horn statesman's tricks, and stood up for the sacred Peepul. And when not busy he would rise, and, all the cares of life eschewing, pitch horseshoes with the village guys—the which the picture shows him doing.

The voters long had marked his curves, and they explained, with admiration, "Give him the job that he deserves upon the Board of Irrigation!" This is a solemn, stately board that pays incumbents fancy wages, and it's been velvet to a horde of patriots and seers and sages. And Bert was chosen with a whoop to be its scribe and secretary. What wonder if he filled his coop with loud hurrahs and crowings merry? Ah, this was manna in the night upon the desert drear and dismal, for country editors must fight to stave off poverty abysmal.

HE took hos job and worked a while, and seemed to have a secret sorrow; he lost his double-leaded smile—no more of sunshine could he borrow. His old companions passed the hint that he'd forgotten where his goat is; then he began some screeds to print that made the State sit up and notice. The chronic politicians roared, and made some observations bitter; for Bert insisted that his Board is naught but poppycock and glitter.

Say, does it make your bosom throb to contemplate this Kansas fellow who tries to write away his job because he thinks the job is yellow? Remember how he needs the dough—the wolf has at his doorway hovered—and you will say, your breast aglow: "The honest man's at last discovered!"

Mr. and Mrs. Hoover

By MOLLIE BEST

"WHO is the head of the American Relief Committee?" was the question asked by thousands of distressed Americans cast up in London by the swirl of the Great War. "The Hoovers," was the invariable reply. "Who are the Hoovers?" In this day of universal advertising, it seems strange that the question is still so often asked; for the Hoovers are the people who have managed the greatest relief work ever undertaken—the feeding of seven million starving Belgians.

In the days preceding and following the declaration of war on Germany, it was impossible to obtain money in England. Even the best banking paper in the world can not be eaten; and it was quite impossible in some places to exchange it for the necessities of life. Simple-minded people were panic-stricken; their most important signs and symbols suddenly ceased to be backed up by substance.

Mr. Hoover Puts an Advertisement in the Paper

IT was at this time that Herbert C. Hoover, an American engineer with a house in Hornton Street, London, put an advertisement in the London papers. The advertisement stated that, as long as his own funds held out, any embarrassed American might apply to him and receive enough gold to provide for immediate necessities. Several other wealthy Americans who wanted to be useful in the same way wrote to Mr. Hoover, suggesting that they pool their money and form a committee for relief.

Meantime, in the temporary absence of its president, Mrs. Hoover became acting President of the American Women's Club, which was besieged by terrified women confronted for the first time in their lives with the primitive problems of food and shelter. The work of both committees was done in the Hoovers' house, and it was soon evident that they were overlapping. Mr. Hoover's committee and Mrs. Hoover's committee therefore decided to combine and thoroughly organize the work of relieving their compatriots. By the time Congress had appropriated a big fund to assist the stranded Americans, the Hoovers had a perfect organization running smoothly, and as a matter of course the government money was turned over to the American Committee.

The Hoovers On the Job

IT was after the last American had been put aboard a ship for home that the Belgian Relief Committee was formed. Now, Mr. Hoover is a financier; but he has also been, in his rather crowded life, a mining engineer in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, as well as in America, and he has had unusual experience in transporting food for great mining camps. Moreover, the management of the American Relief had been a marvel of quiet efficiency, absolutely unhampered by red tape. Again, it was most natural that the Hoovers should be put in charge of the Belgian Relief. An American woman, an authority on the cooking and distribution of food in large quantities, who recently returned from Belgium, added her testimony to that of hundreds of others. "I went," said she, "to offer my services to the Committee; but when I saw the work that was being done. I should as soon have thought of offering to assist the United States Navy."

Outside of California, where they live from time to time, very little has leaked out about these people, who have made so much romance out of the ordinary business of their peaceful lives that by comparison the life of the average military commander seems as dull as the life of a traffic policeman. Mrs. Hoover is the daughter of a Monterey banker. She went to Leland Stanford to study, and took a course in mining engineering. Herbert C. Hoover, a Westerner of Quaker parentage, took the same course in engineering. Having completed their co-education, these two decided to see the matter further, and were married. Their subsequent team-work has taken them into every corner of the uncivilized globe. They have also translated together an old engineering work that for centuries had lain entombed in impossible Latin. No engineer had ever been sufficiently erudite to unearth it, and no person of erudition had ever been enough of an engineer to understand it. For this work they received a medal from the Royal Society.

Facing Death at Tientsin

AFTER their marriage the young couple turned their undivided attention to life as a great adventure, and fate met them more than half way. Mr. Hoover having been appointed chief engineer of the Chinese Imperial Bureau of Mines, one of their first undertakings was an inspection of the mines of China. The Chinese government, to facilitate their work, conferred upon them the rank of mandarin. This was all very well until they discovered that a palanquin followed the rank, borne on the shoulders of coolies. Mr. Hoover, true to his Quaker origin, objected to riding in a palanquin; so they set out mounted upon two stout horses, and followed across China by the empty palanquin. Mrs. Hoover noticed that whenever they came up out of a mine, they were greeted with wild wails and a fierce onslaught on the tom-toms. Inquiry revealed the fact that Mrs. Hoover was the first woman who had ever descended into a Chinese mine. In China a band of evil spirits follow in the wakeof every woman; and the priests with the tom-toms for the discouragement of evil spirits were merely a Chinese "safety first" device.

To this very day those priests are probably silencing scoffers with proof of the soundness of their doctrine; for the terrible Boxer riots broke out at that time. When all the white people were fleeing to the treaty ports, the Hoovers decided to stay and throw in their lot with the handful of foreigners who held Tientsin against twenty thousand armed and enraged natives. Each member of the little band was prepared to kill himself if the besiegers succeeded in breaking through the line of defense. Fortunately, the military equipment of the Chinese was not of the best, though it was quite sufficient to keep life exciting. For in-stance, it became necessary to remove the dining-room into the far interior of the building after a cannon-ball blew in hastily one morning, and, gathering up the entire breakfast, rushed out again.

People who have at any time faced the last great and inevitable enemy without flinching have for all time to come a sober sense of triumph over life.

Their Next Adventure

THE next adventure of the Hoovers was an invitation from a thoroughly de-moralized Russian principality to come and set it straight. The estate had been so mismanaged that the peasantry used ground straw with the flour to give bulk to their bread. Mr. Hoover took a lease of the principality, cut the stubble out of the bread of the poor, and began to reorganize the vast property. He found the slave-driving methods of the Russian foremen so intolerable that he tried importing Americans for the job; but their ignorance of the Russian language was a great handicap. Then Mr. Hoover decided to educate the Russian workmen

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Next, his keen roving eye discovered that their primitive domestic life left the women with time on their hands that might well be employed in bettering their condition. He brought from the Continent jewelry-makers to give the women instruction in that art. The women worked in their own homes, and before long the craft was on a basis that gave them considerable economic independence. The deadly dulness of peace is probably one of the secondary underlying causes of war. The Hoovers have made the activities of peace quite as thrilling as those of war, and much more useful. Changing the economic status of a whole community, taking the stubble out of its bread, is far more interesting than taking a town by shooting down the people with machinery.

Rescuing Stranded Tourists

THOUSANDS of people will regard it as a lucky chance that the Hoovers were in London when war was declared. At first the relief work was done in their own house; but, as Americans began to pour in from every part of Europe, it became necessary to establish larger headquarters at the Savoy Hotel. This place offered special courses in the study of human nature. Here came the irate and spy-haunted Englishman to protest against the entry of hordes of Continental American citizens, come into England doubtless with intent to betray his great Empire into the hands of the Germans. Here came hysterical and cowardly American tourists, outraged because any nation dared to go to war without first securing American baggage—Rachel weeping, not for her children, but for her French petticoats. There were women who were separated from their families and whose minds were bending under the strain of uncertainty; and there were also women who were pained to discover that the United States government was too penurious to lend them money enough to lay in a good supply of foreign clothes before prices soared. One young woman from the Middle West came in with a letter from her father, who evidently had a mathematical turn of mind. He had carefully divided the sum appropriated for relief by Congress, by the number of Americans supposed to be traveling in warring countries. He wrote to his daughter precisely what her share would amount to in dollars and cents, and instructed her not to leave the American Relief until she had secured her rights.

In the midst of all this confusion sat the Hoovers at the switchboard, serene and sympathetic, and working like galley slaves. What they really accomplished was a clearing-house for human necessities. Fat, well fed, middle-aged women who had nothing but their trunks to grieve about, were put in charge of dirty, half clothed, half starved peasant children whose mothers had fled with them before the invading armies; some of these people had been standing up in cars most of the time for two or three weeks. By the extraordinary tact and kindness of the Committee, people's woes were made to neutralize each other. A sick woman who had been separated from her mother and little baby took her life. "Don't call it suicide, boys," Mr. Hoover urged upon the reporters. "That sort of thing is likely to be contagious, and we don't want a stampede."

Outside Mr. Hoover's office some enterprising Briton had posted a notice: "British or American subjects who have lost their motors on the Continent apply to..." A firm hand had crossed out the word "subjects" and substituted "citizens."

In Mrs. Hoover's quarters on the floor below were Americans of every conceivable color and nationality. The government funds could legally he used only for American citizens. But many destitute mothers with little children had fled from war zones in search of their unnaturalized husbands working in America. These poor creatures, who could hardly speak English, were infinitely better treated by the American Relief than the English wives of Germans were treated by the English relief organizations. Probably, if one could get census of nationalities, the good and the bad would measure up about the same. One thing, however, may be claimed for our own country people: they have perhaps more generosity in overlooking national barriers than any other people. The American Relief Committee displayed a positive genius for cutting out the red tape. To them there were no cases: there were only fellow creatures in misery and fear. When government money could not be used to relieve a distressed human being, the Committee went out and got the money from private individuals.

This Is What "American Relief" Means

A VOLUNTEER American worker burst into Mrs. Hoover's office one day. She was working for the Society of Friends of Foreigners in Distress, which had been turned over to the tender mercies of the London Charity Organization. No one can realize the utter degradation of poverty who has not seen the London C.O.S. at work. No wonder the English dread the word "pauper." It puts one in a caste to which every semblance, of consideration or personal liberty is denied. The American volunteer was overflowing with wrath over the case of an old German, who by order of the government had been thrown out of the job he had held for nearly thirty years. His English wife and his three children were starving. Their rent alone came to $1.75 a week; and the London C.O.S. had allowed them exactly $1.50 a week for rent, fuel, and food for five people. Between the long line of her own applicants, Mrs. Hoover caught up the indignant narrative of her countrywoman. As the latter was leaving, she called out: "You might leave me the name of that woman with the three little children. Of course I'm not sure that anything can be done, but it's always worth trying when little children are concerned." When the volunteer returned a few weeks later from the Continent, she looked up the family. The father broke into tears, declaring that his family would have died of starvation but for her. He pulled out a letter from Mr. Hoover's banking firm, stating that an allowance of three dollars a week would be made the family till further notice. Even relief work can not spoil the Hoovers, nor London society hyphenate their simple Americanism.

The Hoovers are not the kind of Americans who buy a paper pattern of a belted earl and cut their lives out accordingly. They have had more fun being the Hoovers than they could possibly have had trying to be anything else. Americans can not beat Europeans at their own game, and only succeed in making fools of themselves when they try. Their one distinction is, and always has been, being themselves, without any self-consciousness or bumptiousness. That was what made Benjamin Franklin the lion of the most aristocratic court of Europe; and it is what distinguishes the Hoovers. At an afternoon tea in London, Lady Blank was inquiring about Mrs. Hoover's children.

"I am taking them back to California to put them in school."

"But," said Lady Blank, "I thought everybody admitted, even Americans, that our schools were vastly superior to yours."

"Yes, I think the English schools are superior"—then the retort courteous—"for little English boys."

"I thought you intended leaving month ago," chimed in another friend.

"My husband positively refused to allow it," said the woman from the voting State. "He says what on earth does a man get married for, unless to have someone to talk things over with when he gets home."

The Hoovers, in fact, seem to have satisfactorily worked out the man-and-woman problem. If a woman's place is in the home, Mr. Hoover seems to think that a man's place is where his woman is. And if a man's place is browsing over the surface of the earth and burrowing into the bowels of it, Mrs. Hoover seems to believe that a woman's place is where her man is. They have been together in China, in Siam, in South Africa, in Australia, in Russia. Always, when Mr. Hoover had made a rough job smooth, he has looked round for a harder one. Therefore, when the hardest job was looking round for a man, it was natural that it should come upon Herbert C. Hoover.

To manage the Belgian situation, and not run amuck of the jealous English on the one hand or the jealous German on the other, is a full-size man's job, and Mr. Hoover—or rather Mr. and Mrs. Hoover—have it.

Something for Father

By GRACE SARTWELL MASON

Illustrations by Edward L. Chase

IT was three days before Christmas. Mrs. Riggs dropped her large, firm curves into a chair in the department-store tea-room, deposited a knobby package on the floor at her feet and two small ones beside her plate, unfastened her furs, straightened her hat, and regarded her daughters with wild and exhausted eyes.

"I've got something for everybody but your father!" she groaned. "And what I'm going to give him I don't know! If I only knew what your father wants—but I don't. I never do. I don't think men mind about Christmas as we do, anyway. Almost anything seems to suit your father. I never can get him to say what he wants. He can be so silent sometimes. There's a wonderful silver coffee-tray at Grump's—we've needed a coffee-tray, a really nice one, for years. Of course, it doesn't seem exactly the present for your father; but, then, he never seems to sense what's given to him, anyway. And it looks like real old Georgian silver."

"For goodness' sake, mother, please give your order!" There was an edge of extreme weariness to her eldest daughter's voice. "I've ordered chicken pate, and Maizie has taken crab salad and alligator pear. Toots asked for maple fritters and French pastry and ice-cream. You don't want her to lunch on sweets alone, do you?"

The glazed look left Mrs. Riggs's eye.

"Dear me, I'm so tired!" she said plaintively. "I don't know whether I can eat anything. I think a little clam bouillon might rest me. And—let me see. English mutton chop? No, that disagreed with me last time. Chicken pie à la jardiniere—it is generally quite good here, isn't it, Julia? And baked potato without paprika. And a fruit salad, please... Maizie! did you remember to have those salad forks for Aunt Marie marked in Old English? You know, she detests any other marking.... What? No, that is all, thanks. No dessert, and black coffee.... There! Now, girls, tell me, what did you get for father?"

THE three charming daughters of Mrs. Riggs—and incidentally of Mr. Riggs—did not immediately answer. Julia, the eldest, gazed beyond her mother's smart toque into space and compressed her lips. Maizie, the middle one, regarded her pink finger-tips and pouted. Toots, the youngest, looked from one to the other of her sisters and grinned disdainfully.

"They didn't get a thing!" she burst forth. "They fussed around over those old salad forks till 'most eleven—after Maizie had had her nails done and Julia had mooned over those evening coats up-stairs! And then there wasn't hardly any time left for daddy's present; and they got to scrapping—"

"Toots!" The word came in the same shocked breath from Julia and Mrs. Riggs.

"Well, they did. And they almost got to knocking father, too. They said it was a bore getting father a present! They said it didn't really matter to father what he got, and—"

"Toots, be quiet!" Julia was very stern, although she reddened a little.

"You know, mother, it's the same thing every year," said Julia. "We never know what to get for father. You don't know what to get for him yourself. Then how can you expect us to know?"

Mrs. Riggs gazed with reproachful distraction from one young face to another.

"I thought if you three girls put your money together you'd be able to get something nice. I—I felt sure I could trust you to think of something he'd like!"

"But that's more than you can do yourself!" retorted Julia crisply.

"Well, at least, Julia," returned Mrs. Riggs with dignity, "I make an effort! Your father is very, very good to you girls; but, of course, if his own daughters are not willing to try—"

"Oh, momsie, draw it mild!" murmured Maizie.

Their waitress bore down on them with food. Silence fell upon Mrs. Riggs and her three charming daughters. As their exhausted energies became somewhat replenished with the expensive and tepid food they had ordered, they drew forth dainty memorandum-books, crossed off various items, scribbled others, and behaved in general like the two hundred other women who were ruining their digestions in that place at that time.

"IF we could only learn to be simple," sighed Mrs. Riggs, helping herself to chicken pie à la jardiniere, "I could make your father a muffler or give him a pair of bedroom slippers."

"He's got three pairs of slippers now, mama," broke in Toots. "There's the pair Maizie gave him last year, and the red ones Julia gave him that he never could wear, and—"

"A house jacket—" began Julia hopefully.

Toots snorted. "If you ever looked twice at daddy, Jule, you'd observe he never wears anything but his old gray coat in the house. He hates house jackets, for he told me so!"

Julia subsided; but Maizie brightened.

"Listen, Julia; I saw a smoking-set over at Grump's. It was eleven-fifty, there was a slightly cheaper one—"

The young-girl lips of Toots curie scornfully.

"Aw, go on," she cried. "You make me tired. You know he don't use the two he's got!"

Maizie frowned at her younger sister

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"Mother, can't you make Toots use decent English?" she cried.

Mrs. Riggs began flurriedly to gather up her furs. "Girls! Girls! Do you realize that Christmas Eve is day after to-morrow? We simply must decide this afternoon what you're going to give father, for to-morrow there's the Altar Guild and the tree and the house to decorate. Now, I want you to stop arguing and agree on something nice!"

Maizie sprang up, glancing as she did so at her wrist-watch. It was a very beautiful little wrist-watch, given to her by father last Christmas.

"I can't stop a minute longer, marmee! I promised Aileen I'd go to a matinee with her this afternoon. It's half-past one now!"

Dismay was in the faces Mrs. Riggs and Julia turned toward her.

"Maizie, I think that's mean of you!" cried Julia. "You know I have to go to the Andersons' bridge this afternoon."

"And you know this is my afternoon for massage!" Mrs. Riggs exclaimed. "I have to pay whether I'm there or not, and Madame's horrid if I'm late, and I've forgotten Cousin Mattie's present. You know, I always try to get her something she likes, because she is so nice to us with her car and all. I shall look around in Grump's. I did think that you and Toots would spend this afternoon on your father's present!"

Maizie's pretty face hardened.

"But, mother, even if I gave up the Matinee, what good would that do? I don't know what to get for father. What are you going to get for him yourself?"

Mrs. Riggs's indignant eyes wavered, fell; she began hastily to draw on her gloves. Then, as if an inspiration came to her, she turned entreatingly to her Youngest daughter.

"Come, now, Toots, what do you think would be nice for father?"

They all turned to Toots. For a moment she was silent; but suddenly she pushed back her chair and shot up to her feet; and then they all saw an expression on Toots's face they had never seen there before. Mrs. Riggs reflected with a vague discomfort that her little girl was growing beyond her. Toots's two sisters felt as if Toots were looking clean through them with her fierce young eyes.

"There's nothing, nothing in this old store good enough for daddy!" she said in a low, passionate voice. "Nor in this whole town! But you don't think so. You think anything is good enough for him! You fuss around days and days over things for Aunt Marie and Cousin Mattie, who've got everything in the world, and you snatch up any old thing for daddy. I—you—make me tired!"

She made a queer grimace, and thrust her hand out toward Julia with a vehement gesture.

"I'll thank you for my money back, Julia Riggs! I'll get my own present for daddy, and I won't shirk for any old matinee or bridge party, either!"

Silently Julia opened her beautiful hand-bag—the one father had given her last Christmas—and took out two silver dollars, which she put into the quivering brown palm. Silently and sullenly Maizie adjusted her furs. In bewildered silence Mrs. Riggs gathered up her parcels.

"Well, well, girls, we must be getting along," she said.

Down in the elevator they went, and through the long aisles of the department-store. And just as they emerged from Toots principal entrance to the pavement, Toots cried, "Why, there's daddy now!"

IT was indeed daddy. He stood in front of one of the great windows, gazing intently at something within. There were little puckers of interest and amusement about his eyes; but a close observer would have detected something wistful in the depths of those eyes—something brought out by the object he was contemplating. His family moved closer until they, too, could look into the window. What they saw was nothing but a toy train of cars whizzing in and out of tunnels and up and down mountain-sides. He was so absorbed in the thing that, when Toots slipped her hand under his arm, he started, reddening with embarrassment.

"Thought I was a pickpocket, didn't you, dad?" Toots's voice was gay now. "Mama and the girls are out there. I had maple fritters and ice-cream for my lunch. Come on out of this crowd."

The rest of his family surrounded father and asked if he had had luncheon, and why had he come out without his neck scarf, and wasn't the crowd dreadful? And father smiled upon them proudly. They were a group to make any man proud. Well groomed, well fed, and well tailored, they were quite a contrast to father. Father looked tired, a bit shabby, a bit shrunken. His face was lined.

"Well, well, where have all you girls been?" he wanted to know, looking from one to another of them with a mild affection. "And where are you going now?"

"We've been shopping a little," said mother.

There was a pause—almost a guilty pause, one would have said. Then Maizie cried: "I must be off! Want to go to the matinee, dad?" She gave his arm a gay, perfunctory pat; but it was noticeable that she avoided his eyes as she moved away.

"Julia is going to a bridge, and I have my massage," said Mrs. Riggs. "Such a tiresome morning! I wish you would see about getting yourself a new overcoat, my dear. Really, that one—"

"Never mind!" interposed father hastily. "What does a man want with a new overcoat when he has such a good-looking family? Where are you off to, Toots?"

He turned toward his youngest daughter, and as he did so there came into his tired face a wistful adoration. Father was supposed to be a very unobservant man. There was a tradition in the family that father never knew what one had on, or cared; that father was absorbed in business to the entire exclusion of those emotions the other members of the family claimed as a matter of course, such as a love of the beautiful, an interest in society, a zest for the joy of life. Of course, father's business may have had something to do with this family view of father. Coal is a dusty and unromantic medium; and in these days of sharp competition a man must fairly breathe and eat his business if he is to supply the needs of a wife and three ambitious daughters that must be kept in that perfection of bloom only to be procured by money.

But now, as he looked at his youngest daughter, father was seeing a great deal more than any of them suspected. He saw her gray eyes looking at him from under the wide black beaver hat, and he knew there was an expression in them he had never seen there before—an expression that seemed to appraise him clearly and thoughtfully. Her eyes had lost their dreamy, young-girl impersonality; something keen and womanly had come into them. Suddenly she astonished him profoundly. She slipped her hand under his arm with an exquisite gesture of tenderness and protection, faced her mother and Julia defiantly, and said: "I'm going with daddy!"

He tried to say something jocular; he tried to keep back the embarrassed smile of pure delight on his face, for Toots's eyes were upon him. She held his arm firmly and turned him about.

"Good-by, mama and Julia!" she called gayly over her shoulder. "Lord Percival and I are going out for the afternoon. We may dine with the Duchess. Don't sit up for us!"

SHE swung him into the gay tide of the Avenue. And as they strolled arm in arm, gradually the embarrassment and the shyness fell away from father. He rose to meet his daughter's mood in a way that astonished himself. They began to play the royal game of "choosing." From window to window they passed, luxuriously choosing anything their fancy dictated. And all the time Toots's sharp little ears were listening for the note of genuine desire in her father's voice. But always he eluded her. If she urged him to choose something he really and truly would like, he always chose some object so extravagantly unsuitable for the father of a family that it ended by her dragging him on to the next window in a gale of laughter. There seemed to be nothing that father really wanted, from bathrobes to scarf-pins.

But her failures did not mar the pleasure of the unusual afternoon. Some unsuspected tie, sympathetic and gay, revealed itself for the first time between them. They wandered up one side of the Avenue and down the other, dipping into its fascinations with the utmost accord. And toward the end of the afternoon they found themselves entering a little shop far downtown—a queer little shop with a fat little man smiling at them from behind the counter.

IT was the most amazing shop Toots had ever seen. The place was alive with marvelous mechanical toys, most of them wound up and going. The little fat proprietor and father appeared to be old acquaintances.

"Anything new in rolling stock this year?" father wanted to know jocularly.

"Sure; they make 'em better every year," returned the little proprietor. "Just look here."

He came out from behind the counter and led them to a work-room at the rear. "The Grand Trunk and Transatlantic railroads!" he laughed, pointing downward.

The floor was a network of tiny metal rails. The little proprietor stooped. At the pressure of a button, here and there tiny trains of cars began to move; signals operated, switches flew open; trucks full of infinitesimal trunks were trundled along the station platforms; bells rang.

Father's face lighted up. He was about to go down on his knees, when he remembered his daughter's presence.

"Maybe you don't care much for this, Toots," he murmured apologetically. "We won't stay but a minute."

Toots's answer was to kneel beside the toy. "Oh, see the little switches!"

"They're real switches. See, they work so!" The proprietor of the shop beamed. "You can start the trains yourself, if you like. Look, I will show you!"

With a glance out of the corner of his eye at his daughter, father stealthily went down on his knees and began to open and close the little switches.

An hour passed, and a quarter of an hour after that. Father started guiltily.

"By Jove, Toots, see what time it is! We'll be late for dinner, and your mother'll scold us."

"I know it, " said Toots, rising reluctantly;

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Daniel Riggs nodded somberly.

"If I could have had this when I was a boy, I guess I'd have gone crazy with joy. I always was wild for a toy railroad. Every Christmas I used to pray for one; but I never got it. I was the only boy, and I had a lot of grown-up sisters. I guess they didn't understand boys much. One Christmas there was a toy train, rails and all, in Badger's window. It looked like a jim-dandy to me. The day before Christmas it was sold. Somehow I got it into my head that my oldest sister had bought it for me,—she had seen me hanging around that window for weeks,—and I couldn't sleep for excitement that night. But I was mistaken. My sister gave me a book called 'Thaddeus of Warsaw.'"

FATHER turned away with a short, grim laugh. They went out of the shop of miracles into the lighted Avenue. Toots slipped her hand under her father's arm.

"Daddy, it's been such a lovely afternoon!" she said. "Would you dare—daddy, would you dare telephone mother that we're going to have dinner downtown? Just you and me! Daddy, I've got two dollars that I don't know how to spend. I'd like to take you out to dinner, to some jolly place—don't laugh, daddy! I—I want to do something for you. I want to do something nice!"

Father looked at his daughter as if he did not quite understand what she was saying. Not since the early days of his marriage had any feminine person belonging to him invited him out to dinner with her. When he took it in, something happened to father's face. Every tired line went out of it; a broad smile that was astonishingly boyish overspread it.

"By jinks, Toots, we'll do it! I don't know what mother will say, but never mind. I guess we can fix it. We'll have big eats in the jolliest place we can find, and then we'll go to the theater, and then we'll take a taxi home, like regular roysterers. I wish this coat wasn't so shabby."

Toots gave his arm a squeeze. "Oh, daddy!" she sighed blissfully. "If folks really knew you, they'd be surprised!"

IT was Christmas Eve.

The Riggs family, according to custom, had had a family dinner and a Christmas tree; and, it now being midnight, had blown out the last candle and retired.

All except father, who was supposed to be attending to the doors and lights. He sat alone in front of the dying fire in the library. He had taken off his dinner jacket, donned in deference to his daughters' new frocks, and shrugged himself into his old gray coat. He had lighted a pipe, but it went out sometime since, and somehow it had not occurred to him to light it again. For father was thinking, or—no, not thinking so much as feeling. It was a habit he did not often indulge in.

First of all and above everything else, he felt an enormous loneliness. It seemed to him that he was just as much alone in that pretty, firelit house as if he were downtown in a strange hotel bedroom. And, besides the loneliness, there was a sense of profound perplexity and depression. Questions that had never bothered him before now stirred and came to the surface of his mind. Was this all that life had for a man at the end of thirty years of hard work and rigorous self-denial? A house, and wife and children, and something put by for their future—these things sounded all right, but, somehow, to-night they did not seem enough. They did not seem a just equivalent for what he had lost in gaining them: He felt a dim sort of rebellion; an old ache throbbed within him; old longings absurdly left over from boyhood awoke and hurt him. He felt bitter; and his bitterness, unreasonably enough, found concrete form in casting back to that Christmas morning forty years before, when, with all the passion of his boy's soul, he had prayed for a train of cars, and had received a book called "Thaddeus of Warsaw."

"Seems to me nothing's ever made up to me for that," he thought. "I had to quit being a boy too soon, anyway. I didn't want to get old and settle down into kind of a draft-horse before I was thirty; but seems like there wasn't any other way."

His thoughts slowly traveled back along the years to his young manhood. Before he was twenty-five he had assumed the responsibilities of a husband and father; circumstances and his own will had quenched the eternal Boy in him.

"Mother and the girls have never wanted for anything," he thought, groping for comfort. "They've never wanted for education or clothes or a good home. It's been years since mother has had to do a stroke of housework. I'm carrying the biggest life insurance the business will stand. And I hadn't anything to start with, either."

HIS head told him that all these things should suffice to make him happy and comfortable: but his heart told him it ached. It was queer about that ache. It always came at Christmas-time. If one of his girls had been a boy, maybe the ache wouldn't have persisted. Not that he did not love his girls, not that mother hadn't always been the only woman in the world for him. But girls never quite understand. They grow up so quickly; they so soon begin to patronize father; and presently, overnight, so it seems, they change into lovely young women, very nice-mannered to father, of course, but remote—oh, so inaccessibly remote!

"Girls," he thought, "they seem to forget how to play. They make a man feel that he's old and dull, only just fit to make money. And, by George! a man's got to make money to keep up with them. Sometimes it seems as if he couldn't go on—I'm so doggoned tired!"

He sat there thinking, feeling, until a coal dropped in the grate. Then he rose and wandered into the other room. Here one lamp still burned. It showed the partly dismantled tree and the five little piles of gifts taken from it—Julia's and Maizie's on the piano, Toots's on the window-seat, mother's on the card-table, and father's piled on a tabouret. He went over and absently inspected his gifts.

There was a silver coffee-tray from mother. She had explained to him that it was a very good pattern, Georgian or Victorian or something; but she hadn't told him what he was to do with it. Well, doubtless she had a use for it—she always knew what to do with his Christmas presents. And there were some beautiful ties with socks to match from Maizie, and a set of Victor Hugo from Julia. Father touched the books respectfully. He liked a good detective story himself; but it was nice of Julia to give him something that would look so well on the library shelves. Toots's gift was in his pocket—a linen handkerchief embroidered by her own hands with a fat D and a wabbly R. He touched it lovingly.

"They're all good girls," he thought. "And their mother, she's all right, too. Always been a good wife to me."

But deep in his heart he knew that mother would not understand about the train of cars and the left-over ache. Mother had grown up along about the time the first baby came, and she'd expected him to grow up too—had taken for granted, in fact, that in the life of a husband and father there is no necessity for tender foolishness, no need of make-believe, no time for irresponsible joys. And Maizie and Julia, they were more grown up than their mother.

He turned out the light, leaving the Christmas tree dark against the frosty window. Like the frost on the panes, the feeling of loneliness chilled his heart. He went back to the library, and was stooping to rake up the fire for the night when he heard a swift patter of footsteps down the stairs. He knew at once who it was, and he moved back into the shadowy corner next to the fireplace. The door was pushed open. Toots, with a candle in her hand, came creeping in. Going straight to the mantel-shelf, she began to unwrap a small package she carried.

Pendant from the mantel-shelf were a long black stocking and a short black sock. These belonged respectively to Toots and to her father. From the time Toots was a baby she had insisted on her father's hanging up his sock alongside of her stocking on Christmas Eve, and she had never outgrown the habit. Always, when the others were in bed, Toots's custom was to steal down and fill her father's sock herself; but this was the first time he had ever caught her in the act.

The candle-light fell now on her eager face. Smiling, she thrust into father's sock something that rattled and winked in the light; and then she sat down at father's desk and wrote busily.

He watched her come back to the fire, saw her reread the note, press her lips to the paper, fold it, and tuck it into the sock. Then, still smiling happily, she took up her candle and tiptoed out.

WHEN the house was quiet again, father came out of concealment. He knew he was not supposed to explore his sock until Toots did the same with hers in the morning; but he wanted to shake himself free from the thoughts that had been troubling him. Snapping on a light near the mantel, he took down his sock. Smiling now, he put in his hand. Then he drew it out with a queer expression on his face, put it in again, and this time brought out a little painted tin train of cars.

It was a cheap little toy; but to father it was a greater marvel than the one in the miracle shop, because tucked in the tender of the tin engine was a little scribbled note that read:

Father slowly refolded the note, put it back in the tender of the tin engine, replaced the train of cars in his sock, fastened the sock to the mantel-shelf. A slow, wide grin had spread over his face; a mist was falling over his faded blue eyes. Mechanically he stooped and raked the ashes over the fire.

BUT when he stood up there was something happy and peaceful in his face. He could not have explained it, he was scarcely aware of it himself; but he had got what he wanted. Not the tin train of cars, but what it meant—understanding, a flash from a kindred soul, youth calling to the buried youth in him. Someone had seen him, not as a husband, or father or provider, but as a playmate.

"By George, and once I wished she was a boy!" he thought. "My little old girl!

He went through the house, carefully looking to the windows and fires. At the front door he paused and looked up and down the snowy, silent street.

"Going to be a snappy night," he thought. "I must get up early and look after the furnace myself. Toots'll be running all over the place in her nightgown. My little girl!"

He locked and barred the door with a deep sense of satisfaction. Climbing the stairs, he stepped cautiously so as not to waken his family. At the door of his youngest daughter's room he paused all instant, listening, with a smile on his face. He was not lonely now, nor even tired. This was enough for any man: to work for, to guard, to cherish some one that loved him—and understood.

Once On the Summer Range

By FRANCIS HILL

Illustration by Douglas Duer

WHISKEY and Doak gone? It couldn't be. The shadows, the fire waver, must be tricking me. I stooped, dropped to my knees, groped over the dark ground there at the side of the shack. My hands strayed into a litter of loose rope, still knotted, cut into odds and ends, scraps. That was all—old Crow's forty-five feet of three-eighths-inch picket-rope—so much hemp—a hash of ravelings.

Whiskey and the boy were most certainly gone. But when—how? I gnawed my lips. Had they been able to count on help from the outside—friends we didn't know of? Was it a crook rescue? Or had my noble pair just been neat enough to wriggle away out of my hitches themselves? And now, what next? Might we expect a rush—any minute? Or would the rats wait till they had the whole Swallowfork gang behind them?

Bah! After all, it was no such terrific catastrophe, this escape. Let the blackguards go! It was now we who had the guns. Well, to it, then. But one thing at a time. And that was to say, first, old Crow. I should need him strong—the old white buzzard. For I must be on hand at the home ranch by daylight of the morning. My business was to see Dorgan, and to see him before the herders had had a chance at him. And so, old Crow—yes, quick! If only Whiskey and Doak hadn't got to him ahead of me.

Once before that night I'd been down to the bottom of the gulch, for water; so I began to know my way about. Without waiting to breathe a word to either the girl or Ericsson, I slipped around the back of the house and was off down among the trees. Just in the very nick, I was. As I neared the gulch bottom, I heard Flynn hoarsely urging young Doak to hurry. The boy seemed to be untying Crow's hackamore rope from the tree, and having trouble with it—Whiskey evidently meanwhile clambering up into position on the old pony's back. You may gamble, though, I didn't hold off to make researches. Letting out a wild yell, I followed it up with a shot from the Colt's, burning the big .44 slug close above their heads. I had a hunch they'd never show the stomach for this kind of gauntlet. And they didn't. Deserting old Crow in a stampede, they ducked away into the cover of the dark trail-side trees. The wise white pony stood my charge tranquilly, ears cocked, snorting, once or twice for politeness' sake.

DIDN'T linger at all: an ambushed club or rock would do the trick for you in that inky black. Grabbing Crow's loosened hackamore rope, I hastily led him up the trail with me. When I could catch the faint high glow from our camp-fire, I started a gradual zigzag up the mountain wall toward it. There, crouched beside her bonny camp-fire, intently on the look-out for me—there was the girl!

"Oh, we've been so worried!" she breathed out. "Especially after the shot and the cries!"

I explained my fray, and sitting, all three of us, about the fire, we laid our plans. Both Ericsson and I should give up our lamb-smacking jobs at the ranch. We'd money and to spare, among the lot of us; and Ericsson wasn't up to working yet, anyway. He should just stick right here, be nursed by the girl, and do guard duty. He made no objection to that. Mine, for the moment, was to be the active role. I must try to square ourselves with Dorgan at the sheds, buy firearms, collect our traps, and then hike back as quickly as possible. Meantime, of course, we should hang religiously on to what guns we had.

The girl didn't want to see me ride down among the herders. She was thoroughly nervous, alarmed. No wonder, poor child—after the night's experience! But I felt we had to square ourselves with Bull Dorgan. Almost certainly, I knew, we might expect more trouble up here—wicked bad trouble, perhaps. This was out of Bull Dorgan's bailiwick: he couldn't prevent it. But Bull, with the shadow of Sheriff Tek Gaines behind him—he ranked a czar at the home ranch. He had a heavy hand, and the smackers and shearers down there were not the brand to work much out in the open. They'd want to strike, if I half sized them up, from under cover. On the whole, with Ericsson's rapid improvement, I felt pretty confident.

BEFORE I set out, I replenished the wood-pile and brought more water from the gulch bottom rill—snow water, it must have been, from the snap of it. We boiled coffee over the jolly camp-fire. But none of us tried for any sleep. About two o'clock I made my start, leaving Ericsson still sitting with his thick shoulders propped up against the front wall of the shack, the fire at his feet, Doak's Winchester resting snugly across his knees. The tension of pain had now quitted his face; his broad, hearty Swede grin was again fixed and normal.

I turned to the girl. About her slender hips drooped Whiskey's belt and holster, with the big blue .44 in it. We thought this advisable till I could get back. I prayed she mightn't have any occasion to use the brute of a cannon, but we gave her a lesson in shooting it off. She showed me a kind of path down the mountainside, so that patient and clever-footed old Crow had an easier scramble of it than when we'd blundered up. The final picture I carried away of her charmed my eyes the night long. You'd never guess how appealing she could be, in her taper gray corduroys, with the big belt and revolver sagging low on her right hip. Once since, at dusk of a blazing summer evening down on New York's Bowery, I saw a Chinese girl out in her embroidered narrow overalls—a slight, tragic little beauty of a child—who looked a bit like that.

That last shadowy flickering sketch of her, hanging, tender and wistful and aloof, in the outer edge of magic firelight,

Page 8

It was not much road at first. I took my usual attitude of trusting the whole expedition pretty generously to the pony. Of the smackers I saw or heard nothing, neither in the five miles of range between the mountains and the lamb camp, nor at the camp itself. Not till I was within three quarters of a mile of the ranch-house did I run into any sign of companionship on the way. You hear voices extraordinarily clearly and well on the dry range; I could pick up the pair of talkers before they got my hoof-beats. It did not take any miraculous powers in an old camp-mate to swear to Flynn and Doak.

You couldn't tell just where the voices came from, in that chill blanket of night air. Ahead they must be, of course. I pressed Crow with my left knee, and we swerved off to the right at a lope. The voices died out instantly. I didn't bother to swing very far off the trail.

The very first faintest tincture of light was now in the sky. I couldn't see Whiskey and the boy; yet they must have been able to distinguish the splotch I made atop the white pony. For, as I loped briskly past a clump of high sage-brush, a thing whizzed out at me. It struck me, too—a sharp, glancing blow on the upper leg.

Only one lonely cartridge I had, and a telltale-colored horse. I thought it better, all round, to get in to the ranch and have my talk with Dorgan; so I didn't draw rein. Nothing else happened. My trouser-leg was cut; I'd a slight sting of pain; a trickle of warm blood even flowed. But that had dried up in a minute or two—a mere graze, nothing to mention. I explored the gash in my saddle-skirt with reflective fingers. That interesting missile must have been Whiskey's big claspknife—very likely the same they'd chopped themselves out of my gulch hitches with. The herders had evidently been taking a leaf out of Ericsson's book.

I FOUND Bull Dorgan, shaggy and formidable-looking in the gray dawn pallor, filling the low ranch-house doorway. I wasted no time in prefaces, he none in interruptions.

"So there's nobody left up there at camp to take out them ewes and lambs this morning, hey?" That was, of course, his opening comment.

"Are you going to lend me a gun?" I countered. "Whiskey and Doak'll be here inside of ten minutes."

He went into the room, and returned with a Colt's and a handful of cartridges. "I ain't got any scabbard or belt for this," he yawned. "Cache it away inside your clothes somewheres. But you won't need no gun here. I'll tend to that."

"Then it's all right about our quitting the lamb band?" I said gratefully.

"Oh, I expect I can maybe chase a conple of men up," he admitted. "It'll be unhandy, but I can do it." He leaned against the door-post, considering a second. "See here. Let the Swede quit. What do you want to quit for?"

My reasons obviously hadn't impressed Bull.

"I just tell you what I'll do with you," he declared. "I'll give you a bunch of wethers to hold out in that summer camp up at the mouth of Castle Gulch."

The idea arrested me at once.

"That'll make you a first-class, bang-up law reason for sticking there," he went on. "The Swede can stay with the folks in the timber. Your shack'll be half a mile away. Go on herding for the ranch."

As a Swallowfork summer herder, of course, I should have an endlessly more influential rating with Dorgan and Gaines. I was far from wishing to offend these potentates. Besides, if I didn't take that camp at the mouth of the gulch, somebody else would. It was altogether too near for chance herder neighbors.

"Why do you want me?" I queried Bull.

"You're a good hand with sheep. You don't know nothing, but you're willing to learn, and you're careful."

"And when will the wethers be ready?"

"As soon as they're sheared. The first band, that'll be. Three days, maybe."

"I'll take it," I agreed.

Bull went inside for his hat. When he came out, I walked with him to the horse corral, and he furnished me with a fresh pony to ride to town on.

Rainbow lay twenty good miles away—twenty thousand, it seemed to me, that joyful spring morning. Did you ever try losing a whole nine hours' night of sleep out of a fine open-air life like this? And then punch sixty miles in the saddle next day? Every now and then I'd catch myself just as I was toppling out sidewise from between the high horn and cantle.

Waking at last in this dazed fashion, I stared to find myself on the edge of town. I put my horse up in a livery barn, had a hotel bath in a wash-bowl, ate and drank again, then dropped in at the best stocked of the two Rainbow general stores. They didn't ask any questions there (questions were all pretty much taboo in that Western town), but they must have given me a passing thought or so. The way I wallowed in ordnance and ammunition was like an agent for a Central American revolution. A Winchester, a double-barreled shotgun, two Colt's revolvers with belts and holsters, a belt and holster for my little .32, and about a hundred pounds of cartridges!

I got back to the Swallowfork at three o'clock. At the horse corral, where I went first to change back to old Crow, I bumped square into a party of six or eight men—shearers. They were moving, with their tools, from one pen to another. Neither Whiskey nor Doak was with them, but anybody could see they knew the night's story. As I drew near, they stopped and eyed me. Then, taking in my glittering accoutrements, they all began to grin. I climbed off the bay and returned the compliment.

"Say," asked a hulking black-eyed fellow called "Jericho." "Has any Indians busted out on the war-path, or anything that-a-way?"

Just then Bull Dorgan hove in view, and the shearers straggled off toward their pen. Bull also had a grin, of course, at my war footing. I gave him back his Colt's with hearty gratitude, and noted—a highly unusual detail in his own appearance—the businesslike six-shooter openly strapped on him.

"I'll ride up along to the lamb camp with you," he vouchsafed. "Loomis and Rutty and Harelip and Nigger Bill's there. I expect I'd maybe better spot what's going on."

He hadn't returned Flynn and Doak to camp, you see. Without being too much upset by the prospect of it, he was yet doing what he reasonably could to fend off trouble. Whiskey and the boy must be working in the sheds down here. I told Bull I'd deliver their revolver and Winchester at the lamb camp next day. He nodded.

AT the camp, while he pushed on out to look up his smackers, I got Ericsson's traps and mine together. Heaven knows there was little enough, beyond our beds. I made up everything into one big blanket-roll, which I clumsily tied across the scat of my saddle. Nigger Bill Jackson, the new camp cook and handy man, showed no disposition to be of service to me, but grimly stalked away out of the shack. I found some cold beans and saleratus bread, and contrived a lunch. After that, taking Crow by the bridle-reins, I once more started across the sage afoot for Castle Gulch.

It was late; the long blue day soon began to close in. The shadow of the trees and mountains made it too dark for me to see much of my new camp. I didn't try to go inside the shack, but merely dropped for a second on the outer bench by the door.

From somewhere out of the night, a hesitating, intensely questioning voice whispered: "Is it you?"

I held hunched against the shack wall, breathless, frozen.

"Mr. Hainlen? Oh—it's you?"

Shying away the cigarette, I leaped to my feet, probed the thick darkness for her with dilated eyes.

"Eloise!"

A murmured "Ah-h-h" responded—a little sigh of happiness and relief.

"Where are you?" I cried.

She stepped forward out of the aspens—no longer in corduroys, but dressed now in a woman's mysterious rustling light dress. She reached out her two hands toward me. I cast myself on my knees before her, swept the two hands together, and pressed them against my face. She did not draw back.

I DON'T know how long a time passed before I spoke:

"You came to meet me?"

She made a tiny motion of withdrawal. Abashed, I rose from my knees. But she was not abashed.

"Yes," she said; "I was looking for you. I'm so glad you've come back—safe."

Then she told me. She'd been watching out for me, ever since an hour before dark, from a high point of rocks on the west side of the gulch. She thought she'd seen a man, far off, leading a white horse. But he hadn't come on up the gulch. Why hadn't I? She couldn't understand. And she couldn't seem to wait. It had been such—such suspense. So she'd just shut her eyes to everything else, and run down here—to try to make sure—

Even with her thin dress, she was still wearing Whiskey's lumbering big Colt's on her hip. I asked her to give the whole beastly outfit to me. Then, opening my war pack, I got out the small Rainbow belt and holster, filled the belt with cartridges, thrust my shiny toy Smith & Wesson into the holster, and handed them to her. Murmuring, she banded my first primitive gift about herself.

A sudden uncontrollable desire to see her face seized me. On the pretext of examining the cabin, I led her inside, and struck match after match. Her skin had the kind of pallor that neither exposure nor firelight can make red. Black hair—lustrous and black as obsidian flung out the contrast. Not till I'd dropped my eyes for a second to her dress did her own eyes drop before me. Long blue eyes these were, yet so dark and so heavily lashed that they too just failed of blackness. Faintly flushing, she said yes, she'd several dresses here. It was only after she'd decided to stay, to be sure, that she'd changed over to the corduroys.

Leaving Whiskey's gun outfit inside the shack, we launched on up the gulch. We idled blissfully along, now deep in shadow, now out under the living stars. Our hands did not again touch; but every word, every thought, that passed between us was a caress.

Except for a swelling still at the back of his head, Ericsson was as able and bull-like as ever he had been. And the beautiful grouse stew he had simmering on the fire for us, two fine big rock-grouse cooked with rice, and a pot of coffee, and a slab of corn-bread!

That night Eloise's father was of our party,—a tall, stooped, strikingly individual, heartbreakingly frail man, with a soft mottled beard and a whimsical mouth. There could be no mistake as to why his students and his daughter adored him. He was as simple and lovable as a gracious child. But tragedy—bitter black tragedy—how it had singled him out, fastened itself on him! How it hung dumbly over him, like a foul waiting bird. Over our otherwise ideal camp supper he babbled genially. But he was by now far out of all the common channels of humanity. It would never have occurred to him, for instance, to take a swallow of the savory stew, if his daughter hadn't pressed the food literally up to his lips.

Eloise soon drew him away from the fire and mothered him to bed for the night. And when we'd straightened up a bit after supper we all turned in for sleep. Eloise had a rude bed across from her father's much better one, in a corner of the cabin. Ericsson and I gratefully unrolled our blankets on the hard ground beside the fire.

Next morning we slipped promptly into the beginnings of a clear and orderly campaign. As Ericsson was to remain here at the park, where the shooting range would be short, he took the shotgun. I, at the wether camp, should have the Winchester. The Winchester and both Colt's used the same .44 cartridge, which simplified matters.

One glistenimg, vivid moment I lay thinking of Eloise, when I'd waked in the morning. But already Ericsson was bestirring himself over the fire. I sprang up to help. After breakfast the Swede put me to work with him tightening up the ramshackle cabin. He made a bully fist at this sort of woodland job. One small but significant detail Ericsson and I attended to in the cabin—the opening of unobtrusive loop-holes in the three blank walls.

Early in the afternoon I set out on Crow for the lamb camp, to return Doak's Winchester and to look for antelope, perhaps. At the gulch-mouth I stopped in at my wether station, to pick up Whiskey's belt and six-shooter. But I searched the cabin among the willows in vain. Whiskey's gun was certainly not where I'd left it.

That little revelation gave me a start. We were under surveillance, then—all the time. A thousand to one, the gun-taker had been up scouting about our very park—while we calmly slept beside the fire, no doubt. Thoughtfully I held on down to the lamb camp.

There Nigger Bill Jackson was busy with a batch of sour-dough biscuit supper. I went to put Doak's rifle up on its regular pegs against the wall, only to find two other guns already in the place. I stood the Winchester in a corner.

"Who got Whiskey's six-shooter last night?" I casually asked Nigger Bill.

He was a surly, wolfish mulatto, bad through and through. Not the whisper of an answer did he make me.

"Who got the six-shooter?" I demanded, trifling with the lever of my Winchester.

"I don't know nothing about no six-shooter. Don't come here bothering me. I don't know nothing about nothing."

There seemed no reasonable way around that. The other smackers would be as hostile. I was a rank traitor to the camaraderie of the outfit, you see; a spoil-sport. I'd thrown my "mates."

I rode off, scouring the coulees along the mountain for antelope; and before long I'd the good luck to christen my new rifle on a young buck.

NEXT day Glendenning, the hotel-keeper at Piegan Springs, put in appearance at the gulch. Eloise had told me about him the night before. When she had traced her father to this Western country she had stopped at the hotel in Piegan Springs, and the old man had helped her in her search. He came now with a wagonful of good grub disguised under a tarpaulin: special things, delicacies in cans, and so on. We had a feast of it for dinner. Glendenning stayed the night, sleeping behind our new outer shelter. For in the morning Ericsson and I had built up a strong breast-high pole-and-log barricade, running across the entire front of the shack, screening the doorway, and with space enough between it and the cabin wall for us to spread our blankets.

We knew that any attack up here now would not be directed primarily against the girl. She'd dropped into the background. The whole united ranch would never stand for a woman hunt like that. Ericsson and I, though, more than took her place.

The day after Glendenning's arrival, my wether band was to be ready. I'd told Dorgan I'd be down at the pens by ten o'clock, and left the park in plenty of time. Eloise walked as far as the cabin with me. I brought my bed-roll down along with me, for in the future I should have to sleep here with my sheep. With Glendenning to lend a hand with her father at the park, Eloise was to spend the morning tidying up my summer home—our summer home.

At the home-ranch Dorgan took me in charge at once, and kept me by him.

After dinner he helped me start my band off through the sage and lupine for Castle Gulch. Just before he spurred away on his heavy roan, he let fall a luminous word.

"I expect you savvy," he said, "that you and the Swede ain't exactly the star favorites in this camp."

I nodded. Bull went on:

"I pick up a sign now and then. And

Continued on page 18

Don't—

Letters Men Write To Actresses

Page 11

ALTOGETHER this is a very remarkable picture page, if we do say it. Photographers claim that the pictures are among the most striking studies of Egypt ever made. The text, too, is interesting. And the text and pictures have nothing whatever to do with each other.

The Pomeranian

By LOUISE WOLFE

Illustrations by G. E. Wolfe

DETERMINED not to afford Manager Chadwick a single additional ground for criticism by being late, Irma Merrill left Mrs. Hanscom's boarding-house with her hunger only half satisfied. His cold disappointment at what he considered her lack of ambition had invested her position with an importance much greater than merely meat and dessert.

She entered the stage door, and started up the stairs, but the stage doorman called her back.

"Letter?" she inquired, surprised.

"Nothing like that." The doorman grinned.

She watched him with sudden anxiety as he disappeared into his cubby-hole. Had Mr. Chadwick left word that he wanted to see her again? What else could it be?

"But that can't be for me!" she protested.

"Left for you, miss."

"Left for me! For me?" She stared in bewilderment at the glittering metal leash thrust toward her, and at the fascinating little Pomeranian on its other end.

"Here you are, miss."

"But it isn't mine—you'll have to send it back."

"Just as you say, miss. Gimme his name and address."

Irma stared.

The doorman understood her offense, even if he did not understand why no flowers and presents filtered through his hands to so pretty a girl. He spoke in his own defense.

"Don't see how I'm going to send him back, if you don't tell me where. Messenger boy brought him and he hadn't any card or address 'cept yours. I told him to wait. I told him we took in almost everything at this door 'cept dogs and canaries. Then what does the little devil do but hook the leash to my pocket when my back's turned and skip. You gotta take the little beast, Miss Merrill."

"But—but—"

"Answers to the name of Pompey."

At his name, the ball of fluff rose, yawned, and danced daintily over to her. Before she realized it, the leash was in her hand and John had disappeared.

She stood looking at her new encumbrance a moment. Then she took him up and petted him. Only one man in all the world could have sent her that dog, and she had not heard from him now for more than a year. "Why—why couldn't he let me alone?" she demanded bitterly of herself.

POMPEY'S little silken head nestled against her arm as she stole gingerly across the stage. But suddenly, in the semi-darkness, she almost bumped into the very man she hoped to avoid.

"Well young woman, have you come to your senses? Did a night's sleep do you any good?" he demanded.

"I don't want that part, Mr. Chadwick; but oh, I do want you to know how awfully good of you I think it was to think of me for it."

"Kindly omit flowers." The big man with the booming voice frowned heavily on her. "No ambition yet?"

She blushed. It hurt her keenly to disappoint the one who, by providing her only chance, had saved her from returning home a failure. It hurt her more that she could not give him her reason.

"Ambition?" She laughed miserably. "Oh, but you know what I told you. I came to New York with the hope of making a name for myself with my voice."

"Yes, young woman. And do you know what my ambition was when came here?" He barred her way fiercely. "I wanted to be an actor like Forbes-Robertson and play Hamlet. But I wasn't above putting on girl shows. And what's the result? I'm not a Forbes-Robertson, but I'm the one that's going to manage him the next season he comes over!"

"I know, Mr. Chadwick; that is why I appreciate your interest. If it only wasn't—wasn't a dance!"

"I can get a dozen good-looking young women who can dance, but not one whose personality suits the dance I have in mind as yours does."

"If it wasn't—" She stopped in con-

"I give you fair warning!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to make you do it. I'm determined to make you do it." He stood aside. Then for the first time he saw the dog in her arms.

"I thought you told me you could just get along on your salary," he stormed.

"I didn't buy him. He was sent to me," she explained, involuntarily hugging her unwelcome gift a little closer.

"Oh!" His tone was strangely jocular.

"Owner waiting at the door or at the church? You know you gave me your word not to run away with one of those stage-door hunting sons of Pittsburgh."

"I have yet to be annoyed by my first millionaire's son."

"Going to keep him?" Manager Chadwick's irritation now appeared to attach itself to the dog.

"I suppose—yes, I'll have to now. You don't mind my taking him up to the dressing-room just for to-night, do you?"

"No. Remember, you'll get twenty a week more when you do that dance and go on in Nina Clark's part. Perhaps you'll take it rather than let your Pomeranian go hungry?" He chuckled, then appeared to become angry with himself for seeming less severe. "I'll give you just one week, young woman, to do for that dog what you wouldn't do for me. Seven days—understand?" He held her eye for a moment, then without further speech turned and walked away.

THERE was an air of finality in his last words that boded ill for the girl if she failed to accept. But behind it Irma felt an impersonal interest that kept her from telling him her reason. She hugged Pompey to her. Seven days of grace! She certainly could make sure she was doing right in that time.

She hastened up the narrow flight of stairs to the dressing-room. They were as steep as a ladder. She thought, too late, as always—of what her retort should have been when Mr. Chadwick accused her of wanting to start at the top of the ladder—"But you sent me up there to dress!" Then she smiled wearily, realizing that this might have made him laugh heartily, but would not have changed his purpose. He was Leroy Chadwick because he had always succeeded, by one way or another, in making people do precisely what he desired.

IRMA had tried futilely to make friends with the other seven showgirls. For some reason she could not fathom, they seemed determined to keep her at a distance. Why was it? Was it because they wanted her place for one of their own friends? That was the nearest solution she could come to.

It seemed now as if Pompey might make her one of them. She was the first to arrive at the dressing-room. As the other girls came in, one and all went into ecstasies over the little Pomeranian. Irma watched them with delight, hoping now to be upon familiar enough terms with them to ask certain questions. But they put her aside with the dog. As each of the seven girls hurried to her individual mirror, hung over the long shelf running the length of the room, Irma found herself ignored and talked past quite as upon former nights. She drew in her under lip and closed her small teeth upon it tightly until the taste of the lip rouge warned her. She did not dare yet ask the questions to which she must have an answer within the next seven days. She waited, but she kept her ears open.

It was Claire Temple who startled her by reverting to the subject that had caused all her doubt. Claire was her right-hand neighbor—an Irish girl with blue eyes and flashing black hair, with the figure and bearing of a princess, the harsh voice of a teamster, and a heart as soft as milk. She was trying vainly to whisper to the rose-and-gold blonde at the next mirror.

"I seen her this afternoon. Say, honest, Gert, I can't see how any girl could get such a touch of the sun as she has."

"Didn't he take care of her when she was sick? Didn't his family chuck him for marrying her? Oh, Claire, roll your hoop! And you a perfect mush over any man that's half decent. Come now, little one, what'd you take over to 'em?"

"Nothin'." Claire threw her rabbit's foot from her as if to end the subject.

"T. B.?"

"Doctor won't tell 'em."

"Then he's got it."

"Sure, and she knows it. Can't you see how the ginger's all gone out of her work, and her face is tightening?"

"Claire, how can we slip her something?"

"You got me. I wouldn't dare to."

"Well, I heard a whisper myself. She'll certainly lose her job if she don't take a brace."

"Who told you that?"

"Now, never you mind. There's nothin' we can do about it, anyhow. No use going to Chadwick and asking him to have a heart—he ain't got none where business is concerned. The only interest he takes in a girl is the box-office one. He don't care whether you're a real live Venus or only a tin imitation. But the minute you fall down in your work—wow! Good night!"

"Who's he goin' to put in her place?" Claire bent toward her like a hawk.

"Oh, I dunno. Some one that needs it less, of course. This is the life!"

There was a grim silence. Evidently every one else in the room had been listening also. Irma could control herself no longer. She bent forward and touched Claire lightly on the shoulder.

"Would you mind telling me if you were just speaking about Miss Clark?" she asked eagerly.

"What made you think that?" Claire turned sharply toward her.

"Oh, I don't know. I'd like to—"

"For the love of Mike! Now, let me tell you something, infant. This friend of ours ain't looking for any charity, and if she was she wouldn't have to look any further than one of us. See here now,

Page 14

Irma sprang to save the envied neck-piece from desecration, and the titter that went round the room at her discomfiture put an end to further questioning.

CLAIRE had answered her definitely, but a vague doubt lingered in Irma's mind. She asked no further questions, she made no further advances, but she still could not bring herself to go to Mr. Chadwick with her decision.

She had come to New York with such high hopes! With exceptional beauty and a good voice, her friends at home had done their worst and convinced her with their small-town flattery. She needed only to be seen and heard to have the metropolis suing favor at her feet. Only one man had had her interest sufficiently at heart to talk against it, and she had believed his interest to be a selfish one. If she had only known about all the pretty girls with good voices pouring into New York! She had become a show girl rather than return home and confess herself incapable of earning a living. She could not write to her own people for aid without proving herself a failure. Well, she had chosen. No, she had won!

She stifled an impulse to retrieve a certain picture from the depths of her trunk. She had won, hadn't she? If she could retain her present place as show girl, all her debts would be paid and she could rank herself among the glorious army of self-supporting women.

NEXT morning the maid informed the already disgruntled landlady of Irma's guest, and Mrs. Hanscom lost no time in appearing in person to inform Irma that "her house was no kennel, though some people treated it no better."

The scene was working toward a most unpleasant chimax, when Pompey appeared from his hiding-place under the couch. At his mute though dignified entrance, Mrs. Hanscom became suddenly quiet and obsequious. She forgot her indignation and endeavored to make friends with the dog. His lofty indifference only whetted her desire. She began to tell Irma dog stories of her own past—she had never owned anything more select than a dachshund.

"I don't see how people who have dogs as affectionate and grateful as them could make war on the whole world, do you?" she asked, with the fervor of one who has thought a new thought.

The most important point was that she agreed to allow Irma to keep the dog.

The question of food for Pompey soon

The landlady promptly erupted with the untimeliness of a volcano.

"Why don't you sell your dog and pay me?" she demanded.

"I can't. He was given me by a—very dear friend," Irma protested.

"Well, all I've got to say is that it wasn't no friend of yours or mine that give you that dog—not if he knows how up against it you are. What was his idea? He might just as well have give you something as expensive as typhoid fever!" Mrs. Hanscom retired to await the sure course of events.

IRMA sat Pompey upon the couch and talked to him. She confided to him precisely their state of affairs. She told him all her own privations during the past year. She implored him to act like a little gentleman and help her. He listened to the first stanza, he yawned at the second, and before she was fairly started on the third, he was curling himself up on a prized piece of chiffon thoughtlessly left in his vicinity.

"You ungrateful little beast!" She jerked the chiffon from under him. "I can't sell you, Pompey, because he gave you to me. But what—what are we going to do?" She stared at him discouraged. "The difference between you and me is that one of us is acting very, very selfish," she informed him with a despairing gravity.

She threw herself on the couch face down. She did not cry, though she had every reason to do so. From Pompey up, every one seemed to treat her badly. The other show girls still held her at a distance. Each night Mr. Chadwick shot her a questioning look that threatened even her present small security if she decided against him. Her time of grace had expired, and to-night he would unquestionably demand her decision. And now she knew with surety that she ought never to take Nina Chalk's place.

"Why hasn't anybody warned her?" she demanded of herself. "They think they are so kind, but I know I'd want to be told." She lay for a time debating the situation in all its aspects.

AN hour later, having left Pompey asleep in her room, she finally located the sordid little apartment where Nina Clark and her husband existed. Nina opened the door with suprise, allowed her to enter with manifest reluctance, then quickly vanished on the score of making herself presentable.

Irma glanced about the cluttered up living-room. Newspapers, Nina's cheap little toque, unwashed dishes, a half bottle of milk in its smeared receptacle, all disputing for space on the only table, demonstrated how much more Nina devoted herself to her sick husband than to her housekeeping.

Irma viewed the havoc of that room with a shudder. She had to suppress an instinct to plunge at things and set them to rights. If Nina Clark scorned the aid of the girls whom she knew, from whose ranks she had risen, Irma realized that she must not be too venturesome all at once.

How she managed to break the news to Nina she never remembered very clearly because of its reception. Nina Clark swept into a veritable fury. She breathed fast and visibly before she could find words to match her sense of outrage.

"So that's what you've been sneaking toward telling me, is it? So you thought you ought to warn me, did you, that Chadwick thinks of putting somebody in my place?" She glared at Irma a moment, then walked straight to the door and held it open. "I don't thank you. I don't thank you a particle, because I'm not such a nut that I don't see what this means. You'd better get out of here. Chad may think of giving you my job, but you can't make it right with me in this way. You'd better go. There's some kick left in me yet. You'd better go before I forget I'm a lady."

Irma was too astounded to speak for a moment. And when she began she explained stumblingly, with a confusion that rendered her explanation worse than none at all.

"Are you going?"

Irma flinched at the tigerish movement Nina Clark made toward her. Some one passing in the hall looked through the door at them curiously. The husband was calling from the adjoining room. She tried to explain afresh as she was driven reluctantly toward the door.

NINA waited until she was outside, then slammed the door. Suddenly she reopened it for a last word.

"You—you—" she screamed in a tone that evidently relieved her irrepressible rage. "You cat! You can't put anything over on me like that. You come here and pretend to be poor, so that you won't get the girls down on you. You try your best to get in with them. You ain't above nothin' to keep from seeming like a scab. A scab—that's what you are. You can't fool us. Our teeth have been cut on the hard world. We know—we ain't such simps that we don't know that you don't have to work, that you're crowding us out of our chances. Why don't you go home, where you behong? Why don't you go away and give us a fair chance to earn our bread and butter?"

She turned and tried vainly to soften her voice to answer her calling husband. "Yes, dear, I'm coming."

She swept Irma with one last scorching look. "You! You scab, you! If I wasn't more of a lady than you—if wasn't for disturbin' the peace of mind of my sick husband, I'd show you what we all think of you for crowding us out. I'd show you up for the low-down thing you are!"

Irma stood staring at the closed door in awe rather than answering rage. So this was why the other show girls treated her like an intrudcr. She was having her way only by making it harder for them, was she?

SHE went straight to her room, straight to her trunk, and, with her heart beating fast, unearthed the photograph she had kept herself so long from viewing. She gazed at the earnest eyes and the determined chin for a long, long time. At last she confessed—to him:

"I haven't got a voice. I—I know it now. I don't want to earn my living by my youth and looks. I—I don't want to keep others from earning theirs."

She felt a desire to cry and at the same time an overpowering longing for the comforting presence of some friend. She called to Pompey, but he failed to appear. Suddenly she noticed that she had not closed the door upon her return. She crept down the stairs. At the door of the front room on the first floor she stopped and listened. Yes, Pompey had deserted her. He was visiting Mrs. Hanscom's "star boarder," who possessed an open fire. She reached out a hand to knock on the door; but she felt too near tears to see any one yet awhile.

"The difference between you and me. Pompey," she reflected bitterly, "is that you know where you belong and I don't."

Suddenly she turned and ran down the other flight. She fairly flew along the chill street to the nearest telegraph office. She sent a long message, but only three of its many words were actually necessary. They were, "I am sorry!"

Again she hurried early to the theater, but for quite another reason. This time she didn't run past the stage doorman. This time her heart leaped when he re-appeared from his cubby-hole with something for her. It was the answer to her telegram. She read it joyfully as she ran up the stairs.

IT was after the performanee. It was after Nina Clark had made that astounding return to form that no one except Irma could wholly understand. Every single thing appeared to be coming out right now. Irma answered Manager Leroy Chadwick with the telegram, that she had read and re-read again and again, still clutched visibhy in her hand.

"I am awfully sorry, Mr. Chadwick. I know now more than ever how kind you've been to me, but—"

A high color suddenly flamed over her beautiful face and made it impossible for her to go on.

"Don't tell me that Pomeranian failed to bring you to your senses?"

"Oh, Mr. Chadwick, but he did! I—I guess I'm a sort of Pomeranian myself. I'm going home as soon as you'll let me."

"You're—you're what?" For once Leroy Chadwick was overwhelmed by a turn of fate.

"I'm going to be married." She rendered to a spirit of mischief that came from her great joy. "I have to get a home for my dog."

"Well, I'll be—"

Chadwick left her with a haste that was only to be explained by his next words. These were uttered to himself after he had entered his office, after he had shut the door, after he had laughed long and heartily to himself:

"And now, how in the world am I going to ask her to send back my dog?"

Then he burst into another roar of laughter.

See What the Children Have Made

No Cage for These Birds

ARE you looking for a place to keep your Ford? You will find Mr. Ibbekin's garage listed in the New York directory. Mr. Ibbekin promises you the best of care. But you may call up some day for your car to be ready at just such a moment, and Mr. Ibbekin will answer:

"Ach, mein gut friend, I can not. I am too busy. A leetle nightingale has died."

For Mr. Ibbekin makes his money on automobiles and spends it on birds. On the top floor of his house he has built an elaborate wire netting structure, which in winter he can close in with glass. There is a tank with a spray, evergreens of all sorts, and many bird-houses and nests; for here Mr. Ibbhekin keeps more than five hundred birds.

Some pairs in his collection are worth $75, says Mr. Ibbekin; but he hastens to add that he will never sell a bird that comes into his possession. He has tiny nun-birds; green and blue and violet tanagers from Brazil; parrakeets and parrots; long-tailed vidas from Africa; and a taha weaver—the smallest bird in his collection—which, lonely because she had no family of her own, adopted two parson-finches twice her size and now keeps house for them. An egg appeared in this menage, but unfortunately never hatched.

It is unusual for birds of different feather to mate. One blood-bill weaver decided to nest with a diamond-finch. But from the very first they disagreed. She insisted on building her nest in the interior of a cocoanut husk, and the weaver

Mr. Ibbekin is up at five every morning to attend to the wants of his birds. He can do all the work really necessary in two hours, but every spare moment he spends with them, treating them to prickly-pears, the hard rind carefully gouged open, or to a delicate entree of worms.

Twelve years ago Mr. Ibbekin came to New York from Germany, where he had been used to the freedom of his father's country place. New York isn't exactly the paradise of the nature lover, in spite of the jungles of Central Park and the Bronx. Mr. Ibbekin discovered that the only place in town where you can do what you like is on the roof, and so there he put his birds. He haunts the wharves to meet every ship from any country that may have birds—though before the war Germany controlled the bird trade. There is a gamble in every purchase, for the healthiest may refuse to be acclimated and die next morning. Or the old inmates may put a newcomer through such a severe hazing that it gives up in despair; for "winged songsters" are not so gentle as they are generally reported. But once let the crucial period of getting used to things pass, and the birds thrive with little care.

How Ham Passed the Buck

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Frank Snapp

I EXPECT you'll admit that when Mr. Robert slides out at 11 A.M. and don't show up again until after three he's stretchin' the lunch hour a bit. But, whatever other failin's I may have, I believe in bein' easy with the boss. So, when he breezes into the private office in the middle of the afternoon, I just gives him the grin, friendly and indulgent like.

"Well, Torchy," he calls over to me, "have I missed any one?"

"Depends on how it strikes you," says I. "Mr. Hamilton Adams has near burned out the switchboard tryin' to get you on the 'phone. Called up four times."

"Ham, eh?" says he, shruggin' his shoulders careless. "Then I can hardly say I regret being late. I trust he left no message."

"This ain't your lucky day," says I. "He did. Wants to see you very special. Wants you to look him up."

"At the club, I suppose?" says Mr. Robert.

"No, at his rooms," says I.

"The deuce he does!" says Mr. Robert. "Why doesn't he come here, if it's so urgent?"

"He didn't say exactly," says I, "but from hints he dropped I take it he can't get out. Sick, maybe."

"Humph!" says Mr. Robert, rubbin' his chin thoughtful. "If that is the case—" Then he stops and stares puzzled into the front of the roll-top, where the noon mail is sorted and stacked in the wire baskets.

I don't hear anything more from him for two or three minutes, when he signals me over and pulls up a chair.

"Ah—er—about Ham Adams, now," he begins.

"Say, Mr. Robert," says I, "you ain't never goin' to wish him onto me, are you? Why, him and me wouldn't get along a little bit."

"I must concede," says he, "that Mr. Adams has not a winning personality. Yet there are redeeming features. He plays an excellent game of billiards, his taste in the matter of vintage wines is unerring, and in at least two rather vital scrimmages which I had with the regatta committee he was on my side. And, while I feel that I have more than repaid any balance due— Well, I can't utterly ignore him now. But as for hunting him up this afternoon—" Mr. Robert nods at the stacks of letters.

"Oh, all right," says I. "What's his number?"

Mr. Robert writes it on a card.

"You may as well understand my position," says he. "I have already invested some twenty-five hundred dollars in Mr. Adams' uncertain prospects. I must stop somewhere. Of course, if he's ill or in desperate straits— Well, here is another hundred which you may offer or not, as you find best. I am relying, you see, on your somewhat remarkable facility for rescuing truth from the bottom of the well or any other foolish hiding-place."

"Meanin', I expect," says I, "that you're after a sort of general report, eh?"

"Quite so," says Mr. Robert. "You see, it's a business errand, in a way. You go as a probing committee of one, with full powers."

"It's a tough assignment," says I, "but I'll do my best."

FOR I'd seen enough of Ham Adams to know he wa'n't the kind to open up easy. One of these bull-necked husks, Mr. Adams is, with all the pleasin' manners of a jail warden. Honest, in all the times he's been into the Corrugated General offices, I've never seen him give any one but Mr. Robert so much as a nod. Always marched in like he was goin' to trample you under foot if you didn't get out of his way, and he had a habit of scowlin' over your head like he didn't see you at all.

I expect that was his idea of keepin' the lower classes in their place. He was an income aristocrat. Ham was. Always had been. Phosphate mines down South somewheres, left to him by an aunt who had brought him up. And with easy money comin' in fresh and fresh every quarter, without havin' to turn a hand to get it, you'd 'most think he could take life cheerful. He don't, though. Hardly anything suits him. He develops into the club grouch, starin' slit-eyed at new members, and cultivatin' the stony glare for the world in general.

And then, all of a sudden, his income dries up. Stops absolutely. Something about not bein' able to ship any more phosphate to Germany. Anyway, the quarterly stuff is all off. I'd heard him takin' on about it to Mr. Robert—cussin' out the State Department, the Kaiser, the Allies, anybody he could think of to lay the blame to. Why didn't some one do something? It was a blessed outrage. What was one to do?

Ham's next idea seems to be who was one to do; and Mr. Robert, being handy, was tagged. First off it was a loan, a good-sized one; then a note or so; and finally he gets down to a plain touch now and then, when Mr. Robert couldn't dodge.

BUT for a month or more, until this S.O.S. call comes in, he don't show up at all. So I'm some curious myself to know just what's struck him. I must say, though, that for a party who's been crossed off the dividend list for more'n a year, he's chuckin' a good bluff. Some spiffy bachelor apartments these are that I locates—tubbed bay trees out front, tapestry panels in the reception-room, and a doorman uniformed like a rear-admiral. I has to tell the 'phone girl who I am and why, and get an upstairs O.K., before I'm passed on to the elevator. Also my ring at B suite, third floor, is answered by a perfectly good valet.

"From Mr. Ellins, sir?" says he, openin' the door a crack.

"Straight," says I.

He swings it wide and bows respectful. A classy party, this man of Mr. Adams', too. Nothing down-and-out about him. Tuxedo, white tie, and neat trimmed siders in front of his ears. One of these quiet spoken, sleuthy movin' gents he is, a reg'lar stage valet. But he manages to give me the once-over real thorough as he's towin' me in.

"This way, sir," says he, brushin' back the draperies and shuntin' me in among the leather chairs and Oriental rugs.

Standin' in the middle of the room, with his feet wide apart, is Mr. Adams, like he, was waitin' impatient. You'd hardly call him sick abed. I expect it would take a subway smash to dent him any. But, if his man fails to look the part of better days gone by, Ham Adams is the true picture of a seedy sport. His padded silk dressin' gown is fringed along the cuffs, and one of the shoulder seams is split; his slippers are run over; and his shirt should have gone to the wash last week. Also his chin is decorated in two places with surgeon's tape and has a thick growth of stubble on it. As I drifts in he's makin' a bum attempt to roll a cigarette and is gazin' disgusted at the result.

"Why didn't Bob come himself?" he demands peevish.

"Rush of business," says I. "He'd been takin' time off and the work piled up on him."

"Humph!" says Adams. "Well, I've got to see him, that's all."

"In that case," says I, "you ought to drop around about—"

"Out of the question," says he. "Look at me. Been trying to shave myself. Besides— Well, I can't!"

"Mr. Robert thought," I goes on, "that you might—"

"Well?" breaks in Mr. Adams, turnin' his back on me sudden and glarin' at the draperies. "What is it, Nivens?"

At which the valet appears, holdin' a bunch of roses.

"From Mrs. Grenville Hawks, sir," says he. "They came while you were at breakfast, sir."

"Well, well, put them in a vase—in there," says Ham. And as Nivens goes out he kicks the door to after him.

"Now, then," he goes on, "what was it Mr. Robert thought?"

"That you might give me a line on how things stood with you," says I, "so he'd know just what to do."

"Eh?" growls Ham. "Tell you! Why, who the devil are you?"

"Nobody much," says I. "Maybe you ain't noticed me in the office, but I'm there. Private sec. to the president of Mutual Funding. My desk is beyond Mr. Robert's, in the corner."

"Oh, yes," says Adams; "I remember you now. And I suppose I may as well tell you as any one. For the fact is, I'm about at the end of my string. I must get some money somewhere."

"Ye-e-es?" says I, sort of cagey.

"Did Bob send any by you? Did he?" suddenly asks Adams.

"Some," says I.

"How much?" he demands.

"A hundred," says I.

"Bah!" says he. "Why, that wouldn't—See here; you go back and tell Bob I need

I shakes my head. "I guess a hundred is about the limit," says I.

"But great Scott!" says Adams, grippin' his hands desperate. "I've simply got to—"

Then he breaks off and stares again towards the door. Next he steps across the room soft and jerks it open, revealin' the classy Nivens standin' there with his head on one side.

"Ha!" snarls Ham. "Listening, eh?"

"Oh yes, sir," says Nivens. "Naturally, sir."

"Why naturally?" says Adams.

"I'm rather interested, that's all, sir," says Nivens.

"Oh, you are, are you?" sneers Ham. "Come in here."

HE ain't at all bashful about acceptin' the invitation, nor our starin' at him don't seem to get him a bit fussed. In fact, he's about the coolest appearin' member of our little trio. Maybe some of that is due to the dead white of his face and the black hair smoothed back so slick. A cucumbery sort of person, Nivens. He has sort of a narrow face, taken bow on, but sideways it shows up clean cut and almost distinguished. Them deep-set black eyes of his give him a kind of mysterious look, too.

"Now," says Ham Adams, squarin' off before him with his jaw set rugged, "perhaps you will tell us why you were stretching your ear outside?"

"Wouldn't it be better, sir, if I explained privately?" suggests Nivens, glancin' at me.

"Oh, him!" says Adams. "Never mind him."

"Very well, sir," says Nivens. "I wanted to know if you were able to raise any cash. I haven't mentioned it before, but there's a matter of fifteen months wages between us, sir, and—"

"Yes, yes, I know," cuts in Ham. "But you understand my circumstances. That will come in time."

"I'm afraid I shall have to ask for a settlement very soon, sir," says Nivens.

"Eh?" gasps Adams. "Why, see here, Nivens; you've been with me for five—six years, isn't it?"

"Going on seven, sir," says Nivens.

"And during all that time," suggests Ham, "I've paid you thousands of dollars."

"I've tried to earn it all, sir," says Nivens.

"So you have," admits Ham. "I suppose I should have said so before. As a valet you're a wonder. You've got a lot of sense, too. So why insist now on my doing the impossible? You know very well I can't lay my hands on a dollar."

"But there's your friend Mr. Ellins," says Nivens.

Ham Adams looks over at me. "I say," says he, "won't Bob stand for more than a hundred? Are you sure?"

"He only sent that in case you was sick," says I.

"You see?" says Ham, turnin' to Nivens. "We've got to worry along the best we can until things brighten up. I may have to sell off some of these things."

A cold near-smile flickers across Nivens' thin lips.

"You hadn't thought of taking a position, had you, sir?" he asks insinuatin'.

"Position!" echoes Ham. "Me? Why, I never did any kind of work—don't know how. Tell me, who do you think would give me a job at anything?"

"Since you've asked, sir," says Nivens, "why, I might, sir."

Ham Adams lets out a gasp.

"You!" says he.

"It's this way, sir," says Nivens, in that quiet, offhand style of his. "I'd always been in the habit of putting by most of

Page 17

"Wha-a-at?" says Ham, his eyes bugged.

"You own a half interest in a beauty shop—in Madame Ritz's?"

Nivens bows.

"That is strictly between ourselves, sir," says he. "I wouldn't like it generally known. But it's been quite a success —twelve attendants, sir, all busy from eleven in the morning until ten at night. Mostly limousine trade now, for we've doubled our prices within the last two years. You'll see our ads in all the theater programs and Sunday papers. That's what brings in the—"

"But see here," breaks in Ham, "how the merry dingbats would you use me in a beauty parlor? I'm just curious."

NIVENS pulls that flickery smile of his again.

"That wasn't exactly what I had in mind, sir," says he. "In fact, I have nothing to do with the active management of Madame Ritz's; only drop around once or twice a month to go over the books with Mabel. It's wonderful how profits pile up, sir. Nearly ten thousand apiece last year. So I've been thinking I ought to give up work. It was only that I didn't quite know what to do with myself after. I've settled that now, though; at least, Mabel has. 'You ought to take your place in society,' she says, 'and get married.' The difficulty was, sir, to decide just what place I ought to take. And then—well, it's an ill wind, as they say, that blows nobody luck. Besides, if you'll pardon me, sir, you seemed to be losing your hold on yours."

"On—on mine?" asks Ham, his mouth open.

Nivens nods.

"I'm rather familiar with it, you see," says he. "Of course, I may not fill it just as you did, but that would hardly be expected. I can try. That is why I have been staying on. I've taken over the lease. The agent has stopped bothering you, perhaps you have noticed. And I've made out a complete inventory of the furnishings. In case I take them over, I'll pay you a fair price—ten per cent. more than any dealer."

"Do—do you mean to say," demands Adams, "that you are paying my rent?"

"Excuse me, mine," says Nivens. "The lease has stood in my name for the last two months. I didn't care to hurry you, sir; I wanted to give you every chance. But now, if you are quite at the end, I am ready to propose the change."

"Go on," says Ham, starin' at him. "What change?"

"My place for yours," says Nivens.

"Eh?" gasps Ham.

"That is, of course, if you've nothing better to do, sir," says Nivens, quiet and soothin'. "You'd soon pick it up, sir, my tastes being quite similar. For instance—the bath ready at nine; fruit, coffee, toast, and eggs at nine-fifteen, with the morning papers and the mail laid out. Then at—"

"See here, my man," breaks in Adams, breathin' hard. "Are you crazy, or am I? Are you seriously suggesting that I become your valet?"

Nivens shrugs his shoulders.

"It occurred to me you'd find that the easiest way of settling your account with me, sir," says he. "Then, too, you could stay on here, almost as though nothing had happened. Quite likely I should go out a bit more than you do, sir. Well, here you'd be: your easy chair, your pictures, your favorite brands of cigars and Scotch. Oh, I assure you, you'll find me quite as gentlemanly about not locking them up as you have been, sir. I should make a few changes, of course; nothing radical, however. And, really, that little back room of mine is very cozy. What would come hardest for you, I suppose, would be the getting up at seven-thirty; but with a good alarm clock, sir, you—"

"Stop!" says Ham. "This—this is absurd. My head's swimming from it. And yet— Well, what if I refuse?"

Nivens lifts his black eyebrows significant.

"I should hope I would not be forced to bring proceedings, sir," says he "Under the Wage Act, you know—"

"Yes, yes," groans Ham, slumpin' into a chair and restin' his chin' on his hands. "I know. You could send me to jail. I should have thought of that. But I—I didn't know how to get along alone. I've never had to, you know, and—"

"Precisely, sir," says Nivens. "And allow me to suggest that another employer might not have the patience to show you your duties. But I shall be getting used to things myself, you know, and I sha'n't mind telling you. If you say so, sir, we'll begin at once."

Ham Adams gulps twice, like he was tryin' to swallow an egg, and then asks:

"Just how do—do you want to—to begin?"

"Why," says Nivens, "you might get my shaving things and lay them out in the bath-room. I think I ought to start by—er—dispensing with these"; and he runs a white hand over the butler siders that frames his ears.

Almost like he was walkin' in his sleep, Ham gets up. He was headed for the back of the suite, all right, starin' straight ahead of him, when of a sudden he turns and catches me watchin'. He stops, and a pink flush spreads from his neck up to his ears.

"As you was just sayin'," says I, "don't mind me. Anyway, I guess this is my exit cue."

I tries to swap a grin with Nivens as I slips through the door. But there's nothing doing. He's standin' in front of the mirror decidin' just where he shall amputate those whiskers.

FIRST off Mr. Robert wouldn't believe it at all. Insists I'm feedin' him some fairy tale. But when I gives him all the details, closin' with a sketch of Ham startin' dazed for the back bath-room, he just rocks in his chair and 'most chokes over it.

"By George!" says he. "Ham Adams turning valet to his own man! Oh, that is rich! But far be it from me to interfere with the ways of a mysterious Providence. Besides, in six months or so his income will probably be coming in again. Meanwhile— Well, we will see how it works out."

That was five or six weeks ago, and not until Tuesday last does either of us hear another word. Mr. Robert he'd been too busy; and as for me, I'd had no call. Still, being within a couple of blocks of the place, I thought I might stroll past. I even hangs up outside the entrance a few minutes, on the chance that one or the other of 'em might be goin' in or out, I'd about given up though, and was startin' off, when I almost bumps into some one dodgin' down the basement steps.

It's Ham Adams, with a bottle of gasoline in one hand and a bundle of laundry under his arm. Looks sprucer and snappier than I'd ever seen him before, too. And that sour, surly look is all gone. Why, he's almost smilin'.

"Well, well!" says I. "How's valetin' these days?"

"Oh, it's you, is it?" says he. "Why, I'm getting along fine. Of course, I never could be quite so good at it as—as Mr. Nivens was, but he is kind enough to say that I am doing very well. Really, though, it is quite simple. I just think of the things I should like to have done for me, and—well, I do them for him. It's rather interesting, you know."

I expect I gawped some myself, hearing that from him. From Ham Adams, mind you!

"Ye-e-e-es; must be," says I, sort of draggy. Then I shifts the subject. "How's Mr. Nivens gettin' along?" says I. "Ain't married yet, eh?"

For a second Ham Adams lapses back into his old glum look.

"That is the only thing that worries me," says he. "No, he isn't married, as yet; but he means to be. And the lady—well, she's a widow, rather well off. Nice sort of person, in a way. A Mrs. Grenville Hawks."

"Not the one that used to send you bunches of roses?" says I.

He stares at me, and then nods.

"It seems that Mr. Nivens had already picked her out—before," says he. "Oh, there was really nothing between us. I'd never been a marrying man, you know. But Mrs. Hawks—well, we were rather congenial. She's bright, not much of a highbrow, and not quite in the swim. I suppose I might have— Oh, widows, you know. Told me she didn't intend to stay one. And now Mr. Nivens has come to know her, in some way; through his cousin Mabel, I suppose. Knows her quite well. She telephones him here. I—I don't like it. It's not playing square with her for him to— Well, you see what I mean. She doesn't know who he was."

"Uh-huh," says I.

"But I'm not sure just what I ought to do," says he.

"If you're callin' on me for a hunch," says I, "say so."

"Why, yes," says he. "What is it?"

"What's the matter," says I, "with beating him to it?"

"Why—er—by Jove!" says Ham. "I—I wonder."

HE was still standin' there, holdin' the gasoline bottle and gazin' down the basement steps, as I passed on. Course, I was mostly joshin' him. Half an hour later and I'd forgot all about it. Never gave him a thought again until this mornin' I hears Mr. Robert explode over something he's just read in the paper.

"I say, Torchy," he sings out. "You remember Ham Adams? Well, what do you think he's gone and done now?"

"Opened a correspondence school for valets?" says I.

"Married!" says Mr. Robert. "A rich widow, too; a Mrs. Grenville Hawks."

"Zippo!" says I. "Then he's passed the buck back on Nivens."

"I—er—I beg pardon?" says Mr. Robert.

"You see," says I, "Nivens kind of thought an option on her went with the place. He had Ham all counted out. But that spell of real work must have done Ham a lot of good—must have qualified him to come back. Believe me, too, he'll never be the same again."

"That, at least, is cheering," says Mr. Robert.

Once On the Summer Range

Continued from page 8

I stand to head anything off, of course—that's where these here wethers come in. But—I'm going to drop a lot of men about the 20th of the month."

"I see. You think that then—"

"You'd better have your eyes skinned plumb wide open at the gulch."

That was all. But you may imagine whether that curt warning wouldn't sink in.

SO more than two weeks dragged by, heavy with suspense. The 20th of the month rolled round. A cruel, spun-out day that 20th was to Ericsson and me. I held my wethers close along the edge of the gulch from dawn to dark. Nothing happened. I slept (in cat naps) at the park that night. Still—nothing. Had the crooks been unable to organize?

In the afternoon of the 21st Glendenning arrived from Piegan Springs on another of his periodic visits. He brought his usual stock of food staples and Eloise's big English luggage-bag from Billings.

That night we had a grand civilized feast. There was even a bottle of wine. Eloise put on a fresh dress out of her bag. We drank half a dozen healths, but nobody mentioned the safe passage of the 20th.

About half past nine o'clock I started down on Crow for my camp, my sheepdog Maggie trotting cheerfully alongside.

It was a windy, cloudy night—damp, fairly. And you don't know the joy damp weather brings to the dry, high-altitude West. We passed the turn. Suddenly, not ten feet ahead of me, Maggie put up a furious barking. I twisted Crow back as only a cow-pony can twist—jammed for the shelter of the rocks. We made the cover right enough. But—gad! as we shot round that corner, the hail of lead that spattered against the rock wall behind us!

A drunken roar filled the air, the gulch shook under the cannonading hoofs of a stampede of horses. Like mad they came—straight on, blind on! My gorge rose. The filthy scum! To have to make themselves crazy with whiskey! I couldn't hold any such alcohol-frantic mob. And in the dark! It was folly to think of it. Yet, once let a couple of the fools get past me—beat me to the park—head me off! All this in one illuminated second. I called to Maggie. I jerked my heels into Crow with a savageness that brought a grunt of surprise from him.

I'd been inhabiting this gulch now for more than three weeks; and, with Eloise for my guide, I'd learned it like the heart of one's hand. The way I shinned poor Crow up that mountain wall! We bumped into the towering "castle" all tidy, though. I dragged Crow in through the gate screen of cubby-hole pines, flung the bridle-reins over his head, which is the cow-pony hint to stick right there till it's come hack for, if it's a week. Then Maggie and I— down we lunged again, across the brook, across the trail, up our path on the opposite side.

Eloise, Ericsson, and Glendenning had, of course, heard the noise. When I'd climbed to within some fifty steps of the park, I piped up with the whistle we used for signal among ourselves. My girl came darting and swaying down the path, poised a breath to make sure of me, shudderingly cast herself on my breast.

"Oh!" she sobbed. "The age! It was terrible!"

I carried her up in my arms. She it had been, they told me, who, without knowing of the special menace of the 20th, had yet caught the first sound of trouble below in the gulch. How those long blue-black eyes swept over me, when I'd set her down in the firelight!

My face threw them into a fright. Ericsson dashed into the shack for buckets. "Hey, I got to sneak down to the creek for water," he said.

We tried to dissuade him. But he would only grin and cry, "Yah!" We might need water, one thing with another. It was the fire, though, that graveled me. How were we going to keep it up for light? I piled it high now with logs, and then chucked all the available rest of our wood inside the new front cabin stockade. From there we might be able to shy it out, a piece or so at a time, on the blaze.

Ericsson came back with the water, in great spirits. But the herders were by now close behind him. With a farewell punch at the fire, we all ducked snug away under shelter of the cabin roof and walls. An hour and more ago Eloise's father had fallen asleep on his pine-bough bed on the floor. The bed was, fortunately, out of range of the doorway. We built traps up about it—didn't otherwise disturb him.

I crawled through the doorway to where Glendenning was crouched behind the outer barricade. Our shack faced south; from that quarter the crooks were riotously approaching up the mountainside.

"Come on, then—come on!" I heard Glendenning mutter. "That's right—come a-running! I just want to kill about three lousy sheep-herders before I die!"

Eloise's pallid face appeared in the house doorway, and, to make her draw back, I crept in. We waited, very still. The Swallowfork raiders came smashing through the dry timber like a troop of elephants. They were raising all this racket on their own broganed feet, having left their ponies below in the bottom.

Suddenly a flash, a crackle, and the room was alive with lead—spitting, singing, thudding: a devil's ladleful.

THE shack, as I have said, had no door; and our breastwork outside ran up only some four and a half feet. But the doorway itself couldn't have been more than five and a half feet high. In order to pour as many bullets as that through so narrow an opening, the miscreants must somehow have climbed into the air—got on top of rocks, lodged themselves, even, in the branches of trees. Underfoot the packed earth of the cabin floor was ripped up in a dozen places.

With the rattle of Winchesters a splitting, triumphant yell also resounded. From behind our outer stockade the four barrels of our two ten-gauges roared back.

Inside, Doctor Duncannon started up on his bed with a cry.

"Lie down beside him," I pressed Eloise. "Coax him—soothe him—take him in your arms. Hold him by force, if necessary. That will be your part."

I stroked her, kissed her hair, thrust her toward her father. It would be safest—for her!

"You must keep him flat down on the bed," I insisted. "Lie down beside him yourself. A bullet might drift in between the logs."

"I'll do as you tell me," she said.

With a spring of relief, I hopped to the loop-hole in the east side wall. At almost the same instant Ericsson came scrambling in through the doorway. He drew another rain of slugs after him. Outside, the fresh logs on the fire flared up.

"Just wait—we'll fix 'em for that!" be grunted. "We'll show the skunks—hey, Matt?" He'd got as far lately as calling me Matt. "My second barrel, by jiminy—maybe I winged one of 'em right off the griddle!"

"No! Who? Are you sure?"

From the side, very carefully, he was letting down the canvas flap over the doorway. "Ain't dead sure. Wish I was." His voice professed indifference, only his squinting eyes and broad cheeks betraying his delight in the exploit.

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, after I banged, I spotted them three young pines out there shaking like thunder—that's all. As if maybe somebody was flopping around inside."

The dropped canvas made the room quite dark; but we could see even better through the loop-holes. Ericsson took the west side wall. Glendenning remained outside. The crooks slammed loose a few times at the curtain, perforating it with jagged slits. But we were never in range.

Once I turned in the dark to Eloise. "You've got your father lying low?"

"Yes," she whispered. And then:

"Don't think of us—unless I can help."

In one breath Ericsson and I commanded: "You're not to move!"

A LONG, unbroken pause ensued. For twenty minutes, not a shot, not a yell. The beasts were evidently trying some suspense game. Our fire outside began to crumble to embers, the yellow light unmistakably to fade down. We simply must have light—there could be no two guesses at that. The rats would sneak in and have the cabin ablaze in a jiffy. With a secret sign to Eloise, I dived under the door-flap, unmolested, for my turn outside. The entrance to that outer stockade, I should say, was formed by having the two halves of the front wall set at different angles, overlapping several feet in the middle. But the opening so made faced to the west, away from the fire. Grabbing up pieces of my stored wood, I began to heave them, without exposing myself too much, over the top of the barricade toward the dying glow. I got the range after a few trys, and managed to start up the flames again pretty brisk. From the herders—not a crack to check me! The minutes ticked on into half-hours. It was stretching—uncanny.

Suddenly a brilliant idea hit me. Taking off my hat, I carefully stuck it out beyond the edge of the stockade entrance. Not a bullet chugged at it—into it. I shifted it about—fairly naturally, you know—this way and that. I tried to make an interesting mark. Result—absolutely nothing. Shoving my Winchester in front of me, I followed on out into the open with head and shoulders, squirming flat on my stomach. Soon even my legs were clear of the stockade.

As I put good wriggled yards between myself and the cabin, however, and the chances of potting by the herders grew cheerily less, I had to think the more of Ericsson and Glendenning. A handful of buckshot from the loop-holes would stop me just as effectually as a slug from among the trees. My big hope, though, was the fire. It burned strong and high again now, casting a broad light. And Ericsson and Glendenning, they were the real gun-fighters—not your skittish, panicky sort who shot first and looked afterward. I knew I could trust them for that. In fact, everything played straight ink my hands. Ericsson and Glendenning spotted me from the house-wall, recognized me, came tumbling out hot-foot, with Eloise at their heels, into the stockade. But by that time I was safe in the border shadow of the pines.

"Stay there!" I besought them all in a low voice. For answer, Ericsson made as if to crawl headlong after me. "Miss Duncannon and her father—stay there. I'm just going to see what's happening. I'll be right back. Be ready to cover me up, in case I have to come a-jumping.

Eloise's strangled cry tore at me across the narrow span of ruddy night. But I crushed the weakness down, and, paying no heed to the bitter protests of the other two, thrust away into the dense black of the timber.

To be concluded next week

She's Not Afraid to Go Down Cellar

THREE years ago Miss Edith Copland of Clarendon, Virginia, moved the wheelbarrow and lawn-mower closer up to the cellar wall, and started her first mushroom bed. She didn't have any capital, and planned to do all the work incident to the new enterprise herself.

The next year, Miss Copland had sold enough mushrooms to justify her increasing the number of beds. This year the wheelbarrow, etc., have been retired to the woodshed; for every square inch of the cellar is laid out in mushroom beds, and along the walls another tierfour feet higher up is being constructed.

Down in Washington, Mrs. Patterson of the Department of Agriculture says she has never seen finer mushrooms than Miss Copland's, and many Northern hotels and clubs agree with the verdict of the Department, backing up their opinion with substantial checks.

Miss Copland has the following recipe for her success:

Begin on a small scale. Make sure you have a market.

With the compost and spawn, mix a little brains.

Running downstairs and coming back with a generous dish of mushrooms with which to grace your steak has a fairy-story-like sound; yet, numbers of enterprising folk are going in for this form of indoor sport every year, and deriving great fun from the venture, even though it goes no further than the supplying of their own and a neighbor's table. And there is no certainty like a mushroom bed below stairs to make a housewife proof against worry from "unsuspected company."

This Farmer Never Looks at the Thermometer

HERE is the kind of farming that even a city man could make a success of. It's a frog farm in a cave, out of which Robert Smith, down in southwest Missouri, has made a comfortable fortune.

Farmer Smith never worries about the weather. All the year round the climate is the same—about 60 degrees, whether it is August or February. The sun never wilts and the frost never bites this crop—these big green batrachians, whose legs are marketed in St. Louis and Kansas City for nice round sums.

Forty acres is now looked upon as a pretty fair-sized farm. There is only an acre or so of ground in this big natural cave devoted to the raising of frogs, but this brings to the owner a bigger income than the farming of two or three forty-acre tracts.

You drive up to the frog farm in a boat. You couldn't get near it in a buggy or an automobile. You launch your boat into a lake just outside the cavern, and then float into the cave's mouth on a river that disappears into the cave.

Frogs, big and little, tadpoles, spawn, and still more frogs swarm in and out of the edges of the big pool. When the weather is warm they venture out into the lake, that is really a spring. They are home-lovers, however, and they do not linger abroad long.

Mr. Smith, who discovered the cave ten years ago, has had a much easier time marketing frog saddles than he might have had raising corn, wheat, or potatoes. The farmer who gets a bunch of hogs ready for the market in six weeks does not exist. Frogs may hatch, grow, and be fattened in that time, and they are not nearly so much trouble as a pen full of hungry, squealing porkers.

The frogs require very little care. If left to themselves, they "just grow," says Mr. Smith. The older ones venture out of the mouth of the cave in summer, and devour flies, bugs, worms, and slugs of all hinds. In winter they are fed some sort of mealy compound that seems to answer all the requirements of frog nature. For the most part, they bury themselves in the mud and stay there until spring.

This is probably the only frog farm conducted underground in the world. Hundreds of the big green fellows are shipped out of the nearest station every week, and other hundreds are eaten on the grounds by the picknickers who are attracted by the bigness of the cave and the delicacy that it produces.

In the first warm evenings of spring the racket in Mr. Smith's cave is fairly thunderous. All the veterans of the pond are singing their raucous love songs. A few weeks later the chorus has quieted down somewhat; but all summer long there is some bass soloist that is ready to perform for hours every evening.

It is easy to raise frogs, Mr. Smith says, even if you haven't a cave like his. They do not .have to be taken care of in winter, like other live stock. All that is necessary for their comfort is a big bank of mud at the bottom of a pool, so they may bury themselves and wait for spring. The main requirement is patience and enough energy to go out and dip up the frogs in a regular dip-net and ship them into the city. Then, of course, it is necessary to go to the post-office and get the check—the proceeds of the shipment.

A Hobo Barber-Shop

THEY claim that this is the home of the most venerable barber-shop joke. Remember? The one where the guileless customer steps into the chair on seeing the sign, "First-class hair-cut, 15c."; and a few minutes later the barber asks him for a quarter. The enraged customer points to the sign. "Oh, yes," says the barber, "but you haf not got first-class hair!"

Anyhow, the proprietor does a rushing business during the summer season. During August and September he works nights and Sundays meeting the needs of a thousand hoboes

Fresh air circulates freely into every corner of this shop, and sterilized water is provided at a primitive fireplace a few feet away. "It is the most sanitary barber-shop in the State," says the proprietor modestly. "Any hobo who, after thinking it all over, has decided to take the step, can feel perfectly safe in my shop."