Wm. Hohenzollern

Lock Box 1, Berlin

DEAR WILHELM:

On the day I write this the President is going to ask Congress to vote that you and my folks are at war.

I see by the papers that some of your employees do not take this very seriously, Wilhelm. So I think I ought to write you, and tell you exactly what it means.

It means—I say it without rancor, Wilhelm, and purely as a matter of giving you the customary notice—it means that your services as King will no longer be required.

So far as we are concerned, you might as well begin right now to clean out your desk. When our govern. ment writes to Berlin next time, the envelop may go to the 'Same address, but it will bear a different name.

We have come to this conclusion solemnly, Wilhelm. No nation ever went into, war with as little flag-waving and cheering as we are going into this one. We are not fighting for revenge, nor for territory, nor to get our "place in the sun." We fire going to war to win peace for the world—for this generation and all generations to come.

We have made UP our minds, very solemnly, that permanent peace must rest. on certain fixed foundations. That is the reason we can not make a permanent peace with you, Wilhelm.

For the first of these foundations is Truth.

I am not going to chide you with the "scrap of paper" incident: nor remind Yon of all the shifty, halting explanations you made, when Our boats were sunk. Zimmermann's last effort is enough to remember: On the very day when he was telling us how friendly you were to us, he was promising to help Mexico take our Southwest away and Japan our Pacific Coast.

Your people we are willing to trust, Wilhelm; but we have had enough of your employees. The new world peace must be written' on a whole sheet of paper, not a scrap.

And the second foundation of the new world peace, Wilhelm, is Democracy.

Kings may have been all right for the little one-cylinder States of the Middle Ages. But there will never be a succession of men strong enough and wise enough, Wilhelm, to drive the big twin-six modern State.

You may point to your splendid ancestor, Frederick the Great; and I admit his ability. But who came after him, Wilhelm? Do you remember? Frederick William the Fat!

Charlemagne was pretty successful at kinging: but a few years after Charlemagne whom do we see? Charles the Simple!

Even granting that you have governed your people more wisely than they could govern themselves—look at your oldest boy, Wilhelm. And, honestly, just between ourselves, hasn't the king business pretty well run out?

As long as Russia was ruled by a Czar, I didn't mind you so much. There didn't seem any real hope for universal peace, anyhow.

But the world is going democratic, Wilhelm: and, for the first time in history, universal peace seems possible. For if history teaches any lesson at all, it is this—that it is tremendously difficult to get democracies into war.

When the smoke of war has cleared away, and you are farming quietly somewhere, Wilhelm, you will begin to see things more clearly. You will begin to understand that what is to blame for your loss of your job is, after all, nothing less than the Christian religion itself.

Nineteen, hundred years ago Jesus Christ went about telling men that they were children of God.

If that is true,—if all men are children of God,—then all men are the equals of their kings.

And now, after nineteen hundred years, Wilhelm, all men are about to find that great truth out.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE PONY EXPRESS

THE "pony boys" were the hardiest of the frontiersmen. Armed only with a revolver and a knife, they broke all records in the history of despatch-bearing. On a thousand-dollar wager one rode 800 miles in less than six days, falling in a faint from his saddle at the end. "Pony Bob" Haslam carried the news of Lincoln's election 120 miles in eight hours; and it never occurred to him to abandon the trip simply because an Indian happened to shoot him in the jaw with a flint-head arrow. Buffalo Bill, the most picturesque of all these men, lived to be seventy-one, but he faced death almost every day from the time he killed his first Indian at the age of fourteen. Once, carrying a very precious despatch concealed in an inner belt, he was stopped by two hold-up men. As one stooped to pick up the pouches he flung at them, Buffalo Bill shot the other, and, before his companion could straighten, spurred his horse on.

Each rider received $125 a month, and was under contract not to gamble, drink, or even swear.

There are few traces to-day of the West they knew. We ride in upholstered luxury across the trails where they risked their lives. But we have not forgotten them: they are a picturesque and honorable group in the conquering of America. They left behind them a fine heritage of courage and high spirit. It was their sons who charged up San Juan Hill; and their grandsons will be in the fore-front of the battle to-day. All honor to them—the eternal heroes of boyhood, the boys of the Pony Express.

THE WRATH OF ELIHU

By ELMORE ELLIOTT PEAKE

Illustrations by Howard E. Smith

AT half-past ten Elihu Hundreth rose from his arm-chair before the blazing logs, stepped out into the sharp October night, and lifted a weather-wise eye to the star-spangled firmament. He then gazed for a moment across the dark fields to the village a mile away, where a few lighted windows still punctured the night.

"If Maisie isn't here in fifteen minutes," he announced to his wife, on returning to the room, "I'll walk down to the church and get her."

"I wouldn't humiliate her that way—a girl of twenty," demurred Mrs. Hundreth. "The Epworth League sociables often hold as late as this."

He vouchsafed no reply, but his clean-shaven, furrowed upper lip set obstinately. He was a handsome man in a rude, Mosaic way, with prominent eyes, large but shapely ears, and a sandy mane roached back from a commanding brow. Everybody respected him, many feared him, and a few loved him.

At five minutes before eleven an automobile sputtered outside. A quick step struck the porch, and a moment later a tall, stalwart girl, with her frost-kissed face framed in a mass of wind-blown coppery hair, strode into the room. A momentary silence followed.

"Who brought you home?" her father asked bluntly.

"Jeffrey Bonebrake," she answered in a resonant, full-throated voice.

"You came straight from the church?".

"No. We ran out to Moody's mill and back."

The eyes of father and daughter met like flint clicking against flint, and no more was said.

The next morning Hundreth walked over to the village, and entered Jeffrey Bonebrake's new, double-fronted brick building—Milledgeville's first "department" store. A dark-haired, well-set-up chap, neatly attired, advanced to meet him.

"Good morning, Mr. Hundreth," said Bonebrake. "What can I do for you?"

Hundreth ignored the salutation.

"I don't want you to come to see my girl any more," he announced, "or to bring her home from places. You're not her kind. You don't belong to church; you smoke cigars, and I'm told you drink beer. I won't have my girl associating with such a man."

Bonebrake flushed through his olive skin. But evidently he was not unprepared for the assault, for he replied: "Mr. Hundreth, Maisie has promised to marry me. If you think you can come between us and spoil our happiness, you don't know either her or me."

It was a tenet of Hundreth's religion never to lose his temper. So, for a moment, without a change of expression, he eyed the stripling before him, as if designing a further test of his mettle. Then he swung about and left the store.

HE found Maisie in the kitchen with her mother, her plump white arms bare to the elbow, her floury hands kneading a lump of yellow cooky dough. She was a happy girl, fond of singing at her work; but now her face was sober, her eyes downcast, and her full scarlet lips were close set, for Jeffrey had just telephoned the import of their interview to her.

"Maisie," he asked abruptly, "is it true that you are engaged to Jeffrey BonEbrake?"

"I suppose so," she answered, with a slight flush. "I told him I would marry him—sometime."

"What did you mean by sometime?"

She rolled the dough before answering.

"Why, when it would be pleasanter for him to ome into our family—when you knew him better."

"I know him well enough now," declared her father. "He's a flighty business man, to say nothing else. Your future happiness is at stake, and it's my business to safeguard it. Listen, my girl, and mark me well. You will never marry Jeffrey Bonebrake with my consent. And if you marry him without it you will cease to be my daughter. I shall treat you as a stranger, and cut off your inheritance."

Maisie made no reply, and her father passed out to the huge gambrel-roofed red barn, which, crowning the rim of the valley, was visible for miles about,—a symbol of the wealth and power of its owner.

In the kitchen there was silence for an interval; then Maisie laughed—a hard, wicked little laugh.

"I wonder if God himself is as sure of his infallibility as father is of his!"

"Hush, child!" exclaimed Mrs. Hundreth, lifting her apron to her eyes.

The girl's handsome face softened, and, crossing the room, she put her arms around her mother. She was tall enough to tuck the latter's head under her chin, and, holding her thus, she murmured affectionately:

"Whatever happens, mommy dear, you and I will always love each other!"

THE carriage-shed at Valley View was amply stocked with vehicles, including an automobile. But Maisie, like her father, preferred to walk to the village in good weather. Late one November afternoon, at mail-time, she set off as usual, wearing a scarlet coat trimmed with fur, a black velvet hat tilted at a saucy angle over her brassy coils of hair, and high-topped tan boots that just met her skirt.

As she passed down the lane, leaning slightly against the high west wind, she made a pretty picture. Her father, standing midway between house and barn, nursed it in his fond eyes. He loved her splendid body, her bounding health; he loved her practicality, her perfect sanity. So, standing there, he felt a renewed assurance that these qualities would save her from what he deemed a misalliance.

Alas! When Naomi called him to supper, and he spoke of Maisie's absence, she said quietly, but with a white face:

"She'll not be back, Elihu. By this time she is Jeffrey Bonebrake's wife."

Hundreth's great hairy hand made two passes for the back of his chair before finding, it, and a witless expression overspread his face.

"You knew it when she went?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And you did nothing?"

"What was there to do?" she asked, quivering with anguish. "It was bad enough for her to be married there at the parsonage, with only the legal witnesses present—as if she hadn't a home or a blood tie in the world. Would you have forced her to run away at night, like some poor scullion who chooses the dark to hide her shame?"

"No," said he heavily; "you couldn't have stopped her. She's the kind that can't be stopped. Well, she has made her bed. Now she'll have to lie upon it."

"And you've made yours," she retorted sharply; "and a hard one you'll find it, I predict. She doesn't expect to be forgiven. She knows that you, for all your belief in Christ, never forgave any one who thwarted you. I've lived with you twenty-five years. I've seen you break men as piously as if you were executing the will of God—as doubtless you thought you were. I saw that you'd break me unless I surrendered my will to yours. I don't regret it; I haven't been unhappy. You demanded much, and you have given much. But I warn you, Elihu, that you've at last met your match. You love her as you love nothing else in this world, and through your love she'll break you."

Elihu closed his eyes as if to shut some horror from his sight.

"This is the cruelest wound life could deal me!" he cried out in agony. "But, with God's help, I shall bear it like a man. And may God have pity on her, too; for Bonebrake will bring her to sorrow."

"Why don't you have pity on her?" demanded Naomi remorselessly.

"I do," he answered in a voice hoarse with grief. "But I passed my word. I can not—I will not—compromise with wrong. I fathered her—I dandled her on my knees-I sat out the nights by her little crib when she was sick—taught her to love truth and purity. And now she has flung me aside for a pretty boy. Like a viper that a man has warmed back to life in his bosom, she has stung me."

"Oh father, take back those cruel words!" cried the woman.

"Cruel but true!" he pronounced sternly. "And now; mother, once for all, let us have an understanding. You as well as I will suffer. Ameliorate your sufferings as you will. Go to see the girl when you please. But, remember, she is never to enter my house again. I wish never to hear you speak her name again. I shall try to forget her. For me there is no other way out."

The young couple lived over the store all winter, but in the spring began to build a nest. Jeff could hardly afford it. The twenty-five thousand dollars he had inherited from his mother had been speedily absorbed by his store.

"I am so happy, mother!" Maisie confided one day, as the two stood in what was to be the kitchen of the new home. Already the promise of maternity was manifest in a tender, spiritual beauty. Then she added, with quick tears: "But I mourn for my lost father!"

HER father, meanwhile, had been dealing out retribution as he conceived it. He had informed the official board of the Methodist church that as long as the Rev. Lloyd Merton, who had married Jeffrey and Maisie, was retained as pastor, he would not contribute a dollar to the church. He had also warned the cashier at the bank, in which he held a controlling interest, to keep a sharp eye on Jeffrey Bonebrake's line of credit.

He had, of course, cut off all purchases at Jeffrey's store. In addition, a month after Maisie's marriage he bought an interest in Cleghorn Brothers' store, Jeffrey's only real competitor; and he gave his large clientele to understand that their patronage would be esteemed. As a result, in the next half year the Cleghorns did a record-breaking business.

There was another result. One soft, warm night in early June, a figure came slowly and doubtfully up the walk to the spacious veranda on which Mr. and Mrs. Hundreth sat. The hall light revealed the face of Jeffrey Bonebrake.

"Go in the house, Naomi," commanded Hundreth, and advanced to the steps.

Bonebrake halted at the foot of the steps, removing his straw hat and mopping his brow.

"Mr. Hundreth," he began, in a voice which nervousness pitched above its natural key, "I suppose you're surprised to see me. You will probably be still more surprised when you hear what I've come for."

He paused, and again passed the handkerchief across his face.

"Mr. Hundreth, I'm on the brink of ruin. I can't borrow any money at the bank. Yet a thousand dollars would tide me over this crisis."

Hundreth stood in statuesque silence.

"I have come to ask you for that amount," continued Bonebrake. "I don't ask it for myself alone. You may not know it, but Maisie is soon to be a mother. I've been afraid to tell her of my troubles, for fear the shock might have a bad effect. Of course, my bankruptcy would have a worse one. I thought this fact might influence you. I might be able to mortgage my little farm for the amount if I found the right person. But it would take time, and I need the money at once—in two or three days at the outside."

His pleading voice trailed into silence.

"Is that all you have to say?" asked Hundreth coldly.

"Yes, sir."

"Then consider the interview at an end. You can't have a dollar of mine. Don't come again."

He returned to his chair. The young man stood motionless for a moment, his hat pressed against his breast, his face showing pale beneath his wavy black hair. Then he took a quick step forward and hurled a torrent of furious, cauterizing curses at his enemy, after which he turned and disappeared in the dark. Mrs. Hundreth noiselessly appeared in the doorway.

---

"What did he want, Elihu?" she asked quietly.

"Money."

She tarried a moment in silence, and then sorrowfully retired.

Hundreth sat in his chair until midnight. Could Jeffrey Bonebrake, tossing on a sleepless bed, have known what his foe was suffering, it might have lulled somewhat the hurricane of hate that raged in his breast.

As the last stroke of twelve from the sitting-room clock died away, Hundreth rose stiffly, as if cramped by his long vigil, locked the door, ascended the stairs heavily, with one hand on the rail, and snapped off the light below by means of a switch-key in the upper hall. Then, instead of proceeding to the room that he and Naomi had occupied for a quarter of a century, he walked softly down the passage to another room—Maisie's.

HE had not entered it since her flight. He stood in the dark a moment, and then flashed on the light. He started at the sight.

Maisie might have left the room only an hour before. With a ruthless pride which perfectly matched her father's, she had taken with her nothing that his money had bought. Even the clothes she had worn away had been sent hack, and now lay across the foot of the bed. Her perfumes and powders, silver toilet set, lotions and creams—all the things she loved to groom her body with—were scattered over the big mahogany dresser, together with a handkerchief and a single desiccated pink rose. Her silver-mounted ebony jewelcase stood open, half filled with rings, brooches, and necklaces.

On her desk, amid a litter of papers, lay a wrist-watch—stripped off and tossed there, it looked, as an after-thought. One of the pillows on the bed still bore the imprint of her head, as if she had flung herself down to ease her heart with tears before taking the last irretraceable step.

Hundreth realized that the disorder of the room, preserved for eight months by his wife, was a memorial, like the toys of a dead babe left to gather dust upon a nursery floor. For a moment his great frame shook as with a chill. But with set teeth and clenched hands he conquered the weakness, as he regarded it, turned off the light, and gently closed the door, as people leave a death-chamber.

NEXT day the carpenters employed on the Bonebrake cottage boarded up the doors and windows, packed their kits, and left. Thus it happened that on August first little Jeffrey Hundreth Bonebrake Was born in one of the hot rooms above the store. But a sturdier youngster or a pluckier mother old "Doc" Mattoon vowed he had never seen—reserving his opinion of the grandfather until he reached McQuown's drug-store, where no ladies were present.

Maisie had borne the revelation of her husband's threatened bankruptcy with a fortitude that he might have foreseen. She had not broached Jeffrey's trouble to her mother; but when her baby was three days old, while she was still pale and content to lie very still in bed, Mrs.Hundreth spoke sorrowfully and apologetically of Jeffrey's errand at Valley View.

"Yes," sighed Maisie. "If he had confided in me I could have saved him that humiliation. I would have told him that he could more easily melt granite than father's heart."

An expression came over her face which her mother had detected, with secret dread, as long ago as when Maisie was a tot of four—an expression which neither gave nor asked for quarter. But quickly, with a glance at the basket which Jeffrey had enameled with White and she had lined with softest flannel, the girl's eyes melted, and she added:

"Nothing matters much, mother, as long as Jeffrey loves me. If he should fail me, I should quietly lie down and die."

"How about me?" asked Mrs. Hundreth playfully, but with a spark of maternal jealousy.

"Mothers never fail," murmured Maisie, extending her white arm across the counterpane to take the other's hand.

Three weeks later Maisie took a clerk's place in the store, to reduce expenses. Jeffrey had succeeded in holding his. creditors at bay until he could mortgage his farm. It was, however, but a brief respite that he gained. In October the doors of the store were closed; and one day, after the sheriff's sale and all the other dismal legal processes were over, Jeffrey, with his wife, son, and a scanty wagon-load of, furniture, set off for his farm, five miles away.

As they came opposite Valley View a squall of sugar-snow struck them. The hard little pellets buffeted their cheeks and sprinkled the sear roadside grass with a hissing sound. Elihu Hundreth's drab-brick homestead seemed warmly veiled by a network of leafless limbs and twigs; and the great barn and its brood of outbuildings—all smartly painted and without a loose board or a broken pane— ooked snug and weather-tight.

"Have you any regrets, Maisie?" asked Jeff soberly.

"None, sweetheart, with God as my witness!" she exclaimed passionately. "But, Jeff dear, we mustn't hate him, though we have the right to. Hate is a poison that in time kills the hater."

"I'm trying not to," he answered, with a convulsive swallow.

JEFFREY'S sixty-acre hilltop farm was scarcely more than a sheep pasture, with gray, weather-beaten, staggering buildings. Yet here, with youth and love as partners, the two started life anew.

When Jeffrey Bonebrake, the farmer, came to town in the two-horse wagon that was his only vehicle, he was scarcely recognizable as the former dapper merchant.

He seemed cheerful enough; yet he looked older and almost haggard. He began to stoop a little. He made his round between stores, post-office, and blacksmith shop with a kind of feverish haste.

"D'you know what I'd do if I was Jeff?" remarked old Flay Seldon one day, as Jeffrey's wagon rumbled past. "I'd git me a shot-gun, load it with buckshot, walk over to Valley View, and blow that ps'am-singin' old hypocrite that ruint me into kingdom come."

The bystanders laughed. Yet Flay had voiced the community feeling. Hundreth passed a good many backs when he walked along the street. In December he was dropped from the board of the Methodist church for absenting himself from worship and refusing to contribute of his means. At the spring election he was defeated for supervisor in Liberty townshipan office he had held for thirty years. That same night some miscreant cut a wire fence on Valley View farm and drove a herd of cattle into a field of young wheat. A week later a spring in one of the outlying pastures was dynamited.

These rebukes made Elihu's pride bleed. But he suffered them stoically, as the discipline of life; uttered no complaint, even to Naomi; threatened no vengeance. Yet he was human. His month took on an habitual set; he seldom laughed.

During the winter, whenever the roads permitted, Mrs. Hundreth visited Maisie weekly, carrying tidbits in the way of pastries and preserves, but avoiding anything substantial enough to smack of largess.

Once, to try Maisie out, she said:

"I had a notion to fetch along a bushel of potatoes—they are so white and mealy for baking."

"It's just as well you didn't, mother," answered Maisie quickly.

THANKS to a near-by settlement of Dunkers,—the prosperous American farmers scorned such petty thrift,—Milledgeville enjoyed a street market every Saturday in the growing season. Hundreth had not seen his daughter since the birth of her baby, when, one morning, passing the dozen or so vehicles backed up to the curb at the market, he stopped as suddenly as if turned to stone.

At the end gate of a dilapidated democrat-wagon stood Maisie. In the wagon, on a white cloth, were neat bunches of onions, radishes, rhubarb, and lettuce, half a dozen dressed chickens, jars of butter, and a basket of eggs. At the other end, with a zone of safety between him and the truck, sat a cooing baby.

Maisie wore a checked gingham dress and a boy's straw hat without band or ornament. The five-cent hat rode her burnished hair like a cockleshell on a breaker.

Yet toil had exacted its toll from her beauty. She was thinner. An angle ran along her jaw where before had been a lovely curve. Her forearms were lean and muscle-marked, and as she displayed a chicken to a customer Elihu's glazed eyes noted that her hands were brown and dry.

If Maisie saw her father she gave no sign. How long he looked Elihu never knew; but presently he became aware, planted directly in front of him, of the sacklike, sun-bonneted figure of old Nora McGillicuddy, the wife of the janitor at the bank.

"You old Beelzebub!" she hissed in his ear, and passed majestically on.

Regardless of an appointment at the bank, Hundreth turned, in a kind of

---

panic, and made swiftly for home, his head swimming. His habit of self-control utterly failed him. For the first time in his life, fear bit him. His wife's warning, "She'll break you!" rang in his ears.

He had glimpsed this ugly, fearsome Thing before. He had felt it trailing him like a shadow. When directing his farmhands, or gazing at a sunset, or sitting in a board meeting at the bank—at any time or place, in fact—he might become conscious of the Thing snapping its menacing jaws, But never before had it actually laid hold of him.

One by one, the manifold activities of his life were losing their zest. Since severing his connection with the church, he had given up going to town on Sundays. Now he gave up going on Saturdays. But even on the other five days of the week he walked cautiously, with furtive glances to right and left for a girlish figure in a wash dress and a boy's hat.

THUS the summer and autumn passed. Depredations on Elihu's farm continued, and he finally put padlocks on all of the out-buildings. He also fell into the habit of getting up in the middle of the night, when sleep would not come, and prowling about the premises with a shotgun in his hands.

One night in November, when thus engaged, he detected a shadowy figure moving stealthily between a corn-crib and the tool-house. He had never contemplated murder, but his nerves were jumpy of late, and almost involuntarily he raised his weapon and fired both barrels. A stunned silence followed the explosions. Then came a flash in the darkness, and a heavy-calibered revolver bellowed six times in quick succession. Elihu heard the bullets sing past his head.

"Some one tried to murder me," he explained to Naomi, who, in her nightdress and shaking with terror, met him at the kitchen door. "After I tried to murder him," he added, with his scrupulous adherence to the truth.

A few days later he discovered that some one had sawed an opening into one of his cribs and removed a small quantity of corn. The piece had been carefully replaced, and he would hardly have discovered the operation except for a sprinkling of sawdust that caught his eye.

That night he looked up an old doublespringed fox-trap in the tool-house, secured the chain with a staple to an upright inside the crib, and set the trap just under the opening that had been sawed out—the most likely place for the hand of the thief to spring it.

He had waited until the hired men retired. It was a strategy, indeed, of which he was half ashamed, and entirely out of character for him, like his shooting at the prowler. So, after going to bed, he could not sleep, but lay and listened for he knew not what—perhaps the scream of a man. But no scund reached hi ears, and about one o'clock he rose, dressed, lit a lantern, and went out to remove the barbarous device.

As he neared the crib his heart jumped. He made out the blurred lines of a human figure crouching close to the wall—crouching but not moving. He paused, fearing that the man, like any trapped creature, might prove desperate. But to leave his victim there, on a cold night, was an inhumanity of which he was incapable; so he again advanced.

Then the light from his lantern revealed the face of Jeffrey Bonebrake—hard, defiant, with eyes scintillating a satanic hate. Hundreth stared in amazement. Never had he suspected Bonebrake in connection with these nocturnal exploits.

"So it's you I have to thank for the damages I have suffered!" he exclaimed.

"No!" retorted Jeffrey doggedly. "I never trespassed on your place until last Wednesday night."

"Was it you who shot at me then?"

"Yes. Let me out of this accursed trap."

"Perhaps a constable had better do that. I'll have to think it over a minute."

"I'll give you a third of a minute!" exclaimed Jeffrey grimly, and, whipping a revolver from his pocket, lie cocked it with an ominous click and began to count. Hundreth was the last man in the world to be coerced by a threat. But the sinister glitter in his antagonist's eyes warned him that he stood cheek by jowl with death. So he set his lantern down, and with his hands alone—few men could have mustered the strength—he compressed the powerful springs of the trap and released Bonebrake's bleeding hand.

For a moment the two men faced each other awkwardly.

"Does Maisie know you're here?" then asked Hundreth, with something like compassion in his voice.

"She! My God, no! She thinks I'm coon-hunting."

"Why did you come, then?"

"Because we're poor up our way. We've got to eat hogs, and hogs have got to eat corn. To keep Maisie from going hungry I'd steal the silver off an altar. And I'd do more than that, Hundreth. I'd kill—either you or myself. Understand? With one of us dead the way would be smoother for Maisie. Some day, if things continue as they are, one of us will have to go. It's the only way. With me dead, you and she would forgive each other—in time. With you dead, forgiveness would not be necessary. She could then eat a crust from Valley View without choking on it. Listen—and show whether you're a man or just the shell of one. I'll toss a coin with you now to see which of us shall go, for the sake of one we both hive. Will you do it? Speak up!"

Hundreth stood like a man in a trance, speechless. Jeffrey, with a contemptuous laugh, swung upon his heel and vanished.

The master of Valley View staggered toward the house. The Thing now had its teeth in him deep, cracking his marrow-bones. The world rocked. The fair structure called life, for which he had wrought so earnestly, was crashing into a shapeless ruin. The wild, maniacal face of Jeffrey Bonebrake, challenging him to a choice between his child and death, danced before his eyes like a hideous mask. He shook with a horror of self.

Presently he found himself upstairs, standing at the door of Maisie's deserted room. He groped his way in through the dark, knelt at the bedside, and, feeling for the little heap of clothes at the foot, buried his face in her scarlet coat. "0 God, deliver me, a ner, from this living death!" he. prayed passionately, over and over.

HE was not a man to do things by halves. He tiptoed downstairs, built a fire in the kitchen range, and sat before it, immersed in sad reflections, until his wife appeared at daybreak. He made no explanation, and she—to such a height had his eccentricities risen —asked for none. After breakfast he harnessed his favorite black mare to a phaeton—he had never learned to like the automobile—and drove to the village. After being closeted with his lawyer for an hour, he headed for the Bonebrake farm.

It was ten o'clock when he drove into the door-yard and hitched Blossom to the leaning slat-and-wire fence. No one was in sight. The little house was banked with straw to baffle the winter gales. A pile of rough firewood—unsalable stumps, roots, and knots—lay near the lean-to kitchen. The stiff, blackened skeletons of a row of dahlias—a flower Maisie loved—rattled against their stakes with a hollow, ghostly sound.

Hundreth, with a pounding heart, gently rapped on the side door. There was no response. The misgivings that had assailed him along the road again stirred. He knew his girl well. He knew he could not easily withdraw the iron he had driven into her soul.

Then he heard voices. Looking up, he saw Maisie and Jeff emerging from the barn—she with her apron gathered up, as if carrying eggs; he with a bucket in one hand and their child on his arm.

BOTH halted at sight of their visitor, and gazed a moment, as if doubting their eyes. Then they resumed their advance, Maisie in front, with quickened steps.

"Has anything happened to mother?" she demanded, with a heaving bosom.

"No; she is perfectly well," answered Hundreth, in the voice that comes from a tight throat.

He removed the Quakerish hat he always wore, and held it awkwardly.

"This is a difficult errand for me, my children—if you will allow me to call you such. I have come to ask your forgiveness for all the wrongs I have done you."

Jeff shot a quick glance at his wife. She stood with her large hazel eyes fixed gravely on the speaker, as if waiting for him to go on.

"I know I ask much," continued Elihu. "I don't expect a few contrite words from me to wipe out in a moment the bitterness of the last two years. I only ask to be accepted on probation—to be given a chance to make good my words."

His eyes misted over. His wide lip, which could set so ruthlessly, trembled. But Maisie's grave face underwent no change.

"Why should you want our forgiveness?" she asked coldly.

"Because I have wronged you cruelly and remorse is killing me! Because I want to make amends. Maisie! Maisie!" he cried suddenly. "Have mercy!"

Jeffrey paled. But the girl only turned her eyes to the purplish bowl in which lay Valley View, bursting with fatness.

"Jeffrey must speak for himself," she vouchsafed at last, slowly. "It is he you have injured most deeply. As for myself—"

She paused, her face went gray, and she turned upon him eyes that seemed like the windows of a soul in ashes.

"As a father, you have ceased to exist

for me. I neither love nor hate you. I have taught myself to think of you as dead. There is nothing to forgive the dead."

She stooped and took the baby's hand in her own, and walked toward the kitchen. She halted at the door and added: "I thank you for coming. I wish you would stay for dinner. It will give you and Jeff a chance to talk."

She passed within. Hundreth stared at the closed door as if it were the portal to paradise locked against him. Then he became conscious that Jeffrey was holding his hand.

"As man to man, I can't do less than meet you half way," said Jeffrey. "I am glad you came, too. I hope to God it isn't too late—for her."

At the table the two men tried to make talk. Little Jeff helped some. At first he gazed at the big stranger with steady, disapproving eyes; but presently, when his grandfather patted him on the head, he smiled and pointed a hand at the dish containing a chicken pie and gurgled "Chicky!" The men forced a laugh, but Maisie did not lift her sober eyes.

After dinner the men sat in the living-room a short time. When his guest announced that he must go, Jeffrey went out to harness Blossom.

ELIHU stepped into the kitchen, where Maisie was washing the dishes.

"Let me dry them?" he asked. "I've been helping mother of late. It sort of takes me back to my boyhood."

Maisie handed him a towel made from a flour-sack. She did not speak; but as she stood at the table,—there was no sink,—her hands feverishly busy, her beautiful head inclined, the tendrils of her hair clinging moistly to her neck, she made such a picture of woe that Hundreth yearned to take her in his arms. But he had forfeited that father's right.

"Now won't you and Jeff spend Sunday with mother and me?" he asked.

Her hands were suddenly still. "Yes—if Jeff will."

"And won't you come early, so you can help mother with dinner?" he pleaded. "It will seem like old times to see you in the kitchen with her again."

"Yes, we'll come early," she answered.

She washed a couple of plates with hands that visibly shook, and added:

"You'll have to take us as we are. Jeff hasn't any good clothes, and the baby hasn't anything white except—"

She swallowed spasmodically.

Hundreth dropped the towel.

"My dear little girl!" he cried, "won't you let me atone? When I die one half of all I own will be yours. But let me give it while I live. Think of your mother! Think of little Jeff!"

Maisie stiffened. Then she fled from the kitchen. A moment later a wild weeping from the front room reached Hundreth's ears. He stood still, throbbing with hope, yet fearful by his presence of stopping the flood that was washing the grief from her heart. But at last he could wait no longer.

She lay across the bed, her face buried in her arms, her body shaken by the storm within. Hundreth, with a streaming face, softly sat down on the edge of the bed and laid his hand upon her head.

Presently the sobs subsided and her hand groped for his.

"Oh, father!"

"Yes, daughter!"

Jeff entered the room, threw them a startled glance, and quickly removed his hat, like one who has blundered into a house of prayer.

THE MELTING POT

In Which the New Books and Magazines are Boiled Down to Give You Fifteen Minutes of Health, Efficiency, Travel, Biography, and Adventure

TEACH YOUR CHILD AT HOME

"UNTIL the age of ten, every child having a good home should remain at home. It is the best place for teaching a child during the first ten years of his life," writes Ella Frances Lynch in Educating the Child at Home (Harper & Brothers). "Many a mother distrusts her own teaching ability. She is rusty; they teach so differently nowadays!"

But this very inexperience is what makes a mother's teaching so valuable. She invents new and simple methods. Hearing her child's questions from morning until bed-time, better than any teacher she can watch his mental growth; she knows exactly what his mind is hungry to know.

"Lincoln's mother, uneducated, taught her boy so effectively in the wilderness as to make a school unnecessary. Do you ask what she taught him? The alphabet, to spell, to memorize passages from the Bible. So well, indeed, did she fulfil her duty as the educator of her child, that a short time ago the chancellor of Oxford University declared to the scholars of Great Britain that among the masters of English eloquence there was not one the equal of Lincoln, the American."

WHAT EVERY SALES-GIRL SHOULD KNOW

IF the girl who sells you a bit of crêpe-de-chine can while you wait make it into a catchy little bow under your chin, she doubles her value. Every girl behind every counter in a big department-store must have some special knowledge, born with her or acquired. To show that a sales-girl's life is more than taking change out of the cash-pulleys, the Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, in a bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, tells what makes saleswomen successful.

The girl at the ribbon counter learns that the style and appearance of ribbon are more important than durability. She shows you how to use the newest of her wares. As profits on ribbons are greatly affected by a too generous, measurement she learns how to hold the bolt so that she can measure accurately. While she sells from the bolt, she watches the length of the ribbon so as to avoid short, unsalable ends. She keeps remnants fresh and clean, and disposes of them in the shortest possible time. Good taste, ability to match and harmonize, personal neatness, deft hands—these are her best assets.

The girl at the lace counter also needs good taste, but she must have besides good eyesight. She must know standard laces and their various meshes. She knows how laces are made, how long they last, and whether they will wash. Without asking directly, she must find out for what purpose the customer wants the lace and how much she wishes to pay, so that she will be able to make suggestions.

While the lace saleswoman concentrates on one customer, the girl who sells trimmings must learn to wait on several; for trimmings make small profits. There is such a variety of wares at the trimming counter that it is hard to choose, and the successful clerk is one who can help you make up your mind.

But the young person who fits your gloves! You would never suspect the information stored in her head. She knows all about sheep—that the softness and durability of glove leather depend on the age of the animal and the place where it was raised; that leather taken from the young of hardy, mountain-climbing sheep is stronger than that from the young of animals that browse in the lowlands.

As for the department where all women linger, the bulletin says:

"Sales-persons who sell infant wear should be women who like children."

0 BROWN EARTH—

0 BROWN Earth, warm and fragrant,
Make soft her tiny bed,
Oh, great Winds, in the darkness
Move gently overhead—
Be kind, you waving grasses
She gathered baby-wise,
And all you buds and blossoms,
Rest lightly on her eyes.
O mothers, to your bosoms
Fold close and safe your own—
My little babe is sleeping
Beneath the stars . .. alone.

Martha L. Wilchinsky in "The Masses"

WRITING FOR THE MAGAZINES

IF you want to be an Irvin Cobb or a Ray Stannard Baker, write about what you like and what you know.

"The thing you like is likely to be the thing you know outside and in," says J. Berg Esenwein in Writing for the Magazines (Home Correspondence School). "But if you know your interesting subject only a little, at least be sure that it is a thing you are in a position to learn about. Research, intelligent investigation, forms the basis of many a masterly article. Find all the facts. Hasty conclusions spell lame results."

Whatever you write, the one interest sure to catch your reader, he says, is human interest. You may write on thrift as something of wide interest; of class interest, like factory life; the making of big guns, an unfamiliar subject which the public would like to learn; the conservation of potatoes as a future problem. But you must make your reader apply all you say to himself.

After you decide what to write, decide next for what magazine to write it. Every periodical has, to some degree, its own tone: Don't write on achroiocythemia for St. Nicholas nor on "Hints to Modern Husbands" for Photo-Play.

The next problem is the opening. The author quotes Barrett Wendell:

"Most people have a strong impulse to preface something in particular by at least a paragraph of nothing in particular, bearing to the real matter in hand a relation not more inherently intimate than that of the tuning of violins to a symphony. It is the mechanical misfortune of musicians that they can not with certainty tune their instruments out of hearing. It is the mechanical luck of the writer that he need not show a bit more of his work than he chooses."

Make your introduction really introduce, or else dispense with it.

The old-fashioned ending has gone out just as much as the old-fashioned beginning. Don't indulge in a final flourish. Summarize the whole in one compact sentence, or conclude with an epigrammatic tone-sentence.

BELGIUM'S FIGHTING PRIEST

THE Germans have camped in Belgium, and they draw ten million dollars' worth of tribute every month. But one old man makes life eventful and uncomfortable for them. Since I914 Cardinal Mercier has been saying the wrong thing to Germany.

There is the story of the Christmas pastoral of I9I5. A letter was mysteriously distributed among the priests of Belgium, and on Christmas Day, instead of the usual mass, the following words were shouted from every Belgian pulpit:

"The other Powers have agreed to respect Belgian neutrality; Germany has broken her word.

"I consider it an obligation to define to you your conscientious duties toward the Power which has invaded our soil.

"This Power has no authority, and therefore in the depth of your heart you should render it neither esteem nor attachment nor respect.

"The only legitimate Power in Belgium belongs to our King and the representatives

of the nation. That alone has a right to our hearts' affection and to our submission."

Of course the German officials stirred themselves and forced these letters from the clergy at bayonet points; but on the following Sunday the priests had learned the new liturgy by heart, and they rendered it with a splendid defiant intonation.

So, next to King Albert, this "preternaturally tall, thin, scholarly, frail old man has become the national hero. He receives in a tiny whitewashed room, furnished with horsehair chairs, a desk, a table, and a small coal stove," says an article in Current Opinion. "Through the windows one looks into a dead garden where shells have plunged and burst. Amid these mutilated surroundings the Cardinal gives voice to his treasonable utterings.'"

Because of his spirit, they say, the Belgians who live on thin soup and bread still have hope and a lot of national pride.

SAVE TIME IN YOUR OFFICE

IF you are penny-wise in writing-pads and pens, you will be pound-foolish in pay-rolls. Economy in time-saving devices for the office is lack of economy in salaries, says William H. Leffingwell in System.

If a ten-dollar-a-week clerk wastes five minutes a day looking for a blotter, his lost time amounts to more than $5 a year—a sum that would buy plenty of blotters. Doubling the number of filing cabinets may cut in half the number of filing clerks; and, while guide cards in the cabinet take up space and are expensive, neither the equipment nor the space is so expensive as the time wasted hunting through the files without sufficient guides.

As some clerks are short and some are tall, why should they all have to sit in the same kind of chair? Leather cushions for men with short bodies, and foot-stools for those with short legs, will reduce fatigue and thereby increase output. It pays to save steps. Plan your office, when you can, so that the girl at the order desk doesn't have to cross the entire office twenty times a day to get to the invoice desk.

It pays also to reduce noise and interruptions. "I have seen fifty clerks lose a quarter of a minute every time a truck rolled across the floor above them," says the author. "That particular truck made two or three trips an hour. This meant a loss of 60,000 minutes in a year, or 100 hours. At even 20 cents an hour, this loss amounted to $200, and would have bought many rubber tires for the truck."

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HOW BELL INVENTED THE TELEPHONE

"TALL and slender, with jet-black eyes and hair pushed back into a curly tangle" ; "sensitive and high-strung" ; "very much the artist"; "his enthusiasms were intense, and once his mind was filled with an idea he followed it devotedly"; "very little the practical business man, and paid scant attention to the small practical details of life."

This was Alexander Graham Bell as a young man, described by W. K. Towers in Masters of Space (Harper & Brothers).

Bell's father was famous for his system of "visible speech," by which he was trying to teach deaf-mutes to talk. Bell inherited this interest. When he was twenty-one he learned that an electro-magnet could vibrate a tuning-tork, and he began to experiment with an electrical telegraph. So he set out on his search for the telephone.

Just at this time he was threatened with tuberculosis, and came to America, where he made a name for himself teaching deaf-mutes. He was so successful that for a time he laid aside his experiments with telegraphy and telephony. Two wealthy men, however, realizing his abilities as an inventor, supported his experiments. One of them, Sanders, had a deaf-mute son. Bell was to tutor him at their Salem home and to conduct his experiments in their basement. The other, Hubbard, a lawyer, had a deaf-mute daughter. Bell fell in love with her, and four years later married her.

While he was working on the musical, telegraph and telephone, he was trying to help a mute talk by making sound- vibrations visible to the eye. "If I can make a deaf-mute talk, I can make iron talk," said he.

Just at the time when his two friends had begun to insist that he stop experimenting with telephony and confine himself to musical telegraphy, he met Professor Joseph Henry, who had aided Morse, and who now urged him to work on.

"But," replied Bell, "I have not got the electrical knowledge that is necessary."

"Get it," replied Henry.

Bell got it. He hired Thomas Watson as an assistant. His two old friends provided funds for his continued experiments with musical telegraphy, and at odd moments he worked on telephony. In 1875, at the end of three years of dreary drudgery, he had completed a new instrument. When sounds were at last transmitted, Bell was wild with enthusiasm. If his instrument could reproduce sounds, it could reproduce words and sentences. His two friends were finally convinced that he was on the road to a greater invention than musical telegraphy, and financed him until 1876, when he spoke into the instrument in the work-room and was understood by Watson in the basement.

On his twenty-ninth birthday he received a patent described as "the most valuable single patent ever issued." It was so entirely new that he did not know how to describe his invention to the patent officials; and although it was far from being a telegraph, he called it "an improvement on the telegraph."

"Had I known more about electricity and less about sound," he said, "I would never have invented the telephone."

SHE KEEPS LONDON FROM FEELING DULL

WHEN the average woman turns fifty-six she is convinced that she is old; she knows it is time to be feeble. Lady Randolph Churchill is a comforting exception. Admitting blithely

to sixty-three, she persists in being one of the handsomest and most debonair women of England; and, having had the good fortune to be born in Rochester, New York, as Jennie Jerome, she has an instinct for clothes that the English can only envy.

Lord Randolph Churchill, dead these twenty-five years, was not of the heroic type, but a pale, languid, perfumed young man, say the chroniclers of the day. Lady Randolph made herself a necessary part of English society. She developed her husband into a fair politician, and even made him quite likable. The political brilliance of her oldest son, Winston Churchill, is well known.

At fifty-six Lady Randolph fell in love with George Cornwallis-West, aged twenty-six; and, although the latter's mother and his sisters—one of them a princess and the other a duchess—made loud and unpleasant protests, Lady Randolph knew her own mind, and married the young man anyway.

Later they were divorced, but don't think Lady Randolph became a blighted being. She wrote plays; she attended the races; she used her influence in Parliament; she did Red Cross work; and she had Prime Ministers and generals and scholars to lunch.

Bernard Shaw once received an invitation; but he answered:

"Certainly not. What have I done to provoke such an attack on my well known habit?"

"I know nothing of your habits," answered Lady Randolph; "but I hope they are better than your manners."

A GREAT AMERICAN SURGEON

THE man who was once a fashionable New York doctor and the butt of a newspaper scandal is now the greatest surgeon in France. French scientists, who have heretofore led the world, flock to his hospital like pupils to study his "bloodless operations."

Americans remember Dr. Joseph A. Blake as a surgeon who attended spectacular cases. He was called in when Roosevelt was shot. When Charles A. Barney, the head of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, shot himself after the crash of his bank, which precipitated the panic of 1907, Dr. Blake was summoned to try and save his 'life.' A few years later, when he and his wife were divorced the newspapers made the most of it and Dr. Blake went to Paris with the reporters yapping at his heels. Since then he has been a voluntary expatriate.

The war broke out, and after a series of vicissitudes Dr. Blake proved himself one of the greatest surgeons who has ever lived. First he became the head of the American Ambulance hospital in Paris.

The Military authorities Wished to keep the hordes of wounded out of Paris. As a result the Ambulance Hospital had only 4000 wounded to fill 60,000 beds, and to keep busy hundreds of rich and handsome women who insisted on being nurses.

Wounded Tommies were heard to say, "Lummy, 'er ladyship again. Be a sport and tell 'er I'm too sick to be nussed to-day."

Several French surgeons were jealous of Dr. Blake. So, after a great fracas, Dr. Blake resigned and went to the British hospital. An evidence of his work there is that, out of two thousand cases of severely-wounded, there were only six deaths.

Now, having completed the finest hospital in Europe, the French government has invited Dr. Blake to be the head of it. It is six stories high and covers a square block in Paris. It will be the surgical center of the world. Its official name is the American Red Cross Hospital of Paris; but, following the custom that seems to arise wherever Dr. Blake goes, it has already been stained "Dr. Blake's hospital in the Avenue du Bois."

WHEN HARRY LAUDER LOST HIS SON

HARRY LAUDER had been singing at the Shaftesbury Theatre in Lon-don for many months when the news came that his only son had been killed in a charge across No Man's Land. For two days the theater was closed. But on the third night the plucky little Scot turned up at the stage door. "I am going to show them what Scotland can do," he said. And the man who had just lost his son put on a khaki uniform and went out before the footlights to sing the big song of the evening—"When the Boys Come Home." At the second verse his voice broke. The great audience, much stirred, jumped to their feet and cheered for the little man who was doing something more difficult than facing shells. Here is a picture of Harry Lauder's son leading his Highlanders in a sham charge against a French windmill.

FOR THE WOMAN WHO SPENDS

"LACK of knowledge of the value of money on the part of women is the most powerful enemy to domestic happiness that exists," declared Judge Lacy of the Domestic Relations Court in Detroit. His figures showed that 26 per cent. of the cases that came before him were due to extravagance on the part of wives, and that in another 49 per cent., in which faults of both man and wife were responsible, extravagance of the wife was the principal trouble.

"Charge accounts at stores, ordering goods over the telephone, and free delivery of small packages are all fruitful causes of extravagance and the higher cost of living," declares T. D. MacGregor in The Book of Thrift (Funk & Wagnalls). He quotes the following twelve "Don'ts" for housewives:

"Don't be optimistic regarding the butcher. Have a set of scales.

"Don't market by phone unless you want seconds and left-overs.

"Don't forget that there is much nutriment in cheap cuts of meat if properly cooked.

"Don't economize on cereals. They are the best and cheapest of foods.

"Don't buy fruits and vegetables out of season.

"Don't buy in large quantities if your home is small.

"Don't take ice in winter. Use a window-box.

"Don't buy new novels.

"Don't use extra telephone messages.

"Don't jump into a car for every ten blocks. Walk!

"Don't get into debt. Charge accounts are vampires.

"Don't live beyond your income.

"Every family should make a deposit in the savings bank each month. It is not what a man earns, but what he and his family saves, that determines his success or failure from a material standpoint."

The Blue Aura

By ELIZABETH YORK MILLER

Illustrations by Arthur I. Keller

TURCO trotted off by himself into the night. He soon vanished in the press about Piccadilly. One moment he was there, and the next he was gone. Dora felt a sense of loss. She looked about vainly, yielding unwillingly to Tyson's clasp of her arm.

"Never mind about him," the handsome boy said, with a consoling laugh. "You have me."

"He's a queer man. I didn't like him at first," Dora replied wistfully.

"You can't dislike Turco."

"He said I would love him," she remarked.

Tyson laughed and squeezed her arm.

"Not likely, when I'm about. I'm simply mad about you. You're the first girl in a year that I've troubled to look at."

With the sovereign in her pocket, Dora listened with an astonishing serenity.

"Do you think I believe that?" she challenged.

"I don't care whether you believe it or not—it's the truth," he replied. She had an uncomfortable idea that he was always telling the truth—too blatant and blunt, even in his florid handsomeness, for the subtleties she fancied she approved.

"You say you're mad about me. Does that mean you're in love with me?"

"Love? I don't know. I've never been in love."

"Neither have I," she asserted.

"lf I ever fell in love," Tyson said slowly, "there wouldn't be any limit to it. That's why I'm careful. If you love a girl she can ruin your life. I've seen it happen over and over again."

There and then Dora cunningly decided that he should love her. With Turco's piece of gold in her pocket she felt quite free. In prophesying her future Turco had invested his friend with romantic possibilities. Was not Tyson one of those men she would love? What was ordained must be.

In the darkness of the street he clasped her bare fingers.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"I must go home," she answered firmly. "I'm tired. It's been a rotten day—except this evening."

"Oh, yes," he said hastily. "I heard what you and Mrs. Petrosini were talking about. You're on the rocks, aren't you?"

Dora tossed her head.

"Not in the least—what do you mean?"

"But—"

"You heard me say it wasn't convenient to pay her to-day. I shall pay her to-morrow. It's no affair of yours."

Under this rebuke, the boy was silent—thoughtful, rather; but he was not accustomed to deep thinking. Plainly she had no need of him. She was not in love with him, nor was she mad about him, as he confessed to himself he was about her. He wondered if this were the beginning of love in his own case. Turco had told him it would have to come sometime, and that he would suffer. Turco had read his future also.

In the practical brain of the handsome acrobat there dawned the wish that Dora Trelawny might be incorporated into the company of Tyro and Turco. But Turco might object. The last time there had been a woman with the act, Turco had behaved in a most ungallant fashion.

So in silence he walked beside Dora, holding her fingers, marveling at the charm in which she was suddenly invested for him. It was dark at the foot of the stairs when they let themselves in.

"Good night," said the now thoroughly independent Dora.

He clung to her hand.

"Aren't you going to kiss me?"

"What for?" she asked.

"Because I want you to," he pleaded.

She thrilled, and leaned toward him, only half believing in her own stinging emotions.

Their lips met. It was a kiss that drowned her consciousness. It was love, at last!

His arms closed about her, and he kissed her again and again. It was love with him, too.

The prophecy of the wrinkle-browed clown was coming to early fulfilment.

"I love you—love you—love you!" Tyson cried between his kisses.

Dora's cheek fluttered against his with the soft terror of a bird's wing. He held her captive. Then he let her go. With a thrilling laugh, she ran up the stairs. She was strangely happy.

THE next day was rather wonderful. Dora had a good breakfast, paid Mrs. Petrosini, and skipped to rehearsal prepared to play Lady Bountiful to her friends. Betty's postal order had come, however, so there were two of them in funds. Dora did not explain how she had received her own riches. They thought she had pawned something.

The best thing that happened that day was a dismissal of the ballet at noon. They would not be called again until Monday morning.

The three girls lunched together at a cheap restaurant in Soho.

Dora was in unusual spirits, and the others followed her lead as a matter of course. When she broke the important news to them they were electrified.

Dora thought she was falling in love!

They gaped toward her, incredulous, curious. They hurled a dozen questions at her in a breath.

It was Dora's moment of temptation.

Continued on page 19

BOYS WILL BE BUFFALO BILLS

SHALL WE TALK WITH THE DEPARTED?

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USELESS JOBS

THE MAN WHO CLEANED UP NEW YORK

By Burton J. Hendrick

THREE years ago Mr. Arthur Woods, then private secretary to Mayor Mitchel, stepped into the office of his chief, put out his hand, and announced that he was leaving for police headquarters, to take up his new job as head of the uniformed force—a dignity to which the Mayor had recently appointed him.

"Good luck to you," said the Mayor, earnestly grasping the new Commissioner's hand. And then he added, looking at him with mock-pity:

"You damn fool!"

At first this hardly sounds like a cordial farewell to the man who was about to undertake the toughest job in the city administration. Yet the Mayor's parting shot contained an immense amount of meaning.

For many years the New York Police Headquarters had done yeoman service as the graveyard of popular reputations. The building was haunted by the ghosts of many public-spirited gentlemen who had entered with the most optimistic hopes of cleaning up the city and making a huge personal success, only to retire humiliated, ridiculed, and sometimes disgraced. For years it had been an axiom that a New York administration succeeded or failed with the success or failure of its police administration.

Certainly the job of policing a city of nearly seven million people, a city that, because of its wealth, attracts criminals and purveyors of vice from the four quarters of the globe,—and to do this with a force of 11,000 men, notorious for its "inner rings," and having behind it years of association with a malign political organization,—this was job enough to make even the most venturesome quail.

The young man now sent forth by Mayor Mitchel to attempt this task was a tall, well-set-up, clean-cut, vigorous figure, with a touch perhaps of the aristocrat, and a face that betrayed rather an affinity for the intellectual atmosphere of Harvard than for the criminals, gunmen, and gangsters of the metropolitan under-world. It was true that Mr. Arthur Woods had served as deputy commissioner under General Bingham from 1907 to 1909.

Three years have passed since this leave-taking in the Mayor's office. So far as the public has known, these three years have been uneventful—certainly they have not been spectacular. Yet America's largest city has suddenly awakened to a sensational discovery. Several civic organizations that make a specialty of watching social conditions have recently studied the Woods administration and published their reports.

I take that of the Bureau of Social Hygiene as typical.

In 1912, says this report, vice "was open, organized, aggressive, and prosperous; in 1916 it is furtive, disorganized, precarious, unsuccessful."

An array of statistics shows the great decrease in the forces that prey. The report gives the chief credit for this change to "the Mayor and to the Commissioner of Police. For three years an able, upright, and high-minded Police Commissioner has pursued a sound and consistent policy, with all the backing, moral and official, that the Mayor could bring to his support. The results are obvious: the police force has steadily improved in efficiency and morale; a new standard of public decency has been set and maintained."

This, then, is the achievement of Arthur Woods. He will go down in New York history as the man who made the city clean, who abolished systematized graft, and who gave the New York police a new soul as well as a new body. A mere glance at the New York policeman discloses the new spirit that he has instilled into the force. The New York "cop" stands up straighter now than he did a few years ago. His attitude is no longer that of apology for himself and his department. The changed attitude of the public—which no longer regards him as a grafter closely associated with the criminal elements—has given him a new self- respect. New York, in the last three years, has abandoned what was formerly one of its favorite pastimes—indiscriminate abuse of its police.

Several years ago, when Arthur Woods was himself a cub reporter on the New York Sun, a veteran fellow craftsman found him one day sitting rather dejectedly at his desk.

"What's the matter, kid?" the old-timer asked.

The young man remarked that he was hard put to it for copy—he had nothing to write about.

"That's easy," the old reporter advised. "Write a story boosting the fireman or one knocking the cop. Either one always makes a hit."

Not a Criminologist

MR. WOODS is not a scientific criminologist; he cares little for the theories of Lombroso, Nordau, and other fatalists who find the explanation of all abnormal tendencies in the primordial germ-plasm. He does not deny that at one time these notions fascinated him.

"The man who thought he knew more about criminals than any man in history," says Commissioner Woods, "discovered that they had easily ascertained characteristics: they had queer-shaped heads, not too much hair, queer-shaped mouths, ears, noses, twisted teeth, and so on. All this sounded reasonable enough to me, until one day I discovered that I had some of these characteristics myself!"

Mr. Woods' first official act was to establish the friendliest relations with the uniformed force. Up to that time the Commissioner had been a kind of inaccessible Mikado—a son of heaven whom the every-day policeman was seldom expected to see and practically never to approach.

Indeed, the cop usually regarded his chief as an ornamental gentleman whom fortuitous circumstances had nominally placed, for a brief period, at the head of the department. That the Commissioner had anything to do with actually managing police work hardly entered his head; that was the work of the inspectors, captains, and sergeants who had been running the job for years.

Presently, however, a new order went forth: any member of the force, however humble his station, was invited to bring his troubles personally to the chief, who, the new notice read, was easily accessible for interviews. One of the most seasoned captains one day read out his orders to an attentive line of privates.

"Them's the orders that go now," he concluded. "Don't wait around to get other orders whispered in your ear. The ones that are read are the ones we mean."

Days of "Pull" Over

THE new spirit in the force is largely explained by the fact that the days of "pull" are over; that no man is transferred—"sent among the goats" is the police phrase—for doing his duty or for failing to do it. Every New York policeman knows that there is no man powerful enough to influence the Commissioner's daily acts.

One day a distinguished New York citizen called on Mayor Mitchel. He wished pressure brought to bear upon Commissioner Woods to transfer a particular captain to a more congenial precinct. By the oddest circumstance, Mr. Woods dropped into the Mayor's office at the same time.

"Here's the Commissioner himself," said the Mayor, introducing the two men. "Perhaps you can persuade him to transfer your captain; I can't."

Other episodes threw much light on conditions new and old. A few days after entering office the new Commissioner asked about police records. The gentlemen to whom he applied looked blankly at each other. Who would believe that a city of nearly seven million had practically no police records! Yet this was the situation in New York three years ago. Almost no history was kept of complaints, burglaries, accidents, and other incidents that came under the purview of the police.

The story is told of the following interview between one police officer, enthusiastic for reform, and the Commissioner: "What do you do when complaints come in?" asked the new Commissioner.

"Well, it's this way," replied his informant. "I get a message over the telephone that a certain flat has been robbed. ` Here, Bill,' I call out, `take this squeal.' Bill writes down on a slip of paper the number of the place and puts the paper in his pocket. When the paper is worn out the complaint is understood to have been dismissed."

Commissioner Woods decided that this method would not do. He showed a sudden enthusiasm for card catalogues, record books, maps adorned with all kinds of crime and accident indicators, and other agencies for obtaining and retaining information of value to the police.

But Mr. Woods' greatest contribution to metropolitan police control is that he has introduced an entirely new basic idea. The standard for a health department is the low death rate; and, similarly, a low arrest rate—when that rate is combined with an orderly community—is now regarded as the ideal toward which the police department should strive. In other words, Mr. Woods has taken prevention as the watch-word of his department, precisely as that is the watch-word of the public health service. His aim is to catch the criminal, not when he is committing his offense or after he has committed it, but before he gets to it. The true business of the police department, as this Commissioner understands it, is to prevent the development of criminal classes.

This prevention work begins where necessarily the training of good citizens always begins—with the children. The thieves and murderers of every great city inevitably receive their kindergarten training upon the public streets. They must receive their training for good citizenship in the same great forum. Under Mr. Woods' prompting, scores of New York policemen have discovered a hitherto unsuspected talent for public speaking. Police sergeants go into the public schools and other popular gathering places, and talk to the children on all matters pertaining to public order and good citizenship.

The children learn how they can have fun without breaking the law, and are cautioned against the pitfalls that lie lurking for them everywhere. They are encouraged to look upon a uniformed member, not as an enemy, but as a friend, and to run to him when trouble is brewing or attempts are being made to mislead them.

At the same time that the police are seeking to establish the most cordial personal relations with the children, they are busily removing temptation in an even more practical way—and that is by breaking up gangs. Practically all city malefactors are recruited from gangs. The gang-leader is commonly a hero in the tenement districts. Thus the destruction of gangs, and the "putting away" of their leaders, not only relieves the community of dangerous nuisances, but removes or destroys much of the glamour that sometimes leads would-be imitators astray.

Helping Ex-Convicts to Find Jobs

FOR criminals who show a real desire to reform, the Woods administration shows every consideration. In this respect the historic attitude of the police force has changed. The old-fashioned conception that pictures the detective and the cop as remorselessly on the trail of the ex-convict, seeking the first opportunity to run him in again, has given place to one of cooperation. The departmental lecturers regularly visit reformatories, exhorting the young inmates to mend their ways, and promising them, when released on parole, the assistance of the New York police department in leading better lives. Preachers, prison missionaries, and miscellaneous reformers make many appeals of this kind, but they have an unusual force coming from the prisoners' natural enemy—a uniformed police sergeant.

Once released from prison, almost the first visitor the ex-convict has is a member of the New York police department. "What can we do to help you go straight?" is the question asked. The convict's immediate need, of course, is a job.

There are hundreds of ex-convicts in New York to-day working steadily and successfully at jobs that have been obtained by Mr. Woods' force. For these men the overhanging dread that "the police will find me out" is clearly no ever-present terror! It is surely prevention work of the highest kind.

A few months ago Commissioner Woods was married. Representatives of all branches of the police turned out to do him honor. Even a delegation of junior policemen—a company of boys who represent the extension of the Boy Scout movement to the police department—attended the wedding.

The leader of these boys, after presenting the bride with flowers, started to make a carefully prepared speech. The effort, however, proved too much. The young man stammered and coughed, evidently afflicted with a bad case of aphasia. Falling back upon his favorite Jewish vernacular, he finally burst out:

"We wish you success, sir, in your new business!"

Marriage by Capture

By Sophie Kerr

Illustrations by E. L. Crompton

IT was decidedly not the end of a perfect day for Bart Lloyd. First of all, his car had to go to the repair shop and he'd been forced to go out to the Country Club on the trolley—old rattletrap! Then Thompson, with whom he was to go round, telephoned that important personal business had delayed him. Next, every one else had started, and there was no one left but Wallie Bitzer; and golfing with Wallie was about as sporting as tarpon-fishing in a bath-tub. Then, when he opened his locker to get his cherished hat,—an old shapeless soup-bowl of a thing that he had bought in Glasgow and treasured like a pearl,—and couldn't find it, he felt black rage in his heart. He got down on his hands and knees and dug viciously into the mass of stuff lying on the floor of the locker.

It was rather dark down there, and besides one of the pillars hid him. That is why Mrs. Andrews and her visiting friend, Mrs. Harrington, did not see him, and consequently felt free to talk about him. When Bart heard his name mentioned he did just what every other normal human being would do under like circumstances—he stayed perfectly still. And this is what he heard:

"And I said, very frankly, that, though Mr. Lloyd is a nice young man, and of course Mary Emily is not a bud by five years or more, I'd never go to all that trouble to marry off a daughter—no, never."

Mrs. Andrews wheezed as she talked. She was stout, and she had played eighteen holes that afternoon.

"Well, with all the things girls can do nowadays," said Mrs. Harrington, in perfect accord, "I agree with you that mothers needn't worry themselves sick when their girls don't marry. It's just as smart to go into a settlement house, or take up suffrage.

"Of course," went on Mrs. Harrington, "I have only lived in Greenfields a few years, and every one has been very friendly, so it is none of my business to interfere. But I wish some one would just say to Mr. Lloyd that, unless he believes in marriage by capture, he had better not be seen so much with Mary Emily Sammis. Are you ready? Then let's go upstairs and have a cup of tea. I am tired."

Bart Lloyd listened to their retreating footsteps in a welter of helpless anger. So this was what people were saying, was it? And that was why Mary Emily Sammis was wished on him at all the picnics and motor parties and every sort of entertainment where the twosing could be arranged by the hostess. A pretty mess he was in! And old Mrs. Sammis, with her nice gray hair and pleasant, motherly ways-mother-in-lawly ways, he beheld them to be now, and he shuddered!

HE forgot about his lost hat and threw his stuff back into the locker in a hopeless hodge-podge. He locked the door with a vicious thrust of the key, and came upstairs wanting to bite something, yet conscious—oh, bitterly conscious—that if the whole Sammis set in Greenfields were determined to marry him off to Mary Emily, he had small chance of escape.

Ever since he had come to Greenfields—summoned by his Uncle Henry from his commencement at Leland Stanford to go to work in Uncle Henry's successful Sash and Blind Company—he had been an intimate of the Sammis family. He hadn't suspected, poor innocent, that the

Sammis hospitality was only a sort of matrimonial spider-web, luring young men into it by means of dancing and Sunday night suppers and the like!

And he had thought Mary Emily such a splendid sort of girl! So safe! Mary Emily was cheery and even-tempered, with pink and white skin and even teeth, and a live sense of humor. And she got herself up right, too—smart clothes and no paint on her face. In short, she was just the sort of girl to be pals with.

So, musing, he came bing right up against some one, and a friendly hand grabbed him.

"Look out there, Lloyd—trying to run me clown?"

It was Tommy Sammis, Mary Emily's older brother.

"Come on and be real devilish—try a vichy and buttermilk—with two straws!"

"Thanks—no," said Bart in haste. "Not for me. I'm—I'm nearly blind with a headache, Tom—"

"Too bad," sympathized the other. "Don't you want me to run you in town? I've got my roadster here—or say—I know; you go upstairs to one of the bedrooms and lie down, and I'll get some medicine for you. Oh, mother," he called, raising his voice, "come over here a minute. Bart's got a fierce headache. Don't you think he'd better go up and lie down a little and let me get him some headache dope?"

Mrs. Sammis approached.

"Why, of course," she said in her most motherly, solicitous voice. "And I tell you what we'll do, Tom—you can go home with me in the big car, and we'll leave Mary Emily here to bring Bart in later in your roadster—"

Bart looked wildly about him.

"I'll feel better presently," he protested. "Please—please don't bother about me. I can go in on the trolley."

"Nonsense," responded Mrs. Sammis briskly. "You go right on upstairs with him, Tom—he does look ill, poor fellow."

IT was no good to protest, and, accompanied by Tommy, Bart presently found himself tucked up in one of the most comfortable of the club bedrooms, while medicine was administered by a kind and brotherly—oh, how brotherly—hand.

Not until Tom took himself off to drive his mother home in the big car was Bart Lloyd given a chance for solitary meditation on the progress he had made in thwarting the matrimonial plots of Mrs. Sammis. It had been, he was forced to concede, progress backward, and it would only be further retrogression when he had achieved the tête-à-tête drive back into town with Mary Emily.

Bart Lloyd turned his head restlessly on the pillow and groaned—partly mental anguish and partly because of the medicine Tom had poured into him. Could it be that only an hour before he had been a comparatively happy young man, with no troubles save that he had lost his Scotch golf cap and Thompson had not turned up to go round with him? How far away that happy time seemed now!

He rose from his bed and put on the clothing that Tommy had insisted on his removing. He felt better when he was dressed. He reached into his pocket and took therefrom a bit of paper and a pencil, and his methodical mind, trained to the problems of the Sash and Blind Company, prepared to grapple with the situation in hand.

After considerable thought he wrote:

Never speak to Mary Emily again. (Difficult if she's going to take me in town to-night.)

Never go to the Sammis house again. (I'd get left out of everything going, if I did.)

Tell Mrs. Andrews that I am already married. She'd tell everybody. (No; too many people know my family—they'd write to mother and she'd have a fit.)

Or let it be known that there is insanity in the family. (No; Uncle Henry would be sore and probably fire me.)

"Oh, bonehead—why don't I just give it out that I am engaged to somebody far away from here?"

Now, that last seemed a feasible plan, less desperate, and requiring less elaborate fabrication than the others. He got up, seized a brush from the dresser, and gave his hair a vigorous, happy brushing, meanwhile eyeing himself with approbation in the mirror. He saw a well-set-up young chap of twenty-six, with a set of fairly desirable features.

"I think," said Bart aloud, turning away from his reflection, "I'd better be engaged to a blonde—a brown-eyed blonde. I always did like brown-eyed blondes. Mary Emily's eyes are—gray,

---

I think. I'll lay special emphasis on my liking for brown eyes. That might be a good way to begin to break it to Mary Emily. I hope she won't really mind. I dare say not. Any one less moony than Mary Emily I never saw. That's one of the reasons why I like her."

And then he realized, with, a start, that he mustn't like Mary Emily any more. He tucked his bit of paper in his pocket and went downstairs.

Of course, the first people he met were Mrs. Andrews and Mrs. Harrington. They nodded to him—rather pityingly, he thought.

And then who should appear but the recreant Thompson.

"I'm sorry I couldn't make it this afternoon, Bart," ho said; "but the wife had an old maid cousin stopping over for the day, on her way to California, and it was up to little Bill to be the attentive host. Lord, what a day we've had! 'S marvel to me how my wife ever happened to be born in the bunch of prunes that she's got for a family. All I've got to be thankful for is that none of 'em live here."

"What do you bother with 'em for if you don't like 'em?" asked Bart.

Thompson regarded him more with pity than with anger. "Yes, I felt that way too, before I was married," he in grinned. "One of the first duties of matrimony, m' boy, is to keep peace with the in-laws!"

He saw his wife approaching and went to join her. Bart looked after him with the feeling of one who has been snatched back from the brink of a precipice in the nickiest nick of time.

TURNING, Bart went out on the wide veranda of the club-house, and sat down in one of the wicker chairs where he could look out over the green links to the hills below, now veiled in the purple shadows of with evening. Motors were rolling up with people who had come out to dine and dance. A late foursome was toiling up the hill from the eighteenth hole, attended by drooping caddies. Little red candle-shades sprang suddenly alight in the dining-room. Take it all in all, it was a cheerful, leisurely sort of evening.

"And how's the headache now?" asked a charming voice, accompanied by a white linen frock and a sapphire sweater.

He rose precipitously, to behold Mary Emily herself, arch-plotter against his happy bachelordom; and he steeled himself to meet her worst wiles.

Yet, it was impossible to look at Mary Emily Sammis and think of her in the role of a Bernard-Shaw heroine, pursuing and harrying man into matrimony—that is, nearly impossible.

"Oh, my head's all right," he answered courteously but coolly. "Awf'ly good of you to stay and take me back to town."

"Why, I like to," said Mary Emily simply. "What do you think about staying and having dinner here? I just saw Mrs. Thompson, and she asked if we wouldn't join them. D'you feel up to it, or are you too much of an invalid? I don't really care."

Heavens, the girl talked as if she were already married to him! The sooner he produced the story of being already engaged, the better for him. Let's see; she was to be a blonde with brown eyes. He looked sharply at Mary Emily.

"By Jove," he exclaimed, "your eyes are brown.. I never noticed that before. I'll have to change them."

Of course he meant he'd have to change the color of the eyes of his supposititious fiancée; but Mary Emily, naturally, didn't know this. She looked at him hard and shook her head mournfully.

"Poor boy—poor boy!" she said pityingly. "So young—and the home for the feeble-minded yawning before him. What did you have that brought on this headache, Bart?"

"I had," he said, looking a little fussed, "I had—I don't mind telling you—a jolt. Let's have dinner with the Thompsons."

During that dinner he took care to observe Mary Emily as a stranger. Because, of course, Mary Emily was a mighty nice girl, even though she wasn't the one he wanted to be Mrs. Bart Lloyd, and he didn't want to be too harsh about letting her find out that his heart was another's. Therefore he must ascertain just how far her affections were engaged with him, and whether or not it was going to be a dreadful shock to her and possibly blight her life.

It was pretty hard for him to find this out; for,—hough she was her usual sprightly self,—and she certainly was a ripping-looking girl in the candlelight, and why she'd ever picked out a dub like him he couldn't imagine,—she wasn't exactly tender in her attitude toward him. She chaffed him now and then, pretty much the way she did Tommy. He kept staring at her hard—and wondering.

After dinner Mary Emily said she didn't want to stay and dance, because she wasn't dressed for it, so the Thompsons came out on the veranda to see them off. Bill Thompson waved an appreciative thumb at the east, where the midsummer moon was rolling into sight.

"Stage moon." he said, "and handsome young couple leaving the club-house veranda with the best wishes of their friends. Romeo. and Juliet stuff—what?"

"Romeo and Juliet's friends didn't give them any best wishes," said Mary Emily with a very unsentimental giggle. "Hop in, Bart. Don't get romantic, Billy—you're thirty: Pounds overweight for it."

"He is not," called Mrs. Thompson indignantly after the departing roadster. But Bart and Mary Emily did not hear. Bart was asking himself as they turned out on the main road, facing the full radiance of the rising moon, whether he really ought to tell Mary Emily about his engagement in such a sentimental setting. But then the brilliant thought struck him that he might say that it was in the moonlight—just such moonlight as this—that he had become engaged to—curse it, he hadn't given that fictitious blonde a name! Fannie—Agnes—Amy—Eloise—Gladys—well, Gladys—would do. He cleared his throat.

"Mary Emily," he said, "I've—I've got something I want to tell you."

"Hold your hat," said Mary Emily, apparently not hearing. "I'm going to let 'er out."

And that was why he did not get a chance to tell Mary Emily that he couldn't be hers; for Mary Emily certainly did "let 'er out."

Moreover, when she got to her own door she dismissed him with such a very brief and casual good night that to mention the fact that he had recently acquired a blonde fiancée named Gladys, color of eyes unknown, was a hopeless impossibility. Bart betook himself to his own rooms with manifold emotions of sorts. Either Mary Emily suspected that some one had warned him of her and her family's intentions, or else she was endeavoring to be a little more artful about it by this pretended indifference. Ha—that was probably the truth of it! He went to bed moodily, and forgot to wind his watch.

IF he had really known what was running in Mary Emily Sammis' mind, he would have been even more startled than he had been by Mrs. Andrews' overheard speech of the afternoon; for Mary Emily Sammis was a sweet and sensible girl, and she had brothers, so she was not unduly puffed up about her own charms—but she had had some very painful experiences with too impressionable young men.

She had had young men whom she regarded as nice boys, pleasant friends, useful escorts, good pals, and the like, suddenly turn to her and declare their love for her in many and passionate words. She had been obliged to refuse more than one young man who afterward bitterly accused her of leading him on.

Consequently, the next morning she sought her mother with a more than usually serious look in her brown eyes "Mother," she said, "I think Bart Lloyd is coming here too often."

Mrs. Sammis raised her eyebrows. She knew the rest of the story she sighed helplessly.

"I'm so sorry, Mary Emily," she said.

---

"He's such a nice boy—I'm really as fond of him as if he were one of my own sons."

"I like him, too," said Mary Emily, "and I don't want to hurt him. Of course, I don't believe he'd behave the way Sam Raines did—getting down on his knees and crying all over the parlor rugs. He's so—well, such an awfully good sort, that I don't want him to think—you know—even for an instant—that I've encouraged him: I really like him very much. It's a silly, old-fashioned word, but actually I esteem him."

Mrs. Sammis smiled.

"I can see," she said, "that Bart's ease is hopeless if you esteem him. That word is fatal to any warmer feeling. But now the thing is—what are we going to do about it? We can't stop having him here all at once, you know."

"No," said Mary Emily, "because people would think he'd done something or other horrid, and he'd never be asked anywhere."

"I always feel so safe about you when you're with him," lamented Mrs. Sanimis. "Dear me—what a trouble it is to have an attractive daughter!"

"Don't speak disrespectfully to your youngest child," said Mary Emily sternly. "No properly brought up mother does it. But—to go back to Bart—as you say, we can't drop him all at once—and, besides, I'm going to the Hardmans' blackand-white dance with him next Friday—and I can't get out of it now. Oh, I'll tell you what, mother. Here's a scheme: The next time he comes you might hint to him—just casually, you know—that I'm engaged to some one. Let's see—an Easterner—some one I met when I was at Vassar. And then Bart will just sheer off naturally, and probably gravitate to Lily Francis, who's simply crazy about him anyway, and—"

"But, Mary Emily," broke in Mrs. Sammis, "I—I can't possibly be a party to any such deception. I'd feel so—"

"You have it to do," said Mary Emily, with firmness largely engendered by enthusiasm over her invention. "Ask him if I am not looking pale. Now, mummy, you just must. I will not have a nice man like Bart Lloyd coming about and proposing to me."

WITH considerable more argument and some coaching on details, Mrs. Sammis reluctantly consented to do her part. But, as Mary Emily rose to leave the room, her mother called her back:

"What makes you think that Bart's —h'm—declaration is so imminent?"

"The way he acted last night," said Mary Emily. "He wasn't a bit like himself. He kept looking at me in such a queer way; and he was so terribly solemn when Billy Thompson chaffed us; and then, on the way home, when we were speeding along in the moonlight,—and it was simply glorious, mother,—he turned to me and in the strangest, embarrassed way he said, 'There's something I want to say to you'—"

"Yes," said Mrs. Sammis. "That sounds dangerous. What did you do?"

"I pretended not to hear him," said Mary Emily. "And I yelled to him to hold his hat, for I was going to let 'er out. And we came home at forty miles an hour. Oh, dear—why are men so tiresome? I'm really fond of Bart. But marry him—never! Why, he was scared to death last night, just trying to propose."

"You want a cave-man, I suppose," said Mrs. Sammis. "They don't often make good husbands, my dear."

"Now, mother, don't be cynical," chided Mary Emily. "It doesn't go with your figure. Anyway, I'd rather have a cave-man than a—a rabbit."

"Marriage by capture," said Mrs. Sammis, smiling, and unconsciously using the very words that had struck such terror to Bart Lloyd's unsuspecting bosom.

"Something of the kind," said Mary Emily, making an affectionate, disrespectful little face at her mother as she went out of the room.

If "the morning after" brought to Mary Emily an intense desire to spare Bart unhappiness, it brought to Bart a still stronger feeling of his own peril. In the midst of ordering the complicated affairs of the Sash and Blind Company, answering his Uncle Henry's hectoring questions, and trying to plan a suitable escape from marriage, Bart had a busy time.

It struck him like another blow that he was bound to escort Mary Emily to the Hardmans' dance, and, though he sought feverishly for a chance to get away on a business trip, the affairs of the Sash and Blind Company furnished no such pretext. He would go; but in the meantime he would steer clear of the Sammis house as if it harbored bubonic plague.

Uncle Henry, by a chance word, further increased the firmness of this resolution. He looked into his nephew's office and said, grinning a smile that Bart could only compare to a satyr's:

"Going round to the Sammises' again to-night, I suppose. Better hustle up, Bart—Mary Emily is a good-looking girl, and these beaus that hang on too long sometimes get left."

And he went off, chuckling at his gentle hint, while Bart murmured a violent "Old senile idiot!" under his breath. Let the violence of his feeling excuse the redundance of his language.

HE stayed away from the Sammis house religiously until Friday night, though it was really very hard to do so, and half a dozen times a day he found himself starting to obey an impulse to call up Mary Emily and ask if he couldn't come round, or if she wouldn't go to the movies, or for a spin in his car—which had now returned from the repair shop and was tuned to racing pitch. Then he would remember.

The Hardmans had the biggest house in town, and the black-and-white dance was an idea they had imported from the East. The guests were to wear black-and-white, and fancy dress was requested. You can figure to yourself how many Pierrots and Pierrettes, ladies of the harem and gentlemen of the time of Louis Quinze, to say nothing of ballet girls and cowled monks, would be in evidence. Bart, taking the line of least resistance, had procured a Pierrot costume and proceeded to get into it, feeling much more of a fool than he looked.

As for Mary Emily—she, having a more original turn of mind than Bart, had elected to go as a magpie—an up-to-date magpie in a short frock of gauzy tulle, on which black and white marabout was sewn in a design that suggested—if you were not an ornithologist—the feathers of a bird. A little tight cap with a very long pointed vizor simulated the magpie's head and beak.

It was very, very jolly, that black-and-white dance. Every one was masked at first—which is always fun, and makes the dullest girl or man in town a mysterious possibility.

Casting off for a time his depression, Bart proceeded to have an extraordinarily good time. Under the cover of his mask he flirted hilariously with every woman in sight. But when the unmasking took place there was a sudden quenching of his high spirits. He put his mask in his pocket and went moodily off into a far corner of the veranda to enjoy a cigarette and his own society.

It was here that Mrs. Sammis found him. That good lady, resplendent in black brocade, had not been allowed to forget the duty laid out for her by her daughter. Bart's avoidance of the Sammis home all the week had made it impossible for Mrs. Sammis to tell him sooner the news of Mary Emily's sudden engagement. Now, however, seeing him alone, she bore down on him hastily, before he had a chance to escape.

"Oh, Bart!" she exclaimed. "My dear boy—you're the very one I want to see."

The affectionate words roused all of Bart's worst fears. He looked about nervously for aid—but none was forthcoming. He couldn't hurdle over Mrs. Sammis and run for cover. No, he must stay and listen. He had not the slightest doubt of what she was about to tell him—she was going to ask him what his intentions toward Mary Emily were. He knew it. He felt it in every fiber of his shrinking being. Mrs. Sammis did not notice his evident agitation. She sat down beside him.

"You know, of course," she began, "that I'm almost as fond of you as of my own boys, Bart."

"Tha's—tha's—very good of you—" he stammered piteously.

"You've been at our house so much, you've really come to seem like one of the family," went on Mrs. Sammis, "and that's what I want to talk to you about."

Bart leaned weakly against the cushions of the little settee on which they were sitting. He could not reply.

"It's about Mary Emily, Bart," pursued the unconscious Mrs. Sammis. "She's—she's very tender-hearted, you know. She can't bear suffering. She doesn't want to hurt you."

Bart's eyes rolled about; but he could not speak, though he wet his lips and tried. Words refused to come.

"You mustn't misunderstand me," went on Mrs. Sammis, regarding him anxiously. "I only want to do what is best for everybody. I didn't want to speak to you about this. But—but since you seemed to be with Mary Emily so much—" She paused; she didn't find her task agreeable.

Bart closed his eyes. He beheld a mental picture of himself being dragged up the long white beribboned and beflowered church aisle, while waves of Lohengrin rolled over him. He almost smelled the gardema he would wear in his buttonhole.

BUT Mrs. Sammis's voice, still going on, woke him gradually from this terrible trance. "It's only right that you should know—that Mary Emily is engaged—to a—to a—very fine—young man in New York and—"

"What!" said Bart in a wild voice, that to Mrs. Sammis indicated the deadly wound her information had given him. "What! Mary Emily engaged?"

"Yes—yes," said poor Mrs. Sammis. "I—I thought it best you should know. Oh, my gracious, there is Mr. Sammis looking for me—and—do forgive me, Bart—I didn't want to hurt you—and really—you know—I'm very, very fond of you."

She seized her fan and scarf and hurried away.

Once more Bart Lloyd fell back on the cushions of the little settee. He experienced all the feelings of a man who, going out to meet a deadly dueling pistol, had been fired at with a pop-gun. His mind could hardly grasp—and yet, yes, that was what she had said. Mary Emily was engaged. The menace of Mary Emily as a wife was absolutely and positively removed forevermore. His spirits began to rise—to rise and effervesce. And then—suddenly—they subsided a bit.

Who was this fellow who was engaged to Mary Emily? One of those stuck-up Ha'va'd chaps, presumably, who probably carried a yellow cane and wore a wrist-watch and had a little foolish waxed mustache. Bart felt a sudden fierce dislike of this man. Mary Emily was far, far too nice a girl to be wasted on a type like that—a little stage-door Johnny, who very likely drank afternoon tea and read poetry—maybe even wrote it. He must know—he must know at once.

Quite without his own volition, Bart picked himself up from that settee and went to seek Mary Emily. He found her fox-trotting merrily with one of his best friends. Bart reached out a long arm as they went by and disengaged her.

"Run along, Frank," he said to her partner. "I want Mary Emily."

AND just the saying of those words cleared the situation in his own mind. Of course he wanted Mary Emily. What a deep, double-distilled fool he had been to think she had wanted to marry him. How true had been that warning of Uncle Henry's. Here he had been sitting on the side-lines like a big boob, and meanwhile some other chap had carried her off. Carried her off? Not yet! He led Mary Emily masterfully out on to the veranda, down the steps, into the far fastnesses of the Italian garden.

"Whew! This cap's hot!" complained Mary Emily. She reached up her two hands and pulled it off, and the classic shape of her little head leaped magically into view. The sight of it fairly made Bart groan. And then—he dared.

He seized Mary Emily and drew her imperiously to him.

"I won't let you marry any fool Easterner," he stormed. "Do you hear me, Mary Emily? I won't—I can't! I've stood about all I can—I've held off and held off and tried not to be too eager,"— and he thought he was telling the truth,—"but I've got to speak now. Listen, darling little girl—Mary Emily—why, you were made just for me! I can't—I can't let you marry anybody else! You've got to marry me—and right away."

With hurried rough tenderness he pulled her face up to his, and, to her great surprise, Mary Emily liked it. This was not the Bart of earlier days. This was—and she gave a delicious little shiver at the discovery—quite another Bart, a daring, masterful, compelling Bart. She was quite content to be in his arms.

"You know," he went on—you know how mad I am about you! There isn't a girl in the world like you, Mary Emily. Tell me—speak to me—you are not going to marry that—that fellow—are you? No, I won't ask you. I'll make you love me—I'll make you marry me."

The same magic that had turned him from timorous side-stepper of marriage to impetuous wooer was working with Mary Emily. She had not known that Bart was this sort of man, but she liked the new Bart extremely well. She put her head against his shoulder with a little warm, breathless sigh. In the meantime, common sense warned her not to tell Bart that her engagement was a myth.

"Why, Bart," she said, "why, Bart—I do—I do—I—like you."

"I don't want you to like me," he said, holding her closer; "I want you to love me. I want you to be crazy about me—the way I am about you! I want you to marry me."

He paused in his demands to kiss her some more.

After a little they were sufficiently out of their delirium to sit down on a bench and talk.

"I just—I just don't know you at all, Bart," said Mary Emily. "You—you fairly swept me off my feet. You—you're a regular cave-man."

Bart heard her with ecstatic complacency.

"I didn't mean to frighten you, sweetheart," he told her. "But I believe in marriage by capture——that's what some of these writing chaps call it. Well, it suits me."

The Blue Aura

—Continued from page 10

How she longed to invest her lover with noble qualities, to make the adventure worthy of the sort of romance she felt was her due! But Betty and Ivy would not rest until they had seen him, and he, of course, could be relied upon to tell the truth about himself.

So she told most of the truth, giving him as much glamour as she thought he could stand, and dwelling heavily on the fact that he was extremely handsome.

Marriage? Dora tossed her head. She did not know whether she loved him enough to marry him.

"Then," said Betty, "it isn't love at all." Dora was crestfallen. Perhaps it wasn't love; how could she tell?

"Has he asked you to marry him?" questioned big-featured Ivy.

Dora hesitated. It would be humiliating to say that he had not. To hesitate, in this instance, was to be thoroughly well understood.

"I'd be careful if I was you," advised Ivy, who was very worldly-minded.

"I should think I can take care of myself," Dora said resentfully.

"I should think Dora could take care of herself," chirped plump little Betty.

It was a curious feature of their friendship that whenever one of the two ventured to criticize Dora, she was immediately set upon by the other, who rallied to Dora's defense.

"What do you know about it?" said Ivy to Betty, with deep scorn. "You're only a child. Of course Dora can take care of herself. We all of us can, up to a certain point."

"What certain point?" asked Dora. She was thirsty for knowledge.

"When love steps in," Ivy explained.

Her big features had a wistful expression. One does things sometimes—that are foolish."

"And indiscreet," agreed Betty,

It was Ivy's turn, now, to support Dora.

"Dora is the last person in the world to be indiscreet," she snapped.

Betty cut herself half of the attenuated piece of cheese offered for their consumption. She was a perfectly unconscious glutton.

"Well, you said she was foolish," she retorted.

"I didn't."

"You did!"

"Dora, did I?"

"You said that when people were in love they were sometimes foolish," Dora put in.

DORA had told them very little about Turco, and nothing at all about the aura business. They would have fastened on her like leeches if there were any chance of getting their fortunes told.

After lunch she resolutely bade them good-by. She wished to be alone. She knew she would see Tyson again that evening, and she was impelled to make herself more attractive.

She went into a cheap shop off Shaftesbury Avenue, and bought a pair of white gloves, and a scarlet ribbon for her hair. In another shop, where they sold misfit and second-hand theatrical shoes, she discovered a pair of black slippers with red heels for four-and-sixpence.

By this time the sovereign had shrunk considerably. She was appalled to find that there was less than four shillings left. But her room was paid for, and food was never important except when she was hungry.

With these inspiring purchases she returned to her lodgings. Up the stairs she went singing, the spring in her veins, joy in her heart. Mrs. Petrosini met and beamed on her.

"It is a beautiful day, miss."

"Indeed, yes," responded Dora.

"Mr. Tyson, he has a gentleman to tea. He would like you to come at five o'clock, if you are in. I go to buy a cake."

"How nice!" exclaimed Dora.

She glanced at Tyson's closed door. She longed to knock, to speak to him and tell him she would come to his tea-party; but, after all, it was enough that he had invited her. It was getting on for half past three; she would have to hurry.

Dora ran upstairs to her room to get ready. She moved about briskly, humming under her breath, occasionally twirling on her toes.

What had brought joy into her life so suddenly? Was it indeed the love she had confessed to her friends, or was it something less romantic—Turco's gift of the golden sovereign?

Presently she was conscious of a puzzling sound, or a succession of sounds, from the room below. She stopped her singing and toe-twirling, and went softly, pausing to listen every now and again. Dull thuds like blows; the murmur of voices; strange sounds as of bounding and leaping. The reverberations sounded stealthy.

Dora had no watch. She took her time from the clock in the Milano, which she could see by bending down to the windowsill. It was now five, and she must go to the teaparty. A wistful desire to show herself in a domestic role seized her. She gathered. up her work-basket with some silk stockings she was mending.

Still the mysterious sounds kept up. A she went down the stairs, Wondering and a little nervous, she suddenly realized their meaning.

TYSON came to the door in his shirt sleeves and black satin knee-breeches. He was perspiring, and wore no collar. His hair fell negligently over his forehead. His other guest, of course, was Turco, and they had been practising.

Turco had donned no professional costume beyond a pair of gymnast's shoes. He wore the baggy clothes of yesterday, minus his coat, the same red tie and apparently the same wilted collar.

It was a large room,—the best in Mrs. Petrosini's house,—and the furniture, with the exception of a heavy table, had been pushed back against the wall, leaving a cleared space of faded Brussels carpet. The table was plainly a piece of professional furniture belonging to the acrobatic team—as were also a short graduated ladder and a couple of stout chairs.

Dora came in with her charming smile somewhat tempered of its fierceness, the work-basket in the crook of her arm. She felt small and helpless and soft in the presence of this muscular young man.

"Sit there," he said, indicating a safe corner. "We'll go over this trick again before the old woman brings up the tea."

Turco came forward rather shyly from his position in the background. His young partner seemed rather out of breath, but Turco was cool and unhurried. Dora smiled at him. There was a secret bond between them.

Holding the ladder, he screwed up his eyes and blinked—just like a monkey. She could fancy what a mirth-provoking object he would be with very little makeup.

Up the ladder he scampered, balancing it by himself, and perched on the top round, while it swayed perilously. Down, down it would go on one side, while he sat in seeming unconsciousness of his danger, and lit a cigarette with infinite pains and many facial contortions.

Dora laughed, then bit her lip to control a squeak of alarm. Surely this time he would fall.

Tyson swung into the scene at the critical moment. As Turco would have come tumbling down, his partner caught the ladder and raised it aloft with one arm, Turco still at the top.

It was a mighty feat of strength. Tyson held the ladder high over his head, while Turco began to gambol madly on all fours from end to end, as if suddenly awakened to a sense of danger, now that he was more or less safe.

The muscles on the younger man's neck stood out like cords; his bare arms trembled under the fluctuating weight.

How strong he was!

Dora's lips went white; she leaned forward, watching him tensely, her soul in her eyes.

He met her glance, and for a second

---

his massive arm wavered; but it stiffened instantly again at a guttural exclamation from his suspended partner.

Then there was a light thud as Turco leaped to the floor, and it was over.

The blood rushed back into Dora's lips, coloring them profusely. She was excited and curiously content. She had seen the slip, the instant of wavering hesitation when her eyes met those of the young man. The knowledge filled her with a sense of gratified power. Guiltily she bent over her mending-basket as Turco scolded his partner. She was surprised to see Tyson take it so meekly. Turco was plainly the master.

Mrs. Petrosini, entering with the tea, saved the situation.

Instantly they became a merry party. Dora took the head of the table and poured the tea. The two men sat on either side. They ate voraciously. Their work was over for the day.

IT began to grow dusky, and after a while they lit the gas. Dora was encouraged to go up and put on a ballet skirt and slippers. Turco had an idea that she possessed acrobatic talents. She came back, shy and mincing in her old black skirt and worn practice slippers.

Dora was a feather-weight in her lover's arms. He tossed and balanced her lightly. She had a marvelous sense of balance, but she was half afraid.

When it came to dancing, she could demonstrate an art of her own. Turco put her through her paces, watching her singularly virile movements with his critical monkey's eyes, as if he saw something through and beyond her.

She did not know that Tyson had hinted to his partner about incorporating her into their act. She did not know that through the gate of fatalism she had walked into these men's lives, and that both of them realized it. She was merely supremely happy.

There in the pale, insufficient gas-light, their elongated shadows moving grotesquely, the three wore themselves out. Dora was pale with fatigue, but she was wound up, like an over-excited child.

Breathless, Tyson caught her in his arms at the climax of collapse, and held her close while he pressed his lips to hers in an ecstatic kiss. She struggled, ashamed to be embraced before Turco.

The uncouth little man had swung himself upon the table, and sat there with his legs folded under him, watching them.

"Turco doesn't mind. He knows I love you," Tyson said, his handsome face irradiated with a tender smile.

Dora drew herself away and shook out her mane of short hair.

"You shouldn't have kissed me," she pouted.

"But I kissed you last night, and the night before," said the unpleasantly truthful young man, in a tone of hurt astonishment.

"How dare you? How dare you talk about it!" shrieked Dora.

What would Turco think of her—he who had given her gold for her independence?

"Don't you love me?" Tyson asked, with a teasing inflection.

"No; I hate you!" she cried.

"That's not true. Why can't you ever speak the truth? You're a coward," Tyson continued, with a bantering smile.

She moved toward the door with simulated dignity, her short skirts bobbing like the tail-feathers of an angry hen.

Tyson was there before her.

"You're not angry, really? We've had such a jolly time. All because I kissed you? But I love you and you love me. Does it matter if Turco knows?"

Turco turned his head to follow their movements, as if watching them had an uncontrollable fascination for him.

Dora stamped her foot. She felt that she was being made to look silly.

"Let me go—don't talk to me! I am angry—I'm furious!"

Suddenly 'Turco, the squatting idol, spoke:

"His is beautiful—all rosy and quivering with pune love! But hers! How hideous it is! It licks the whole room with its flaming tongues of hate—black and scarlet. God help her, but she is hideous! God pity her because she is so hideous!"

Dora looked at Tyson.

"What does he mean?" she whispered fearfully.

Tyson looked uncomfortable.

"Don't mind him. He gets like that sometimes. He imagines he's looking at our astral bodies."

Dora shuddered. Turco was uncanny.

She did not object when Tyson put an arm about her shoulders. It gave her a sense of protection.

"Did he mean me? Am I black with flaming tongues of hate? Oh!" And she began to sob.

The oracle with his little blinking eyes sat firm, watching her. She felt like a wriggling insect on the point of a pin.

"There, there; you mustn't mind him. Run upstairs and change your dress. It's nearly nine o'clock. We'll go out and have a jolly supper." He followed her into the hall. "Tell me you love me—tell me that I'm going to be all the world to you, as you are to me."

"Yes," she whispered tremulously. "I do love you. It was a lie when I said I hated you. Only, with him there—"

"But Turco knows—he knows everything."

"All the same—I don't want him to know!"

"How ridiculous you are!" Tyson exclaimed, with a chuckling laugh.

DORA was going to be married on a Saturday morning—the last day of April. May was an unlucky month for weddings, and Teddie Tyson thought June too far away.

Ivy and Betty were to be bridesmaids, and Turco was to be the best man.

In a characteristic letter Dora conveyed the news to her mother:

I am going to marry a young gentleman very high up in the theatrical profession, who draws a big salary. He is very handsome. I shall probably act on the halls with him before long. He and his partner are training me. I work hard all day, as well as keeping my place in the revue; but I am leaving that, of course, although the manager is broken-hearted at the thought of losing me.

The gentleman I am going to marry is named Mr. Tyson. I am the only woman he has ever loved. I should like to buy a wedding dress, but thirty shillings a week doesn't go very far.

We are going to be married in St. Giles's, Soho, at eleven o'clock on the 30th of April ; so think of me. Mr. Tyson is giving an early lunch afterwards at the Milano, a very smart restaurant near here. It will be early, because all of them—the girls and my future husband and his partner—have matinees. We are going to the Metropole at Brighton until Monday afternoon for a short honeymoon, as my future husband can not break his important contracts.

To Dora's horror, her mother's response to this inflated letter was an intimation that she intended to be present at the ceremony and give the bride away. She would tell her mistress that a young relative of hers was being married. Still, as Dora knew, her mother was anything but unpresentable, and it might be possible to carry off the illusion so lightly given to Betty and Ivy. As for Tyson, she had long ago confessed most of the truth to him. It was no good lying, when Turco of the gimlet gift of second sight was always about.

A few days after she had heard from her mother, and began to fear that the hint about the wedding dress had been ignored, there came a solicitor's letter containing a twenty-pound note. The solicitor said that his client, Mr. Henry Mayfield, had heard with pleasure that Dora Trelawny was going to be married, and begged to send the inclosed as a small token of his interest. Mr. Mayfield hoped that she would be very happy.

Dora hated the thought of Mr. Henry Mayfield. To Turco she went with her perplexity and the twenty-pound note. She and Turco had become great friends. Should she return the note with a haughty letter saying that she wanted nothing of Mr. Henry Mayfield?

Turco scrutinized it carefully, turning it about in his fingers, and wrinkling his brows, as if he were as perplexed as she.

"You need some money," he said finally. "You want new dresses and a pretty white

---

veil. I couldn't bear to see you anything but beautiful and happy on your wedding-day. But why won't you let me give it to you?"

"Oh, Turco, I can't! You've been so kind already. And Ted wouldn't like it."

"So he would," mused Turco. "Then why not keep this and buy yourself pretty things with it? Whatever gives one innocent joy is good—must be good."

Dora kept the money. She kept it long enough to spend it, as Turco advised.

Instead of practising so much now, she sewed on her wedding dress, and Betty and Ivy came to help her.

A sewing-machine was hired; paper patterns were bought. Betty and Ivy made their own bridesmaids' frocks. The little room at the top of Mrs. Petrosini's house overflowed with the litter of silks and muslins they produced.

Dora's fellow workers at the theater fished for invitations to the wedding. Some of them gave Dora presents, and these she was in honor bound to invite. But Betty and Ivy surrounded her jealously. It was they who conducted the sewing bees, who were on intimate terms with the lovers, and best of all with Mr. Turco, the man who told fortunes.

THERE came the last night that Dora would be with them. The manager—who had been pleasantly relieved when Dora handed in her notice—gave her a present. It was a scarlet leather handbag, lined with white silk, fitted with puff, mirror, and purse. The consumptive-looking girl of dubious prosperity, whom Dora had consistently snubbed, sent an ivory manicure set in a green velvet case. In a burst of tenderness toward all humanity, Dora, at the eleventh hour, also invited her to the wedding.

The stage-hands clubbed together and gave her a silver mustard-pot; the doorkeeper jokingly wished her "many happy returns"; and the low comedian, who heard of the impending event for the first time, sent out for a magnum of champagne in which the ballet should drink her health after the show was over.

Dora was moved and considerably touched by all this kindness. On the stage, when she ought to have been smiling in the accepted ballerina fashion, a sudden access of emotion caused tears to trickle down her cheeks.

Perhaps there was only one person in the crowded house who actually saw the tears. When the performance was over he strolled around to the back to discover, if possible, who she was.

The manager knew him. In his way, he was a man of some importance. He stood in the wings, smoking a cigarette, talking to the manager, his real errand unexplained, while twenty girls divided the comedian's magnum between them and wished Dora good luck.

"That kid's going to be married tomorrow—and a good thing, too," said the manager. "I'll be glad to see the last of her."

The man of some importance made a few casual inquiries. He liked the look of Dora. He learned that St. Giles-in-the-Fields would be the scene of the wedding, and that the manager had instructed the stage-manager to exert full disciplinary measures at to-morrow's matinee.

"She's a ring-leader," he added, "and a perfect little pest."

The man of some importance puffed at his cigarette and regarded Dora thought-fully. She was aware of his interest. In her short white skirts and garlands of pink rosebuds, she looked charming.

She drank her own health, pirouetted on her toes, inclined her head, smiled wickedly, the center of an admiring throng of girls.

"Lights out!" called a bored electrician, suiting action to his words.

Giggling, pushing each other, the twenty herded into the gangway like fluffy sheep, but with considerably more grace. Only a bulb here and there relieved the gloom.

"Lights out," repeated the manager under his breath; then, more audibly: "Were you by any chance going to invite me to supper, Harland?"

"Exactly what was in my mind," replied the other.

In the dewy freshness of dawn, Dora awoke on her wedding morning. Even in crowded Soho there was the charm of the dawn. Belated market carts, piled high with vegetables smelling strongly of the earth, rumbled past on their way to Covent Garden. The sparrows twittered almost like country birds.

Dora leaned out of her window, and chuckled softly when she saw a sleep-rumpled head poked out of the window below. Tyson was smoking a cigarette. It was exciting to think that he couldn't sleep, either.

Dora tiptoed back into the room and soaked her sponge with cold water. Then, leamng out once more, she let him have it. There was a spluttering exclamation, the cigarette was drowned, the water ran over his hair and down the back of his neck. Dora retired with swift discretion.

Tyson was not only going to be married and to set forth on his scant two days' honeymoon, but between the events he had his professional duties. It would be a crowded day.

As for Dora, she was free to enjoy herself without thought of work. And this morning she was not in the least sentimental about leaving the theater.

Before dressing, she smoothed out the bed covers and arranged her glistening wedding finery. There was the gown itself, of silk and muslin and much imitation lace—the splendid joint creation of the three ardent seamstresses. There was the tulle veil in its prim folds, and the wreath of artificial orange blossoms, stiff, waxy, and smelling of the paint on the unnaturally green leaves. There were the soft white kid tango slippers with their long ribbons, and the pristine stockings of artificial silk. The lingerie was threaded with blue for luck. Dora's bag was already packed for the week-end, and her traveling costume hung in the wardrobe. The twenty pounds had gone far.

The bridal bouquet arrived at an early hour. Then Turco came and brought a wonderful scarlet cape—his offering. Dora and Teddie met on the stairs, where they sat for an ecstatic moment with clasped hands and told each other how happy they were. Gay, glad voices from below sent them scampering to their separate rooms. The bridesmaids had arrived.

They brought their finery in suit-cases; for they were not only to dress the bride, but to dress with her.

Laughing and chattering, they hauled the cases up the narrow stairs, banging at the bridegroom's door as they passed.

They opened the suit-cases, and soon the pale blue of the bridesmaids' frocks mingled with the white of the bride's garments. The room was scarcely big enough to hold all three of them, and they got in one another's way. Little things sent them into shrieks of laughter. Dora put on one of her stockings inside out, and had to leave it, because it would have been bad luck to change. That made them laugh.

---

There was something in the manner of her reply that kept them from asking the further questions they would have liked to ask.

She had put off telling them her mother was coming, hoping that at the last moment Edith Trelawny would change her mind, or that the strict mistress would interfere. But no, she had come; she was the one blot on the perfect day.

EDITH TRE LAWNY, clad in neat navy blue serge, with a festive white hat wreathed in roses and a pair of white gloves she had "borrowed" from her mistress, sat at ease in Mrs. Petrosini's one comfortable chair. A certain primness about her rendered it difficult to believe that she was anybody's mother, least of all Dora Trelawny's.

She looked to be about thirty-six, which was the least she could have been; and from whomever Dora had taken fire and diablerie, it was certainly not from her. She had sleek, mouse-colored hair; pale eyes set too near together; and thin, selfish-looking lips. A pair of rimless eye-glasses added to the prim effect of her. With her mouth relaxed and without the eye-glasses, she might have passed for pretty. In fact, it was easy to see that once she had been pretty.

Mrs. Petrosini had been quite impressed with her; but she had not been impressed with the Italian woman, nor with the salotto. Alone, she murmured the word "Onions!" accompanied by a first-class sneer.

The expression still marred her countenance when the door opened and Dora, enveloped in filmy white, entered.

The two women kissed like the strangers they were.

"Well, you are a girl! This is a place! Where is your fiancé? Whatever for did you go and get all that cheap lace? Let me look at you. Dear me, whatever for did you cut your hair short?"

"It was a rainy day and I didn't have anything else to do," snapped Dora.

"You've a tongue in your head, haven't you?" observed Edith sarcastically.

"Where else would I have it?" asked Dora.

"That's a pretty way to talk to me, when I've come all the way from Hillborough to see you married."

"I'm sorry, but you began on me like you always do—criticizing and finding fault. .I—was—so—happy! And now—what's the matter with the lace, anyway? I thought it was pretty."

Dora's lips quivered.

Overhead the bridegroom was dancing a breakdown, and Turco's deep, sweetly melancholy voice could be heard calling to the bridesmaids.

Shadows passed before the windows. The two carriages had come—hired, it must be admitted, from a local undertaker, but none the less festive, for all that. The horses wore wedding favors on their bridles, and the coachmen were also decorated. The whips had bows of white satin ribbon.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Edith Trelawny, in a tone of deep disparagement.

All the children in the neighborhood appeared as if by magic. Windows flew open, and dark-haired women leaned comfortably out, prepared to enjoy the spectacle. The waiters gathered in an interested group in the doorway of the Milano. The white cap of the chef gleamed against the bars of his underground prison.

"Mother—" Dora began awkwardly. "Mother—do you mind if I introduce you as Mrs. Trelawny? I told the girls— that is, I couldn't tell them—"

Her speech stumbled. Neither could she tell Edith.

The older woman flushed a painful, ugly crimson. Her haughty air of superiority deserted her for a moment.

"Of course; I don't mind in the least," she said hurriedly. "But who is to sign the register?"

"Mr. Turco, for one. He knows. And he's fixed it up with the verger to be the other witness," Dora replied: "1 couldn't bear Betty and Ivy to know—and Turco understood that."

So, in the nick of time, Dora got a little of her own back, although no malice was in her mind. It was as she said—that she could not bear the girls to know. She had lied to them to set herself right with the world. It was no fault of hers that she had not been born honestly, nor so highly as she had pretended.

Some one knocked at the door, and then Dora forgot the shadows that threatened to cloud her happiness. The smiling, ugly face of Turco appeared. In addition to the clean collar and new necktie, he was wonderfully furbished up. His baggy trousers almost had creases, showing the will if not the actual accomplished deed. He wore a boutonniere of lilies-of-the-valley, grotesquely large, and a pair of white gloves. His boots were overlaid with a lustrous black polish, through which their original tan hue gleamed fitfully.

Following him came the bridegroom, modishly correct in every detail, and as handsome as the heart of Dora could wish. Here indeed was something to which her critical mother could not take exception.

If Edith was not impressed, at least she had the grace to keep it to herself. Perhaps Dora's request had thrown her off her balance and made her less sure of her own position.

In the hall Betty and Ivy, in their pale blue muslins, waited with interested, serious faces; and behind them was Mrs. Petrosini, with the angelic child clinging to her skirts.

Dora presented her parent hurriedly.

"This is my mother," she said.

After all, she could not bring herself to say "Mrs. Trelawny." It was the last lie, and she could not tell it—principally because Turco was looking on. Once Turco had described to her the astral thought-form of a lie, and she did not care to give psychic birth to such a thing on her wedding-day.

The party filed out and got into the carriages. Turco and the bridesmaids occupied one; the bride, bridegroom, and Edith Trelawny followed in the other.

SO Dora drove off to her wedding.

As the coachmen flourished their beribboned whips, and the black horses, missing the accustomed funereal plumes, tossed their heads lightly, the sun came out, thin and watery, as if tinged with the pale acid of lemons.

The children in the street raised a feeble cheer; the dark-haired women exchanged remarks and withdrew from their windows; the group of waiters dispersed; and the chef's cap disappeared from the underground grating.

To be continued next week

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

MEASURING THE SNOW CROP

IF snow will form in snow-balls, it is dense and full of water; if it will not, it is not of so much value to the dry farmer of the West.

The snow survey is a recent scientific development, to benefit farmers who depend on irrigation, and it is carried out by the government in the mountain regions of the West, where snow water is the chief liquid refreshment for crops.

The survey is accomplished by fast ski runners, who measure the density of the snow by weighing samples, and the depth by measurement. A close estimate of the amount of water that will come down in the spring is thus made, and water companies. and farmers benefit accordingly.

If much water will be available, crops needing it can be planted; and the companies will have excess moisture to sell to farms not able to get it ordinarily.

NUTS FOR BUTTONS

THE present prosperity of Esmeraldas, in South America, is entirely dependent on nuts which are as hard as bone, and as impossible to digest as a piece of chromium steel. These tagua-nuts are called ivory-nuts in America, and it is from them that most of the buttons we use are made. George Frederick Kunz, in his new book on Ivory and the Elephant (Doubleday, Page & Company), devotes a chapter to imitation ivory, of which a large proportion of the ivory articles in your possession is probably composed.

The ivory-nut, when shelled, looks like a Brazil nut, except that it is larger, and when it has been through the drying process at the button factory it looks like ivory and is just as hard. Large articles can not be made from the nuts, because they are too small; yet a million and a half dollars' worth of them was imported into the United States last year. Esmeraldas exported thirteen and a half million pounds of tagua-nuts.

Natives can earn about sixty dollars a season gathering ivory-nuts. They procure an outfit from the exporting company, and, thus equipped, with an ax, a machete, a gun, and ammumtion, some lard and beans, with perhaps a little rice, they set forth for the year's work. The journey up the Peruvian, Colombian, or Ecuador river takes from three to six days. In the land of the tagua they build a palm shelter and gather the big husks.

Two men can collect about ten tons of nuts in the season, and these are transported to the port on a raft which is built on the spot from balsa wood. Balsa is from the cork tree—the lightest wood known.

Imitation ivory in larger pieces is made from rubber that has been treated with chloroform. After going through a long manufacturing process it comes out in slab form, and can then be worked in a lathe. Still another substitute is made from milk; but this has not been produced on a commercial scale. The chemists are still trying to find a very cheap imitation ivory that will serve all the purposes of the real material.; because it is feared that the present wholesale slaughter of elephants will soon make ivory a curiosity instead of a commodity.

To distinguish vegetable ivory from the genuine material, allow the doubtful article to soak for fifteen minutes in a little concentrated sulphuric acid. If it is a product of the ivory-nut it will become rose-tinted. Real ivory is untouched by the acid. The tint can be washed off with water.

NO BOMBS IN THESE MOVIES

ADMISSION is free in the bomb-proof motion-picture theater which the Germans have erected behind their lines in France for soldiers. This photograph was brought over, uncensored by the British, in the cargo submarine Deutschland. It requires a large number of men to keep the theater going, because operators, janitors, and express messengers must be kept on the jump to keep the program varied.

The officers have found that the relaxation provided through the films is of inestimable value in maintaining the morale of the troops. The theater runs night and day with the latest comedies and dramas, interspersed with what news pictures can be obtained.