How Do Good Salesmen Find Prospects?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

A NEW subscription book canvasser was sent out to make the final clean-up in a city district that had been pretty well combed by other salesmen. The sales-manager thought he might find a few more customers there. In a month he sold more books than anybody else who had worked the territory, and the way he did it was this:

The books were of a solid, educational nature—history, travels, popular science. In The farmers' the middle of a block he would souvenir for information find a little downstairs carpenter shop, or up an alley hear the hammering of a blacksmith. The stairs were rickety, the alley full of teams.

He figured that salesmen had passed the carpenter and blacksmith by because they were not easy to get at, and were unpromising in appearance. He was right. Also, he figured that carpenters, blacksmiths, and workers generally may be better readers and thinkers than so-called bookish folk, or that they might want good books for their children. Right again! And that was where he made most of his sales—among the people that the other fellows had overlooked.

Finding good prospective customers is half the art of selling. Not every salesman is resourceful at it. It calls for a certain curiosity about people, and imagination in following their habits, and fitting one's goods to them in new ways, and searching among overlooked groups of the population, finding people who are obviously customers, and establishing lines of approach to them.

Several automobile salesmen sat reading the morning paper before starting the day's work. Most of them read idly, to get the gossip of the town. But one read with a note-book, jotting down sales information, making even the town gossip help him earn a living.

The Chamber of Commerce has just landed a new industry. The salesman makes a note to call at that concern's local office and get the names of officials who will soon be moving in.

Mrs. Bagster, that ambitious young matron, delivered a talk on town planning last week before a gathering at Washington. Note: When again approaching her on the subject of a new car, talk town planning.

The Continental Company has declared an extra dividend. This suggests seeing Percival to-day—he has been considering a purchase, and this money out of the sky may bring him to a decision.

The engagements, weddings, birthdays, and anniversaries all suggest possible customers, and the town gossip gives points upon which to make connections with people.

With a note-book like that, a salesman can lay out his day's work in a way to get results. Without it he may be virtually calling on people at random, asking, "You don't want a new automobile to-day, do you?"

It is one thing to keep track of all the prospects for a given kind of sales, and quite another thing to develop future customers by broad educational methods.

A large concern that manufactures cream separators has three sales agents in different States, whose respective methods illustrate three different ideas about prospective customers.

The first agent is an elderly fellow in an old dairy section where every farmer keeps cows. So every farmer for miles around is a fairly good prospect for a separator. But this agent makes little effort to find out which farmers have old, leaky, wasteful machines, or how much is being lost by bad methods in handling milk. His sales imagination never turns on the people in the country roundabout. He waits for the farmers to come in and buy new machines. Still, he does a good business, just because dairying is so well established there.

The second agent is in a section where only one farmer in three keeps cows. He has to hustle for business. There is a growing interest in dairying, however, and he set his imagination to work on the problem of locating possible customers. He mailed cards to every farmer in the county, asking him to tell how many cows he kept, the amount of his milk and cream production, the make of separator used, its age, and so forth. Every man who filled out this card and sent it in received a useful tool as a souvenir.

Returns from the cards were good, and later the agent got still more information by offering a souvenir to farmers' wives where it had not been forthcoming. When three quarters of the farmers who kept cows had supplied information, it was easy for the agent to see who might be losing money through an inefficient, worn- out machine, and every time he drove out into the country for a day's sales work he followed a definite route planned from his information cards.

The third agent is a woman. She took over the separator business when her husband died. She is located in a state so far south that dairying is still an infant industry, with possible customers few and scattered. But she had a long-range imagination, and was willing to work for the future. Whenever she heard of a farmers' meeting, she drove over to the place and gave an educational talk about the profit in dairy cows. Many farmers were willing to go into dairying, but could not get their cream to market. She helped to organize gathering service. She stirred up the State experiment station, attended all the local fairs and gave separator demonstrations, interested the bankers in financing the purchase of cows.

Her job of finding good customers was a long one, extending over several years; but when results materialized she had the bulk of the separater business in that section, because she had created the demand by preaching the basic gospel behind the separator.

Fifty Boys from One College Working in a Ship-Yard

THEY asked the government what they could do to help, and were directed to a ship-yard, where they are calking wooden ships.

Perhaps you can find work in a ship-yard.

If not, you can at least raise something to eat this summer.

Every man, woman, and child who either grows food or helps to build boats is helping to win this war.

Does Your Respect for Folks Grow Greater or Less as You Go Along?

I HAVE made no change in the following letter except to erase the writer's name. Read it all the way through:

It is not an easy thing to put into writing an experience that lies as close to one's heart as this one does to mine. But if its fortunate outcome will bring cheer to some other similarly situated, I shall be glad that I wrote to you about it.

Two winters ago my doctor broke the news to me that I was tubercular. One lung and both kidneys were affected. I had to give up my position at once and put myself absolutely under the doctor's care.

I was engaged to be married at the time. My doctor told me that marriage was out of the question. I decided to disregard his advice on this point, feeling that I could never give up the man I loved. My fiancé felt the same way. He wanted more than ever to be my helpmate, and urged me not to obey the doctor in this one matter.

We consoled ourselves—a bitter consolation—with the thought that perhaps we would never have any children. Even if we had, they would not necessarily inherit tuberculosis.

Then, as I lay thinking, there came to me this thought: Suppose that I should have a baby after all, and that some day that child should be told, "You have tuberculosis." Not for anything in the world would I want a child of mine to go through that first terrible agony of despair that I had gone through.

The next day I told my fiancé my decision. Oh, it was hard, Mr. Barton. We separated. We have not seen each other since. I dare not trust the strength of my will too far.

Of course I thought of death, the speedier the better. I contemplated every method of suicide, from sitting on the third rail to breakfasting on bichloride. But with returning spring there came the renewed desire for life.

I followed the doctor's instructions to the letter—milk and eggs, fresh air and sunshine, and absolute rest. By the end of the year my lung was entirely cured. The kidneys were better, but they could probably never be entirely well.

Through the efforts of a friend I obtained a half-time position in a hospital, which leaves my afternoons free for the rest that I still must take. So for the present I am self-supporting, obtain free medical treatment, and am slowly but surely regaining health.

Best of all, I am cheerful; I am happy in my work, which is largely among children. And I am full of plans for the future.

Some day, if God is willing, I am going to have a bungalow in the country—a bungalow that has a flower garden in front of it and a vegetable garden in back. And then I am going to adopt a baby. Not a hundred per cent. better baby, but a little tubercular girl, Mr. Barton, and give her a fair chance in life, even as has been given me.

What feelings are stirred up in you by that letter?

Merely a momentary irritation that a stranger should .waste your time in telling you her troubles?

Or does it start you to thinking how much of patience and fidelity and quiet heroism is hidden away under every commonplace life?

There is a verse in the Bible that reads: "What is man, ;that thou art mindful of him?"

Some people read that verse to mean: "What can you see in a poor creature like man, that should make you pay any attention to him?"

And others read: "What a wonderful thing is man, that even God Himself likes to visit and talk to him."

Which interpretation is yours?

As you grow older, do you find yourself becoming less patient with your fellow men and women, more critical of their faults, more cynical about their goodness, more inclined to see them as only a higher form of animal, living a meaningless life, dying a cowardly death?

Or do you marvel more and more at the patience with which they bear their burdens, the unfaltering faith that Makes them continue to hope for the best, even after a life-time of disappointments; the unshaken fidelity that fixes their eyes on a heaven out of which has issued so little pleasure mingled with so much of suffering?

I have sometimes thought that one measure of success is a man's increasing power to find cause for reverence in the lives of his fellow men.

Judged by that standard, have you passed the peak of your success, or are you climbing toward it year by year?

Bruce Barton. Editor.

THE ABANDONED ROOM

By WADSWORTH CAMP

Illustrations by Robert McCaig

THE night of his grandfather's mysterious death at the Cedars, Bobby Blackburn was, until midnight, in New York. He was held there by the bad habits and companionships that had angered his grandfather to the point of threatening a disciplinary change in his will. As a consequence, Bobby drifted into that strange adventure which later was to surround him with dark shadows and overwhelming doubts.

Meantime his cousin, Katherine Perrine, was at the Cedars, where for some time she had lived alone, except for the servants, with old Silas Blackburn. At twenty she was too young, too lighthearted for this sort of life; but she had persisted in it, partly, perhaps, to make up for Bobby's shortcomings. She had, indeed, never been in harmony with the moldy house or its bleak, deserted, and unfriendly surroundings.

Bobby and she had frequently urged the old man to give it up. He had always answered angrily that his ancestors had lived there since before the Revolution, and that what had been good enough for them was good enough for him. So, on that night when death stalked through the Cedars, Katherine had to meet it alone. This was her account of those hours which were to bring such terror and misery in their train.

For several days, she said, the old man had behaved oddly, as if he were afraid. That night he ate practically no dinner. He wandered from room to room, his tired eyes apparently seeking something. Several times she spoke to him:

"What is the matter, uncle? What worries you?"

He grumbled unintelligibly or failed to answer at all.

At last she went into the library and tried to read. But the late fall wind swirled mournfully about the house and beat down the chimney, and the fire cast disturbing shadows across the walls. Her loneliness and nervousness grew sharper. The restless, shuffling footsteps of old Silas Blackburn fretted her imagination. She was tempted to ring for Jenkins, the butler, to share her vigil; or for one of the two women servants, now far at the back of the house.

"Bobby," she said to herself, "will have to come out here to-morrow. I can't stand it any longer alone."

But Silas Blackburn shuffled in just then, and she felt a trifle ashamed as she studied him, standing with his back to the fire, glaring around the room, fumbling in his pocket, with hands that shook, for his pipe and some loose tobacco.

His fingers trembled so that he could hardly light his pipe. His heavy brows, gray like his beard, contracted in a perpetual frown. His voice quavered unexpectedly when he spoke of his nephew:

"Bobby! Damned waster! God knows what he'll do next."

"He's young, Uncle Silas."

He brushed aside her customary defense. As he continued speaking she noticed that his stooped shoulders kept jerking spasmodically.

"I ordered Mr. Robert to be here tonight. Not a word from him. I'd made up my mind, anyway. My lawyer's coming in the morning. My money goes to the Bedford Foundation—all except a little annuity for you, Katy. It's hard on you, but I've got no faith left in my flesh and blood."

His voice choked sentimentally; in view of his ruthless nature, his unbending egotism, there was something repulsive in the self-pity it betrayed.

"It's sad, Katy, to grow old with nobody caring for you except to covet your money."

She arose and went close to him. He drew back, startled.

"You're not fair, uncle."

With an unexpected movement, nearly savage, he pushed her aside and started for the door.

"Uncle!" she cried. "Tell me! You must tell me! What are you afraid of?"

He halted at the door; but he failed to answer.

"It—it's not Bobby you're afraid of?"

"You and Bobby," he muttered, "are thicker than thieves."

She shook her head.

"Bobby and I," she said wistfully, "aren't very good friends, largely because of this life he's leading."

He went out of the room, mumbling incoherently.

KATHERINE resumed her vigil, unable to read because of her misgivings, staring at the fire, starting at a harsher gust of wind or any unaccustomed sound. And for a long time she heard the shuffling, searching tread of her uncle. Its cessation about eleven o'clock increased her uneasiness. What was he so afraid of?

A morbid desire to satisfy herself that his fear had not been justified drove her at last upstairs. She stood in the square main hall at the head of the staircase, listening. Her uncle's bedroom door was straight ahead. To her right and left narrow corridors led to the wings. Her room and Bobby's and a spare room were in the right-hand wing. The opposite corridor was seldom used, for the left-hand wing was the oldest part of the house, and in the march of years too many evil legends had gathered about it.

THE large bedroom was there, with its private hall beyond, and a narrow, inclosed staircase descending to the library. Originally it had been the custom for the head of the family to use that room. But for many years no one had slept in it, because it had sheltered too much suffering—because so many Blackburns had died there.

Katherine's anxiety centered, not on the ghostly chamber down the corridor, but on her uncle's door ahead. She was about to call out, when a stirring, in the room momentarily reassured her.

The door opened and her uncle stepped out. He wore an untidy dressing-gown. His hair was disordered. His face appeared grayer and more haggard than it had before. A lighted candle shook in his right hand.

"What are you doing up here, Katy?" he quavered.

His appearance frightened her. She broke down and began to cry.

"What are you crying for, Katy?"

"I'm afraid because you are," she answered. "You've got to tell me what it is. I'm all alone. I can't stand it! What are you afraid of?"

He didn't answer. He shuffled on toward the disused wing. Her hand tightened on the banister.

"Where are you going?" she whispered.

"I am going to the old bedroom."

"Why? Why?" she asked hysterically. "You can't sleep there. The bed isn't even made."

He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper:

"Don't you mention I've gone there. If you want to know, I am afraid. I'm afraid to sleep in my own room any longer."

"Then why don't you send for some one—a man?"

"Leave me alone," he mumbled. "Nothing for you to be worried about, except Bobby."

"Yes, there is!" she cried. "Yes, there is!"

He paid no attention to her fright. He entered the corridor. She heard him shuffling between its narrow walls, and saw his candle disappear inside.

She ran to her own room and locked the door. Then she hurried to the window and leaned out, her body shaking, her teeth chattering as if from a sudden chill. She could almost hear the quiet, assured tread of approaching disaster.

The two wings, stretching at right angles from the main building, formed a narrow court. Clouds harrying the moon failed quite to destroy its power, so that she could see across the court the facade of the old wing and the two windows of the old bed-chamber, through whose curtains a spectral glow was diffused. She heard one of the windows opened with a grating noise. The court was like a sounding-board. It carried to her even the shuffling of the old man's feet as he approached the bed. Then the glow that had come from his candle vanished. She heard a rustling as if he had stretched himself on the bed, a sound like a long-drawn sigh.

She tried to tell herself there was no danger in her uncle's sleeping in that room if he chose; that his peculiar behavior sprang from the eccentricity of age. But the house, her surroundings, her loneliness, contradicted her. To her over-acute senses the thought of Silas Blackburn in that room, so often consecrated to death, was full of a vague and unaccountable menace.

SHE slept for only a little while. Then she lay awake, listening with a curious sense of expectancy. The moon had ceased struggling. The wind cried. The baying of a dog echoed mournfully from a great distance.

Suddenly she sat upright. She sprang from her bed, and, her heart beating insufferably, felt her way to the window. From the wing opposite had come a soft, shrouded, falling sound, another long- drawn sigh.

She tried to call across the court. At first no response came from her tight throat. When it did at last, her voice was unfamiliar in her own ears.

"Uncle!"

The wind mocked her.

"It is nothing," she told herself—"nothing."

But her vigil had been too long, her loneliness too complete. The strong pre-

---

monition of disaster, tightened its hold. She must assure herself that Silas Blackburn slept untroubled.

As she put on her slippers and her dressing-gown, she strengthened her courage. There was a bell-rope in the upper hall. She could ring for Jenkins.

WHEN she stood in the main hall, she hesitated. It would probably be a long time, if he heard at all, before Jenkins could answer her. Her candle outlined the entrance to the musty corridor. Just a few running steps down there, a quick rap at the door, and perhaps in an instant her uncle's voice, and the blessed power to return to her room and sleep!

She called on her pride to let her accomplish that brief, abhorrent journey. With a passionate determination, she entered the corridor, ran its length, and knocked at the locked door of the old bedroom. She shrank as the echoes rattled from the dingy walls, where her candle cast strange reflections. There was no other answer. For a moment she had a sense of an intolerable companionship; it made her want to cry out for brilliant light, for help. She did scream:

"Uncle Silas! Uncle Silas!"

Then, through the silence that crushed her voice, she became somehow aware that death had accomplished its mission in this house. She fled into the main hall. She jerked at the bell-rope. The contact steadied her, stimulated her to reason. One slender hope remained. Silas Blackburn might have left the bedroom and gone through the private hall and down the inclosed staircase. Perhaps he slept on the lounge in the library.

She stumbled down, hoping to meet Jenkins. She crossed the hall and the dining-room, and entered the library. She bent over the lounge. It was empty. Her candle was reflected in the face of the clock on the mantel. Its hands pointed to half past two.

She pulled at the bell-cord by the fireplace. Why didn't Jenkins come? It seemed to her impossible that she should wait another instant alone.

The butler, as old and as gray as Silas Blackburn, faltered in. He started back when he saw her.

"My God, Miss Katherine! What's the matter? You look like death."

"There's death," she said.

She indicated the door of the inclosed staircase. She led the way up with the candle. The paneled, narrow hall was empty. That door, too, was locked, and the key, she knew, must be on the inside.

"Who—who is it?" Jenkins asked. "Who would be in that room? Has Mr. Bobby come back?"

She descended to the library before answering. She put down the candle, and spread her hands.

"It's happened, Jenkins—whatever he feared."

"Not Mr. Silas?"

"We'll have to break in," she said, with a shiver. "Get a hammer, a chisel, whatever is necessary."

"But if there's anything wrong," the butler objected, "if anybody's been there, the other door must be open."

She shook her head. Those two first of all faced that extraordinary puzzle: If Silas Blackburn had not died a natural death, how had the murderer entered and left the room with both doors locked on the inside, with the windows too high for use?

"We have got to know," she whispered, "what's happened beyond those locked doors."

Jenkins got a chisel, and they went up the main staircase, and down the corridor to the door which Silas Blackburn had entered so strangely. Jenkins inserted the chisel with maladroit hands. He forced back the lock, and opened the door. Dust arose from the long-disused room, flecking the yellow candle-flame. They hesitated on the threshold, forced themselves to enter. Then they looked at each other and smiled with relief; for Silas Blackburn, in his dressing-gown, lay on the bed, his placid, unmarked face upturned, as if sleeping.

"Why, miss," Jenkins gasped, "he's all right."

Almost with confidence, Katherine walked to the bed.

"Uncle Silas—" she began, and touched his hand.

She drew back until she reached the wall. Jenkins must have read everything in her face, for he whimpered:

"But he looks all right. He can't be—"

"Cold already! If I hadn't touched—"

The horror of the thing descended upon her, stifling thought. Mechanically she left the room and told Jenkins what to do. After he had telephoned police headquarters at the county seat and had summoned Dr. Groom, a country physician, she sat without words, huddled over the library fire.

THE detective, a competent man named Howells, and Dr. Groom arrived at about the same time. The detective made Katherine accompany them upstairs while he questioned her. In the absence of the coroner he wouldn't let the doctor touch the body.

"I must repair this lock," he said, "the first thing, so nothing can be disturbed."

Dr. Groom, a grim and dark man, had grown silent on entering the. room. For a long time he stared at the body in the candle-light.

"Why did he ever come here to sleep?" he asked in his rumbling bass voice. "Nasty room! Unhealthy room! Ten to one, you're a formality, policeman. Coroner's a formality."

He sneered a little.

"I dare say he died what the hardheaded world will call a natural death. Wonder what the coroner'll say."

The detective didn't answer. He shot rapid, uneasy glances about the room, in which a single candle burned. After a time he said, with an accent of complete conviction:

"That man was murdered."

This was the story that Katherine recited to Bobby when, under extraordinary conditions that neither of them could have foreseen, he arrived at the Cedars many hours later.

OF the earlier portion of the night of his grandfather's death Bobby retained a minute recollection. The remainder was like a dim, appalling nightmare.

When he went to his apartment to dress for dinner that evening, he found the letter of which Silas Blackburn had spoken to Katherine. It mentioned the change in the will as an approaching fact that nothing could alter. Bobby fancied that the old man merely wanted the satisfaction of terrorizing him, of casting him out with all the ugly words at his command. Still, something more than a million isn't to be relinquished lightly.

Bobby had an engagement for dinner. He decided that he would think the situation over until after dinner; then perhaps he would set out for the Cedars.

It was, perhaps, unfortunate that at his club he met friends who drew him in a corner and offered him too many cocktails. As he drank, he asked himself why in the last few months he had avoided the Cedars, why he had drifted into too vivid a life in New York. It increased his anger that he hesitated to give himself a frank answer. He knew in his heart that it was because he had cared too much for Katherine, and because lately, beyond question, the bond of their affection had weakened.

He raised his glass and drank. He set the glass down quickly, as if he would have liked to hide it. A big man, clear-eyed and handsome, walked into the room and came straight to the little group in the corner. Bobby tried to carry it off:

"'Lo, Hartley, old preacher. You fellows all know Hartley Graham? Sit down. We're going to have a little cocktail."

Graham looked at the glasses, shaking his head.

---

"If you've time, Bobby, I'd like a word with you."

"No preaching," Bobby bargained. "It isn't Sunday."

Graham laughed pleasantly. "It's about money. That talks any day."

BOBBY edged a way out, and followed Graham to an unoccupied room. There the big man turned on him.

"See here, Bobby! When are you going out to the Cedars?"

Bobby flushed.

"You're a dear friend, Hartley, and I've always loved you, but I'm in no mood for preaching to-night. Besides, I've got my own life to lead."

He glanced, away.

"My own reasons for leading it."

"I'm not going to preach," Graham answered seriously, "although it's obvious you're raising the devil with your own life. I wanted to tell you that I've had a note from Katherine to-day. She says your grandfather's threats are taking form; that the new will's bound to come unless you do something. She cares too much for you, Bobby, to see you throw everything away. She's asked me to persuade you to go out."

"Why didn't she write to me?"

"You haven't been very friendly with Katherine lately, have you? And that's not fair. You're both without parents. You owe Katherine something on that account."

Bobby didn't answer, because it was clear that, while Katherine's affection for him had weakened, her friendship for Graham had grown too rapidly. Looking at the other, he didn't wonder.

"There's another thing," Graham was saying. "The gloomy old Cedars has got on Katherine's nerves, and she says there's been a change in the old man in .the last few days—wanders around as if he was afraid of something."

Bobby laughed outright.

"Him afraid of something! It's always been his system to make everybody and everything afraid of him. But you're right about Katherine. We have always depended on each other. I think I'll go out after dinner."

"Then come have a bite with me," Graham urged. "I'll see you off afterwards. If you catch the eight-thirty you ought to be out there before half past ten."

Bobby shook his head.

"An engagement for dinner, Hartley. I'm expecting Carlos Paredes to pick me up here any minute."

Graham's disapproval was belligerent.

"Why in the name of heaven, Bobby, do you run around with that Panamanian? Steer him off to-night. I've argued with you before. It's unpleasant, I know; but the man carries every mark of crookedness."

"Easy with my friends, Hartley. You don't understand Carlos. He's good fun when you know him—awfully good fun."

"So," Graham said, "is this sort of thing—too many cocktails, too much wine. Paredes has the same pleasant, dangerous quality."

A club servant entered.

"In the reception-room, Mr. Blackburn."

Bobby took the card, tore it into little bits, and dropped them one by one into the waste-paper basket.

"Tell him I'll be right out."

He turned to Graham.

"Sorry you don't like my play-mates. I'll probably run out, after dinner, and let the old man terrorize me as a cure for his own fear. Pleasant prospect! So long."

Graham caught at his arm.

"I'm sorry. Can't we forget to-night that we disagree about Paredes? Let me dine with you."

Bobby's laugh was uncomfortable.

"Come on, if you wish, and be my guardian angel."

He walked across the hall and into the reception-room. The light was not brilliant there. One or two men sat reading newspapers about a green-shaded lamp on tile center table. Bobby didn't see Paredes at first. Then from the obscurity of a corner a tall, graceful form emerged with a manner that suggested stealth.

The man's dark, somber eyes were inscrutable. His jet-black hair, parted in the middle, and his carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard, gave him an air of distinction—an air, at the same time, a trifle too reserved. For a moment, as the green light stained his face unhealthily, Bobby could understand Graham's aversion. He brushed the impression aside.

"Glad you've come, Carlos."

The smile of greeting vanished abruptly from Paredes' face. He looked with steady eyes beyond Bobby's shoulder. Bobby turned. Graham stood on the threshold, his disapproval a little too frank. But the two men shook hands.

"I'd an idea, until I saw Bobby, " Graham said, "that you'd gone back to Panama."

Paredes yawned.

"Each year I spend more time in New York. Business suggests it; pleasure demands it."

His voice was deep and musical; but Bobby had often remarked that it, like Paredes' eyes, was too reserved.

"Hartley," Bobby explained, "is dining with us."

Paredes betrayed no sign of displeasure. Graham added:

"Bobby and I have an engagement immediately after dinner."

"An engagement after dinner! I didn't understand—"

"Let's think of dinner first," Bobby said; "we can talk about engagements afterward. Perhaps you'll have a cocktail here while we decide where we're going."

"The apératif I should like very much," Paredes said. "About dinner there is nothing to decide. I have arranged everything. There's a table waiting in the Fountain Room at the C——, and there I have planned a little surprise for you."

He wouldn't explain further. While they drank their cocktails Bobby watched Graham's disapproval grow. The man glanced continuously at his watch. In the restaurant, when Paredes left them to produce his surprise, Graham appraised with a frown the voluble people who moved intricately through the hall.

"I'm afraid Paredes has planned a thorough evening," he said, "for which he'll want you to pay. Don't be angry, Bobby. The situation is serious. You must go to the Cedars to-night. Do you understand? You must go—in spite of Paredes, in spite of everything."

"Peace until train-time," Bobby demanded.

He caught his breath.

"There they are. Carlos has kept his word. See her, Hartley? She's glorious."

A YOUNG woman accompanied the Panamanian as he came back through the hall. She appeared more foreign than her guide—the Spanish of Spain rather than that of South America. Her costume was as unusual and striking as her beauty; yet one felt that neither accounted fully for the manner in which all the glances in this room were drawn to her.

Paredes had introduced her to Bobby a month or more ago. Bobby had seen her a number of times since, in her dressing-room at the theater where she was featured, or at crowded luncheons in her apartment. At such moments she had managed to be exceptionally nice to him.

"Paredes," Graham muttered, "will have a powerful ally. You won't fail me, Bobby? You will go?"

Bobby scarcely heard. He hurried forward and welcomed the woman. She tapped his arm with her fan.

"Leetle Bobby!" she lisped. "I haven't seen very much of you lately. So when Carlos proposed— You see, I don't dance until late. Who is that behind you? Mr. Graham, is it not? He would, maybe, not remember me. I danced at a dinner where you were one night, at Mr. Ward's. Even lawyers, I find, take enjoyment in my dancing."

"I remember," Graham said. "It is very pleasant that we are to dine together."

He continued tactlessly:

"But, as I've explained to Mr. Paredes, we must hurry. Bobby and I have an early engagement."

Her head went up. "An early engagement! I do not often dine in public."

"An unavoidable thing," Graham explained. "Bobby will tell you."

Bobby nodded.

"It's a nuisance, particularly when you're so condescending, Maria."

She shrugged her shoulders. With Bobby she entered the dining-room, at the heels of Paredes and Graham.

Paredes had arranged for everything. There were flowers on the table. The dinner had been ordered. Immediately the waiter brought cocktails. Graham glanced at Bobby warningly. To set an example, he refrained from touching his own. Maria held hers up to the light.

"Pretty yellow things! I never drink them."

She smiled dreamily at Bobby.

"But see! I shall place this to my lips in order that you may make pretty speeches, in order that you may tell me it is the most divine aperatif you have ever drunk."

She passed the glass to him, and Bobby, avoiding Graham's eyes, emptied it. And afterward frequently she reminded him of his wine by going through the same elaborate formula. Probably because of that as much as' anything else, constraint grasped the little company more tightly. Graham couldn't hide his anxiety. Paredes mocked it with sneering phrases which he turned most carefully.

Before the meal was half finished, Graham glanced at his watch.

"We've just time for the eight-thirty," he whispered to Bobby, "if we pick up a taxi."

Maria had heard. She turned tempestuously.

"Am I to be humiliated so? Carlos! Why did you bring me? Is all the world to see my companions leave in the midst of a dinner, as if I were plague-touched? Is Bobby not capable of choosing his own company?"

"You, are thoroughly justified, Maria," Paredes said in his expressionless tones. "Bobby, however, has said very little about this engagement. I did not know, Mr. Graham, that you were the arbiter of Bobby's actions. In a way, I must resent your implication that he is no longer capable of caring for himself."

Graham accepted the challenge. He. leaned across the table, speaking directly to Bobby, ignoring the others:

"You've not forgotten what I told you. Will you come while there's time? You must see that I can't remain here any longer."

Bobby sought to temporize.

"It's all right, Hartley. Don't worry. I'll catch a later train."

Maria relaxed.

"Ah! Bobby still chooses for himself."

"I'll have enough rumpus," Bobby muttered, "when I get to the Cedars. Don't grudge me a little peace here."

Graham arose. His voice was discouraged:

"I'm sorry. I'll hope, Bobby."

Without a word to the others, he walked out of the room.

SO far, when Bobby tried afterward to recall the details of the evening, everything was perfectly distinct in his memory. The remainder of the meal, made uncomfortable by Maria's sullenness and Paredes' sneers, his attempt to recapture the earlier gaiety of the evening by continuing to drink wine, his determination to go later to the Cedars in spite of Graham's doubt—of all these things no particular was missing. He remembered paying the check, as he usually did when he dined with Paredes. He recalled studying the time-table and finding that he had just missed another train.

Maria's spirits rose then. He was persuaded to accompany her and Paredes to the music-hall. In her dressing-room, while she was on the stage, he played with the boxes of make-up, splashing the mirror with various colors, while Paredes sat silently watching.

The change, he was sure, came a little later, in the café, at a table close to the dancing floor. Maria had insisted that Paredes and he should wait there while she changed.

"But," he had protested, "I have missed too many trains."

She had demanded his time-table, scanning the columns of close figures.

"There is one," she had said, "at twelve-fifteen—time for a little something in the café. And who knows? If you are agreeable I might forgive everything and dance with you once, Bobby, on the public floor."

He sat for some time, expectant, watching the boisterous dancers, listening to the violent music, sipping absent-mindedly at his glass. After a while he noticed that Paredes had grown unusually quiet.

"I mustn't miss that twelve-fifteen," Bobby said at last. "You know, Carlos, you weren't quite fair to Hartley. He's a splendid fellow. Roomed with me at college, played on same team, and all that. Only wanted me to do the right thing. I won't miss that twelve-fifteen."

"Graham," Paredes sneered, "is a wonderful type. Apollo in the flesh and Billy Sunday in the conscience."

Then, as Bobby started to protest, Maria entered, more dazzling than at dinner.

THE dancers swayed less, boisterously, the chatter at the tables subsided, the orchestra seemed to hesitate as a sort of obeisance.

A man Bobby had never seen before followed her to the table. His middle-aged figure was loudly clothed. His face was coarse and clean-shaven. He acknowledged the introduction sullenly.

"I've only a minute," Bobby said to Maria.

He continued, however, to raise his glass indifferently to his lips. All at once his glass shook. Maria's dark and sparkling face became blurred. He could no longer define the features of the stranger.

"Maria!" he burst out. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Her contralto laugh rippled.

"Bobby looks so funny! Carlos! Leetle Bobby looks so queer! What is the matter with him?"

Bobby's anger was lost in the increased confusion of his senses; but through that mental turmoil tore the thought of Graham, and his intention of going to the Cedars. With shaking fingers he dragged out his watch. He couldn't read the dial. He braced his hands against the table, thrust back his chair, and arose. The room tumbled about him. Before his eyes the dancers made long, nebulous bands of color in which nothing had form or coherence. Instinctively he felt that he hadn't dined recklessly enough to account for these amazing symptoms. He was suddenly afraid.

"Carlos!" he whispered.

He heard Maria's voice dimly:

"Take him home."

A hand touched his arm. With a supreme effort of will, he walked from the room, guided by the hand on his arm. And as he went his brain recorded fewer and fewer impressions for his memory to struggle with later.

At the cloak-room some one helped him put on his coat. 'He was walking down steps. He was in some kind of a conveyance—he didn't know what it was. He only understood that it went swiftly, swaying from side to side. Whenever his mind moved at all, it came back to the sensation of a black pit in which he was suspended, struggling against impossible odds.

Then abruptly there was no more swaying, no more movement. He heard a strange, melancholy voice, whispering without words, with a futile perseverance, as if it wished him to understand something it could not express.

"What is it trying to tell me?" he asked himself.

Then he understood. It was the voice of the wind, and it tried to tell him to open his eyes; and he found that he could. But, in spite of his desire, they closed again almost immediately. Yet from that swift glimpse a picture outlined itself later in his memory.

---

In the midst of wild, rolling clouds the moon was like a drowning face. Stunted trees bent before the wind, like puny men who strained impotently to advance. Over there was one more like a real man: a figure, Bobby thought, with a black thing over its faceóa mask.

"This is the forest near the Cedars," Bobby thought. "I've come to face the old devil, after all."

He heard his own voice, harsh, remote, unnatural, speaking to the dim figure:

"Why am I here in the woods near the Cedars?"

And he thought the thing answered:

"Because you hate your grandfather."

Bobby laughed, thinking he understood. The figure in the black mask that accompanied him was his conscience.

Then Bobby felt himself sinking back, back into the sable pit.

"I don't want to go," he moaned.

A LONG time afterward he heard a whisper again, and he wondered whether it was the wind or his conscience. He laughed through the blackness, because the words seemed so absurd.

"Take off your shoes and carry them in your hand. Always do that. It is the only safe way."

He laughed again, thinking:

"What a careful conscience!"

He retained only one more impression. He was dully aware that some time had passed. The quality of the blackness all about him deepened. His fright grew. He felt himself slipping, slowly at first, then faster, faster down into impossible depths; and there was nothing at all he could do to save himself.

"Go away! For God's sake, go away!"

Bobby thought he was speaking to the somber figure in the mask.

Something hurt his eyes. He opened them, and for a time was blinded by a narrow shaft of sunlight resting on his face. With an effort, he moved his head to one side, and closed his eyes again, at first merely thankful that he had escaped from the black hell, trying to control his sensations of physical pain. Gradually curiosity forced its way into his sick brain and stung him wide awake. This time his eyes remained open, staring about him.

He had never seen this place before. He lay on the floor of an empty room. The shaft of sunlight that had aroused him entered through a crack in one of the tightly drawn blinds. There was dust and grime on the walls, and cobwebs clustered in the corners.

Struggling to a sitting posture, he gasped for breath. Although it was very cold, perspiration moistened his face. He could recall no such suffering as this since, when a boy, he had slipped from the crisis of a deadly fever.

Had he been drugged? But he had been with friends. There could have been no motive.

What house was this? Was it, like the room, empty and deserted? How had he come here? For the first time, he went through that dreadful process of trying to draw from the black pit useful memories.

He started, recalling the strange voice and its warning; for his shoes lay near by, as if he might have dropped them carelessly when he had entered the room and stretched himself on the floor. Damp earth adhered to the soles. The leather above was scratched.

"Then," he thought, "that much is right. I was in the woods. What was I doing there?"

HE suffered the agony of a man who realizes that he has wandered unaware in strange places and retains no recollection of his actions. He went back to that last unclouded moment in the café with Maria, Paredes, and the stranger.

Where had he gone after he had left them? He had looked at his watch; he had told himself he must catch the twelve-fifteen train. He must have gone from the restaurant, proceeding automatically, and caught the train. That would account for the sensation of motion in a swift vehicle; and perhaps there had been a taxicab to the station. Doubtless, in the woods near the Cedars, he had decided that it was too late to go in. But why had he come here? Where, for that matter, was he?

At least, he could soon answer that. He drew on his shoesóthey were patent-leather pumps. He got to his feet, lurching for a, moment dizzily. To hide his rumpled evening clothes as much as possible, he buttoned his overcoat collar about his neck. Feeling like a thief, he opened the door quietly. The rest of the house was as empty as the room. The hall was thick with dust. The rear door stood half open. The lock was broken and rusty.

He began to understand. He remembered there was a deserted farmhouse less than two miles from the Cedars. He must have taken shelter there when he had decided not to go to his grandfather.

HE stepped through the doorway to the unkempt yard, about whose tumbled fences the woods advanced thickly. He recognized the place. Glancing at his watch, he found that it was after two o'clock. The mournful neighborhood, the growing chill in the air, the sullen sky, urged him away. He walked down the road. Of course he could not go to the Cedars in that condition. He would return to his apartment in New York, where he could bathe, change his clothes, recover from this feeling of physical ill—perhaps remember something more.

It wasn't far to the little village on the railroad, and at this hour there were plenty of trains. He hoped no one he knew would see him at the station. He smiled wearily. What difference did that make? He might as well face old Blackburn himself as he was. By this time the thing was done: the new will had been made. He was penniless. But he didn't want Katherine to see him like this.

From the entrance of the village it was only a few steps to the station. Several carriages waited at the platform, testimony that a train was due. He prayed it would be for New York. He didn't want to wait. He didn't want to risk Katherine's driving in on some errand.

His mind, intent only on escaping prying eyes, was drawn by a man who stepped from behind a carriage and started across the roadway in his direction, staring at him incredulously. But quickly his apprehension vanished: he couldn't recall the face, and there was no harm in being seen, miserable as he was, by this stranger. He looked closer. The man was plainly clothed. He had small, sharp eyes. His hairless face was intricately wrinkled. His lips were thin, making a straight line.

To avoid him, Bobby stepped aside, thinking he must be going past. But the stranger stopped and placed a firm hand on Bobby's shoulder. He spoke in a quick, authoritative voice:

"You are Mr. Robert Blackburn."

For Bobby, in his nervous, bewildered condition, there was an ominous note in the assurance of this peremptory greeting.

"What's amazing about that?" he jerked out.

The stranger's lips parted in a straight smile.

"Amazing! That's the word I was thinking of. Hoped you might come in from New York. Seemed you were here all the time. That's a good one on me—a very good one."

The beating of Bobby's heart was more pronounced than it had been in the deserted house. He asked himself why he should shrink from this stranger. The answer lay in that black pit of last night and this morning. Unquestionably, he had been indiscreet. The man would tell him how.

"You mean," he asked with dry lips, "that you've been looking for me? Who are you? Please take your hand off."

The stranger's grasp tightened.

"Not so fast, Mr. Robert Blackburn. I dare say you haven't just now come from the Cedars?"

"No, no. I'm on my way to New York. There's a train soon, I think."

His voice trailed away. The stranger's straight smile widened. He laughed harshly.

"Sure there's a train, but you don't want to take it. And why haven't you been at the Cedars? Grandpa's death grieved you too much to go near his body?"

Bobby drew back. The shock robbed him for a moment of the power to reason.

"Dead! The old man! How—"

The stranger's smile faded.

"Here it is nearly three o'clock in the afternoon, and you're all dressed up for last night. That's lucky."

Bobby couldn't meet the narrow eyes. "Who are you?"

With his free hand the stranger threw back his coat lapel.

"My name's Howells. I'm a county detective. I'm on the case because your grandfather died very strangely. He was murdered—very cleverly murdered. Queerest case I've ever handled. What do you think?"

In his own ears Bobby's voice sounded as remote and unreal as it had through the blackness last night:

"Why do you talk to me like this?"

"Because, I tell you, I'm on the case, and I want you to turn about and go straight to the Cedars."

"You mean you suspect—you're placing me under arrest?"

The detective's straight smile returned.

"I'm simply telling you not to bother me with questions. I'm telling you to go straight to the Cedars, where you'll stay. Understand? You'll stay there until you're wanted."

BOBBY knew it would be dangerous to talk or argue. Moreover, he craved an opportunity to think. He turned and walked away. When he reached the last houses, he glanced back. The detective remained in the middle of the road, staring after him with that straight, satisfied smile.

Bobby walked on, his shaking hands tightly clenched, muttering to himself:

"I've got to remember. Good God! I've got to remember. It's the only way I can ever know he's not right—that I'm not a murderer."

To be continued next week

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

WHAT TO DO IN YOUR GARDEN THE FIRST WEEK IN AUGUST

The information given in this article is furnished by a research agriculturalist at the New Jersey Experiment Station.

THE first week in August is a popular vacation week; but there is plenty to do in your garden.

In the first place, there are all the early crops to cultivate. Cultivation—the breaking up of the soil surface—conserves the moisture and keeps down weeds. Always stir the soil after a rain, except in the case of beans, when cultivation while moist is apt to cause the growth of "rust," an undesirable parasitic fungus.

Corn requires a great deal of cultivation. Add to the soil a top dressing of bone meal (30 pounds) and as much wood ashes as you can, up to 50 pounds.* With a rake incorporate this plant food in the soil.

This is a good time of year to put in time watering. Things are apt to dry up in the first week in August. Unless you keep your cabbage well watered, for example, it is subject to a disease known as club-root. Spinach also must be kept moist.

It is a good plan to use manure water, thereby giving your garden food and drink at the same time. Steep well rotted manure in water by soaking a bag of it in a pail full of the latter, and sprinkle liberally.

If you have fruit trees, now is the time to thin them out; if grapes, to train them to their permanent position; if berry canes, to trim them close to the ground.

There is one important late crop which may be planted this week, and one unimportant one. The former is beans (a highly nutritious, nitrogen-fixing crop which should be in every war garden); the latter is celery (a delicate crop requiring careful cultivation and yielding little food value).

The Davis variety of stringless snap- beans is probably the best to use. Plant one and one half inches deep two inches apart in rows two feet apart, putting the "eye" of the bean toward the center of the earth. Keep your rows straight by a string stretched between two pegs. (This applies to all crops planted in rows.) Apply bone meal for phosphorus (about 40 pounds) and wood ashes for lime.

Celery must be transplanted either from seed grown in boxes for about two weeks, or by the use of purchased baby plants. The latter method is preferable if you buy from a reliable firm.

* All measurements of fertilizer and other material given here are based on a model garden of a city lot 100 by 25 feet (one twentieth of an acre). All directions are based on the climate and latitude of New York City. Allow a week's difference for every hundred miles of latitude.

WILL FUNERALS BE ABOLISHED?

MOST of us have felt, at one time or another in our life, that funerals were unnecessarily ugly. A writerin the English Fortnightly Review, Mr. C. E. Lawrence, comes out boldly and says that war is going to put an end forever to the old-fashioned funeral, with its plumed black horses, its forbidding hearse—"a polished box of hopelessness"—and its yards of crape.

Instead, we shall submit sensibly to the custom of having our bodies burned after death, and our ashes scattered in beautiful gardens full of trees, wild flowers, green walks, and birds.

"The cemeteries, those battalions of gray monuments, with their waxen flowers and formalities, broken columns, and depressed angels, must go—absolutely go.

"What do they commemorate? What do they represent? Decay, brute death, the mere matter of man. It is impossible to see serrated rows of tombs and stones, constructed with as much solidity and strength as minerals can give, and believe that the dead are to arise from that.

"Let us have God's acres that are truly so; green gardens in which the annual resurrection of the flowers can help and teach the truth of immortality.

"The funeral of George Meredith was an example, and a promise of a new and better arrangement.

"His earthly being was reduced by burning to primal dust (what a beast of a word is 'cremated' !); the ashes then were scattered in a graveyard. The act was simple, reverential, informal, touching, appropriate to the man and the occasion. Is any thing more required?

"Is the soul any farther from God because the body, its passing tenement, has been reduced summarily and with thoroughness to its always inevitable condition? Surely not.

"Is it to be believed that Wyclif, whose body was burnt, the ashes thrown into a river, and so carried to and dispersed in the sea, is the less likely for that to be a partaker of immortality? Or is Savonarola, or Joan of Arc, or the martyrs by fire—are any of them the less likely to be received among the saints because they were deprived of what the undertakers call a sumptuous funeral?"

THE MAN BEHIND HINDENBURG

IT was not the Kaiser who lifted Hindenburg up to the supreme command of the forces of Germany: it was the voice of the German people. Had the Kaiser refused or delayed his response to that overpowering demand, there might have been a revolution in Germany, according to the belief of a German officer quoted in an article in the Atlantic Monthly.

Hindenburg is the popular god: he can have anything he wants. In sixty-four words he settled the U-boat controversy, swinging the tide in favor of unrestricted warfare, when even the Kaiser hesitated. If ever the time comes when he feels called on to say the word, the political life of the Chancellor will end. And, in that case, the successor to the Chancellor is likely to be, not Hindenburg, but Hindenburg's chief of staff, von Ludendorff—the silent, friendless genius, almost unknown to the public, but recognized by the wiser few in Germany as the real brains of Hindenburg, the power behind the throne.

Hindenburg is a "Junker"; but, according to the same article, the life of das Junkertum is limited in Prussia. Von Mackensen and Ludendorff, the next two in command, are both commoners. The war has forced ability above birth. The 1914 edition of Wer Ist's, the German "Who's Who," does not mention von Ludendorff. When the war broke out he was simply a colonel. It is said that von Moltke already had his eye on him; but von Moltke soon disappeared from the scene. It was Hindenburg who singled him out.

When the old man had been assigned to the Eastern front, he sent at once for von Ludendorff. Traveling night and day, they met at Hanover, and all the rest of the night they worked over their maps and plans, and all the next morning while the train raced across Germany.

"On Sunday, August 23, at half-past one in the afternoon, it reached Marienburg, the old capital of the Teutonic Knights, now sorely menaced, like all of East Prussia, by the great tidal wave of invading Russians. On the Saturday following, shortly before noon, the Great General Staff in Berlin announced that the great Russian army had been defeated and was being pursued over the frontier.

"Hindenburg became the popular idol: and Ludendorff, unheard of except by the very few, became the monarch of the Eastern front. It was he who organized the government following the successes of the troops; he who laid out train schedules, and little by little extended his grasp on things governmental until he reached clear back to Berlin. Nothing is done now by the German government in any department—food, munitions, navy, even foreign relations—in which the veiled hand of Ludendorff, unseen by the public, does not have its part.

"As for Ludendorff the man, it is impossible to say much about him. The simple truth is that no one knows him. He is chilly, reserved, remote, almost wholly without charm; he has been so, according to his old-maid aunt, who knows him probably better than any one else, since childhood. Hindenburg, at the mess-table, is disposed to be expansive, genial, even garrulous. One of his old officers told me long tales of his love for the Biertisch, his delight in song, his waggish humors. There are no such stories about Ludendorff. He seems devoid of any social instinct. The few visitors to Great Headquarters come back to Berlin with the news that they have seen him, but that is about all they have to report. He is credited with no apothegms, no theories, no remarks whatever. He remains, after nearly three years of war, a man of mystery."

HOW WOMEN CAN HELP

IT may be necessary, before the summer is over, to enlist a million women for work on the nation's farms. In the meantime, every woman, as the adjutant-general of her own household, has opportunity to help win the war.

In what is probably the wealthiest home in the country, a recent visitor was surprised to be served a meal of just three simple courses. "Better help yourself to some more of the roast," said the hostess. "It is all you are going to get: you see, we have put ourselves on a war basis."

Every housekeeper can help to win the war by putting her family at once on a war basis. And there are numberless other little economies, all of which will help,. For example, "the waste-paper loss in the United States is enormous," says World's Work. "The Women's Economic League in New York City recently started a campaign to collect waste paper from private and office buildings throughout the city. The paper is sold to junkmen and the proceeds given to the Red Cross or other work. The scheme has been worked out with surprising results in Ottawa and other Canadian cities. This is effective war work that a woman can do."

HIS PIGS PAID FOR HIS HOME

IN an Iowa town, one day at noon, a harness-maker was going home from the shop where he earned his ten dollars a week. He saw some men grouped around a pen in a neighboring livery barn, and went in to investigate. He found them looking at a fine big Poland-China sow. He was so taken with her appearance that he offered to buy her for $100.

His wife thought that was a large sum to pay for one pig, but she finally agreed to it. They kept the expensive creature in a pen on their lot in town. The sow, which weighed 700 pounds, produced in the first year eighteen pigs that sold for $40 each. Before she died she endowed her owner with $3500 worth of pigs.

The harness-maker's name was Henry Fesenmeyer. His story is told in Farm and Home. The second time he bought a sow he paid one hundred and fifty-one dollars. She did so well that be purchased a five-acre lot on the edge of town and enough hogs to fill it. Next he bought a little farm; but when the cholera killed all his herd he had to go back to the five- acre lot. From that time on he was successful. He is now, says the writer, one of the leading swine breeders of the State.

---

JUST TO BE ALIVE IS AMUSEMENT ENOUGH

IT is true that in childhood "the sky is a deeper blue and the stars have greater brilliancy than they ever have in later life." Every one remembers how exciting and radiant were the things that surrounded him then—a red drum or a blue wagon, the wind at night, the reflections in the water. The retina of the eyes was sensitive to every color, every degree of light.

As people get older, "a crust of habit" forms. They grow jaded with bright colors, and the world becomes a dull gray. All men are unconsciously but continually struggling to break through this veil of dullness, and generally they go about it in the wrong way—by using stimulants or seeking tawdry, inactive amusements. How, then, can we "crack the crust of habit" and reach the thrilling world of reality that children and animals live in?

Dr. Richard Cabot, in the Health Bulletin of the Life Extension Institute, answers:

You can not reach it—

By putting food into your stomach just to fill it.

By eating a half-hour meal in ten minutes.

By making animal foods the mainstay of your diet.

You can not reach it—

By the poison routes—alcohol, nicotine, coffee, or any other drugs.

By the constipation route, so easily escaped if you will eat rationally.

By the "liver pill" and "headache powder" routes.

By the "medicinal" whisky route.

You can not reach it—

By the lazy route.

By letting the four hundred muscles in your body become soft and degenerate.

By converting yourself into a fixed organism instead of a moving organism.

You can reach real life—

By the activity route. Give those four hundred muscles something to do.

By the open-air route. Get into the open and let the air play around you.

You can reach it by developing muscle-hunger!

What is muscle-hunger? You will not find it in any encyclopedia, but it is a condition, nevertheless. Recently we saw a baby wisely left on the lawn to its own devices. For fully fifteen minutes the infant struggled to get its legs from under the blankets. At last, after vigorous effort, the little fat legs were free. That is muscle-hunger. Those who lack it seek the hammock and the porch chair.

When one who has muscle-hunger sees a hill, he wants to climb it; when he sees the road, he wants to walk it; when he sees a game, he wants to play it.

Muscle-hunger can be cultivated even in the most sedentary occupation. Begin and end each day with setting-up exercises (if they seem monotonous, do them to a phonograph). But keep the muscles alert and alive throughout the day. When you move, move briskly. Contract and relax your muscles frequently during the day, and take some full, deep breaths. And if you have a chance to swing on something,—a limb of a tree or even a door-jamb,—do it.

VERDI AS A FARMER

WHEN Verdi composed "Aïda," he did it with one hand on the hoe and the other on the keys. After this operatic triumph had stormed the world, his ambition for writing scores seemed to give way to his ambition for raising stock. He was prouder of his success in developing his Italian estate of Sant' Agata than he was of "Trovatore" and "Traviata."

Verdi was especially proud of his horses and cows. The Verdi breed was famous. He did not hold himself down to the conservative farming methods of his neighbors, but studied all improvements. The sweeping changes in American methods especially aroused his interest. He ordered all the ingenious machines for saving labor and time that were used in the United States, and tried to persuade his tenants to take up modern methods. A large part of his great estate was leased. His tenants loved him like a father.

When Italy, after three crop failures, suffered from hard times, he didn't give any of his tenants a chance to beg for a lower rent. He lowered it before they had time to ask.

"Do all you can for the farmer," the great musician would say. "Italy is not a rich country. Good agriculturists are more important for its welfare than mediocre musicians, poets, lawyers, and politicians."

His day's work as a farmer, after he had stopped writing operas, is described by Maurice Halperson in Musical America:

"Verdi arose very early in the morning—he could be seen at five o'clock around his plantation and stables. He inspected the whole place thoroughly, and gave the gardener and the laborer his orders, paying special care to his extensive stables.

"At seven o'clock the maestro took, in company with his wife, a modest breakfast, after which the farm work was continued with untiring energy. At eleven o'clock the most substantial meal of the day was served. Verdi's correspondence took up many hours of the afternoon, as the composer used to read and answer every letter with the greatest care.

"A modest supper was partaken of at five o'clock in winter and at six' o'clock in summer.

"Three hours later perfect quiet reigned. `We are peasants,' Verdi used to say, 'and we go to bed with the chickens."

THE CHILD WHO CAN'T PASS EXAMINATIONS

"THERE'S no use sending Tommy to school," said Edison's teacher to his mother. "He can't learn anything. He hasn't got the apparatus."

So, because he never was able to pass his examinations, Edison quit school. Even after he grew up, he never could pass an examination. If lawyers tried to cross-question him in court, every idea went out of his head.

Booker T. Washington said he was never able to pass his examinations. Charles W. Eliot, when president of Harvard, said he could not pass the college entrance examinations. Herbert Spencer said he never could, either; but, as he considered them vicious institutions, he didn't seem to care. Henry Ward Beecher stood sixty-fourth in a grammar examination. And the boy who got the best mark grew up to be a barber!

STARTING YOUR BOY AT THE BOTTOM

THERE is plenty of room at the bottom. It is better to start there and climb to the top than to start half way up and stick.

"So many boys and young men are getting the wrong start," says a merchant in the New York Times. "The salaries paid by most of the Wall Street houses are high, I believe, because, first of all, the business just now can afford them; and, secondly, there must be some premium for the lack of opportunity." In other words, the boy is paid high wages to start, because he can't get much higher from the position he fills."

In the mercantile field, says the writer,—who himself has several positions open which he has been unable to fill,—there is unlimited chance for the young man who wants to make something out of himself. For, once he has learned a business from the bottom up, he has training that will pay better in the end than the job with the high salary at the start.

"It is more profitable to start low and have your salary grow every year, than to stick around the same mark or lose ground as time goes on. As far as hours go, we have a long day. But if the work is congenial and the employee knows he is getting ahead, hours don't count. We generally turn down the applicant whose first question is, 'What hours do I have to work?'"

"The Japanese government," writes William McAndrew, associate superintendent of the New York schools, in the Journal of the National Educational Association, "after sending many boys to be educated in foreign institutions, decided to ask for an examination by which they could select the youth of promise who were worth the expense of this training. Inquiry was sent forth to each university which had received the young Japanese: 'What examination can we give our youth so as to select those of greatest promise for future service?' All the universities but one returned replies to the effect that they did not know of any such examination. One university appointed a committee of the faculty to investigate and make a report. They sent to the library for all the biographies of eminent men. In each volume they turned back to the man's school days. When they made their report, they said: 'The one most prevalent characteristic of men of mark in their school days is that they couldn't pass their examinations.'"

Mr. McAndrew himself tested the high-school records of ninety pupils. He found that those who passed the highest examinations did the poorest work.

NOT RESPONSIBLE

From Punch

MUCK AND MISERY

"AT best, trench life can be described by two words, muck and misery," writes D. K. Winfield Ney in the New Orleans Medical Journal.

"Many of the soldiers are of the best French families; with sensitive nervous systems; who had never known hardship or toil; and are compelled to live in the trenches for weeks at a time, in mud and filth, without being able to bathe or change their clothing—suffering from intolerable itch, exposed to wind and cold and almost daily rains, with but little protection, and in constant danger of death by exploding shells, gas attacks, or mining operations, all of which are from an unseen enemy."

That is why, he says, the state of the soldier's nervous system when he is wounded is an important element in his treatment.

"When wounded, these men frequently fall into mud or water, often wait for hours before being moved or receiving first-aid attention, exposed to cold and wet, and sometimes suffering severe hemorrhage before assistance can be had from the regimental medical officer. I had many of these men sent into the base hospitals wearing the same blood-stained, muddy clothing in which they were wounded several days before.

"One is struck," goes on the doctor, "by the absolute quietude of most of the men who have just been brought in. Their one desire seems to be to sleep and rest; and it is often with difficulty that they are persuaded to partake of hot stimulants. These men, with shattered nervous systems, are pictures of utter exhaustion.

"Many of the cases that are sent to the base hospitals come there with a diagnosis of 'general fatigue and tachycardia.' These are sent in by the hundreds, and in many instances absolute rest in bed and digitalis fail to cause abatement of the symptoms. These men can stand no exertion, and even at rest the heart action is very rapid. I observed a number who had remained in hospitals for months, during which time they developed a gradual enlargement of the thyroid gland. In quite a few of these cases they were, revived only after I had ligated one or more thyroidal vessels or removed a lobe of the thyroid gland. These cases, I believe, indicated derangements of the ductless glands due to the emotions.

"What the result will be of such shocks to the nervous system it is hard to determine, and sometimes we are almost afraid to think."

Will the Jews Disappear?

By BURTON J. HENDRICK

AT the present moment more Jews are filling conspicuous public positions in the United States than they have at any time in our history. No administration has had such close association with influential Jews as has Mr. Wilson's. Mr. Wilson was the first President ever to appoint a Jew to the United States Supreme Court. The selection of Mr. Paul M. Warburg as a member of the Federal Reserve Board marked another step forward for the Jews in the United States. One of the largest financial contributions to Mr. Wilson's pre-convention campaign in 1912 was m de by another Jew, Mr. Henry Morgenthau; the same man played an active part in managing both of Mr. Wilson's presidential campaigns, and afterward served very creditably as his ambassador at Constantinople.

It hardly needed these striking instances to emphasize the important part that the Jews are playing in all branches of American life. At the present time the United States is giving the world its greatest experiment in Judaism. Some years ago a. conference of American rabbis registered its opposition to Zionism on the stated grounds that "America is the Jew.,' Jerusalem and Washington their Zion."

A Million Jews in New York City

EVIDENCES that this statement has an actual basis are apparent on every hand. Thirty-five years ago the United States contained only about 150,000 Jews; now we have considerably more than 2,000,000. Next to Russia, our country shelters more Jews than any other, and one half of all the Jews in the United States, about 1,000,000, are found in the city of New York. The American metropolis has gathered more members of this persecuted race than were ever before assembled in one community; for even Jerusalem at its greatest period of glory contained only about 600,000 Jews.

In New York City to-day one person in every six is a son of Israel, while on Manhattan Island the proportion is almost one in every four. The outward appearance of the town becomes more and more Jewish every day. Fifteen years ago our Russian immigrants lived mostly on the congested East Side, while New Yorkers now rub elbows with them everywhere.

In the street-cars and the subways we find long-bearded gentlemen poring over newspapers printed in Hebrew characters; and these same newspapers, formerly sold only in the tenement sections, now repose upon practically every news-stand; while advertising signs printed in Yiddish are making their appearance on the elevated stations.

Street-car conductors and subway

guards not infrequently have faces that strongly suggest the seed of Abraham, and the roster of the New York police force contains many names like Levy, Jacobs, and Rosenthal. If you rent an apartment, the chances are that you will pay your monthly stipend to a Jewish landlord; if you go to the theater, you purchase your ticket from a Jewish manager; if you enter a department-store, the proprietor is commonly a Jew; if your children attend the public schools, they frequently have a Jewess for a teacher; if they enter Columbia University, at least one-third of their classmates will he Jews; while if they select the City College the proportion will be nearer ninety per cent. New York has the largest high school in the world,—the Washington Irving,— and practically all of its 6000 pupils are Jewish girls.

Several Jews in Congress

IN the municipal departments Jews hold more positions than the representatives of any other race. Jewish stenographers, Jewish office-boys, Jewish lawyers, Jewish physicians, Jewish dentists, Jewish stock brokers, Jewish retail and wholesale merchants abound on every hand. Jewish cartoonists—men like Goldberg—supply much of our daily entertainment; certain Jewish writers are acquiring high reputation as humorists; and the Lincoln pennies that constantly pass through our hands are the product of a Jewish designer, Victor D. Brenner. Many prize-fighters are Jews,—though they are "featured" under Irish names,—and the gangster situation in New York, once almost exclusively an Irish problem, now concerns mainly Jewish boys and young men; of the second generation.

In the higher walks American Jews likewise have reached distinguished positions. They hold important chairs in our colleges, and there are plenty of Jewish judges and many American physicians—men like Dr. Abraham Jacobi and Sigismund S. Goldwater—who are worthy representatives of the race. There are several Jews at present in Congress, and Jews have represented their States in the Senate. New York's two most successful newspapers, the World and the Times, have been the works of Jewish proprietors. Another Jew, Mr. Solomon S. Carvalho, is the business manager of all the Hearst newspapers.

Next to J. P. Morgan & Company, the greatest American banking house is that of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, whose head, Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, is generally regarded as the most influential Jew in the United States. Another member of this firm, Mr. Otto H. Kahn, was the closest associate of E. H. Harriman in his railroad enterprises. He has also been the greatest force in lifting American opera to its present high estate. A Jewish engineer, Charles M. Jacobs, built the Pennsylvania tunnels under the East River.

There is a widespread impression that the Jew is unused to bearing arms, and that, in general, physical courage is not one of his characteristics. But American experience apparently disproves this idea. According to a canvass made by the Jewish Year Book, there were in June, 1915, 64,714 men in the various military organizations of the United States, of whom 3741 were Jews. That is, although the Jews comprise only two per cent. of our population, they have contributed six per cent. to our regular military forces.

About 4000 Jews fought in the Spanish War, and half a dozen or so were found in that most typically American of all the regiments, Roosevelt's Rough Riders. The report on the sinking of the Maine, prepared by a Jew, Rear-Admiral Marix, did much to precipitate the war with Spain. At present another member of the same race, Rear-Admiral Joseph Strauss, heads the Naval Bureau of Ordnance, and is thus one of the central group of influential chiefs who manage the American navy.

Though, as compared to all the Jews in the world, the number of this people in America seems large, they actually make up only about two per cent. of our total population. It is only their tendency to congregate in a few places, especially New York, that causes our Jewish contingent to be anything of a "problem."

The question is constantly asked, what is to become of them? No people adapts itself quite so rapidly to the American environment as this, and none shows greater interest in identifying itself with the general body politic. What are the chances of assimilation? What is the likelihood that the Jew will make its racial contribution to the future American composite?

Reduced to its final terms, this means, to what extent will the American Jew mingle with the rest of our population—that is, to intermarry?

Why the Jews Are a "Peculiar People"

AT first this idea strikes most people as absurd. They have been educated to the conception of the Jews as a peculiar people—as a race inevitably set apart to maintain its integrity through the centuries. The medieval ghetto, the peculiar garb, the exclusive tribal customs and dietary practices, and the rabbinical laws—these are the conceptions that naturally come to mind when we attempt to estimate the future of this people. That our two million American Jews may disappear, in the course of two or three centuries, through intermarriage, seems at first a notion almost too extravagant to be entertained. Yet, in the opinion of many Jews themselves, the theory is not necessarily ridiculous.

One of the greatest Christian writers on the Jews, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, takes the stand that the Jews are not a peculiar people at all, and that it is merely circumstances that have made them so. If we had taken a few hundred thousand Englishmen, two thousand years ago, set them apart to live in restricted districts, forced them to wear a distinctive garb, forbidden them to engage in agriculture, limited their activities to particular trades, and prohibited them from marrying Christians under penalty of death, the English would to-day probably be a "peculiar" and unassimilable people.

In saying this I do not ignore the fact that Jewish exclusiveness is inherent in the Jewish religion. The ghetto, for instance, was not originally devised by Christians, but was the preference of the Jews themselves, whose dietary laws and other customs made it necessary for them to live apart from their Christian neighbors. But externals like these, in an era of enlightenment, easily disappear; and the fact remains that, side by side with all this tendency to exclusiveness, the Jew has always shown great adaptability to his environment. Practically all ethnologists agree that throughout the bitter centuries Jews have constantly intermarried with the Christian races amid whom they have lived.

Many even deny that there is such a thing as a Jewish race. Russian Jews look like Russians, Spanish Jews like Spaniards, Italian Jews like Italians, while there are even Chinese Jews,—Jews who observe all the Jewish religious rites and all their dietary laws,—who have the almond eyes, the flat noses, and the yellow skin of Mongolians.

To the student of ethnology this means only one thing, and that is intermarriage. Indeed, we all know that intermarriage has been going on from the earliest times, since many of the most famous Jews of the

Continued on page 15

NOAHS

DOWN WITH PROGRESS

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EARTHQUAKERS

—Continued from page 10

Old Testament had Gentile wives. Thus Joseph's wife was Asenath, an Egyptian; Moses' wife was a Midianite; Samson's a Philistine; Solomon, we must remember, was not a pure Jew, since his mother was a Hittite. The most cursory reading of the Old Testament discloses that the seed of Abraham was constantly mingling with surrounding peoples.

But the study of modern history indicates more clearly what we may expect in the United States. We must constantly keep in mind that intermarriage of Jews and Christians,' until recent years, was illegal, precisely as it still is in Russia and Austria. There are unmistakable evidences, it is true, that intermingling had been going on all through the Middle Ages; but these unions, where they were not illicit, followed baptism. Many thousand Spanish Jews accepted baptism in 1492 in preference to expulsion.

In Scandinavia 65 Per Cent. of Jews Marry Christians

IN Europe the intermarriage of Jews and Christians is going on at a rate that few can explain. Dr. Maurice Fishberg, one of our leading American authorities on the Jews, has recently published the figures—figures that are fairly astounding. Germany furnishes the best field of study, not because intermarriages are most common there, but because the German social statistics are most complete and reliable. We can go back no further than 1875 for our figures; for it was not until 1875, incredible as it may seem, that marriages between Jew and Gentile were permitted under the law. Since then they have increased in frequency.

In Germany as a whole, according to the figures presented by Dr. Fishberg, nearly twenty per cent. of Jewish marriages to-day are with Christians. But it is only when we take the statistics of the great cities, such as Hamburg and Berlin, that the complete extent of this amalgamation can be understood. Thus in Berlin, from 1875 to 1879, thirty-six per cent. of all Jewish marriages were with Christians. But in 1905 this proportion had increased to forty-four per cent. In Hamburg, again, this proportion had increased to sixty per cent.; that is, in this latter city more Jews were marrying Christians than were marrying Jews. In Scandinavia Dr. Fishburg's figures show that the proportion is even higher; there it reaches sixty-five per cent.!

This tendency to assimilation, we must keep in mind, is the product of less than a single generation. After being emancipated, in the matter of matrimony, for only forty years, the Jews of Hamburg and Berlin are marrying more frequently outside their race than within it. Certainly this record lends some weight to the idea that the Jews are not really an exclusive people, but have been made so by the restrictive laws of their environment. Suppose, in Berlin and Hamburg, the age of liberalism had started three or four centuries ago—that the bars against intermarriage had been removed in 1400 instead of in 1875. Of course, the Jewish race, as a race, would long since have disappeared in these cities, and its Jewish elements would have become so mingled with the rest of the population that they could never be identified.

What are the signs that a similar tendency has made itself felt in the United States? Here the laws prohibiting such mixed marriages have never prevailed. And here a large amount of intermarrying has undoubtedly been going on. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were about 2000 Jews in the United States. In the main, these were the Sephardic or Spanish and Portuguese Jews, usually regarded as the aristocracy of the race. Basing our calculations on the normal rate of increase; there should be at least 25,000 descendants of these early settlers. The fact that there are only a fraction of such descendants means that these old-time Jewish families have allied themselves, in large degree, with the native stock.

The many marriages of conspicuous Jews with conspicuous Americans fairly indicate this same tendency. Thus August Belmont, a Jew from Germany,—his real name was August Schoenberg,—married a daughter of that Commodore Matthew C. Perry who opened Japan to the western world. Abraham Jacobi, the distinguished authority on children's diseases, married Mary Putnam; Walter Damrosch married the daughter of James G. Blaine; and Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the musician, married Mark Twain's daughter.

These mixed marriages in high places emphasize another point, and that is that Jews more frequently than Jewesses marry outside their faith. The reason, of course, is that, under present conditions, the Jew usually raises his social status by a Christian marriage, and that, everywhere in the world, the man more commonly marries above his social station than the woman.

But the last thing that American Jews wish to be are a people set racially apart. They give every indication that they desire to become part and parcel of the American commonalty. In New York they have long since burst the bounds of the "ghetto" and are mingling with the rest of the populace. They show a growing tendency to change their names; there are thousands of East Side Russian Jews who now have old-fashioned Anglo- Saxon appellations. It is a constant complaint of the rabbis that the young Jew carries his religion lightly; though not many become Christians, the educated Jew is likely to be a free-thinker.

A curious development is the extent to which they are Christian Scientists. Charles Klein, the distinguished playwright who went down on the Lusitania, was a loyal follower of Mrs. Eddy. The average New York Jew has long since ceased to regard his dietary laws; indeed, he is one of the most zealous patrons of the oyster and lobster palaces.

Social Ostracism Gradually Disappearing

PROBABLY the ruling ambition of most of the younger generation in New York's East Side is to leave it. They are rapidly shaking off their Yiddish and the peculiar ways of Israel. Probably most Christians would be surprised at the extent to which Jews give each other presents on Christmas and to which Jewish children are brought up to a belief in Santa Claus.

A few years ago a rich Jew in Philadelphia left money to build a synagogue. for the old Portuguese congregation. His nephew and executor of his will, who had to carry out this bequest, was an Episcopalian! American statistics shed no light upon the extent to which amalgamation is going on; but many Jewish authorities attest that it is widespread. Dr. Fishberg, for example, whom I have already quoted, believes that mixed marriages are very frequent, and that they will become much more so. Many rabbis and Jewish leaders frown at the practice; on the other hand, there are plenty who do not hesitate to officiate at the wedding ceremony.

The reason why this intermingling on a large scale is inevitable in this country is that the conditions that encourage it exist on a larger scale here than anywhere else in the world. If the removal of the bars has produced such extensive intermarrying in Scandinavia and Germany, it is rather absurd to believe that the much greater freedom enjoyed by Jews in the United States would not have the same effect here. Indeed, in this country only one thing stands between the Jew and his amalgamation, and that is the social ostracism that—the unpleasant fact must be conceded—is still unfortunately his portion.

Some of the most talented people of this and other generations are the fruit of Christian-Jewish marriages. I wonder how many readers know that Bret Harte was a "mongrel" of this kind? Others are Sir John Herschel, the astronomer; Francis Turner Palgrave, the critic; Sir John Millais, the artist; Leon Gambetta, the statesman; and Sir Arthur Sullivan, the composer. Sidney Sonino, now foreign minister of Italy, is also half Jewish. Whatever consequences the wholesale amalgamation of our Jewish stock will have, it will not debase the long-heralded composite American.

LIT UP

By WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

Illustrations by Frank Snapp

IT was only because there was something that wouldn't smother in Rose Powers' heart that she was saved at all for her deep breath of life. She had lived with Mrs. Powers from a little girl, and it appeared to have been ordained that she would marry one of the Powers boys—even Rose came to expect this.

All the pressures from the beginning were toward Edward, the elder. Elkerton, Michigan, was pleased with Edward. No athlete, no collegiate sensation, but a sturdy and reliant youth with perspicacity and a quiet voice. Edward was as ordered as a checker-board and as serenely safe as a concrete vault. He had the best drugstore in Elkerton, and it was by no means that when it fell into his hands from a father who was more like the younger son.

But a drug-store wasn't enough to hold the force and acumen of such a young man—not while real estate stirred occasionally and mortgages had a grip left; not while you could collect the entire living product of a pharmacist for eight dollars a week—one who would sleep under a show-case and answer a night-call, in case Elkerton was anywhere restless or out of sorts. The fact is, Edward can hardly be kept a secret.

Already, on one occasion, he had signed a check with four figures. This sign-post in his career of twenty-seven years was frequently mentioned in family circles with deep though familiar awe. This topic invariably led the family to an embarrassing pause, which, it was understood, was for thought of the younger son.

Mother Powers would then be asked, with pleasant caution: "What do you hear from Harvey?" And how many times she had been forced to reply: "Nothing—not lately." But at intervals she would be able to say: "We got a card from him in San Francisco"; or, "He sent Rose a picture-post-card of Desolation Island"; or, "We got a letter marked `Rosario, A. R.'—and he says he's working on a coffee plantation."

Harv was about everything that Edward wasn't. Rose had always loved him, but she wasn't sure at times that her love alighted anywhere. All the thrills of her life had come from Harvreal adventures and hair-breadths of a memorable kind. As it seemed now, she had never walked out with Harv unless there was a fire, a runaway, or at least a dog-fight.

She kept it a secret, but there was a quality to thrills—even thrills of fear—that was better to think about than any fair procession of days. She had the instinct that if she revealed a truth of this kind, even to Mother Powers, the confession would link her dangerously to the all but forgotten days before she came to the Powers cottage to live—a strain of blood perhaps that had apparently required a seasoning of thrills for its perfect ebb and flow.

SHE was about cornered. Edward wanted her—the patient Edward wanted her now. She had staved him off many times. It had never occurred to her that she was altogether her own property. Harv had been away twenty months. A woman couldn't live on thrills, anyway.

She had turned down Harv flat and forever—just before he went. She knew there was no doubt in his mind (if his mind were still working anywhere in the

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world) but that she was already Edward's in an irreproachable marriage sanctity. Perhaps that was why he stayed away.

HIS train stopped at Elkerton, Michigan, a freezing morning late in October. The last stretch of the journey was done—and Harv had been nine weeks on the way. The chill was a relief, despite his thin clothing. Home town again—ivy on the depot turned scarlet, the freight-house painted like new, Commercial Street all paved, and the same old mud-holes in Adkey Street now frozen into iron—little change—Al Turner still running the Lorelei pool-room.

The cold air touched sharply a half- healed wound between Harv's lower ribs. The bandage had slipped. Tropic blood was a slow mender.

A prod of hunger spurred his steps over the streets of his boyhood. To avoid meeting any who might recognize him and thus delay with greetings the breakfast he had anticipated for nine weeks, Harv turned down the alley back of the opera-house, and came out beyond the row of store buildings. Four blocks yet to go—and eleven thousand miles behind—this pilgrimage to a breakfast in the home kitchen. He scuffed his way through the fallen leaves. Frost lay on the long, grass in the front yard.

Mother, with hands soapy and red, her blue apron wet with dish-water, came to admit him—wide-eyed; laughed and hugged and questioned, forgetting dish-water and all the scolding she had, stored up. Twenty months had given her time to think of many reprimands. Her Harv was a bad boy. Yet now she did not refer once to the night of March the third, last year, when he had disappeared.

The boy stared long at his mother. "You don't get any worse, you little old top-notcher—"

Mother blushed. Her son was finding an actuality about her face that he had met nowhere abroad. He was listening for another step. It made his mouth twitch. Food was in the air and on the table. Harv had a hunch that he would remember this moment—more than most to come. He saw that mother was fixing for a good cry. Breakfast was all he had dreamed—yet the big moment had passed.

Tucked in the spare bed, he thought it out. Yes, it was as he had thought: Rose was gone from the house. He hadn't asked.

At first, because she was so utterly thrilled, Rose had hid herself. Later, because he did not ask, she would not budge into the sitting-room while the two talked. After that, too expanded with emotions, too flighty to be fixed with words, she ran to the house of a neighboring girl friend. When she returned, the mother's finger crossed her lips, commanding quiet in the house.

"He's asleep."

Rose went to the door of the spare room presently, and, assured by the breathing, allowed herself a long look at the sleeper. It was a shock to see him so thin, his face pinched and white. Rose wanted to enter the bedroom, but Mother Powers was now standing behind. The two women, after their mysterious ways, pressed their hearts together. The pilgrim slept on until Edward came in for dinner—a veal stew for the prodigal.

Rose was now encountered.

If breakfast had been a sumptuous reward for his racking journey, this dinner on the lean calf was another matter. Foreign scenes seemed also lacking salt.

Harv handled the party with grace, applying himself leisurely to fruit the while.

For the third time, Ed remarked upon the pallor that showed under Harv's tan.

"Oh, yes—a poke in the ribs the other week—"

"With a cane?" asked mother.

"No—a dagger—"

Terror passed from eye to eye. Ed cleared his throat. Mother's countenance hastened Harv into explanation:

"It isn't much—it was half healed up when I started for home the second of August—"

"Oh, Harv! Why didn't you tell me right away? I thought you looked, awfully peaked and pale, but I laid it to the climate."

"Nothin' to fuss about."

"You must go right back to bed."

"Not till I get a piece of that apple pie."

"Oh, Harv, how did it happen?"

"A fellow didn't like me."

Rose was choking, and on Mother Powers' face was written intimations of the awfulness of life.

THAT afternoon Harv was made very easy. The mother moved about the house while he slept, a kind of continual shudder upon her from the puckered wound that she had bathed. Rose heard him stirring late in the afternoon, and hummed past his door until it was opened. Mother joined them abruptly, but showed her innocence by leaving shortly to get supper. Rose lingered—yearning in her eyes. Harv yawned and refused to grant to himself that there was any difficulty in the moment.

"You must have had a wonderfully interesting time—South America and all that—and your—"

She referred tacitly to his wound. He did not hasten to reply, and Rose blushed and stared blindly at a lithograph hung beside the bed—a panel of plums and bananas, with a twig of cherries dropped in carelessly—realistic almost to the smell. Upon Harv's mouth formed a contemplative smile.

"Buenos Ayres—great old town! But a rotten time getting there. Wish you could have seen those bunks on the Mary Nell—comfortable as a window-sill; and the cook's galley with cockroaches parading around the frying-pans. Life is peculiar, specially along the equator. But what nights at sea! Everything is larger

aloft as you cross the line—bigger sky and new stars. Warm winds bringin' magnolias and cinnamon, and the ocean a-swayin' underneath. Buenos Ayres made up for that old hooker, the Mary Nell—white stone buildings, avenues shade of palms, dark-haired girls—"

Harv had lost himself in delectable memories. But in the strain of silence he drew in hastily to Elkerton.

"I wonder how soon supper will be ready, Rose?"

The rap at the door was mother, who came in looking flustered, saying that Mr. Leet, owner and editor of the Elkerton Democrat, was in the sitting-room, wanting to know if he could see Harv.

"Tell him I may drop around tomorrow, mother—long, hard trip, you know. I'll try to manage to get to him—not now. Mention the Mocha and Java Plantation," he called after her.

She turned and came back.

"The what?"

"Just that—he'll get you. You ought to see the Argentine, Rose—"

Her head wheeled to him. Things had moved a bit fast. Life was peculiar.

"I always wanted to travel," she said.

Her lips were red and a bit breathless, chin lifted, a misty gleam in her eyes that Edward never caused. Harv screened himself quickly with:

"Queer—how things turn up. I met a young heart the very night we got shed of the Mary Nell. Guess it was meant to be. I don't know—peculiar—first thing I knew, she was sittin' opposite in a restaurant, laughin' sort of to herself, eyein' me straight—and I was learnin' Spanish faster in a minute than in any one day before or since. Her name was Josa—she was like that. Went to her house to see her parents—real parents. They treated me royal. Little sorry about that, too—"

Presently Rose sent an uncertain shaft through the silence:

"Why sorry, Harv?"

Mother interrupted again, with word that Linc Spies and Morley Winter had come to see Harv.

"Tell 'em I'll meet 'em at the Lorelei before closin' time. Say, mother, how soon is supper?"

Rose seemed suspended. In the quiet again, she asked:

"What became of her then—Josa?"

"I never see moonlight but what I think of Josa," he said tenderly. "But you know how it is—a lot of the time there isn't any moon, to say nothing of daylight—"

"Oh—does your—side hurt you, Harv?"

"No. I was just thinking about a Chilean girl—"

"You were there, too?"

"Santaja, her name was—"

"Different—" murmured Rose.

"Lots different," declared the cavalier. "I don't believe Santaja ever ate anything—no, she wasn't thin, but a kind of dream-girl, she was—soft and flowery and so young—"

A motor stopped in front of the house. Rose started up, her cheeks crimson.

"It's Ed coming. Tell me some other time," she said.

SHE left the room abruptly. A grin and a gleam passed quickly across Harv's face. He was shaving when Edward came in and sat down in the chair left by Rose. The chair made a different sound. Harv craned, regarding him studiously.

"You must have laid on thirty pounds at least, Ed. That's some fur coat—"

"Yes; I sent to Philadelphia for that. Driving, you know—"

Harv's jaw was coming out clean and hard from the lather.

"Um-mh, Philadelphia. I miss the smell of horse, though," he remarked.

"How was it you got hurt, Harv?" Edward inquired.

"Little poker game," answered Harv, "down in Calderos—Chile, you know. Nothin' but gold makes a noise down there—gold mines up in the hills back of the town—a government mint near San Lostrique Plaza. Five of us in the game—sure, they know poker—and one guy got sore. The table was bright. There was heavy goin' for a minute. I didn't ' start anything either way, but I got out with more than I brought in—and a little slit besides—"

The elder brother shivered.

"What have you been up to, Ed?"

Edward cleared his throat and said nervously:

"Harv, you know I feel that I owe you something of an apology—"

"Is that all?"

"Now, Harv, you don't know what I mean. You went away before I could settle. Those things take time—probate and all that—and it was just like borrowing—the way I used your two thousand—"

Harv's eyes twinkled. "I wonder where ma keeps her talcum powder?"

Edward went on, a bit flustered:

"You see, Harv, I had a chance that day to use four thousand, so I just put our money together, and wrote out a note payable to you—and it was just exactly like investing it for you—"

"Ed, you always did neglect the back of your neck—"

Edward hurried on, as if making the deep part of a confession:

"Now, Harv, here's what I mean. I know the world—I'm older than you—it was my duty to look after your interests, especially with you gone off, the Lord knows where—and I had this chance I speak of—and I'm giving you six and a half interest on your two thousand—"

"You've got a grand little mind, Ed. Two and two makes four all right; but, where I come from, they take the rate of interest out of your ribs—little red instalments— Say, what is it starts eatin' you when you see a piece of change?"

"Ten per cent., then," offered Ed.

"That's certainly generous," said Harv, with deadly quiet in his manner. "Ed, it makes me think of the day pa died. You couldn't hardly wait till they lugged him out before taking possession of this place. Ma would have been rentin' out rooms if I hadn't put her wise. However, God knows you have to live in Elkerton and get the world that way, and something's coming to you for that, I suppose. Now, Ed,"—he paused to find the arms of his shirt,—"I'm needin' some improvements on the coffee plantation—about thirty-five hundred would cover it, and you're my Shylock. I'll take about five hundred in cash and your separate check for the rest. I want it to-night—now, before supper—and I don't want to get lit up, because it might be bad for my wound. Also I want that fur coat. I won't be goin' around by way of Philadelphia—not this trip."

EDWARD blinked and saw his younger brother's face slightly above and very near his own. And before his eyes, close between his face and the other's, seemed to run a series of pictures, extending from early boyhood as far as the Calderos poker game—pictures in which Harv was "lit up"—and from them all a single drawled sentence arose: "I didn't start anything, but—"

"You run along before supper, Ed—mother'll keep things warm for you—cash on the five hundred—and better pick up your other coat on the way back—"

That was about all that Rose heard, because just then Ed began to back out of the room. Exactly as Ed had been shown a series of pictures concerning Harv, Rose had been given to see her own life from her coming to the Powers home to the present moment. She saw it all so clearly that there was little need to think. She saw the elder brother so clearly that she did not care to look again. She saw Harv more clearly than ever before.

Supper was not quite ready when Harv emerged, rather fit. Mother Powers, who was to be relied upon for food before all things, had broken training now. She was in the parlor with several neighbor women, who followed her finger as it traced, somewhat indefinitely, Harv's path around the Horn, and crossings of the Andes and Amazon.

Harv withdrew. It was the same old atlas that had long ago rubbed its dust

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on his knees. He grinned at the thought of the world idea that had come to him from that big book.

Rose was in the kitchen. He tarried above her brown hair just long enough to suggest that they walk out somewhere later in the evening.

Supper—a lamplight affair—was not a good hour. Afterward there were guests in the front room. Edward came late and had his supper alone. Harv denied himself to the visitors and helped Rose dry the dishes. There hadn't been an answer about their walking out together. Harv didn't ask twice.

ROSE stood in the shadows of the dining-room. The elder brother had gone.

"It must be warmer," said Mother Powers, pointing to a well covered chair. "Ed has left his fur coat."

"I did notice a change," said Harv, picking up the coat and going into the front room. From there he called: "Oh, mother—"

And now Rose listened again, for it was tremendously her business. Harv seemed to be driving the little gray woman into a corner. Rose could see that particular corner. He took his mother in his arms—her head to his shoulder. He laughed and held his head high, showing his teeth. Something was lost from the sentences that he impressed upon her that minute, but a certain repetition went through all: "You and I—you and I—little old topnotcher, you and I—"

Now he was talking quite seriously and low:

"They all fluke, mother. Believe me, I've seen a lot of 'em, and they only make good just so far. But you go the full distance—take it from me. Now I've got a good bit on my mind,—markets are restless, coffee up and down, and the ranch needin' repair,—but I'm not so rushed anywhere that I can't come when you call. I'm all for you, mother. Here's a little present—don't stick it in a savings bank. Three thousand—it's yours. Now spend it. It's Ed's check, but don't mind that—it's been certified inside the last two hours. You'll injure my feelin's if you don't blow it. I've been cut deep, and my feelin's won't stand bein' injured. By the time it's gone we'll be able to rake up some more. Now I'm going out. You just remember—what I said about us—"

It filled the listening Rose like a breath from big mountains. The two came out, Mother Powers flushed—a deep blue glint in Harv's eye.

"I'm going out," he said.

There had been just one quick flash of his glance into the younger woman's face. She felt it somehow in her throat. She couldn't speak; for an instant she was

unable to stir. He was not coming back. She knew this by his talk to Mother Powers—a more formal good-by than usual from Harv.

She was changed. He had spoiled Elkerton forever. She felt that she could no longer breathe in the house of the elder brother. She heard Harv's step on the porch. The night had not changed. Icy cold had come in through the opened door. She heard the mother weeping, as she ran to the hall for her coat and hat.

SHE was in the street. Harv was a half block ahead, swinging easily toward town. She kept at the outer edge of the walk—in the deep shelter of the maple row. The leaves rustled crisply in fresh frost. The smell of their burning was in the air. Along the curb the boys had made bonfires before supper; they were just dull glows now except when the wind fanned.

He was going to the Lorelei first. He had told Linc Spies and Morley Winter. How could he do that? Elkerton would never hold Harv with five hundred dollars in his pocket; yet how could he go away without a word to her? He had asked her to come to-night, and she hadn't answered—unless this was her answer. What was Harv to expect, when she had turned him down flat and forever before his last trip—and fled from the house at his coming this morning?

They were in the town lights. If he stopped at the Lorelei, it was all finished for her. She would go back to the house. It would not mean Ed—never that—but Elkerton forever. Linc Spies— Morley Winter— Elkerton. And she had breathed the big mountains somewhere, sometime. Harv had to breathe them—or die. The light of distance was in his eyes—not the eyes of a failure. No failure could talk as he talked—to a brother, to a mother.

She saw the narrow blue band around the light of Al Turner's pool-room. If he stopped—

He did—but only to twitch his shoulders and pass on. He looked taller. She found herself hurrying now. She passed the Lorelei—heard the voices of Elkerton's young men. Harv did not belong to them.

He was crossing the Commons toward the station. It came to her lips before she knew it, almost:

"Pei—n-n-ng!"—the call of childhood.

He halted as if shot. She had an instant vision of Harv's taking her by the shoulders and talking to her—as he had talked to Mother Powers, only different; finding in her the excellent substance he had found in the mother—only different. They were hurrying together. A train whistled.

"Hello," he said breathlessly. "You did come! The call—it was like the good kid days. You always were a card—only I thought Elkerton had you—"

HE was looking into her face, his fingers stiff upon her shoulders. Now he pulled her along. The train whistled again. They were on the station platform. Far down was one heavy-coated man with a bag. He did not turn.

"You don't belong here. You need mountains, Rose. You see them in the morning—you march all day, and they're still ahead—big smoky mountains always ahead—they never answer back—they always call—you can look at them, and a crust is enough to eat—water's wine with big mountains ahead. Come on with me. I don't know where we're goin' first—"

He shouted above the roar of the slackening train:

"It's west-bound—it doesn't matter. The mountains are bigger and farther there. We'll keep on going. My God, you really mean it? Up you go—big step. We'll go as far as this old wagon takes us—then we'll get another. Why, Rose—this is all I've ever hoped for! And you've got me forever, the way you did it—"

He was standing in the aisle, his head held high, and laughing. She breathed deep. Her fingers brushed the frosty window to look out. It seemed as if the train was standing still and the world was wheeling past.

"I've always wanted to travel so—" she whispered.

The Flag of Lolonnois

By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

Illustration by George Gibbs

(Concluded)

RANSOME rose from the table, bowed to Mary, nodded to me, and thus undramatically left us. Remembering him as he was on that evening, calling to mind his thought of Mary's security, it is hard—despite all that happened before and all that happened afterward—for me to think of Ran- some as the bloody murderer that he was.

Mary left me to my cigar shortly after Ransome's departure, and I made no effort to detain her, although I sat for hours beneath the African stars, listening to the sounds of preparation that came from the Comet. But finally I, too, turned in, leaving the door of my room, which was next to the room of my wife, slightly ajar—although, let me set it down here in simple justice to Ransome, I had no fear that danger threatened Mary; I had seen too well the manner in which he ruled his crew aboard the Comet to doubt his control over those left upon the island.

Next morning, after breakfast, Mary and I, strolling in the garden, could see no signs of the Comet. I proposed a look around, and, each of us armed with a revolver, we ventured from the garden and passed down the main street.

Footsteps sounding behind us, we turned, to face Reardon.

"Just wanted to know if there's anything I can do for you," he said, with a grin.

On inspiration I answered:

"We thought we'd like to go fishing. Are we permitted to take a boat?"

"Considering that the nearest settlement is five hundred miles either way, I shouldn't wonder if you could," chuckled Reardon. "And you want lines and things. Wait a bit and I'll fetch them."

He got the tackle from a store-house, led us to the water-front, and there equipped with oars a serviceable boat, told us where the fishing was good, and pushed us off.

We made but a pretense of fishing.

"Yes," I admitted; "but I doubt if there's gas capacity in any of them for a trip of over a hundred miles. But you've noticed the negroes. Even those that waited on us don't speak English. And their lingo doesn't sound like any European language, not even Portuguese. Just their own native jabber. If they'd been picked up at any settlement, along the coast, you'd expect them to speak English or Portuguese, after a fashion."

"Well?" she said.

"It's my idea that they come from inland," I told her—"fresh from their native kraals, or whatever they may be called. And where they came from—"

"Into the jungle?" she interrupted, with a tiny shudder. One didn't have to draw diagrams for Mary Fitch.

"Isn't that better than the sea? With the certain knowledge that if we weren't overhauled we'd die of thirst, or be lost on the shore somewhere?"

"Wouldn't we be overhauled on land? Or mightn't we starve?"

"There's a good chance of it," I admitted. "But—we don't want to stay here. Anyway, let's look around."

Mary agreed with me. So, that afternoon, once again we pretended to go fishing. And, finding that no one seemed to take any particular interest in our movements, I rowed directly across the narrow harbor and landed on the beach. But we discovered no trail leading into the dank jungle, impenetrable, that reared itself before us. For two hours we searched, and then decided that, if trail there was, it

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was not near there. I suggested climbing a tree, from its top to spy out the land, to which suggestion Mary assented.

I made my way to the top of a very tall tree, and looked around me. There, stretching inland and along the coast for as far as I could see, lay the jungle. Peer as I would, I could see no sign of a trail. I started to descend. As I did so my vision swung seaward, and I grew rigid.

There, half a dozen miles away, was the smudge of a vessel. Beneath her black smoke I made out her lines. It was the Comet. But it was not she alone that made me tense. It was the sight, beyond her not more than four miles, of another smudge of smoke and another craft. And, even as I watched, a dull boom sounded on the jungle air, and the Comet was running away from the other craft!

"What's the matter? Why aren't you coming down?" called Mary.

"Didn't you hear it?" I cried.

But down below, sound smothered by the undergrowth, the cannon-shot had been indistinguishable to her. I told her what I saw, and excitedly she demanded that I help her up to my side.

With my aid, she gained a point in the branches of the tree just below me. And there we watched the Comet meet her fitting end.

The other ship—a destroyer too—came up hand over hand. Other shots sounded in the humid atmosphere, and one of them must have struck a vital spot. For suddenly, a mile or so offshore now, the Comet ceased her flight. Amidships sounded an explosion.

The fire of the other craft ceased. Doubtless she waited for the signal of surrender. But it never came. We could see a figure, tiny, antlike, at that distance, swarm up the skeleton mast of the Comet. We could see him—I thought it was Ransome—wave something in the breeze. Instinctively I knew it for what it was: the black flag of Lolonnois, flaunting itself, for the last time in history, from the masthead of a buccaneer.

And then there came another iron storm from the victor. There were two more explosions, and the Comet was gone.

FOR a moment after she disappeared beneath the waves, Mary and I held our breath. Then, as a little shriek, born of pity, excitement, delight at our escape,—of a score of mixed emotions,—came to her lips, I clapped a hand across her mouth, and pointed downward. She understood.

There had been no idleness on the island while we watched the battle off the harbor mouth. The fight had been seen from there, too; and when it became evident that the Comet was destined to defeat, flight began. Loaded into the boats that had been beached or moored a little offshore, the negroes raced for the mainland where Mary and I were perched. Reardon came with them.

Landing, they loaded themselves with various stores, men and women carrying burdens; and when I stopped Mary's little cry, the advance guard of them was beneath us, and but a hundred yards away. They disappeared into the jungle immediately, urged on by Reardon.

We waited until the last faint sound of their passing had ended. Then we descended from the tree and, hand in hand, raced to the shore. We jumped into the small motor-boat that had carried Reardon across the little harbor. I spun the wheel and Mary took the tiller. Swiftly we rounded the island and came in view once more of the craft that had sunk the Comet.

Came into view of her, I say, but—she was steaming away from us. Nor, though we stood up and waved and screamed, did she deviate from that racing path away from us.

I remember that I cursed beneath my breath, that Mary wept, and that I comforted her.

"They'll surely come back," I told her.

"Why?" she asked.

And I could not answer that question.

I took the tiller from Mary's nerveless hands—she had seen much, suffered much, and this final shock of disappointment was the last straw—and steered back to the beach from where we had first embarked. Thence, still silent, we walked to the dilapidated "palace," and at its door I left her.

But not for long. My Mary Richley Fitch, as I think I have shown, was no weakling. Within twenty minutes from the time I left her, she called to me from the front door. I rose from the broken-down bench where I had been gloomily smoking a cigar.

"Supper," she called.

I walked to her, amazed.

"How were you able to?"

"Weeping gives one a fine appetite," she said. But her eyes were dry.

She had set right to work, and from the kitchen had brought a meal of tinned things. But there was hot coffee.

"I could have cooked something, but I didn't want to. We must talk it over—but not until you've eaten."

I flashed her a glance of gratitude for that, and fell upon the meal.

"Now, then," she said, after supper and the sudden African sunset, "I've looked into the commissary."

"Already?"

"There is enough tinned stuff—meat, fish, milk, soups—to feed two people for months. It's all stored in that room off the kitchen. Fuel for the engine is the only other thing we need to consider, isn't it?"

"But why?" I asked. "That war-ship will come back here."

"Don't," she said. "Let us—get down to brass tacks. I don't want encouragement that is just—encouragement. Why should it come back?"

I was stumped. If the war-ship had not already known of the existence of the supply depot for the Comet on this island, there was no particular reason for belief that she would learn of it later. Mary put my next thought into words.

"Only one white man was left here," she said. "That man, Reardon. He ruled the negroes, but—there was a war-ship, manned by other white men, with powerful cannon, to back up his orders. And now the negroes have seen that war-ship destroyed. Suppose that Reardon still can control them? Even so—they will come back here. And, Seth, what a rich mine this island is for those savages. For Reardon, too. Seth, they will come back, either with Reardon or without him. And in either case—"

Her voice died away. I rose.

"Let's go look for oil," I said.

We found it—scores of barrels, many of them small and not too heavy to be easily rolled down the beach and aboard the motor-boat—not the motor-boat we had been in when the war-ship failed to notice us, but a larger one. A bright moon gave us plenty of light to work by, and I saw no reason for delay and many reasons for speed. She was equipped with fuel enough to carry her at least five hundred miles, and probably much farther, before I called it a day.

"And the first thing in the morning we'll load food aboard her, and water, Seth, and—and let's start at once. This place—" She shuddered.

"Right after breakfast," I agreed.

And then I left her at the door of her room. I was more nervous than I had let her see. I meant to stay awake all night.

But it had been hard work rolling those barrels of oil. I fell asleep.

I AWOKE, dazed from the heaviness of my slumber, and by a bright light that blinded me. But I was not too dazed to halt my groping for the revolver beneath my pillow at the warning words that issued from the lips of Reardon.

"I got a bead on you, and you touch your gun and it'll be the last thing you'll touch in this world," he said.

I lay there, staring at the circle of light that gleamed from his palm. I could think only of my wife in the next room. For she was asleep in the next room— asleep because she trusted me to protect her from just such a thing as had happened: the return of Reardon.

"She's got a gun, ain't she?" he asked.

I had not thought of that, but now I could not hide the exultation on my face. And Reardon saw it.

"She has, eh? Get out of bed! Hustle, now—and quiet!"

There was nothing for me to do but obey, and obey I did. Save for my coat and shoes, I was dressed, never having intended to go to sleep.

Reardon passed between me and the bed. He took possession of my revolver.

"Now—ahead of me—march," he said.

I eyed him. "Where to?"

"Into the next room," he said. "Steady!"

He deftly side-stepped my sudden rush, and as I rebounded from the wall against which I had crashed, his voice filled with menace:

"Just for that I've a mind to—"

"Mary!" I cried. "Mary!"

"Seth!"

She had been sleeping; I could tell that from her voice.

"Your revolver! Reardon is here!" Cool as ice her voice answered:

"I have it, Seth. Tell me—"

BUT Reardon broke in upon her words.

He spat a curse at me, and backed to the door of my room, keeping me covered.

"You toss your gun out into the hall, miss," he cried, "or I'll put a bullet through Fitch. Hurry up, now."

"Don't do it, Mary," I cried. "Don't—"

And then Reardon's jeering laugh cut me short. For, without a moment's hesitation, heedless of self, Mary tossed her revolver through her door into the hall.

"Good girl, that," said Reardon. "Hanged if I'd go to sleep when I was supposed to be guarding her."

I answered nothing, but Mary said:

"Never mind, Seth; I didn't expect you to stay awake. And now that Mr. Reardon has us, what is he going to do with us?"

"I'll tell you," said Reardon. "That boat you been outfittin'—take another passenger? I saw her as I came up here. I come pretty near takin' her right then and there, only I see she had no food or water aboard her. And I don't want to be surprised by you, Fitch, while I'm outfittin' her, so— Well, here we are. Now, do I take her alone, or do you come with me?"

"How far do you mean to take us?" I asked. "Suppose that you go your way and we go ours."

"You'd naturally think that way, wouldn't you?" he retorted. "But—it's a long sail to the nearest settlement. One man could do it, I suppose, but I ain't much of a sailor. Two men, watch and watch, and with a woman to do a trick at the wheel when it was necessary—well, it would be easy."

"And after we reached civilization? Just before we reached it? You with arms and we with none?"

It was Mary that spoke. She had dressed and come into the hall.

Reardon shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"It's dog eat dog," he said. "I'd have to trust you; you'd have to trust me. But there's a bunch of niggers back there in the jungle. When we camped to-night I heard 'em talkin' quiet with one another. There's lots of good stuff in this village—and only me, they was figurin', in the way. So I got out of the way."

"But what has that to do with our going in the same boat with you?" I interrupted.

"Why, just this much: You're a gentleman and Mrs. Fitch is a lady. Suppose I leave you here, or let you go off in another boat? Suppose that war-ship comes back here and picks you up? Suppose you tell them about me? I'm done.

"But suppose you're with me, and we tell a story of being lost from one of those ships that the Comet sunk. I might have a hard time gettin' any one to believe me alone. But with you two to back me up, it'd be easier. See?"

I didn't see, and neither did Mary.

"And you want us to lie to save your worthless skin, do you?" I said.

"It ain't worthless to me," he answered. "Yes, that's exactly it. Are you with me?"

He played his flash on the lamp on a table in my room, and walked over and lighted it. Then he turned to us. Mary had entered the room and stood by me.

"It don't look to me like you had any choice," he said. "It's come with me or wait here for them savages to get back here, as they surely will. For I'll

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dismantle every other boat. You people can help me save my skin. I'll cook up a story that'll do; you can stick to it. That's all."

"Well, Mr. Reardon," said Mary, "suppose we start, and talk ways and means over later?"

He shook his head. "It won't do."

"Well, then we'll stay here," said Mary. "We don't intend to lie when we reach civilization. We intend to tell the whole story."

It was the choice, apparently, of life and death; and Mary had chosen death—chosen it calmly, matter-of-factly, almost, although I could feel her quiver.

Reardon looked puzzled.

"Look here," he said. "I need you two. You two need me. Can't we compromise? Suppose you people help me get away, and I help you get away? Then, supposing we get to some port safely, that you give me a chance to make my getaway? Give me twelve hours' start, or something. I know Africa; I'll be safe enough with that leeway."

I suspected something—what, I did not know.

"But if a ship picks us up?" I said. "Well, in that case I lose," he answered. And I—well, I believed him. I looked at Mary.

"Twelve hours. No one could blame us for giving him that much chance," she said. "And still—"

She loved life, as did I; and yet, life could be purchased too dearly. But, as she hesitated, Reardon spoke again, eagerly:

"We get within striking distance of some port, and I'll land you two. I'll give you supplies, and you can snake your way overland to safety. I'll take my own chances of making my getaway then. Talk your heads off then, if you will."

"And you'll take your chance if a ship picks us up?" asked Mary. "You know that we'll at once tell who and what you are?"

"I'll take my chance," he said.

"All right, then," said I. "We'll go with you."

"And, as it's getting on to dawn, let's start loading the food aboard the boat," said Reardon. "Those niggers—"

TWO hours later we had loaded the Margie—incongruous name for the motor-boat of such a gang as had ruled this island—with food and water.

Mary was aboard the craft, and Reardon was monkeying with the engine. I was unfastening the lines that held her to the little dock.

"Fitch!" called Reardon loudly.

I straightened up, looking at him, the lines in my hand. And then I knew—knew him for the murderous liar that he was!

For he had Mary aboard the craft; had not been compelled to subdue her by force; had her there complaisantly. And he had kept me with him until the very last moment, until the last danger of a savage rush from the mainland, against which I would have fought by his side, had vanished. And now—in his hand he held a revolver, leveled at me.

As I have said, I had straightened up. I was a fair mark; yet the sudden scream that burst from Mary's lips must have unnerved him, for his first shot went wild. Something struck me heavily, viciously, in the shoulder. But, though I fell, I fell forward, clutching at the gunwale with both hands, my body lying on the dock, my legs twined about a beam. A living line, I held the Margie to the landing.

I heard Reardon fire again, felt the bullet crash through my left calf, heard the engine sputter, heard Mary scream.

And then, panther-like, somebody bounded over me and landed in the boat. The impetus of his striking broke the last vestige of my grip on the gunwale. Hopeless, death clutching at my heart, I raised myself on one elbow.

And hope came back to me, brought by the last person on earth one would think could bring me hope—Ransome! For it was he! His clothing draggled about him, a bloody bandage around his head, he was as evil-looking. as a demon from hell; but—he brought hope to me.

For like a cat he righted himself, and stood facing Reardon, slightly crouched, bent at the knees, his long, powerful arms flexing.

"My guests, Reardon, I think I said, eh?" he said softly.

The would-be murderer gaped at him.

"To be treated with courtesy, I think I told you, eh, Reardon?"

There was menace indescribable in his voice, and he edged a bit closer. And Reardon fired—fired twice before they closed. And then—I can only describe what happened by saying that Ransome broke the man in two with his powerful hands. For it was a limp, lifeless, grotesquely twisted body that he hurled into the harbor half a minute later.

BREATHLESS, I had watched the brief struggle. Still breathless, I watched Ransome now. For he straightened up, bowed to Mary, opened his mouth, and—collapsed in the bottom of the boat beside the engine. One at least of Reardon's shots had gone home.

Then Mary, who had been a frozen image since Ransome had miraculously— so it seemed—come to our aid, seized an oar. The water was shallow; the boat, that had drifted a little way from the dock, was easily poled ashore. In a moment Mary was out and had made the lines fast. She was kneeling beside me, her arms around me, her tears on my face, and I was assuring her—what was patent—that I was suffering only flesh-wounds.

Ransome stirred in the bottom of the boat. He rose, coughing heavily. He sat on a thwart.

"I apologize," he said. "I—thought I had—more control—over—my men."

Mary spoke to him, her voice breaking:

"Just a moment. When I have Seth's wounds—"

With strips torn from her petticoat, she was binding me.

Ransome shook his head.

"I have seen death come to many men," he said. "I know when it has come to me. That—swine—got me—here."

He touched his left side.

"I haven't a chance. In—five minutes. Mrs. Fitch—though you hate me—I have saved you—just now. I ask—one favor. Let me—rest—in the—sea. Don't—bury me."

He looked up. Painfully he drew something from his pocket. It was soggy but unmistakable: the flag of Lolonnois.

"It is yours, Fitch." He laughed. "That I should have clung to wreckage and brought it here—to you! It is fate, my Fitch, fate. Oh, well!"

A spasm of coughing shook him. When it was over he looked up again.

"You and I and fate, Fitch. Well, fate and I have played a brave game, and you have watched it. I wish you, Fitch, that happiness that never was mine, that—"

And then he died.

For a long time Mary and I sat on the dock in silence. Finally I spoke to her:

"If you'll just walk away, Mary—"

I rose painfully; I had to lean on her shoulder.

"I know," she said; "and I'll do it. But—we can't go now. Your shoulder; your leg—"

She was looking at the "palace" as she spoke. I was looking toward the mainland. Gently I turned her head. On the beach, quietly but rapidly launching skiffs, were negroes. Wounded or not, there was nothing to be done but flee. And so we got into the motor-boat. Mary took the wheel, I started the engine; and, to an accompaniment of savage yells, we sped out of the harbor.

At its mouth I slackened the engine. Though Mary would have helped me, I bade her look away. For Ransome was a small man, and I had one good arm. And so we buried in the deep the last of the buccaneers.

IT was next morning that we sighted a ship. Oddly enough, I had suffered no fever. Mary was, if anything, in worse shape than I was. That was owing, perhaps, to the fact that when I had drifted into sleep, my wife had not awakened me, but had stood watch all night long.

But neither of us thought of wounds or fatigue as the hull of the steamer grew more distinct, as we made out her lines, of the destroyer type, as, having seen our signals of distress,—a petticoat on an oar,—she came to us with a bone in her teeth. And at last she stopped, drifting in the ground-swell, while she lowered a ladder, alongside which Mary steered the Margie. We were fast to her side, and then—then Mary fainted.

It is odd that the most harrowing thing of all the fearful adventure was the fact that I was unable to carry my wife up the ladder, but must needs let other arms do that service. And so, for a while, I left her.

We were aboard his Britannic Majesty's ship the Hornet. Mary was in a cabin that had been assigned to her. I, bandaged, and with a crutch, was in the ward-room. At a long table sat the captain and most of the officers, staring at me.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Captain Travis, as I finished my long tale. "A bally pirate, eh? Jove! We saw the flag she finally flew, of course, but—we didn't know what to make of that. Thought it some crazy stunt. Thought they'd gone mad, or something like that. We surely thought that she must be a German, though we couldn't place her at all, her lines and type were so Yankee. But the Germans have had so many surprises up their sleeves in this war, and we didn't know but what this type of craft was one

---

of them. A pirate! Jove! We captured one of her men; found him floating in the wreckage—unconscious, but not seriously hurt. Well, we needn't bother about him. A pirate! He'll swing before this day ends."

"Tell me about it—your side of it," I said.

Captain Travis tugged at his mustache.

"There isn't much to tell," he answered. "Reports of vessels being sunk the past few weeks by a German raider alarmed the owners of the liner Southern Cross. They asked the Admiralty to detail a ship to convoy her. She's a mail-boat running between Capetown and Southampton, you know. Well, we picked her up two days ago, and came up along the coast with her. Yesterday morning we sighted a strange craft. We wirelessed her, but her replies were unsatisfactory. She was a war-ship, of our own general type, too. When she sheered off we made certain she 'was the German raider we'd heard so much about, and we went after her.

"But we should have known that she was no German from the way she was sailed and the way she was fought," said this English sailor. "The Germans would have put up a better fight. Marksmanship was awful. And I guess that's all."

He shifted the subject, and spoke again:

"About that town in there? You say there's no one left in it?"

"Except the blacks," I told him.

"Well, we needn't bother about them just now. They've done no harm. They've been used, but that's no crime, 'I suppose. As for that other West Indian island that you think this Ransome had stocked with men and supplies—our cruisers will do some keen scouting in the next few weeks, Mr. Fitch.

"And now—let's have it over with. The trial of this man we captured. You'll testify, of course. I must give him a fair trial, you know," he added, "and your testimony is necessary."

"Certainly," I agreed.

BUT when, five minutes later, they brought into the ward-room the lone survivor of the pirate, he was the one man against whom I could not testify. For it was Carey, the imbecile.

Captain Travis was a conscientious and rather diplomatic officer.

"There's always friction between neutral and belligerent nations," he said, after I had finished defending Carey. "This man is an American citizen. In view of what you say about his mental condition, I'll not hang him. Off the coast of Spain I'll turn the Southern Cross over to one of our North Atlantic fleet. Oh, the Southern Cross isn't very far off," he smiled, "though, naturally, in the thick of yesterday's fight she rather took to her heels.

"And after I've seen to her I'll speak a liner bound for the United States, one of the Mediterranean boats, and I'll transfer your wife and yourself to her. Also the man Carey. He'll have to be imprisoned, of course, and face trial in your courts. Is that satisfactory?"

I hesitated. Mary, my wife, was English. I believed that she loved me, but— I met Captain Travis's glance.

"My wife," I said, "might want— You fully understand the circumstances of our marriage?"

"Perfectly legal," he said.

"That's the point," I said, coloring. "Suppose my wife wants it untied? She may not want to go to America. In which case—"

"In which case, my dear fellow, I'll set her aboard the Southern Cross. But suppose you go and ask her?"

I did. I knocked upon the door of Mary's cabin, and she admitted me. I told her of Captain Travis's offer. She looked at me.

"I am English—yes," she said. "At least, I was. But doesn't a wife become a citizen of her husband's country? And—and—I haven't any people; my uncle was my last relative. And—and—you don't have to be married to me. I'll—I'll get a divorce or something, and—"

And she said no more just then, for I kissed her quivering lips.

TWO days later we were transferred to a Mediterranean liner bound for New York, Carey with us. In New York, Mary and I were married in a church, and went upon a honeymoon that was interrupted only when Carey was brought to trial for piracy. There I not only testified in his behalf, but was his attorney, and won him clear. I may say that my conscience has never reproached me for defending Carey, either, because, shortly after his acquittal, an operation performed upon his skull rende ed him thereafter honest and normal.

As for the island off the African coast, Captain Travis wrote me some months afterward that a cruiser had visited it, but found no trace of natives, and not a single thing of value. But Ransome's West Indian base was found within a week after my talk with Captain Travis, and a score of ruffians tasted British justice.

And this is all that I have to tell of the cruise of the Comet, whose flag now is in my home, a mute testimony to the horrors that I suffered—horrors that were well worth suffering, since they brought me Mary Richley, whose possession makes me look almost kindly upon the black flag of Lolonnois.

The End

How We Met the Higher Cost of Living

By N. JENKINS

WE were just plain, every-day people, living in a fairly prosperous section of a Southern town. My husband, Edward, is a salaried man, and his monthly pay check amounts to $125. I made my own clothes and the three children's, and did my own work, except the washing and weekly cleaning. We economized in every way we could; so we were able to have a nice home; to keep the children supplied with school books and always neatly and warmly clothed; to have good meals, pay our church dues and insurance money, and subscribe to one paper and one magazine. And we put a few dollars in the bank monthly.

More than this, you will see, we couldn't expect to do on $125 a month; and when the cost of living became higher, there were no more extra dollars to put in the bank. As it continued to climb, we were obliged to draw from our little savings account. Clearly this wouldn't do at all.

The plan by which we met the change was mine, and I had quite a time getting Edward to consent to try it. But now you would have to offer him very great inducements to persuade him to return to the old way of living.

We had been living in a small house for which we paid $27.50 a month. I began to look around for something cheaper.

Quite out of the suburbs, and about three quarters of a mile from the trolley line, we found a comfortable bungalow with two acres of good land fenced in. The rent was $16.50. We decided to take this place. There was nothing against it but the distance from the trolley car, and that has proved a positive benefit; for the daily walk has improved Edward's health, and he has to get up only twenty minutes earlier.

We moved out to the bungalow, drawing a portion of our savings to meet the initial expenses of the move. We had a pleasant living-room, dining-room, and a play-room for the children, besides the bed-rooms, kitchen, and bath-room. There was a charming brick porch, vine-covered, along the southern side of the house. No gas, electric lights, or running water; but there was a deep well of delicious water.

It was still early enough in the spring to plant a good kitchen garden, so we put in everything that grows well in this section—tomatoes, sweet peppers, egg-plant, okra, butter-beans, lima-beans, and stringless string-beans, onions, peas, artichokes, lettuce, Irish and sweet potatoes; and later on cucumbers, melons, and canteloupes.

We couldn't spare any grazing land for the Jersey cow we had bought, but we made her pay her own board—we gave a certain quantity of her good rich milk to a neighbor for the rent of a grass meadow.

Sukey provided us with milk and cream, butter, and cottage cheese in abundance. We make it a rule to supply the home commissariat first; but we have been able to sell the surplus to the steward of the neighboring Country Club.

We fixed up an old chicken-house, and bought two pure-bred cockerels and two dozen graded pullets. Now we have fresh eggs for breakfast and to use in making many delightful and nutritious dishes; fried chicken or roast chicken or pot-pie every Sunday and when we have company, in spite of the high cost of these delicacies. We sell some eggs and chickens to the aforesaid Country Club.

On the outer extremity of our two-acre farm is a neat pen, shaded with myrtle bushes, and screened from view by a grape arbor. Here luxuriate several fine black pigs, so fat that life might well be—but apparently is not—a burden to them.

Why should the high cost of living trouble us now? We have met it successfully. We are putting money in the bank. We do not vegetate because we live in the country. We have pleasant neighbors to visit. We can afford to go to the best things at the theater occasionally, and to the movies with the children once a week. We plan picnics and fishing parties and other country festivities, and enjoy them with a free mind. We attend the country church, and we subscribe to several good magazines, and have a yearly membership ticket to the library in town. Altogether the change from town to country has been a good one for us; and we advise many of our friends to try it.

HERE is the average monthly budget for this family, whose income of $125 a month too little to give them the simple comforts of life in town, but in the country gives them health and good food, and a little extra for the savings bank.

What "human document" can you write, out of your experience, that will be interesting and helpful to other every-day folks like us?

     

	Rent	Groceries	Milk	Vegetables	Bread	Salary
In town	$27.50	$40	$3.50	$5	$3.50	$125
In the country	16.50	15	Sukey pays the bill	We raise them	We make our own	125
	———	———
Saving	$11.00	$25

       

Sale of cream and milk	$10
Sale of eggs and chickens (average)	8
Sale of roses (average)	3
Sale of vegetables (average)	14
Sale of fruit (occasional, about)	4
	———
Total saving, $87.	$39

ON BOARD THE SUBMARINE

By BERNICE BROWN

U-BOATING is certainly not an old man's sport. Like its aërial rival, the submarine demands a certain type of officer. He must be physically fit, quick in judgment and execution, the master of his nervous system, a daredevil and a mathematician combined.

Before he goes aboard, he dons a suit of black leather lined with wool. At the conning-tower hatch some one presents him with a handful of waste; for, until he returns to his base, he will breathe and touch and taste and smell oil.

The interior of a U-boat must resemble the outside of a July lemonade pitcher; only, the drops of liquid are oil, the fuel for the heavy Diesel engine. The far-going submarine carries a crew of from nineteen to thirty men, each carefully trained in every detail of the terrifyingly intricate machinery. The success of a whole campaign may depend upon the immediate repairing of one leaking cell in the battery. In Germany, the engineers receive part of their training in the factories where the various parts are constructed.

"All hands" work in artificial light, breathe "tinned air," sleep in vigorously swaying hammocks—and all hands are oily. Only three men look through the periscope; the rest of the crew are blind to everything except the fragile fortress in. which they are imprisoned.

Curiously enough, the Germans were long skeptical of the future of the submarine. At the beginning of the war the German government possessed perhaps thirty U-boats, of which only twelve were of modern design. In August, 1914, England owned seventy submarines and had twenty more in process of construction. As early as December, 1913, Admiral Sir Percy Scott, the great English champion of the under-sea craft, declared: "I can see no use for the battleship and very little employment for the fast cruiser." He must have spoken loud enough to be overheard in Berlin—anyway, the Germans heeded.

While the early German U-boats displaced less than 200 tons, those now in use displace 900. Without renewing their oil supply they can now travel twelve thousand sea miles. During one voyage to the United States the Deutschland (which, by the way, was built in six months) journeyed 180 miles under water.

The belligerent U-boat carries two guns and boasts, three tubes for the discharge of torpedoes. Lest you should think being rammed by a torpedo is as ignominious as being run over by a street-car, realize that each torpedo costs $7500. We wonder how often they indulge in target practice.

Aboard a submarine, one can complain even of the high cost of breathing. That the air supply may not be imposed upon, electric stoves are used for cooking, and the submarine—which becomes very cold when submerged—is also heated by electricity.

The chief safety device is, of course, the periscope, the eye of the submarine. In addition there are meters to indicate the state of the air, a compass, a pressure-gage to tell the depth, an instrument like a level which shows the inclination of the submarine, and a log to indicate the speed. If worst comes to worst, but not too suddenly, the crew may don outfits like the self-contained diving suit, and escape from the disabled submarine by, the conning-tower hatch or any available hatch. The air in these suits is purified by chemicals, and some types contain enough to last thirty minutes.

In spite of all this, we imagine an insurance company would consider any member of a submarine crew a mighty poor risk.

Just Noises

By ERNEST A. STEPHENS

WHEN your engine is peacefully purring like a well fed cat on a downy cushion—when your clutch is operating perfectly—when your transmission generally gives no untoward indication of its presence and when you realize that mile after mile is being reeled off without conscious mechanical effort, you know that all is well with your car. Being a really and truly motorist, this means that everything is right with you also.

But just suppose the sequence of well behaved sound is broken by any unexpected noise, however small. Intuitively you wonder what has gone wrong; you speculate on whether it is transient or likely to be permanent, slight or serious; you think it may be in the engine, in the differential, in the universal joint—and your peace of mind straightway departs until such time as you have traced the irritating sound to its source and removed the cause.

There are noises and noises. All are puzzling at first, but some are capable of being identified. Have you ever thought of using a stethoscope to locate mysterious knocks in the engine? A modified form of the instrument used by the doctor is on the market and often employed; but a lot of good detective work can be done with nothing more technical than a metal rod held between the teeth at one end, the other being placed in turn on the various suspected parts of the engine. The object of using such a device is simply to magnify the noise, and thus render it possible to diagnose the complaint before taking down the engine.

One of the most difficult noises to locate is caused by what is known as piston-slap. It is usually fairly loud; it seems to come from the cylinders, but can not be readily traced to any individual cylinder. Experts do not agree as to the cause, but the trouble probably arises from a piston that is loose on its pin, or from a piston ring that is loose vertically in its groove. The noise occurs, as a rule, when pressure is placed on the piston, as at the commencement of compression. Your stethoscope will be useful here, and the remedies are either new piston rings, a new piston (if the old one is too loose in the cylinder), or a new pin that fits properly.

A heavy pounding noise from the crank-case may indicate a loose connecting rod or a crank-shaft that is loose in one or more of its bearings. If you suspect trouble of this type, the matter should be investigated without delay, as connecting rods have been known to break away from their moorings, and a wrecked crank-case, with probable damage to the cylinders, is the result. Rattling noises around the valve mechanism mean lost motion and consequent loss of power, and should be attended to, although they do not indicate the grave possibilities attendant on the other noises referred to.

When you hear a sharp whistling noise, you may be sure that gas is escaping under pressure, owing to a defective gasket or packing for some part of the inlet or exhaust manifolds. If you listen closely you will discover whether the noise occurs on the suction or the exhaust stroke; if it is the latter there will be a noticeable odor. In either case go over the joints until you locate the fault, and fit new gaskets.

Of course there may be noises from time to time in parts other than your engine. Your transmission may emit a grinding sound, which indicates lack of lubricant or gear trouble; your bevel drive and differential may get in bad shape; and do not forget that broken or damaged wheel bearings may mean ruined tires.

Every car has an individual note which indicates that it is in perfect tune. You will soon learn to have your ear similarly attuned, and will be able at once to notice any harshness or abnormal sound far more accurately than would be the case if you were operating a strange car. If you hear any noise that you can not trace, just write to this magazine at once. The automobile editor will be glad to help you—and the cost is nothing at all.

Mr. Stephens' book, "Running Your Car at a Minimum Cost," written for our readers, will be mailed on receipt of a nickel.

Address 381 Fourth Avenue, New York.

They Once Were Kind and Good

HERE'S a picture we bought just about the time the war broke out, and have been wondering ever since whether we dared to publish it. It shows a graveyard for birds, the only one of its kind in the world—and it's in Germany.

At the big health resort in Beelitz, birds are often killed by flying against the great glass windows of the sanatorium. And the patients made a practice of picking up their little bodies and burying them with appropriate ceremonies.

After the Lusitania was sunk and it became so unpopular to print anything nice about Germans, we decided we would have to throw this picture away. And then, after all, we decided to print it anyway.

We feel as strongly as anybody about the way Germany has conducted this war. We believe she must be thoroughly whipped if the world is to be safe. But, without yielding a bit of that feeling, we are going to try to keep in mind through the war our memory of the German people as they used to be—with hearts big enough even to care for poor little birds. The German people as they used to be—and as we trust and believe they will some day be again.

Published weekly by The Crowell Publishing Company, at New York, N. Y., George H. Hazen, President. Executive and editorial offices, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City, N. Y. All rights reserved. Subscription terms in the United States, its dependencies, Mexico, and Cuba, SLOP a year. In Canada, 81.25. Foreign countries. S1.75. Entered as second-class matter June 14, 1915, at the post-office at New York, N.Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879.