What Is the Best Way to Meet Competition?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

THE trouble with Archie was that he feared competition. And the trouble with Sam, that he refused to consider it at all.

Bob struck a sensible balance between the two, because he neither feared nor ignored it—he studied the other fellow, and learned from him as much as possible.

They were three branch managers for a big Eastern concern, and in their widely scattered territories competition came to them in various forms.

Sometimes it was prices.

A customer assured Archie that a rival house was offering identical goods for ten per cent. less money. That was enough for Archie! He wrote the house in a panic, asking for closer prices to meet this yellow peril; and, when these were not granted, he maintained that it was little use to try and sell goods against such a handicap.

Rather strangely, he was scared by nothing but lower prices. Tell him that the other fellow was giving better service or deliveries, and he refused to worry.

If anybody told Sam that the other fellow was cheaper or better, he let the news go in one ear and out the other. Competition simply got the absent treatment from him! And that calm assurance often gave the death-blow to mere competitive rumors.

But there was one difficulty. Very often the other fellow had a real advantage in new goods; and then Sam was the last man in his territory to hear about it, and his house failed. to get desirable information.

Watching the Other Man

BOB looked at competition with the eye of a student. Anything the other fellow did was interesting to him. He wanted to know all about it.

If a customer reported that another house offered goods at a lower price, Bob did not rest until he saw the goods. Seven times in ten they did not materialize at all, but ended in rumor.

The rumor that the other fellow sells for less money has always been one of the buyer's trusty weapons, and always will be.

If the goods were actually produced, then Bob went over them in detail, and could nearly always point out inferiority of material or workmanship, or show how the lower price figured in some combination of goods sold together, with profit made up on other articles.

If better values really turned up in his territory, then he woke the house by wire, and the thorough information he supplied made it possible to meet real competition.

There is one competitor who will never forget Bob!

This was a concern that sold goods in advance, on contracts specifying that the price was to be the same as that made every year by Bob's house. That price was always named on the first of September.

Bob found that extensive sales had been made in his territory on such a basis, and sent in his information.

When the price was named that year, it was below cost! It held for only two hours, and was then advanced; but the other fellow had to live up to his contracts, and the loss was a lesson—that never was needed again.

The worst feature about competition, usually, is that business men neglect to get the real facts. A small merchant worries about the low prices of the department-store or mail-order house, and lets it go at that, while the actual competition is probably not tower prices at all, but better service, or a wider range of goods to choose from, or more complete information given to customers in advertising. A little study of the facts would show that merchant where he might enlarge on his own stock, or give better service, or attract customers by more information in his advertising.

Rules for Studying Competitors

ONE of the best schemes for studying competition is that suggested by a sales-manager who deals with many retail merchants.

Four elements must be considered.

First. The other fellow may be bigger, or have a better reputation, or possess more capital.

Second. He may have a superior location—on the main shopping street, say, where people find it easier to visit his store.

Third. He may be carrying better merchandise and giving better service.

Fourth. His prices may really be lower.

To find out what is his true advantage is to do away with all the guess-work. In competition, as in other things, fear fattens on the unknown. When his advantage is determined, then steps can be taken to meet it.

What the Little Merchant Can Do

SIZE, reputation, and even larger capital are not insurmountable obstacles. If the little merchant has less money, all the more reason for making it work harder by turning stocks oftener; and if he is smaller, so much more opportunity for holding customers by personal attentions not easily rendered by a big organization.

Reputation is a matter of neither capital nor size nor years. Each business concern makes that for itself as it goes along.

As for an out-of-the-way location, that has often been turned into an advantage; for it means lower rents and overhead cost, which can be given customers in prices.

If the other fellow is really giving better service and merchandise, then all effort can be centered on that point, which is largely a matter of buying and stock-keeping skill; and if his prices are lower—which is not apt to be the case in these days of high costs for the large business— then better merchandise and service are still the best methods of meeting competition.

The best way ever found of meeting competition in any line is--have a good look at it and see what it really is!

A Great Little Word Is "Why"

A SUCCESSFUL man whom I know recently changed from a business with which he was thoroughly familiar to a business that he knew absolutely nothing about.

I watched to see what he would do.

For two solid weeks he did nothing but ask questions.

He took a train to Washington to learn what information the government had on trade conditions in the new field.

He visited around among jobbers and manufacturers: he even went to the company's strongest competitors.

Everywhere asking questions. It was simply amazing, the amount of useful data that he was able to dig out.

Curiosity is a human characteristic that has been much maligned. Men speak of it slightingly, as if it were something to be ashamed of; a weakness to be repressed.

My own idea is that when a man gets beyond the point of asking questions, he might as well be dead.

Without curiosity there would be no growth, no progress.

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
may be a good enough motto for men who are on their way to be shot. But from such men expect no empires to be builded, no inventions made, no great discoveries brought to light.

Curiosity [the Scientific American once said] is the handmaiden of Science.

No doubt many a man before the time of Columbus had remarked the exotic fruits and branches tossed up by the waves on the shores of the Canary Islands. The natives had gathered them for generations without ever so much as a thought. But to Columbus those strange gifts of the sea were messages sent from a land that no European ship had ever touched. Out of his wonder about them came his voyage to the New World.

Then we have Newton's apple. Things have fallen ever since the universe was created. And no man before Newton seems ever to have asked himself, Why?

Robert Meyer, a ship's surgeon in the East Indies, noticed that the venous blood of his patients seemed redder than that of people living in temperate climates. Doubtless other physicians had also noticed that fact. Meyer, pondering on it, reached the conclusion that the cause must be the lesser degree of oxidation required to keep up the body temperature in the torrid zone. That thought led to the discovery of the mechanical theory of heat, and to the first comprehensive appreciation of the great law of the conservation of energy.

If you have witnessed the gradual progress of the mind of a little baby, you have seen a miracle.

And what is the golden ladder on which the baby climbs out of mere consciousness into intelligence?

Curiosity—nothing else. The constant reaching out for the untried (even though the reaching involves much upsetting of flower vases, and many burned and bleeding, fingers), the eternal why: the unquenchable how and what.

Some men climb a little way up that ladder, and are satisfied.

They reach a point where the day's task becomes more or less automatic; where their feet follow easily along a familiar path. And they are content. They would not pay a nickel to see an earthquake: they would not open a new book, or stretch their minds in wonder at what lies even beyond the next desk above them, to say nothing of what lies beyond the stars.

Ceasing to be curious, they cease to grow.

For surely one secret of genius is this—the ability to remain interested in new things, even into old age.

The curiosity of Bluebeard's wife proved fatal, to be sure; and Lot's wife, yielding to her curiosity, reaped a bitter recompense.

One must use judgment in the exercise of even the divinest gifts.

On the other hand,

Zacchæus he
Did climb a tree,
His Lord to see.
And, braving the ridicule of the passing crowd for the sake of his curiosity, he was rewarded with the secret of happiness and everlasting life.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

MAKING GOOD AT FIFTY

By WILLIAM FLEMING FRENCH

Illustrations by D. S. Ross

PERHAPS a modest desk in one corner of a big office, a job that demands hard, steady work from eight till five, and a salary of three thousand dollars a year doesn't spell Success to you—but wait till you hear the story.

At forty-eight years of age Edward Abbott was a business failure of twenty years' standing—an "office man" of the senior clerk type, who had settled into the fifteen-hundred-dollar rut as a young man, and stuck there.

Regarded by his employers as "steady," "reliable," "sincere," "well meaning," "trustworthy,"—and a number of other alphabetical combinations that do not necessarily spell live wire,—he proved himself a machine that had struck its stride, that would turn out its exact quota of work day after day until tagged for discard.

At forty-nine Edward Abbott was scrapped. Sickness and trouble had crippled the machine that the efficiency doctor designated as more costly to repair than to replace. And so began the downward slide. Slowly at first, but with growing momentum, came the change. Gradually the neatly pressed clothes grew shabby and the carefully brushed graying hair straggled. The lines of the pleasant face showed more plainly, and the eyes lost something of their genial sparkle. All these tell-tale signs deepened visibly from month to month; his face was like an etcher's plate under the biting acid that ate mercilessly and made faint lines into deep wrinkles.

At fifty Edward Abbott was broken in health and spirit. Moneyless, friendless, hopeless, he stood, an old man at the threshold of the poorhouse.

But fifty-three finds him seated at his letter-smothered desk, the joy of health and life shining from his rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes—young in spirit, in health, in ambition.

Here, in Edward Abbott's own words, is the story that tells how the wonderful change was wrought.

ON a blustering March day I contracted the grippe that proved the source of all my troubles. For three weeks the grippe clung tenaciously. Then I recovered and went back to my job. But in May I was taken with another attack that resulted in pneumonia, with pleurisy following; and the Fourth of July found me still indoors.

When I returned to report for work, my job was gone. A young man had been slipped into my place—a mere boy, he seemed to me. Confident of the value of experience and of my good record, I went to the manager for reinstatement. But, to my amazement and horror, he had nothing to offer me. I was astonished, dumfounded—indignant. If he didn't value mature judgment and experience more than such a condition indicated, I would give my services to some one who did. Apparently this suited him, although he assured me that personally he very much regretted losing me; that his hand had been forced by orders from headquarters to "speed up" his organization.

Out of work at fifty. There's more misery and bitter despair in those few words than I could describe in hours. I didn't realize this at first, but before the next winter had passed cruel experience taught me to dread the thought they conveyed.

It's better to forget the days of my search for work. Nobody wanted experience, it seemed. They wanted youth.

Too old! How I hated that phrase, and how often I heard it. With the passing weeks, the interviews granted me grew shorter; the glances at my hair, my hands, my face became franker, and my dismissals more curt.

AT first I regarded the rejections of my application for work almost as insults, and often I had to fight back sharp words. But soon my bursts of temper and indignation grew less frequent, and the dull heart-aches and hopelessness that replaced them seemed to sap the very life from me.

How many times I applied for work I can not say. I lost track the first month. From the position of office manager I lessened my demands, step by step, until I sought any kind of work—anything. But I think I must have aged rapidly then; for I caught the sad, anxious look in my wife's eyes, and heard her sob in the still night, when she thought I was sleeping—as if I could sleep!

And then it came—the parting! She wanted to share my misery, but I could not have that. She had suffered enough. We had saved a few hundred dollars, but the doctor bills and almost a year of idleness had taken it all but a few dollars— and that was to go for my insurance. That must be kept up. A year's insurance paid, my wife with her people, and then—

To cast a loved wife upon charity— after thirty years! But I knew it was harder for her than for me. I saw her off, and then boarded the train that would take me to the little town of the poor-farm. My brain was afire with strange thoughts. Why had I failed? Why should I desert my wife and rot with doddering old men in a poorhouse? They were seventy or eighty—I was fifty. Wasn't there one speck of manhood left in me?

I glanced at my companions, two other unfortunates that work shunned. They were not old, either. Perhaps one was even younger than I. The other was not much my senior. The spirit in them was dead—they were broken-down horses going to their last earthly pasture. I stared across the double seat at them, as they sat humped hopelessly together, gazing out of the window with eyes that did not see.

Was this my fate? To sit and wait and wait and wait—while strange hands fed me the thin gruel of charity? Was my mind, as alert as in boyhood, to decay into dumb helplessness, like the minds of the two unfortunates in the next seat who were to share public alms with me? Wouldn't it be better, more decent, at least to die alone, awake and fighting? And wasn't there the insurance? My wife deserved that.

BEFORE we reached the outskirts of the little town I saw the poor-farm, with its stiff red buildings and double skirting driveway. It looked as dismal and dead as the lives it sheltered. And as the train stopped I saw the bus—I knew it was the bus. Somehow its lean horses and tired driver carried the stamp of the poor-farm.

Probably the most important impulse of my life came to me as I started to descend the steps of the car. I turned suddenly and almost leaped down the opposite steps, crossed the narrow strip of grass that separated the tracks from the main street of the tiny town, and headed for the open country, my back to the almshouse. I harbored but one thought, one desire: to get away from it all—out under the clear sky, where I could die alone. I knew then why the doomed deer runs until it drops, and why the wounded wolf seeks the thicket.

For hours I walked on, mindless of the heat, of throbbing head and aching feet. Then I dropped. It was dusk when I awoke. Hungry! I was hungry. Not the dull warning that my stomach sometimes flashed to my brain—that perhaps I'd better eat; for even of late, in the pinch of real poverty, I had never known actual hunger. I had been too miserable to be really hungry.

But that June evening, a year after pneumonia had laid me low, I felt the exquisite bite of actual hunger. I sat up in surprise. Yes, I was certainly hungry. I hadn't felt those pangs for years. But then, of course, my troubles would drive them away. The decision must be reached. I had come into the country to end it all—and was searching for a quiet spot. No doubt there was one just over the hill, where I could—

But I was hungry! My outraged. stomach protested sharply. I got a quick twist of hunger that made me gasp—and smile. It was a regular "kick," such as I used to get when I went hunting with my brother. We would be gone all day, and come home to a hot dinner of—

Ham and eggs! with plenty of good bread and butter and coffee. That was what I wanted. My troubles could wait! The job before me was to locate some ham and.eggs, and to do it quickly. So I pushed aside my morbid thoughts and started over the bill in search of a square meal.

A few minutes later I looked down into a small valley, and saw the snuggest sort of a little farm-house nestled comfortably in a green yard dotted with apple trees, white with blossoms.

As I approached, a guinea-hen raced noisily around the corner of the barn and with a screech flew to the top of a willow, while a clumsy pup barked playfully below. And then the farmer approached, milk-pail in hand.

In answer to his pleasant greeting, I stated plainly that I was in search of a substantial meal; that, while I had a

---

little money with me, I would much rather earn it than buy it; and that my preference ran to ham and eggs and coffee.

He grinned knowingly and said:

"This kind of weather lets you know what you want, doesn't it? See by your color you're from the city—you look pasty-like. My son's in the city, and he says he's never hungry till he comes home. Guess we can fix you up all right, but it'll have to be bacon instead of ham."

We went into the house, and I met Mrs.

Haskins, who set before me, in a very few minutes, four big eggs and a plate of bacon, done to a turn, but tender and rich with flavor. And there were thick slices of bread and plenty of golden butter. The coffee was hot and the cream thick—and I had the best meal of my life.

AFTER supper I addressed my host frankly:

"Now, I want to pay for this perfect meal—with work, if possible. I suppose I could go out and split wood, or something like that—but the chances are I would spoil your ax and not do as much in the whole evening as you could do in ten minutes. I've been very ill, and am not worth my salt to you physically, I imagine. But I have my own line, and can no doubt do that much better than you, and so I suggest that, if you have any figuring to be done, any business letters to write, or any of that kind of work to do, you make use of me. I can do that a good deal better than you, and worlds faster."

It was Mrs. Haskins that answered—and quickly, too:

"Yes, sir; that's fair enough, for certain. You just sit down at the desk in the living-room, and I'll bring you the books. Heaven knows where they're scattered to now. If Fred Haskins isn't ashamed to let you see how he has let his accounts go, you can help him out. I can't! He's got it so mixed up that I can't figure out from his last month's records whether we got two thousand eggs from our three hundred hens or two thousand hens from three hundred eggs. And that ain't the worst—we don't know whether the groceryman in town owes us money for eggs or whether we owe him for groceries."

"Yes, sir; that's fair enough, for certain. You just sit down at the desk in the living-room, and I'll bring you the books. Heaven knows where tlrey're scattered to now. If Fred Haskins isn't ashamed to let you see how he has let his accounts go, you can help him out. I can't! He's got it so mixed up that I can't figure out from his last month's records whether we got two thousand eggs from our three hundred hens or two thousand hens from three hundred eggs. And that ain't the worst—we don't know whether the groceryman in town owes us money for eggs or whether we owe him for groceries."

The books that Farmer Haskins kept were certainly all his wife said—and a little besides.. When I sat down at that rickety little golden-oak desk in one corner of the old-fashioned room, I thought I was a bookkeeper; but when I got up at midnight, I knew I was an accountant.

The job I had assumed when I gathered up the hatful of credit and debit slips, of bill-heads, and notations on scraps of wrapping paper, envelops, receipts, bills, and almost anything else capable of recording pencil-marks, was one that I would have given up in my earlier days as impossible. But with that wonderful supper comfortably under my belt, and the trustful but somewhat anxious faces peering over my shoulder, I settled down to the work in earnest.

It was a big task, and before I had fairly started they were urging me to leave it and go to bed, fearful lest they were overworking me. But it challenged me to prove that my mind was as active and alert as ever, that my mental rank was not that of the wards of the poorfarm—and it tossed up to me the picture of my fellow passengers of t he morning, who had accepted the offering of fate and plodded wearily on to the almshouse. And so I sorted and listed and credited and debited, until the good woman tiptoed off to bed, and the man leaned back in his chair and snored.

I was tired—dead tired; but I fought on. For a year I had been begging for a chance to prove my worth—just to prove what I could do. Well, here it was—a headless, tailless tangle that seemed to defy classification and order. But it was my chance; and I took it.

Did I say it was midnight when that mass of figures shaped itself and order came from the chaos? Such a statement would be conservative. And when I woke Haskins and with honest pride displayed my work, he applauded so loudly that his wife called from the bedroom above. And then that good woman slipped on a faded wrapper and came down. Seeing how tired I was, and how weak, she made fresh coffee and served it to me, in spite of my protests.

In the morning she prepared me the latest breakfast I imagine she had ever cooked—for she did not wake me until ten o'clock. Then she had cold water for me to wash in, and a big rough towel for me to dry with—and it felt good, too!

After a hearty breakfast—and how good it tasted!—I saw her bustling about the yard and hen-houses, and of course I volunteered to help. I was told to go ahead and gather eggs, and that I would find them almost anywhere.

WHILE I was still rummaging about the place, discovering in just what queer spots hens will lay, Mr. Haskins', gruff but pleasant voice called to me from the dining-room. There I found dinner on the table. I glanced at the clock on the what-not in the corner. Twelve o'clock! Could it be possible that I had poked around that barn-yard for almost two hours?

As Mrs. Haskins handed me a plate loaded with good things to eat, I reminded her that I had had breakfast at ten o'clock. But she smiled knowingly, and I ate it all.

After dinner my suggestion that I be on my way was squelched by the businesslike Farmer Haskins, who insisted that I come out to the pasture and see the calf his prize cow had presented him.

I found that he was clearing burdock out of his pasture, and there, at least, was one thing I could help him in. I carried away the pests as he dug them up.

By supper-time I was too tired to think of leaving; and that evening I put the final touches to the books, and explained the system to both Haskins and his wife. They were delighted, and I was proud—how proud, they did not know. Prouder than I have ever been before or since in my life. I had done a difficult task well.

I spent all summer on the Haskins farm, first doing light chores about the house and barnyard. Then, as my strength returned, I was able to help in the field a little. It seemed to me I had never known quite such happiness before in my life, and of course I wrote to my wife and told her all about it.

IN July she came out and spent a week with us. The look she gave me then—when I met her at the train—rekindled the fires of hope and ambition that I had let die some years before. And then again in the autumn, when she came to plan things with me, I saw in her eyes the light of pride and of wonder—for certainly I was a stronger, healthier, happier man than she had ever known me.

A week later I went to the city and told my story to a big man with whom I had a casual acquaintance. I went into detail and explained that I had three things I had never before possessed—health, ambition, and confidence. What I wanted now was a chance to prove out. Would he get that for me? Would he tell some of his friends my story, and ask them to give me a chance, at the bottom if they wished—but a chance, at any rate?

He met my request, and got a banking and bond firm to take me on as usher, at fifteen dollars a week. The concern to which he was sending me would have "to be shown": its officers had little faith in "worn-out old men"; but they were willing to "try anything once."

So I moved back to the city and started at my new job. Saturday noon the chief clerk called me to his desk and said:

"Mr. Abbott, you've surprised us a little. Your work has pleased us, and we've decided to let you go on the information desk Monday."

My salary envelop contained twenty dollars instead of fifteen. This increase was the result of my efforts to extend to each customer every courtesy possible, and to secure as much of the information they required as possible, and to do it while they waited their turn to see the officers. In many instances this was surprisingly easy to do. It saved the officers much bother, too, for in several cases the callers wanted information that almost any clerk in the establishment could have furnished. For example, the second day of my services here, a wealthy woman asked to see the president. Her account was such as to make that request imperative. Unfortunately, the president was then in conference, and would likely be engaged for the most of an hour. It was doubtful if the visitor would wait, and she would certainly resent having to leave without transacting her business.

A few careful questions brought out the fact that she wished to know whether United States government Panama bonds were subject to income tax, and what interest they paid. That was all she wanted to know, but she wanted to know that right away. I got the answer within five minutes, and she went away satisfied, and she didn't see the president, either.

From the information desk I was promoted to assistant in the foreign department. And then I started climbing alongside of the young men who were just starting in the game of life. But now I possessed their greatest asset—that which I had lost years back—ambition. And against their youth I matched experience, strengthened by the knowledge of my own weaknesses and ripened by actual suffering.

By being willing to spend a few evenings at the library, I was able to learn the names and values of practically all foreign moneys—a knowledge that proved a valuable asset when the officers telephoned or stopped at the window for such information. When I discovered that we were sending more than a hundred letters a month to a Spanish interpreter for translation, my wife and I added that language to our studies, and within a year I was able to handle this correspondence.

I HAVE charge of our foreign business now, and am almost a year along in my study of Russian. I find that much more difficult than Spanish to master, but I have made the acquaintance of a number of Russians here in the city who help me considerably. Through them I expect to develop an enviable business in Russia, and perhaps some day establish an office in Petrograd. At least, my plans along this line have proved interesting to our officers.

The love for the country that I formed while on the Haskins farm has never lessened, and now my wife and I are happy and healthy in our snug suburban home. As I climb in this business we are going to keep adding to our little place until we have a regular farm of our own.

When Postage Stamps Were Forged

THE biggest stamp forgery on record resulted in a wholesale swindling of collectors throughout the world in 1889.

An announcement had appeared in several Parisian papers that the King of Sedang, an island off the coast of China, was going to the French capital. It further. appears that this self-styled monarch, rejoicing in the appellation of King Marie I, was an ex-officer in the French navy; so his appearance in Paris was sure to be attended with a considerable sensation.

After his Majesty had done Paris in the manner of the usual visiting potentate, and had been duly advertised, sets of seven varieties, of postage stamps marked "Sedang" and bearing most artistic half-moons, were offered *to Parisians. So great was the demand for these issues that in less than a month they realized enormous prices, one variety being quoted at two hundred dollars a specimen.

Not until the whole assortment had been disposed of, and the King and his wily ministers had reaped fat fortunes from these stamps, was it discovered that the whole business was a fraud and the stamps consequently worthless.

In 1900 many collectors were fooled by the big Finnish stamp forgery. Immediately upon the announcement that, though Finland was Russian territory, it would be permitted to reissue its own stamps, a black specimen inscribed "Suomi" (Finland) came upon the market, and dealers almost fought one another in their anxiety to take up the first limited issue at lofty prices. This bubble was soon burst by the announcement of the Russian authorities that the stamps sold were forgeries.

An amusing hoax perpetrated upon dealers and collectors alike occurred a few years ago, when beautifully engraved "Spitzbergen" stamps were sent to Great Britain and America. It was a pretty stamp, in the center design of which was shown an explorer in the act of shooting a polar bear. The stamp was much admired; but not so much so when it was discovered that Spitzbergen had no post-office. One dealer bought several thousand at a ruinous figure.

Colors of stamps can easily be altered by acids, and such alterations in the case of some issues will make a difference of several hundred dollars for a single specimen. Then, too, the art of the stamp forger is so subtle that he has found it possible to remove the effigy from one stamp and substitute a design from another issue, all without fear of detection save by the most powerful microscope.

Everything You Want to Plant

By SUSAN GLASPELL

Illustrations by Ralph P. Coleman

LETTY ROBBINS closed the schoolhouse door, very slowly locked it, then stood there still. An idea had come into her head. Her eyes did not look as if the idea made her happy. Slowly she walked across the yard, and stood looking along the country road toward home. As she locked the schoolhouse door, she wondered how long she would go on locking it; as she walked slowly down the road now, she wondered just how much of her life she would spend walking along that road at that particular time of day.

Not that she disliked either the road or the time of day; a country road in late afternoon is a pleasant place to be when days are getting longer. But you don't want to be anywhere because that's where you've got to be; and, while it is very nice to be alone at times, it isn't at all nice to be alone because there is no one who wants to be with you.

Letty had not had a good day at school; the children had been stupid, and she had been cross. The reason the day had not gone well was that she had been to a party the night before, and the party had not gone well.

It was a grange party, and all the young folks of the neighborhood were there, dressed in their best and doing their best. Letty had started out with a fervid determination to have a good time: she had never had a worse one.

She would be thirty next month. She felt, if nothing happened before she was thirty, nothing would happen at all. She had counted on the party: the party had dismally failed her. It was as if she had made a last stand, and lost.

Letty had three sisters—all older, all unmarried. "I guess it just doesn't run in our family to marry," she had heard Addie, the eldest, say the night before, to a man whose idea of social ease was to ask single women why they were not married. Letty, who was trying to talk to Joe Stewart the way Bessie Lyons was talking to Charlie Daggett, felt red spreading over a larger and larger area of her face. She went on talking very fast, and she saw Joe looking around the room at other girls, and she wanted to cry. Also she wanted to kill Addie! She hated all her sisters, looking so plain in their dress-up clothes, trying to be partified and looking so out of it—and putting it in people's minds that she was out of it too! It was inhuman; but the Robbins girls were so definite a thing that it seemed if you were one of them there was no use trying to be anything else.

Though, until the very end of the party, Letty went on trying—fervently if not wisely. She had dressed to her utmost for the party, trying to get herself up the way Bessie Lyons did, because the more she looked like Bessie the less she would look like her sisters. So she had frizzed her hair and bound a pink ribbon round it. Now, Letty's hair was never meant to be frizzed and bound with a bright pink bow. It was soft brown hair that wanted to part and curve round the ears in a very nice line all its own. But Letty desperately wore the frizzed, pink-bound hair, and tried to frivol up to it. And, just as Letty's hair was meant to fall as it would, so Letty herself was meant to charm in a more gentle and really more subtle way than the sprightly Bessie Lyons. But it takes the perceiving eye to note the subtle charm, and the young men of that neighborhood hadn't seen that Letty Robbins' eyes had in them a light that did not tally with the neighborhood's idea of the Robbins girls. And of course the light wasn't actually there, as there was no one to see it, and there was no one far-seeing enough to see potential lights. Perhaps not simply stated, but the matter is not a simple one.

ANYWAY, Letty determined that at this party she would not sit around and talk with the older folks, the way her sisters did. She would be herself. What it came to was that she wasn't herself at all; and alas! Letty frivolous was Letty rather foolish. It wasn't Letty's quality to say teasing things to young men the way Bessie did; and when they looked amazed or resentful or bored—or amused, she wanted to cry; and because she couldn't cry she had to wind herself up the tighter.

She had gone in to refreshments with Joe Stewart. She saw Charlie Daggett wink at Joe. She had a sick feeling that it had something to do with her, but put down the idea. And then, after supper, because she was left alone, she went to the dressing-room, as if to get something; and on the other side of the wooden partition where the women had left their wraps she heard men's voices, and under his breath Charlie Daggett sang:

"When the Robbins try again!"

Some one came in just then, and she had to fight down shame and angry disappointment and pretend to be fixing her hair. It was Bessie Lyons who had entered.

"Having a good time, Lett?" she asked good-humoredly.

Letty yawned. "Oh, I don't know. Yes, in a way: But there isn't any one very interesting around here, do you think?

"Why, I don't know," said Bessie, dabbing some powder on her nose. "I'm having a pretty good time," she added, not so good-humoredly.

Letty was smoothing down her dress.

"I suppose I'm a little spoiled," she said, with a sigh. "I met so many really interesting people—people with brains—at Normal last summer."

And then, head high, she went out of the dressing-room—head high, but knees shaking—and told her sisters the air was so close it gave her a headache and she wanted to go home.

Going home her sisters talked soberly about the party. It was moonlight, and the trees threw shadows on the meadows. They spoke in comfortable fashion of what a lovely night it was. Letty was so quiet that Addie asked kindly:

"Didn't you have a good time, Lett?"

And Letty snapped: "As good a time as a person could have at such a silly, stupid affair!"

"Why, I thought you were having a fine time," said Emma. "We were saying we had never seen you so lively."

Letty bit her lip hard. She wanted to say awful things to her sisters. When she got home, she snatched off the pink bow, her cheeks burning a deeper pink than the ribbon. She brushed out her frizzled hair so hard that it brought the tears to her eyes.

When she went to bed, she pulled the curtains down tight, so that the moonlight wouldn't shine in—this despite the protest of Emma, who shared the room with her.

"Why, I like to see the moonlight coming into the room," said Emma in uncadenced prose.

Letty wanted to tell Emma she didn't know anything about moonlight! She lay awake, thinking bitter things about her sisters, her cheeks burning at the memory of the things she had said to the amazed Joe Stewart.

THAT was why, walking slowly toward home next day, she had a hopeless sense of being one of the Robbins girls. And the thing in her that was Letty, and that wanted to be part of the spring, seemed to know itself threatened and was in rebellion.

As she turned a bend in the road a young man wheeling a bicycle came out of the Stephens place. He looked at Letty, raised his hand half way to his cap, peered at her, then completed the capward gesture and said cordially: "Why, how do you do?"

Letty scrutinized in turn, and then, her face suddenly lighting with having made it out, said warmly, as if to apologize for the hesitancy:

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Gordon?"

"Gordon the tree man," said he briskly, as if to assure getting himself completely placed.

"Oh, I know," laughed Letty; "and rose man, and syringa and honeysuckle man."

"Also the asparagus and strawberry and onion-set man," he went on with it gayly.

"'Everything you want to plant'!" bantered Letty, the Letty in her taking hold.

"'Place your order with Gordon'!" he bantered back, not getting on his wheel, but walking along the road with her.

"Still teaching school?" he ventured.

---

"Yes," said Letty, stiffening a little.

"Well," said he, with a deep sigh, "I guess that's a better job than selling plants."

"Oh, I don't think so!" cried Letty, instantly cordial again. "Why, I think selling plants is—when you come to think of it," she said, her voice falling shyly, "selling plants is a beautiful thing to do. Going around the country and getting people to plant things that will have flowers—that will grow big and give shade. Why, just think of the things that are growing all over this county because of you."

She laughed in an excited little way.

"Yes, there is that," he said appreciatively. "I've thought of it myself. But then, there's all the cussing you get, when things don't grow."

"But your things usually do grow, don't they?" asked Letty politely.

"Oh, of course," said the salesman hastily. "But there are people who want two trees to grow where only one was planted."

They laughed as if that were a very amusing idea, looked at each other to make sure the other was amused, and then, eyes meeting, laughed again. The pink had come into Letty's cheeks; her face had lighted and softened. Gordon the tree man made np move toward getting on his bicycle, but instead reached out for new avenues of conversation.

"Well," he said, "what's happened around these parts since I was here?"

Letty began to tell him the news. There was so little to tell that it was dispiriting. She tried to make much of trifles. Joe Evans had bought an automobile—though he had vowed he never would. The Lewis place had been sold. The Smiths were moving to town. She paused, resentful of the barrenness of these disclosures. It made her feel "one of the Robbins girls." She looked off across the fields to a red house, and that made her think of another piece of news.

"And Ed Ridder died in January."

She said it in a grim little voice, and she had a wild desire to laugh. The desire to laugh veered to a sudden impulse to cry. The young man who sold everything you want to plant saw that her eyes were not clear.

"Oh," he said, with an awkward gentleness.

Letty wanted to tell about Ed Ridder, but something in that "oh" left her shyly silent. They walked for a little way in silence, she looking steadily ahead, for her eyes had not cleared. Then she had a fear that he would get on his bicycle. She looked at him and smiled. The tears had left her eyes dewy. The tree man apparently quite forgot that bicycles are made to ride on.

When they came up to the poplar trees that set the Robbins yard apart from the Robbins corn-field, Mr. Gordon said he was coming next day to see her father.

"You get home about this time of day?" he asked.

"Yes," said Letty, flushing.

"Why, I'll tell you," he ventured, "I have to go to the Marks', right there by the school. Why don't I stop for you? And—maybe you could tell me what your father might want."

This thought of what Letty's father might want seemed to make them bashful. They parted like a boy and girl who didn't know just what to do about parting.

"Wasn't that the Gordon & Company man?" demanded Addie, when Letty opened the door—opened the door far more light-heartedly than she had closed the last one.

"It was Mr. Gordon," said Letty, with a singing heart but a particularly dignified voice.

"Well, did you tell him the syringa died?" demanded Addie.

"Was it his fault that we had a severe winter?" said Letty.

"It shouldn't have died," persisted Addie. "He'll have to give us another."

"Addie!" admonished Letty. "How can you be so greedy?"

"Greedy!" retorted the indignant Addie. "I like that. It was you yourself said they ought to give us another!"

"Did I?" laughed Letty, and, softly singing to herself, ran upstairs.

AT supper that night Mr. Robbins wanted to know why the Gordon man hadn't come in to see him, when he was right there at the gate. Letty said he was coming to-morrow. There followed an elaborate discussion as to why he should come to-morrow when he was there to-day. Emma said that was one of the things the efficiency magazine taught you—never to take unnecessary steps.

"He has a bicycle," said Letty; "he doesn't step."

She laughed, and something about the laugh made her family turn puzzled eyes to her. It was a sort of laugh the Robbins household was not used to. But soon attention was safely riveted on what variety of cabbage it would be best to plant.

That night Letty put the shades as high up as they would go.

"I thought you didn't like moonlight coming into a room," said Emma, in her voice of unfailing soberness.

"Sometimes you like one thing and sometimes another," said Letty.

"Don't get notional, Lett," warned Emma. "I've noticed that notional people don't make good teachers."

At Letty's laugh Emma retreated into dignified silence—that is to say, silence as dignified as could be retreated into by a woman who had just put her front hair into kid curlers.

Next afternoon Letty was erasing long division from the blackboard when she heard the sound of a bicycle being leaned against a fence. They had walked a quarter of a mile down the road, and nothing had been said about Mr. Robbins' especial needs for the cultivation of his farm. In fact, little had been said about anything. And yet, Letty this time had no fear that the representative of Gordon & Company would get on his bicycle and spin away. His eyes did not have the look that Letty was all too familiar with—the look of wondering how to get somewhere else.

At last he began, in a way both impetuous and bashful: "I was glad I was to come for you to-day because—" He paused; Letty looked gentle encouragement. "It's funny," he pursued, "but when you have something to bear yourself, you like to be with a person who—has gone through something."

Now, to tell the truth, Letty was a little bewildered. While it was true she had gone through something—what she had gone through was sorrow at having nothing to go through. And how did Mr. Gordon know she had gone through anything? And what was he bearing? Letty had not thought of him as one who silently endured sorrow. However, it seemed no time to argue the matter. The note in his voice made Letty just naturally slip into the place he had prepared for her.

"Yes," she breathed.

"There aren't many people who understand," he went on.

"That's true," said Letty—and she meant it.

They crossed a little bridge without speaking. Then:

"Was it—this January you lost him?" the tree man asked.

Letty was on the point of asking, "Lost whom?" But some instinct—perhaps the voice that breathed o'er Eden—kept her from it. And then she knew. "Ed Ridder died in January." She remembered how she had said it—and why she had said it that way. Her face burned. She wanted to laugh; and then, as yesterday, she wanted to cry.

"Oh—I'm so sorry," she heard him saying.

She was thinking how to explain. And while she was thinking he continued: "I am sorry you lost the one who cared for you; and yet—it has made you so different."

Perhaps there isn't a shred of excuse for Letty. She could then and there have said, "No one ever cared for me." But would she not then cease to be "different"? There is a way of saying the word "different" which makes it a very desirable thing to be. And because the note in his voice was something she had never heard before—something that stirred her and made her happy—she turned to him with a smile, and quite lost sight of the idea of getting something under false pretenses.

"You see," he said, "I understand, because—well, because of what I have gone through myself."

And so they walked on together, enfolded in that sense of understanding, of having gone through something that made them different.

NO one was at the window this time when Letty and the "Everything You Want to Plant" man approached the Robbins place. Letty asked him if he was coming in to see her father, and he suddenly decided it would be better for him to see her father to-morrow evening. He did not in words state the advantages of the next day over the present, but his eyes said quite plainly: "That will give me another chance of seeing you."

That night the shades were again up, and Letty could see a house over on a far hill. Suddenly she realized it was Ed Ridder's house, and her happy thoughts grew disturbed. She was a little afraid, a little contrite, and—to state it in full—a little amused.

It was true enough that Ed Ridder had played a part in Letty's life. Ed Ridder was so fat and ugly that as a little girl Letty used to be afraid of him. When she saw him coming. she would hide her face against her mother and in panic cry, "Man! Man! Fat man!" He had such a big red nose that, even after she was too grown up to cry, "Man! Man!" she would go out of her way to keep from passing Ed Ridder. This was the man whose death had made her "different."

THE next evening demonstrated that business and sentiment do not always combine happily. There was too much talk about the syringa and about certain unthrifty peach trees. Why did her father make so much of worms on cauliflower? It seemed to Letty that one might speak of happier things. They all sat around in the dining-room, and she would have liked to take Mr. Gordon into the sitting-room. She wished the rest of the family would go to bed instead of remaining up to say disagreeable things about the vegetable kingdom. Once, when her father said that last year's tomato vines hadn't been worth the manure they grew in, Letty's eyes met those of her new friend, and a look passed between them as of two understanding souls in an alien world.

The situation became a difficult one. How were Letty and Mr. Gordon to let the Robbins family know that the business interview had ceased to be, and the social one—with which they had nothing to do—had begun?

Mr. Gordon did his best by turning the conversation to channels remote from the soil; but the Robbins family had a way of always forcing it back to plant lice or something equally inauspicious. And there came a terrible moment when Letty would probably have brought about the instant death of her entire family, could she by raising her right hand have done so. Mr. Gordon, in his attempt to indicate that he was a young man making a social call, spoke of chocolate cake as something that meant a great deal to him.

"It's fattening," said Emma, who was trying not to get stout.

Mr. Robbins clapped his knees and laughed:

"I wonder if 'twas chocolate cake killed Ed Ridder?"

Letty had a feeling that was like nothing so much as if the bottom of her stomach had given way. Wildly she considered what she could speak of. There was nothing to speak of. She wanted to look at Mr. Gordon, to see how he was taking it; she daren't look.

Mr. Robbins began: "I suppose you never heard about Letty and—."

Letty turned the conversation. Her method was drastic but effective. She turned the conversation by overturning the lamp. There are things which never fail to turn a conversation.

Mrs. Robbins averted catastrophe by deftly catching the lamp on its way to the floor. "Why, Lett," she demanded, "why did you do that?"

"I-I was just going to move it," said Letty, "so it wouldn't shine in Mr. Gordon's eyes."

"Well," said Emma, "I guess it's better it should shine in Mr. Gordon's eyes than set the house on fire."

For some moments the conversation dealt with fires—fires that had taken place and fires that had been narrowly averted. Only once Letty looked at Mr. Gordon. He was looking at her. Letty began turning the leaves of Gordon & Company's catalog.

And suddenly Mr. Robbins again clapped his knees.

"I'll tell you why Lett upset the lamp!" he cried. "It's because I was talkin' about Ed Ridder!"

Letty had just one emotion then—a longing for death.

"Now, pa," said Mrs. Robbins good-humoredly, "don't talk about Ed Ridder. You know Lett don't like to even think of him."

---

"Let the dead rest," said Emma. "Especially when they're better off dead."

"I must be going," said Mr. Gordon, rising.

At the door Letty found voice. She said, "I want to ask you what you think would be the best place for that crimson rambler"—and stepped out with him.

She was sure that if Emma stepped out to join the conference about the rambler she would simply burst into tears. But Emma only said, "My, it's raw," and closed the door.

Letty was about to say: "I want to explain—" for she felt this situation could go on no longer. But before she could say anything he had both of her hands and was holding them tight in his.

"How could they?" he murmured tenderly. "But then, families never understand."

"No," Letty found herself murmuring.

"Mine doesn't either," he said sadly.

They stood there close together and looked into each other's eyes. The night may have been raw—but not for them.

"Lett!" called Emma. "Don't stay out there without anything round you. We know where we want the rambler, anyhow."

Letty went into the house without knowing where she was going to put the rambler, but knowing that she was going riding with Mr. Gordon at three o'clock the next afternoon.

This news had to be broken to the Robbins family. It would be simple enough in most households of that community, but at the Robbinses' such a thing was unprecedented. It meant a radical change in family life.

Letty broke her news gently. "Mr. Gordon has to drive over to the Junction this afternoon," she said, as she wiped dishes that Sunday morning, "and he thought he would like to have me go with him for company."

"To have you—" began the uncomprehending Addie.

"Well, I think he's got—" burst out Emma.

But both of them left it dangling in mid-air. They got the idea. They grew quiet—so strange was this idea in that household.

It was Letty's mother, dressing a chicken at the other table, who best rose to the occasion.

"It'll be a pleasant day for a drive," said she, quite as if she were used to daughters who went driving. And then, "You should have asked him to come to dinner, Lett."

A NEW and grave danger beset Letty that afternoon. She was so happy that she forgot to be sad. She was reunited with her recent grief by Mr. Gordon saying:

"I am so glad you are able to—throw it off a little."

"One has to—throw things off," said Letty, working hard to throw off the depressing effect of this turn the conversation had taken.

"Yes," sighed he,"or one couldn't go on."

Everything else merged into a wondering just what it was Mr. Gordon was trying to live down. She assumed that he had lost the one he loved. How much had he loved her? So much that he could never care again? It was wonderful that she and Mr. Gordon should have been drawn together; and yet, it would be mournful indeed if the thing drawing them together were also a thing holding them apart.

He looked at her and said softly: "I shouldn't have spoken of it."

"I—wish you hadn't," said Letty.

"I won't again," he promised contritely. "There are some things it is best not to talk of."

"It seems so to me," agreed Letty.

"You cared so much that you can not—bear to think of it?" asked the tree man wistfully.

Letty stirred uneasily.

"It isn't that. But, you see, there were—unfortunate things—connected with it."

"I judged so from the attitude of your family," said he gravely. "They did not—want you to marry him?"

"No," said Letty grimly.

"But you stood out against them all, and loved him in spite of anything any one else might think about him."

He voiced it admiringly, but with sadness.

"Well—yes—in a way," stammered Letty. "Let's talk of something else," she said, tears close.

He put his hand over hers, as a pledge of understanding. They were almost back to the Robbins place now. After a moment he began, in the bright voice of one bent upon turning a conversation into pleasant channels:

"I wonder what's become of the horrible old man who lived over there?"

With horror Letty saw that he was pointing to the red house in which Ed Ridder had lived and died.

"I don't remember his name," he went on, "and he must have gone away, because a young couple who can't speak English are there now. But last year—" He began to laugh. "You know who I mean—the fat man with a nose like a comic valentine? I went there last year to try and get an order—and all of a sudden he came round the corner of the shed —and if I didn't back up. I didn't know for a minute what he was. I wonder what—"

"Oh—listen!" cried Letty. "Listen to the beautiful bird! I wonder what kind of a bird that is?"

"You love birds and things, don't you?" said the tree man softly.

That note in his voice was sweeter to Letty than the note of any bird. It was too new and beautiful to give up. If only she knew how to let go the grief that had brought her Mr. Gordon without letting go of Mr. Gordon himself! And there were so many awkward things about it. It is hard to be supposed to be in mourning when you are happier than you, have ever been in all your life. Mr. Gordon had asked her to go to a party of the "Sons" at the Junction the next Friday night; and then, just as Letty was trying not to be too joyful in her acceptance, he said contritely: "Oh—I forgot. I'm always forgetting. Of course you wouldn't want to go to parties now."

Now, Letty wanted like everything to go to the party. She wanted Bessie Lyons to see her at this party. She wanted Joe Stewart to see her—and a number of others. But what was she going to do about it? She wanted to say that she didn't think it right to nurse one's grief—that you owed it to your friends to go on with your life and be as happy as you could. She was about to venture upon this when Mr. Gordon exclaimed, in a shocked voice: "How awful of me!" And Letty, who had joyfully glimpsed gayety and triumph, could do nothing but discreetly retire into her grief.

FOR the next two weeks Mr. Gordon was in that neighborhood. It would seem that the farmers who adjoined what was called the Round Grove School-house were doing a great deal better by their farms that spring than the other farmers of the vicinity—so often did Mr. Gordon find himself on the circumference of Round Grove at just about half-past four in the afternoon. Mr. Gordon ceased to be Mr. Gordon to Letty. He said his name was Fred, and that he did not like to be called Mr. Gordon by one whom he felt understood him as Letty did. And Letty became Letty—in accordance with the law of progress.

There came a Friday afternoon when that stretch of road between Round Grove and the Robbins place was covered with reluctant feet. Fred would have to leave that night. He was called home where "Everything You Want to Plant" grew. He had had a letter from his father, "blowing him up" for beng so slow in covering the territory. He and Letty laughed about this—the laugh of young people who know something their elders don't.

"If I had my way," said he, "I'd be all summer covering this territory."

"Maybe you will have to come back to 'recover it," said Letty, her heart thumping at her own effrontery.

"Would you like me to?"

"Yes," breathed Letty.

A silence.

"Then I will," said he.

And out of that another silence—one of those silences that have life.

"Do you think," he began, "that you could—sometime—care again?"

"Yes," said Letty, very low.

"As—much as you did before?"

"Yes," said Letty, and added: "More."

"You could?" he cried. "Maybe it seems queer to you to be—well, to be jealous of some one who—isn't living; but I have been."

"Don't be," said Letty. "There—isn't any reason to be."

"It wasn't all—perfectly happy, was it?" he asked wistfully.

"No," said Letty; "it was not." "You—don't want to tell me about it, do you?"

"I'd rather not," said Letty. "I'd rather—forget."

"He—drank?" gently inquired Fred.

Letty's head was turned away. Because she didn't want to turn it back, she nodded.

"I thought so," said he—"the way your family acted." Then, as one making a remark of possible interest: "I don't drink."

Continued on page 20

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

DID THE GERMAN PEOPLE WANT PEACE?

THERE was a time when at every dinner-table some one was heard to say: "I don't believe the German people wanted war; it was all the Kaiser and the Prussian militarists."

Mr. William Archer has collected some five hundred utterances from German statesmen, preachers, and educators, showing what the German people were taught to want regarding war. Here are a few quotations, all taken from German books and pamphlets written before 1914:

Nothing is more immoral than to consider and talk of war as an immoral thing. "War is the mother of all good things" (Empedocles). . . . And there is nothing more moral than the collective egoism, the self-conserving instinct, of nations.—E. Hasse.

War is the most august and sacred of human activities. For us, too, the great, joyful hour of battle will one day strike. Still and deep in the German heart must the joy in war and the longing for war endure.—Otto von Gottberg, in Weekly Paper for the Youth of Germany, January 25, 1913.

The efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must be stigmatized as unworthy of the human race. . . . The weak nation is to have the same right to live as the powerful and vigorous nation! The whole idea represents a presumptuous encroachment on the natural laws of development.—General V. Bernhardi.

It is nothing but fanaticism to expect very much from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war. For the present, we know of no other means whereby the rough energy of the camp, the deep impersonal hatred, the cold-bloodedness of murder with a good conscience, the general ardour of the system in the destruction of the enemy, can be as forcibly and certainly communicated to enervated nations as is done by every great war. Kultur can by no means dispense with passions, vices, and malignities.—Fr. Nietzsche.

What men tower highest in the history of the nation? Whom does the German heart cherish with the most ardent love? Goethe? Schiller? Wagner? Marx? No, no—but Barbarossa, the great Frederick, Blucher, Moltke, Bismarck, the hard men of blood. It is to them, who offered up thousands of lives, that the soul of the people goes out with tenderest affection, with positively adoring gratitude. Because they did what now we ought to do. . . . Our holiest raptures of homage are paid to these Titans of Blood-Deed.—Dr. W. Fuchs, in Die Post, January 28, 1912.

It is proved, beyond all shadow of doubt, that regular war (der regelrechte Krieg) is, not only from the biological and true kultural standpoint, the best and noblest form of the struggle for existence, but also, from time to time, an absolute necessity for the maintenance of the State and society.—Dr. Schmidt, of Gibichenfels, at meeting of Pan-German League, Berlin, October, 1912.

From Gems of German Thought
(Doubleday, Page & Company).

IF YOU SEE THE FLASH, YOU'RE NOT HIT

THE unseen force which destroys millions of dollars' worth of property, costs 800 lives, and injures 1500 persons annually is the one agency of destruction about which we know the least. But we do know that if you can see the flash you haven't been struck.

"When clouds are rapidly formed by air currents rising into the air, enormous quantities of electricity are produced," says the Electrical Experimenter. "We do not know exactly how it is produced. The latest theory, that of Dr. Simpson, explains electrification as resulting from the splitting of rain-drops into smaller particles as they tend to fall through a rapidly rising current of air. In some way, clouds do become highly charged with electricity. Sometimes they are positively charged and sometimes negatively charged. When two clouds or a cloud and the earth are at sufficiently great difference of potential, the resistance of the intervening air is overcome, and a discharge takes place, producing the common phenomenon of lightning."

ASK YOUR BUTCHER FOR WHALE MEAT

WHEN oil-wells were discovered, the New England whaling captains of sixty years ago retired. Whale oil was no longer burned in lamps. It was even found that steel corset stays were just as good as whalebone. Once again the whale is becoming one of the world's most valuable animals, provided we learn to eat whale meat.

In Japan whale meat is a staple, says an article in the Chicago Daily News, and very popular with people who can't afford to buy beef. It is a coarse meat, they say, which tastes something like venison, but has a distinct flavor all its own.

A young Norwegian revolutionized the whale industry by inventing a new method of hunting—the shore station and harpoon gun method. This was so effective that the industry grew to yield $70,000,000 worth a year. Every year thousands of whales were hauled up on the beach, butchered, forty dollars' worth of oil extracted, and the excellent meat wasted.

Since we are all prepared to eat whale, it is nice to know about this animal. It is the largest in the world. It is a mammal—that is, it suckles its young. It breathes air, but can hold its breath for a thirty- or forty-minute dive.

NO MORE HEADACHES FOR HOUSEWIVES

IT is our women who twenty-four hours of the day are forced to endure splotchily papered walls, ceilings that seem on the point of dropping down on the head, and rooms stuffed with a mighty mass of illy assorted furniture that lacks even the virtue of being useful."

Therefore Lionel Robertson and T. C. O'Donnell, in The Healthful House (Good Health Publishing Company), give suggestions for making homes as wholesome and harmonious as the average office:

Buy furniture simple in design and do away with hiding-places for germs and dust. It must harmonize with your decorations, or you will soon grow tired and irritable.

A dustless home is a healthy home. Build your vacuum-cleaning system into the house. It may cost more, but it is better than the broom or the old-fashioned sweeper. And don't use a duster: an oil dusting rag is the proper thing.

Indirect heating, though more expensive, provides better facilities for ventilation. A fire-place is most essential, as it is the best guaranty of good ventilation.

Consult an architect who knows how to plan for your health and comfort.

DOWN WITH THE ELSIE BOOKS!

THE Elsie books, the Alger books, the Oliver Optic series, and others just as bad,—have been fed to American children for fifty years.

"Series written for girls are the poorest of their kind," writes Sophy H. Powell in The Children's Library (H. W. Wilson Company). "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that almost all fiction written for girls is entirely hopeless from either the literary or the ethical standpoint. The heroines are impossibly rich, or good, or bright, or beautiful. Most of the series for girls reek with snobbishness and admiration for wealth; and, when the remarkable heroine is not slangy or obsessed with worldly ideas, she is impossibly goody-goody, with a tendency to reform her parents and other older people.

"'Careful' mothers try to keep love stories from their growing daughters, but it is impossible to believe that girls could get any more harm from novels written for grown-ups than from the modern girl's book.

"The adolescent girl is looking for romance and love stories. Better give her the world's great love stories about men and women than to have her make her heroines of boys and girls as immature as herself.

"Nor can the re-written novel or extracts from it be recommended. The child can afford to wait until he can appreciate the original. The Boy's Charlemagne, the Child's Shakespeare, Good Queen Bess, in which history and mythology and great literature are boiled down and made sweet and utterly harmless, fill a child's mind with sugar-coated untruths. Only the children of the poor are allowed to see life face to face."

WHAT TO DO IN YOUR GARDEN THE THIRD WEEK IN AUGUST

The information given in these articles is furnished. by a research agriculturist at the New Jersey Experiment Station.

OUR last article ended with a hint about cabbage-worms and beetles, and the use of arsenate of lead. But there are other troubles, and most of them descend upon your vegetable Eden at just about this time. It is possible that you may have to take a week off from constructive gardening and fight your enemies.

Insects and their larvæ (caterpillars and so-called "worms") may be destroyed by arsenate of lead, in solution or powdered, as described in the last article, by Paris green (1 ounce to 10 gallons of water), or by hellebore (one half ounce to 10 gallons of water), which is especially good for cabbages.

Plant diseases present a very difficult problem. One has to know when it becomes necessary to sacrifice the plant. For it is a mistaken notion that every blighted bit of plant life with a green leaf still intact should be cherished as if it were a sick child. Remove all seriously diseased plants, and burn them, or else there is grave danger of the disease spreading; for blights, mildews, and fungi diseases are contagious. "Germ" diseases, which attack human beings, are, of course, nothing more or less than just such parasitic attacks.

The best weapon for plant diseases is Bordeaux mixture. Mix together one and one half pounds of burned lime and 10 gallons of water, and one and one half pounds of copper sulphate and 10 gallons of water. Then add one mixture to the other and use immediately. Apply as a spray, using a hand sprayer, and see that the entire leaf surface is covered.

On plots where plant diseases have got the better of the gardener's efforts, do not run the risk of planting the same crop the following year. This applies to club-root, potato rot, and potato, melon, cucumber, and tomato blight especially.

It is extremely likely that you are still busy with your second planting. It was a big job to suggest for one week. Continue to cultivate cabbage and the other maturing plants. Your onions ought all to be ripe and ready to pull. Celery will require your careful attention, and if your pruning has not been carefully done you will need to give some time to that. The watering obligation, of course, continues daily. There is not apt to be much rain at this time.

But your second planting, on the whole, is nearly finished, and that is a great responsibility off your mind. There is only one important crop still to plant. We shall discuss that next week.

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WHAT WE SHIP TO FRANCE

TO feed, arm, and transport soldiers on their way to France, is one of the biggest items in the United States government budget.

Here, says Commerce and Finance, are some of the problems that confront the shipping board:

"To each soldier forty tons a year. If you grasp that, you may get some idea of the magnitude of the job in transportation connected with the army we send to France.

"The food an American soldier eats averages between three and four pounds a day. An army must have many animals. Horses and mules eat an unconscionable amount of feed, under the pressure of military work. To clothe an army is a great job. The clothes of a soldier last a very short time when the service is hard. For every man on the firing line there is an expenditure of 225 rounds of ammunition a day. The oil for motor-cars, the supplies for hospitals, the equipment for road-making, trench-digging, temporary railroads, bridge-building, etc., go into fabulous weights.

"No nation ever had such a transportation task. In addition to looking after our own forces, we must feed much of Europe and supply much of the munitions for our Allies.

"We need ships, ships, ships."

ALL ABOUT THE COW

THE heroine of history is the family cow. She put an end to prehistoric socialism by supplying man with his first property. She was the currency in which some of the ancients traded. She fixed the abode of man in one spot and ended his rovings in search of game. She accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to the West Indies. She is a Colonial Dame. She landed at Plymouth three years after the first Pilgrim. The Texas steer was the epic of pioneer life.

The Texas boom, says James M. Binkley in the Nation's Business, was built on three trails that led out to a Kansas railroad. The hoofs of numberless horned steers had hammered them until they were as solid as cement.

"More than a million head passed over the three trails in 1871. New shipping points were established, where hundreds of cattlemen were quartered. Saloons, dance-halls, and gambling rooms abounded. There is no Sunday west of Newton,' the cow-boys said, 'and no God west of Pueblo."

But a change took place in the sweep of the herds toward Kansas. The close-cropped grass along the trails died out. The American Desert, where beeves could be fattened cheaply, was opened up.

"It was then that the mighty flow of money from New England and Old England, from Germany, France, and Italy was turned into the West. Large owners saw that free grazing would have to be regulated."

Organized capital bought land from the government. The Prairie Cattle Company, owned by Americans and Englishmen, purchased 3,000,000 acres.

The cow is still the leading lady in the American live-stock industry. After a decline of some years, her tribe has increased until there are now 22,768,000 milch cows in the country.

WHEN CARUSO TRAVELS

WHEN Caruso went on a concert tour to Cincinnati last spring, he was exposed to many hardships. A Pittsburgh hotel, for instance, expected him to sleep on a three-quarter bed with one mattress and two pillows. Caruso demanded a double bed, three mattresses, and eighteen pillows.

"Eighteen pillows, three mattresses, or no concert!" writes Edward L. Bernays in Musical America. "So at one-thirty the hotel resounded with a hurry call for the necessary comfortings. The entire personnel was in on the mobilization. Six little bell-boys, one female housekeeper, a Hungarian houseman, who was glad of the opportunity to stand by while a Caruso matter was going on, one hotel manager, and an assistant! Closets were ransacked, mattresses were dragged up in great quantities. And meanwhile the great tenor

was sitting in his salon, utterly disgusted with hotel life in American 'provinces."

There were other adversities. A wedding party in a Cincinnati hotel got in the way. Strains of orchestral music from the room next to Caruso's warned him there would be no sleep for him that night. He told the manager. The manager told the wedding party. The party consented to move nine flights down—orchestra, wedding cake, and all. Next morning the bride and groom received from Caruso a photograph of himself on which he had written: "Thank you for my not sleepless night."

The severest test of endurance, however, was the request for songs. Once, as he was returning from a shopping trip, he met, says the writer, a tall Westerner with a slouch hat and a pipe, who stopped him with:

"'You're Mr. Caruso, ain't you?'

"The tenor acknowledged his identity.

"'Well, sir, I spent ten dollars for your show to-night. And I want you to sing this list of encores.'

"The Westerner dove into his pocket and handed a twelve-inch list of encores to Mr. Caruso. Among the songs were 'Silver Threads Among the Gold,' 'I Hear You Calling Me,' and 'Mother Machree.'"

HOW LONG DO YOUR CLOTHES LIVE?

THE collar has a fragile constitution. The length of its life depends upon how gently it is treated and how often it is washed. New collars will bear starching and washing forty times before they begin to crack at the edges. Collars in use can stand the trip through the laundry only twenty times. This shows that actual use accounts for about half the life of a collar, and wear in laundering the other half.

To make a warm petticoat or a pair of pajamas last long is just as worthy as to make potatoes go as far as possible, says Frederick J. Haskin in the Chicago News. "In war-time, textiles are second only to foods in their value and importance. The University of Pittsburgh is investigating the reasons for the mortality of modern wash fabrics and looking to science to increase their longevity.

Three factors, says the writer, are found to be essential for the long life of any piece of wash goods—it must be of good quality; it must be properly used; and it must be properly washed.

"The most economical practice is to launder garments as often as is necessary, but no oftener, and to take care that they are not unnecessarily soiled," says the writer. "A combination of soap and soda is the best for use in laundry work. This combination weakens the cloth less than either soap and water or soda and water."

ADMIRAL SIMS, DISTURBER

THE newspapers recently carried a despatch stating that, in the absence of the British Admiral, the combined Allied fleets were temporarily under the command of Vice-Admiral William Sowden Sims. It is a fair guess that that day was an unpleasant one for the German submarines.

From the very moment of his graduation from the Naval Academy, Sims' restless energy has created trouble for the Navy Department, as Robert F. Wilson points out in World's Work. He was stationed first in Asiatic waters, from which there began to flow a steady stream of letters to the department officials, criticizing the ability of our men to shoot.

Sims had met in China an English lieutenant of about his own age, who had invented what he called a "Morris tube"—a small gun to be attached to a big one and fired at a small target near at hand. The tube afforded target practice exactly as if the big guns had been fired, but at much less expense. Sims tried one of the tubes out on his own ship, and kept writing to urge their adoption by the Navy Department. When no attention was paid to his letters, there arrived one day at the White House two registered letters, one to President Roosevelt, the other to Secretary Loeb.

This was too much. Sims was ordered home for punishment. President Roosevelt was not impressed by Sims' plea. Sims therefore made him a proposition. He asked that some of the big ships be assigned to target practice. If the test proved that the men could shoot, he was to be disciplined.

The idea appealed to President Roosevelt. He assigned six ships to the test, under Sims' direction. Sims selected an abandoned lighthouse on the coast, and put up a big target. For something like an hour the big ships steamed back and forth, firing at the target. At the end of the test it was examined, and found to be absolutely unscratched. Sims was promoted to a newly created position, with the title inspector of target practice. He is known as the father of target practice and good shooting in the navy.

The navy's performance in the war with Spain was creditable: we have even come to think of it as splendid. But, as a matter of fact, in the running fight that took place along the Cuban coast, only one shot out of every hundred fired reached its mark.

"After a few years of Sims' instruction," says Mr. Wilson, "that ship which failed to make fifty per cent. of its shots strike a target much smaller than a battle-ship was in disgrace."

PLUMBING FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

HARVARD recently offered a prize of $200 for the best essay on plumbing.

"Modern plumbing is the only thing that makes possible the housing of nearly 6,000,000 persons within the small area of New York City," says Commerce and Finance. "Plumbing has been an important factor in the civilization of the last two hundred years. The advances in the last ten years have been great. Plumbing might be a good thing to teach in the colleges. The modern young man is looking for opportunities of making easy money. If he can go to Harvard and learn plumbing, his future is assured. Harvard surely would do well by her students to teach them plumbing."

JITNEY TACTICS

By FREEMAN TILDEN

Illustrations by August Henkel

OUT of the dim depths of his "office" in one corner of the livery stable; out of the bluish-gray haze created by his corn-cob pipe; in a voice somewhat shaken with the travail of "figgerin'," Matt Pillicy, proprietor, shouted:

"Hey, Joe! Oh, Joe!"

A youthful voice, cracking somewhere between the soprano of boyhood and the tenor of adolescence, wafted in through the screen door that separated the office from the stable:

"Yessir."

"Joe," continued Mr. Pillicy, as a red head and a million freckles appeared at the door, "you got a high school eddication. How much is nine and seven?"

"Sixteen."

"No fooling now, Joe! Is that straight?"

"Yessir."

Mr. Pillicy sighed deeply, and dropped the bit of paper he had been scrutinizing.

"I was afraid it was sixteen," he moaned. "And yit—I thought Phillips might have made a mistake in the grain bill. Nine and seven is two figures I was never sure of. Sixteen dollars and forty-one cents! To feed a lot of hoss boarders!"

The owner of the livery stable puffed gloomily for a while. Then he continued:

"Got your sweet-potato here, Joe?"

"Yessir."

"Go get it, son, and let's have a tune."

Matt Pillicy rose, pressed his horsey, wide-brimmed, mouse-colored hat down upon his forehead, kicked off his slippers, and went to recline upon an ancient and untidy couch in the corner. He propped himself up on one elbow, and waited, much in the attitude of an Eastern potentate watching the shimmering dancing girls.

Joe Greeley, the sole assistant left to the proprietor in these his lean days, came in with a black instrument that looked like a deformed pickle punctured by woodpeckers. It was the "sweet-potato," otherwise known to the musical world as an ocarina. Certainly a step above the harmonica, this fascinating instrument represented to Mr. Pillicy the ne plus ultra of harmony.

"Play `Silver Threads Among the Gold,' Joe," he requested.

The youth complied, to the best of his ability. The high notes split the atmosphere with the shrillness of an enraged pig, while the lower notes battered the ether like a sea-lion in pain. But Mr. Pillicy was enraptured. His earnest eyes watched every movement. He breathed quickly. At the end of the tune he took a long sigh, and remarked, with fullness:

"I like that tune, Joey. It's mighty soothing, after a long day of doing nothing."

"Shall I go out and finish the stalls now?" asked the soloist.

Matt Pillicy yearned for more mellifluence. But he curbed his weakness and nodded.

"I s'pose so. Wait a minute, though, Joey. Sit down: I want to tell you something.

"You know, Joey, I'd hate awful to lose you. But nobody can say Matt Pillicy ever stood in the way of a boy's rising in the world. I got to tell you, Joe, that the first time you see a good job, you just hop to it, and never mind me.

"This livery business is just about ready to drop dead, Joe. P'r'aps you know it without being told. Yes, boy; the jitneys have put Pillicy on his back. So long as I've got a case note left in these jeans, the hosses'll be fed and you'll get your bit on Saturday night. But we're getting pretty near the jump-off rocks, Joey, and you can't wring no blood out of turnips. That's why I'm giving you fair warning. You don't owe me nothing but a week's word when you see something good."

THE boy's face clouded, and the tears sprang into his eyes. Choking back a sob, he replied:

"Mr. Pillicy, I wouldn't leave you for a job in a bank. What d'ye think I am, anyways? After you grabbing me out of the reform school and sticking to me like you was my father—d'ye think I'd— I'd—"

Mr. Pillicy's big, honest eyes showed signs of contracting the same dampness.

"Come, come, now!" he cried, with a comical attempt at fierceness. "I ain't firing you, am I? You can stay with me just as long as you want to, Joey. Only I thought you ought to know. Jehosohaphat! it makes me sick to think of it. Why, the time was when I had this stable chuckful of good hoss-flesh, and was doing a land-office business, summer and winter. Vacation people in the summer and drummers in the winter. Easy come, easy go. I blew it in as it came. And now the jits have got the business. The only reason we ever send out a rig now is because the automobiles are all let."

"I hate them things!" uttered Joe, with naïve bitterness.

"No use to hate 'em, Joe. They're here to stick. No use to knock 'em, either. But you know the latest. Pretty clever of Eastman, too. I hand it to that garidge lad, if he is running me out of business."

"I didn't hear about it," responded Joe dolefully. "What's he done?"

"Eastman's got four jitneys running night and day. And now he's sprung a new one. He's hired a New York feller to come up on the side of Tobin's mountain and be a hermit. Eastman built him a shack, furnishes him grub, and pays him a little something besides. All the feller has to do is to herm for the summer boarders that Eastman rushes up there to look on. He got up a little yarn about the feller being disappointed in love and taking to the woods. It made a big hit with the wimmin and—well, I hand it to Eastman for cleverness, if it does hurt us."

There was a silence. Then Joe said:

"Mr. Pillicy, you've got more brains than Eastman. If you wanted to think out something, you could beat him all hollow. You've lost your nerve, that's all. I wish you would think up something. You could, if you wanted to."

Matt Pillicy shook his head. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and flung it on the floor. He struck his big hands together hopelessly. And, just as he was about to deny that he had more brains than the jitney-owner, there was a knock on the outside door.

"See what they want, Joe," he ordered.

In a moment the boy returned.

"It's a feller wants to know can he do some chores for his dinner," he announced.

"They all come to me," groaned the liveryman. "Why don't they go to the millionaire shoffer, Eastman? Tell him we do our own chores—but I'll stake him to a light lunch. Take him out in the barn and give him a nose-bag. And—"

Suddenly Matt Pillicy's eyes flashed with an inspiration. He reached for his hat and planted it back on his head. "Wait! I got an idea, Joe! Came to me just like that!" He snapped his fingers. "Tell the stranger to come in."

"What are you going to do?" asked Joe with admiring breathlessness.

"Joe, we're going to have an attraction of our own," said Mr. Pillicy. "Does this feller look anything like an Injun?"

"No," replied the youth; "he looks like a hobo."

"Never mind," concluded the liveryman spiritedly. "Jitney tactics, Joe, must be met with jitney tactics. We'll see if we can't make an Injun of him."

The ambulant stranger, who lunched regally at Matt Pillicy's expense, proved to resemble a disheartened gunman, and to answer to the name of Creep. He had a watery and evasive eye, a self- confident manner, and an abnormal appetite. Joe Greeley was right: Creep did not look in the least like an Indian; but, by the same token, neither do most Indians.

After dinner Mr. Pillicy took his employee aside and said, in a mysterious voice:

"Joe, I'm going down to Springhaven on something important. If that feller tries to escape, get down my shotgun and shoot him in the leg. We need him in our business. Hide the whips and watch out he don't cut any lead pipe or take off the door-knob. I'll be back on the five-seven."

"I bet you're going to put something over on Eastman," smacked Joe.

"We'll see, boy; we'll see," was the response.

WHEN Matt Pillicy returned he was bearing a large parcel. He called Joe Greeley and the stranger into the office, carefully locked the door, drew the tattered curtain, and began to unwrap the parcel.

"Now, looky here, Creep," said the liveryman, pausing with his hands on the string. "You say you're looking for something soft for the rest of the summer. I've got a job that's softer'n silk. I'm going to plant you out on a little island in the middle of Black River. There's an Injun suit in this here package, which I borried from a friend of mine; a member of the Internal Order of Red Men. I'm going to set up a wigwum onto that island, and you're going to be a noble Injun."

"What's the game?" asked Mr. Creep suspiciously.

"Your duties will be to look like an Injun and act like one When you see me coming with a party of folks from the village, you'll come out on the bare rock, on the road side of the island, and pow-wow-wow-wow, just like that. For this you get five dollars a week and grub furnished. Some but'nut juice'll make you a nice Injun color. How's it strike you?"

"I should worry," was the reply. "Let's see the disguise!"

MR. PILLICY drew forth the Indian suit, coat, trousers, and plumed headgear, and spread them out with a flourish. There was a pair of moccasins, a tomahawk, a bow and arrows, and several strings of beads. Mr. Creep examined them with a connoisseur's eye, and sensed the whole scheme.

"I'm on," he said. "This is just my style of a job. But when you foist spoke about me going to the island, it kind of made me shiver."

"What do you think of that for an idea, Joe?" asked the liveryman of his assistant.

"I dunno," was the dubious answer. "D'ye suppose you can get people to pay to ride out and hear an Injun yell?"

"Huh! You don't realize what summer boarders will pay money for," replied Pillicy. "Besides, there's a ledgin about that island. Years ago that was the place where a Injun chief made his last stand ag'in' the white men. These here summer boarders are always looking for ledgins. Now, what I'm going to do is to advertise in the Banner, and pass around some flyers to the effect that an Injun has home back to the home of his forefather."

"But they might hire Eastman to run them out in a jitney," said Joe.

"Now, there's where we've got 'em," replied Matt, rubbing his hands. "I've picked the one road in the whole town that a jitney can't navigate. There never was the machine made yit that can climb that old wood road, full of stumps, with passengers. There's where we've got 'em!"

Went on Mr. Pillicy:

"I propose to carry with me 'a horn, when take out the people. When you hear me toot that horn, Creep, then is the cue to come out on the rock, wave the tommyhawk, and pow-wow-wow. You want the job, do you?"

"Three months on the island," replied Creep, the near-Indian. "How do I catch my eats?"

"I've got a little skiff on the river. You'll get your supplies every two or three days. Now, put these togs on, and we'll see how you look."

THERE were two things that contributed to the chances of success of Matt Pillicy's scheme. One was the publicity that he wisely gave the home-coming of the noble red man. The other was the

Continued on page 15

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

NO, THANKS; WE NEVER BET

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WHAT BECOMES OF STENOGRAPHERS?

—Continued from page 10

fact that the hermit had begun to pall somewhat upon the jaded taste of the summer boarders.

Three days after the Indian had taken up residence, a buckboard load of curious city people were whirled out to the scene. Mr. Creep performed faultlessly. He rejoiced all hearts with the verisimilitude of his whooping. The following day two buckboards were put in commission: And at the end of a week Mr. Pillicy, with a glad heart, got out an ancient four-horse tally-ho, slicked it up, and filled it with tourists.

The one great danger—which was that the youthful and adventurous spirits of the village would find a way to visit the island on their own account, and get into unromantic relations with the red man—was happily avoided by the stern policy of the liveryman. He instructed his aborigine to threaten with instant death any trespasser upon the half-acre of ter; ritory. Mr. Creep faithfully responded by pushing the first prying youth into the river as he was landing. And Del Higgins, the constable, a frequent checker- player in the livery-stable office, refused to take cognizance of the assault, on the ground that Injuns ought to be left alone when they were leaving other people alone.

Business increased. The old livery stable came once more into its own. Mr. Pillicy waxed industrious, optimistic, and eloquent. Two more horses were added to the string. Joe Greeley whisked around, whistling.

"I tell you, boy," shouted Matt, clapping his assistant on the shoulder affectionately, "you was right. Matt wasn't working his head, that was the matter. Of course this prosperity is only temporary, but it's great while it lasts. It's funny how people will pay for seeing an Injun shake his club and holler—but they do. You got Creep's supplies ready for to-night? I've got to go up and see him. He's doing pretty well, but there's one thing I've got to stop him from. Yistiddy there was a mighty pretty little girl in a blue frock in the morning party, and I distinctly heard that Creep feller hollering, ' Oh, you bluey!' and trying to attrac' her attention. Fortunately, the party didn't seem to be wise to what he said; but that sort of thing won't go. If he's going to talk, he's got to talk Injun."

THAT night, after dark, Matt Pillicy went out to the river, pulled his skiff from the place where he had cleverly concealed it on the bank, and rowed across to the island. The red man was awaiting his arrival with ill-concealed impatience.

"Well, Creep, how does it go?" asked the liveryman, in gay humor.

"It ain't what it's cracked up to be! The ants is terrible, also the flies. Got the grub? F' goodness' sake, Mr. Pillicy, don't bring any more canned salmon. .I'm getting scales and fins. An' remember, they's other kinds of meat 'cepting bolony sausage. An' I reckon they's five dollars coming my way, ain't they?"

"Sure, sure," was the reply, though Mr. Pillicy was inwardly alarmed at the faultfinding spirit of the red man. "But hadn't you better let me keep the money till you get through? You ask anybody if Pillicy ain't as good as the bank. You can't spend it on this island, you know—and you might lose it."

"I should worry. Let's see the five," insisted the Indian. He clutched the bank-note eagerly, and crisped it into his pocket. "In some ways it's a good job," he admitted grudgingly. "Only it's lonesome. Got this morning's N' Yoik Scream with you?"

"Here it is," said Matt, handing over a newspaper. "And now I want to tell you, Creep, that I don't want any hollering of remarks to the people I bring out here; understand?"

"The Jints trimmed Cinci.; Cold Soup ran third at Louisville," commented Mr. Creep, with both eyes buttoned to the sporting page.

"That may be, and maybe not," replied the puzzled liveryman—"but you mind what I say, Creep. You shout Injun or nothing."

As the livery-stable keeper was about to depart, the Indian came running down to the beach after him, bearing a lantern.

"Say, Mr. Pillicy, it gets awful lonesome. Stay and have a game of pinochle, will you?"

"Can't stop to-night. Got to get back to the stable. Anyway, I don't know that game," replied the liveryman. "Good night."

Matt Pillicy deliberately fixed the oars and pulled away in the skiff; and in the half-darkness the last thing he saw was a faint silhouette on the rock, accompanied by a glistening kerosene eye.

"My Injun!" panted Mr. Pillicy in soft ecstasy. "Jitney tactics, sure; but it's a great scheme, just the same. If only nothing don't happen!"

WHETHER the major portion of the summer visitors swallowed Mr. Pillicy's bland fable about the Indian, or whether they considered it in the light of a mild and one-man pageant in these days of rejuvenated pageantry, the result was the same: to wit, that prosperity came back to the big red livery stable between Sears' Block and the Commercial House. Even the more sophisticated villagers consented to make believe they were fooled; and the younger set kept the buggies busy on Saturday afternoons and Sundays.

Matt set up a bulletin at the post-office, announcing that "excursions will be run to Indian Rock at 9.45 A.M. and 2.15 P.M. sharp."

Altogether it looked well for Matt Pillicy, and not so well for Mr. Eastman, his hermit, and garage.

In truth, it looked almost too good to last, without a break in the luck. And so it was.

It was the third day of the third week, dating from the noble red man's return, that Joe Greeley, who was now running the morning excursion, came whirling into the livery-stable yard on two wheels, nearly an hour ahead of time. Mr. Pillicy, from the rich shades of his "office," saw four sweating horses rumble in, and saw each one of his employee's million freckles glowing with excitement. He slid into his slippers and stumbled out.

"What's the matter, Joe?" gasped the liveryman. "Anything gone wrong?"

"Gone wrong!" choked the youth. "That Injun—he's dished us—Mr. Pillicy—he has!"

"He hasn't quit, has he?" was the anxious inquiry.

"Quit? No! But he'd better have quit, Mr. Pillicy. He's scared the wimmin-folks half to death, and they're madder'n wet hens and makin' threats to have Creep pinched. The dirty villain!"

"Don't get excited now, Joey," admonished the proprietor. "Keep your head and tell what happened."

Joe climbed off the high seat of the tally-ho. He fastened the head horses and began:

"Well, Mr. Pillicy, I blowed the horn the same as usual, when we got in sight of the island. I pointed to the rock, and was telling 'em the story of the ledgin, and cautioning 'em to keep their eyes on the place where the Injun would come out.

"First he didn't come out. I blowed again. He didn't come. Then I blowed three or four times, and fin'lly out pops that skunk with nothin' but a night-gownd on, and the night-gownd blowing out behind like the flag on the post-office. He comes out with no tommyhawk nor nothing, waving his arms and hollering—not Injun whoop, but just plain hollering.

"I tries to turn round, but the road is too narrer, and we parades right along the river-bank in full sight of that feller in his night-gownd, with the ladies covering their eyes and screaming to beat the band.

"They is a man with his wife on board, and he grabs me by the arm and says he isn't going to have his wife witness no such 'bomination, and if I don't turn back, he will. So you bet I makes the first turn and beats it back like the wind. And now we're in for it, Mr. Pillicy."

Matt Pillicy, who, in spite of being one of the biggest-hearted and best-natured men in Enderby, was of a most mercurial temperament, seized his wide-brimmed hat from his head, hurled it to the ground, and began to jump on it. From past experience, Joe understood that his employer was thus expressing the last degree of exasperation. Between jumps Mr. Pillicy was relieving himself by such comments concerning the Indian, his ancestry and future place of residence, as might be expected in the livery-stable vocabulary.

Finally the liveryman, exhausted by the jumping exercise, leaned up against the barn and gasped out:

"Harness up Dolly right away, Joe! Gimme the democrat and put in the ivory-handle whip. Don't stop to brush her off! I'll wring that feller's neck when I get out there."

It was record time that Matt Pillicy made from the livery stable to the spot where his skiff was hidden. He didn't stop to hitch the horse; he simply threw the reins over her back and hurled his enormous bulk out of the carriage. He went crashing through the underbrush like a wounded moose till he reached the spot where the skiff should have been. It was gone!

Mr. Pillicy emitted a roar that must have sent terror to the soul of the Indian on the island. He crashed up and down the bank in search of his boat, and finally almost stumbled across it about a hundred yards up-river from the accustomed place. One row-lock was missing.

The liveryman jumped in and began to scull. With his first nervous and over- muscular efforts he simply swept the craft around in lightning circles. Finally he calmed down a bit and made progress, pausing now and then to shake his fists in the direction of the wigwam.

MR. CREEP, the noble red man, made his appearance just as the nose of the skiff grounded near the rock. Sure enough, he was clad just as Joe had reported—in a night-gown that barely reached his knees and flapped wildly in the brisk breeze. He gave one look at the visitor, and, sensing impending peril, turned and fled down the beach.

For a three-minute period the neighboring birds stopped singing and looked down upon the astonishing spectacle of an unequal foot-race between a near-nature man and an irate pursuer in hob-nailed boots. The pursuer gained rapidly. When he got near enough to clutch the tail of the white flying garment, the race was over. In another second Mr. Pillicy had his Injun by the neck, and was evidently considering whether to kill his prey at once or wait for illumination.

"Lemme explain! Don't hit me! Lemme explain!" begged the Indian.

"You — you miserable critter!" panted Pillicy. "Where's them clothes? Where are they?"

"I lost 'em," choked the Indian.

"Lost 'em? You miserable critter! Don't you tell me nothing of the kind! How could you lose 'em on this island? Where's your street clothes?"

"I lost those, too! Leggo my windpipe!"

"Lost those too! Don't you try to bamboozle me! What you done with 'em? Quick, before I strangle you!"

"Help!" gurgled the Indian. "Leggo, please! I'll tell you the truth. I did lose 'em—playing pinochle!"

Mr. Pillicy was so surprised that he actually loosed his grip. He looked into the other man's bulging eyes and roared:

"Playing pinochle! You—wha' d'ye mean? Playing pinochle where? With who?"

"The hermit!" wailed Mr. Creep, dodging an expected blow.

Matt expelled a long breath. "Pinochle—with the hermit! Eastman's hired man! Here! My boat—"

"Yes; he came over in your boat."

"And you played with him? And he trimmed you down to your night-gownd?"

The Indian nodded fearfully.

Suddenly the liveryman burst out in a roar that echoed through the surrounding woods. He began to laugh somewhere down deep in the diaphragm, and the laugh, rising by notches, at length reached his mouth and came forth in raucous cycles. He put his hands to his sides, threw back his head, and began to totter around in a risible circle.

IT was a full two minutes before Matt could go on with his inquiry. Even then he almost strangled as he asked:

"What else did you lose?"

"Tommyhawk, bownarrer, feathers, and my salary."

"That hermit must be a great pinochle-player," guffawed Pillicy.

"I think he keeps a deck up his sleeve," murmured the Indian. "He cleaned me out, Mr. Pillicy. Lemme go, Will you? I didn't mean no harm."

"Do you mean to tell me, Creep, that that hermit feller acturally took away your clothes? And you went and let him?"

"Well, he won 'em," said the Indian, with resignation. "A feller can't be a piker. And he was coming over this afternoon, after work, and stake the clothes against my next week's salary. He took the clothes away with him, because he said he oncet took a IOU in a pinochle game and it turned out to be Carranza money."

"He's going to come over this afternoon, is he?" mused the liveryman. Then of Creep he asked: "What time?"

"Soon as he knocks off hermiting." And the Indian added, still looking furtively at the iron fists of his employer:

"Say, Mr. Pillicy, you don't know how lonesome it gets here on this bunch of rocks."

"I s'pose it does," returned Matt thoughtfully and with returning good humor. "I dessay if that hermit doesn't find a boat to come over in, he'll maybe swim across."

"No; he can't swim. He said so."

"Oh, he can't swim. Uh-huh. Can't swim. Uh-huh. Well, I'll fix it so he can boat across. What time's he due, about?"

"He generally gets here about half-past five."

"Well, you better see you win the next game, or he'll leave you as the devil made you," concluded Mr. Pillicy in a kindly way. "I'm going back. Maybe I'll bring

you a suit of clothes or something, or see that you get one."

"Oh, say, if you would," was the grateful response. "Don't be too hard on a feller, Mr. Pillicy. I kind of got gambling in my blood."

"Well, I'll see you later," added the liveryman, as he sculled across.

And when he had reached the opposite bank, he fastened the boat, not at his own chosen spot, but at the place the hermit had left it.

When he returned to the stable, Matt Pillicy was in high spirits. His good-humored eyes flashed with a secret pleasure that puzzled Joe Greeley. But all that Matt said was:

---

"Joe, you look out for things. I'm going away, and I may not be back till late to-night. Sit up till I come."

A few hours later, just about the time the sun was gilding the tops of the highest trees of the range west of Indian Rock, Matt Pillicy, humming as he pulled, rowed softly up river in another boat. He hugged the shore on the side opposite the one where the excursionists had gazed upon the red man. When he had gone even with the rock, he turned and rowed quickly across the stream.

As the nose of his new craft scraped upon the island, Mr. Pillicy jumped out, pulled the boat up a few feet, and listened.

He distinctly heard two voices. One was rather a whining voice, the other seemed loudly obdurate. He heard the whining voice exclaim:

"Say, ain't you got a heart? You wouldn't take a feller's clothes away and leave him nakit, would you?"

The other voice replied:

"I'm going to keeps em till you get some more coin out of that rube stableman; see?"

"Creep didn't ought to have played another game," muttered Pillicy. "I bet he's lost his night-gownd."

He strode up the inclining shore, and hastened toward the wigwam. There he looked through the opening upon a strange sight.

A BLANKET was spread upon the ground, and on the blanket were playing cards, tossed about as if, after the game, the loser had angrily hurled them to earth. The Indian, nicely adorned in the simple garment in which Matt had left him, was hunched up disconsolately on one side, gripping his toes. On the other side of the blanket was the hermit, a sizable fellow with a few weeks' growth of black, beard, made imperative by the job of hermit. He wore a strongly visible grin of success.

"So you lost again, Creep, did you?" blurted out Matt.

"Hello, is this your boss?" asked the hermit of the lightly clad Indian, looking up in surprise.

"He trimmed me," replied the red man, without raising his eyes.

"You never ought to play, except old maid, and for fun," admonished Pillicy, without cracking a smile. Then, turning to the hermit:

"You must be pretty smooth with the pasteboards, young man."

"Oh, I know a few things," said the hermit with pride.

"I never played that game of pinochle," said Matt contemplatively. "Down to the village we play mostly auction pitch—ten cents up and down."

"Ten cents up and down!" exclaimed the hermit. "That's a piker's game! Why don't you play for marbles?"

"Oh, it's just friendly," explained Matt. "I don't gamble, as a rule. Still," he added, pulling forth an old-time roll of bills, "if you did happen to know the pitch game, why, I sort of feel sporty myself, for an old codger."

At sight of the roll, the late New Yorker, now hermit, had a distinct glistening at the eyes.

"Pitch!" he cried. "Sure; I know that game. I know 'em all. I'll play you a few hands. What'll we call it—a dollar a throw?"

The loud impudence of the hermit made Matt's fingers itch, and filled him with unquenchable detestation. But he restrained his feelings and went on calmly:

"No; we'd better make it short and sweet. I'll tell you what I'll do. You've got Creep's clothes, haven't you? Well, I'll play you for 'em. I'll put ten dollars against his street clothes and the Injun outfit."

"I'm on, I'm on," was the gleeful reply. "You're no piker."

"Well, gather up those cards, and I'll be right back with a new deck," said Matt.

He went out and looked down at the shore. His old boat was drawn up near the rock. Swiftly he made his way to it, heaved it off the beach, and gave it a lusty push into the river. When he saw it drifting sidewise the current, he sighed happily and came back.

"Now, friend," said the liveryman, seating himself at the blanket, "the understanding is, we use one deck of cards, eh?"

Matt rolled up his sleeves as he spoke, displaying two arms capable of felling a steer.

The hermit looked a the arms, stirred uneasily, and buttoned up his coat, through the weather was sultry.

"No, don't button it up; take it off!" ordered the liveryman.

Again the hermit took cognizance of the arms, and did as he was told.

"Now," went on Matt, "we'll cut for deal. Low deals. Seven points the game."

The deal went to the liveryman.

"Ten dollars against this pore feller's clothes and the Injun tools," repeated Mr. Palley, throwing down a yellow note. "Go ahead!"

THE hermit's fingers were trembling. He looked at the liveryman several times before he looked at his cards.

On the contrary, Mr. Pillicy, the hero of twenty-five years of auction pitch, played with every commercial traveler who ever "made" Enderby, was all coolness and precision. He breathed upon his six cards for luck, and then squinted at the corners. At the same time he was saying, as if conversing with himself:

"The first time I find a feller doing stunts with the cards, I just pull his nose. The second time, I twist his ears off. The third time, I beat him to a pulp. I bid three."

The hermit, almost unconsciously, felt of his nose and ears. Then he said faintly:

"Go ahead; it's yours."

Mr. Pillicy made his three points on the deal, and scored them with elaborate care.

On the second hand the hermit picked up courage. He bid four—the limit. Mr. Pillicy sold to him. The hermit made only three, the jack not being out, and "went in the hole" for four.

Next hand, Matt drew a long breath and bought it at four also. He had luck with him. He led the only face card in his hand, the bare jack of hearts. He caught the ten, the only other heart out, and went game.

Instantly Mr. Pillicy rose, gathered up the bundle of clothes from the corner, picked up his plucked Indian by the left ear, and hurled them both out of the wigwam.

"Put on your street clothes!" he ordered, "and then come back."

"Ten dollars against ten dollars this time went on Matt. "What say, hermit?"

The hermit agreed. By the time Creep had donned his street attire, Matt had won another quick game. Whereupon he asked, with a biting drawl:

"How much more money you got, hermit? You've got to have money to take up my time."

The hermit was angry and defiant. He shed his entire funds upon the blanket, and ostentatiously counted it. It totaled $27.15.

"Play you for the whole business!" shouted Matt, drawing forth his roll.

There was a moment of hesitation. But the New Yorker was game. He nodded silently, and clutched at the cards ravenously. He was rewarded, partly, for the deal went to him. He showed the three top spades, and took every trick; but, the jack not being out again, he made only three.

THEREUPON Mr. Pillicy breathed on his cards again. He smiled a huge smile when he looked at the corners, and, without a face card in his hand, bid three, to force his opponent. The hermit sensed the bluff, and sold for three. Matt grunted his appreciation of the strategy, and lamely led his highest card, the ten of diamonds. The hermit threw down his cards in rage. He had no diamonds at all. Then Matt caught a good hand, made four points, and gathered in the cash.

"You're pretty slick yourself," grumbled the hermit, with a sour implication.

"You don't mean to say I don't play square?" asked Matt, with a dangerous gleam in his eye.

"No—no, of course not," replied the hermit, moving back slightly. "Well, you've cleaned me. I'll be getting back to camp, I guess."

"Cleaned you? Go on; you've still got your clothes," said the liveryman. "This feller Creep was game enough to stake his clothes. Who's the little piking boy now?"

The hermit took thought. Then he replied:

"All right. How much'll you put up against my clothes?"

"Oh, about ten dollars—and that's favoring you."

This time Matt Pillicy took a long breath and bid a rash four. He bought, and led the king of clubs. The hermit promptly took it with the ace, with a low and triumphant snort.

"That's the time you stepped on your heel, stableman," he said.

Matt Pillicy leaned forward, glaring at the hermit's ace. Then he reached forth a brawny hand and took the hermit by the nose.

"It's an ace, sure enough!" said Matt, applying the tweezers to the nose; "but it ain't the ace that belongs with the deck. It looks to me like an ace from that pinochle deck. Here's the gen-u-ine ace, right here. Sometimes I have a fancy

to lead the king first when I have 'em both. My trick! Next time, remember, I twist your ears off! Now, play on this ace."

The heart went out of the hermit. He threw down his cards.

"You're some player, you are," he cried. "The clothes are yours. I'll let you have 'em just as soon as I get some more."

"You'll let me have those clothes right now," replied the merciless Pillicy. "I've been wanting a suit just like that, for Sundays. Take 'em off!"

The hermit profanely demurred.

Matt took the hermit by the ears.

"Take 'em off—the way Creep did!" he growled.

THE Indian began to laugh. "That's what you did to me, Bill!" he shouted. "He won 'em, Mr. Pillicy did. You better shed 'em!"

The hermit looked wildly around for a deadly weapon. The deadliest weapon in view was Mr. Pillicy's ham-like fist. Hermit began to plead his case. The judge was deaf. Hermit made wild promises. Matt couldn't hear them. Finally, garment by garment, the clothes began to come off.

"You ain't going to leave me with nothing, are you?" asked the hermit, choking.

"No; I've got a heart. You can put on the Injun togs," replied the liveryman.

"I can't go back in them," bawled the hermit. "I'm working as a hermit."

"You was working as a hermit," said Matt mildly, "before you came over here and bothered my Injun."

The liveryman slowly began to gather up the loser's clothes. Then he gazed fondly into the hermit's face, and went on:

"Young man—you are considerable pinochle-player. But you ought not to never, never play auction pitch with a rube stableman. You was a hermit. You are now an Injun. You are now Pillicy's Injun. I just happen to have a safety razor with me, with which you are going to shave that beard with. Also I brought along some but'nut juice. It will make you look like a noble red man.

"Hermit, when you hear me blow my horn to-morrow morning, you come out on that rock yonder, and swing the tornmyhawk, and pow-wow-wow, like that. If you do it right I'll give you five dollars a week and grub. If you don't—I'll come back here and take away your Injun clothes. Being as you can't swim—I'll see you here later. Come on, Creep!"

A few minutes afterward Mr. Pillicy rowed silently across to the shore. Mr. Creep was in the stern of the boat, likewise silent. They looked back at the island. A solitary figure, clothed like an aborigine, was standing on the rock, watching them go. Ho was still standing there when they lost sight of him.

NOT a word was spoken until the carriage reached the railroad crossing near the village center. Then Matt Pillicy said:

"Get out, Creep!"

Mr. Creep, late of New York, got out, and waited humbly for further orders. The liveryman took him by an arm.

"Creep," said Matt softly, "here's a five-dollar bill for luck. You wasn't such a bad Injun. But this other feller has worked you out of a job. This railroad runs north and south. South is the direction of New York. You are now facing south. Good-by."

Mr. Pillicy released his hold and, without malice and in an entirely friendly way, lifted his right foot and assisted Mr. Creep into the night.

Thereupon he went back to the livery stable, put up the horse, woke up Joe Greeley, and said wearily:

"Joey, if you ain't too tired, get out the sweet- potato. I need music. Play 'Silver Threads Among the Gold.'"

The Abandoned Room

By WADSWORTH CAMP

Illustration by Robert McCaig

FOR a long time no one spoke. The body of Silas Blackburn had been alone in a locked room, yet before their eyes it lay, turned on its side, as if to tell them the fashion of this murder. The tiny hole at the base of the brain, the blood-stain on the pillow which the head had concealed, offered their mute and ghastly testimony.

Dr. Groom was the first to relax. He raised his great, hairy hand to the bedpost and grasped it. His rumbling voice vibrated with a childish wonder:

"I'm reminded it isn't the first time there's been blood from a man's head on that pillow."

Katherine nodded.

"What do you mean?" the detective snarled. "There's only one answer to this. There must have been a mechanical post-mortem reaction."

For a moment Dr. Groom's laugh filled the old room. It ceased abruptly. He shook his head.

"Don't be a fool, Mr. Policeman. At the most conservative estimate, this man has been dead more than thirteen hours. Even a few instants after death the human body is incapable of any such reaction."

"What then?" the detective asked. "Some one of us, or one of the servants, must have overcome the locks again and deliberately disturbed the body. That must be so; but I don't get the motive."

"It isn't so," Dr. Groom answered bluntly.

Already the detective had to a large extent controlled his bewilderment.

"I'd like your theory, then," he said dryly. "You and Mr. Paredes have both been gossiping about the supernatural. When you first came you hinted dark things. You said Mr. Blackborn had probably died what the world would call a natural death."

"I meant," the doctor answered, "only that Mr. Blackburn's heart might have failed under the impulse of a sudden fright in this room. I also said, you remember, that the room was nasty and unhealthy. Plenty of people have remarked it before me."

Graham touched the detective's arm.

Dr. Groom smiled. The detective faced him with a fierce belligerency.

"You'll agree he was murdered?"

"Certainly, if you wish to call it that. But I ask for the sharp instrument that caused death. I want to know how, while Blackburn lay on his back, it was inserted through the bed, the springs, the mattress, and the pillow."

"What are you driving at?"

Dr. Groom pointed to the dead man.

"I merely repeat that it isn't the first time that pillow's been stained from unusual wounds in the head. Anybody who's ever heard of this house knows what I mean. We needn't talk of it."

"I merely repeat that it isn't the first time that pillow's been stained from unusual wounds in the head. Anybody who's ever heard of this house knows what I mean. We needn't talk of it."

Silas Blackburn's great-grandfather, he told the detective, had been carried to that bed from a Revolutionary skirmish with a bullet at the base of his brain. For many hours he had raved, fighting unsuccessfully against the final silence.

---

"It has been a legend in the family, as these young people will tell you, that Blackburns die hard; and there are those who believe that people who die hard leave something behind them—something that clings to the physical surroundings of their suffering. If it were only that one case— But it goes on and on.

"Silas Blackburn's father, for instance, killed himself here. He had lost his money in silly speculations. He stood where you stand, detective, and blew his brains out. He fell over and lay where his son lies, his head on that pillow. Silas Blackburn was a money grubber. He started with nothing but this property, and he made a fortune; but even he had enough imagination to lock this room up after one more death of that kind.

"It was this girl's father. You were too young, Katherine, to remember it, but I took care of him. I saw it. He was carried in here after he had been struck at the back of the head in a polo match. He died too, fighting hard. It strikes me as curious that, the first time the room has been slept in since then, it should harbor a death behind locked doors—from a wound in the head."

Paredes' fingers were restless, as if he missed his customary cigarette. The detective strolled to the window.

"Very interesting," he said. "Extremely interesting for old women and young children."

"Thanks," the doctor rumbled. "I'll wait until you've told me how these doors were entered, how that wound was made, how this body turned on its side in an empty room."

The detective glanced at Bobby.

"I'll do my best. I'll even try to tell you why the murderer came back this afternoon to disturb his victim."

But Bobby felt that the doctor had had the better of the argument.

For a moment Katherine, Graham, Paredes, and he were together in the main hall.

"God knows what it was," Graham said; "but it may mean something to you, Bobby. Tell us carefully, Katherine, about the sounds that came to you across the court."

"It was just what I heard last night when he died," she answered. "It was like something falling softly, then a long-drawn sigh."

"You were alone up here?" Graham asked.

"I think so."

"No," Bobby said. "I was in my room."

"What were you doing?"

"I was asleep. Katherine's call woke me up."

"Asleep!" Paredes echoed. "And she didn't call at once—"

Bobby grasped his arm.

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm sorry," Paredes answered. "I shouldn't have spoken. I'm more inclined to agree with the doctor's theory, impossible as it seems."

"Yesterday," Katherine said, "I would have thought it impossible. After last night and just now I'm not so sure. I—I wish the doctor were right. It would clear you, Bobby."

He smiled.

"Do you think any jury would listen to such a theory?"

KATHERINE put her finger to her lips. Howells and the doctor were coming from the corridor of the old wing.

At the head of the stairs the detective turned.

"You will find it very warm and comfortable by the fire in the lower hall, Mr. Blackburn," he said pointedly.

He waited for them all to go; then he walked slowly into the new corridor.

Bobby knew what he was after. The detective had made no effort to disguise his intention. He wanted Bobby out of the way while he searched his room for a sharp, slender instrument.

Paredes lighted a cigarette and warmed his back at the fire. The doctor settled himself in his chair.

Bobby couldn't sit still. He nodded to Graham, got his coat and hat, and stepped into the court. Dampness and melancholy seemed to exude from the walls of the old house. He paused and gazed at the footprint in the soft earth by the fountain. Graham, who had come silently from the house, startled him:

"What are you looking at?"

"No use, Hartley. I was on the library lounge. I heard what Howells said."

"Perhaps it's just as well," Graham answered. "You know, then, what you are facing. We've got to find a way around that evidence."

Bobby pointed to the windows of the room of death.

"There's no way around except the doctor's theory." He laughed shortly. "Much as I've feared that room, I'm afraid the psychic explanation won't hold water. Paredes put his finger on it. I would have had time to get back to my room before Katherine called—"

"Stop, Bobby!"

"Hartley! I'm afraid to go to sleep! It's dreadful not to know whether you are evil and ingenious to the point of the miraculous in your sleep. I'm so tired, Hartley."

"Why should you have gone to that room this afternoon?" Graham asked. "You must get this idea out of your head. You must have sleep, and perhaps, when you're rested, you will remember."

"I'm not so sure," Bobby said, "that I want to remember."

He indicated the footprint.

"There's no question about it. I was here last night."

"Unless," Graham said, "your handkerchief and your shoes were stolen."

"Nonsense!" Bobby cried. "What motive would any one have had to commit a murder in order to send me to the chair? And who would have known his way around that dark house like me? Who would have found out so easily that my grandfather had changed his room?"

"That's logical," Graham admitted slowly: "but we can't give in. By the way, has Paredes ever borrowed any large sums from you?"

Bobby hesitated.

"A little here-and there," he answered.

"Has he ever paid you back?"

"I don't recall," Bobby answered, flushing. "Why do you ask?"

"If any one," Graham answered, "looked on you as a certain source of money, there would be a motive in conserving that source. Probably lots of people knew Mr. Blackburn would make a new will to-day."

"Do you think," Bobby asked, "that Carlos is clever enough to have got through those doors? And what about this afternoon—that ghastly disturbing of the body?"

"If Paredes," Graham insisted, "tries to borrow any money from you now, tell me about it. Another thing, Bobby. We can't afford to keep your experiences last night a secret any longer."

He stepped to the door and asked Dr. Groom to come out.

"He won't be likely to pass your confidences on to Howells," he said. "Those men are natural antagonists."

After a moment the doctor appeared, a slouch hat drawn over his forehead.

"What you want?" he grumbled. "This court's a first-class place to catch cold in."

"I want to ask you," Graham began, "something about the effects of such drugs as could be given in wine. Tell him, Bobby, what happened last night."

YOUNG Blackburn recited the story of last night's dinner, of his experience in the cafe, of his few blurred impressions of the swaying vehicle and the woods.

"Hartley thinks something may have been put in my wine."

"What for?" the doctor asked. "What had these people to gain by drugging you? Suppose, for some far-fetched reason, they wanted to have Silas Blackburn put out of the way. They couldn't make you do it by drugging you. At any rate, they couldn't have had a hand in this afternoon. Mind, I'm not saying you had a thing to do with it yourself; but I don't believe you were drugged. Any drug likely to be used in wine would have sent you into a deep sleep. And your symptoms on waking are scarcely sharp enough. Sorry, boy. Sounds more like aphasia. The path you've been treading sometimes leads to that black country, and it's there that hates sharpen unknown. I remember a case where a tramp returned and killed a farmer who had refused him food. Retained no recollection of the crime—hours dropped out of his life. They executed him while he still tried to remember."

"I read something about the case," Bobby muttered.

"Been better if you hadn't," the doctor grumbled.

He thought for a moment, his heavy black brows coming closer together.

"I'll say this for your comfort: You probably followed the plan that had been impressed on your brain by Mr. Graham. You came here, no doubt, and, with an instinctive realization of your condition, took that old precaution of convivial men returning home, and removed your shoes. Then some subconscious idea warned you that you weren't fit to go in at all, and you probably wandered off to the empty house."

"Then," Bobby asked, "you don't think I did it?"

"God knows who did it. God knows what did it. The longer I live, the surer I become that we scientists don't know everything."

He turned, with Graham and Bobby, at the sound of an automobile coming through the woods.

"Probably the coroner at last," he said.

The automobile, a small runabout, drew up at the entrance to the court, and a wizened little man, with yellowish skin stretched across high cheek-bones, walked up the path.

"Well!" he said shrilly. "What you doing, Dr. Groom?"

"Waiting to witness another reason why coroners should be abolished," the doctor rumbled. "This is the dead man's grandson, coroner; and Mr. Graham, a friend of the family."

Bobby accepted the coroner's hand with distaste.

"Howells," the coroner said in his squeaky voice, "seems to think it's a queer case. Inconvenient, I call it. Wish people wouldn't die queerly whenever I go on a little holiday."

He started up the path with Dr. Groom.

"Are you coming?" Graham asked Bobby.

Bobby shook his head.

"I don't want to. I'd rather stay outside. You'd better be there, Hartley."

Graham followed the others, while Bobby started down a path that entered the woods.

Immediately the forest seemed to close greedily about him. Here and there, branches cut against a pallid, greenish glow in the west—the last light.

Bobby wanted, if he could, to find that part of the woods where he had stood the night before. He left the path, walking at haphazard in the undergrowth. Ahead he saw a placid, flat, and faintly luminous stretch. He pushed through the bushes, and paused on the shore of a small, stagnant lake.

The morbid loneliness of the place touched Bobby's spirit with chill hands. As a child he had never cared to play about the stagnant lake, nor, he recalled, had the boys of the village fished or bathed there. He was about to walk away, when a movement on the farther bank held him, made him gaze with eager eyes across the sleepy water.

He thought there was something black in the black shadows of the trees—a thing that stirred without sound through the heavy dusk. But he could see nothing distinctly in the bad light.

He started around the end of the lake, and for a moment he thought that the shape of a woman, clothed in black, detached itself from the shadow. The image dissolved. He wondered if it had been more substantial than fancy.

"Who is that?" he called.

The woods muffled his voice; there was no answer. Nor did he hear any crackling of twigs or rustling of dead leaves. If a woman had been there; she had fled noiselessly; yet, as he went on around the lake, his own progress through the decayed woods was distinctly audible.

It was too dark on the other side to detect any traces of a recent human presence in the thicket. Yet he couldn't quiet the feeling that he had had a glimpse of a woman clothed in black, who had studied him secretly across the stagnant stretch of the lake.

On the other hand, there was no logic in a woman's presence here at such an hour—no logic in her running away from him. While he pondered, the night invaded the forest completely, making it impossible for him to search farther. It had grown so dark, indeed, that he found his way out with difficulty. The branches caught at his clothing. The underbrush tangled itself about his feet. It was as if the thicket tried to hold him away from the house.

AS he entered the court he noticed a discolored glow in the room of death.

He opened the front door. Paredes and Graham alone sat by the fire.

"Then they're not through yet," Bobby said.

Graham arose. He began to pace the length of the hall.

"They've had Katherine in that room. One would think she'd been through enough. Now they've sent for the servants."

Paredes laughed lightly.

"After this," he said, "I'm afraid, Bobby, you'll need the powers of the police to keep servants in your house."

---

Muttering, frightened voices came from the dining-room. Jenkins entered, and, shaking his head, went up the stairs. The two women were in tears. They paused, as if seeking an excuse to linger on the lower floor, to postpone as long as possible their entrance of the room of death.

Ella, a pretty girl with dark hair and eyes, went up and spoke to Bobby:

"It's outrageous, Mr. Robert. He found out all we knew this morning. What's he after now?. You might think we'd murdered Mr. Blackburn."

Whispering to each other, she and the older woman followed Jenkins, while the three men waited in the lower hall.

Jenkins came back first, his face white and twitching.

"The body!" he mouthed. "It's moved! I saw it before."

He stretched out his hands to Bobby.

Angry voices in the upper hall interrupted him. The two women ran down, as white as Jenkins. At an impatient nod from Bobby, the three servants went on to the kitchen.

Howells, the coroner, and Dr. Groom descended.

"What ails you, doctor?" the coroner was squeaking. "I agree it's an unpleasant room. Lots of old rooms are. I follow you when you say no post-mortem contraction could have caused such an alteration in the position of the body. There's no question about the rest of it. The man was clearly murdered with a sharp tool of some sort, and the murderer was in the room again this afternoon and disturbed the corpse. Howells says he knows who. It's up to him to find out how. He says he has plenty of evidence, and that the guilty person's in this house, so I'm not fretting myself. But I'm cross with you, Howells, for breaking up my holiday. One of my assistants would have done as well."

HOWELLS apparently paid no attention to the coroner. His narrow eyes followed the doctor with a growing curiosity. His level smile seemed to have drawn his lips into a line, inflexible, a little cruel. The doctor grunted:

"Instead of abolishing coroners we ought to double their salaries."

The coroner emitted a long squeak as an indication of mirth.

"You think unfriendly spooks did it. I've always thought you were an old fogy. Hanged if that doesn't sound modern!"

The doctor ran his fingers through his thick, untidy hair.

"I merely ask for the implement that caused death. I only want to know how it was inserted through the bed while Blackburn lay on his back. And if you've time you might tell me how the murderer entered the room last night and to-day."

The coroner, repeating his squeak, glanced at the little group by the fire.

"Out in the kitchen, upstairs, or right here under our noses is almost certainly the person who could tell us. Interesting case, Howells!"

Howells, still watching the doctor, answered dryly:

"Unusually interesting."

The coroner struggled into his coat.

"Permits are all available," he squeaked. "Have your undertakers out when you like."

Then he nodded humorously at Doctor Groom.

"If I were you, Howells, I'd take this hairy old theorist up as a suspicious character!"

The doctor made a movement in his direction. He checked himself, went to the closet, and got his hat and coat.

"Want me to drop you, old sawbones?" the coroner asked.

Savagely the doctor shook his head.

"My buggy's in the stable."

The coroner's squeak was thinner, more irritating than ever.

"Then don't let the spooks get you, driving through the woods. Old folks say there are a plenty there."

When the doctor and the coroner had gone, Howells excused himself with mock-humility.

"With your permission, I shall write in the library until dinner."

He bowed and left.

"He wants to work on his report," Graham suggested.

"An exceptional man," Paredes murmured.

"Has he questioned you?" Graham asked.

"I'd scarcely call it that," Paredes replied. "We've both questioned, and we've both been clams. I fancy he doesn't think much of me since he found out I believe in ghosts; but the doctor seems to interest him."

"Where were you?" Graham asked, "when Miss Perrine's scream called us?"

Paredes stifled a yawn.

"Dozing here by the fire. I am very tired after last night. To-morrow, with a fresh mind, I hope to be able to dissect all I have seen and heard here to-day."

"The thing that counts is what happened to me last night, Carlos," Bobby said. "The only way you can help me is to explain that."

As Paredes strolled to the foot of the stairs Bobby waited for a sign, perhaps, that the Panamanian was offended and proposed to depart. Paredes, however, went upstairs, yawning, only stopping to call back:

"I must make myself a trifle more presentable for dinner."

Graham faced Bobby with the old question:

"What can he want hanging around here, unless it's money?"

And, after a moment:

"He's clever—hard to sound."

WHEN Graham went to telephone about the funeral arrangements, Bobby remained in his chair, gazing drowsily at the fire, trying—always trying to remember, yet finding no new light among the shadows of his memory.

Just before dinner Katherine joined him. She wore a somber gown that made her face seem too white. Without speaking, she sat down beside him and stared, too, at the smoldering fire. He drew comfort from her presence, from her silence.

"You make me ashamed," he whispered once. "I've been a beast, leaving you here alone these weeks."

She wouldn't let him go on, so they remained silently by the fire until Graham and Paredes came down.

When dinner was announced, the detective strolled from the library, and, uninvited, sat at the table with them. His report evidently still filled his mind; for he spoke only when it was unavoidable, and then in monosyllables. Paredes alone ate with a show of enjoyment, alone attempted to talk. Eventually even he fell silent before the lack of response.

LATER he arranged a small card table by the fire in the hall. He found cards, and, with a package of cigarettes and a box of matches convenient to his hand, began to play solitaire. The detective, Bobby gathered, had brought his report up to date; for he lounged near by, watching the Panamanian's slender hands as they handled the cards deftly. Bobby, Graham, and Katherine, glad to withdraw beyond the range of those narrow, searching eyes, entered the library and closed the door.

Graham, who was expecting a report from his man in New York as to the movements of Maria and the identity of the stranger, moved about restlessly.

"If we could only get one fact," he said, "one reasonable clue! I've never felt so at sea."

"If we only knew the thing that Uncle Silas was afraid of!" Katherine whispered.

"That," Bobby cried, "is the fact we must have."

He paused.

"What's that?" he asked sharply.

There were sounds of wheels in the gravel. The front door banged. Then they heard the tread of men in the room of death overhead. Later came to them the footsteps of people carrying some heavy burden.

They looked at each other. Katherine hid her eyes.

It was the detective who broke their despondent silence. He strolled in, glanced around curiously for a moment, then walked to the door of the inclosed staircase and grasped the knob.

"To-night," he announced, "I am trying a small experiment, on the chance of clearing up the last details of the mystery. Since it depends on the courage of whoever murdered Mr. Blackburn, I've small hope of its success."

He indicated the ceiling.

"You've heard, I dare say, what's been going on up there. Mr. Blackburn's body has been removed to his own room. The room where he was killed is empty. I mean to go up and enter and lock the doors, as he did last night. I shall leave the window up, as it was left last night. I shall blow out the candle as he did."

He lowered his voice. He looked directly at Bobby, and his words carried a definite challenge:

"I shall lie on the bed and await the murderer, under the precise conditions that Mr. Blackburn did."

"What do you expect to gain by that?" Graham asked.

"Probably nothing," Howells answered, "because, as I have said, success depends upon the courage of a man who kills in the dark while his victim sleeps. I simply give him the chance to attack me as he did Mr. Blackburn. Of course, he realizes it would be a good deal to his advantage to have me out of the way. I ask him to come, therefore, as stealthily as he did last night. I beg him to match his skill against mine. I want him to play his miracle with the window or one of the locks. But I'll wager he hasn't the nerve, although I don't see why he should hesitate. He's a doomed man anyway. I shall make my arrest in the morning."

BOBBY would not meet the menacing eyes. The detective's manner increased the hatred that had blazed in his mind when he had stood in the bedroom with his grandfather's body.

"I gather," he said, "that you haven't unearthed the motive for disturbing the body. And have you found the sharp instrument that caused death?"

The detective answered tolerantly:

"I have found a number of sharp instruments. None of them, however, seems quite slender or round enough. I'll get all that out of my man when I lock him up. I'll get it to-night if he comes."

"Why," Graham asked, "do you announce your plans to us?"

The detective's level smile widened.

"You shouldn't ask that, Mr. Graham. I've let the servants know my plans. Mr. Paredes knows them. I wish every one in the house to know them, in order that the murderer—who is in the house—may come if he wishes."

Katherine rose abruptly.

"When you come down to it," she said, "you are accusing one of us. It's brutal, unfair—absurd."

"I am a detective, Miss," Howells answered. "I have my own methods."

Bobby stared at the slight protuberance in the breast pocket of the detective's coat. The cast of his footprint must be secreted there, and almost certainly the handkerchief that had been found beneath the bed. He shrank from his own thoughts.

Katherine approached the detective.

"In any case," she urged him, "I wish you wouldn't try to spend the night in that room. After what the doctor has said, it—well, it isn't safe."

Howells burst out laughing.

"Never fear, Miss. I'm content to give Dr. Groom's spirits as much chance to take a fall out of me as anybody. I'll be going up now. Good night to you all—and pleasant dreams."

He opened the door and slipped into the darkness of the private staircase.

Katherine shivered.

"He has plenty of courage, Hartley! If nothing happens to him to-night, he'll finish Bobby in the morning. That mustn't happen—he mustn't go to jail. You understand? Things would never be the same for him again."

Graham spread his hand [?]

"What am I to do? [?] to

---

New York and get after these people myself."

"Don't leave the Cedars," Bobby begged, "until he does arrest ne. There'll be plenty of time for the New York end then. Watch Carlos if you want, but, most important of all, find out—somehow you've got to find out what my grandfather was afraid of."

Graham nodded.

"And if it does come to an arrest, Bobby, you're not to say a word to anybody without my advice. You ought to get to bed now. You must have rest, and Katherine, too. Don't listen to-night, Katherine, for messages from across the court."

"I'll try," she said. "But, Hartley, I wish that man weren't there. I wish no one were in that room."

She took Bobby's hand.

"Good night, Bobby, and don't give up hope. We'll pull you through."

Bobby waited, hoping that Graham would offer to share his room with him. But Graham only said:

"I'll be in the next room, Bobby. If you're restless or need me, you've only to knock on the wall."

Bobby didn't leave the room with them. The warmth with which Katherine had just filled him faded as he watched her go out with Graham. Her hand was on Graham's arm. There was, he fancied, in her eyes an emotion deeper than gratitude or friendship.

He walked anxiously to the table, remembering the medicine Dr. Groom had prepared for him that afternoon to make him sleep. The glass was there. He drained it, and stood for a time looking at the pinkish sediment in the bottom. That was all right for to-night, but afterward— He shrugged his shoulders, remembering that it would make little difference what he did in his sleep when they had him behind prison bars. Perhaps this would be his last night of freedom.

He found Paredes in the hall, still playing his solitaire with languid gestures.

"I thought you were tired, Carlos."

Paredes glanced up. His eyes were neither weary nor alert. As usual, his expression disclosed nothing of his thoughts.

"The game interests me," he murmured, "and you know," he added, "I sometimes think better while I amuse myself."

BOBBY nodded good night and went on up to his room. Even as he undressed, the effects of the narcotic were perceptible. His eyes had grown heavy, his brain a trifle numb. Almost apathetically he assured himself that he could not accomplish those mad actions in his sleep.

"Yet last night—" he murmured. "That finishes me in the eyes of the law. The doctor will testify to aphasia. According to him, I am two men—two men."

He sighed, recalling snatches of books he had read, and one or two scientific reports of such cases. He climbed into bed and blew out his candle. His drowsiness thickened. In his dulled mind one recollection remained—the picture of Howells coldly challenging him with his level smile to enter the old bedroom and make a murderous effort to escape the penalty of the earlier crime. And Howells had been right. His death would give Bobby a chance. The destruction of the evidence, the bringing into the case of a broader-minded man, a man without a carefully constructed theory—all that would help Bobby, might save him.

Drowsily, Bobby felt that he hated more than ever this detective who had the power to make him writhe like this in his net. Thought ceased. He drifted into a trance-like sleep.

He was in a black pit, fighting against crushing odds. The darkness thundered around him. Then he understood. He was in a black cell, and the thundering was the steady advance of men along an iron floor to take him—

"Bobby! Bobby!"

He flung out his hands. He sat upright. The thunder, the footfalls, became a hurried knocking at his door.

"Bobby! [?] ou're there?"

I [?] erine.

[?] matter?"

"You're there. I didn't know. Got up. Hartley's putting some clothes on. Hurry! The house is so dark—so strange."

"Tell me what's happened!"

She didn't answer at first. He struck a match, lighted his candle, threw on a dressing-gown, and stepped to the door. Katherine shrank against the wall, hiding her eyes from the light of his candle. He thought it odd she should wear the dress in which she had appeared at dinner. But it seemed indifferently fastened, and her

hair was in disorder. Graham stepped from his room.

"What is it?" Bobby demanded.

"You wouldn't wake up, Bobby. You were so hard to wake," said Katherine.

"It's nothing," Graham said. "Go back to your room, Katherine. She's fanciful—"

Her eyes were full of terror.

"No; we must go to that room. I was asleep. It woke me up, stealing in across the court again."

Bobby grasped her arm.

"You called us at once?"

She shook her head.

"I—I couldn't find my dressing-gown. This dress was by the bed. I put it on, but I couldn't seem to fasten it."

Bobby remembered his last thoughts before drifting into the trance-like sleep.

She seemed to know what was in his mind.

"But when I knocked you were sleeping so soundly."

"Too soundly, perhaps."

"Come, we're growing imaginative," Graham said. "Howells would take care of himself. He'll probably give us the deuce for disturbing him; but to satisfy you, Katherine, we'll wake him up."

"If you can," she whispered.

THEY entered the main hall. Light came through the stair-well from the lower floor. Graham walked to the rail and glanced down. Bobby followed him. On the table by the fireplace the cards were arranged in neat piles. A strong draft blew cigarette smoke up to them.

"Paredes," Graham said, amazed, "is still downstairs. The front door's open. He's probably in the court."

"It must be very late," Bobby said.

Katherine shivered.

"Half past two; I looked at my watch. The same time as last night."

With a gesture of resolution, she led the way into the corridor. Bobby shrank from the damp and musty atmosphere of the narrow passage.

"Why do you come, Katherine?" he asked.

"I have to know."

Graham raised his hand and knocked at the door, which again was locked on the inside. The echoes chattered back at them. Graham knocked again. Katherine raised her hands, too, and pounded at the panels. Suddenly she gave up. She let her hands fall listlessly.

"It's no use."

"Howells! Howells!" Graham called. "Why don't you answer?"

"When he boasted to-night," Katherine whispered, "the murderer heard him."

"Suppose he's gone down to the library?" Graham said.

Bobby gave Katherine the candle.

"No; he'd have stayed. We've got to break in here. We've got to find out."

Graham placed his powerful shoulder against the door. The lock strained. Bobby added his weight. With a splintering of wood the door flew open, precipitating them across the threshold.

Through the darkness Graham sprang for the opposite door.

"It's locked," he called, "and the key's on this side."

Bobby took the candle from Katherine. He forced himself to approach the bed. The flame flickered a little in the breeze that stole past the curtain of the open window. It shook across the body of Howells, fully clothed, lying with the head on the stained pillow. His face, intricately lined, was as peaceful as Silas Blackburn's had been. Its level smile persisted.

Bobby caught his breath.

"Howells—"

He set the candle on the bureau.

"It's no use. We must look at the back of his head."

"The back of his head!" Katherine echoed.

"If he's dead, we can't disturb him—it's against the law," Graham began.

"Look!" Bobby cried. "We've got to look!"

Graham tiptoed forward. He stretched out his hand. With a motion of abhorrence, he drew it back. Bobby watched him hypnotically, thinking:

"I wanted this. I hated him. I thought of it just before I went to sleep."

Graham reached out again. This time he touched Howells' head. It rolled over on the pillow.

"Good God!" he said.

THEY stared at the red hole near the base of the brain—at a fresh crimson splotch straying beyond the edges of the darker one they had seen that afternoon.

Graham turned away, his hand still outstretched as if it had touched some poisonous thing.

"He was prepared against it," he whispered; "yet it got him!"

He glanced rapidly around the room, whose shadows seemed crowding about the candle to stifle it.

"Unless we're all mad," he cried, "the murderer must be hidden in this room now. Don't you see? He's got to be, or Groom's right and we're fighting the dead. Go out, Katherine. Stand by that broken door, Bobby. I'm going to look."

To be continued next week

Everything You Want to Plant

—Continued from page 7

"That's good," said Letty, who said everything she could say truthfully with a great deal of conviction.

"I knew you had gone through hard things," he continued. "I knew it that first day. You mustn't—regret it too much, because it has made you so wonderful."

"And you have gone through hard things too," Letty ventured.

Fred cleared his throat. "Well—yes."

Letty wanted to say "What?" But she couldn't very well ask him to explain his sorrow, when she wasn't explaining hers. So she only smiled. At which he exclaimed: "I want to kiss you!" and then added hastily: "But I mustn't—yet. Not until," he sentimentally pursued, "grief has died out of your heart."

Letty wanted to say that perhaps if he kissed her it would help her grief to die, but she checked herself. Kissing her was scarcely feasible at the moment, anyway, on account of the automobile that was coming down the road.

They parted at the Robbins gate, sadly but happily. He was coming back. He thought he could get his father to buy him an automobile. And then, even though he was somewhere else, he could get over here sometimes. He spoke of how wonderful it was they had come together in that strange way—that mysterious way, understanding each other before they really knew each other. He wondered if there had ever been anything like it before.

Letty thought probably there hadn't. There was something strange about it. He held her hand a long time, sheltered by the gate-post. They promised to write, and at last the sweet melancholy of parting was concluded by a man coming along and asking Letty if she knew whether her father wanted to sell his colt.

For a while after that life centered in the rural postman. Any one else, reading Mr. Gordon's letters, would not look upon them as infinitely to be desired. The automobile had been ordered. Baxter County was bad territory. He did not think the farmers as intelligent there as in other places. Anyway, they bought less. And the food was poorer than in other parts of the State. These bits of information would not seem things to hurry home from school for. But— "I wish I could stop at the school to-night." Or, "I am tired to-night, and wish I could talk to some one who understands." In parentheses— "Do you know who I mean?" Once he wrote, "I wish I could look into a certain pair of soft brown eyes and hold a certain hand. Maybe I will soon."

On the Saturday after receiving "Maybe I will soon," Letty went to town and bought some new clothes. She bought a pink dimity, of a pattern that somehow just suggested a person who, after having been chastened and deepened and made tender by sorrow, is ready to emerge once more, and more understandingly than ever before, into the sweet joyousness of life. Strange how a dimity could suggest all this, but it did. And Letty made it up with ruffles; and when she tried it on she parted her hair in the middle and brought it down low over the ears into a soft knot at the back.

That night she wrote a letter to which there was a postscript: "A certain person is lonely." Bold, brazen Letty!

LATE in May a certain person met a certain other person. It was when a certain automobile drew up at a certain schoolhouse door. It was a wise automobile, and knew that the longest way round can be the most desirable way home. When it reached the Robbins place, all the Robbinses were at the window, peering into the gloaming. They were about to go out and look for Letty. Letty laughed. Why should she not laugh? She was going to marry a young man who sold "Everything You Want to Plant."

Fred had to "scoot right away," and Letty was not sorry that he couldn't come

---

in. That talk in the twilight under the first stars had been too wonderful to conclude with her father's opinion of the best manner of fertilizing potatoes. In fact, just so far as was possible, Letty kept away from her family that night—her own world was too beautiful for invasion.

Fred was there the next month, and took her to a grange party. Letty wore the pink dimity.

In the course of the evening Letty went in the dressing-room to powder her nose. And this conversation came to her across the wooden partition:

"Say," said Joe Stewart, "do you want to know who's the prettiest girl here to-night?"

"Bessie Lyons?" ventured a voice.

"Bessie Lyons nothing," scornfully replied he whom Letty had one time tried in vain to fascinate. "Letty Robbins has got Bessie beat just one mile!"

Going home, Fred spoke of the past. He hoped it would not stand between them. Passionately Letty said she didn't see why it should. He wanted to know if, when he started to kiss her, she ever thought of—that other one.

Now, this idea of thinking of Ed Ridder when about to be kissed by Fred was so preposterous. that Letty laughed. Fred looked hurt. Letty tried to explain, but she was handicapped by the fear of explaining all too well. So, in wily fashion, she turned the conversation to Fred's own dead love. Did he, when about to kiss her, think of this other whom he had kissed—and was that, demanded Letty with growing indignation, why this awful thing was in his mind about her?

It was only one of those quarrels that lovers work up in order to get the most out of their love.

Letty was going to be married in September. Bessie Lyons' engagement to Charlie Daggett was broken, and it was not an insignificant part of Letty's triumph that Bessie was conspicuous that summer chiefly because she was going to be Letty's bride's-maid. The Robbins family had the unexpected energy of a life-time to give to Letty's wedding, and they devoted their entire summer to it. And then, at the last, they came within an inch of spoiling everything.

For Ed Ridder came to the wedding—not, to be sure, in the flesh, the earth being happily relieved of that, but in the consciousness of the keyed-up Robbinses.

IT was Mrs. Robbins who began it, while they hovered round the happy couple who were awaiting minister and guests. Arranging a fold of Letty's dress a little more to her satisfaction, she exclaimed:

"Now, isn't it too bad Ed Ridder isn't here to see Letty in her wedding dress!"

Letty felt precisely as if some one had taken a tub of cold water and doused her with it. She gulped, tried to speak, couldn't.

"Do you suppose you'd run if you saw him coming, Lett?" laughed Addie.

While still casting about for something to say,—and some means of saying it,—she heard Addie inquire of Fred:

"I suppose Letty has told you all about how she used to love Ed Ridder?"

"I should think," choked Letty, "that on this day you would speak only of things—"

"Why, Lett," said her mother, "I had no idea—"

"Why, I didn't know you still had—" began Addie.

"Letty is right," said Mrs. Robbins. "This is no time to talk of things that were—distressing. Come, Addie, let's see if that frosting has hardened."

"I call that very poor taste," said Fred frigidly, when they were alone.

Letty raised tearful eyes.

"You didn't love him as you do me, did you?" he demanded.

"I did not," cried Letty. "Believe me, I did not!"

"Just the same," said Fred, "I'm glad we aren't going to live round here. I couldn't stand it to be everlastingly hearing that man's name."

"Neither could I!" cried Letty.

They were going to live where "Everything You Want to Plant" grew. Fred was going to be in charge of the business end of things there.

It was after the ceremony had been performed, and the radiant couple were surrounded by their feasting friends, that the host, looking with satisfaction at the neighbors gathered at his board, suddenly cried in a loud voice:

"Well, well, everybody here except Ed Ridder!"

It must be confessed that Letty had an unbridelike impulse to attack her father with the knife which had just been handed her for cutting the wedding-cake.

There was a general laugh.

"Did you ever see the picture we have of Ed Ridder?" genially inquired Mr. Robbins of his new son-in-law. "Addie, get, that old album that has—"

"Now, pa," interrupted Mrs. Robbins, "let's let Ed Ridder rest in peace."

"Why should we?" demanded Mr. Robbins. "We ought to keep his memory green. Eh, Letty?"

"I'll bet Lett'll never forget- him," laughed Bessie Lyons.

Bride and bridegroom were looking like twin thunder-clouds. Mrs. Robbins began to speak of wedding-cakes.

AFTER tearful farewells had been spoken, and the automobile was bearing Letty from the old home toward the new, Fred burst out:

"I have never known anything more outrageous! In many ways," Fred went on severely, "I like your father very much. But, I must say, in some ways—"

Letty's arm stole round his neck. She kissed him. The car meandered into a ditch—happily, not a deep one.

"Letty," he demanded, holding her close, "will you ask your family never to mention that man's name in my presence again?"

"I will," said Letty fervently.

"I'm glad we're not going to live round here," said Fred.

"I hope," began Letty, artfully turning the thing other side to, "that where we are going to live I won't have to hear about—her."

"Who?" he asked.

"You know," she whispered.

"Oh—yes," he replied awkwardly.

He drove a little way in silence. Suddenly he slowed the machine, and turned a determined face to Letty.

"See here, Letty," he began; "there's something I think I ought to tell you."

That phrase smote Letty accusingly, but she only said gently: "Yes?"

"That was all a bluff," he blurted out.

"A—?" stammered Letty.

"Bluff," repeated Fred. "I wanted to be like you. It's true enough I was feeling blue that day, but it wasn't on account of a—dead sweetheart." He laughed. "It was because my father had roasted me like the devil for not getting more orders for our new onion sets! It made me sore, and so— I just kind of fell in with your sadness."

Letty was silent. She was thinking.

"Don't you see how that could happen?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes, Fred," said Letty gently. "And there never was—any one?" she asked after a moment.

"Oh, of course I've been around with girls more or less; but—no, you're the first one I ever really loved."

Letty was trying to say, "And you're the first one I ever loved,"—trying to tell him that Ed Ridder was the comic valentine,—when his hand went over hers and he murmured:

"Of course I knew it would be different with you."

He kissed her, as one who has won his love from all the world. Could Letty tell him there had been no one to win her from? Perhaps she could, but she didn't. She told herself it would not be kind to Fred. There was a fleeting reflection upon the strangeness of life—wonderful was romance when it could flower from the failure to sell onions and the failure to make a hit at a party, the sadness of these failures merging into beauty, into love. Letty paid swift, silent tribute to this wonder of life before she cried:

"I never loved any one half as much as I love you!"

The Big Gamble

By CAPTAIN A. P. CORCORAN, Late British Army.

WAR'S a game, with death for the loser. Skill may win it for an army; but only luck will win it for each man, and there's no telling how the cards will fall.

On December 19,1915, three hundred and ninety high explosives came over into the town of Bienvillers, and not a casualty was there to the credit of the German army. Yet the very next day, after a silence of three weeks, just one stray shell came crashing into Pommier, and killed thirteen men.

I know men who went to France in the fatal August and who have fought through the war ever since. Not a scratch have they to show for their experience. And I also knew men who, after two days in the trenches, were through with the war for good.

That's the fortune of war, as it is known on the front.

You should watch the Tommy as he awaits an attack, when the "Berthas" are busily trying to bury or blow him up, and death is thundering all around him. There he squats, with his pipe, leaning his back against the trench-side, and watching with the unconcern of a stoic.

"Betcha a fag the next one gets the ole stump, Bill," says he.

"Betcha tuppence," answers Bill, "that it 'its the 'eap of stones."

Their comrades chime in. In a minute there's a sweepstake made between the ten of them hiding in their traverse. Very often they survive to collect the bets. The chances are pretty even either way.

My Two Narrowest Escapes

AFTER you have watched the ways of the war for a time, and seen the strange freaks of fortune that befall the different men, you begin to have a new conception of the god Mars. Stern he is—there's no doubt of it; but seemingly he likes his joke at times. Nasty jokes, as a rule, for the pawns he plays with. But I must confess he was kind to me. I'll tell you some of the good turns he did me, and then some of the mean tricks he can play.

I was at a Brigade Signal Office once, just a couple of miles behind the line. It was in a two-story house, and we were upstairs in a big, long, narrow room. At the rear end were the telegraph clerks, operating their instruments. At the other end were an orderly and myself. An artillery duel was on, and the noise was pretty terrible. But we paid no attention until, suddenly, a shell tore crashing through the roof, splitting the house in two.

Gone were the operators and their end of the room. And there were the orderly and myself, sitting in the open, suffering from nothing worse than an ugly shock.

But I was spared even that in its most nerve-racking form in my next narrow escape from extinction.

This time I was at Vermeilles, where I had been billeted for a month while we prepared for the slaughter at Loos. Hard work it was, from which we got no respite until everything was absolutely shipshape. Finally, on the last night before the attack, having a little time on my hands, I took the opportunity of dining with some artillery friends whom I might never see again. They lived several miles from my "home"; and as our festivities were long as well as joyous, I decided to spend the night at their quarters. I came home shortly after dawn next day, and found this awaiting me at my billet:

A shell had crashed into my room during the night, destroying the end that had been mine. In the ruins were the remains of my servant, who had evidently seized the opportunity of my absence to sleep in my more comfortable bed. Had he stayed in his own, he would have survived, for his couch was entirely intact.

But, in case such escapes as these might tend to make you strut a bit, to look on yourself as favored of the gods and reserved for higher things, there were always examples before you of others equally narrow, where the survivor was merely spared for a worse end. Isn't it George Meredith who describes this life as a "huge ironic procession, with laughter of gods in the background"? Well, those gods, if they exist, must have many a laugh now at the sport they are making of us mortals. Cruel sport, as you will see.

Story of Five Brothers

THERE was a widow in the North of England who had five sons before the war. One was a regular soldier. He went to France in August, 1914. His brothers, civilians before, now joined Kitchener's army, and went out with the first hundred thousand.

Now, Bill, as we may call the regular, was in every scrap going. He fought at Mons, on the Marne, on the Aisne, at the first and second Ypres. And not a bullet even grazed his skin. The others, on the contrary, lasted not much more than a month. They were, all killed, one after another.

A War Office, we are told, is no more than a machine; but machines, it seems, at times have feelings. At least, this one beard of the five brothers and of their widowed mother. Somehow, it reached headquarters, also, that there were two helpless sisters in this unfortunate but patriotic family. So the orders went forth to release Bill from the front and provide him with a profitable job in munitions, where he might serve his country in comparative safety and affluence.

Bill was in the line when the order came; but he packed his kit in short order, shook hands with his friends, and mounted a motor lorry that was to take him to the station. You might think that the immortals had no use for Bill, having steered him so safely thus far; but, as I have said before, Mars must have his little joke. In sight of that station, a hell came over, and picked that motor lorry out for a target. Up it went, carrying Bill to kingdom come. According to your way of looking at it, there's kismet or confounded luck.

At Neuve Chapelle, one time, there was a company of fellows who had been in the trenches eight days without respite. Hot work it was, too, as you probably know already. But, somehow, all these chaps survived. Finally they were relieved and marched off to billets, leaving two of their number to tidy up odds and ends. About four hours later they followed. As I have said, there was not a scratch on them when they left the trench, though the fight had been of a bloody order. But now, on their way home, when their work was done, over comes an explosive, picks up the two, and carries them heaven knows where.

It was a habit, behind the line, to send a band over from divisional headquarters to brigade headquarters about every second day, in order to amuse the men. Usually it played in the evening, and, of course, attracted a crowd. The performance, as a rule, took place in the town square. One evening, either by luck or good aim, a shell pitched right in the middle of the crowd, which numbered about two hundred. Just twenty were killed. If you were betting on it, you might just as well have put your money on the other hundred and eighty. But there you are—the fortunes of war.

Turning a Debt Into $10,000,000

IN a small, scantily furnished basement office in Port Huron, Michigan, her home town, Bina M. West began her life-work, which has proved to be the formation of the largest insurance society for women in the world.

That was twenty-five years ago. Then her sole capital was an enthusiastic determination to carry her work to success, untiring youthful energy, and $150 of borrowed money. With it she paid for the printing of the circulars that first outlined her plan to the mothers of America.

She began life as a school-teacher, and was the first woman in the State of Michigan to become a member of a local board of school examiners. It was while engaged in this work that she conceived her great idea.

"During my teaching days," she recently explained, "the mother of two of my brightest scholars died. I well remember what a blow this was to her son and daughter, who had only a drunken father to guide them.

"Soon they were adopted; the girl by a hotel-keeper and the boy by a man interested in horse-racing. The hotel-keeper gave the girl every advantage he could afford; but the boy soon fell into bad ways and lived in a stable most of the time. He was a promising lad, and would under other circumstances have made a bright business man. The boy and girl grew up without ever seeing each other.

"Had their mother left some insurance protection for them, a guardian would have been appointed by the court and the course of their lives would have been very different."

"It was then that the plan of an insurance society for mothers took shape in my mind.

"My resolution was given strength by the ease of another family which I heard about. The mother, through the burden of caring for five little girls, became an invalid. At first people were very kind; but finally it grew to be an old story, and one day, when I called to see her, she said `I hear you are interested in insurance. Surely that will be a fine thing for women who have to go through experiences like mine. You will provide something for them too, will you not? Death is only one condition we mothers have to meet.'

"When I left her that day, my mind was made up, and the next year I formally organized a woman's insurance society."

After resigning from her position on the school board, Miss West set herself to study the science of insurance; and then, to interest men and women in her plan, she traveled from one end of the country to the other.

The welcome she received at first was not always unmixed with suspicion. The idea of insurance for women then was still too new. She won converts not so

much through arguments as by the inherent force and strength of her character.

An amusing episode is told of her first trip to Pennsylvania. She had written to a woman to say she would be at Bradford on a certain day, naming her hotel and asking her to call.

The woman and her husband arrived at the hotel at the appointed hour. Neither of them had discussed their impressions of the stranger they were soon to meet. But they doubtless had in mind a gray-haired maiden lady with a decidedly worn look, judging from the size of the task she had undertaken. A girlish young woman entered the room.

Both rose apologetically and, explaining that they had called to see Miss West, inquired if they could be directed to her.

"Why, I am Bina West," exclaimed the stranger, with a laugh. "What sort of a freak did you expect to see?"

While the society she has organized still was in a nebulous stage, Miss West paid all the expenses incurred out of her own savings. She was unwilling to have others risk money on her plan until she had fully demonstrated its feasibility.

More than ten million dollars is now credited on her organization's books. This represents the monthly payments of about 188,000 women. In the course of her career Miss West has signed over to dependent children and relatives and in sick benefits more than $14,000,000. Her chief pride is that not one dollar intrusted to her care has ever been lost through dishonesty, bank failures, or poor investments. Many a man must envy this record.

No account of Bina West's work would be quite complete without mention of her mother, who through all these years has been her constant and untiring assistant.

"No train ever leaves too early for mother to be up to help me get started, or arrives too late for her to be waiting up to discuss developments with me," remarked her daughter.

Both mother and daughter still make their home at Port Huron. The people of the town look upon Miss West with no small degree of affection. In fact, quite recently, when her insurance society laid the corner-stone of a new $250,000 home office building, she was heralded as "Port Huron's first citizen." Leigh Danen.

How Many Descendants Has a Fly?

IT is fortunate, for man that the insect world is a house divided against itself, says C. A. Ealand in his book, Insects and Man (Century Company). Except for this check the human race would be extinct in five or six years. The fecundity of many insects is enormous. Huxley estimated that, mishaps apart, a single green fly would in ten generations produce a mass of organic matter equivalent to 500,000,000 human beings, or as many as the entire population of the Chinese Empire.

From the earliest times man has suffered from insect damage to his crops, his livestock, and himself. Locust plagues rivaling those of Europe have come to man from time to time. Pliny mentions them; they visited Ukraine in 1645, and America at the close of the Civil War; a vast swarm 2000 miles in extent crossed the Red Sea in 1889, and eight years previously 1300 tons of locust eggs were destroyed in Cyprus alone.

But this is not all. The United States suffers damage annually to the extent of $40,000,000 owing to the depredations of the Hessian fly; the cotton-boll weevil causes an annual loss of $3,000,000, the cotton moth $15,000,000, and the chinch bug $7,000,000. Add to this the damage done by gipsy and brown-tail moths and the San José scale, to say nothing of a host of minor pests, and the total assumes alarming proportions.