Is There a "Secret" in Bossing People?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

Illustration by Jessie Gillespie

A NORTHERN forestry professor wanted his class to make a thorough study of the Florida turpentine industry during vacation, in July and August. He was advised by a Florida lumberman to choose some other season of the year.

"That's the hardest time in our pine woods," the latter said. "The weather is hotter than blazes—the mosquitos bite, and your boys are pretty sure to get discouraged."

"But midsummer is the only time we can come," replied the teacher. "I believe I can handle them."

So the professor brought his class, and disappeared in the woods; and the Floridian, after waiting a week, penetrated to their camp to see how the tender college boys liked it.

To his astonishment, they were all healthy, happy, and busy. The living was hard, the surroundings uncongenial; but they played at their work like a game.

"How do you do it?" asked the admiring Floridian of the professor.

"Why, it's simple enough," said the professor. "I just watch for the first grumbler, and squelch him on sight. Most of the fellows in a crowd like this will overlook the drawbacks for the sake of the work and the fun and the achievement. But two or three will be critical and on the lookout for something to complain about, and if you let them start growling they'll infect the whole crowd. So I go after the first grumbler with an ax.

"It need not be a steel ax, of course—one of the most effective weapons is ridicule. If I make the normal fellows laugh at the grumbler, he must either get in line or get out."

Taking Responsibility by Degrees

IN business, and in life generally, men and women are constantly being given a chance at authority, tried as bosses, and promoted or dropped back into the ranks, according to results. They are pushed into places where they have charge of little groups of subordinates, and if they show ability at managing a corporal's squad they are given a platoon, and then a company, and then larger commands.

Very often, the difference between a man who succeeds as a manager and one who fails is so striking and immediate that it seems as if the real boss must have some secret of management. If there is any single method, probably this of making work a game, and keeping every player happy, is as good as any; and a keen eye for the first grumblers will go far toward accomplishing that.

She Wanted to Help Win the War

A BUSINESS girl wanted something businesslike to do as her contribution to our war. She lived in a factory town where most of the girls and women seemed to be playing at service during the first excited weeks of preparation. There was an organization of women that spent most of its energy in talk and purposeless activity; but she wanted her contribution to be something more definite. But, on the advice of her employer, a fine manager of people, she joined the organization, and took upon herself the job of squelching and winning over the grumblers, the self-seekers, and the raging individualists.

"War is two tenths soldiering nowadays, and eight tenths manufacturing and distribution," said her boss. "If you devote your time to learning leadership now, and getting that organization in line for real service, it will accomplish something later; and incidentally you will be utilizing this war for the finest kind of self-development.

"By and by, if Russia quits or the German fleet gets out, and we are drawn into war on a great scale, there will be plenty of outlet for all your business ability, and you will be ready."

With that viewpoint, she began to watch the cliques that were busy in the growing organization of women, and took steps to suppress the grumblers and gossips by finding something interesting for them to do.

In a few weeks she was the executive center of the organization.

Sometimes It Is the Boss Who Grumbles

BUT it is not always in the rank and file that the first grumbler will be found. The aspiring boss himself will bear close watching for the first signs of discontent and criticism.

A newly promoted office manager got his chance at authority. He had never bossed people before. His technical ability was excellent, but he did not get on well with the clerks in the first few weeks.

Presently the office force was becoming disgruntled and careless. The new boss went to the general manager with a complaint about a man named Smith.

"Smith is a good detail man, and I do not want to discharge him," he explained. "But yesterday he made a mistake that was a real bonehead play. I want to fine him what it cost the firm in material and time."

"That's something new," said the general manager. "We have never fined anybody before. But you're in charge, and must manage as you think best. Maybe your idea is right. But will you let me make a suggestion? If you have to fine people for their blunders, then you ought to have a system of rewards for their good work. Unless your books show a just balance in such matters, men will not have confidence in you as a boss. When you settle the amount of Smith's fine in your mind, just give him credit for his merits."

That boss is a manager of managers.

Smith was never fined.

For, when the new office manager came to balance his good work against his mistake, he found so much in Smith that was worth keeping and praising that he took an ax to himself as a grumbler. He and Smith had a talk. The substance of it was that Smith was too good a man to let his batting average slump by such carelessness, and that he must work to prevent such an error happening again. In the next month Smith made good a dozen times; and the office manager became a real boss, because he had found and weeded out the first grumbler—himself!

Don't Lay in a Stock of Camouflage: It Will Depreciate Badly in Value After the War

THE future of Germany, I presume, is no particular concern of mine. Yet I keep thinking what a tragic position hers will be after this war.

Some day, soon or late, the war will end: and Germany, with the others, will send out her ambassadors to the world.

He will come to Washington—Count von Somebody, and, smiling graciously, will tell us how eager his government is to resume friendly relations with us.

And all the time he is talking it will be running through the back of our minds: "Yes, that is what Von Bernstorff said, at the same time when he was trying to blow up our factories, and league Japan and Mexico against us."

Another German ambassador will go to Buenos Aires. "I present the compliments of the German government," he will say.

And the President of Argentina will be wondering to himself: "Is this the same government whose envoy suggested that our boats be sunk so as to leave no trace?"

German salesmen will hurry out across the world with their sample cases, protesting the value of their goods.

And men will wonder whether the statements behind those goods are like the statements made by the German government to the United States when the Sussex was sunk.

Bitter as are the days for Germany now, the days after the war will be more bitter.

For her government has ruthlessly torpedoed the good ship Faith: it has cut the cables of mutual trust by means of which men have been accustomed to communicate with each other. And the rest of the world stands aghast.

Few things in civilization are more inspiring than the slow increase of men's faith in one another.

When the Psalmist exclaimed, "I said in my haste, All men are liars," he was not far wrong.

To lie, to cheat, to get the better of a competitor by any hook or crook, was the standard practice of early business.

The Phœnicians and Greeks, trading with the tribes along the Mediterranean, used to land on the shore, pile up their goods, and then put out a little way in their boats again.

Out from their hiding place would come the natives to pile up beside those goods the articles which they offered in exchange, and having done it they would hide themselves.

Both sides wanted to do business, but neither party trusted the members of the other enough to appear beside them on the shore.

In religion as well as business the rule of fraud was the accepted rule.

"I will sacrifice ten heads to Zeus if I be delivered from this sickness," the pious Greek would exclaim.

And being delivered he would sacrifice cabbage heads instead of heads of cattle, and receive the congratulations of his friends upon the cleverness of his ruse.

Little by little the world has grown away from this kind of practice.

As the coral reef grows by the addition of one tiny organism after another, so has Faith grown in the world—each generation raising it a bit, higher by the addition of its honesty and trust, until all business has come to be done on men's trust in each other's words.

That slow, painfully wrought creation, Germany with wanton hand demolished.

We hear much talk to-day of camouflage, which is a fancy name for lying. Be not misled by its seeming popularity.

You will live to see a penalty visited on Germany for the slaughter of Truth such as has never been borne by any people before.

You will see men's word to each other take on a new preciousness in the years to come, because of the terrible price which they will pay who have disregarded their word.

In our generation it will be true as it never has been before that the highest honors will be reserved for the sort of man whom the Bible describes:

The man who "sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not."

Bruce Barton, Editor.

THE GOLDEN SNARE

By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

BRAM JOHNSON was an unusual man, even for the northland. He was, above all other things, a creature of environment, and necessity, and of that something else which made of him at times a man with a soul, and at others a brute with the heart of a devil. In this story of Bram, and the girl, and the other man, Bram himself should not be blamed too much. He was pathetic, and yet he was terrible. It is doubtful if he really had what is generally regarded as a soul. If he did, it was hidden—hidden to the forests and the wild things that had made him.

Bram's story started long before he was born, at least three generations before. That was before the Johnsons had gone north of Sixty. But they were wandering, and steadily upward. If one puts a canoe in the Lower Athabasca and travels northward to the Great Slave and thence up the Mackenzie to the Arctic he will note a number of remarkable ethnological changes. The thin-faced Chippewa with his alert movements and high-bowed canoe turns into the slower moving Cree, with his broader cheeks, his more slanting eyes, and his racier birch-bark. And even the Cree is transformed as he lives farther north; each new tribe is a little different from its southernmost neighbor, until at last the Cree looks like a Jap, and the Chippewyan takes his place. And the Chippewyan takes up the story of life where the Cree left off. Nearer the Arctic his canoe becomes a skin kaiak, his face is still broader, his eyes like a Chinaman's, and writers of human history call him Eskimo.

The Johnsons did not stop at any particular point. There was probably only one Johnson in the beginning of that hundred year story which was to have its finality in Bram. But there were more in time. The Johnson blood mixed itself first with the Chippewa, and then with the Cree—and the Cree-Chippewa-Johnson blood, when at last it reached the Eskimo, had in it also a strain of Chippewyan. It is curious how the name itself lived. Johnson! One entered a tepee or a cabin expecting to find there a white man, and was startled when he discovered the truth.

Bram, after nearly a century of this intermixing of bloods, was a throwback—a white man, so far as his skin and his hair and his eyes went. In other physical ways he held to the type of his half-strain Eskimo mother, except in size. He was six feet, and a giant in strength. His face was broad, his cheek-bones high, his lips thick, his nose flat. And he was white. That was the shocking thing about it all. Even his hair was a reddish blond, wild and coarse and ragged like a lion's mane, and his eyes were sometimes of a curious blue, and at others—when he was angered—green like a cat's at night-time.

No man knew Bram for a friend. He never remained at a post longer than was necessary to exchange his furs for supplies, and it might be months or even years before he returned to that particular post again. More or less the Royal Northwest Mounted Police kept track of him, and in many reports of far-away patrols filed at Headquarters there are the laconic words, "We saw Bram and his wolves traveling northward," or "Bram and his wolves passed us"—always Bram and his wolves.

For two years the Police lost track of him. After that the Police kept an even closer watch on him, waiting, and expecting something to happen. And then—the something came. Bram killed a man. He did it so neatly and so easily, breaking him as he might have broken a stick, that he was well off in flight before it was discovered that his victim was dead. The next tragedy followed quickly—a fortnight later, when Corporal Lee and a private from the Fort Churchill barracks closed in on him out on the edge of the barren. Bram didn't fire a shot. They could hear his great, strange laugh when they were still a quarter of a mile away from him. Bram merely set loose his wolves. By a miracle Corporal Lee lived to drag himself to a half-breed's cabin, where he died a little later, and the half-breed brought the story to Fort Churchill.

AFTER this, Bram disappeared from the eyes of the world. Bram—and his wolves! Think of it. Alone. In all that time without a voice to talk to him. Not once appearing at a post for food. A loup-garou. An animal-man. By the end of the third year there was not a drop of dog-blood in his pack. It was wolf, all wolf. From whelps he brought the wolves up, until he had twenty in his pack. They were monsters, for the undergrown ones he killed. Perhaps he would have given them freedom in place of death, but these wolf-beasts of Bram's would not accept freedom. In him they recognized instinctively the super-beast, and they were his slaves. And Bram, monstrous and half animal himself, loved them. To him they were brother, sister, wife—all creation. He slept with them, and ate with them, and starved with them when food was scarce.

When Bram wanted meat, and there was meat in the country, he would set his wolf-horde on the trail of a caribou or a moose, and if they drove half a dozen miles ahead of Bram himself there would always be plenty of meat left on the bones when he arrived. Four years of that! The Police would not believe it. They laughed at the occasional rumors that drifted in from the far places; rumors that Bram had been seen, and that his great voice had been heard rising above the howl of his pack on still winter nights, and that half-breeds and Indians had come upon his trails, here and there—at widely divergent places. It was the French half-breed superstition of the chasse-galère that chiefly made them disbelieve, and the chasse-galère is a thing not to be laughed at in the northland. It is composed of creatures who have sold their souls to the devil for the power of navigating the air, and there were those who swore with their hands on the crucifix that they had with their own eyes seen Bram and his wolves pursuing the shadowy forms of great beasts through the skies.

S0 the Police believed that Bram was dead; and Bram, meanwhile,was becoming more and more each day like the wolves who were his brothers. But the white blood in a man dies hard, and always there flickered in the heart of Bram's huge chest a great yearning. It must at times have been worse than death—that yearning to hear a human voice to have a human creature to speak to, though never had he loved man or woman. Which brings us at last to the final tremendous

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climax in Bram's life—to the girl, and the other man.

The other man was Philip Brant.

To-night he sat in Pierre Breault's cabin, with Pierre at the opposite side of the table between them, and the cabin's sheet-iron stove blazing red just beyond. It was a terrible night outside. Pierre, the fox-hunter, had built his shack at the end of a long slim forefinger of scrub spruce that reached out into the barren, and tonight the wind was wailing and moaning over the open spaces. Close to the east was Hudson's Bay—so close that a few moments before, when he had opened the cabin door, there came to him the low, never-ceasing thunder of the under-currents fighting their way down through the Roes Welcome from the Arctic Ocean. Westward from Pierre's cabin there stretched the lifeless barren, illimitable and void, and overhung at day by a sky that always made Philip think of a terrible picture he had once seen of Doré's "Inferno"—a low, thick sky, like purple and blue granite. And at night, when the white foxes yapped, and the wind moaned—

"As I have hope of paradise, I swear that I saw him—alive, m'sieu," Pierre was saying again over the table.

Brant, of the Fort Churchill patrol of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, no longer smiled in disbelief. He knew that Pierre Breault was a brave man, and he was not superstitious, like most of his kind, or the sobbing cries and strife of the everlasting night-winds would have driven him away.

"I swear it!" repeated Pierre.

SOMETHING that was almost eagerness was burning now in Philip's face. He leaned over the table, his hands gripping tightly. He was thirty-five, almost as slim as Pierre himself, with eyes as steely blue as Pierre's were black. There was a time, away back, when he wore a dress suit as no other man in the big Western city where he lived; now the sleeves of his caribou-skin coat were fringed and torn, his hands were knotted, in his face were the lines of storm and wind.

"It is impossible," he said "Bram Johnson is dead!"

"He is alive, m'sieu."

In Pierre's voice there tremble.

"If I had only heard, if I had not seen, you might disbelieve, m'sieu," he cried, his eyes glowing with a dark fire. "Yes, I heard the cry of the pack first, and I went to the door, and opened it, and stood there listening and looking out into the night. Ugh! they went near. I could hear the hoofs of the caribou. And then I heard a great cry, a voice that rose above the howl of the wolves like the voice of ten men, and I knew that Bram Johnson was on the trail of meat. Mon Dieu—yes—he is alive. And that is not all. No."

His fingers were twitching. For the third or fourth time in the last three quarters of an hour, Philip Brant saw him fighting back a strange excitement. He was beginning to believe Pierre.

"And after that—you saw him?"

"Yes. I would not do again what I did then for all the foxes between the Athabasca and the Bay, m'sieu. It must have been—I don't know what. It dragged me out into the night. I found the trail of the wolves, and I found the snowshoe tracks of a man. Oui. I still followed. I came close to the kill, with the wind in my face, and I could hear the snapping of jaws and the rending of flesh—yes—yes—and a man's terrible laugh! If the wind had shifted—if that pack of devil's souls had caught the smell of me—tonnerre de Dieu!"

He shuddered, and the knuckles of his fingers snapped as he clenched and unclenched his hands. "But I stayed there, m'sieu, half buried in a snow dune. It was so dark I could not see them. I went to the kill then, and—yes, he had carried away the two hind quarters of the caribou. It was a bull, too, and heavy. I followed—clean across that strip of barren down to the timber, and it was there that Bram built himself the fire. I could see him then. Long ago, before he killed the man, he came twice to my cabin—and he had not changed. And around him, in the fire-glow, the wolves huddled. It was then that I came to my reason. I could see him fondling them. I could see their gleaming fangs. Yes, I could hear their bodies, and he was talking to them and laughing with them through his great beard—and I turned and fled back to the cabin. And that—that—was not all!"

Again his fingers were clenching and unclenching as he stared at Brant.

"You believe me, m'sieu?"

Philip nodded.

"It seems impossible. And yet—you could not have been dreaming, Pierre."

Breault drew a deep breath of satisfaction, and half rose to his feet.

"And you will believe me if I tell you the rest?"

"Yes."

Pierre went to his bunk and returned with a caribou-skin pouch.

"The next day I went back, m'sieu," he said, seating himself again opposite Philip. "Bram and his wolves were gone. He had slept in a shelter of spruce boughs. And—and—par les mille cornes du diable if he had even brushed the snow out! His great moccasin tracks were all about among the tracks of the wolves, and they were big as the spoor of a monster bear. I searched everywhere for something that he might have left, and I found—at last—a rabbit snare."

Pierre Breault's eyes, and not his words, and the curious twisting and interlocking of his long slim fingers about the caribou-skin bag in his hand, stirred Philip with the thrill of anticipation; and as he waited Pierre's fingers opened the sack, and he said:

"A rabbit snare, m'sieu, which had dropped from his pocket into the snow—"

In another moment he had given it into Philip's hands. The oil lamp was hung straight above them. Its light flooded the table between them, and from Philip's lips, as he stared at the snare, there broke a gasp of amazement. Pierre had expected that cry.

It seemed, for a space, as if Philip had ceased breathing. He stared, while the light from above him scintillated on the thing he held. It was a snare, almost a yard in length, with the curious Chippewyan loop at one end and the double knot at the other.

The amazing thing about it was that it was made of a woman's golden hair.

THE process of mental induction occasionally does not pause to reason its way, but leaps to an immediate and startling finality. After that one gasp of amazement Philip made no sound. Then, slowly, his eyes rose from the silken thread in his fingers and met Pierre's. Each knew what the other was thinking. If the hair had been black. If it had been brown. Even had it been of the coarse red of the blond Eskimo of the upper Mackenzie! But it was gold—shimmering gold.

Still without speaking, Philip drew a

knife from his pocket and cut the shining thread above the second knot, and worked at the finely wrought weaving of the silken filaments until a tress of hair, crinkled and waving, lay on the table before them. He could not remember where he had ever seen just that colored gold in a woman's hair. Probably he had, at one time or another. It was not red gold. It possessed no coppery shades and lights as it rippled there in the lamp-glow. It was flaxen, and like spun silk—so fine that, as he looked at it, he marveled at the patience that had woven it into a snare. Again he looked at Pierre. The same question was in their eyes.

"It must be—that Bram has a woman with him," said Pierre.

"It must be," said Philip. "Or—"

That final word, its voiceless significance, the inflection which Philip gave to it as he gazed at Pierre, stood for the one tremendous question which, for a space, possessed the mind of each. Pierre shrugged his shoulders. He could not answer it. And as he shrugged his shoulders he shivered, and at a sudden blast of the wind against the cabin door he turned quickly.

"Diable!" he cried, recovering himself, his white teeth flashing a smile at Philip. "It has made me nervous—what I saw there in the light of the camp-fire, m'sieu. Bram, and his wolves, and that!"

He nodded at the shimmering strands.

"You have never seen hair the color of this, Pierre?"

"Non. In all my life—not once:"

"And yet you have seen white women at Fort Churchill, at York Factory, at Lac la Biche, at Cumberland House, and Norway House, and at Fort Albany?"

"Ah—h—h, and at many other places, m'sieu. At God's Lake, at Lac Seul, and over on the Mackenzie—and never have I seen hair on a woman like that."

"And Bram has never been out of the northland, never farther south than Fort Chippewyan, that we know of," said Philip. "It makes one shiver, eh, Pierre? It makes one think of—what? Can't you answer? Isn't it in your mind?"

FRENCH and Cree were mixed half and half in Pierre's blood. The pupils of his eyes dilated as he met Philip's steady gaze.

"It makes one think," he replied uneasily, "of the chasse-galère and the loup-garou, and—and—almost makes one believe. I am not superstitious, m'sieu—non—non—I am not superstitious," he cried still more uneasily. "But many strange things are told about Bram and his wolves—that he has sold his soul to the devil, and can travel through the air, and that he can change himself into the form of a wolf at will. There are those who have heard him singing the chanson de voyageur to the howling of his wolves away up in the sky. I have seen them, and talked with them, and over on the McLeod I saw a whole tribe making incantation because they had seen Bram and his wolves building themselves a conjuror's house in the heart of a thunder-cloud. So—is it strange that he should snare rabbits with a woman's hair?"

"And change black into the color of the sun?" asked Philip, falling purposely into the other's humor.

"If the rest is true—"

Pierre did not finish. He caught himself, swallowing hard, as though a lump had risen in his throat, and for a moment or two Philip saw him fighting with himself, struggling with the age-old superstitions which had flared up for an instant like a powder-flash.

"But those stories are not true, m'sieu," he said in a repressed voice. "That is why I showed you the snare. Bram Johnson is not dead. He is alive. And there is a woman with him, or—"

"Or—"

The same thought was in their eyes again. And again neither gave voice to it. Carefully Philip was gathering up the strands of hair, winding them about his forefinger, and placing them afterward in a leather wallet which he took from his pocket.

He went to the door, opened it, and for a few moments stood listening to the screech of the wind over the barren. Pierre, still seated at the table, watched him attentively. Philip's mind was made up when he closed the door and faced the half-breed again.

"It is three hundred miles from here to Fort Churchill," he said. "Half way, at the lower end of Jesuche Lake, MacVeigh and his patrol have made their headquarters. If I go after Bram, Pierre, I must first make certain of getting a message to MacVeigh, and he will see that it gets to Fort Churchill. Can you leave your poison-baits and your deadfalls long enough for that?"

A moment Pierre hesitated.

Then he said:

"I will take the message."

Until late that night Philip sat up writing his report. He had started out to run down a band of Indian thieves. More important business had crossed his trail, and he explained the whole matter to Superintendent Fitzgerald, commanding "M" Division at Fort Churchill. He told Pierre Breault's story as he had heard it. He asked that another man be sent after the Indians, and explained, as nearly as he could, the direction he would take in his pursuit of Bram.

When the report was finished and sealed he had omitted just one thing:

Not a word had he written about the rabbit snare woven from a woman's hair.

THE next morning the tail of the storm was still sweeping bitterly over the edge of the barren; but Philip set out, with Pierre Breault as his guide, for the place where the half-breed had seen Bram Johnson and his wolves in camp. Three days had passed since that exciting night, and when they arrived at the spot where Bram had slept, the spruce shelter was half buried in a windrow of the hard, shotlike snow that the blizzard had rolled in off the open spaces.

From this point Pierre marked off accurately the direction Bram had taken the morning after the hunt, and Philip drew the point of his compass to the now invisible trail. Almost instantly he drew his conclusion.

"Bram is keeping to the scrub timber along the edge of the barren," he said to Pierre. "That is where I shall follow. You might add that much to what I have written to MacVeigh. But about the snare, Pierre Breault, say not a word. Do you understand? If he is a loup-garou man, and weaves golden hairs out of the winds—"

"I will say nothing, m'sieu," shuddered Pierre.

They shook hands and parted in silence. Philip set his face to the west, and a few moments later, looking back, he could no longer see Pierre. For an hour after that he was oppressed by the feeling that he was voluntarily taking a desperate chance. For reasons which he had arrived at during the night he had left his dogs and sledge with Pierre, and was traveling light. In

Continued on page 21

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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

THE TWO GREATEST DETECTIVES IN THE WORLD

ON the surface, no two men could differ more than Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective in fiction, and William J. Burns, the greatest detective in real life.

Sherlock Holmes was lean, hawk-nosed, and mysterious. He took opium and played the violin. There is nothing of this sort about William J. Burns. He looks and is a shrewd, cheerful, brisk, healthy business man. All the same, when Conan Doyle invented Sherlock Holmes he was not so far from inventing William J. Burns.

Sherlock Holmes' great specialty as a detective was an enormous mass of well coördinated information which he had at his fingers' ends. This is Mr. Burns' specialty. Also Holmes succeeded because of his phenomenal power to deduce rapidly and accurately from his wide range of knowledge.

Mr. Burns is successful for the same reason. When Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories William J. Burns was only twenty-six. So that, in a way, Conan Doyle may be said to have predicted the great American detective.

The picture shows Sir Conan Doyle and his wife on meeting Mr. Burns.

DO THE DEAD LIVE?

IS there in all the mass of so-called "evidence" anything that can really convince a thoughtful man that human personality survives beyond the grave? Many wise men have thought so; many scientists even.

"I tell you with all the strength and conviction I can utter that we do persist, that people over there still take an interest in what is going on here," said Sir Oliver Lodge; "that they still help us, and know far more about things than we do, and are able from time to time to communicate with us."

Edward C. Randall has spent a large part of his life in investigation of the subject, and in his new book, The Dead Have Never Died (Knopf), he tells of one of numerous occasions on which his father's spirit appeared to him:

I was one of my father's executors, and after his dissolution and the settlement of his estate, speaking to me from the next place, he told me that I had overlooked an item that he wanted to mention to me.

"Well," I said, "if that be true, tell me about it."

He answered: "Some years before I left I loaned a small sum to Susan Stone, who resided in Pennsylvania, and I took from her a promissory note upon which, under the laws of the State, I am entitled to enter a judgment at once without suit. I was somewhat anxious about the loan; so before its maturity I took the note and filed it with the prothonotary at Erie, Pennsylvania, and he entered a judgment which became a lien on her property. In my books of accounts there was no reference to that note or judgment. If you will go to the prothonotary's office in Erie, you will find the judgment on record. I want you to collect it."

I sent for a transcript of that judgment. I found it entered on October 21, 1896. I question if any one knew of that transaction besides the makers of the note and the prothonotary at Erie. Certainly I did not know about it. The psychic present at that interview could not have known about the matter, and I certainly collected the money.

CHEERING

AFTER much meditation the wealthy business man thought he would go a-flying. So he approached an aviator at a flying ground and fixed things up.

Up they went, but the machine seemed very unsteady. It wobbled and zigzagged terribly, and once or twice nearly sideslipped.

"Easy there!" gasped the passenger. "Remember this is my first trip."

The aviator yelled back at him: "Well, it's only my third."

HOW YOUR FACE STARTED

THERE are few things that have interested and fascinated human beings so much as the human face.

It has been the subject of at least a million poems and a million pictures. It has been the cause of wars and changes of empire. It represents as nothing else does the human personality. This wonderful complex, expressive thing started out by being simply a mouth.

"The oldest part of the face is the mouth. The primary business of the face was to direct the mouth toward food," writes William R. Gregory in the American Museum Journal.

Very low forms of life, such as corals and sea anemones, have well developed mouths—and the mouth is the whole face. Certain forms of insects carry the face a little further by commencing to have jaws. But it is not until we reach the shark (the most normal and typical of the fish-like vertebrates), says Mr. Gregory, that we see all the elements that are characteristic of the face of the mammals. In sharks are found nostrils, eyes, a mouth, a tongue, and lips.

The writer points out interesting differences between the face of an ape and the face of a man. "But," he concludes, "if we compare the skull of a young anthropoid ape with that of a young human

being, we shall find that every bone in the ape skull may readily be identified in a slightly different form in the human skull: the number and kinds of teeth are the same, and even the crown-patterns of the molar and bicuspid teeth are fundamentally similar. From the palæontological viewpoint these numerous and fundamental resemblances can only mean that living apes and men have evolved from a remote and as yet undiscovered common ancestor.

WHAT BOOKS DID LINCOLN READ?

IT has been said of Lincoln that one difference between him and the other boys around him was that "his mother had seven books."

Apparently a good many more than seven books passed through his eager hands during the days of his young manhood.

"What this shifting library comprised will doubtless never be fully known," says Alonzo Rothschild in Honest Abe (Houghton, Mifflin Company). "It is said to have included, besides certain elementary textbooks, the Bible, Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress,' Æsop's Fables, the Arabian Nights, Weems's 'Life of Washington,' a history of the United States, Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe,' Weems's 'Life of Marion,' the Speeches of Henry Clay,—with which was doubtless incorporated a "Memoir" of the statesman,—the Life of Benjamin Franklin, Riley's 'Narrative of the Loss of the Brig Commerce,' a few of Cooper's 'Leather-Stocking Tales,' and the Revised Laws of the State of Indiana, with which were bound, besides other documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States."

Young men are constantly writing magazine editors asking what they shall read. These are the books that lay at the foundation of Lincoln's style and homely wit and wisdom: how many of them have you read?

THE COST OF AUTOMOBILES IN THE WAR

MUCH has been written about the motor vehicle's part in the war, but no authentic report has come from either side as to the actual number of automobiles and motor-trucks engaged in the transportation of men and supplies to and from the battle-fronts. The only figures that can be accepted as carrying any weight are those prepared by the Japanese government, which has made a special investigation of this subject and reported that there are about 300,000 gasolene-fed vehicles in the military service of the belligerents.

These figures, of course, do not include those cars that might have been sent abroad by the United States. It is said that France is using about 80,000 motorcars, England 30,000, Russia 40,000, Italy 10,000, Belgium 10,300, Rumania 1,700, and Serbia 125. Of the Central Powers, Germany is given credit for having in war service 100,000, Austria 30,000, Turkey 750, and Bulgaria 300.

It is safe to assume that 80 per cent of the motor vehicles are of the commercial type. The average cost of a motor-truck, according to government figures, is $2,650, which brings the bill against the warring nations in this branch alone up to $715,500,000. In addition, the 30,000 or so passenger cars cost them about $24,000,000, setting the average price at $800—and there are thousands of Fords in the ambulance service.

Occasionally reports come through of the wiping out by artillery fire of whole caravans of motor-trucks; but, considering the great number of machines in service and the conditions under which they operate, remarkably few meet untimely ends. On the French front last year on an average of from seventy to eighty cars a week were hopelessly wrecked—quite a few by collisions or by being ditched. But in this case hopelessly wrecked only means that extensive repairs had to be made before the cars could again be placed in service.

In France automobile repair depots have been arranged on a plan similar to that governing the hospital service. Cars meeting with minor mishaps are sent to stations just back of the firing lines, where facilities are available for making necessary repairs. Second repair bases take care of cars requiring more extensive repairs, while to the central repair shops, many miles from the fighting, are sent the cars or trucks that are absolutely useless.

At these latter shops the vehicles are dismantled and all parts disassembled. The parts are thrown aside later, to be placed in the melting-pot and turned into munitions, while out of those parts that are still capable of performing their functions are constructed "rebuilt" machines.

Nothing goes to waste. It is a rule of the French military authorities that not an ounce of metal or a plank of wood from any of the army cars shall pass into civilian hands. Every automobile part is stored away for re-service.

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WILL FAMINE BE CONQUERED?

WHEN the men of the world finish fighting one another, there will remain for them some other battles that will challenge their ingenuity and endurance. Famine, the great enemy of the race in ancient and medieval times, has been pretty thoroughly banished in the more modern countries. But Russia, China, and India have all been swept by its ravages in recent years, and, unless great foresight is exercised, will suffer greatly again after the war.

As recently as 1911 more than one third of the area of the Russian Empire in Europe was afflicted, says the National Geographic Magazine, reducing 8,000,000 people to starvation.

In China in 1906-7 a starving army of 300,000 Chinese camped beneath the walls of the city of Tsing-kiang-pu. During this famine parents found it necessary to sell their daughters to wealthy families in which they became slave girls. Early in the period of distress girls of from ten to fifteen years of age brought as much as $20 apiece; but when the suffering was most severe the customary quotation in the slave market was sixty cents, while in one instance a father is known to have accepted fourteen cents and two bowls of rice in exchange for his child.

India, of course, has been the greatest famine sufferer. In the twenty-three famines that occurred in that country between 1769 and 1900 more than 25,000,000 natives perished. In time of distress the restrictions that caste throws about rescue and relief work would be exasperating if they were not so tragic. For example, in the terrible Orissa famine thousands of Santals perished, in the midst of ample supplies furnished by the govenment, before it was discovered that there is a peculiar tenet of their faith which forbids them to touch food cooked by Brahmins.

LITTLE THINGS—By Orrick Johns

THERE'S nothing very beautiful and nothing very gay
About the rush of faces in the town by day,
But a light tan cow in a pale green mead,
That is very beautiful, beautiful indeed.
And the soft March wind and the low March mist
Are better than kisses in a dark street kissed.
The fragrance of the forest when it wakes at dawn,
The fragrance of a trim green village lawn,
The hearing of the murmur of the rain at play—
These things are beautiful, beautiful as day!
And I sha'n't stand waiting for love or scorn
When the feast is laid for a day newborn. . . .
Oh, better let the little things I loved when little
Return when the heart finds the great things brittle;
And better is a temple made of bark and thong
Than a tall stone temple that may stand too long.

From "Asphalt" (Alfred A. Knopf).

THIS MAN COULDN'T STAND CRITICISM

ACCORDING to Horace Greeley, J. Fenimore Cooper was one of the most sensitive of novelists, and had a passion for bringing libel suits against his critics. In his Autobiography (written after Cooper's death) Greeley tells how the novelist returned to America after a long residence abroad, and, being arrogant and autocratic in his manners, soon came in for a good deal of unpopularity.

Retiring to his paternal acres near Cooperstown, New York, he was soon involved in a difficulty with the villagers, who had long been accustomed, in their boating excursions on Lake Otsego, to land and make themselves at home for an hour or so on a long, narrow point that ran down from his grounds into the lake, and whom he now dissuaded from so doing by legal force. The Whig newspaper of the village took up the case, urging that the people's extrusion from the "Point," though legal, was churlish; whereupon Cooper sued the editor for libel, recovered a verdict, and collected it by taking the money—through a sheriff's officer—from the editor's trunk. By this time several Whig journalists had taken up the cudgels for their brother editor; and, as Mr. Cooper had recently published two caustic, uncomplimentary, self-complacent works on his countrymen's ways and manners, some of the castigations took the form of reviews of those works.

Cooper sued them all, among them Thurlow Weed, editor of the Albany Evening Journal. Weed was detained at home for some hours on the day of the trial, and a verdict by default was entered against him calling for $400 damages.

He was on hand a few hours later, and tried to have the case reopened; but Cooper would not consent: so Weed had to pay the $400 and costs. Deeming himself aggrieved, he wrote a letter to the Tribune, describing the whole performance; and on that letter Cooper sued me.

The case against Greeley, being brought to trial, was argued by Cooper and Greeley themselves, and by Cooper's son Richard.

I employed no lawyers [says Horace], not realizing that I needed any. No witnesses were called, for none were needed. I admitted the publication and accepted the responsibility therefor; so the questions to be tried were, "Was the plaintiff libeled by such publication? If so, to what amount was he damaged?"

After summing up the argument, the story goes on:

The presiding judge now rose and made a harder, more elaborate and disingenuous speech against me than either Richard or Fenimore had done; making three against one, which I did not think quite fair. He absolutely bullied the jury, on the presumption that they were inclined to give a verdict for the defendant, which he told them they were nowise at liberty to do.

The verdict of the jury was against Greeley—damages $200 and costs, making a total of about $300. He returned immediately to New York, and wrote an account of the trial which filled eleven columns of the next day's Tribune.

I think that was the best single day's work I ever did [says he]. I intended that the report should be good-natured,—perhaps even humorous,—and some thought I succeeded; but Fenimore seems not to have concurred in that opinion; for he sued me upon the report as a new libel—or, rather, as several libels. I was defended against this new suit by Hons. William H. Seward and A. B. Conger so cleverly that, though there were various expensive interlocutory proceedings, the case never came to trial.

THE WAY OF A GREAT DOCTOR

THE greatest physicians have usually cared little about making money. James Bayard Clark, writing his Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway (G. P. Putnam's Sons), tells a story illustrating how little room there is for financial calculation in the mind of a great doctor or surgeon.

Doctor Janeway was asked to go to a small town outside of New York, to see a very rich man who lay critically ill. He was gone all afternoon and evening. The next morning at breakfast his wife asked him about his journey. He told her the name of the town where he had gone. "Then, his face relighting with the memory of the case which had so engrossed him, he came out in his characteristic way with: 'Very sick man: pneumonia; unusual type—very unusual.' 'But that very long trip, a whole afternoon and evening, that should mean a pretty good fee,' said his wife. The doctor, his mind still occupied with the sick man's problem, replied: 'It was in the upper lobe, right side, quite solid. Very rare—very rare to see that in these cases.'

"Then very gently from his wife came: 'Did you remember to put down his address?' 'No, no,' was the somewhat irritable response. His mind then going back to the patient again: 'But I have my notes on the case—on his condition.' 'But his name?' she came out with, 'so that you can send your bill; you put that down?' 'His name?' repeated the Doctor slowly, a slight frown of annoyance coming over his face as his train of thought was by then definitely derailed. 'His name? No; didn't get that.'"

HAVE YOU A PLAY TO SELL?

NOTHING is more important for your manuscript than a good first impression. Clear typing, good paper, a scrupulous observation of the rules for punctuation and margins, often trick an editor or play-reader into immediate attention. Walter Pulitzer advises: "The disadvantage of being spotted as a beginner in itself makes it worth one's while to have a thing typewritten to avoid the handicap." Also Fanny Cannon, in Writing and Selling a Play (Henry Holt & Company) assures us that all the world hates an amateur, and that among haters managers are the most ruthless.

The sheets of the play manuscript should be fastened together at the side, book fashion, and covered with some heavier paper. The first page should contain the title and the author's name. The second page gives the cast of characters in full. These may be mentioned either in order of their appearance or of their dramatic importance. The next page presents a synopsis of the act and scene, with the time and place of each. In typing the play proper, be careful to differentiate between the "business" and what is spoken by the characters. Never tax the patience of the manager by puzzling him—he doesn't like puzzles.

Unless you have a personal introduction to a manager, Miss Cannon advises the sending of the manuscript to a play-agent, who will "push" it if he feels that it is marketable.

If your play at last invades the manager's sanctum and pleases him, it is advisable not to sell it outright, but to accept a royalty (from 2 to 10 per cent) based on the gross weekly receipts during the run of the play. The copyright belongs to the author, and also the right of publication. To-day the moving-picture rights also should be included in the contract. The dramatist should receive at least 33⅓ per cent of the royalty paid by the moving-picture company.

WHERE THE CHILDREN EAT LEAVES

SOMETIMES one single incident throws a clearer light on the condition of a people than whole columns of description. A missionary just returned from Syria, who is quoted by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, reports that no grapes are expected in the town of Aleih this year because the children have eaten the shoots and leaves on the vines. The mulberry orchards were planted with wheat, but in many cases the children plucked the wheat to eat the grain buried in the soil.

Some Traveling Salesmen Who Sold Themselves

By EDWARD MOTT WOOLLEY

ONCE there was a boy named Gunn who lived in Springfield, Ohio. As soon as he graduated from high school he went to work in the office of a factory, and then, by a curious twist of fortune, he became physical director for the Young Men's Christian Association at Akron. Meanwhile he was working out an idea he had conceived for keeping track of things by means of card-indexes. These devices were scarcely known at that time.

Armed with his idea and a suit-case, he went down to Boston one day and introduced himself to the Library Bureau. First he "sold" this concern his idea, and then he "sold" himself. He was employed to go out on the road and sell card-index systems. Some men who look for jobs are merely applicants for work, while others, like James Newton Gunn, bring along an idea or perhaps a whole campaign.

It was a man-size job Mr. Gunn undertook, for in the next few years he traveled all over the United States. New England, especially, he raked with his fine-tooth comb of salesmanship. It is related of him that at one cross-roads where he had to wait between trains there did not seem to be a single prospect, but that before train-time Mr. Gunn had sold a card-index to the Sunday school. Every enterprise, from a cattle range to a dynamite factory, was his prospect. He invented and sold index systems for anything. Incidentally, he invented the card-index tab, which constitutes a sort of city directory to a card-index.

In his work as a traveling salesman Mr. Gunn gained an extensive knowledge of the accounting and efficiency needs of business men, and finally he went into business for himself, establishing the firm of Gunn & Richards, in Boston, as "production engineers"—a term that he himself coined.

He found the field a fertile one, and business came fast. He was thrown into contact with many important industries of the country, such, for instance, as the great Studebaker Company. Here, in his capacity of efficiency promoter, he was for two years general manager. In this same capacity Mr. Gunn became known to the United States Rubber Company, a corporation of vast proportions. He seems to have been successful in these relations, for a year ago he was elected president of the United States Tire Company, a subsidiary. To this big job he now devotes all his time.

I asked Mr. Gunn to tell me the inner secret of his success, so that other traveling men who wanted to be presidents of great corporations might know just how to proceed.

"Well," he answered, "I suppose I was a sort of paranoiac on the subject of card-indexes."

In other words, it was inventive work that did it. He didn't merely take instructions from the home office: he kept the office busy following him. You may judge of his intense activities from the fact that in one year he delivered seventy-five lectures before the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was also a lecturer at the Harvard School of Business Administration. This in spite of the fact that he was not a college man himself.

There is always a peculiar interest in the bigger personal success of traveling men, because the road salesman is the man out on the firing line, and often he hews his way amid great difficulties and hardships.

A Business Diplomat

IN Troy, New York, lived I another young man, William A. Marble, who got an office job with the Linen Collar Manufacturers. He had an ambition to be a traveling man, and presently he found an opening with the Worcester Corset Company. In time he went to Roth & Goldsmith, also corset manufacturers, in New York. His new territory included New England, New York, and Philadelphia.

From an old-time corset man I get the following insight into the mystery of Mr. Marble's rise—for you know these things are always mysteries, and fascinating ones:

"Will Marble was a diplomatic warhorse. He had the faculty of getting along with people and smoothing out their wrinkles, and therefore he sold a lot of goods. The first year with the R. & G. Company he increased sales in his territory fifty per cent., and that gave him some class with the bosses.

"Well, one winter things went badly with the firm's trade out in a Western State, and one of the proprietors made this suggestion:

"'Let's send Marble out there.'

"So they wired Marble and hustled him off toward the Pacific coast, where he got such results that ever afterward, when things went wrong with a territory, the bosses got their heads together and said:

"'Send Marble out there.'

"Thus he covered about every State in the Union, made good in a big way, and was taken into the firm."

Mr. Marble is now head of the house, has been president of the Merchants' Association in New York City, and is a leading merchant of the metropolis. He says there is no particular secret about his success, except that he worked. In fact, he worked so hard that during the first three years after his marriage he was home only thirty-four days. However, he gives the following as his creed:

He was tremendously interested in his work.

He set about making every customer a personal friend.

He kept his temper, no matter how disagreeably he was treated; he never answered an attack in kind.

He claimed for his goods only what he could prove.

He Put Ideas into Collars

ONE can hardly think of Troy without thinking at the same time of collars. One day I walked miles and miles in Troy—under the roofs of mammoth collar factories. The magnitude of the industry is almost incredible. After taking this walk I had the opportunity to talk with Frederic F. Peabody, who is the head of a many-million-dollar collar corporation.

Mr. Peabody is still another example of a graduated traveling salesman—one of the sort who could not be kept out on the road because he was worth more at the home office, managing other men.

It was a very humble start he had—and no college education. Doubtless higher education helps some men to succeed, but most of the old guard of big business men arrived without a degree. Mr. Peabody, however, was a teacher in his youth, and went from his native State of Vermont to Minnesota to command a country school. Evidently the future in that line did not fire his imagination, for somehow he got down to Chicago. This was in 1876, and he was seventeen. It happened that a little store in that city chanced to advertise for a clerk, and young Peabody beat the crowd to it.

It proved to be the old story. He sold a lot of goods—collars among them. Then we find him out on the road selling collars. His customers used to ask him how he could make a living selling just collars!

Well, there you get the secret of it. Concentration on collars got results. He hammered everlastingly on collars; he helped to individualize collars; he put ideas into them. Ideas are what take many a traveling salesman off the road and boost him along up.

But perhaps the main reason for Mr. Peabody's success was the everlasting push he put into the selling of collars.

This Man's Selling Tactics Have Become Standard

SOME men, when in search of opportunity, quit their native fields and chase a rainbow in New York or some other big city. Hugh Chalmers did not. When he quit school at fourteen he went to work in the office of a cash-register factory in his home town of Dayton, Ohio. Between errands he explored cash registers, and I get the following little drama from an old-time Dayton man:

Salesman in the office: Boy, don't monkey with that machine!

Boy: Yes, sir.

Salesman [an hour later]: Boy, I told you to let that machine alone!

Boy: Yes, sir.

Salesman [an hour later]: If you don't let that machine alone I'll have you fired!

Boy: Yes, sir.

Next day: While salesman is at home, ill, boy demonstrates and sells two cash registers to callers.

Some years later: Boy, grown up, gets salary around $75,000 a year.

But,in the meantime, Hugh Chalmers was a live wire on the road, and studied salesmanship from an original viewpoint. He studied his product from every angle, and had a standardized argument for every objection of the prospect. His work got such results that he was made sales manager, and then general manager and vice president. His pioneer work in handling traveling men attracted the attention of the business world, and his methods have been widely followed. He instituted classes in salesmanship—not theory, but actual practice. Salesmen were required to know their goods and be able to impart their knowledge. They had to sell not merely goods, but service.

Mr. Chalmers studied salesmen just about as he studied the goods. He was a psychologist. He didn't want at any price any of the old-style, go-as-you-please salesmen, but for the other kind he believed in incentive and commendation. He believed in paying commissions and giving prizes, and he was an enthusiast on the subject of salesmen's comparative records. His men competed with each other, and districts competed with other districts. It was always a grand get-away for results—and the results were great.

Then this master salesman sought bigger fields, and to-day is prominent as an automobile manufacturer in Detroit, at the age of forty-two.

Another erstwhile traveling salesman is William M. Wood, president of the American Woolen Company. In early life he was an office man in New England textile mills. Through a series of unhappy circumstances, he found himself out of employment at Lawrence, Massachusetts, and it was then he himself put up the proposition to go on the road to sell yarns. Mr. Wood told me it was six weeks before he sold his first order. After he once got the swing, however, he sold two million dollars' worth of goods in a year.

Thus we get an insight into the character of the man who afterward organized the great company of which he became the head. Sometimes it takes almost unbelievable persistence to win, and those who do not win are often the ones who do not pay the price.

Men Who Were Willing to Pay the Price

NOT so many years ago a young seed salesman, W. R. Roach, traveled over a large section of the United States. In the course of his journeys in search of sales he came upon a small canning plant at Hart, Michigan, which was badly run down and for sale. Mr. Roach bought it. It was just the sort of thing he had been looking for, because he had ideas about the canning of vegetables and fruits. He had eaten a lot of canned goods that didn't appeal to him, and he had studied out the reasons why.

To-day the Roach business has grown to immense proportions, so that he is probably the biggest individual canner in the United States. He buys the vegetable product of 15,000 acres and a large fruit product in addition. He was one of a group of men who raised the canning business out of a mere unskilled calling into a real profession. He made his job as a traveling salesman a stepping-stone instead of a mere grind of order taking.

John H. Hanan, the shoe manufacturer, was a traveling man in his youth. He worked for his father. On his first trip he found that his greatest difficulty in selling goods was the lack of a brand. He was trying to sell nameless shoes, and he revolted. After that the name Hanan went on every pair of shoes, and he worked for the cumulative effect as much as for the single sale.

In Cleveland lives W. D. Taylor, president of the big wholesale hardware house of the George Worthington Company, and within recent years president of the National Hardware Association. He began his business life with the same company as a stock boy, incidentally becoming adept with the broom and snow shovel. Then after a while he went out on the road. That was quite a long time ago, but human nature doesn't change much. It took just about the same qualities to sell hardware in the seventies that it does to-day. I asked an old hardware man how it happened that Mr. Taylor sold such quantities of goods that the house brought him in off the road and put him in command of all the wholesale selling.

"Because he had such an amazingly intimate knowledge of the stock," was the answer; "and because he knew his customers about as well as he knew the stock. The house thought he would be a good man to train other salesmen."

The same formula would hold good to-day as a guide for aspiring salesmen who want to be sales managers and to be taken into partnership, as Mr. Taylor was.

Surely traveling salesmen ought to get some lessons in good buying, even while they are practising the art of selling. And no doubt there are a number of junior partnerships waiting to-day for traveling salesmen who have the caliber of these men.

THE WAX BEAUTY

By GERTRUDE BROOKE HAMILTON

Illustrations by Herman Pfeifer

IT had been sleeting all night, and in the morning the city was bright and perilous. The river, and the tracks of the New York Central running beside the river, were glazed with ice. The signal tower between the river and the tracks was hung with icicles. Every bush and tree in the long park above the river had its coating of frozen water. A cold sun shone and a colder wind blew.

Along one of the walks of the park came Addie Shank, in a thin jacket, a short skirt, scraggy furs, and a Tam-o'-Shanter hat topped by a pompom. At a point where there was an unobstructed view of the signal tower she slowed her steps.

Smoke was blowing from a stove-pipe that protruded from the lower part of the tower, and the open door showed a round room under the signal turret—a room with an uncarpeted floor, a chair, a table, a chest, a cast-iron stove, and a drift-wood shelf of books. On the rough planking where the tower stood, a young man with dark-red skin, dark-red hair, and bulk that bulged his clothes was getting an armful of fire-wood from a stack near the tower.

On the path above the river, the wind glued Addie's garments to her flat young form and nipped her nose and ears blue.

The young man straightened from piling his arm with wood, and looked up at her.

Perceiving his look, Addie twined her cat-fur about her flat chest, and hurried on, with an air.

She had come out of her way to walk through the park and look down at the signal tower; and now she left the park by an exit that took her across the Drive and over to upper Broadway.

The streets were hazardous; but, in the human panorama moving over the sleet-covered pavements, Addie's tread was airy and sure. She stopped at a fruit vender's cart to buy two bananas. She ate them for her breakfast as she went along.

AN old building on upper Broadway—in front of which a dusty wax beauty in a glass case advertised Riflard's hair-dressing parlors—swallowed up Addie Shank. She was old Riflard's assistant in the gentle art of waving and coloring hair.

For a quarter of a century Riflard had dressed hair in Manhattan. In his heyday Riflard had made money. But heydays are of short duration in the city. Custom is fickle, residences shift, younger competitors come up. Too, the war had brought a scarcity of good dyes that had affected the hair-dressers.

For some time Riflard's young assistant had received no salary, subsisting on the tips given her by the ladies she marceled and colored. The tips had been scarce of late, trouble having arisen in the parlors on account of the domestic hair-dyes on the market. Addie was patriotic,—she wore a penny flag on the lapel of her jacket,—but she agreed with Riflard that her countrymen had yet to master the art of making dyes. Several heads had come out ocher instead of blond in the parlors; and when a dye promising black had turned the head of a customer purple, Riflard had been forced to throw away an expensive stock of newly purchased coloring-matter.

This morning Addie found Riflard in a tangle. The day before, Addie had ventured to use a sample Titian dye on the head of an ingénue of the footlights who was getting gray. The dye had been perpetrated on Riflard by a live salesman from somewhere in the United States.

Riflard was now trying to appease an ingénue with grass-green hair!

Addie Shank, with the intrepidity of youth, entered into the fray. She assumed the responsibility for the accident, sympathized with the ingénue, and suggested one of Riflard's best transformations.

The ingénue became belligerent. Addie "sassed" her. Threatening immediate suit against the Riflard hair-dressing parlors, the green-haired ingénue withdrew.

Riflard plucked off the goatee he wore pasted on his chin and removed the toupee he wore on his head.

"A suit for green hair in the courts!" the old hair-dresser said gently to his assistant. "Riflard is done for!"

Addie had never before seen Riflard without goatee or toupee. For three years she had murmured to the customers and creditors in his parlors: "Monsieur will attend you in a few minutes." She had regarded Riflard with some awe. Shorn of his toupee and goatee, he was not distingué—he was an old gentleman with a bald head and a tremulous chin.

He looked about his parlors, at his dusty wall placards: "Hair coloring by experts"—"Restoring gray hair a specialty"—"Work guaranteed." His chin shook.

"It was my fault, monsieur!" Addie guiltily ejaculated. "I shouldn't have used that sample dye!"

"It doesn't matter, Miss Shank," replied Riflard kindly. His chin sank into the hollow of his throat. "Nothing matters."

"Maybe she won't sue, monsieur," said Addie hopefully. "Maybe she just said that because she was mad."

"It doesn't matter," repeated Riflard. He clasped his hands, white from many years of shampooing. "I must confess to you, Miss Shank," he added shakily, "that things have closed down on me." His chin wept. "Creditors will seize the stock to-day."

"What, monsieur?" cried Addie.

"I had expected to pay up your salary with the money from the work you did yesterday, Miss Shank." Riflard threw up his white hands. "I have nothing."

Addie gulped. She walked to the window, and stood there, looking out at the bright, perilous city. She took off her Tam-o'-Shanter and twirled it on her finger.

RIFLARD regarded the back of her well shampooed head with dejection. Addie had pure blond hair, that had never needed color or glint from bottles. Riflard's dejection increased.

"Once," he said, "I could have given you cards to the biggest hair-dressers in the country. But my name does not carry now." His chin became poignant. "I am one of the few who have conquered the marcel!" he cried. "I have given the best years of my life to the study of the scalp. In my time I have dressed prominent heads! And I am undone by a raw dye!"

He pasted the goatee back on his chin, to conceal anguish.

The goatee put things on a more normal basis. Addie turned from the window, and hung her cat-fur and thin jacket on a peg behind a mirror. From another peg she took down the costume she wore in the parlors—the chic, threadbare black taffeta cover-all and limp Swiss cap and apron.

"Shall I put them on, monsieur?"

Riflard returned the toupee to his head. The tuft of hair gave him back his elegance.

"Not this morning, Miss Shank;" he said, with manner. "You may have a holiday."

"Thank you, monsieur," said Addie, undaunted by the length of the holiday coming to her.

SHE put the silk cover-all back on the peg, and took down the cat-fur and thin jacket. Then her glance went back to the bright window, and she paled. "Can't you pay me any of my salary, monsieur?" she asked tightly.

"Alas, I have nothing," confessed Riflard, pacing the parlors. He halted at his desk, and took out one of his professional cards: "M. Riflard, New York and Paris." He wrote on the back of the card, in his effete chirography:

To Whom It May Concern: This certifies that Miss Adelaide Shank is qualified in every branch of hair-dressing. (Signed) RIFLARD.

He came back from the desk and put the card into Addie's hand.

"You are young, Miss Shank," he said earnestly. "You won't be long finding another place."

But Addie's features were rigid.

"You'll have to pay me something, monsieur," she said thinly. "I was going to tell you so this morning. My room-rent's behind, and I'm out of cash." She looked down at the card he had given her, and laughed. "I'm not a goat: I can't live off paper!"

"True!" lamented Riflard. He looked about the parlors. Then he reached for his rusty soft hat and ancient cape-coat.

"I have one thing of value outside of my shop, Miss Shank," he said hurriedly. "I brought it with me when I came from Paris, thirty years ago. If I can dispose of it to another hair-dresser, your salary shall be paid."

He put on his hat and cape, with his very good manner, and hastened from the parlors, and down the steep flights of stairs that led to the street.

Addie went to the window, to see where he was going.

Riflard came out of the old building, and unlocked the glass case in which the dusty wax beauty advertised his hair-dressing parlors. He took the beauty in his arms, locked the case, and started rapidly along icy upper Broadway.

As he crossed the corner, Addie saw the old hair-dresser slip on the sleety concrete. He dropped the wax beauty, and fell in his attempt to catch it.

A honking automobile hit the wax beauty, decapitating it. The beauty's smiling shampooed head rolled to a sewer, and into it.

Riflard lay still from his fall.

The driver of the automobile put on speed. A policeman and a crowd sprang up.

Addie ran, hatless, from the parlors, down the flight of stairs, out to the crowd. She elbowed her way to Riflard. Dropping on her knees, she put his head on her flat young chest. "Monsieur!" she cried.

His goatee had fallen off. His chin was stern. But he was not dead, not even unconscious.

"It doesn't matter, Miss Shank," he managed to say.

"It was my fault, monsieur!" gasped Addie. "If I hadn't fussed about my money, you wouldn't have fallen."

"Nothing matters," smiled Riflard, as he closed his eyes.

Addie stayed with him until an ambulance clanged along upper Broadway to take in M. Riflard. He opened his eyes as they picked him up. His smile told Addie Shank to be good and hopeful—for everything mattered for the young.

ADDIE watched the ambulance go off.

Then she went back to the old building, and up to the hair-dressing parlors.

The green-haired ingénue was there, with a lawyer.

Addie told them a gentle lie:

"Monsieur broke his neck, falling on the ice—no use hunting him down to sue."

With an air, she put on her Tam-o'-Shanter and jacket before the mirror, and twined the cat-fur over her chest.

Riflard, in his heyday, would have applauded her dignified departure from the parlors, her descent of the stairs, and the way her stilt legs were not unsteadied by the empty glass case at the entrance. The holiday ahead of her allowed no gush.

With Riflard's card, she visited every hair-dressing establishment and beauty

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parlor along upper Broadway. She had no success. Riflard's card carried small weight.

AT the end of the day, going back to her lodgings, Addie Shank went out of her way to walk through the park above the river. She knew that the red-haired young man at the signal tower was on for his long shift; she had gone out of her way so many times to walk through the park that she knew just when his shifts came around.

She had first seen him in the summer, when she had spent a half-holiday in the park. He had been mending a boat in the cove near the planking. Bare-footed, with a shirt that exposed his big chest, and sleeves rolled to his arm-pits, he had seemed to her a dark-red giant. She had watched him in admiration. That summer she had acquired the habit of going out of her way through the park. Their acquaintanceship had not gone beyond her downward look and his upward look. He had not come up to the park, and she had not gone down to the river.

When she came this evening to a point where there was the view of the signal tower, she saw his red head in the turret. Instead of walking slowly to look at him to-night, she stopped. It was nearly dark,—he could not see her,—so she had the opportunity to gaze smilingly at him as he sat in the lighted turret. A faint throb of nature moved in her flat young chest. She thought it the wind—and she looked at the steps that led down to the planking, and wondered if it were warmer down there.

He could not see her—she had no particular place to go—so she climbed down the steps in the early dark, and crossed the railroad tracks to the planking. It was more sheltered there than on the walk above. She stood by the wood-stack near the tower, and looked fixedly at the long, dark river.

A train went by on the tracks below the signal tower. The signal light changed color. The red-haired young man came down from the turret and out to the planking. He crossed to the wood-stack; and, in the light that streamed from the door he had left open behind him, he stared at Addie Shank.

With an air, she twined her fur over her chest. "Beg pardon," she said haughtily. She moved toward the steps that led to the park above.

He recognized her. "Hello," he said involuntarily.

She paused, and deigned to elucidate, "I came down here to look at the river."

His step toward her had a start in it. He looked over his big shoulder at the river, and then at the waxen, pretty face and frigid figure. He reached her, and caught her arm. "Say, you weren't going to—?" he stuttered.

"Of course not!" she retorted, glancing contemptuously at the river.

But his concerned grasp detained her.

"What did you come down here for?" Then he half apologized: "You see, here by the river—things happen."

"Why should anything like that happen to me?" sniffed Addie, twining her fur.

"That's so," he answered.

He dropped her arm and looked shamefacedly at her, in the light that came from the round room under the signal turret. Then he laughed, and swung his arms.

"My name's Luke," he said impulsively. "What's yours?"

"Addie," she answered coolly. "What's your last name?"

"Rime," he laughed. "What's yours?"

"Shank."

She turned her shoulder on him, and started over the tracks.

"Good-by, Mr. Rime."

He followed her to the foot of the steps.

"Say," eagerly, "where do you live?"

"In New York," frostily.

"You're kidding me!" He swung his arms. "Tell me where you live! I want to come and see you."

"It's not what you want—it's what you get!" Her flippant voice was threaded by a tremor.

He was quick to catch the tremor. His big hand went out to her.

"You're bluffing!" he accused. "I bet you came down here to—!" He caught her arm again. "You're skinny!" he ejaculated. "I didn't know you were so skinny!"

"Mr. Rime,"—distinctly,—"loose my arm." She was unapproachable. "I came down here to look at the river—and I hope I'm enough of a lady to be believed. And as to my being skinny,"—her disdain died, and tears shook her voice,—" it's none of your business! You'd be skinny, too, if you were me! I'd thank you not to rub it in!"

She prepared for a rush up the steps.

"Come back here!" he commanded. He was blustering. "Can't you tell a friend about it?"

She returned with spirit:

"Sure, I can tell a friend about it! Maybe you don't know what I am."

She took Riflard's card from the pocket of her jacket, and went back to the stream of light that came from the round room. She read aloud, from the back of the card:

"To Whom It May Concern: This certifies that Miss Adelaide Shank is qualified in every branch of hair-dressing. (Signed) RIFLARD."

She looked aloofly at Luke Rime.

"Maybe you don't know who Riflard is," she said with commiseration. And, with sudden passion: "He's the best hair-dresser in the city! And he's done for—somewhere in a free ward! I guess there are people to pity more than me, Mr. Rime!"

"I guess so," said Luke soberly. He held out his hand for the card, and it lay like a snowflake on his big red palm. "You're some style," he said with admiration.

"I'm some done for," she admitted under her breath.

He was instant with his sympathy:

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'Sure, I'm some style!'" But her retort was inaudible, too.

"What are you saying?" he demanded, stepping close to her and bending his red head down to hear.

"Oh, darn!" she answered—and, without volition, put her blond head on his shoulder and wept.

His arm sheltered her naturally.

"Tough luck, if you can't tell a friend," he stammered.

"Punk luck, anyway!" she sobbed.

Mutely he patted her sharp shoulder-wing.

"It's so hard!" she blubbered.

"So it is," he agreed.

"There was Riflard," she gulped. "He slipped on the ice, after all his bad luck! And look at me! I haven't any clothes, or money, or anything. And—I'm hungry!"

She dabbed her china-blue eyes on his rough coat, and suddenly laughed.

"I hate the gink that bawls!" she scoffed, twining her fur.

"You can't help bawling sometimes," said Luke Rime. He looked into the round, lighted room under the turret. "Say, I've sausage and beans in here," he told her eagerly. "I'll heat them up for you."

"No, thanks." Her head was up. "I'm going."

"Quit your joshing," he directed. If you're hungry, come in and eat."

"All right," she said, unexpectedly docile.

SHE followed him into the warm round room, and sat on the chest under the driftwood shelf of books, while he closed the door and stuffed the cast-iron stove with wood. She knew a friend when she found one—she knew the city, but she knew a friend. She pulled off her Tam-o'-Shanter and her fur. Outside the wind blew, and that dark river plashed against the tower.

He buttered a tin plate on which to heat the sausage and beans.

"Funny, how you can't get anywhere without victuals," he reflected.

"I don't care much about them," she shrugged, blue eyes feasting on the beans.

When the sausage and beans were hot, he jumbled the food to the table—and she straightened it out with quick, orderly hands before she ate. She sat on the chair, and he sat on the chest.

"Honest," he said, "when I opened the door and found you out there, weren't you going to—?"

She shook her head.

"What would you have done—if I had, Mr. Rime?"

"Pulled you out." He swung his arms.

She laughed. "Next time I don't know what to do, I'll come down and try it."

"You'd better not!" He sobered. "I tried drowning once, myself."

Her eyes dilated. "Anybody pull you out?"

"You bet—I squeaked for help!"

"All right—I'll squeak when I try it."

She finished the beans with gusto, and got to her feet to go.

"Much obliged, Mr. Rime," she said. "Good-by." She put on her fur.

"Are you going by, up in the park, to-morrow?" he asked her.

"How do I know?"—twining her fur.

"I'll look for you," he promised.

"Will you?" she parried.

"I've seen you up there lots of times."

At the door, she turned the knob.

"Lots of times, I've thought I'd go up and walk there myself."

"Your walk would have been lonesome!" she declared snippily.

His brown eyes were bright under his dark-red brows.

"Say," impetuously, "I'm going up to-morrow to walk there!"

She twined her fur over her chest.

"Then I'll see you later, Mr. Rime," she said, eyes bright as his.

HE followed her out. "Tell me where you live," imperatively.

"All right—I will, later."

She was going over the planking with a hint of haste in her airy tread.

He followed over the tracks.

"I don't like many girls," his big voice confided in the dark. "But I like you."

"I like you," she admitted, flying up the steps that led to the park. At the top of the steps, she called down through the dark: "Good-by, Mr. Rime!"

He called up ringingly: "Don't say 'Good-by'! Say, 'See you later!'"

"See you later!" she laughed, skimming

through the ice-glazed park, where so often she had loitered to look down at the signal tower. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were wide. Her flat young chest was throbbing as the wind hit it. Though she did not know it, she was in love.

With energy and purpose, Addie Shank began the next day. At the end of it—having had no luck in her line of beauty work—she applied at a mammoth white eating-place where a card in the window said a dish-washer was wanted.

She fell to washing dishes, at ten cents an hour, in a sort of coop, with a square of glass in the door to give her a glimpse of the world. To wash dishes, she gathered her pure blond hair into a tight knot at the back of her head, and put on a gingham cover-all.

Because she must have the dimes to live, she washed dishes the next day. And, because she must have dimes again, she washed dishes the next day. And the next.

She anticipated better things in the future. She looked forward to the time when she could go out of her way through the park, and loiter again on the walk above the river. She thought, with an eternal smile, of Luke Rime.

THE winter went and the spring came, bringing—even in the city—quickening nature.

She was still washing dishes in the coop. Her ten-cent hours had paid her room-rent and bought her food. But every day she wore the pompomed Tam-o'-Shanter, the thin jacket, and the scraggy fur. And she was skinnier than ever!

One morning the captain of the eating-place came to the dish-washer's coop and told Addie she was wanted at the desk.

Her first thought was of Luke. Enveloped in her gingham cover-all, blond hair screwed back in the tight knot, hands white with the suds, in panic she looked through the square of glass in the door.

She saw Riflard.

The old hair-dresser had a silken goatee and toupee of a very excellent shade. He carried a top-hat, and wore suède gloves.

Addie ran from the coop.

"Monsieur!" she cried.

Riflard stripped off his suède glove to take her hand.

"I have had persons at work for a week locating you, Miss Shank," he said gently. "I believe I owe you some money. I am now in the position to discharge my debts."

He bowed, with his very good manner.

"Thank you, monsieur," said Addie, awed.

In addition, you shall have a holiday," smiled Riflard. "A holiday, to hear what Riflard has done, and what he has to ask you, at the end of the day. Will you lunch with me at the Waldorf, Miss Shank?"

"Yes, monsieur," said Addie, undaunted. She took off the gingham coverall.

Riflard beckoned the captain of the eating-place, and arranged that Addie should have the day.

The captain himself flew for the Tam-o'-Shanter, thin jacket, and scraggy fur, on the peg in the dish-washer's coop. He assisted Addie Shank into them.

Riflard turned the revolving doors of the eating-place for her. Composedly twining her cat-fur about her chest, Addie went through the doors. And when she found Riflard handing her into a limousine at the curb, all she said was, "Thank you, monsieur." She rested her sharp shoulder-wings against the cushions as if she had been used to them all her life.

"And now ask Riflard what he has done," said the hair-dresser, stroking his goatee.

"What have you done, monsieur?" said Addie.

He laid his white hand lightly over hers.

"I have perfected a reliable hair dye and put it on the market," he said gently. "Riflard is a rich man."

Addie caught her breath. "Oh, monsieur!"

"Let me tell you about it," said Riflard, flinging back a corner of his elegant cape-coat. "When I came out of the hospital some months ago, I apprenticed myself to a chemist. He allowed me, in off hours, to

Continued on page 15

BRAIN CELLS

HOW TO TELL A MOTHER

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TOO MUCH IS ENOUGH

Continued from page 10

work in his laboratory on 'Riflard's Reliable Hair Dye, made in the U. S. A.' When my dye was perfected, I patented it. And now my name carries weight in the hair-dressing parlors here and abroad. I have come up with the wars that seemed to spell my misfortune, Miss Shank. And my life-long study of the scalp has not been in vain."

He fondled his goatee.

"It is wonderful, monsieur!" murmured Addie.

"And now, Miss Shank," said Riflard earnestly, "how much do I owe you? A great deal, I think. Not only were you a good girl, a faithful worker, an artiste in my parlors; but when Riflard—who could not pay your salary—lay, like an old umbrella, in the icy street, you knelt beside him and put his head on your heart. Ah, Miss Shank, those young, compassionate heart-beats kept life in me while I lay in the cold shelter of the hospital. They were with me, Miss Shank, when I determined not to be undone, and to do an old man's bit for his country by saving its ladies from green and purple hair." His tone was gallant, then sprightly. "In a way, this fortune is yours as much as mine, Miss Shank. I—an old-timer—would never have had the courage to test an untried sample on a customer's head. And, had it not been for that atrocious green hair, the Riflard perfect dyes would not be delighting America by their lasting, exquisite shades!"

He smiled at her. "As you know, I have none to make happy," he added. "And money does not matter much unless one has some one to spend on. Will you think, Miss Shank, of the tiara, or rope of pearls, or ring, that might please you most? Buy what your heart dictates on your holiday.

Her decision was quick: "I want a white fox fur."

"A furrier's," Riflard directed the chauffeur.

The limousine rolled into Fifth Avenue, and along the smooth thoroughfare. It stopped before a shop with windows hung with seal and ermine.

Riflard handed Addie into the furrier's.

Addie zealously went through the exclusive stock of white furs until she found what she wanted: a lustrous, dazzling scarf that enveloped her in white. She had the cat-fur sent to her lodgings.

SHE came out of the furrier's with a dancing tread. Her feet hardly touched the step in getting back into the limousine. She sat up straight, twining her chest in lovely fur.

"Where now?" asked Riflard happily.

She named the park above the river. And, tumultuously happy, she told Riflard about Luke Rime—the walk, the signal tower, the sausage and shelter. She described the tower, and the room under the turret, with the chest, and chair, and table, and driftwood shelf of books. She described Luke Rime: dark red, young, big as a giant!

She did not know what shifts Luke was handling now; she was not even sure that he was still at the signal tower. But she wanted—with all the pent-up nature in her flat young chest—to show him her new fur.

And she told Riflard so.

Riflard was holding his goatee to his chin by this time. The limousine was full of bounding youth; Addie's cheeks were pink and her china-blue eyes were starry.

"Slower, slower," begged Riflard. "You muddle an older one's wits." His white hand touched hers with its delicate stroke. And he drew his hand back, and sat very still in his corner of the car.

"Miss Shank," he said gently, "alas, I have nothing."

"Nothing, monsieur?" echoed Addie, in surprise.

His chin threatened to become querulous under his goatee. "I am one of the few who have conquered the dyes," he said peevishly. "I am illustrious. I was undone, broken. I put my ribs together again. I overcame misfortune. But—still—I have nothing." He struggled for complacency, and explained with courtliness:

"I had intended to ask you—at the end

of the holiday—to become Madame Riflard."

Addie gulped. She looked at him with a blink.

"It passes," said Riflard. His chin sank. "You are in love with this young man you want to show your furs to," he sighed. "You did not want Riflard's jewels. The luncheon, set to music and palms, held no appeal to you when you recalled your meal of sausage with him. Poor old Riflard can give you everything but one thing. He could make his wife as fair as any wax beauty. But he could not give her what your shining eyes are now dreaming of. At an entrance to the park, Miss Shank, I will put you down."

His chin wept under his beautifully dyed goatee.

"I'm sorry, monsieur," said Addie guiltily.

"Do not think of it," replied Riflard, recovering himself. His very good manner returned with the lifting of his chin. He took a card and gold pencil from his pocket. "If you will give me your address, I will send you what I think I owe you," he told her kindly.

Addie murmured her address. "Thank you, monsieur," she said.

The limousine stopped at an entrance to the park. The chauffeur left his seat to open the door.

But Addie had the door open. Her foot was on the step. "Oh, monsieur," she cried, "thank you for the holiday."

Riflard stripped his hand of its glove to touch her fingers.

"Adieu, petite amie-de-cœur," he said gently.

His smile told her to be happy—for everything mattered for the young.

ADDIE watched the limousine go off. Then she entered the park. Every bush and tree had its tender spring budding. A warm sun shone and a warmer breeze blew. She walked along the path above the river to the point where there was an unobstructed view of the signal tower.

Her step failed. The commotion started in her flat young chest.

Below, in the cove near the planking, Luke Rime was in a river-barge, overhauling it. His shirt exposed his big chest, and his sleeves were rolled to his arm-pits. The sun glinted on his red hair and skin. He looked like a young ox in the small cove.

Addie loitered along the walk, twining and untwining her new fur. Every minute she expected Luke to look up from the barge. But Luke's eyes stayed down—as if he had looked up in vain too often.

So Addie descended the steps and crossed the tracks to the planking.

When Luke Rime saw her coming, enveloped in white fox, he sat stolid in the water-stained barge. His dark-red brows met over his eyes. He appeared not to know her.

She approached him with with some timidity.

"Maybe you don't remember me, Mr. Rime," she said.

"Maybe I don't," he replied shortly.

She looked at the signal tower. "I remember you."

"Do you?" He dropped his eyes to the barge.

Her eyes went to the path above the river.

"I used to walk up there," she said. "And one night I came down here. It was cold. I was— You thought I came down here to— You gave me some sausage." She was twisting her fur. "Don't you remember?"

He regarded her. "Yes," he said coldly. "I asked you to walk with me, and you never came."

"I couldn't get off," she explained.

"You didn't want to, I guess," briefly.

"I did!" indignantly.

His look concentrated on the magnificent fur shrouding her. He stood up in the barge, rocking it. He stepped on to the planking.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

She became distant. "None of your business!" she replied.

He caught the fur, crushing it in his big red hand. "Tell me where you've been!" he demanded.

She essayed to pass him. "Beg pardon," she said icily.

His bulk blocked her way. His eyes were concerned.

"Say," he sputtered, gripping the rich fur, "you haven't—?"

"Of course not!" she flashed, with a contemptuous look.

He detained her. "You're dolled up!" Then he half apologized: "You see, in the city—things happen."

"Why should anything like that happen to me?" she sniffed.

"That's so," he answered, embarrassed.

He let go of her fur. He stood looking at her with an expression that made his face soft.

She turned her shoulder on him, and started toward the steps.

"Hold on!" he protested, following. "Don't get mad."

He was beside her. He began to laugh down at her, and to swing his arms.

But she measured him with the look that flashed. "Good-by, Mr. Rime," clearly.

The laugh went out of him. He fell back. "Good-by," he answered humbly.

ON the steps, she turned, eyes nearly level with his. But, close to him, she lost her high manner, and laughed.

"I bet you can't guess who dolled me up," she cried. "Riflard!"

She explained, in a rush of words, about Riflard's successful hair dye.

"He's rich!" she boasted. "He got me this holiday. I came up here in an automobile!"

"Did you?" said Luke. He turned his heel on her and walked back to the barge.

She followed to the edge of the planking.

"What's wrong?" she demanded.

He turned in the barge, gigantic, hot.

"I love you," he said. "I loved you at first sight. When you came down here without knowing my name, and put your head on my shoulder and cried, I loved you. It wasn't the time to tell you then. I was just a rough fellow you didn't know. I asked you where you lived. You kidded me. You're kidding me now."

The blood boiled up to the roots of his dark-red hair.

The blood was in her face, too—delicate blood.

"I'm not kidding you," she said. She untwined the white fur. Straight and skinny, she stood before him in her short, frayed skirt and threadbare jacket. She looked at the long, sparkling river. She leaned over the edge of the planking, and let the white fur slip from her hands. It fell to the river, and sailed along it.

She jumped into the barge with him.

"What a fine day for drowning, Mr. Rime!" she laughed.

He pulled her into his arms.

She laid her head on his shoulder.

THREE STORIES OF SUCCESS

For Him Adversity Ended in Ad

THERE is a cigar store where Miller's Biggest Little Store used to be.

The Biggest Little Store has moved across the street and is now one of the largest retail jewelry houses in Detroit.

The Biggest Little Store did not cause a ripple on the surface of the mercantile sea that day seven years ago when its one door was carefully opened to the attention of the public.

Its receipts that day were exactly $3.75. Now there are days when more than $12,000 is packed into the cash-carriers.

Miller started his business in an ice-box. A wholesale meat dealer built up a partition, giving Miller a space twenty by ten feet. A narrow entrance permitted one customer to come in, or go out, at a time. Miller arranged mirrors so as to give the impression of a larger store.

It did not take him many days to realize that he would be lost unless he could attract the attention of the buying public.

He hit upon the scheme of inserting liner advertisements in the Sunday newspapers. They were inexpensive. He thought if he could pack a punch into a few words he would catch the reader's eye and interest him.

He started off this way:

There is no alibi for failure to-day—it's better to be wearing a Miller diamond than a medal for 15-ball pool!

A low price-tag is like an old shoe—it fits in a pinch!

They say I can't sell at my prices and live—I'll let you know when to send flowers!

There's many a "live wire" who is grounded—and don't know it!

It wasn't long before people began to read the liners for the sake of catching Miller's homely and unconventional sayings. Business came. Then, also, came something else.

The city decided it had to pave the thoroughfare. Brick was piled along the curb, and it became a most unattractive place for shoppers. Under such conditions most merchants would have been content to wait until repairs had been finished. But not Miller.

Walking out of his store one afternoon, he approached the foreman on the job, and, assuming a most belligerent attitude, cried: "Don't you dare let any of your men pile bricks in front of my store!"

Two hours afterward the little shop was completely hidden.

Miller went out again, looked up the foreman, handed him a couple of cigars and a gold pencil, and whispered:

"Can I put a sign on top of that heap?"

"Sure," replied the foreman, chuckling.

A few minutes later Miller had the sign up. It read:

My store is behind this pile of bricks.

Car riders saw it, and smiled. Shoppers on the other side of the street saw it—and came across. The newspapers commented upon it.

Miller followed up the next day with:

My store is still here:

It's the Biggest Little Store in Town!

That sign stayed until the pavement was completed. The store has been known as Miller's Biggest Little Store ever since.

This year Miller is doing a business of more than half a million dollars. It's all cash. Personally he prefers selling a ten-cent collar button to a five thousand dollar diamond ring.

"I can work up more enthusiasm making a sale to a man who has ten cents to invest in a collar button than I can to the man who wants an expensive diamond," he says. "The man after the collar button wants value. I have to convince him as to the worth of the article. The man after the diamond has the money to spend. It doesn't take salesmanship to sell him."

N. B. Beasley.

Hens and Happiness

I USED to be a druggist with a nice little business in a wide-awake country town in New Hampshire. My store was above the average.

I was successful, too. During each of the last twelve years I saved from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars over and above all expenses. But—and here's the leak in the cider barrel—my home was neglected.

If you've ever thought much about a druggist's life, you'll know it means work from early morning until late at night. I'd open the store at six-thirty in the morning, so the mill people could get anything they wanted before they went to work. Then I'd be there until afternoon. Sometimes I'd shut up the store until I had dinner; but usually Mary would come over and stay there for a bit. Then at night I'd have to stay late—for I guess the Checker League would have busted if they couldn't have used the store as a club-room.

I was in a rut, all right. You know how a fellow will get in one. But one night Mary came down to the store and walked home with me. She did that frequently; but this night it was in a pouring rain, and I'll never forget how I wondered why she had come out.

"Tell me," she said, as we were walking back home, "do you like this life? I'm just about sick of it. We never see each other except just for a while at night."

I didn't know what to say; but, to tell the truth, I had begun to weary of it myself.

"But I'm a druggist," I finally replied. "What else can I do?"

"You say it as if it was the President of the United States," she laughed. "And you have done well. Now, we've a little money, and we're growing older every day. Why not get some little place where we could earn enough to live on, and just be near each other the rest of our days? Why, as it is now, we almost might as well be a thousand miles apart."

It didn't take very long for me to make up my mind that Mary was right.

We found this little place down in Massachusetts, and started in.

We had determined that hens would make our plans possible. And they have. This work wasn't entirely new to us, as both Mary and I had seen more or less of the country when we were young. We started out with one hundred and fifty hens,—all Rhode Island Reds,—and we have increased our flock year by year, until now we have about twelve hundred layers. All poor hens were weeded out right from the first, and only eggs for setting were saved from the best layers. But recently I've let my hired man do the work while I watch.

That this work has paid is indicated when I tell you that last year—1916—we sold an average of 14,877 eggs per month. Here's our last year's business tabulated:

        

14,877 eggs per month
Average selling price 40 cents dozen		=$495.90 per month
Gross sales per year		=5950.80
Average per hen		= 4.95 per year
Cost of feeding	$2.50 per hen
Cost of hired man	.65 per hen	3.15
Net profit per hen		1.80
Net profit for the flock		2160.00

Many of my friends have asked me why we have had such success—for there are many, many failures in the chicken business. To all of them I have replied that it is gray matter that counts. In chickens, as in anything else, it is necessary to follow business fundamentals.

First: Select your stock.

Second: Keep on everlastingly selecting your stock, breeding only from the best layers. Discard firmly the poorer ones.

Third: Feed liberally. Our feed bill averages at least ninety cents per hen above the average. But it pays!

Fourth: Have proper housing for the hens.

Fifth: Keep everlastingly at it!

The Eater Eaten

WHEN Delburt Sills was fifteen, his father died, and Delburt had to leave school to care for his mother, who was ill from shock and worry. All that stood between them and the poorhouse was ten acres of ground and a flock of fifty chickens. The ground had been planted with wheat, but it was in the midst of the Kansas grasshopper belt, and that year there was a grasshopper to every spear of wheat. As for the chickens, they wouldn't lay, and there wasn't enough food to last them during the coming winter.

But Delburt solved the combination of misfortune. It took some time to win his mother's consent to his Napoleonic plan of strategy, but once she was won the boy wasted no time. He bought two pieces of common screen wire, each three feet wide and twenty feet long, fastened the two pieces together lengthwise by means of a small wire, then bent the piece of screen, which was now six by twenty feet, over round wooden forms and fastened it together at the top with screen-door hooks in such a manner that the contrivance, which now resembled a huge pipe, could be instantly closed. This "pipe" he rolled out to the center of the wheat field, where the grasshoppers were the thickest. Then he made two round doors of thin boards, and swung one at each end of the pipe by means of a leather hinge at the top.

At three different places under the pipe he dug little round holes in the ground. Getting another boy to help him, he collected scrap lumber, and built a wall six feet high and twenty feet long and leaning over the pipe. On the under side of this leaning wall he fastened white oil-cloth. Then he placed an old covering composed of sacks and bits of canvas sewed together near by, and set a sulphur candle in each of the little holes he had dug under the pipe.

Delburt was now ready for his "drive." He got together several neighbors, and with these, his dog "Wab," and his boy helper, lie started to drive the millions of 'hoppers toward the trap.

More than five bushels were taken as a result of this first drive. These were placed in sacks and taken to an old barn loft, where they were spread out to dry. As fast as thoroughly dried they were sacked and put away in a dry, cool place.

In the following week Delburt secured close to one hundred bushels of the insects. He never stopped until it was almost impossible to find a 'hopper in the field.

Two weeks later he began to feed the dried insects, about half and half grasshoppers and grain, with kitchen scraps, to the chickens. The result was astonishing. The hens began to lay at once, and they continued to lay all that cold, snowy winter. The like was never known before in that community. As soon as his mother had recovered her health, Delburt went into the chicken business on a larger scale.

That was two years ago. The widow and her son have cleared nearly $3000 on their chicken ranch, and have such a fine stock on hand that they could easily dispose of it for as much more. And Delburt is back in school again.

YOUTH CHALLENGES

By CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

Illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock

(Concluded)

NEXT morning the whole city breakfasted with Bonbright Foote. His name was on the tongue of every man who took in a newspaper, and of thousands to whom the news of his revolutionary profit-sharing or minimum-wage plan was carried by word of mouth. It was the matter of wages that excited every one. In those first hours they skipped the details of the plan, those details that had taken months of labor and thought to devise. It was only the fact that a wealthy manufacturer was going to pay a minimum wage of five dollars a day.

Malcolm Lightener did not content himself with telephoning. He came in person to say his say.

"I thought I taught you some sense in my shop," he said, as he burst into Bonbright's office. "What's this I hear now? What idiocy are you up to? Is this infernal newspaper story true?"

"Substantially," said Bonbright.

"It's unfair," said Lightener. "You'll have every workingman in town flocking to you. You'll get the pick of the labor."

"That's good business, isn't it?" Bonbright asked, with a smile. "Now, Mr. Lightener, there isn't any use thrashing me. The plan is going into effect. It isn't half-baked. I haven't gone off half-cocked. It has been carefully planned and thought out—and it will work. There'll be flurries for a few days, and then things will come back to the normal for you fellows. I wish it wouldn't. You're a lot better able than I am to do what I'm doing, and you know it. If you can, you ought to."

"Bonbright," said Malcolm Lightener, getting to his feet, "I'm disappointed in you."

"Come a year from now and tell me so; then I'll listen to you," said Bonbright.

"This nonsense won't last a year. You'll have to give it up, and then what? You'll be in a devil of a pickle, won't you?"

"All you see is that five dollars. In a day or two the whole plan will be ready. I'm having it printed in a pamphlet, and I'll send you one. If you read it carefully, and then come back and tell me it's nonsense, I don't know you. You might let me go under suspended sentence at least."

Lightener shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"Take one chunk of advice," he said. "Keep away from the club for a few days. If the boys feel the way I do, they're apt to take you upstairs and drown you in a bath-tub."

That was the side of the affair that Bonbright saw most during the day. Telephone messages, letters, telegrams poured in. After a while he ceased to open them, for they were all alike—all sent to say the same thing that Lightener had said.

THE news of the new profit-sharing plan reached even to Mrs. Moody's obscure boarding-house, and the table buzzed with it. It mounted the stairs with Mrs. Moody to the room where Ruth lay apathetically in her bed.

Mrs. Moody sat down in her rocker and looked at Ruth triumphantly. "I'll bet," she said, "when I read this you won't lay there and pertend you don't hear. If you do it's because somethin' 's wrong with your brains, that's all I got to say."

She began to read. The first words caught Ruth's attention. The words were Bonbright Foote. She closed her eyes, but listened. Her thoughts were not clear, but the words that Mrs. Moody was reading were important to her. She realized that. She tried to concentrate on them—tried to comprehend. Presently she interrupted weakly.

"Who—who is it—about?" she asked.

"Bonbright Foote, the manufacturer. I read it out plain."

"Yes. But what is it? I didn't—understand very well. What did he—do?"

Mrs. Moody began again impatiently. This time it was clearer to Ruth. Once she had tried to do something like this thing she was hearing about—and that was why she was here. It had something to do with her being sick—and with Bonbright. It was hard to remember.

"Even the floor-sweepers git it," said Mrs. Moody, interpreting the news story. "Everybody gits five dollars a day at least, and some gits more."

"Everybody—" said Ruth. "He's—giving it to—them?"

"This Mr. Foote is; yes."

SUDDENLY Ruth began to cry, weakly, feebly.

"I didn't help," she wailed like an infant—her voice was no stronger. "He did it alone—all alone. I wasn't there."

"No, you was right here. Where would you be?"

"I wonder—if he did—it—for me?"

Her voice was piteous, pleading.

"For you? What in goodness name have you got to do with it? He did it for all them men—thousands of 'em. And just think what it'll mean to 'em! It'll be like heaven comin' to pass."

"What—have I—got to do—with it?" Ruth repeated, and then cried out with grief: "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. If I'd never been born—he would have done it—just the same."

"To be sure," said Mrs. Moody, wondering. "I guess your head hain't jest right to-day."

"Read. Please read. Every word. Don't miss a word."

"Well, I swan. You be int'rested. I never see the like."

And the good woman read on, not skipping a word. Ruth followed as best she could, seeing dimly, but seeing that the thing that was surpassed the thing she had once sacrificed herself in a futile effort to bring about. What was it she had done? It was something about Bonbright. What was it? It had been hard, and she had suffered. She tried to remember. And then remembrance came. She had married him!

"He's good—so good," she said tearfully. "I shouldn't have—done it. I should have—trusted him. Because I knew he was good—all the time."

"Who was good?" asked Mrs. Moody.

"My husband," said Ruth.

"For the land sakes, what's he got to do with this? Hain't you listenin' at all?"

"I'm listening. I'm listening. Don't stop."

Memory was becoming clearer, the fog was being blown away, and the past was showing in sharper outline. Events were emerging into distinctness. She stared at the ceiling with widening eyes, listening to Mrs. Moody as the woman stumbled on, losing account of the reading as her mind wandered off into the past, searching, finding, identifying. She had been at peace. She had not suffered. She had lain in a lethargy that held away sharp sorrow and bitter thoughts. They were now working their way through to her, piercing her heart.

"Oh!" she cried. "Oh!"

"What ails you now? You're enough to drive a body wild. What you cryin' about? Say!"

"I—I love him. That's why I hid away. Because I—loved him—and—his father died. That was it. I remember now. I couldn't bear it."

"Was it him or his father you was in love with?" asked Mrs. Moody acidly.

"I—hated his father. But when he died I couldn't tell him—I loved him. He wouldn't have believed me."

"Say," said Mrs. Moody, suddenly awakening to the possibilities of Ruth's mood, "who was your husband?"

Ruth shook her head.

"I—can't tell you. You'd tell him. He mustn't find me—because I—couldn't bear it."

THE maid came to the door.

"Young woman at the door wants to see you," she said.

"Always somebody. Always trottin' up and down stairs. Seems like a body never gits a chance to rest her bones. I'm comin'. Say I'll be right downstairs."

In the parlor Mrs. Moody found a young woman of a world with which boarding-houses have little acquaintance. She glanced through the window, and saw beside the curb a big car with a liveried chauffeur. "I vum," she said to herself.

HOW MEN FIGHT—By Captain A. P. Corcoran

IF fighting had been his business, he would have known that he was bankrupt. Any Boche could have told him it was time to cry "Kamerad!" But the trouble with Doyle was, he didn't know when he was beaten. He had been fighting all his life just for fun.

He had been caught in a wood, where he was on reconnaissance with three companions. They were killed. He faced twenty Prussians alone. But he had two revolvers.

Astride the bodies of his dead friends, he opened fire. They tried to surround him, but he picked off the most adventurous. Finally his ammunition gave out. But his spirit was still going strong. As a last evidence of his intentions, he let fly the revolvers right in the face of the foe. Then they took him.

But even a Boche can be generous. Before they led him away, the officer in charge walked up to him, and, taking a decoration from his own breast, pinned it on that of the man he was taking prisoner.

"That's the finest piece of fighting," he said, "I have ever seen."

When a Frenchman goes to fight, it is with a song on his lips—a song that tells of love for his country. He is in the fray for the honor of France, without which he counts his life not worth the living. So he fights ardently, recklessly. And he fights victoriously, as all the world now knows.

A Britisher, too, goes into it with a song on his lips. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say with a roar issuing from his throat. His feet keep time to a music-hall ditty bawled out by some hundred lusty lungs. A Britisher, you know, is in the game for the sport.

And the Boche? Well, the Boche is conducting his appointed business. An efficient workman keeps his music for leisure moments.

How will the American take it? Joyously or seriously? As good sport or grim business? I am inclined to think the former; but I should like to be there to see.

Perhaps you think it unimportant, this matter of mental attitude? But I am going to tell you some stories to prove that you are wrong. There's Doyle, to start with. Think of an army of Doyles! Remember, it is a man's spirit that makes or breaks his regiment.

They say "All's fair in love and war." So the Boche thinks, and so do we—but with a difference, as you are now going to see.

It was during the retreat from Mons

that a battalion of the Irish guard came up against the Prussian guard. The odds were eight to one in favor of the enemy. The Irish charged; but they might as well have run against an india-rubber wall.

But they kept at it. Clash! and back they bounced again, and again and again and again. But you know the old proverb. They tried once more, and it worked. Clean through the Prussian line they broke, reformed hastily but successfully in its rear, then crashed straight through again to their own line.

The Prussians, disorganized, started to retreat. By this time our line was in an uproar. Every one wanted to take a hand in making the victory complete. The cook with his pots, the blacksmith with his hammer—they all joined in the chase. The pride of Prussia fled. And no wonder. They thought they were up against an army of madmen.

It wasn't according to Hoyle, of course, this business of pursuing the enemy with a poker. But that's what we call "fair" when we happen to get into a fix. Now for the Boche's interpretation of his privileges:

He had been trying for some time to dislodge some Canadians; but the Colonials insisted on sticking like burs. They refused to budge with such unparalleled pertinacity that he found it necessary to bring into play all his knowledge of psychology. And a very good psychologist he is.

He began by hoisting the white flag of truce. The Canadian officer, who was little more than a kid, went over the top to find out the reason. Whereupon the Boche shot him down, dragged the body into his trench, and then stuck it up on bayonets, where all the Britishers might see.

Did they budge? You bet they did. As one man, they rushed out to avenge the death of their officer. Which was exactly what their enemy had planned. Turning his machine-gun on them, he mowed them down like wheat. That's what he calls "playing the game."

But there is one advantage in meeting a "dirty fighter." He is bound to lose out in the end. Take him when he is fit and when he feels the odds are with him, and he'll put up an excellent scrap; but let him see he is in danger of losing, and that imminently, and he'll lie down and cry for mercy.

However, not all our enemies partake of the Prussian spirit. I have met hordes of relatives and friends who took part in the Dardanelles campaign, and they all agree in praising the Turk. They say that for clean fighting he has no superior. And I have heard one story where, when he was obliged to retreat from positions he had held quite long, he left behind him several large bags of water on which was written: "For the Enemy Wounded."

You like to meet a man like that. You like better to fight side by side with him. But you like best of all to be on the same side with a man who is made of your own flesh and blood. That is why we are enthusiastic in welcoming our Yankee cousin. We feel he is essentially of the same metal as ourselves. If he has the "punch" of the Irishman, he has the grit of the English. And that is some grit, as I know from experience.

What is it inspires whole bodies of men to rush to their death not only recklessly but even joyously? Love of country? Perhaps; but I'm afraid they hardly think of it. It is simply esprit de corps and the fighting spirit.

It was the Duke of Wellington who first ascribed a great victory to a love of sport. He was right. And, remember, the Boche is neither a footballer nor a baseballer. The Allies are both. Perhaps General Pershing will some day say that this war was won first on the Polo Grounds.

Youth Challenges—

Continued from page 17

"I'm Mrs. Moody, miss," she said. "What's wanted?"

"I'm looking for a friend. I'm just inquiring here because you're on my list of boarding-houses. I guess I've asked at two hundred, if I've asked at one."

"What's your friend's name? Man or woman?"

"Her name is Foote. Ruth Foote."

"No such person here. We got Richards and Brown and Judson and a lot of 'em, but no Foote."

The young woman sighed.

"I'm getting discouraged. I am afraid she's ill somewhere. It's been months, and I can't find a trace. She's such a little thing, too. Maybe she's changed her name. Quite likely."

"Is she hidin' away?" asked Mrs. Moody.

"Yes—you might say that. Not hiding because she did anything, but because—her heart was broken."

"Um. Little, was she? Sort of peaked and thin?"

"Yes."

"Ever hear the name of Frazer?"

"Why, Mrs. Moody—do you— That was her name before she was married."

"You come along with me," ordered Mrs. Moody, and led the way upstairs. "Be sort of quiet-like. She's sick."

Mrs. Moody opened Ruth's door and pointed in.

"Is it her?" she asked.

Hilda did not answer. She was across the room in an instant, and on her knees beside the bed.

"Ruth—Ruth!" she cried.

Ruth turned her head slowly and looked at Hilda. There was no light of gladness in her eyes; instead they were veiled with trouble.

"Hilda," she said, "I didn't—want to be found. Go away and—and unfind me."

"You poor baby! You poor, absurd, silly baby!" said Hilda, passing her arm under Ruth's shoulders and drawing the wasted little body to her closely. "I've looked for you, and looked. You've no idea the trouble you've made for me. And now I'm going to take you home. I'm going to snatch you up and bundle you off."

"No," said Ruth weakly. "Nobody must know. He—mustn't know."

"Fiddlesticks."

"Do you know? He's done something—but it wasn't for me. I didn't have anything to do with it. Do you know what he's done?"

"I know," said Hilda. "It was splendid. Dad's all worked up over it, but I think it is splendid just the same."

"Splendid," said Ruth slowly. "Splendid. Yes, that's it—splendid."

She seemed childishly pleased to discover the word, and repeated it again and again.

PRESENTLY she turned her eyes up to Hilda's face, lifted a white, blue-veined, almost transparent hand and touched Hilda's face.

"I"—she seemed to have difficulty to find a word, but she smiled like a little girl—"I—like you," she said triumphantly. "I'm sorry you came—but I—like you."

"Yes, dear," said Hilda. "You'd better like me."

"But," said Ruth, evidently striving to express a differentiation, "I—love him."

Hilda said nothing. There was nothing she could say, but her eyes brimmed at the pitifulness of it. She abhorred tears.

"I'm going now, dear," she said. "I'll fix things for you, and be back in no time to take you home with me. So be all ready."

"No," said Ruth.

"Yes," Hilda laughed. "You'll help, won't you, Mrs. Moody?"

"Hain't no way out of it, I calc'late," said the woman.

"I won't be half an hour, Ruth. Good-by."

---

But Ruth had turned away her face and would not answer.

"Say," said Mrs. Moody, in a fever of curiosity that could not be held in check, after they had passed outside of Ruth's room, "who is she, anyhow? Somebody, I'll perdict. Hain't she somebody?"

"She's Mrs. Foote—Mrs. Bonbright Foote."

"I swan to man! And me settin' there readin' to her about him. If it don't beat all. Him with all them millions, and her without so much as a nest like them beasts and birds of the air in Scripture. I never expected nothin' like this would ever happen to me. And who be you, if I might ask?" Mrs. Moody said.

"My name is Hilda Lightener, Mrs. Moody."

"Not that automobile man's daughter—the one they call the Automobile King?"

"They call dad lots of things," said Hilda, with a sympathetic laugh. She liked Mrs. Moody. "I'll be back directly," she said, and left the good woman standing in an attitude suggestive of mental prostration, literally gasping at this marvel that had blossomed under her very eyes.

HILDA drove, not to her home, but to Bonbright Foote's office.

Dulac was on his way to Bonbright's office, too. He had started before Hilda, and arrived first. If he had been asked why he was going, it is doubtful whether he could have told. He was going because he had to go—with freshly burning hatred of Bonbright in his heart. Bonbright was always the obstacle he encountered. He believed now that it was Bonbright who had broken the first strike. Then Bonbright had married the girl he loved. Some men can hate sufficiently for that cause alone. And now, better equipped than for the first strike, and with the chances of success multiplied, Bonbright had intervened again—with his plan.

So he was going to see the man who had come between him and every object he had striven for. He did not know why. He followed impulse, as he was prone to follow impulse. Restraints were not for him. He was a thinker, he believed; and after his fashion he was a thinker. But his mind was equipped with no stabilizer.

He brushed aside the boy who asked his business with Mr. Foote, and flung open Bonbright's door. On the threshold he stood speechless, tense with hatred, eyes that smoldered with jealousy burning in hollows dug by weariness and privation. He closed the door behind him slowly.

Bonbright looked up and nodded. Dulac did not reply. He simply stared, his lips drawn a trifle back so that a glint of white showed between.

"You wanted to see me?" said Bonbright.

"Yes," said Dulac. The word was spoken so low, so tensely, that it hardly reached Bonbright's ears.

Dulac took one step toward Bonbright, and paused. The movement was cat-like. His eyes did not leave Bonbright's.

It seemed to Bonbright that Dulac had been in the room for hours. Now only the desk separated them, and Dulac bent forward, rested his clenched fist on the desk, and held Bonbright's eyes with the fire of his own.

Bonbright remained motionless. It seemed to him that all the conflict of the ages had centered itself in this man and himself—as if they were the chosen champions, and the struggle had been left to them. He was ready. He did not seek to avoid it, because it seemed inevitable. He was champion of his class; Dulac the champion of his class. He wondered if he and Dulac had been appointed to abolish each other.

There was a sudden change in the fire of Dulac's eyes, a sudden upleaping blaze, and Bonbright braced himself.

Unheeded by either, the door opened, and Hilda stood in the opening.

"I've found her," she said.

Dulac uttered a gulping gasp, and closed his eyes, that had been unwinking—closed his eyes a moment; and with their closing the tenseness went out of him, and he sagged downward, so that his body rested on the desk.

Bonbright leaped to his feet.

"Hilda!" he said, and his voice was tired. It was the voice of a man who has undergone the ultimate strain.

"I've found her. She's ill—terribly ill. You must go to her."

Dulac raised himself and looked at her.

"You've found—her?" he asked.

"We must go to her," said Bonbright.

He was not speaking to Hilda, but to Dulac.

They three went downstairs to the car silently, drove to Mrs. Moody's boarding-house, and climbed the stairs to Ruth's little room. Mrs. Moody hovered about behind them.

They entered the room softly. Ruth seemed to be sleeping. Bonbright stood at one side of her bed, Dulac on the opposite side; but they were unconscious of each other. Both were looking downward upon Ruth.

She opened her eyes; saw Bonbright standing over her; shut them again and moved her head impatiently. Again she opened her eyes, and looked from Bonbright to Dulac. She pointed a trembling finger at Dulac.

"Not you," she whispered. "Not you. Him."

She moved her finger until it indicated Bonbright.

"I don't—believe you're—really there—either of you," she said. "But I—like to have—you here. You're my husband. I love my husband," she said, and nodded her head.

BONBRIGHT fell on his knees beside her, drawing her to him. He could not speak.

Ruth sighed as she felt his touch.

"You're real," she whispered. "Is he real, too?"

"Ruth!" groaned Dulac.

"You know—don't you, Hilda? I told you—a long time ago. I never loved—him at all. Isn't that—queer? I thought I did—but—I didn't know. It was something else. You won't feel too bad, will you?"

She was looking at Dulac.

"I think you—had better—go," she said gently.

Dulac looked at Ruth, looked at Bonbright. Then he turned, and, stumbling a little as he went, fumbling to open the door, he obeyed.

Hilda moved toward the door.

"If you want her—cure her. Nobody else can."

And she left them alone.

"I loved you all the time, but—I didn't know. I was going—to tell you. And then he died. You'll—believe me, won't you?"

"Yes," was all he could say.

"And you—want me back? You—want me to be your wife?"

"Yes."

She sighed happily.

"I'll get—well, then. It wasn't worth the bother before."

Then: "You haven't said anything. Isn't there something you ought to say?"

He bent over closer and whispered it in her ear, not once, but many times. She shut her eyes; but her lips smiled, and her fragile arms drew his head even closer, while her thin hand stroked his cheek.

"If it's all real," she said, "why don't you—kiss me?"

Her smile blossomed for him again, and it was something like her old, famous smile, but sweeter, more tender.

"I didn't dream a bit of it," she said to herself.

Hilda came in.

"We're going to take her to our house, Bonbright, till she gets well. That's best, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"You'll come, won't you, Ruth?"

"If my husband comes too," she said.

RUTH'S strength returned miraculously, for it had not been her body that was ill, but her soul, and her soul was well now, and at peace. It was pitiful how she clung to Bonbright—how she

---

held him back when he would be leaving in the morning, and how she watched the door for his return.

When Ruth was able to sit up, they began to lay out their future and to plan plans.

Already Bonbright was building a home, and the delight they had from studying architects' drawings and changing the position of baths and doors and closets and porches was unbelievable. Then came the furnishing of it, and at last the moving into it.

"I'm almost glad it all happened," Ruth said.

"Yes," said Bonbright.

"We'd have been just ordinarily happy if we'd started like other folks. But to have gone through that—and come into all this!"

"Let's not remember it," he said. Then:

"Ruth, you never make any suggestions about the men. You know lots more about them than I do. You were born among them. But you just listen to me when I talk to you, and never offer a word."

"I'll suggest when I think of anything. I couldn't have dreamed it or hoped it. Nothing I could have asked for them would have been as splendid as this."

"You believe in it?"

"More than that. I've been into their homes. They were glad to see me. It was wonderful. Enough to eat, cleanliness, mothers at home with their babies instead of out washing. No boarders. They showed me their bank accounts, or how they were buying homes and how quickly they were paying for them. And I was proud when I thought it was my husband that did it."

She loved to talk business with him; to hear about the new mills and how they were turning out engines. She discussed his project of enlarging further, perhaps of manufacturing automobiles himself, and urged him on.

"It will give work to more men, and bring more men under the plan," she said. That was her way of looking at it.

Hilda came often and laughed at them.

"Just kids," she jeered; but she envied them, and told them so. And then, because she deserved it, there came a man into her own life, and he loved her and she loved him. Whereupon Bonbright and Ruth returned her jeers with interest.

MORE than a year went by. Then came a cloud on the horizon. Even five dollars a day and the plan did not seem to content labor, and Bonbright became aware of it. Dulac was active again, or rather he had always been active. In spite of the plan, a strike threatened.

Ruth was thunder-struck, Bonbright bewildered. His panacea was not a panacea, then. He studied the plan to better it, and did make minor improvements; but in its elements it was just.

"It's the inevitable surge upward of humanity," said the professor. "You rich men try to become richer. You are reaching up. Labor has a long way to climb to reach you, but it wants to reach you. As long as a height remains to be climbed to, man will try to climb. Class exists. The employer class, and the employed. As long as one man can boss another, and as long as one man can say to another, 'Do this or do that, there will be conflict. Everybody, whether he knows it or not, wants to be his own boss, and by as much as he is bossed he is galled. It can never be otherwise."

"You knew from the beginning that I would fail," said Bonbright.

"You haven't failed, my boy. You have done a fine thing. But you haven't solved a problem that has no solution."

But Bonbright was unhappy, and he carried his unhappiness to his wife.

"It's all been futile," he said.

She was wiser than he. "No," she said hotly; "it's been wonderful. I've told you how I've visited them and seen the new happiness—seen women happy who had never been happy before; seen comfort where there had been nothing but misery. It's anything but futile, dear. You've done the best—and it was a splendid best. If it doesn't do all you hoped, that's no sign of failure. I'm satisfied, dear."

IT was not many weeks after this that Bonbright sat frightened and anxious in the library—waiting. A nurse appeared in the door and motioned. She smiled, and a weight passed from his heart.

Bonbright followed into Ruth's room, pausing timidly at the door.

"Come in, come in, young man. I have the pleasure to announce the safe arrival of Bonbright Foote VIII."

Bonbright looked at Ruth, who smiled up at him and shook her head.

"Not Bonbright Foote VIII, doctor," said Bonbright, as he moved toward his wife and son. "Plain Bonbright Foote. There are no numerals in this family. Every one who is born into it stands by himself. I'll have no ancestors hanging around my boy's neck."

"I knew it," Ruth whispered in his ear; "but I was a—a teeny bit—afraid. He's ours—but he'll be more than that: he'll be his own—as God wants every man to be."

THE END

This is the Place Where—

IN this little cottage in Fordham were written two of the most widely known poems in our literature—"The Bells" and "Annabel Lee." When Edgar Allan Poe went there early in 1846, hoping to find renewed health both for himself and Virginia Poe, his girl wife, Fordham was far outside the city of New York, and the poet was probably the first of the commuters from the Bronx.

A year before, he had written "The Raven." He had fame, but very little else, since his work had brought him only the bare necessities of life; and he continued turning out critical articles for New York publications, riding every day on horseback the fourteen miles to and from the city.

Virginia Poe's health did not improve, but grew worse, and she died on January 30, 1847, after living the cottage less than a year.

Poe stayed on there for two years, writing "Ulalume" as well as "The Bells," and finding, perhaps, relief from his sorrow by giving it expression in "Annabel Lee," his last poem.

Then, broken in mind and body, he went South to consult friends about a new publishing venture. The journey ended in Baltimore, where he died in a hospital.

The Golden Snare—

Continued from page 4

his forty-pound pack, fitted snugly to his shoulders, were a three-pound silk service-tent that was impervious to the fiercest wind, and an equal weight of cooking utensils. The rest of his burden, outside of his rifle, his Colt's revolver, and his ammunition, was made up of rations, so much of which was scientifically compressed into dehydrated and powder form that he carried on his back, in a matter of thirty pounds, food sufficient for a month if he provided his meat on the trail.

He laughed a little grimly as he thought of this concentrated efficiency in the pack on his shoulders. In a curious sort of way it reminded him of other days, and he wondered what some of his old-time friends would say if he could, by some magic endowment, assemble them here for a feast on the trail. He wondered especially what Mignon Davenport would say—and do. P-f-f-f! He could see the blue-blooded horror in her aristocratic face! That wind from over the barren would curdle the life in her veins. She would shrivel up and die. He considered himself a fairly good judge in the matter, for once upon a time he thought that he was going to marry her. Strange that he should think of her now, he told himself.

And thinking of her his mind traveled back to the old days. Undoubtedly a great many of his old friends had forgotten him. Five years was a long time, and friendship in the set to which he belonged was not famous for its longevity. Nor love, for that matter. Mignon had convinced him of that. Fate was a playful old chap. It was a good joke he had played on Philip—first a bit of pneumonia, then a set of bad lungs afflicted with that "galloping" something-or-other that hollows one's cheeks and takes the blood out of one's veins. It was then that the horror had grown larger and larger each day in Mignon's big baby-blue eyes, until she came out with childish frankness and said that it was terribly embarrassing to have one's friends know that one was engaged to a consumptive.

Philip laughed as he thought of that. The laugh came so suddenly and so explosively that Bram could have heard it a hundred yards away, even with the wind blowing as it was. A consumptive! He drew in a deep lungful of air, and forced it out again with a sound like steam escaping from a valve. The north had done that for him. He loved it. And because he loved it, and the adventure of it, he had joined the Police two years ago.

AT noon, when Philip built a small fire to make tea and warm his bannock, he took the golden tress from his wallet and examined it even more closely than last night. It might have come from a woman's head only yesterday, so bright and shimmery was it in the pale light of the midday sun. He was amazed at the length and fineness of it, and the splendid texture of each hair.

He ate his dinner and went on. Three days of storm had covered utterly every trace of the trail made by Bram and his wolves. He was convinced, however, that Bram would travel in the scrub timber close to the barren. He had already made up his mind that this barren—the Great Barren of the unmapped north—was the great snow sea in which Bram had so long found safety from the law. Its unpeopled and treeless wastes formed a tramping ground for him as safe as the broad Pacific had been to the pirates of old. Philip could not repress a shivering exclamation as his mind dwelt on this world of Bram's. It was worse than the edge of the Arctic, where one might at least have the Eskimos for company.

He realized the difficulty of his own quest. His one chance lay in fair weather, and the discovery of an old trail made by Bram and his pack. An old trail would lead to fresher ones. Also he was determined to stick to the edge of the scrub timber; for if the barren was Bram's retreat he would sooner or later strike a trail—unless Bram had gone straight out into the vast white plain shortly after he had made his camp in the forest near Pierre Breault's cabin. In that event it might be weeks before Bram would return to the scrub timber again.

That night the last of the blizzard that had raged for days exhausted itself. For a week clear weather followed. It was intensely cold, but no more snow fell. In that week Philip traveled a hundred and twenty miles westward.

It was on the eighth night, as he sat near his fire in a thick clump of dwarf spruce, that the thing happened which Pierre Breault, with a fatalism born of superstition, knew would come to pass. And it is curious that on this night, and in the very hour of the strange happening, Philip had, with infinite care and a great deal of trouble, rewoven the silken tress back into the form of the golden snare.

THE night was so bright that the spruce trees cast vivid shadows on the snow. The world did not need a moon. At a distance of three hundred yards Philip could have seen a caribou if it had passed. He sat close to his fire, with the heat of it reflected from the blackened face of a huge rock, finishing the snare which had taken him an hour to weave. For a long time he had been conscious of the curious, hissing monotone of the Aurora, the "music of the skies," reaching out through the space of the earth with a purring sound that was at times like the purr of a cat and at others like the hum of a bee. Not until he had finished, and was placing the golden snare in his wallet, did the one sound individualize and separate itself from the other.

He straightened himself suddenly, and listened. Then he jumped to his feet and ran through fifty feet of low scrub to the edge of the white plain.

It was coming from off there, a great distance away. Perhaps a mile. It might be two. The howling of wolves.

It was not a new or unusual sound to him. But never had it thrilled him as it did now, and he felt the blood leap in sudden swiftness through his body as the sound bore straight in his direction. In a flash he remembered all that Pierre Breault had said. Bram and his pack hunted like that. And it was Bram who was coming. He was sure of it.

He ran back to his tent and in what remained of the heat of the fire warmed for a few moments the breech of his rifle. Then he smothered the fire by kicking snow over it. Returning to the edge of the plain he posted himself near the largest spruce he could find, up which it would be possible for him to climb a dozen feet or so if necessity drove him to it. And this necessity bore down upon him like the wind. The pack, whether guided by man or beast, was driving straight at him, and it was less than a quarter of a mile away when Philip drew himself up in the tree. His breath came quickly and his heart was thumping like a drum as he climbed up the slender refuge that was scarcely larger in diameter than his arm. From his unsteady perch ten feet off the ground he stared out into the starlit barren.

Then came the other sound. It was the swift chug, chug, chug of galloping feet—of hoofs breaking through the crust of the snow. A shape loomed up, and he knew that it was a caribou running for its life. He drew an easier breath when he saw the animal was fleeing parallel with the projecting finger of scrub in which he had made his camp. He noted the silence of the pursuing wolves. It meant but one thing. They were so close on the heels of their prey that they no longer made a sound. Scarcely had the caribou disappeared when Philip saw the first of them—gray, swiftly moving shapes, spread out fan-like as they closed in on two sides for attack, so close that he could hear the patter of their feet and the whines that came from between their gaping jaws. There were at least twenty of them, perhaps thirty, and they were gone with the swiftness of shadows driven by a gale.

From his uncomfortable position Philip lowered himself to the snow again. Concealed in the shadow of the spruce, he

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waited. He made no effort to analyze the confidence with which he watched for Bram. When he at last heard the curious zip—zip—zip of snowshoes approaching, his blood ran no faster than it had in the preceding minutes of his expectation, so sure had he been that the man he was after would soon loom up out of the starlight. Fate had played a trump card into his hand. Now, with the wolves gorging themselves, his plan was to cut Bram off and make him a prisoner.

FROM his knees he rose slowly to his feet, still hidden in the shadow of the spruce. In his unmittened hand he held his revolver. With staring eyes he looked for Bram out where the wolves had passed. And then, all at once, came the shock. It was tremendous. The trickery of sound on the barren had played an unexpected prank with his senses, and while he strained his eyes to pierce the hazy starlight of the plain, far out, Bram himself loomed up suddenly along the edge of the bush not twenty paces away.

Philip choked back the cry on his lips, and in that moment Bram stopped short, standing full in the starlight, his great lungs taking in and expelling air with a gasping sound as he listened for his wolves. He was a giant of a man. About his shoulders fell a mass of unkempt hair that looked like seaweed. His beard was short and thick, and for a flash Philip saw the starlight in his eyes—eyes that were shining like the eyes of a cat. In that same moment he saw the face. It was a terrible, questing face—the face of a creature that was hunting, and yet hunted; of a being half animal and half man. So long as he lived he knew that he would never forget it; the wild savagery of it, the questing fire that was in the eyes, the loneliness of it there in the night, set apart from all man-kind.

In this moment Philip knew the time to act was at hand. His fingers gripped more tightly about the butt of his revolver as he stepped forth out of the shadow.

Bram would have seen him then, but in that same instant he had flung back his head, and from his throat there went forth a cry such as Philip had never heard from man or beast before. It began deep in Bram's cavernous chest, like the rolling of a great drum, and ended in a wailing shriek that must have carried for miles over the open plain—the call of the master to his pack, of the man-beast to his brothers. It may be that even before the cry was finished some super-instinct had warned Bram Johnson of a danger which he had not seen. The cry was cut short. Before Philip's startled senses had adjusted themselves to action Bram was off, and as his huge strides carried him swiftly through the starlight the cry that had been on his lips was replaced by the strange, mad laugh that Pierre Breault had described with a shiver of fear.

Without moving, Philip called after him: "Bram—Bram Johnson—stop! In the name of the King—"

It was the old formula, the words that carried with them the majesty and the power of law throughout the northland. Bram heard them. But he did not stop. He sped on more swiftly, and again Philip called his name.

"Bram—Bram Johnson—"

The laugh came back again. It was weird and chuckling, as if Bram were laughing at him.

In the starlight Philip flung up his revolver. He did not aim to hit. Twice he fired over Bram's head and shoulders, so close that the fugitive must have heard the whine of the bullets.

"Bram—Bram Johnson!" he shouted a third time.

HIS pistol arm relaxed and dropped to his side, and he stood staring after the great figure that was now no more than a shadow in the gloom. Once more he was alone under the stars, encompassed by a world of nothingness. He felt, all at once, that he had been a very great fool. And Bram had laughed at him.

Very soon he would pay the price of his stupidity—of his slowness to act. Before the night was over Bram would return, and with him would come the wolves.

And then, for the first time since he had returned from the edge of the barren, Philip saw the man again as he had seen him standing under the white glow of the stars. And it struck him, all at once, that Bram was unarmed. Comprehension of

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this fact worked a swift and sudden hope in him. From a tree he could fight the pack and kill them one by one. He had a rifle and a revolver, and plenty of ammunition. The advantage would lay all with him. But if he was treed, and Bram happened to have a rifle—

He put on the heavy coat he had thrown off near the fire, filled his pockets with loose ammunition, and hunted for the tree he wanted. It was a gnarled and wind-blown spruce six inches in diameter, standing in an open. In this open Philip knew that he could play havoc with the pack. Perched in the tree, silhouetted against the stars that made the night like day, he would be an easy victim. But it was his one chance, and he took it.

AN hour later Philip looked at his watch. It was close to midnight. Not a sound came from off the barren or from out of the scrub timber that did not hold a mental and physical shock for him. He believed that Bram and his pack would come up quietly; that he would not hear the man's footsteps or the soft pads of his beasts until they were very near. Twice a great snow owl fluttered over his head. The little white foxes, curious as children, startled him most. Half a dozen times they sent through him the sharp thrill of anticipation, and twice they made him climb his tree.

After that hour the reaction came, and with the steadying of his nerves Philip began to ask himself if he was going to escape the ordeal which a short time before he had accepted as a certainty. Was it possible that his shots had frightened Bram?

Cowardice was the last thing he would associate with the strange man he had seen in the starlight. Vividly he saw Bram's face again. Wild and savage as that face had been, he had seen in it the unutterable pathos of a creature without hope. He no longer felt the quickening thrill of man on the hunt for man. He could not have explained the change in himself—the swift reaction of thought and emotion that filled him with a mastering sympathy for Bram Johnson.

Under it all, in Philip's mmd, ran the thought of the woman's hair. In Pierre Breault's cabin he had not given voice to the suspicion that had flashed upon him. The thought oppressed him now. He knew that human hair retained its life and its gloss indefinitely, and that Bram might have had the golden snare for years. It was quite reasonable to suppose that he had bartered for it with some white man in the years before he had become an outlaw, and that a curious fancy or superstition had inspired him in its possession.

Sharply opposed to reason was that consciousness within him which told him that the hair had been freshly cut from a woman's head. There was, or had been, a woman with Bram. Bram—and a woman! And a woman with hair like that!

He left his tree after a time. For another hour he paced slowly back and forth at the edge of the barren, his senses still keyed to the highest point of caution. Then he rebuilt his fire. It was very cold. He noticed, after a little, that the weird sound of the lights over the Pole had become only a ghostly whisper. The stars were growmg dimmer, and he watched them as they seemed slowly to recede farther and farther away from the world. This dying out of the stars always interested him. It was one of the miracles of the northern world that lay just under the long Arctic night.

Philip looked at his watch. It was four o'clock. In another quarter of an hour he could not see the tree beside which he stood. And Bram did not come. With the beginnings of the gray dawn Philip rebuilt his fire for a third time, and prepared to cook his breakfast. He felt the need of coffee—strong coffee—and he boiled himself a double ration. At seven o'clock he was ready to take up the trail.

He believed now that some mysterious and potent force had restrained Bram Johnson from taking advantage of the splendid opportimity of that night to rid himself of an enemy. As he made his way through the scrub timber along the edge of the barren it was with the feeling that he no longer desired Bram as a prisoner. A thing more interesting than Bram had entered into the adventure. It was the golden snare.

Not with Bram himself, but only at the end of Bram's trail, would he find what the golden snare stood for. He appreciated the extreme hazard of following Bram to his long-hidden retreat. The man he might outwit in pursuit and overcome in fair fight, but against the pack he was fighting tremendous odds.

What these odds meant had not fully gripped him until he came cautiously out of the timber half an hour later and saw what was left of the caribou the pack had killed. For a radius of twenty feet about it the snow was beaten hard by the footprints of beasts, and this arena was stained red with blood and scattered thickly with bits of flesh, broken bones, and patches of hide. Philip could see where Bram had come in on the run, and where he had kicked off his snowshoes. Bram had evidently arrived in time to save the hind quarters, which he had dragged to a spot well out of the red ring of slaughter. After that the stars must have looked down upon an amazing scene. The hungry horde had left scarcely more than the disemboweled offal. Where Bram had dragged his meat there was a small circle worn by moccasin tracks, and here, too, were bits of flesh scattered about—the discarded remnants of Bram's own feast.

The snow told as clearly as a printed page what had happened after that. Its story amazed Philip. From somewhere Bram had produced a sledge, and on this sledge he had loaded what remained of the caribou meat. From the marks in the snow Philip saw that it was longer and broader than any sledge he had ever seen. He did not have to guess at what had happened. Far back on the barren Bram had loosed his pack at sight of the caribou, and the pursuit and kill had followed. After that, when beasts and man had gorged themselves, they had returned through the night for the sledge. Bram had made a wide detour so that he would not again pass near the fringe of scrub timber that concealed his enemy, and with a curious quickening of the blood in his veins Philip observed how closely the pack had hung at his heels. The man was master—absolutely. Later they had returned with the sledge, Bram had loaded his meat, and with his pack had struck out straight north over the barren. Every wolf was in harness, and Bram rode on the sledge.

Philip drew a deep breath. He was learning new things about Bram Johnson. If fear of capture had possessed him he would not have returned for his meat. He wondered why Bram—instead of returning for the meat this night—had not carried the meat to his sledge. It would have saved both time and distance.

IN the edge of the timber, where he could secure wood for his fire, Philip began to prepare. He cooked food for six days. Three days he would follow Bram out into that unmapped and treeless space—the Great Barren. Beyond that it would be impossible to go without dogs or sledge. Three days out, and three days back—and even at that he would be playing a thrilling game with death. In the heart of the barren a menace greater than Bram and his wolves would be impending. It was storm.

His heart sank a little as he set out straight north, marking the direction by the point of his compass. It was a gray and sunless day. Beyond him the barren was a white plain, and this plain seemed always to be merging into the purple haze of the sky.

At the end of an hour he was in the center of a vast amphitheater which was filled with the gloom and the stillness of death. The rim of the sky was like a leaden thing, widening only as he advanced. Under that sky, and imprisoned within its circular walls, he knew that men had gone mad.

Half a dozen times in those first two hours he looked at his compass. Not once in that time did Bram diverge from his steady course into the north. In the gray gloom, without a stone or a tree to mark his way, his sense of orientation was directing him as infallibly as the sensitive needle of the instrument which Philip carried.

It was in the third hour, seven or eight miles from the scene of slaughter, that Philip came upon the first stopping place of the sledge. The wolves had not broken their traveling rank, and for this reason he guessed that Bram had paused only long enough to put on his snowshoes. After this Philip could measure quite accurately the speed of the outlaw and his pack, and there was little doubt that Bram was traveling six miles to his four.

It was one o'clock when Philip stopped to eat his dinner. He figured that he was fifteen miles from the timber-line. As he ate, there pressed upon him more and more persistently the feeling that he had entered upon an adventure which was leading toward inevitable disaster for him. For the first time the significance of Bram's supply of meat, secured by the outlaw at the last moment before starting out into the barren, appeared to him with a clearness that filled him with uneasiness. It meant that Bram required three or four days' rations for himself and his pack in crossing this sea of desolation that reached in places to the Arctic. In that time, if necessity was driving him, he could cover a hundred and fifty miles, while Philip could make less than a hundred.

UNTIL three o'clock m the afternoon he followed steadily over Bram's trail. He would have pursued for another hour if a huge and dome-shaped snowdrift had not risen in his path. In the big drift he decided to make his house for the night. It was an easy matter—a trick learned of the Eskimo. With his belt-ax he broke through the thick crust of the drift, using care that the "door" he thus opened into it was only large enough for the entrance of his body. Using a snowshoe as a shovel he then began digging out the soft mterior of the drift, burrowmg a two-foot tunnel until he was well back from the door, where he made himself a chamber large enough for his sleeping-bag. The assurance that he had a home at his back in which neither cold nor storm could reach him inspirited him with an optimism which he had not felt during the day.

From the timber he had borne a precious bundle of finely split kindlings of pitch-filled spruce, and with a handful of these he built himself a tiny fire over which, on a longer stick brought for the purpose, he suspended his tea pail, packed with snow.

Darkness was falling swiftly about him. By the time his tea was ready and he had warmed his cold bannock and bacon the gloom was like a black curtain that he might have slit with a knife. Not a star was visible in the sky. Now and then he added a bit of his kindling to the dying embers, and in the glow of the last stick he smoked his pipe, and as he smoked he drew from his wallet the golden snare. Coiled in the hollow of his hand and catching the red light of the pitch-laden fagot it shone with the rich luster of rare metal.

With the going of the fire an utter and chaotic blackness shut him in. Feeling his way, he crawled through the door of his tunnel, over the inside of which he had fastened as a flap his silk service tent. Then he stretched himself out in his sleeping-bag.

Since he had left Breault's cabin he had not enjoyed such a bed. And last night he had not slept at all. He fell into deep slumber. He did not hear the wailing of the wind that came with the dawn. His inner consciousness, the guardian of his sleep, cried for him to rouse himself. It pounded like a little hand in his brain, and at last he began to move restlessly. His eyes shot open suddenly. The light of day filled his tunnel. He looked toward the "door" which he had covered with his tent.

The tent was gone.

In its place was framed a huge shaggy head, and he found himself staring straight into the eyes of Bram Johnson.

To be continued next week.