One Minute with the Editor

Who Writes All the Popular Songs?

HOW much money does a popular song make for its author? Did you know that most of the song writers can not read a note of music? We have an article about this. Unless all signs fail, you may look for it next week.

Don't the Safety Razor Ads Satisfy You?

DEAR EDITOR: Will you please print pictures of young men on the covers of your magazine, instead of girls' pictures all the time?

95 Madison Avenue, New York

DEAR EDITOR: I know who murdered Mrs. Fisher, and how the murder was committed. Where shall I send my answer, so as to be sure and get the money?

A Correction

ONCE upon a time we printed a picture of Miss Theresa Flanagan on a page of pictures of "People You Don't Want to Meet." Since then we have met Miss Flanagan. She's the sort of person one would want to meet. Moreover, she is nurse at a "hospital," not an "asylum."

The Wintergreen Oil King

By WALT MASON

MID Pennsylvania's rugged hills, up in the county of Monroe, the oil of wintergreen distils from leaves, an aromatic flow. Nine tenths of all that balmy oil that this round planet can produce comes from that little tract of soil—nine tenths of all that precious juice!

There women and the kids are seen, in season, gathering the leaves; and for a hundred pounds of "green" twelve bits the toiling one receives. A woman with a skilful hand may earn two dollars in a day; a child may work to beat the band, and get six nickels as his pay. There are a hundred fragrant still upon this belt of wintergreen, and each one when it's working spills a sweet aroma o'er the scene.

There is a man named John T. Stotz—Broadheadsville's where he gets his mail—who owns the oil in wholesale lots, the oil that scents the passing gale. He is the king of wintergreen, the monarch of that luscious oil; for forty years he's made it queen of Monroe County's make their quest; he owns 'most all the busy stills, and bys the product of the rest.

In all the world there is no man who knows as much about this oil, which is the outcome of his plan of ceaseless study, care, and toil. A chemist he, and in his shop are scores of bottles of the "ile," and there the guest would like to stop, inhaling incense by the mile. He has the finest cultured nose that e'er was seen upon the pike; one sniff will to that beak disclose adulterations and the like. The oil is costly when it's pure—it brings three bucks or more a pound—and when they have a chance, for sure, adulterators flock around. The able sleuths of Uncle Sam, who'd foil the trickster's little game, detecting doe in oil or jam, must stop to analyze the same. But Stotz will take of oil in a jar, and hold it to his trenchant nose, and say, "They've doctored it with tar!" and noting of that vintage goes.

The war has cut the business down, but many stills are making juice, and Stotz, the king without a crown, is handling all they can produce. He has on hand, in times like these, oil worth some 30,000 bones, and that would flavor all the seas, down to the haunt of Davy Jones.

The High Cost of Honor

By KATHARINE HOLLAND BROWN

Illustrations by G. E. Wolfe

IT was the spring of 1913, that year of flood and wrath. The Mississippi had been on the rampage for weeks. Mile on mile, the waters spread over the Arkansas bottoms, a muddy sea. The farm-houses perched on high ground could still be seen, but the shiftless "ground cabins" had been drowned out like so many gopher holes. Young Dudley Coleman, an apple cheeked cub civil engineer working for the great Interstate Drainage Company, had to wallow through a mile of ooze to reach his launch, after a grueling nine hours' shift with his levee gangs. He hauled his big, muddy body aboard, and sat down, puffing. Sweat trickled down his crimson forehead, and streaked through the clay already drying on his square Beacon Street chin. Half a dozen cuts told of as many stumbles in submerged brush. O'Hara, his striker, grinned at him.

"Sure, sir, ye look like ye'd been wrastlin' wid a steam-shovel."

"I feel rather that way."

Young Coleman scraped off the top layer of mud, and glared at that heaving yellow ocean. Toward them, down-stream, a solitary steamboat floundered its way.

"What idiot can be trying to navigate in this flood, O'Hara?"

"Yon's Wonderland, sir. She's due at Severn Landing now. She'll give 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' for matinee to-day, and 'Camille' to-night—"

"'Uncle Tom's Cabin'? What on earth—"

"Sure, she's a show-boat, sir—a floatin' theayter."

"She looks it."

Young Coleman sniffed as Wonderland sloshed into closer view. She was an old-time side-wheeler, a marvel of blinding white paint and gingerbread. Strings of flags adorned her, as a dreadnought on parade. A fierce bronze eagle soared above her pilot-house; a mammoth mermaid simpered at the bow.

"That little sawed-off aft is Grogan, her owner. The big bossy lady in pink is Lilian de Montmorency, his wife, Wonderland's star actress. Be givin' 'em a salute, sir, whiles I humps this scow out of their wash."

Coleman sounded their penny whistle. Wonderland responded with a deafening siren roar and exuberant shouts from the gaily dressed group aft. Among that group, the big bossy lady in pink stood regnant, a peroxid Boadicea. The steamer passed so close that Coleman caught the blaze of the diamonds on her big, muscular hands, the broad smile on her plump, thickly powdered face.

"A grand sight, that," remarked the cheerful O'Hara. "Decked out like a pawnbroker's bride, wasn't she? They say there's no better business woman on the river, sir."

Coleman frowned.

"I'm not keen on your friend Lilian. What I want to know is, where are the people that live around this forsaken place?"

"The Memphis packet took thim all off, sir, days ago. All save a few pigheads like MacLaren yonder."

He pointed upstream. On a tiny knoll stood a low brown cabin. Already the river washed the log steps. Another hour, and the water would cross the threshold.

"People there still, eh? We'll stop and take them off."

"But MacLaren won't thank us, sir. A quare stick he is. Gentleman born, they say, and a gentleman he is, f'r all his glum hermit ways. An' his girl, she's a lady, mind that—f'r all the Severn women-folk can wag their evil tongues—"

He broke off sharply, and his broad face reddened.

"His girl? His daughter?"

"Well, sir, that I can't tell ye. 'Tis five year since he brought her down from St. Louis—she, an' his books, an' his pianny, an' his trunks full of crazy wheels an' engines an' whirlymacues. An' in those five years not one soul has that old grouch axed to pass his door. The girl has hardly set foot off the knoll. He's never let her go to school, even. Though they do say he's taught her the pianny till she plays something grand. Not a friend has the child got on earth, savin' that surly old man, an' she but a slip of a thing, winsome as a shamrock. Irena, he calls her. A heathen name, at that."

"How old is she?"

"Sixteen. Seventeen, maybe. Some holds she's MacLaren's own child. Others say she's an orphan he's adopted, to mind the house and tend him when he's down. 'Tis dyin' these five years wid the consumption he's been, poor man. An' others say—but ye know Severn, sir. Ye know how a small town can talk."

"Well, hermits or no, we'll take them off, else by noon they'll be adrift. Put the launch alongside."

"Ye'll get a scowl f'r yer pains, sir."

"All right. Put her alongside. But—I say, O'Hara! Look! What's that black thing hanging on the door? It looks like black cloth— By Jove, man! What can it mean?"

O'HARA gasped out. His right hand went to his breast with a quick, shaken sign of the cross.

"Mary Mother! 'Tis black cloth, sure, sir. It means—but which of the two—A-ah, sir! Look!"

The door swung open; its ominous emblem swayed in the sudden draft. On the threshold stood a young girl. Her honey-

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yellow hair bound her little head in great shining braids. Beneath it, a small heart-shaped face, stricken with terror and grief, stared down at them, white as ashes.

"'Tis Irena herself! Poor lamb!" O'Hara drove the launch across the submerged yard. "An' she alone in the cabin wid—that!"

The launch grounded on a mass of willow roots and stuck fast. The men jumped overboard and splashed to the steps. Coleman stood with bared head. His tongue blundered abominably for sheer pity.

"We saw—the black cloth. Please let us come in—and do what we can."

The girl did not answer at once. Puzzled, Coleman raised his head and looked at her. What he saw brought the blood to his heart.

She was oven younger than he had thought, more delicate and frail. Her hands were clenched, her wide, dark eyes were tear-swollen, her lips were quivering. Yet upon every feature was stamped beauty—a beauty so profound, so exquisite, that it caught his breath and leaped like wildfire through his veins.

"He went away from me yesterday." Her child voice shook, her soft eyes filled. "Nobody came by, and I daren't leave him to row to town. But he told me just what to do. He said somebody would come soon. And you did come."

She led the two men into the cabin.

O'Hara stumbled across to the straight white shape on the low bed, and knelt, whispering prayers. But Coleman stood stock-still, amazed. A dull bare room: a bed, a chair, a table, a rickety piano. But on the board walls hung scores of blue-prints and fragments of designs, and the table was heaped with strange trumpery—a fine microscope, a jumble of wires and screws and test-tubes and tools. Coleman peered at the inscription on one drawing.

Then he looked down at that old wasted face. The face of a gentleman, ascetic, clean; the face of a seer, a visionary. Perpetual motion! Well, the poor hermit-soul's mysteries were all solved now. All but this white, desolate child beside him.

"Pack up yer duds, girl dear." O'Hara spoke gently. "We'll be Lakin' you to Severn. Takin' you—both."

The girl hesitated. "But where— how—"

"There, there, girl dear." O'Hara patted her thin shoulder. "We'll give him as fine a funeral as money can buy. Preacher, an' flowers, an' all the hacks in town. Ye'll see!"

But the miserable question only deepened in her eyes.

"We—we can't. For he said—oh, poor Uncle Robbie!" she sobbed out, heart-broken. "He said there wasn't any money left. He spent the last on his new tools. He didn't even own the cabin."

"Don't! We'll do everything."

Coleman spoke gruffly. He had a wild longing to snatch the little stricken creature into his big arms and comfort her.

"Pack what you need, and put on a warm cloak. We'll take you both to Severn right away."

SEVERN was only twenty miles downstream. But it was far past noon when they reached the landing. His life long, Coleman would remember that strange, silent journey down the flooded river. Straight and long under his winding-sheet, the dead man lay astern. Moveless as ivory, the girl sat by his rough bier. Forward at the steering-wheel crouched Coleman and O'Hara. They hardly spoke. They never once glanced astern.

At last the launch grounded on the sodden wharf. They left Irena at the forlorn Severn Astor house, while they made arrangements for the funeral.

Two hours later, as they drove away from the cemetery, Coleman realized that his work was just begun. He had done his duty by the dead. But now—the living!

Irena had already told her short, pitiful story. She was MacLaren's grand-niece. Her father had been a bookkeeper in a St. Louis foundry, her mother a young school-teacher, a New England girl, "Sarah Lord Peabody, of Haverhill," without near kinsfolk. When she was twelve, both parents had been killed in a tenement fire. Then MacLaren had adopted her, and taught her to keep his house. He had taught her other things, too, she added shyly: to play a little, to speak a little French and German, to read aloud from his shabby trunkful of classics. He had been kind, but very strict. He had lived in terror of his perpetual-motion motor being stolen—hence their hermit life.

"I can't take her back to that hole of a hotel." Coleman studied her face, so wan and sad, yet so beautiful that he felt a sudden awe, boyish, chivalric. What a flower-thing she was, this lone little waif! She was like—in a flash, Coleman remembered, with a curious shy delight—that old, old picture of his mother, taken in the decorous seventies: her little slim, unformed body; her braided hair; her soft, dark eyes.

If only his mother were at home, he'd pack Irena off to her. She would know just what to do. But she was in Zurich, where the younger boys were at school. Failing that, he could take Irena to some good school in St. Louis. But for to-night, —where, in this dingy, half-drowned place, could he put the child?

"Ye'll not be takin' her back to that low-flung tavern," whispered O'Hara. "An' the preacher tell me he'd gladly take her, but his two kids is down wid measles, an' the mistress wore out entirely. An' the sexton's folks is drownded out of house an' home, so they're sleepin' at his wife's father's. Now, where in the nation—"

"The minister will give me a list of his parishioners. Of course, some one of the church ladies will take her in for tonight."

"Why 'of course'?" muttered O'Hara grimly.

WHY indeed? At ten o'clock that night Coleman bolted into the little station waiting-room, where Irena sat, her lashes drooping, the faithful O'Hara beside her.

"Did ye find—" O'Hara began. Then he stopped, startled by the black rage in the boy's face.

"I found—hell!" Coleman hit the words off, between gasps of fury. Red sparks blazed in his heavy-lidded eyes. "Those worthy Severn women! Those—those foul-mouthed old harridans! They'd 'like to oblige us,' but they 'really hadn't room.' Every last cat whined the same tune. And when I'd beg 'em to let her sleep on the hat-rack or the kitchen floor—'N-no; we don't know anything against her. But Mr. MacLaren was very peculiar. And there has been talk.' Talk!"

"Yis, talk. 'Tis the leadin' product of this slimy little town! But were wastin' time jawin', an' this child so beat out she can't lift her sweet head."

"But what can we do with her?"

"Sure, sir, there's one chance left. Lilian de Montmorency."

"Lilian de Montmorency! That show-boat woman!" Coleman snorted.

He had a vivid sight of the fair Lilian as she had waved to him that morning—her coarse figure, her bedizened hair, her bold, gay, painted face.

"Sweet place, that, to take Irena!"

"Well, it'd be decent, sir. An' a roof over her tired head."

Coleman began to argue. Then he yielded, disgusted but beaten. Gently he roused Irena. Dazed with sleep, she stumbled obediently beside him down the endless black shore to the huge dim bulk of Wonderland.

Lilian de Montmorency herself answered their hail. Big, bossy, and competent, she trailed a lurid scarlet satin kimono out on the guards, and summoned them across the gang-plank. Big and serene and vulgar from bleached coronal to scarlet slippers, she heard Coleman's unwilling request.

"You say her guardian died yesterday; and was buried to-day; and the church ladies don't want her. H'm!" Her narrow blue eyes pried into his sullen face. "Well, I don't cotton much to that church-lady gang. I reckon she'll find a roof here, all right—as long as she wants it, too."

She thrust out a big, glittering hand, and pulled Irena into the full light. The gesture was comically uncouth, yet it was not ungentle. And the shrewd eyes she bent on the girl were honestly kind.

"She'll be safe here, gentlemen. You two pike along now. Good night."

And she led Irena into the cabin.

VAGUELY thankful, dog-tired to their Samaritan bones, Coleman and O'Hara tramped away. Coleman fell asleep planning to go back to Wonderland by day-break, and send Irena to the school in St. Louis by the first train. But at midnight a messenger roused him. The up-river levee had broken again. He and O'Hara must hurry back to the contract.

"Anyhow, I'll start her north at six to-night," Coleman thought.

But at six that night he lay limp and unconscious, while the chief engineer blistered the wires with demands for a surgeon, a trained nurse, a special tug to rush Coleman and his broken leg to the Memphis hospital.

The leg healed rapidly. Meanwhile, Coleman's nurse earned a martyr's crown. Every day he dictated a letter of instructions to Miss de Montmorency concerning "my ward." He sent her a cheek for Irena's expenses. He even ordered a warm sweater and heavy shoes for the girl. He finned and fussed and worried. In the innocence of his heart, he was almost pompously paternal.

To all of his commands Lilian made but one reply—a truculent purple scrawl on a lurid lilac sheet:

Young Mr. Coleman of Beacon Street lay back on his pillows and howled. He was still weak and hilarious when O'Hara tiptoed in. O'Hara spelled out the letter solemnly.

"The lady's what ye might call outspoken, sir."

"Quite. But she is evidently treating Irena well. And by next week I'll be able to go down and take the child away."

"Take her away, is it?" A queer glint awoke in O'Hara's eye. "Away from Lilian de Montmorency? A childless woman wid a jaw like a pavin'-brick, an' a limper of fire an' tow, an' a heart bigger than the two big fists of her? Well, sir, I wish ye luck!"

With which cryptic farewell he tiptoed out.

Coleman paid little heed. He was already drafting a letter to the principal of the St. Louis school, outlining his ward's course of study.

TWO weeks later, Coleman, still leaning on his cane, but a personable young giant every inch, walked up Wonderland's gang-plank. In his pocket reposed the principal's staid note, in which she acknowledged his payment of Irena's first-term tuition.

All Sumner County swarmed on the wide decks, for Wonderland was giving "East Lynne." Half way down the crammed little auditorium, Lilian recognized him, with a friendly whoop. She strode beaming up the aisle; but he caught a queer, furtive gleam in her narrow eyes.

"Well, Mr. Coleman! hooray for you! Took some nerve to drag that game leg down-river, hey? Grogan and me will count it a compliment that you came to see me in 'East Lynne.' You'll want to see Irena, too. You'd never believe how that kid has spunked up. Irena, hon, look who's here!"

From behind the papier-mâché palms came a hurrying little figure. Coleman's stick clattered to the floor.

Lilian had done her two-fisted best for the girl. Already Irena's thin checks had filled, her color had deepened, her frail little body was straighter, stronger. This much he saw with a rush of gratitude. Then a glaze of horror settled on his face.

Irena's fair locks were loosed from their Gretchen braids, and piled in a puffed and wiggy stash. Her soft baby throat was bared to the gaping eyes of Sumner County. Her thin little hands glittered even as Lilian's own. Crime of crimes, her silken lashes were beaded thick, and a smear of raw pink daubed her chin and made high lights on both cheeks. Yet, through all this desecration, her beauty shone out on him unsnorelted, a white star.

"Ain't she the peach, since I toned her up?" said Lilian simply. Honest, glad achievement rang in her voice.

Irena turned to her. Between the two there passed a glance of such illumined meaning that Coleman stared. Lilian's bold eyes glowed with mother-tenderness. But the girl looked up with adoration, a passion of profoundest love, almost of reverence.

"Guess I was right, Mr. Coleman. I didn't need no smart Alec of a C. E. to teach me how to make a lady out of Irena!"

She laughed proudly and gayly.

"Run along to your piano, lion. Time the curtain went up. You'll stay to supper, Mr. Coleman?" Again that wary gleam awoke. "We want an hour's visit before you must go back."

Coleman accepted with cordial aplomb. Three mortal hours he sat through Lady Isabel's joys and sorrows. Next him, a fat old lady, in a plush coat that smelled of peppermint, wept intermittently and leaned on his shoulder at emotional moments. Before him, two mothers in Israel chewed their snuff-sticks while the lights were low; across the aisle, a red-headed baby roared without ceasing. The close little room steamed. Coleman's leg pained him infernally. He set his teeth and endured.

SUPPER was set in a tight little coop off the galley. All Wonderland sat down: the hot, tired band, the blowsy character woman, the chesty fifth-rate juvenile, the frayed, leering old "heavy." In all his Brahmin days, young Coleman had never sat at meat with such a Bedlam crew.

Irena sat at Lilian's right, safeguarded by her own loveliness in the midst of the hairy rout. Coleman shuddered. To-morrow, thank heaven, he would take his flower of a girl away and put her in proper hands. His chest expanded. He could not have felt more altruistic, more paternal, had he been fifty-five and worn side-whiskers.

Supper over, Lilian led the way to her sitting-room.

"Run bring your new shirt-waist, Irena. I want Mr. Coleman to see how handy you're gettin' with your needle. Next time he comes, you and I must show him how I've taught you to fence. And dance, too. She'll make a better soft-shoe than me, Mr. Coleman, give her time."

Her words were as mild as milk, but her blue eyes snapped and her voice rang challenge.

Coleman straightway took up that challenge.

"Irena and I are deeply in your debt, Miss de Montmorency. I have come now to pay that debt. And I shall take Irena to St. Louis to-night."

There was a pause. Irena threw back her head like a deer. Her small face was chalk-white, stunned. Lilian did not stir. Her florid face hardened. Her heavy jaw set like granite. At last she spoke. Her voice was almost a jeer.

"Oho! You want to pay Irena's debts. She doesn't owe one cent. And you'll take her to St. Louis to-night. Well, son, guess again. Irena stays right here. Get that?"

Coleman drew a tingling breath. He spoke with suave control.

"Really, Miss de Montmorency! Do you not forget my claim?"

"Your claim? On Irena? Because you gave poor MacLaren decent burial, does that give you a strangle-hold on Irena—hey?"

Coleman gulped.

"Hardly that. But I am interested in her welfare. I wish to give her a good home, and an education, an——and every

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chance to become a lady. A lady in every sense." He knew he sounded like a sickening prig, but he had to say it.

"Oh!" Lilian's voice softened, but her eyes still held that menacing gleam—the gleam of the tigress standing before her threatened cub. "Well, what better home could she ask than Wonderland? Her own state-room, and plenty to eat and wear, and no end of beaus—for the Sumner County young fellows are all crazy over her. So's our own boys, actors and band-men, too. If she wasn't so bashful she could have the gayest time going. Everybody loves her, from Grogan down to the last rouster. Ain't that so, Grogan?"

The little man grunted, and gave Coleman a fiery scowl. Then he glanced at Irena tenderly.

But her education. Is it fair to neglect that?"

"Education? Ain't I educatin' her myself? She's learnt half the title role of 'The Lady of Lyons' already. She'll sing, too, soon's I can give her a lesson or so. And she's took up buck-an'-wing to beat the cars. What more could your school do for her, hey? Tell me that!"

Coleman's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

"As for teachin' her to be a lady—a, I reckon that's my long suit. You can't play so many fine-lady parts without havin' 'em soak in. I've done 'em all. Juliet at nineteen, Camille at twenty, and grand leads like Du Barry an' Vampire ever since. Playin' the lady is my one best bet." She laughed again triumphantly. "I've never lost a trick yet."

Coleman sat limp. At last he spoke.

"True. Yet perhaps Irena needs the school discipline. She is only sixteen."

"Seventeen last March."

"Seventeen, then. She is old enough to decide for herself."

Coleman stood up. He spoke with sudden sharp command:

"Irena!"

As he looked down into that exquisite, bewildered face, his heart gave a wild leap. How lovely she was, his little quiet flower! All his fatherly pretense vanished. He was just a shaken, eager boy.

"Irena, you know I want the very best in the world for you."

Irena nodded, her soft lips apart.

So—you will trust my judgment. I want to take you to a school. At once. What do you say?"

Irena shook her head.

"Thank you, Mr. Coleman. I'd rather stay with Lil."

"But you don't understand." Coleman's controlled voice rose. "Miss de Montmorency has been most kind; but I want to give you chances of study that you can not get here."

"Lil will give me all the chances I need. I thank you, sir; but—"

Her eyes fled to Lilian. Between the two there passed again that white flame look, that look of love. "As long as she wants me, I'll stay with Lil."

"And that's forever!"

Lilian whirled and caught the girl close. She laughed again, with wet, flashing eyes.

"Go call off your school, Mr. Coleman. It may have the grandest teachers going, but it couldn't make a grander lady out of Irena than I shall. Wait and see."

COLEMAN did wait. The first weeks, he raged and sulked by turns. After that, he spent a great deal of time in futile schemes. Often he took his launch and hunted up Wonderland, lying moored at some drowsy river town. Lilian always received him hospitably. Irena would glow at his coming with a charming shy delight.

With every glimpse of the girl he found a deeper beauty. His gallant boyish heart thrilled, his very soul went out in a tumult of longing, a frantic desire to serve her, his lovely lady, with the best that was in him.

The summer wore away. Tireless, forever failing, Coleman fought on at his absurd one-sided duel. Lilian was an honest foe: more than once she spoke out, straight and fair:

"Oh, you're welcome to come see Irena, Mr. Coleman. And you're welcome to take her away from me, on one condition. Any time you can show me a woman who will bring Irena up better than I can, then I give her up—right then and there. You can bank on that. For I want Irena to be a lady, a real lady, in every way. But, till then, Irena's mine. And you're wastin' time tryin' to win her away."

Against that tragi-comic ultimatum Coleman could beat himself in vain. But

at length the sardonic fates took a hand.

It was late October, and the fall rains were on, when the Chief Engineer's wife and sister, middle-aged Boston women, took it into their amiable heads to spend a week with him as a surprise.

They reached the tumble-down Junction, twenty miles below camp, to find that the tracks were under water; that no launch was for hire, short of Memphis; that there was no hotel of any sort for miles. But Grogan was aboard the train. With generous courtesy, he loaded the ladies, bag and baggage, into his launch, and took them twenty miles up the river to camp.

THREE days later the two visitors steamed down to Wonderland to express their thanks.

They had come for an hour—they stayed the entire afternoon. The next day they asked Lilian and Irena to camp to spend a week-end.

Coleman knew nothing of their coming. He spent that week in St. Louis. It was a grinding week. On the last night he came home at eight, and threw him-self on his bed, too dead tired to go to dinner. An hour later a rap on the door awoke him. He sat up, stiff and blinking.

"Lady to see you, sir."

"Lady? What lady?"

"Sorry, sir." An alarmed page stood at the door. "She would come up. I couldn't stop her, sir."

Coleman looked, puzzled, at the approaching figure.

"I—Miss de Montmorency!" he burbled welcome. "Delighted! May I take you down to the drawing-room? I have no sitting-room here."

"No, you may not. I want to see you. See you alone."

Lilian de Montmorency stood breathing hard and fast. Under her toppling plumes her face was gray-white, stricken.

"Irena's here. Down at the depot. With the Chief's wife."

"Irena!"

"Yes. I brought her up on the train. For I'm goin' to give her up. Give her up—to you."

"Give her up—to me? What on earth—"

"It was those two women-folks done it." Lilian spoke on, half to herself. "lf they hadn't come I'd never knowed the difference. But, now I do know, I can't go back on my word. I've always vowed that if any other woman could make a finer lady out of Irena than me, why, I'd throw down my hand and quit. Here's where I quit. Right now."

She halted. Coleman waited.

"I kinder sensed the difference, the minute they crossed the gang-plank. Though they weren't nothing to look at—sandy, and snub-nosed, and the plainest duds ever. But it was all there, you bet! The way they talked, low and soft, and brisk, too, and the way they ate their victuals, and the things they talked about to Irena. Books and plays I never even heard tell of. And they hadn't eyes for nothin' but Irena. They began askin' her questions right from the start. Was her pa one of the Richmond MacLarens, and was her ma a New England woman, and all such stuff. When she said he was, and her ma was Sarah Peabody of Haverhill, they purred over her like she was the Queen's cousin. But that wasn't all."

Coleman sprang up.

"Don't tell me if it hurts you to say it. Don't, please!"

"Set still. I've got to tell you. They was in their state-room. They didn't know there was nothin' but canvas between them and me. The Chief's wife, she says, in that crisp, carryin' voice:

"'Arbutus ought to be her name. Such a New England flower!'

"'A New England flower blossoming in this mire,' says the sister. 'This dreadful circus-boat for a home. That impossible creature for a foster-mother!' She meant me."

Coleman started toward her. She waved him away.

"Just let me finish. The sister went on:

"'Give that child the right rearing, and she could hold her own any where. But, poor little lovely soul, she will be chained down to the Montmorency level all her days.'

"'Somebody ought to tell her.'

"'Somebody never will. It would be too cruel. No. In the goodness of her heart, the Montmorency will keep on boosting, and Irena will be a Montmorency herself, come twenty years.'

"Then they stopped. But they'd said a-plenty.

"First I tried to bluff it out. Here I was, with ten times more looks than they two put together, an' money an' style besides. If I couldn't make a lady out of Irena, who could? But I couldn't bluff for a cent. Those women were the real thing. They knew.

"Irena loves Grogan and me dearly. She'll always love us. But if I keep her, time will come she'll know, too. She'll say to herself, 'Lil could have given me my chance. But she held it back. Lil was good and kind, but she wasn't square.'

"That's why I'm giving her up. Hurt? Well— Grogan and me, we lost all three of our own kids, years ago. When Irena came, seemed like the Lord was tryin' to make it up to us. To lose her now—now, when she's grown into our very hearts—"

She stood up, swaying. She looked like a woman smitten with old age in a single night.

"But it, is not fair! It is not just!" All Coleman's smug Puritan walls were down. He stormed with angry pity. "You shall not give her up. It's too beastly mean! When you love her so—when you've spent yourself, body and soul, for her good!"

"Oh, yes, it's fair. And nothing could cost me too much, if it's for Irena."

She put out her hand to him gently.

"Go down to the depot now. Tell Irena that you want her to go to Boston and study, and grow up a real lady. A lady that's real enough for one of you swell Colemans, even." She smiled at his flushed demur with a deep and gentle understanding. "No, son, you haven't fooled me—not one minute. And I can't speak higher for you than to say you're good enough for Irena. Only—promise me one thing! Promise you'll be good to Irena. Always—always!"

"Yes, I'll be good to her." Coleman choked. Victory was his, and its taste was bitter in his mouth. Then inspiration fired his stumbling tongue.

"You say that you're not a lady. Can't you see how nobly you are proving yourself right here and now? Don't you know that only a lady—a lady in every fiber—could do what you have done?"

SLOW color mounted in Lilian's face.

"Oh, I ain't worth praise like that, son," she stammered, oddly abashed. "Though it's kind of you to say it." Her voice took on a piteous, grateful note. "I—I won't forget your sayin' it, neither. Go on now. Tell Irena I'm sending her away because it's best for us both. Tell her she'll understand it all some day. And—if you'd just as lief, you—you might say to her—"

"Yes?" Coleman's grasp tightened on her big cold fingers.

"Tell her—" Lilian hung back, half ashamed. Then her drawn mouth set in a pitiful, plucky smile. "Tell her the spiel you gave me just now."

"The spiel I gave you—"

"Yes. That—maybe I've got the makings of a lady, after all. Maybe I am a real lady inside. Even if it never does show through. I—I'd kind of like to have her know."

"All right," said young Coleman brusquely.

He had to be brusque or break; for his heart was down on its knees to the tawdry royal creature before him.

"But that's the last thing on earth that I'd need to tell Irena. Irena has always known you as you really are. Irena will always know."

What Should This Woman Do?

WHEN Stephen and I fell in love five years ago, I was twenty-six, and he was twenty-eight, and the brilliant and devoted pastor of a city church. The Sunday before our wedding—which caused actual consternation among the church members who saw a sales-person becoming their minister's wife—the congregation raised Stephen's salary to $1800 a year. Two weeks before I had resigned my position as head of the dress department of a large department store, where for two years I had earned, in salary and commissions, more than $2000 a year.

I used to laugh at Stephen when, before we were married, he asked me if I was sure I would never regret abandoning my earning abilities to share with him less than I had earned alone.

"Why," I would answer, "I'd marry you if you were a laborer making fifteen dollars a week!"

How many times since I have thought how much more true independence, how much loss worry and scheming and scrambling to make both ends meet, we should have had if he were a laborer at two and a half dollars a day instead of a minister at more than double that pay! How it would simplify my problem now, as I find myself taking charity—there is no other word for it—to keep my children clothed, and as I witness my husband worrying more hopelessly each year to maintain our required standard of living.

This must sound as if Stephen had failed, or at least stood still in the ministry. On the contrary, Stephen is succeeding. His salary, as an index of this growth, is now $2400 a year.

Stephen's salary—so we call it; but the church people require duties of me in quite as exacting a spirit as they do of Stephen. These duties I had expected, and am glad to undertake; but I had not associated baking bread and pies and cake and cookies for sale as an essential part of my life as the wife of a minister. But without the continuous "dinners," "bazaars," "sales," and festivals organized by the women whom I am supposed to lead, Stephen's salary would not be paid, and our church would cease to meet current expenses.

I fear that I am not an ideal minister's wife; for I seem to have brought from business a taste for independence which makes it difficult, in these circumstances, to be properly grateful when my husband's salary is paid.

Neither can I feel the proper gratitude for the intense interest taken by church members in our family affairs—for the virtual dictation by the church of the way we must order our family life and apportion our personal expenses.

I first encountered that interference before our marriage. Stephen and I had been looking for an apartment. We had talked the matter over several times.

We had agreed that a fifth of the income for rent should be the highest possible figure. Stephen's salary was then $150 a month, so that made $30 the price we could afford for rent. For that much money we found a pleasant, sunny little four-room apartment in a quiet street not many minutes' walk from the church. Stephen and I were at the real estate office making final arrangements to take it, when Stephen was called to the telephone. Mr. Lloyd—one of the richest and most influential men in our church—was on the wire. Some one, who had taken an interest in us, had reported what we were doing, and Mr. Lloyd had acted immediately.

"It was the distinct understanding of the congregation when we raised your salary," he said to Stephen—so forcibly that I, and the real estate agent also, I am sure, heard him distinctly—"that the increase would enable you to occupy a properly dignified home close to the church and accessible to our members."

So we started in a five-room apartment at fifty dollars a month—almost double what we ought to have paid.

APPEARANCES! Keeping up appearances! How opposed in every principle that is to the teachings of the Church. But how this "keeping up appearances" is imposed upon a minister! At the start, our $1800 a year, of course, should have been enough to provide two people with every comfort; and our $2400 a year now, properly apportioned, would excellently provide for our little family of four.

I am well aware that $2400 a year is far in excess of the average family income; but the average family is not required to live in a community of people spending from $4000 to $20,000 a year, and obliged to keep up appearances.

Where does our money go? I present our monthly outlay, not with any idea that it is a model for the expenditure of two hundred dollars for a family of four, but rather the opposite. It is simply the best arrangement I have been able to devise to provide required appearances and to supply necessities:

                 

Rent	$55.00
Charity and church dues	12.00
Insurance	15.00
Maid	22.00
Groceries	30.00
Meat	10.00
Milk	10.00
Gas	3.00
Telephone	5.00
Light	2.00
Ice	1.00
Stephen's clothes	8.00
Stephen's laundry	3 .00
Children's clothes	5.00
Doctor and dentist	10.00
Drugs	3.00
	$194.00

This leaves six dollars a month for car-fare and sundries, including my clothes.

The item for doctor and dentist includes, of course, the "cost" of our two babies. For many months after the birth of each baby I went without buying any new clothes for myself; and now, when the "children's diseases" come around, the children and I go shabby for a whole season—or take charity.

This last winter it was scarlet fever. Both of the children were very ill; but we pulled them through—we had a trained nurse day and night for two weeks for the baby. So, in the spring, I found myself with my blessed babies safe, but with absolutely no money to clothe them. I had no good street dress myself; but, though my old one was shabby, at least I could wear it! I had not grown, but the children had.

Then arrived our first charity box. It came from Mrs. Lloyd.

"It was sent out of pure kindness," I kept saying over and over to myself as I took out the underclothing, "rompers," dresses, and little hats that her children had outgrown, and, for myself, a dress I had often seen her wear. I argued with myself long that afternoon, and was able, when Stephen came in, to say to him—in a voice that was almost too calm—that we had had a piece of good fortune, and to show him the clothing.

He said nothing at all—just turned and walked out again, and didn't come back until supper-time. Then he said: "We must keep those things, of course."

I said, "Of course."

If we were obliged to keep on in our present way of living, the children could not grow into the strong, independent man and woman that I prayed nightly they might be. We must make some change, Stephen and I; and Stephen, without leaving the ministry, could not make it. So it must be for me to make the change. The salary my employment had brought me six years before came into my mind again and again.

My old way of life, with its freedom from the surveillance of others in small personal matters, was in my mind day before yesterday as I walked down a street near the store where I used to work, when I encountered Mr. Alden, the general manager. I did not expect, that he would recognize me, for I was older and shabby—I was not wearing Mrs. Lloyd's dress that day. But he stopped me with outstretched hand.

"Miss Chapin! That is, I mean Mrs.———"

"Andrews," I supplied.

"Yes. I had forgotten your married name; but this day I was going to look it up and write you a letter. Can you come up to my office with me for a moment?"

I went, fearing, hoping—I did not know what. On the way we chatted. I told him about my children. I could see he was appraising me; and, as soon as we were in his office, he made the offer plainly to me:

"I was going to write you about this: I have tried no fewer than eight women in your position since you left me, Mrs. Andrews. Every one of them has made a failure. If you care to come back to me,—either for an indefinite employment, or for two years in which you will find and train for me a successor,—I will pay you an advance of twenty per cent. over your last salary, and you will receive

every possible privilege as to hours, leave of absence in case of sickness or other emergency at home. You need not be in your office earlier than nine, and I believe it can be arranged that you can leave at five on week-days and at noon on Saturdays. What do you say?"

I didn't know what to say; but he must have seen me start as I thought of what I had the power to do. The five thousand dollars additional to Stephen's salary that I could earn in two years! How it would relieve everything, give us something in the bank, take away the worry and strain and constant fear of catastrophe! Mr. Alden, seeing my struggle, kindly inquired more about my affairs. I needed money, didn't I? Yes, desperately. Couldn't my mother or some one come and take care of the children when I was at work? Yes; my mother, though unable to help us in any other way, could do that. I could not flatter myself that my children would be under less efficient care for the next two years if my mother looked out for them during the day than if I did. It simply meant moving to an apartment with an extra room for her; and that expense would be nothing compared to what I could earn. Then, if I had to have money—I had admitted that—what was the obstacle?

"But, Mr. Alden, you have forgotten," I said at last. "I married a minister."

"Oh, I had forgotten!"

His manner changed at once. He was not less eager to employ me; he simply was less hopeful of it.

BUT why, I asked myself, why should this be? Why should I feel, or be made to feel, that because I am the wife of a minister I am not as free to help my husband and my children as I would be if Stephen were in other work? Is it because the church does employ me too, and has a just claim on all of my time? Why does it not pay me, then? Or, if it considers it is paying me now, why does it not give Stephen and me together better than a day laborer's wages?

If it is right for me—if it is expected of me—to cook and serve and sell food at church suppers to help pay my husband's salary, why is it that the plain proposal of my working downtown, at excellent pay and under dignified conditions, to help my husband directly, is certain to cause a scandal?

Mr. Alden has given me time to think it over and to let him know what I shall do. And what shall I do? Is it a false restriction that the wife of a minister—offered the opportunity to help her husband and to free herself and children from the degrading position of petty dependence—is not free to work for money save in the church parlors? Or am I free? Should I defy the restriction as false, and act as the wife of any one but a minister would? In plain words, what should I do?

Towing Cecil to a Smear

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Frank Snapp

JUST think! If it had turned out little different I might have been called to stand on a platform in front of City Hall while the Maya wished a Victoria Cross or something like that on me.

No, I ain't been nearer the front than Third Avenue, but at that I've come mighty near gettin' on the firin' line, and the only reason I missed out on pullin' a hero stunt was that Maggie wa'n't runnin' true to form.

It was like this. Here the other mornin', as I'm sittin' placid at my desk dictatin' routine correspondence into a wax cylinder that's warranted not to yank gum or smell of frangipani,—sittin' there dignified and a bit haughty, like a high born private sec. ought to, you know,—who should come paddin' up to my elbow but the main wheeze, Old Hickory Ellins.

"Son," says he, "can any of that wait?"

"Guess it wouldn't spoil, sir," says I switchin' off the duflicker.

"Good!" says he. "I think I can employ your peculiar talents to better advantage for the next few hours. I trust that you are prepared to face the British War Office?"

Suspectin' that he's about to indulge in his semiannual josh, I only grins expectant.

"We have with us this morning," he goes on, "one Lieutenant Cecil Fothergill just arrived from London. Perhaps you saw him as he was shown in half an hour or so ago?"

"The solemn-lookin' gink with the long face, one wanderin' eye, and the square set shoulders?" says I. "Him in the light tan ridin'-breeches and the black cutaway?"

"Precisely," says Mr. Ellins.

"Huh!" says I. "Army officer? I had him listed as a rail-bird from the Horse Show,"

"He presents credentials signed by General Kitchener," says Old Hickory. "He's looking up munition contracts. Not the financial end. Nor is he an artillery expert. Just exactly what he is here for I've failed to discover, and I am too busy to bother with him."

"I get you," says I. "You want him shunted."

Old Hickory nods.

"Quite delicately, however," he goes on. "The Lieutenant seems to have something on his mind—something heavy. I infer that he wishes to do a little inspecting,"

"Oh!" says I.

YOU see, along late in the summer, one of our Wall Street men had copped out a whalin' big shell-case contract for us, gaily ignorin' the fact that this was clean out of our line.

How Old Hickory did roast him for it at the time! But when he come to figure out the profits, Mr. Ellins don't do a thing but rustle around, lease all the stray factories in the market, from a canned gas plant in Bayonne to a radiator foundry in Yonkers, fit 'em up with the proper machinery, and set em' to turnin' out battle pills by the train-load.

"I gather," says Mr. Mills, "that the Lieutenant suspects we are not taking elaborate precautions to safeguard our munition plants from—well, Heaven knows what. So if you could show him around and ease his mind any it would be helpful. At least, it would be a relief to me just now. Come in and meet him."

My idea was to chirk him up at the start.

"Howdy, Lieutenant," says I, extendin' the cordial palm.

But both the Lieutenant's eyes must have been wanderin', for he don't seem to notice my friendly play.

"Ha-ar-r-r yuh," he rumbles from somewhere below his collar-button, and with great effort he manages to focus on me with his good lamp. For a single-barreled look-over, it's a keen one, too—like bein stabbed with a cheese-taster. But it's soon over, and the next minute he's listenin' thoughtful while Old Hickory is explainin' how I'm the one who can tow him around the munition shops.

"Torchy," Mr. Ellins winds up with, shootin' me a meanin' look from under his bushy eyebrows, "I want you to show the Lieutenant our main works."

"Eh?" says I, gawpin'. For he knew very well there wa'n't any such thing.

His left eyelid does a slow flutter.

"The main works, you understand," he repeats. "And see that Lieutenant Fothergill is well taken care of. You will find the limousine waiting."

"Yes, sir," says I. "I'm right behind you."

Course, if Mr. Robert had been there instead of off honeymoonin', this would have been his job. He'd have towed Cecil to his club, fed him Martinis and vintage stuff until he couldn't have told a 32-inch shell from an ash-can; handed him a smooth spiel about capacity, strain tests, shipping facilities, and so on, and dumped him at his hotel entirely satisfied that all was well, without having been off Fifth Avenue.

The best I can do, though, is to steer him into a flossy Broadway grill, shove him the wine-card with the menu, and tell him to go the limit.

He orders a pot of tea and a combination chop.

"Oh, say, have another guess," says I. "What's the matter with that squab casserole and something in a silver ice-bucket?"

"Thank you, no," says he. "I—er—my nerves, you know."

I couldn't deny that he looked it, either. Such a high-strung, jumpy party he is, always glancin' around suspicious. And that wanderin' store eye of his, scoutin' about on its own hook independent of the other, sort of adds to the general sleuthy effect. Kind of weird, too.

But I tries to forget that and get down to business.

"Surprisin', ain't it," 'says I, "how many of them shells can be turned out by—"

"S-s-s-sh!" says he, glancin' cautious at the omnibus-boy comin' to set up our table.

"Eh?" says I, after we've been supplied with rolls and sweet butter and ice water. "Why the panic?"

"Spies!" he whispers husky.

"What, him?" says I, starin' after the innocent-lookin' party in the white apron.

"There's no telling," says Cecil. "One can't be too careful. And it will be best, I think, for you to address me simply as Mr. Fothergill. As for the—er—goods you are producing, you might speak of them as—er—hams, you know."

I EXPECT I gawped at him some foolish. Think of springin' all that mystery dope right on Broadway! And, as I'm none too anxious to talk about shells anyway, we don't have such a chatty luncheon. I'm just as satisfied. I wanted time to think what I should exhibit as the main works.

That Bayonne plant wa'n't much to look at, just a few sheds and a spur

track. I hadn't been to the Yonkers foundry, but I had an idea it wa'n't much more impressive. Course, there was the joint on East 153d Street. I knew that well enough, for I'd helped negotiate the lease.

It had been run by a firm that was buildin' some new kind of marine motors, but had gone broke. Used to be a stove works, I believe.

Anyway, it's only a two-story cement block affair, jammed in between some car-barns on one side and a brewery on the other. Hot proposition to trot out as the big end of a six-million-dollar contract! But it was the best I had to offer, and after the Lieutenant had finished his Oolong and lighted a cigarette I loads him into the limousine again and we shoots uptown.

"HERE we are," says I, as we turns into a cross street just before it ends in the East River. "The main works," and I waves my hand around casual.

"Ah, yes," says he, gettin' his eye on the tall brick stack of the brewery and then lettin' his gaze roam across to the car-barns.

"Temporary quarters," says I. "Kind of miscellaneous, ain't they? Here's the main entrance. Let's go in here first." And I steers him through the office door of the middle buildin'. Then I hunts up the superintendent.

"Just takin' a ramble through the works," says I. "Don't bother. We'll find our way."

Some busy little scene it is, too, with all them lathes and things goin', belts whirrin' overhead, and workmen in undershirts about as thick as they could be placed.

I towed Cecil in and out of rooms, up and down stairs, until he must have been dizzy, and ends by leadin' him into the yard.

"Storage sheds," says I, pointin' to the neat rows of shell-cases piled from the ground to the roof. "And a dozen motor-trucks haulin' 'em away all the time."

The Lieutenant he inspects some of 'em, lookin' wise; and then he walks to the back, where there's a high board fence with barbed wire on top. "What's over there?" says he.

"Blamed if I know," says I.

"It's rather important," says he. "Let's have a look."

I didn't get the connection, but I helped him shove a packin'-case up against the fence, so he could climb up. For a minute or so he stares, then he ducks down and beckons to me.

"I say," he whispers. "Come up here. Don't show your head. There! What do you make of that?"

So I'm prepared for something tragic and thrillin'. But all I can see is an old slate-roofed house, one of these weather-beaten, dormer-windowed relics of the time when that part of town was still in the suburbs. There's quite a big yard in the back, with a few scrubby old pear trees, a double row of mangy box-bushes, and other traces of what must have been a garden.

In the far corner is a crazy old summer-house with a saggin' roof and the sides covered with tar paper. There's a door to it, fastened with a big red pad-lock.

Standin' on the back porch of the house are two of the help, so I judged. One is a square-built female with a stupid, heavy face, while the other is a tall, skinny old girl with narrow-set eyes and a sharp nose.

"Well," says I, "where's your riot?"

"S-s-s-sh!" says he. "They're up to some mischief. One of them is hiding something under her shawl. Watch."

Sure enough, the skinny one did have her left elbow stuck out, and there was a bulge in the shawl.

"Looks like a case of emptyin' the ashes," says I.

"Or of placing a bomb," whispers the Lieutenant.

"Mooshwaw!" says I. "Bomb your aunt! What for should they—"

"Look now!" he breaks in. "There!"

THEY'RE advancin' in single file, slow and stealthy, and gazin' around cautious. Mainly they seem to be watchin' the back fire-escapes of the flat buildin' next door, but now and then one of 'em

---

turns and glances towards the old house they've just left. They make straight for the shack in the corner of the yard, and in a minute more the fat one has produced a key and is fumblin' with the red padlock.

She opens the door only far enough to let the slim one slip in, then stands with her back against it, her eyes rollin' first one way and then the other.

Two or three minutes the slim one was in there, then she slides out, the door is locked, and she scuttles off towards the house, the wide one waddlin' behind her.

"My word!" gasps the Lieutenant. "Right against the wing of your factory, that shed is. And a bomb of that size would blow it into match-wood."

"That's so," says I.

Course, we hadn't really seen any bomb; but, what with the odd motions of them two females and the Lieutenant's panicky talk, I was feelin' almost jumpy myself.

"A time-fuse, most likely," says he, "set for midnight. That should give us several hours. We must find out who lives in that house."

"Ought to he simple," says I. "Come on."

We chases around the block and rings up the janitor of the flat buildin'. He's a wrinkled, blear-eyed old pirate, just on his way to the corner with a tin growler.

"Yah! You won't git in to sell him no books," says he, leerin' at us.

"Think so?" says I, displayin' a quarter temptin'. "Maybe if we had his name, though, and knew something about him, we might—"

"It's Bauer," says the janitor, eyein' the two bits longin'. "Herman Z. Bauer; a big brewer once, but now—yah, an old cripple. Gout, they say. And mean as he is rich. See that high fence? He built that to shut off our light—the swine! Bauer, his name is. You ask for Herman Bauer. Maybe you get in."

"Thanks, old sport," says I, slippin' him the quarter. "Give him your best regards, shall I?"

And as he goes off chucklin' the Lieutenant whispers hoarse:

"Hah! I knew it. Bauer, eh? And tonight he'll be sitting at one of those back windows, his ears stuffed with cotton, watching to see your plant blown up. We must have the constables here right away."

"On what charge?" says I. "That two of the kitchen maids was seen in their own back yard? You know you can't spring that safety-of-the-realm stuff over here. The police would only give us the laugh. We got to have something definite to tell the sergeant. Let's go after it."

"But I say!" protests Cecil. "Just how, you know?"

"Not by stickin' here, anyway," says I. "Kick in and use your bean, is my program. Come along and see what happens."

SO first off we strolls past and has a look at the place. It's shut in by a rusty iron fence with high spiked pickets. The house sets well back from the sidewalk, and the front is nearly covered by some sort of vine. At the side there are double gates openin' into a grass-grown drive-way.

I was just noticin' that they was chained and locked when the Lieutenant gives me a nudge and pulls me along by the coat sleeve. I gets a glimpse of the square-built female waddlin' around the corner of the house. We passes by innocent and hangs up in front of a plumber's shop, starin' in at a fascinatin' display of one bath-tub and a second-hand hot-water boiler. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I could see her scout up and down the street, unfasten the gate, and then disappear.

"Huh!" says I. "Kitchen comp'ny expected."

"Or more conspirators," adds Cecil. "By Jove! Isn't this one now?"

There's no denyin' he looked the part, this short-legged, long-armed, heavy-podded gent with the greasy old derby tilted rakish over one ear. Such a hard face he has, a reg'lar low-brow map, and a neck like a choppin'-block. His stubby legs are sprung out at the knees, and his arms have a good deal the same curve.

"Built like a dachshund, ain't he?" I remarks.

"Quite so," says Fothergill. "See, he's stopping! And he has a bundle under one arm."

"Overalls," says I. "Plumber, maybe."

"Isn't that a knife-handle sticking out of the end of the bundle?" asks the Lieutenant.

So it was; a butcher knife, at that. He has stopped opposite the double gates and is scowlin' around. Then he glances quick at the house. A side shutter opens just then and a dust-cloth is shaken vigorous. Seein' which, he promptly pushes through the gates.

"Ha!" says the Lieutenant. "A signal. He'll be the one to attach the fuse and light it, eh?"

WELL, I admit that up to that time I hadn't been takin' all this very serious, discountin' most of Cecil's suspicions as due to an overworked imagination. But now I'm beginnin' to feel thrills down my spine.

What if this was a bomb plot? Some sort of bunk was being put over here—no gettin' away from that. And if one of our shell factories was in danger of

being dynamited, here was my cue to make a medal play, wa'n't it?

"I am for telephoning the authorities at once," announces Cecil.

"Ah, you don't know our bonehead cops," says I. "Besides, if we can block the game ourselves, what's the use? Let's get 'em in the act. I'm going to pipe off our friend with the meat-knife."

"I—I've only a .34-caliber automatic with me," says the Lieutenant, reachin' into his side pocket.

"Well, you don't want a machine-gun, do you?" says I. "And don't go shootin' reckless. Here, lemme get on the other side. Close to the house, now, on the grass, until we can get a peek around the—"

"S-s-s-sh!" says Cecil, grippin' my arm.

He was strong on shushin' me up, the Lieutenant was. This time, though, he had the right dope; for a few steps more and we got a view of the back parch.

And there are the two maids, hand in hand, watchin' the motions of the squatty gent, who is unlockin' the summer-house. He disappears inside.

At that Cecil just has to cut loose. Before I can stop him, he's stepped out, pulled his gun, and is wavin' it at the two females.

"I say, now! Hands up! No nonsense," he orders.

"Howly saints!" wails the square built party, clutchin' the slim one desperate. "Maggie! Maggie!"

Maggie she's turned pale in the gills, her mouth is hangin' open, and her eyes are bugged; but she ain't too scared to put up an argument.

"Have yez a warrant?" she demands. "Annyways, my Cousin Tim Fealey'll go bail for us. An' if it was that Swede janitor next door made the complaint on us I'll—"

"Woman!" breaks in the Lieutenant. "Don't you know that you have been apprehended in a grave offense? You'd best tell all. Now, who put you up to this? Your master, eh?"

"Howly saints! Mr. Bauer!" groans the fat one.

"For the love of the saints, don't tell him!" says Maggie. "Don't tell Mr. Bauer, there's a dear. It was off'm Cousin Tim we got it."

"That miscreant in the shed there?' asks the Lieutenant.

"Him?" says Maggie. "Lord love ye, no. That's only Schwartzenberger, from the slaughter-house. And please, Mister, it'll be gone the mornin'—ivry bit gone."

"Oh, will it!" says Cecil sarcastic. "But you'll be in prison first."

"Wurra! Wurra!" moans the fat female. "Save us, Maggie! Let him have it for the takin's."

"I will not, then," says Maggie. "Not if he's the prisident of the Board of Health himself."

"Enough of this," says the Lieutenant. "Hands up, you bomb plotters!"

But about then I'd begun to acquire the hunch that we might be makin' a slight mistake, and that it was time for me to crash in. Which I does.

"Excuse me," says I; "but maybe it would help, Maggie, if you'd say right out what it is you've got in the shed there."

"What is ut?" says she, tossin' her head defiant. "As though you didn't know! Well, it's a pig, then."

"A pig!" sneers the Lieutenant. "Very likely, that is!"

"Yez didn't think it was a hip-pot-tamus, did ye?" comes back Maggie. "An' why should you be after botherin' us with your health ordinances—two poor girls that has a chance to turn a few pennies, with pork so dear? 'Look at all that good swill goin' to waste,' says I to Katie here. 'An' who's to care if I do boil some extra praties now an' then? Mr. Bauer's that rich, ain't he? An' what harm at all should there be in raisin' one little shoat in th' back yard?' So there, Mister! Do your worst. An' maybe it's only a warnin' I'll get from th' justice when he hears how Schwartzenberger's killed and dressed and taken him off before daylight. There he goes, the poor darlint! That's his last squeal."

We didn't need to stretch our ears to catch it. I looks over at the Lieutenant and grins foolish. But he wouldn't be satisfied until Maggie had towed him out to view the remains. He's pink behind the ears when he comes back, too.

"Please, Mister Inspector," says Maggie, "you'll not have us up this time, will yez?"

"Bah!" says Cecil.

"Seein' it's you," says I, "he won't. Course, though, a report of this plot of yours'll have to be made to the British War Office."

"Oh, I say now!" protests the Lieutenant.

And all the way down to his hotel he holds that vivid neck tint.

"WELL," says Old Hickory, as I drifts hack to the office, "did you and the Lieutenant discover any serious plot of international character?"

"Sure thing!" says I. "We found a contraband Irish pig in Herman Bauer's back yard."

"Wha-a-at?" he demands.

"If the pig had been a bomb, and its tail a time fuse," says I, "it would have wrecked our main works. As it is, we've had a narrow escape. But I don't think Cecil will bother us any more. He's too good for the army, anyway. He ought to be writin' for the movies."

Foreign Movies Made in the U.S.A.

Please, Mister, Let Us Vote

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Making the Great White Way White

By LOUISE EBERLE

THERE used to be only one Great White Way in the United States; now there are thousands. The Great White Way ever has spread like a case of measles in a public school. The out-skirts of Smithtown and Jonesville may still be dark—so dark that one runs a fifty-fifty chance of breaking a leg if he ventures out unguided. But Main Street—that's a different story. For two blocks Main Street is a perfect blaze of glory. "This," says the proud resident, guiding the visitor through in his runabout—"this is our Great White Way."

Meantime the father of them all, New York's Broadway, glitters on, using up four or five or more thousand dollars' worth of electric light each night. Seven hundred thousand people walk nightly under the glare of those lights, and say "Broadway has a new sign" in just the same way that an astronomer would exclaim, "There is a new star in the heavens!"

When Roofs Were Only Roofs

TEN years ago the matter of leasing roof space for a sign on Broadway was easy; for roofs were only roofs. But when signs with action were introduced—the Chariot Race, and the famous skirt that defied the rain for so many years at the corner of 42d Street and Broadway—a desirable roof space climbed to $5000 yearly. When the signs invaded Times Square—and the Great White Way became the world's biggest splurge—a certain landlord's specially fine location jumped to $18,000 one year and $30,000 the next.

But that isn't all. One advertising company is paying $5000 a year for a roof that it never intends to use, simply in order to keep off other signs which, if put up by some one else, would cut off one of its client's signs, and so break the contract that calls for an unintercepted view.

After the lease is secured by an advertiser, the city must be dealt with. The fire commissioner must be satisfied as to the safety of the projected sign; another official must know what the wind pressure on it will be. Once sign-builders contemplated mixing their electric bulbs with the stars; but a limit of seventy feet has been set on their aspirations. Another consideration is the distance between sign and roof, the fire department demanding free walking space for its men. Last, the sign must not be too heavy for the structure it is to rest upon. The steel supports of the building must be located, and the sign be built upon them. On one occasion these couldn't be found, and the building commissioner made the company run its own supports clear down, embedded in the outer wall of the building.

Meanwhile the new sign in the zodiac of big business is being manufactured in a shop. A life size (or rather sign size) blue-print is made for a pattern, from which the sign itself is cut in sheet tin. This is painted, stayed, the holes cut for bulbs, the supports made, and nearly every detail completed. You don't often notice men working at an electric sign. The reason is the rapidity with which they go up after leaving the shop. One of the biggest—sixty by a hundred feet—went up between Monday morning and Tuesday night, when its 3500 bulbs flashed out the latest instalment in big business's perpetual thriller.

How do they work—these signs? Some gravely surmise that a man stands behind each one to manipulate the changes—or that there's a regular switchboard with

an operator somewhere. The operator, however, is a metal box a few feet long, that dwells in commonplace dustiness on the roof. Inside is simply a row of inch-thick metal disks revolving on a single axis. Here and there a bit of each disk's rim is cut away. As the disks revolve and a contact is made or broken, the result in the box is a green flash and a staccato snarl. But above the great sign flashes out its part in Broadway's incantation.

A button pressed down somewhere in the building has started and will stop the whole thing. And a meter equally inconspicuous records the sign's appetite for "juice." One sign eats thirty dollars' worth every night. If that makes you tremble, then let me add that the advertising firm with the largest number of electric signs to its credit has on its Broadway displays, between Twenty-third and Fifty-ninth streets, 50,000 bulbs. Of course it gets its electricity at a whole-sale rate, but you can estimate the bill by figuring on the basis of your own bill per month for the ten bulbs in your apartment, and then multiplying by 5000, allowing for the fact that the signs are lighted continuously from a half hour after sun-set till twelve-thirty.

Watching for Trouble

THERE is a picturesque job held by two men who start each evening from opposite ends of the Great White Way, meet in the middle, and go back over their beats till the magic hour of half after midnight. These watchers look out for two things—flaws in operation, and renewals. Do you remember the lady of Herald Square whose skirts flapped in the rain? Well, one night that rain started to fall upward—and there was a quick call for the emergency squad.

Another sign had an unprecedented number of breakages. The watcher mounted to the roof: he had not long to wait after the sign was lighted. Pop! went one bulb; bang! another; zip! a third.

Still nothing could be detected until the watcher stopped and rested his puzzled eyes on a hotel across the street. There, in an open window, stood a man with an air-gun, improving his marksmanship on this marvelous target.

Never Mind the Cost

SEVEN hundred thousand people save electric light at home by promenading up and down in the free glare of Broadway. Are they all New Yorkers? Not by any means. Sooner or later, every man, woman, and child in the United States is drawn to that flaming path like moths to a blazing candle.

A traveler who would stand long enough in Times Square would ultimately meet all his friends from everywhere. That is why Broadway is more than a diagonal bisector of Manhattan, more than a street, more than a five-mile-long sign-board. It is a personality.

And what do we care how much it costs? It's worth it. It is America's sign-board, the most striking spectacle the foreigner sees—an advertisement to the world of the big, brilliant, glorious way in which things are done on our side.

The cities of the Old World are dark with war and fear; but the Great White Way is still white.

Behind the Bolted Door?

By ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

Illustration by Henry Raleigh

The Characters:

JUDGE BISHOP, Mrs. Fisher's lawyer. DOCTOR LANEHAM, her physician. Miss DAPHNE HOPE, a lawyer in the Judge's office. Mr. WALTER WILLINGS, a settlement worker and friend of Miss Hope. McGLOYNE, Chief of Detectives.

IT was characteristic of Laneham that before he slept that night he had already arranged, so far as was humanly possible, to free himself of all professional duties for the next ten days. Fortunately, he could turn things over to McMaster, of his Hartsdale sanatorium, with an almost easy mind.

It was no less characteristic of him that, before he had risen next morning, he had already begun to arrange and classify the ghastly data of the night before as if for a hospital record. A pad and pencil lay on his dressing-table, and, as he went to and fro, from time to time he made a jotting. Who had killed Mrs. Fisher? In the end his pad showed roughly this:

BY the time he had finished his memorandum sounds below told him that Miss Hope and Willings, his two "special deputies," had arrived. He heard Jacobs, his man, and Mrs. Neilson, his housekeeper, installing them. Number 390 was a big, well appointed house. There was no good reason why they should not be at least physically at ease.

He met them on the stairs, and led them over side by side and sat them down on the big leather window-seat.

"Well, you're here. And you've forgiven me that Zancray stuff?"

"I guess so," said D. Hope.

"I knew you would. And how do your settlement people take it that you're going to leave them and move up here with me?"

"They knew it was better for us to leave—for a while, at least. And then, they know you, too."

"Thank you. And the pater?"

"He's in Japan somewhere," Miss Hope replied. "They all are. And they won't hear of it for another month."

"Which, I should say, is just as well!"

Both of the young people looked very quiet and businesslike. The girl, deep-breasted, supple, free of limb, was almost the larger. But Willings' big round glasses were accompanied by any amount of clean, tanned sinew; and, with the humor in his face, there was all the pluck and spirit needed.

"The first thing," said the Doctor, speaking first to him, "is, how far are we to let the lady go in this?"

"Why," she asked, "what do you mean?"

"Simply this. Part, at least, of what's ahead is likely to be the old business of bad men in this city of adventures. And, after all, you are a woman, you know."

"Now, Doctor, listen." One thing D. Hope possessed was a faculty for looking straight at people and speaking in the same way. And she spoke so now. "I settled all that forever the first week I was down in Hudson Street, when I got into one of those West Side gang fights we have down there. I didn't know what it was at first. All I saw was a young fellow come bursting out of a crowd. I thought he was wearing a big red neck-tie. But it wasn't a neck-tie. And two others were after him, and more behind, yelling at them to 'make it a job.' He ran into a store—a delicatessen shop. Of course, like any girl if she lets herself, I began telling myself that I must get away—that I mustn't even dream of interfering. And then I thought: 'Yes, and isn't that just exactly why we've always been an inferior sex—and we have been! And if I could do anything at all, even the littlest thing'—"

"I'll tell the rest," said Willings. "When I came along, I found her standing in the door of that delicatessen store, with the biggest ham knife. And if any of those tough guys had really tried to pass!"

"All right!" said Laneham. "I surrender. Say no more. And I'll tell you now what I want you to do first."

WHEN Judge Bishop arrived, he was just finishing:

"There were only a few charred bits of paper. I picked them out of one of the grates up there at the

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Fisher apartment. Just one word was readable, up in the left-hand corner of the page—in good big advertising type. That word was M-U-N-D. The paper looked like the cover of a magazine. And because mund is a German word you'd better try the German book-stores first of all. See if there's a copy of a magazine in town with M-U-N-D in big letters up in one corner."

"Well!" said the Judge. "Well! At any rate, you sound professional enough. And what's the answer?"

"Bishy, if you won't mind too much, I don't believe I'll tell you."

"What?"

"I don't believe I'll tell you. Because probably I'm wrong. At the start, at least, I'll probably be wrong four times out of five. Yesterday you were just Lawyer Bishop, an odd friend. Today you're District Attorney of the city, and it won't help a lot to gum you up along with me."

"Add right, Laney, whatever you think. It's just as you say."

"But there's something I can tell you"; and Laneham's tone became almost solemn again. "It's practically certain that the awful voice we heard in there was the same that sent my hurry call."

"No?"

"No question. I've just heard from Miss McCollum—in my lower office, you know. The call came in to her. The words used were simple enough: I was merely to come at once. But she says the voice was one she'll never forget. She imitated it for me."

"My Lord! But, at any rate, that's something learned."

And they went up to the Casa Grande together.

THEY went, first, because they had to attend the coroner's inquest.

It was the customary inquest, too. It called attention to the obvious and shut its eyes to all that was not. But it at least made it possible for the poor body to be removed. The funeral was to be on the morrow, from the Fisher country place at Greenwich. And after the inquest Laneham and the Judge again moved out to the corridor together.

"Well, Laney, what now?"

"'Till further notice, it's the butler, Jimmy. But first I must try to put myself right with McGloyne."

"McGloyne! The saints help you! Now that he knows you even have official credentials, he'll eat, sleep, and dive to keep you from getting anything."

"Maybe so; but I must play the game."

In his pocket and on his conscience was the murder note he had picked up in the apartment. He pulled it out as he walked and glanced at it again. At the top, in fine, clear script:

We have now reached the point where it must be either murder or suicide.

And beneath, in the writing which Judge Bishop had identified as Mrs. Fisher's own:

Couldn't it be made to look like an accident?

What did it mean? Whose hand, so well trained, so unshaken, hed penned the fatal lines at the top of the sheet?

If the big Chief of Detectives showed the first sign of reciprocity, he intended to show that note to him. And, with all the tact that was in him, he began to explain himself.

He told McGloyne that he had been asked to help in the case simply because of special medical and psychopathic knowledge. His only desire was to he useful; perhaps they might be able to help each other. And, for his part, he wanted to ask now if the Identification Bureau had as yet given anything—on either the Fisher butler or Maddalina, the maid?

It was rather a long speech. And McGloyne waited, half-staring at him, till he had finished. Then, without answering, he laughed, turned away, and began to talk to one of his lieutenants.

The insult was gross enough, but only as a last resort did Laneham intend to go over his head to Bishop or the Commissioner. It still remained to be seen just how far the big Inspector's powers extended.

BEFORE an hour was over he might well have decided that they amounted to something very like complete blockade.

He wanted a set of floor-plans, both for the Casa Grande and the Casa Reale, its annex. Though without either door or elevator connections, both were simply halves of the same building. And he made his request at the renting office.

He was refused, absolutely—"under orders just issued by the Detective Bureau."

He tried to talk to one of the house men. Did he know, asked the Doctor, whether Jimmy, the butler, had any friends? Would he recognize them if he saw them?

The man would not answer. He too had had his orders. And they were orders that had mentioned him, Laneham, in particular.

He went to the woman across the court, a Mrs. Deremeaux. It was she who had heard the argument in Mrs. Fisher's apartment that afternoon, and the voice crying "See! See!" and "No, no, no!" Would she know the voices of the Fisher servants?

But Mrs. Deremeaux, too, had been warned: she refused to speak a word.

There was still the matter of tracing his hurry call. And, visiting the local telephone exchange, he showed his credentials and asked to see the record. They had it, of course?

"Oh, certainly. But they were very sorry, there was an order against it."

"An order?"

"Yes, and it had just been repeated. But no doubt he could get the information he wanted by going where the order had come from."

"Which was—?"

"Why, of course, the Detective Department."

"All right," he told himself. "It's about time, in any case, that I was trying something from what Bishop calls my own bag of tricks."

And, back at the Casa Grande, he went first to those private rooms of Professor Fisher's. Apparently he wished only to look again at the fireplace where he had found the paper ashes. But they were gone now; all had been swept clean.

He turned, and, following the corridor, went on to Mrs. Fisher's rooms. Whatever his object there, it took him through the library where, the night before, tho two Central Office men had begun turning out the drawers of Mrs. Fisher's odd Washington desk.

They were now at it again. They were opening bundle after bundle of her correspondence. And at one side they had piled the yellow indexed boxes of what was evidently a sort of little household-accounts filing cabinet.

It was that, indeed, which brought the Doctor to a halt.

"If you're after stuff on the high cost of livin'," said one of those "C.O.'s,"—and there was a jeer in his voice which said that here, too, Laneham had been expected,—"there's a bunch o' evidence there."

"Thanks," responded the Doctor.

Picking one of the yellow fires from the heap, he began to leaf it over.

It contained what any one would have looked for in it—the receipted bills of butcher and baker, of florist and decorator.

Yet, when Laneham put it down, he took up another. Then, on a sudden, his face seemed to change and fill. He looked at those Central Office men. They were no longer observing him. Cautiously he went back to one section of that first file. And five minutes later, with eyes that shone subduedly, he was at a telephone.

He first got in touch with his two "special deputies"—or arranged through Jacobs to do it when next they should call up again.

Then he got Bishop. Could he come in again that night, he asked him—any time after ten?

Promptly at ten that night the Judge appeared.

"Well?" he said heartily, before he had thrown off his coat, "is there anything on Jimmy yet?"

"A little. He was employed last by a Mrs. Morson Dillingham, now diving at the Sorrento, in East Eighty-fourth Street. He is almost certain to go back to her. In fact, he may have been there already, but I think not. And, if not, he will probabdy call about this time tonight or tomorrow night. In any case, Willings and D. Hope are watching now."

Bishop laid down his cigar with a kind of fixed deliberation.

"And how, Laney, how! If you'll just begin with the explanation—"

But at that moment the telephone broke in on them, and Laneham turned. It was D. Hope.

"Doctor! Doctor!" she was crying. "He's in there now. And Mr. Willings is up at the garage. But I've called him, and he's coming with the runabout!"

SINCE afternoon, the day had been clouding up for more snow. And by evening the snow had begun to come. But the Doctor had arranged cover for his watchers. Directly opposite the Sorrento is a little French millinery, "La Belde Bergere." Though apparently it was closed and deserted for the night, actually it was not. On both sides of the Sorrento entrance are big pillar lights. And from the curtained window of La Belle Bergere one could see as well as from outside.

For the last fifteen minutes Miss Daphne Hope had been maintaining the watch from that window alone. And then suddenly she had caught her breath with a great start.

It was Jimmy. He was wearing unknown clothes, and he had shaved off his mustache. But much difference that could make! He had chosen to approach the Sorrento from Miss Hope's side of the street—had passed so near, indeed, that with the window open she could have touched him. And, taking hold of herself, she ran for the Belle Bergere telephone.

Fortunately, she got Willings almost at once. Next, following orders, she sent word to the Doctor. And after that, as if determined, if need be, to make the capture alone, she hurried to the street.

She kept her own side of the street, because she must not attract attention. She forced hersclf to walk first to the Avenue corner; then, against the drive of snow and wind, back toward the elevated again, and then—but never really losing sight of that Sorrento entrance—once more toward the Avenue. And, just as again she came opposite, Mr. "Owly" Widdings and the runabout arrived.

She had only to nod. "He's in there now." The car turned sharply. In the snow-cleared space at the curb, another car, a big limousine, was waiting. But there was room for the runabout behind it.

"Better get inside and cover up," said Willings, "and let me talk to him alone."

So they waited, their hearts beating fast—two minutes—three—four—ten. Then suddenly from the doorway of the Sorrento Jimmy came out.

Now, at no time was Walter Willings the sort of young man who acts without a plan. From the Doctor, moreover, he had received advice as to certain things he hadn't thought of for himself. And as the little butler started to pass him, "Jimmy!" he said, "Jimmy!"

But there was one thing that neither the Doctor nor Willings had thought of; and that was the one thing Jimmy did.

At the first sound of his name he had jumped back, his eyes staring. Then, as he recognized Willings, "H'all right!" he cried—"h'all right! But I'll never be took alive!" And, with a whimpering leap, he threw himself at Willings' throat. From the very impact, Willings was overbalanced; and, getting his foot behind him, the little Cockney threw him headlong into the snow-piled gutter.

From the big limousine ahead there leaped a large and bear-skinncd chauffeur.

"Hi, what's the excitement?" And immediately Jimmy flung himself at him.

"An' you too, then, by Gord, you too!"

"Cripes, what you at?" The man fell hastily back into the Sorrento doorway. Seeing him do it,—even as if he planned it so,—the little butler jumped to the empty driving-seat of that big limousine, threw the power on, and was away. No time to call for help. Willings, once more on his feet, could only pitch himself to the wheel of the runabout, and launch it in the big ear's wake.

BEHIND him there dwindled the shouts of the bear-skinned chauffeur. In Willings' face was a whirl of snow that was fast becoming a blizzard. But, ahead, the big car had now whipped south into the Avenue. How to stop it? That was the only question. He knew already he was gaining. The runabout had the speed. But would mere speed be enough? The big limousine turned and again speeded eastward into the dark and tunnel-like narrowness of a side street. Then Willings, suddenly remembering, dropped his hand into his side pocket, into which the Doctor had slipped a little blue steel automatic. At the same moment he felt a soft weight press his shoulder. It was D. Hope drawing herself perilously over, and letting herself down into the seat beside him. And, as if her mind had been a part of his, "Shoot at his rear tires, she said—"as soon as there's light enough again. And let me drive!"

The limousine passed under the elevated, skidded from a glacier of ice and snow, shot south for a block, and turned riverward again in another empty, storm-swept side street. But it was at least lighter. The little car closed up through the flying spindrift. D. Hope's hands came down upon the wheel, and unyieldingly took charge of it. And, with a queer feeling of being in the movies, Willings brought his gun into play and began to shoot.

From a group seen blurrily in a door-way as they flicked by, there came a yell.

But he shot again.

This time, too, the driver of the big limousine heard him. And under the next electric he turned back a face of sick-white desperation. Moreover, it was evident he was in a part of the town he didn't know. For, following his present course, he must soon run into a cul-de-sac and trap himself between the river and the new market.

Again Willings fired. And another yell from a lone pedestrian, head down against the gale. But they were a block nearer the dock-front. If, now, their man did not turn south again—

He did not. Even after he had seen the trap before him, he still kept crazily on. Along the whole water-side no soul seemed to be moving save themselves. The runabout closed up once more, drew alongside. D. Hope held them steady by the wheel, and again Willings fired.

It was as if the explosion of the bursting tire had drowned the report of the gun itself. The big car dropped, slewed to the right, and finished, snow-stalled against a damp-post. But, as the little butler threw himself out on the other side, the light from that lamp again let them see his face. And they knew then why he had taken them almost straight for the river.

"You'll never!" he cried wildly as he ran, lurching and swaying, and no longer did he seem to know them. "Gord 'e knows I'm h'innocent. But I done my seven years 'ard for being h'innocent once before. An' never—I'll never be took again for that! Not till you can stop me drown!"

He had reached the string-piece of the nearest pier. And there he turned again.

"Keep h'off, now, keep h'off!"

But, when Willings still came on—"H'all right!" he cried, with one last, wretched, animal-to-its-torturers quiver, —"I'm done!" And he plunged over.

It was not till afterward that Miss D. Hope knew why Mr. "Owly" Willings halted for the bare two seconds that he did. But it was only to get his glasses off. Then, poising, he dived clear. The girl herself was ready to follow. But she still kept a feminine clear-headedness which bade her first to pause at least a second to use her eyes. And then she saw that almost directly beneath them was a dock

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ladder. As if there had been no such detriment as skirts, she dropped down it. Hand over hand she went, till she was waist-deep. Between two big pieces of slush ice, but within seizing distance, Willings had come up again. And she caught him by the shoulder, even as he had just managed to catch Jimmy.

Yet the little butler was still trying to fight them off.

"Let me die, I tell you! Let me die! Ain't it no proof to you—that—that I'm 'ere to die?"

"Yes, Jimmy; yes, indeed it is! And I never believed you did it, from the start!"

It was D. Hope who said that. By now, too, she had got her arm around him.

"We're not the police, you know," choked Willings, getting an arm around him from the other side. "They're accusing us, too. Come back with us now—and we'll all of us—help each other."

Persuaded or not, Jimmy no longer had the strength to resist, and was fast falling into complete collapse. But they got his feet upon the steps; and, foot by foot, they thrust him up.

Over the string-piece there now leaned a staring bargeman.

"Gosh!" he said. "Gosh! What's the racket? Was he drivin' tanked?"

"No," panted Willings. "He just wanted some ice for his exhaust."

"Say!" said the man. "Well, he sure wanted it dang bad!"

Bedraggled, and with their oozy garments already beginning to freeze, they got Jimmy back to the runabout and lifted him in.

"Now you," said Willings, turning to the girl.

"No," she cried. "No, you. I'm going to drive. I look all right, up above; but you'd be stopped by the first policeman. The engine'll keep me warm, too. Get in, and cover up—both of you—to the chin."

And, in the end, when he had seen to it that she herself was wrapped in the biggest robe, he did.

By then, though, half a dozen other gaping longshoremen had come up.

"But, hell!" one of them asked, "who owns the other car?"

"An old friend of ours named Dinnis," answered Willings, without batting an eye. "Just tell him we'll see him later."

Meanwhile, behind the wheel, D. Hope was raising a hand of entreaty and command. "Please. You're in our way, you know."

And, with one long, triumphant hoot, the little runabout was on its way back through the storm to 390.

Whatever the little butler had to tell of the things that had taken place behind those bolted doors of the Casa Grande, they were soon to know.

More than that, the story of that night itself, which by now might well have seemed to be nearing its end, was in reality only just beginning.

To be continued next week

Personality, Etc.

By OCTAVUS ROY COHEN

Illustrations by Nell Hatt

"MY Gawd, lookit this!"

Blanche Carroll, senior member of the sister act, Carroll & La Grange, singers, dancers, and nut comediennes, indignantly waved under the retrousse nose of her partner a typewritten letter from Al Wilton, booking agent.

"Lookit," she quavered, with great and righteous wrath. "Jus' look. It ain't enough for 'em to shoot us down here where we gotta put on three shows a day, but—but—" And she choked.

Edyth La Grange reluctantly lifted her gaze from the pages of the magazine she held and glanced with some annoyance at the letter.

"No use gettin' huffy about it," she remarked evenly. "We're gettin' a hundred and fifty, and me, for one, ain't got no kick comin'. I'll play four shows if they'll come across all right and proper."

"But—but you don't—understand."

"No?"—penciled eyebrows arched interrogatively.

"It—it ain't the three per I'm kicking about. I knew that when they booked us South. It's—this!"

Once more the letter was waved challengingly, and Miss La Grange dog-eared the magazine and sat on it.

"Well," she encouraged, "shoot!"

"THESE here things," explained Miss Carroll, "are the dates for the next seven weeks which was sent me by Al Wilton. Sumpin' new, too, sending the dates ahead for the whole show. There's three acts which plays together for five weeks: Birmingham, Atlanta, Savannah, Jacksonville, an' Noo Orle'ns. One of em's us; one's Carsey's Seals; an' t'other—t'other—"

"Yes?"—encouragingly.

"Is Bill Colson."

"Bill Colson?"

"Yeh." Blanche whirled to face her partner. "D'yuh mean t' say," she shrilled, "that after bein' with me for forty-six weeks you ain't never heard of Bill Colson? Answer me that, Edyth, answer me that!"

"No." Edyth stifled a yawn. "I ain't never heard you mention him. He's a nut comedian or sumpin' like that, ain't he?"

"Yes, he is, is he? An' some nut! An' You never heard of him?"

"Certainly not." Miss La Grange met her partner's eyes squarely. "Whatever's eating you, Blanche? I ain't seen you so excited since that orchestra leader queered your dance up in Chi. You honest seem mad that I ain't ever heard of Bill Colson, 'ceptin' his ad in the professional papers. I just ain't never worked on the bill with him, that's all."

"I suppose," quivered Miss Carroll, with concentrated sarcasm, "that you ain't never heard I was oncet married!"

"Well—yes."

"Well—" There came a dramatic pause. "He's him!"

"No!"

"Uh-huh."

"Your husband?"

"My ex-husband—thank Gawd!"

"I see."

"No, yuh don't see. Yuh can't. Al Wilton always has had some sort of a grudge against me. Last season he bills me for seven weeks with Hardin's Trained Rats, him knowin' that I'm scared with rats anywhere around, an' what was the result? I lost my voice and the act went rotten—plumb rotten. I had to fake every curtain. Then, in one burg—Kenosha, I think it was—some fool manager put them on to close an' me right ahead of 'em. I could hear the little beasts squeaking—an'—well, it just crabbed my whole ac', that's what."

"That," decided Miss La Grange, "was probably coincidence."

"Coincidence nothing! It was down-right meanness, that's what it was. No later than two months ago I was out with Al, an' tellin' him all about how me an' Bill ain't been speakin' to each other since we was divorced—an' here he goes an' routes us together. It wouldn't be so bad for a week. But five! An' Jacksonville an' Noo Orle'ns both Sunday towns. An' there ain't such a bunch of railroads down this part of the country that yuh kin pick y'r train. We'll be stickin' closer'n a brother to Bill for five weeks, an' it's gonna be rotten."

"Well,"—Miss La Grange extracted her magazine and opened it eagerly,—"what's done's done. It jus' can't be helped." And she took up the thread of the story where it had been left off.

Miss Carroll froze haughtily.

"A swell sympathizer you are!" she vouchsafed icily.

FOLLOWING the divorce proceedings of Colson vs. Colson, in which cruelty and incompatibility were alleged by complainant "of her own knowledge," Bill Corson had gone "single." Coming at a time when first-class nut comedians were at a premium, he made a sensation.

Bill was a man of some education, a great deal of perception, and an inexhaustible fund of ready wit. So it was that he had prevailed on the booking agent to instruct every house manager to place him next to the close on the five- and seven-act bills of the Southern section of the circuit.

IT was said of him that vaudeville patrons could witness his act three shows a day for six days and never hear the same thing twice. A natural mimic, he convulsed his audience with "throw-offs" on the acts that preceded him. And the self-congratulations of the last act on the fact that it followed him usually died after the first show; for Bill invariably explained to the house just what was coming—and did it in such a way that, no matter how serious the closing act, it brought howls of laughter from the house.

Kicks, many and frenzied, had been registered with various managers at the houses he played; but the answer was always the same:

"Them people pay their money to laugh, an' Bill Colson makes 'em laugh. You ain't got no kick comin' if he saves a bum act."

And so infectious was his good nature that by the second day of his week's run the other acts were flocking to his dressing-room for a smoke or a friendly chat. One couldn't stay angry with him for long.

With Blanche Carroll things had been different. Blanche had the makings of an excellent nut comedienne, an ability that had flourished mightily under Bill's tutelage, and gradually she had come to the point where she had balked against acting as feeder for his wit. One fatal day she told him so. Bill's reply was sarcastic and to the point: he remarked that he was just carrying her because she was his wife; explained that he could draw as much as a single as in team work; told her that she never would have been worth a cent if it hadn't been for him, and that she wasn't worth much more than that now—and that if she wanted to break away to go to it. She did.

It was during the divorce proceedings that Blanche had discovered Edyth La Grange in songs and dances on the four-a-day. She was keen enough to see that Edyth had that rarest and most valuable of all theatrical blessings, a personality, and that she was, in addition thereto, blessed with an unusually fine soprano voice.

The approach was made and the team was formed. They mapped out their act, bought some new patter from a professional vaudeville writer, made a tremendous hit on their try-out, and within eight weeks were playing several weeks on the Big Time. Then had come a trip over the Western circuit, and now they were booked through the Middle and Eastern South. They were billed as "Carroll & La Grange, the Personality Pair."

ARRIVED in Birmingham, they went direct to the Molton Hotel. And half a page up the register was the signature of Bill Colson. The tiny fists of the senior personality girl balled and her fine white teeth ground together.

"If he tries to queer my act—" she muttered belligerently, as an obsequious bell-hop led them to the elevator. "If he tries to queer my act—"

They learned that there was a rehearsal next morning at eleven o'clock, a matinee scheduled for two-thirty, and evening performances at seven-thirty and nine-fifteen.

On their arrival at the theater, they found the other members of the bill present, talking more or less excitedly to the stage manager, the electrician, and the

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orchestra loader. Bill Colson alone appeared unconcerned. He sat on a property chair near the wings, indulging in a dry smoke. As his former wife swept disdainfully past him he merely smiled, and then, when she could not fail to hear him, he distinctly said: "Howdy, Blanche!"

Save for a tightening of the lips, Blanche did not answer. It was the first time since the divorce proceedings that she had laid eyes on her former life partner, and he looked disgustingly happy and well groomed for a desolate man. She had been mad enough when she entered the theater: she was more angry now. The cause of her initial anger had been the program hung in the lobby. It billed her second. Bill Colson was fourth, next to the close. The house manager saw her coming and tentatively put up his guard. He was credited with having once remarked that he'd rather face a rampant 40-centimeter gun than a woman with a grouch.

"Is this Mr. Gross?" she asked icily.

THE other performers looked at her curiously. Even Carsey's trained seals turned to inspect her.

"The same," returned the house manager, extending his hand with an appearance of cordiality.

"I'm Blanche Carroll of Carroll & La Grange. I wanna know why we're billed second."

"Why, you see, it's this way," he explained placatingly. "There're just five acts on the bill, and three of 'em's full stage. You're in one an' Bill Colson is the other act in one. By the way, lemme introduce Mr. Colson."

He turned to Bill, who had sauntered idly over. Blanche favored her former spouse with a glance that would have withered a less torrid disposition.

"I've met Mister Colson," she snapped.

"Is that so?"

"Yeh," drawled Bill. "That's so. Honest. Y' see, she used to be my wife."

The gathering snickered audibly, and the color rose high in Blanche's cheeks.

"I didn't know—"

"I wish t' Gawd I didn't, either," parried the woman. Whereupon Bill whistled the opening bars of "The man who wrote that Home Sweet Home never was a married man." More laughter from the professionals on the stage.

"There's two acts in one on the bill," pursued Miss Carroll, her temper getting the better of her. "One of 'em's a single. Ours is a team act. I demand that we go on fourth."

"Demand" had always been the wrong word to use when asking favors of Ike Gross. His jaw squared and his eye flashed just the least bit of fire.

"You seen the billin' in the lobby?" he asked.

"I did."

"Well, she goes as she's written. Understand?"

"But—"

"There ain't no 'buts,' Miss Carroll. I'm manager of this here house, an' I'm gonna be manager. You can go on or not, as you want. Judkins & Conover are laid over here for a week, an' I can fill any hole which might be made in my program. Get that?"

"But—"

"What's the answer? Do you go on second—or stay off the bill?"

"I—I—"

"Which?"

"We'll go on," interpolated Edyth La Grange sweetly. "She's just a little excited."

"So I see," answered the manager. Then, to Blanche: "If you're going on, get busy with your rehearsal. I wanna look the act over. No off stuff goes in this house. We got the commission form of government, an' they don't stand for it."

"My act," sizzled Blanche, fighting hard to retain some shred of dignity, "is a clean one. I leave dirty jokes an' such things for certain nut comedians whose names I ain't mentioning, but who queers any bill they're in." She leaned over the footlights and handed her music to the orchestra leader. "Here's the score. That 'Lovey-Dovey' stuff is the opener.

The cue for 'Everybody Loves Chicken' is when I say—"

AT the conclusion of the Monday matinee the Misses Carroll & La Grange took two legitimate curtains and hurried to their dressing-room, where, in a remarkably short space of time, they divested themselves of their stage raiment, rubbed off the grease-paint, and started for the stage door. But as they crossed the space beyond the wings they heard a howl of daughter from the audience. Then they saw the stage-hands moving the set of the sketch that followed their act and fixing the stage for Carsey's trained seals.

"Bill Colson's pulling 'em down," observed Miss La Grange tactfully.

"Humph!"

A scream of applause from out front.

"He's a riot," observed Miss La Grange. "Let's listen."

With seeming reluctance, Miss Carroll allowed herself to be led to the wings, out of sight of the stage. Bill Colson was working as he had never worked before. His patter was running easily, and the house interrupted him every few words with a gale of laughter.

"Now, that operetta which came just before me," he was explaining seriously—"that was all a fake. You saw that fat guy that was playing the villain? He ain't really a villain at all. No, honest he ain't." Laughter. "And that fight was just put on to get you excited. He wouldn't fight with that tenor. He's too fat." More laughter. "Besides, he just treated him to a drink before the sketch started." A big laugh. "They're pals, you know. I don't understand why the actors fake the public that kind of way. Now, you would have thought by what they said that the blonde was the tenor's wife. But she ain't really. No; she's the

wife of the fat man. I wouldn't stand for such fakery if I were you." Laughter. "Any one wanting their money back can apply at the box-office. I don't say you can get it—but you can apply." Tremendous laughter.

Miss Carroll curled her lips scornfully. "Still pulling that old bunk!" she snapped.

"AND all those other acts are fakes," pursued Colson. "Take that act that went ahead of the operetta. That's called a sister act. But they ain't sisters—not really. Did you ever see sisters that looked as unlike as them two? Certainly not. One of them was married once." More laughter.

"The brute!" This from Miss Carroll.

"The blonde—she was the one. Only she wasn't a blonde then." A scream of applause from the spectators.

"That's going too far," choked Blanche. "Too far altogether."

"This thing I'm doing here," the comedian went on, "is called nut stuff. It's awful popular in New York and them other big cities where there are lots of wise guys. But it's a shame the way one act will try and steal another act's stuff. Now, didja notice that blonde—she tried to pull some of this nut comedy, but I don't believe it fooled you for a minute." A laugh. "Did you notice the way she talked to the orchestra leader and called him 'Gus'? I don't believe she knows him, do you? Does she know you, Gus?"

"Yes," returned Gus.

"Well, well!" Colson scratched his head. "I always thought she was a lady."

The house howled approval. Miss Carroll jumped to her feet, her face flaming.

"That's too much! Too much! I'm not going to stand for it. I'm going to see Gross."

"I'm gonna watch his act out," returned Miss La Grange quietly. "He's the best nut comedian I ever saw."

"Oh, you are, are you? Very well. But I'm going—" And Blanche swept out of the stage door. Carsey of the trained seals looked after her and winked at Miss La Grange.

"Gawd!" he remarked. "Ain't she the hot one, gettin' mad at a nut comedian!"

"Mebbe—"

"She must hate him a heap."

MISS CARROLL paced the manager's office until the trained seal act was half over. Then she called the program boy.

"Where's the manager?"

"Cuttin' de show," returned the youngster. "He always does that ev'y Monday matinee, so's he can do away wit' all de rough stuff."

Gross entered the office, smiling. His eye lighted on the irate figure of Miss Carroll and his grin disappeared, but his eyes twinkled merrily. Here was his chance.

"Bill Colson was a riot," he offered sweetly. "Best act ever been on this stage."

"Old stuff," she retorted angrily. "And that's just what I want to see you about, Mister Gross. He can queer the other acts if he wants to, but I serve you warning right here and now that he can't queer mine. That stuff he palled about my not bein' a real blonde is the rawest thing I've ever heard. And I am, too. See—" She lowered her head for his inspection. "When a woman ain't a real blonde the roots of her hair is natural color. Mine's golden all the way through."

"Hum!"

"And Colson's just simply gotta can that stuff about my knowing Gus and not bein' a lady. That stuff I pull with the orchestra leader always gets a big laugh, an' he's queerin' it. I can't have no come-back on ev'thing I do. Besides, him an' me used to pull that bull when we was teamin' together. It's terrible old. Seems he'd have more respect—"

"He gets across," returned Gross acidly—"which is more'n I can say for every act on this here bill. An' he ain't no sore-head. An' I'll tell you this right now, Miss Carroll: I happen to know that you 'n' Miss La Grange, who is a nice little girl, is hooked along with Colson an' that trained seal act for four more weeks after this. If you wanna register a kick an' lay off for that long, all right. But you'd better lemme know now, so I can wire Wilton in Chicago. He can shoot down another

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act in one to fill the bills where you'll leave a vacancy. But I gotta know now. If you ain't satisfied you don't have to stay. It's a cinch to get acts which is good enough for second position on a five-act bill!"

"He's got to cut—"

"He'll cut nothing. What's it? Do you stay on the bill or jump your contract? Quick—"

"It's outrageous! I'll stay!"

CARROLL & LA GRANGE went well at the first-night show, and immediately after the third curtain Blanche hurried to her dressing-room. Her outburst that morning had made her rather unpopular with the other acts, to speak mildly, and comments were frequent and caustic. And, principally because she knew she had acted foolishly, Blanche became more enraged at herself and at her ex-husband, who had caused it all.

Once in her dressing-room, she looked around for Edyth; but Edyth was not there. Two, three, five minutes passed and still Edyth did not materialize. From the stage Blanche could hear the members of the operetta company valiantly attacking the "Rigoletto" quartette, and succeeding to the entire satisfaction of the audience; and in a vague way she felt that Edyth had remained in the wings. Bill Colson followed the singers.

Blanche strolled with seeming nonchalance and with purposeful aimlessness between the double line of dressing-rooms, executed a flank movement, and strolled into the wings. There, chatting as if they had known each other all their lives,—and pretty well at that,—stood Bill and Edyth.

He was tall and she was short and plump—and pretty. He was bending over her with the manner of a proprietor, and her eyes were laughing gaily into his.

Blanche stiffened, and her jaw grew a bit more square. She turned on her heel and strode swiftly back to her dressing-room. After all, he was her husband,—or had been,—and it was a positive disgrace the way Edyth was acting. She'd speak to her. And yet, when Edyth dropped in for a final survey of her make-up before their second show, Blanche said nothing. Somehow, there really seemed to be nothing to say. But her work lacked spontaneity, and the act, to use the vernacular, went rotten. One forced call, led boldly by pluggers, was the best they could do. And, as they made their exit, Blanche left and Edyth right, Blanche brushed against Bill Colson, and she imagined that she could detect a flicker of amusement in his laughing gray eyes.

AFTER the matinee next day, Blanche pleaded headache and left the theater quickly while the encore of the musical act was on. She noticed with a jealous twinge, though, that Edyth and Bill stood chatting in the wings.

That night, when Bill's nut stuff had been particularly raw and Edyth had been particularly attentive to him, the senior member of the team took the junior member of the team to account.

"Edyth," she said sharply, in the seclusion of their dressing-room, "it's up to me to hand you a few straight from the shoulder. The way you and Mister Colson is carrying on is something scandalous."

That was a little strong even for Edyth, and her ever-ready temper flared a bit.

"Whatcha mean?"

"I mean the whole gang is talking about the way you and him—"

"No!" snapped Edyth. "They ain't talkin' about Bill—Mister Colson—an' me: they're talkin' about Mister Colson an' you, an' the boob way you acted at rehearsal yesterday. Honest, Blanche, I ain't never, in all my experience behind the asbestos, seen the equal of that stuff you pulled yesterday. It was fierce, that's what—fierce!"

"I'll thank you to mind your own business—"

"An' I'll thank you to mind yourn. You ain't got no clove hitch on Mister Colson, just because he was your husband oncet. Gawd knows, I think he's glad he ain't now. I know I would be if I was him. He's a fine feller, that's what, an' after the show to-night him and me's going to the Florence for a bite 'n' a bottle."

"O-o-h!" Blanche drew herself to her full height and gazed her fury at Edyth. She spoke just one word: "Go!"

And Edyth went. Discretion is often by far the better part of valor.

For the balance of the week in Birmingham, things went from bad to worse. Blanche was miserable, but she was a stoic. If it drove her nearly crazy with fury and jealousy to see her pretty partner accepting a world of attentions from her ex-husband, she did not show it. Nor did she show that the ill-concealed dislike of the other acts on the bill struck her to the quick, or that Bill's vitriolic nut-stuff, spoken at her over the heads of the audience, hit home—and hit hard.

It required every particle of her not bad histrionic ability to put her act across. Edyth was always in a gale of spirits, and it wasn't so very hard; but, even at that, it isn't a cinch to carry on your act when you're not speaking to your own partner even in the narrow confines of your dressing-room. And worse even than present conditions was the knowledge that four more weeks of it stared her in the face.

As to Bill, he had not noticed her existence since that Monday morning rehearsal. He was tantalizingly content in Miss La Grange's society. They were together constantly: drives, sight-seeing trips, restaurants, in the wings, in the dressing-room corridor. They were both popular with the others on the bill, and Blanche was a pariah.

FROM Birmingham they jumped to Atlanta. Blanche breathed a sigh of relief when the train pulled out of the Union Depot and she watched the smoky sky-line of Birmingham fade into the background. But she had reckoned without Carsey's Trained Seals. Even before the Monday rehearsal, Carsey and Mrs. Carsey had informed every act on the bill about the dramatic situation existing between the acts of Bill Colson, nut comedian, and Carroll & La Grange, the Personality Pair. Further, they had given details of the preceding Monday rehearsal, and the romance that was brewing between Bill Colson and Edyth La Grange. Madame Francine, contortionist, who had worked on the bill in Asheville with Carroll & La Grange, pursed her lips.

"I never was strong for Blanche Carroll," she remarked cuttingly. "Now, that there little trick Edyth La Grange what's with her is a different proposition altogether. That there kid has the real personality, an' she's got one of the best sopranos I've heard in vaudeville. Honest, she's good enough for high-class musical comedy. I, for one, don't see why she don't break away an' go single. Give her a good line of patter, some new songs, a few dances that ain't dry-as-dust, an' she'll stand solid booking on the big time."

Bill Colson edged into the group.

"'Lo, people," he greeted. "What's the big-time act I hear you gassin' about?"

"I was saying," repeated Madame Francine, "that Edyth La Grange has the making of a big-time single."

"Uh-huh." Bill scratched his head for a second. "Yep, she'll go strong single with the proper line of stuff. But, Lordy—what a partner she'd make for a high-class an' enterprisin' nut comedian!"

Then he strolled away. The others gasped, and within ten minutes Madame Francine had repeated the remark, with proper embellishments, to Blanche Carroll.

Blanche's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

The next morning she entered Edyth La Grange's room without knocking—since the Birmingham episode they had been occupying separate rooms. Edyth yawned, sat up in bed, and rubbed her eyes sleepily. Edyth found it hard to remain angry with any one—she had long ago regretted her outburst and forgiven Blanche hers.

"Hello, kid," she greeted cheerily.

"Good morning, Miss La Grange."

"Huh?" Edyth slipped into a silk

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kimono. "Still sore about me 'n' Bill?"

"I've come to tell you—"

"Ah, say, Blanche! Drop that Sarah Bernhardt stuff, can't yuh? That don't go with me. Let's forget—"

"I've come to tell you," repeated Blanche evenly, "that you an' me's done. You can get another partner if you want an' keep on with the act. But I'm leaving at the end of the week."

Edyth was staggered. She mulled it over for a few seconds; then:

"Aw, c'm on, Blanche; y'r kiddin' me."

"I was never more serious in my life, Miss La Grange. Let me know by to-night if you're going to keep on with the act. I never threw nobody down, an' if you ain't I'll wire same to Al Wilton."

Then she was gone. Edyth stared after her for a long time and then indulged in a rare luxury.

"Ain't wimmin hell?" she asked of no one in particular. "Now, ain't they just hell?"

THE first-night show was over. Blanche Carroll sat alone in her dressing-room and stared disconsolately into the make-up mirror that hung suspended by an antiquated hit of brass wire.

She took stock of herself. Suddenly she grabbed the photograph of Edyth La Grange from the dressing-table, tore it into bits, and flung it into a corner. From the orchestra pit came the opening bars of the trained-seal music. A light knock sounded on the panels of her door.

"C'm in," she invited mechanically.

The door opened, then closed again. Blanche turned to stare into the eyes of her ex-husband. She caught her breath convulsively, then rose.

"Beat it!" she ordered curtly.

For answer he seated himself on the trunk and extracted a cigarette from a monogram silver case.

"It's awful comfortable in here. Hey! wait a minute!" He sprang to the door just in time to keep her from leaving the dressing-room.

"I'll scream," she threatened angrily. "If you think you can come into a lady's dressin'-room—"

"Aw, subside," he grinned. "Choke it, Blanche. I wanna have a talk with you. You kin scream when I finish. Now, listen." His face grew serious and he leaned forward earnestly. "I reckon I've been handin' you a dirty deal since that Birmingham thing. I was just tryin' to have a little fun, an' I didn't mean nothin' by it. Now Edyth tells me you 'n' her's split on account o' me—"

"You flatter yourself!"

"Can that stuff, Blanche. That you 'n' her's split on account o' me. I guess it musta got your goat, an' it ain't fair for me to crab your ac' thataway. What I wanna say is this, Blanche. It's please not to bust your act up. I'll let up—honest; an' I'll get Savannah next week to put me second an' you fourth. I feel rotten, knowin' I handed you a black eye when all I wanted was to kid you along."

She was fighting for control—making a pitiful fight.

"Nothin' doin', Bill," she replied, for-getting that she was on terms of strictest formality with him. "You done played the devil now. I couldn't work no more

with Edyth La Grange if I wanted to. Me 'n' her's split indefinite. An'—an'—she'd make a mighty good partner for a—a—high-class an' enterprisin' nut comedian—"

He gazed at her steadily.

"Yes, I guess she would; likewise, she'd make a awful good single."

"Sh—she—ain't crazy 'bout workin' single—any more. She useter be; but—"

"Darn that!" he burst out. "I come in to make things right with you. I feel like the devil about makin' you quit the circuit—an' it's all my fault." He rose and came very close to her. "I'm sorry, Blanche—honest I am. Think it over, won't you, kid? Please!"

In the old days he had said "please" in just that way. The tears were coming—she knew they were coming—they were here—

"G-g-g-get out," she choked, "or—or—I'll scream!"

Then his arms were about her, as in the old days, and he was crushing her to him and pressing her head into the hollow of his shoulder.

"There, there, kiddie, cry it out. An we'll fix things all right—you an' me."

The re-marriage of Blanche Carroll and Bill Colson, and the reincarnation of the team of Colson & Carroll, was a seven-days wonder in vaudeville circles. A great combination, everybody agreed; both of them had been improved by their couple of years apart. But wasn't it funny the way they got together—

The team of Carroll & La Grange finished the week in Atlanta and then split. Blanche and Edyth shook hands rather formally and kissed each other lightly; but, despite her new-found happiness, Blanche could not quite forget.

Before Edyth left the theater that night, Bill Colson called her aside and pressed into her hands a plush case containing a diamond lavalliere.

"You done great," he said gratefully. "She don't suspect a thing. If it hadn't been for you an' Al Wilton, I reckon I never could have got her to take me back!"

My Friend the Black Bear

By EL COMANCHO

WHY any one should be afraid of the common black bear is beyond me; for he is the most amiable, clownish creature that lives in all the wilderness.

He will not in any circumstances attack a man except he be so cornered and surrounded that he can not get away in any direction, and even then he must be prodded, and so hurt physically and bedeviled mentally that he at last turns and fights from sheer anguish and despair.

Even the old story of the she bear with cubs attacking man without severe provocation I do not believe to be justified at all; for my personal experience leads me to believe thoroughly that Mother Bear will get away from you, either with or without her babies, just as quickly as she can do it, if there is a way open to her.

The Black Bear's Main Pursuit

NORMALLY the black bear seems to have two great, all-pervading ideas, the first being to fill his stomach, and the other to get just as much fun out of life as he can.

No animal has a keener nose or keener appetite; therefore he is a good hunter after food and has great ability in finding what he wants without disturbing his neighbors, and to keep out of the sight of mankind at the same time; which probably helps to make him the inquisitive, good-natured clown that he is.

He eats almost anything in the woods, feeding very extensively on "roots, yarbs, barks, an' gums," whenever and wherever he finds them. He is fond of many kinds of berries, and eats the leaves and small green twigs along with them. He eats fish when he can get it.

He is an expert tree climber, and will eat birds' eggs and the young birds; but he does it only casually, not as a regular diet. He will eat meat at times: the older it is the better. In all my experience of forty years in the wilderness I have never yet found any animal that I could say positively had been killed by a black bear. I do not believe he kills live animals for food except possibly under stress of great hunger.

He loves honey, and tears a wild bees' nest to pieces whenever he can get to it, greedily eating honey and bees together; paying no attention to stings unless a bee gets him on the nose, when he rubs it and cries for a minute like a little boy, and goes right back to his job of cleaning up the nest.

Ants and their eggs are also a favorite food, and he tears many a rotten log to pieces to get them.

He is good-natured, playful, and has, I think, a keen sense of humor; for his biggest job outside of filling his stomach is doing funny stunts to amuse himself. He will pick up a bit of broken wood, lie flat on his back, and juggle it for an hour with no other idea than to have fun.

His Inquisitiveness

HE is as inquisitive as any boy, and is forever following his nose up-wind to investigate some odor—with laughable results sometimes too.

He can slip along through forest paths, or over dead leaves or even through dead brush, with no more sound than a ghost if he wants to; and if you come upon him suddenly and yell at him or rattle some of your camp tinware and run straight at him with it, he will be so badly seared that he will bawl like a calf and go crashing away through the woods like a runaway locomotive.

He is one of my best woodland friends, one of the most whimsical, lovable, clownish, harmless creatures in the wilderness; and no man should ever kill him, for he does a great deal of good as a vermin destroyer.

The Price of Preferred Stock

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

A READER in Washington, D. C., wants to know why the common stock of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is quoted higher than the preferred stock. He had read the article entitled "What About the Preferred Shares of Big Railroads?" in this magazine for August 9, in which railroad preferred stocks were highly spoken of as investments. "Why is the common stock of that road," he asks in some mystification, "preferred to the preferred stock?"

Preferred Stock Dividends Limited

THE reason B. & O. preferred sells lower than the common, although it comes ahead of it in more senses than one, is because the dividend is strictly limited by the charter or by-laws of the company to 4 per cent. and there is absolutely no limit to the dividends on the common stock, provided there are enough profits to pay them. Perhaps this point will best be explained by referring to another case, a more interesting one at the present time.

The E.I. du Pont de Nemours Powder Company, the great du Pont concern, has both preferred and common stock. Shortly before this article was written the preferred sold at 96 and the common at 700! Why this amazing discrepancy? Why should the stock that has a first claim upon both assets and earnings of this stupendously profitable money-making mint sell at less than one seventh the price of the common or ordinary stock, which is subordinate to it in claims? A brief reference to the company's charter or by-laws, summarized in any financial reference book, will show that the "common is enacted," exclusively to all dividends in excess of 5 per cent. per annum paid to the preferred stockholders, and it will receive in liquidation all assets, after paying to the holders of bonds and preferred stock the par value of their holdings."

Preferred stock is supposed to be more of an investment security than common stock. The idea is that in return for certainty of a present fixed income the investor will be willing to forgo the possibility of large future profits. Now, it should be understood, especially at this time of great upheavals in the world's markets, that speculation is based on future rather than on present benefits. A stock that pays 6 per cent., and is pretty sure to pay it for years to come, but also pretty sure to pay no more, is far less likely to soar to great heights than one that pays nothing, but may pay a big dividend in the indefinite future.

I do not say that Baltimore & Ohio common will ever increase its dividend. But there is nothing in the company's by-laws or charter to prevent an increase, whereas the preferred stock is limited to 4 per cont. High prices are always based on future possibilities rather than on present certitudes. The whole life of speculation is uncertainty.

It should not be supposed that preferred stocks never go up in price. Sometimes a very rich company pays off its preference shares at a fancy figure to get rid of them. Other corporations are not permitted to do this. The provisions governing almost every issue of securities differ. The great point is to know what the rules are. Names mean nothing. Investors are fooled by the mere words "preferred," "guaranteed," and so on. The question is, how are they preferred or guaranteed?

Is Goiter Curable?

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

THERE is a wide diversity of opinion as to the cause of goiter. Many locate the seat of the disease in the heart itself, in the blood-vessels, and in the blood; others, who favor the so-called "mechanical theory," ascribe the symptoms to compression by an enlarged thyroid gland of the nerves and vessels in the neck, although they neglect to tell us how the gland became enlarged.

Other competent medical authorities believe that goiter is essentially nervous, originating in some disturbance of the rambling pneumogastric nerve (or vagus), or of either the sympathetic or central nervous system. In fact, the whole question is very hazy and indefinite.

We know, however, for a certainty that the pathological basis or actual origin of goiter is a disturbance in the function of the thyroid gland. But whether this due to water deficient in inorganic salt (as many claim), to nervous shock, injury to the thyroid gland, constitutional diseases, defective metabolism, or what not, is not known.

We know only that the rapid heart action and palpitation, the distressing tremor, the unsightly swelling in the lower part of the neck, the protrusion of the eyeballs, and the nervous excitement accompanying goiter—particularly that form known as exophthalmic goiter—are extremely difficult to cure. Sometime the surgeon removes a large portion of the goiter—not all, because it has been found that complete removal is usually attended with grave changes in the mental or the physical equilibrium.

The cure of goiter is—or was—equally uncertain. I say "was" advisedly; for if the recently discovered "pressure-therapy" of Dr. William FitzGerald of Hartford Connecticut, is found to be all its discoverer claims for it, "zone-therapy" bids fair to supersede all other methods.

Briefly, Dr. FitzGerald's method consists in stimulating the nerve centers—or "push-buttons"—in the zone in which the trouble is located. This is accomplished by passing a blunt steel probe, the point of which has been still further blunted by being wrapped in cotton, through the nostril, and causing pressure at a point on the vault of the pharynx,—that portion of the cavity in the head where the nose ends and the mouth begins,—which pressure is reflected as a metallic sensation in the region in which the goiter is located.

This pressure is maintained for several minutes at a time, night and morning. To assist in the treatment, the patient, several times daily, compresses firmly the second joint of the thumb, which is located in the zone running up the center of the body, including, of course, the goiter region, pressing on each thumb alternately. This seems to stimulate the normal functional activity in the "first zone."

In the past fifteen months Dr. FitzGerald has treated in this manner twenty-one cases, many of which were of pronounced exophthalmic type, with protruding eye-balls, unsightly enlargement of the thyroid gland, rapid heart action, and all the manifold nervous symptoms that accompany goiter. Twelve of these have been discharged as cured, and nine are well on the highway toward recovery.

I met and talked with a number of Dr. FitzGerald's patients. It is too early, of course, to say what the ultimate effects will be; but from present indications the results of this method bid fair to be permanent. At any rate, the principle is so simple and so easy of application that it would seem well worth a trial before risking the dangers and the possible nervous developments which follow, a radical operation, or sometimes even the use of organic extracts or powerful alteratives.