We Reassure a Mother

A MOTHER writes us about her son's reading. Among other things, she says:

In spite of all I can do or say, he insists on reading stories. How can I correct this habit?

Frankly, Madam, we do not know.

It is about as easy to cure a boy of eating as it is to destroy his love for good stories.

Centuries before there was any writing, story-tellers drifted about from village to village, gathering the people together and telling them stories.

The love of fiction is as old as that—older than recorded history, older even than civilization. It can not be rooted out: its roots run back too far.

And why should you want to root it out?

The greatest Teacher that ever lived spent half His time telling stories to His disciples. "Without a parable [a story] He taught them nothing." These stories have transformed humanity.

One great story written in our own country, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," so stirred men's hearts that they said, "Slavery must go."

Good stories will not hurt your boy: they may, if he is the right kind of boy, inspire him to real achievement.

And they will do something else for him, equally important. They will develop his imagination.

We have too little regard for the high value of the imagination, we Americans. We are too matter-of-fact. We forget that all great inventions, all great discoveries, all great achievements in science or business, came to pass because some man first had imagination enough to conceive them.

Many men have been hit on the head by a falling apple. Newton, when the apple hit him, had imagination enough to formulate the law of gravitation.

Many men have been burned by their wives' tea-kettles. Watt had imagination enough to conceive the steam-engine.

Look through the pages of history, and you will discover that the leaders of men have been those who could dream great dreams and carry them out—the men of powerful, intelligent imagination.

Because this is true, the editor of a magazine that prints stories has a responsibility that he must take seriously if he is any sort of man at all. He is intrusted with the duty of stimulating the imagination of thousands of children of mothers like you.

He may, if he choose, publish stories whose appeal is to the baser side of the imagination—and even achieve a certain sort of circulation increase for his magazine by so doing. Or he may regard every mother among his readers as if she were his own mother, and every mother's son as a younger brother.

You need not concern yourself because your boy likes stories. But are the stories that he reads the right kind of stories—do they appeal to his imagination on its best and highest side?

That is the important question for you.

Once On the Summer Range

By FRANCIS HILL

"SPEND the summer absolutely in the open. Don't draw, don't read, don't study, don't do anything with your head"—Lord, how well I remember the chill intonation, the aloof eyes, of those big Fifth Avenue doctors as they said it!

Fifty dollars they charged me for that outrageous advice. If I had known what that fifty dollars would do for me—if I could have looked into a crystal and seen Ericsson and myself on that night when those ruffians tried to murder us—

But, anyway, I went. "The open," those beastly, cold-lipped doctors had said. Good! I chose Montana quite deliberately from the map,—it looked like the biggest stretch of open in the United States,—packed some bags, bought a ticket, crossed the ferry, and boarded a train.

My ticket read to Helena. But at Livingston I decided to take my courage in my two hands and make a break. So there, within sight of the far, mottled sides of the tumbling Crazy Mountains, I bade that dusty railroad good-by, and embarked on my real adventure.

FROM Livingston I zigzagged slowly north into the country, traveling at first by coach, then on horseback. For I soon made out that the famous navigator at sea without a compass was as nothing to the pilgrim in this country without a horse. My saddle and pony I bought one morning in a wicked little cow town, and, to my inexpressible amazement, I was not pitched off, either then or later. I named my new mount Crow, on two scores: he was nearly white in color, and he was rumored to have emerged out of the dim background of history as a stolen Crow Indian horse.

I had no notion of spending my summer in idleness. Cow-punching I was not so foolish as to dream I could aspire to; nor yet horse-wrangling. But I had an idea that I could herd sheep. As a matter of fact, a dozen or more cowboys along the road had told me, with brutal jeers, that anybody could herd sheep who would; the only difficulty, they swore, was to find anybody who would. I would, I promptly determined. I was here for my health. A summer on a sheep ranch seemed to serve my turn extremely well.

Easy mile after mile I sat my jogging old Crow. The blueness of the sky, the soft whiteness of the few clouds, the brilliance of the air, made one drunk with happiness. Presently we struck due east on our trail—old Crow and I—and entered the Pinto Basin. We had a distinct destination in view now, and, just at sunset one windy, high-colored evening, made it. The home buildings of the Swallowfork sheep ranch were an ugly, evil-smelling clutter of sheds, barns, and corrals, on the head waters of Fishduck River. I'd heard far below that the Swallowfork needed men desperately, so I took little chance of rebuff in presenting myself for a job. Tek Gaines, sheriff of Piegan County, owned and operated it without living on it—operated it on an immense scale. Right now it was in the fullest swing of lambing, with shearing immediately on the cards.

Even in the present mad whirl of activity, however, Gaines himself did not seem to be on the place. His foreman, Bull Dorgan, I eventually found among a

huddle of thoroughbred Merino ewes and lambs in a pen. Bull looked me over scowlingly for one minute; then, despite my obvious greenness, gruffly told me to spread my blankets in the hay-barn and turn my horse into the corral. So that night old Crow ranged out in the Pinto with a bunch of the Swallowfork ponies, and I slipped into membership of the lamb-smacking crew. Also, that night I ate my first meal—a hearty, absolutely satisfactory ranch supper—prepared by the stubby freckled hands of Eric Ericsson. Good old Ericsson, honest American Swede—but for his tough arm and impenetrable head, I should never have lived to tell this tale!

THAT first night on the Swallowfork I slept joyfully. But by daylight next morning I was up and out in the pens with the other smackers; and by sundown that night was ready to rave and froth at the stinking, bawling mass of ewes and lambs with the best—or the worst—of them. Or, no; I must do myself that credit. Not with the worst. The worst of those Swallowfork lamb-hands were just about past belief. In the dewless chill radiance of that first dawn, I caught a good, comprehensive look at them, and shudders played up and down my spine. Those unholy faces, those slouching, defiled bodies they did appal one! How could any ordinarily decent, normal man live six months with such refuse? However, I'm of a fairly tenacious turn.

After a grimy two weeks' apprenticeship in the home ranch pens, I was abruptly sent out, in a crew of four men, to establish an overflow lamb camp some five miles off from the main sheds.

Our herd squad consisted, besides myself, of Eric Ericsson, an eighteen-year-old boy named Doak, and a veined-nosed, evil-minded, rather efficient middle-aged scoundrel called Whiskey—Whiskey Flynn, if I remember.

Bizarre as it may seem, I in a sense captained this charming branch outfit. I was, in the first place, the only one of the four who had a horse; and I did not drink raw alcohol out of a bottle. Bull Dorgan may have noted these slight points. He did not put me in actual charge; he merely addressed all his orders to me.

So we four strangers settled down to some weeks of living together in the tolerably narrow quarters of that foot-hill shack. Every day or two, fresh squalling battalions of ewes and lambs were driven up to us. Ten empty days passed. Then one evening, absolutely without prelude, a new note filled the air.

We had a so-called bench running across the entire outside front of our shack. It was a single unplaned plank, twelve inches wide; but much rubbing of sheepy overalls had worn it smooth, and you could, at a pinch, stretch yourself sidewise full length along it. This night I was simply sitting, to the right of the doorway, lolled back as well as I could against the round logs of the shack wall, smoking a pipe, fairly comfortable and serene. At the extreme far end of the bench to the left of the doorway, young Doak and the grizzled man dubbed Whiskey had drawn away together and were huskily whispering. I paid no attention to them. From the very outset, we had instinctively paired off. Eric Ericsson and I held together against Flynn and the boy. But to-night my mate hadn't yet finished cleaning up after supper; so I smoked alone.

Suddenly, from across the doorway, my inattentive ears picked up a word.

"It's a girl, I tell you!" insisted Doak. "You bloody old red-eye fool! Don't you think I can savvy a girl?"

In his fit of snarling vehemence, the boy had blurted the thing out. I couldn't but hear involuntarily. Whiskey Flynn hissed sharply at Doak, and glanced warningly over his shoulder in my direction. Then their tones dropped low again. In a moment or two they got up and moved off.

My curiosity was piqued. A woman? Out here on the range? Impossible! A woman? It had been so long since I'd seen a woman that I wondered if I could be altogether certain of "savvying" one if I came upon her. But—pshaw! On this far edge of the Pinto Basin—this womanless alkali desert a hundred and twenty miles from the railroad!

But, after all—"It's a girl, I tell you!" If there should happen to be a woman somewhere out here! What sort of woman? Fancy—a really feminine creature being pawed over in the minds of that pair, there, on the end of the bench! For Whiskey and Doak had now come back to their old place. They seemed to me to be guarded, waiting.

Presently Eric Ericsson ambled out from the shack, wiping his wet hands on his overalls. When he had lighted his pipe, I proposed: "Let's stroll up to the spring for a bucket of water."

"Sure!" he agreed, in his hearty broad Swedish voice.

SWEDISH; but Eric Ericsson, I should explain, was a good American—American born: Connecticut. He had gone a couple of terms to a country school in up-State New York; entered on his man's career, at about thirteen or fourteen, in the Pennsylvania woods; gradually worked his way West, till now, at thirty-five, he was contentedly earning his forty dollars a month and keep as cook and generally helpful man on the Swallowfork ranch.

"I thought I just now heard Doak and Whiskey discussing a girl," I casually mentioned. "There's no girl anywhere up around here, of course?"

Ericsson started. I thrust my face close.

"There isn't, is there?" I persisted.

He began to mutter: "Oh, mister! No! So they've smelled her out already, then, have they? By jiminy! That's bad, mister—that's bad!"

"Then there is a girl?" I exclaimed. He went on muttering: "By jimmy! I

---

don't know what to do about that—I don't!"

"Do about what?" I demanded.

A profound sigh tore his lumpy frame.

"Soon everybody will be on to it—everybody on the whole place. They'll get her. Yes, sir, they'll get her, mister! Or else they'll drive her away."

I took him by the shoulder and almost forced him down on the ground with me.

"You don't trust me," I reproached.

Again he sighed and shook the big square head, though not, I understood, specifically at me.

"She's over here—maybe five miles."

"Eh?" I cried. "What? Five miles—from this camp?"

"Dressed as—" He didn't want to tell.

"Dressed, as a boy." Then, when it was out, he nodded solemnly. "Yes; a real nice little girl, mister. Only five miles away. Living over there in a gulch with her father."

"Well, what in the deuce are you making all this row about?" I said. "With her father? That's all right, then. Could she be with anybody better? Can't he look out for her?"

"The old man," mournfully returned Ericsson, "is loco. It's the little girl that's trying to look out for him."

Five miles away! Dressed, as a boy! That accounted for all the argument about the "savvying." It was queer. The blood began to pound a little in my neck.

"Go ahead," I pressed. "Don't stop. Tell me what you know."

"I don't know anything." He spoke gloomily. "I just saw her—that's all."

"Not to speak to?"

"Yes, I spoke to her—sure I spoke to her. But I never let on I spotted she was a girl."

"Well, how was it?" I all but shouted. "When and where? Give me the facts!"

"YOU remember that afternoon I borrowed your pony and Billy's gun to go out and get an antelope? I saw her that afternoon. I found my bunch of antelope, and I crawled up on 'em, picked out a young buck, and let fly. I got him, all right, but he made for the timber. It was that big rocky gulch he headed for; I guess you ain't been there—Castle Gulch, they call it. Rocks piled up on top of each other—like warehouses. 'Way up there the buck laid down, dead heat, and let me sneak in close. I plugged him between the eyes. When I shot, the little girl peeped out of the timber."

"Oho! The timber, eh?"

"I didn't know it was a girl," said Ericsson—"not then. I thought it was some light-weight kid of a boy. I pointed and made signs—offered her some of the meat. She wouldn't come near for a good while. But she wanted meat—for her father. Corduroy pants she had on, and a big black Stetson that covered up her hair, and a kind of a long blue coat. Purty—oh, Lord—purty as a picture! Her father was sick, she told me. I carried up half the buck to their shack among the trees."

The Swede liar! He'd told us at camp he'd given half of that antelope to some boys from the home ranch he'd met.

"It was an old shack, though," he went on. "Not much good. The little girl—she'd tried to fix it up as well as she could. But she didn't know how. It's blame near falling down: ten years old, I guess—prospectors, maybe, or loggers. I wanted to go back the worst way and tighten it up for 'em; but I was afraid it might rattle the little girl."

"And you saw her father?"

"I saw him—sure. She said he was sick. But—" Ericsson touched one stubby fuefinger to his brow. "Loco, mister. Plumb loco—that old man. Nice—not bad, not wild. But just clean loco. He was circling around the shack with some bugs and ants and things pinned on to a piece of board. He talked foolish—foolish, but nice, you know. I showed the girl how to cook the meat. They're nice people—quiet and all that."

"But—but!" I sang out—"I don't understand. What are they doing there? How do they live?"

"I don't know any more, mister."

"Didn't she tell you their name, or anything?"

"No, she didn't say anything about any name. But she was glad to get the meat. All she's got to shoot with is a little .22."

I thought I heard a suspicious sound over toward the right edge of the coulee.

"Let's strike back to camp," I said.

Ericsson took up the bucket of water, and we moved briskly down to the cabin. Neither Whiskey Flynn nor young Billy Doak seemed anywhere about, when we got there. We made a quick round of the corrals and all possible near-by loafing-places. Not a sign. I looked for Doak's rifle in the shack. Nowhere to be found. Then we spurted out to where I'd picketed old Crow for the night. Gone! It was his loping hoof-heats I had heard.

For an instant Ericsson and I stood peering at each other through the night. This careless commandeering of my horse—it did something to me. Evidently they thought me a milksop. Also, very likely, they thought Ericsson a fool. He was so easy-going, so good-tempered. And they didn't dream he had seen the girl! I could hear the squat, yellow-haired cook breathing hard now, in the forty-five or so packed seconds we stood confronting each other. He was snortiug just like a little bay shorthorn bull he often reminded me of.

"But you haven't got any gun," I objected.

"Yah!" he spat. (Excitement always brought out the uuderlyiug Swede in him.) "Yah! Gun? I don't want any gun! A club—that's all I want! That, pair of bums? Skunks, mister! Polecats!"

It seemed to me that skunks were precisely the game you most needed firearms for. I had only a little Smith & Wesson pocket revolver myself—a laughable nickeled toy, in Western eyes—.32 caliber. Ericsson could muster absolutely not a thing. Against us, young Doak carried his Winchester repeating rifle, and Whiskey Flynn never made a move without his big blue Colt's .44.

I said: "It's your idea, then, we take a hand in all this?"

He stooped and grabbed up old Crow's loose picket-rope off the ground, untied it from the steel pin, and began feverishly to coil it, he broke for the shack. "Just wait! Wait till I get a hatchet!"

But I dashed alongside. "You're sure you can lead the way over in the dark?"

He grunted, continuing to coil the rope.

A LOVELY late May night it was, moonless, yet full-starred. We struck the wide lower reaches of the big rocky gulch, and swung up into it at a krot. As we drew near the real timber, Ericsson, far from slackening his pace, quickened it. We hadn't once heard hoof-beats ahead.

The walls of the gulch narrowed in sharply, and our cool overhead glimmer of stars all but went out. Then we were among the trees—evergreen chiefly, very black and still. But the piny night smell—how unutterably keen and delicious!

Ericsson charged silently on, a strange mixture of Viking and Indian. Presently our ears caught a slight shiver and sigh, our stretched eyes made out a pallid spot beside the trail. It was old Crow. The roustabouts had ridden him bareback, with only a hackamore on his head. I ran my hand lightly over him: already the strong sweat had begun to cake and dry on his white pelt. We hurried on.

If we had needed any spurring, the yell that now came ricochetting down the mountainside would have supplied it. A man's yell, it was; and it betokened pain aud chagrin. Ericsson leaped ahead through the trees. Jove, how black! Then, far off in the timber, we picked up the faint, ruddy glow of a camp-fire.

A "fine green corral of a park"—so Ericsson had described the girl's haunt to me. It was a little fairy jewel of a place, a nook of dreams! Naturally, I got only the most blurred glimpse of it all that first night; but I saw that the grassy open space was nearly circular in shape, and that the dilapidated log hut stood fairly in the middle of it. On the ground before the shack door burned the fire.

"Doorway," I should have said, not "door." Door to the house there was none. Instead, a young pine-tree, with a pyramid of dense green branches, had been cut down and leaned up against the aperture from the outside. Behind it, in the flickering yellow play of the fire, a point of formidable bright metal would now and then flash out in high relief. Behind that again, one could just suspect the shadowy lines of a human form. It must be the girl guarding her citadel with the little .22.

What more instantly concerned us, however, was the position of Flynn and Doak. That interesting pair of raiders had obviously suffered a setback. They were both at the rear of the house, out of range of the doorway and in relative darkness. Did I mention that the shack had only the one opening?—no window or anything of the sort.

Flynn, half crouched on the ground, muttering and cursing, was tying up his leg with a rag that had been a handkerchief. Doak, paying no attention to him, rifle in hand, busily gathered up chips, dry twigs, cones, and so on, heaping them against the back-wall of the house. He also kept a watchful eye on the situation at the front. Before we could get round to the edge of the clearing nearest them, Flynn was standing on his feet again, manifestly only triflingly hurt, and Doak had mounded up a heap of wood against the logs of the shack. Together, they then crawled low along the upper side of the shack to the front.

This should, by all odds, have been our time to rush. But we'd had to move so slowly, we were not ready.

WHEN Doak reached the front of the cabin, he stretched out and grabbed a partly burned brand from the camp-fire, drawing no shot from the girl, and retreating to the back of the house with his flare in safety. Flynn remained at the side in front. He was squatting on his heels, his big blue six-shooter in his hand.

"Now, then, you young she-devil!" he snarled at the doorway. "Are you coming out? Or will we have to burn you out?"

He waited. No sign from the cabin.

"All right," said Whiskey. "We'll give you till I count ten. But you hear me! You'd better come quick! We're going to get you, if we have to kill you for it! Ten—do you hear? Ten!" He began slowly to count.

At last Ericsson and I were set for the rush. In the very innermost possible fringe of the encircling trees we hung, perhaps thirty feet from Flynn, forty from Doak. As the grizzled sheep-herder dog raucously counted off his long seconds, and young Doak waved the brand about his head, Ericsson whispered in my ear:

"I'll knock the gun out of Whiskey's hand and go for Billy. He won't be able to get his Winchester up in time. You tend to Whiskey with the little .32."

He dropped the rope; his right hand, with the hatchet in it, swung back over his shoulder.

"Ten!" shouted Flynn. "Fire her, boy!"

Ericson breathed, "Now!"

That hatchet! Thirty feet is a pretty husky throw for such a tool—and the light was none too good. But the way that revolving edge and handle hurtled through the air! Whiskey had the big single-action Colt's outstretched before him, leveled but not cocked. Clad! Ericsson's hatchet struck it like a bolt of lightning, head on, just across the cylinder. The gun whirled round at right angles, tearing itself out of Flynn's grip. With a yell, Whiskey jerked the hand back in against himself, and rose to his full height.

It seemed to me that Ericsson's knotted gorilla arm had not completed its cast of the hatchet before he was following it out into the open at about the same speed. But it was for young Doak he made—Doak, stooped there with rifle and brand, absorbed in the bonfire-startling. Nickeled .32 in my fist, I lunged for Flynn.

I was a tortoise at this game beside Ericsson. Before I could get to Whiskey, he was down in front of the cabin, groping with his left hand for the gun. I slammed a bullet along the ground close under his fingers, and he jumped back. When he faced around, he was looking at some six feet, square into the smoking tube of my little .32.

Ericsson, meantime, had been scorching like a rocket for Doak. At Whiskey's yell, of course, the boy had straightened, with a bound, from his fire-starting. He saw Ericsson coming. As Doak rose the flaming torch was in his right hand, his rifle, clutched by the barrel, in his left. He swiftly figured, as Ericsson had already figured before him, that he would never be able to get the repeater pointed in time. Not to do any good! Still, a Winchester out of action—it has other uses. Dropping the flare, Doak gave both hands to his gun-barrel, swinging the stock well above his head. Ericsson had absolutely nothing but his naked fists. He dove in,—a beautiful long tackle,—coming like a thing out of a catapult. He got Doak. Only, the descending butt of the Winchester caught him while he was in the air—an awful smashing thud. The two of them tumbled over and over on the ground together; but when they stopped rolling, Ericsson lay quiet.

Doak leaped to his feet, the rifle-barrel still clutched in both hands. Up into the air whirled the stock for another smash. I'd already hopped far enough to the front, risking a shot from the girl, to have both thugs in something like a line. For one instant I took my eyes completely off Flynn, turned the little .32 loose at Doak.

The try wasn't a hit. But the swish of the bullet froze the boy stark in his tracks. The butt of the Winchester didn't fall, that second trip.

One cartridge I had left now; and my partner stretched on the grass there, cold! Fortunately, the kindling against the shack wall hadn't taken fire.

"Drop that gun!" I commanded Doak— "without lowering your arms."

For a breath he glared silently into the muzzle of the little, nickeled six-shooter (it covered Flynn as well now), then slowly let the Winchester slip to the ground, keeping his arms above his head.

"Get your hands up!" I said to Flynn.

He followed Doak's suit—without lagging, without comment.

"Doak, step up here beside Whiskey."

Sulkily he did it. That opened a gap of some feet between him and his rifle.

"Shoulder to shoulder," I exacted. "And keep facing me—both."

I edged across the grass toward the fallen Winchester, seeing to it that my sheep-herders religiously honored me, as I shifted, with their full front. When I got in the region of the rifle, I felt carefully about, over the ground for it with my feet. The smooth, rounded gun-stock was not hard to locate. Then, eyes always bleakly along my short nickeled tube, I slowly stooped and picked it up.

AND the girl! What of her? Could anything be hoped for in that quarter? She hadn't potted me with her .22. Had she seen—understood it was a rescue?

Somehow, I didn't have much confidence in her grasp. Nothing about her seemed reasonable. But one must do something.

In my gentlest voice I called: "Miss."

No answer.

"Miss," I repeated, "nobody will harm you now. But there's a man down outside here—the man who gave you the antelope meat the other day. You can help. I'm taking care of the two brutes who were bothering you. Would you or your father bring some water?"

Silence for another long minute—dragging, interminable. Then, in the intense mountain quiet, I heard a body swish out past the pine needles in the house doorway. After that—more silence. But now, I was certain, I could feel her cautiously peering round the log corner at us. For some little space she eyed us so, all up and down. And still not a word, not a breath. Then I heard her push back past the pine branches into the cabin again. When she came out this time, the pine branches made a metallic sound as against tin. But still she hesitated before appearing round the corner—"He's a good man," I assured her—"not like these wolves. Please do what you can

---

for him. But first—will you hand me that big blue revolver that's lying on the ground in front of the house?"

Very, very gingerly she approached me with Whiskey's six-shooter. I took it from her at arm's length—caught one quick glimpse of her from head to foot. She had her shiny little .22 at the ready in her other hand, I saw. I thanked her for the revolver. Still saying nothing, she retreated to the front of the house again; but I now guessed it was for water.

WITH Whiskey's big Colt in my fist, and the girl for an ally—well, I began to look up a bit. I tried the .44, made sure Ericsson's hatchet hadn't put it out of commission. Then I slipped my own desperate young weapon into my pocket.

The fine point about the big-caliber gun, however, was that it let me back far enough off from the cabin to be able to include Ericsson under my eye. So I could now, at least, half watch the girl as she worked over him. She had only a small can of water. Always timidly, uncertainly, she sprinkled a few drops of the water into the Swede boy's partly turned face. He gave no sign.

I began to be frightened in good earnest.

"Dash him well!" I cried. "Hard!"

She tipped her little bucket, splashed all she had—a couple of pints or so. It was enough: it did the trick. Ericsson gurgled, coughed, spat, sat up.

"By jiminy!" he stumbled. Hazily he began to finger at the back of his head.

I simply can't tell you how relieved and delighted I was!

Grunting and blinking with the pain of it, he went on to explore his cracked top.

"What the thunder—I don't know—where am I? What is it?"

"You're up in Castle Gulch," I said. Doak gave you a clout over the head with his Winchester. The young lady, there, was good enough to come out of her cabin and revive you."

He climbed hastily to his feet, bowed and felt for his hat. He looked sick and pale, and his big head was evilly swollen; but anybody could see the fine fellow sticking out all over him.

"Don't you worry and run away, now, miss," he muttered. "Mr. Hainlen and me—we won't let nobody hurt you."

Then he tumbled down in a dead faint again at the girl's feet.

However, just to have seen him up on his short columns of legs—that was distinctly something. The girl flashed by me, bringing more water from the shack. Under her continued drenchings Ericsson roused, and a second time began to claw round to hoist himself up.

"Lie still, there!" I warned him. "Don't move. We'll get on without you."

The girl, remember, had not yet once spoken: she might be a mute, for all I personally knew. However, there was only the one plan. I said to her: "We'd a rope—we left it out there in the edge of the trees. You couldn't find it, I'm afraid. But do you think you could hold this revolver on the crooks—just like this? Do you think you could? For half a minute—while I manage that rope?"

Then I heard her voice. She whispered, steadily enough: "I'll try."

"Splendid! I'll be keeping the Winchester on 'em too, from wherever I am. Are you ready?"

She drew up close beside me, and I transferred the cocked and pointed big Colt's from my hand into hers.

"If either of them flutters a finger," I told the girl, "let fly. Hold on the middle of the chest—the stomach."

She nodded. With my own eye and Winchester always fixed on the sheep-herders, I backed off into the fringes of the clearing. I knew exactly where we had started our lunge from: a triangle of three little pine-trees, jutting slightly out into the grassy circle of the open, marked the spot. Soon one of my exploring feet was inside the coil of picket-rope. Hurriedly, without stooping, I dragged it forward that way to the cabin.

I'D never tied up a man for keeps in my life, of course. But, on the other hand, I was pretty well born and bred in a sailboat; I knew several tricks about knots. So, notwithstanding my Eastern tenderness, I fancy I trusted Whiskey and young Doak up rather handsomely. Between the two of them I used the whole forty-five feet of three-eighths-inch lariat. Taking the cartridge-belts and Whiskey's gun-holster, I left my buckos stretched out full length—a sullen pair of logs—along the upper side-wall of the shack. Then, you bet, I breathed easier.

As I now relieved the girl of the big six-shooter, I had a rapid look into her face. Poor little mountain masquerader of a girl!

The camp-fire had begun to burn low, so I smartly set about building it up. Then, between the girl and me, we succeeded in lifting and hauling Ericsson around to the front of the house, propping him up in a sitting position against the log wall, his feet comfortably spread out toward the fire—he violently protesting all the while:

"Hey, now, mister! I'm all right. Let me be—let me do it myself. By jiminy! Now, don't you, miss—you ain't near strong enough. Don't let her, mister! I can walk, I tell you. Ain't you going to leave me walk? Much obliged—much obliged, miss. But, by jiminy!"

DON'T make any mistake—I'm not going to try to describe this girl to you. In the first place, I couldn't. Next, that sort of thing's never any use. A man's love comes to him in a million different ways. Mine came to me out of the sky, that night, in the fantastic little fire-lighted dream-park in Castle Gulch. From the moment I turned, with a long breath, after having finished up on the last knot with Whiskey and Doak—from the moment my eyes really met hers, really met and spoke to her, you understand—from that moment I was lost: drowned—in love!

Perhaps, under commoner circumstances, it mightn't have been. In the rum little architect's-office lot at home, I had enjoyed the reputation of being a mere grubber—insensible to women, sport—insensible to everything in life but my grind. I dare say I was selfish, absorbed. Perhaps it had needed this shock—the blow to my health, the strangely poignant, lonely, natural life in the foothills—needed all this to wake a soul in me.

Never think, though, that night was all magic. We'd some pretty practical issues to face. Suddenly the absence of the girl's father struck me. In answer to my hint. she said: "Yes; he's inside, there. Lying down. Asleep."

"But!" I marveled. "Through all this row? And, in your pinch, you never waked him?"

"He's not well. He sleeps a great deal—he's had a nervous breakdown."

I begged her to explain more to me. After a moment, in a halting low voice, she began to speak:

"My father is a college professor—or he was till last winter. If you've studied much mathematics, perhaps you know his name: James Duncannon of the Institute of Technology."

I was absolutely bowled over. "Why," I cried, "no architect can get along without knowing him! His book on strains is the standard!"

"Yes; he's written five books of mathematics. But zoology was—is—his real life. Even now—" Quickly she had to cover her eyes with her right hand.

Huskily I tried to bolster her:

"I see, I see. I know something about study—what it can do to one."

She took down her hand and went on:

"He felt this—this trouble—coming a long while. He was afraid of it—did things to—to fight it off. Instead of scientific books, he read only the lightest stories—hundreds of them. Most of them were about the West. And gradually the West began to exert a queer fascination on my poor father. After a while, he wouldn't read anything but Western stories. He grew more and more like a boy."

"Had you nobody to help you?" I couldn't forbear asking. "Forgive me, but—your mother?"

"My mother died in Italy five years ago, of a fever. That was the beginning with poor father: he couldn't seem to adjust himself to the change. For the past five years we've lived alone together—he and I. We're from Maine. We had plenty of friends in Boston, of course. But this—it's so hard to talk about. We couldn't discuss it. And people were so nice. They understood.

"Father kept growing worse, you see. One morning last month I went into his room to wake him. He wasn't there. He'd run away—just like a boy. I thought of the West at once. But we hunted about Boston for two days, and advertised in other cities, and I hurried up to our little Maine farm. But I was almost sure that he'd go West. In Chicago the police found a clue for me; and in St. Paul another. Then I followed on out along the line of the new railroad. Finally—out here I found him."

She stopped, her eyes swimming, and I don't mind saying that mine were too.

"You must cut away out of here!" I exclaimed excitedly, to hide my weakness. "To-night—at once. Go in and wake your father. I'll help you get ready. You are to take my horse and break for Rainbow—that's the nearest town. I'll travel as far as I can with you to the road. Then I'll meet you in Rainbow again to-morrow, and arrange everything."

She slowly shook her dark head.

"You don't understand. Father's become very weak—childish. It's mortal with him—this. He grows feebler every day. If—if he lives through the summer—" One overpowering sob convulsed her. "No; to drag him away from his little moment of happiness now—it would be to kill him."

"But—but—you?" I found myself stuttering helplessly. "Is there no possible way—to get at him—to explain?"

Again the slow shake, unimaginably touching, of the downcast head. I looked long at her, then rebelled with sudden fury against the filth of life.

"Ericsson!" I shouted. "She shall stay! She shall stay—do you hear me? Till she chooses to go. What—do they mean to say we can't take care of her? Law or no law! You're able to sit here and pump a gun?"

A delighted grin overspread the Swede's broad, reddish-blond mug.

"Yah, sure!" he grunted. "You bet you, mister! We'll fix 'em!"

BEFORE jumping into the work of the night, I fed my eyes on the girl a moment longer. Almost whispering, I asked her: "What's your name?"

"Eloise."

I lingered beside her in the yellow fire flicker, aware of the loneliness that would seize upon me the instant I turned my eyes from her. The dogs—to dare to dream of possessing her—this fair creature! I groaned, swung abruptly round the corner of the cabin, six-shooter in hand. Not dogs—rats! By heaven, they should be dealt with!

I stopped short, frozen in my tracks. Whiskey and young Doak were not there!

To be continued next week

Do You Want to Be a Railroad President?

By EDWARD HUNGERFORD

THE other day a man died in Montreal who had acquired distinction in that Canadian city. He had been knighted, he was a director in the Bank of Montreal; higher honors hardly exist in the imagination of any Canadian. His art collection was the finest in the Dominion: it was valued at more than two millions of dollars. This man—his name was Sir William Van Horne, and he was the head and front of the Canadian Pacific Railway—had many more millions of dollars, in land, in buildings, in securities of every sort. Men deferred to his judgment. He sat in high places. Yet he was fond of telling of the days when he was a telegraph operator back in Chicago, the old Chicago whose streets were shaded by maples and catalpas.

To the boy "doin' errants" around the little yellow depot at the crossroads, or blackening his face and hands in the grime of roundhouse or locomotive shop, there must seem to be a vast and unbridgeable chasm between him and the man who comes in his own railroad car and receives the reports and homage of the biggest bosses that the boy has ever known. Yet the chasm can be bridged. Sir William Van Horne bridged it; better still, nearly every successful railroad president in the United States to-day has succeeded in bridging it.

Men Who Began at the Bottom

VAN HORNE, a mere boy of ten, was running errands in a crude railroad station at Joliet, Illinois. Three years later he was a full-fledged telegraph operator in the barn-like wooden terminal of the Illinois Central Railroad on the lake-front of Chicago. At twenty-one he was a train despatcher. At twenty-nine he was general manager of what is to-day the Wabash; and nine years later he became president of the Milwaukee road. Yet he was a big enough man to leave the presidency to become a general manager—a builder, if you please. And the road that called him was then a struggling company—the Canadian Pacific, engaged in the seemingly impossible task of placing across the wilds of Canada, from Lake Superior to the Pacific, the last link of an all-Canadian transcontinental route.

Van Horne shouldered this task. He built the road. Engineers had said that it could not be done. But he did it—in five years less than the time given it by its charter.

How can a boy become a railroad president? How have boys become railroad presidents? How are the boys of today preparing to become railroad presidents?

Lest you think the great head of the Canadian Pacific an isolated case, take the group of able men who are to-day at the top of great railroad organizations all the way across the United States. Take Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore & Ohio. Willard was a track laborer on the old Central Vermont before he had reached the age of eighteen. Before he attained the dignity of a trainmaster's job, he was fireman, engineer, brakeman, conductor, and roundhouse fore-man. When he sat in the engine-cab, he carried books under the seat, so that he might read when he was not shoveling coal or driving the locomotive. To-day Daniel Willard is the most widely read and quoted of all the railroad men of America.

J. H. Hustis, president of the Boston & Maine, and A. H. Smith, president of the New York Central, began their railroad service as office-boys. C. H. Markham, president of the Illinois Central, like Daniel Willard, began as a track laborer. Marvin Hughitt, for many years head of the Northwestern, and W. A. Gardner, now its president, A. J. Farling of the Milwaukee, and Milton H. Smith of the Louisville & Nashville, were like Sir William Van Horne in beginning their careers by pounding a telegraph key. Probably three quarters of all the men who head American railroads to-day began as track laborers or telegraph operators—the greater part as operators.

How can a boy become a railroad president? If the boy-who-would-be-president takes too much stock in the foregoing, he will reply: "By getting a job as track laborer or telegraph operator."

The New Type of Railroad President

NOT a bit of it. The track laborers on the greater part of the railroad mileage of the United States to-day are Mexicans or Japanese or negroes; and as for the telegraph operator—he is no longer the all-powerful factor in railroad operation that he was twenty-five or even ten years ago, owing to the use of the long-distance telephone in despatching trains and in transacting other business.

No; the road to the presidency of the railroad of to-morrow is not by way

of the telegraph key or the trackman's spade. It is already necessary that the man at the very head of a great transportation organism be more than an expert engineer, a good operating man, or a keen traffic-getter. The railroad president of to-day must be a statesman; he must be a diplomat. In these piping days when there is a commission in every State, to say nothing of the big Commission at Washington, to tell the railroad men just how they must operate their properties, when counties and cities take delight in getting under railroad ribs, the big job is to meet these Solons and, if not, actually to succeed in worsting them, to be able at least to hold one's own with them.

That is why the very newest type of railroad president is apt to be a different sort from the oldtimer who played upon the telegraph key or helped juggle the hundred-pound rail. The Pennsylvania—whose middle name, if ever it had one, would be Conservatism—still stands by the ancient and honorable tradition that its president must be an engineer, trained if possible in its own shops. But the Southern Railway has in its new president, Fairfax Harrison, a lawyer whose diplomacy is quite in keeping with his native State, Virginia. Judge Robert S. Lovett, head of the Union Pacific, is, as his title would indicate, a lawyer. And the other day a man came to sit in the president's office of the Burlington who had been in its employ only seven years. He had been called in recognition of the theory that, the railroad of to-day should be headed by a diplomat and a lawyer.

Why the Railroads Need Lawyers

THERE must be good men in every road to-day and to-morrow to build the lines and to maintain them, to operate under all the new phases and conditions that call for constantly increasing trainload and decreasing expense, to go out and get the competitive business. For these big jobs—the managerships that are pre-fixed by "general" and the vice-presidencies—the boys in the shops and in the engine-cabs and in the little depots are training to-day. But for the biggest jobs—the post that even "generals" and vice-presidents defer to as the "chief's"—men are in preparation in the colleges and the technical schools of the country. And those energetic and ambitions fellows who are not actually in the colleges are getting the college sort of training in the innumerable ways that open to the young man who has the will.

Only a little while ago a big and popular fellow—division superintendent of a big and popular railroad in the MiddleWest—was missing from his usual haunts. One night one of his friends espied him on a trolley-car bound downtown, with some battered text-books under his arms.

"I'm going to school again," he said.

"To school!"

"To law school. That's the thing the railroad man of to-day needs. He needs it at every turn. I haven't time, or our legal department hasn't time, to take up the multitude of things that arise on this division alone that need a smart lawyer's brain. It may only be a cow that, because of her untimely decease at the point of one of our locomotives, has been raised from obscurity to pedigree; but an incalculable amount of damage to the road may arise if these things are not given to a good lawyer at the beginning. That's why I'm tinkering with Blackstone and the Code."

He stopped short. The trolley was halting opposite the law school.

"So long," said the superintendent; "I'm going up."

So he is—going up. I talked with his president last week. He had heard of the law school episode. He has marked that superintendent for advancement.

More Good Jobs than Men

A GOOD railroad man, trained to a fine edge in the great branches of the science,—construction, maintenance, operation, traffic,—a man well versed in the law, a keen diplomat, a maker of public addresses: a specialist in all these things, and yet a man so broad that you may think of him as a specialist in nothing at all. A large contract, boy-who-would-be-president, but not an impossible one. There are a thousand sizable railroads in the land, more than a hundred whose size fairly entitles them to be called principalities.

The game is worth the candle. Each of these railroads must have a president, a guiding hand at its throttle. There is a possible position for you at the head of some one of them. There are more good jobs there, both to-day and to-morrow, than there are good men to fill them.

The rest is up to you.

A Ridiculous Affair

By WILL PAYNE

Illustrations by Robert Amick

THE president considered it a moment and replied:

"Yes; that's a good idea. Telephone and see if you can get her down here right away."

So the treasurer telephoned:

"This is Mr. Stillman speaking from Mr. Green's office. Mr. Green would like you to come down at once. There's something here in the office I think you would like to see—something that will interest you.... Beg pardon?... No, the banks do not open until ten o'clock. Of course, you can get any money you wish directly after ten. No doubt you could have it sent up here to the office for you if you wished."

She drove her own car down, so it took barely fifteen minutes. When she entered, the treasurer stood up and made her an impersonal, perfunctory little bow, looking off at the wall rather than at her. Looking off at the other wall, she slightly inclined her head in his direction.

The president merely glanced up at her, without word or nod. The third man had come in by that time. He acknowledged her presence by taking off his hat and laying it on the table—carefully depositing beside it a half smoked, half chewed cigar.

She came in with swift, light steps—with a dash, keyed up and eager, her eyes sparkling. Her rapid glance searched the room, and immediately found what it sought—a stack of bank-notes that lay on the table a foot away from the third man's slouch hat and fuming cigar butt. She swept over and dropped into a vacant chair thereabouts. One might have sensed little ripplings of nervous energy through her, little tinglings and urgings of leashed eagerness, as of a thoroughbred dog on a hot scent. This showed in her shining eyes, her controlled breathing, in small waves of motion through her body, as she settled herself in the chair and restlessly touched a strand of hair under her hat-brim.

THE scene was the office of the president of Venner Brothers' Implement Works. The room had windows on two sides—and needed them this lowering November day. Snow fell soggily past them. There was no steam heat in this old part of the plant, but a coal fire burned smokily in the grate. The room contained some filing cases, a glass-covered book-case, several chairs, a long table in the center, and a big desk against the blank wall.

Jacob Green, the president, sat at the desk, his swivel-chair swung around to face the room and tilted back, his lean legs crossed and his claw-like hands clasped behind his head. He was a slight, unhandsome man, with a short, coarse red beard and a mat of like hair, both splotched with gray. For all present purposes, he was Venner Brothers' Implement Works. There were six heirs to the estates of Lemuel and Peter Venner—all females; and the estates were to remain in trust until the youngest heir—this Sara who had just entered—reached her thirtieth birthday. Meanwhile Jacob Green held autocratic sway.

On her twenty-fourth birthday Sara had returned quite definitely to the ancestral roof, and had quite definitely proposed taking a hand in the ancestral affairs. That had been in the January preceding this November. It had taken her three months to learn that expending herself upon this slight, wiry, unhandsome man, who sat at the big desk day in and day out, and knew the implement business from the ground up, was exactly as profitable as butting her head against a stone wall. If she raged at him, he laughed at her. If she pleaded, he told her to trot along and not bother him. Whatever else she did, having made up his capable mind that Venner Brothers should do so and so, so and so was precisely what it did. She had been three months learning the lesson, whereas an intelligent pup—as she remarked one day to the treasurer—would have learned it in three days.

But presently she quarreled with the treasurer, too. Her explosiveness would have brought harsher criticism, only there are certain combinations of form, features, and complexion, attended by certain graces of tone, glance, and movement, before which masculine criticism mostly throws up the sponge. So they simply remarked that she had her father's temper.

Merely glancing up at her this soggy morning, and barely waiting for her to be seated, Jacob Green said to the treasurer, with a touch of impatience: "Go on."

Addressing the third man, the treasurer resumed his narrative:

"We keep more cash in the office than concerns of this kind usually do. It's an old custom, I understand. There's never less than six or seven thousand dollars; sometimes there's fifteen or twenty thousand. So we make up the pay-roll from our own office cash instead of giving the men checks on the bank, and we pay off the different shops on different days. This man Pershing has attended to that ever since I've been here, and has had the run of the cash. He's been doing it, I understand, a dozen years or more.

"Well, yesterday Pershing went down to pay the men in the finishing shop. He put the money and the pay-roll in his bag, and left my office about a quarter to five. As the men quit work, you know, they come to him and get their pay. Usually it takes half or three quarters of an hour. We keep a small amount of cash in a drawer under the counter in my front office—a couple of hundred dollars or so—enough to pay any small bills that may come in. The rest of the cash is in a bank safe that stands in a vault off my front office. Nobody but Pershing ever touches the cash in the safe, you know.

"BUT when he was down in the finishing shop paying the men yesterday afternoon, Mr. Green sent over to my office for a couple of hundred dollars. The banks were closed and he wanted to use some money. There wasn't that much in the drawer, so Miss Lewis, who is sort of an assistant to Pershing, went to the safe to get it. For convenience in counting, most of the money is done up in five-hundred-dollar packages that are piled in a stack in the cash box of the safe. I don't know why Miss Lewis pulled out one of the bottom packages in the stack. I suppose she had a curiosity to finger the cash. Anyway, she did pull out one of the bottom packages, and it struck her as looking odd. She got the money for Mr. Green out of another package; then she brought the first package, that had struck her as looking odd, in to me. It was one of those."

He nodded toward the six bundles of bank-notes, each with a yellow paper band around it, that lay on the table.

"Well, I looked at it, and saw in a moment it was counterfeit. I went into the vault with her, and we examined the other packages, and found five others that were counterfeit. Naturally—well, I was just

---

flabbergasted. We came out of the vault,—both of us all in a heap,—and then Pershing came in. I should have said this was near half past five and everybody except Miss Lewis and I had gone. I told Miss Lewis she could go then, and called Pershing into my room."

The treasurer paused a moment and contemplated the opposite wall thoughtfully.

"It seemed pretty clear to me," he resumed, "that Pershing must have put the counterfeit money in there, because nobody else, so far as I knew, ever touched the cash in the safe; and if he had put the counterfeit money there, it was likely he had taken out good money in its place. Of course, if he was guilty I wanted him to confess, and I talked with him for some little time—maybe ten minutes. But I couldn't get anything out of him. He just said he didn't know anything about it.

"It seems Miss Lewis, instead of going home, lingered out in the hall a few minutes, being excited and curious to know what would happen. Then she'd gone downstairs, and was lingering around the front door when Mr. Green, on his way home, came across her, and she told him about the counterfeit money. So Mr. Green came immediately up to my office, where I was still trying to get Pershing to confess. I took him into the vault to show him the counterfeit money; and Pershing slammed the vault door shut, locking us in there, and ran away."

JACOB GREEN nodded and drove a claw-like hand into the mat of his short red beard.

"An hour later," he said to the third man, "some woman telephoned to the watchman to come and let us out of the vault."

He looked along the table at Sara and added: "Perhaps this young lady can tell us something about that."

"I?" cried Sara. "How should I know anything about it?"

"The watchman was rather under an impression it was your voice," the president replied drily.

"How should a watchman know my voice?" she demanded; and, before he could answer, she inquired: "Who is this gentleman, please?"

She referred to the third man, who sat on the same side of the table with her, three or four feet away. He was a burly person, with beefy shoulders and a heavy face, marked with patches of fine red veins on each cheek. His eyes, half hidden by puffy eyelids, were singularly dull-looking.

"That gentleman," Jacob Green replied, "represents the United States Government—which, of course, is interested in all cases of counterfeiting."

"But this isn't a case of counterfeiting," she asserted positively. "Counterfeiting is putting bad money in circulation. This money never was put in circulation. It was just put in a safe. That's something entirely different, isn't it?"

"Well, that's so—that's so," the man replied thoughtfully. "Of course, if he simply put the money in the safe and never tried to pass it outside—" His singularly dull-looking eyes contemplated Sara's eager face, and he repeated, much impressed: "Of course, if he only put the money in the safe— But very likely he's been passing counterfeit money outside, too."

"No, he never has!" Sara answered with prompt vigor. "He has never passed a single bit anywhere!"

"Well, that might alter the case," the man admitted. Taking up one of the packages in a heavy hand, he looked it over again. "Still, he may have the plates from which these notes were printed. You know, having a counterfeit plate in your possession is a crime, even if you never pass counterfeit money. If he has the plates it would be my duty to arrest him."

"But he has no plates!" Sara answered triumphantly. "He destroyed them!"

"But are you sure of that, now?" the man inquired doubtfully. "I must be convinced of that. How do you know it?"

"He told me so himself!" she affirmed conclusively.

The man showed no surprise or other emotion at that statement. He merely laid down the package, his opaque eyes on her face, and observed: "He's been telling you about the case, then?"

She colored, and took a tiny bit of her lip between her teeth as if chastising herself.

"Circumstances alter cases, you know," the man remarked gravely. "If I knew the circumstances of this case, now—" He broke off suggestively.

SARA swiftly raised her troubled blue eyes to the clock over Mr. Green's desk, which showed nine minutes to ten. She thought a moment, then impetuously addressed the man with a question:

"You've never seen this Mr. Pershing?"

"No," he replied; "I'd like to know about him."

Immediately, with pink cheeks and indignation in her voice and sparkling eyes, she told him:

"He's no more a criminal than I am! If you should talk with him five minutes you'd know it was ridiculous to call him one! I suppose he's forty years old, but he's hardly bigger than a thirteen-year old boy. When he sits in an ordinary chair he hooks the heels of his little boots on the chair rung because his legs aren't long enough to reach the floor comfortably. He has a little round face that never grew a beard, and round palish blue eyes that always look like a frightened child's. He's so timid—why, when I went into the treasurer's office I always made it a point to stop and speak to him, and he was so embarrassed that he behaved foolishly."

"You've been talking with him a good deal, then," the man suggested.

"No, not lately," she replied decisively. "Mr. Stillman and I disagreed—very radically. I have not been on speaking terms with him, so naturally I have kept out of the treasurer's office the last two months."

Jacob Green observed: "This young lady disagrees very radically with the whole works here. She thinks I ought to put in my time baking cookies, while Stillman and the other officers put on white aprons and hand 'em out to the men."

Ignoring that interruption, Sara went on impulsively:

"Being a timid, passive little man, naturally he's married to a big, aggressive woman. I know her well enough, because she's very active in the Woman's Club here. I needn't go into it very much; but she's one of those unfortunate persons whose will is strong in proportion to the feebleness of their minds—unsatisfied and sour and utterly selfish. It's ridiculous to suppose poor little Pershing could control her.

"It all began in his household expenses, you know. She simply spent more money than he earned. You'd understand if you saw her—fat and overdressed and simpering at forty! She spent more than his small salary. He could do just as much about it as a cork can about the current that carries it along. He told me—with his little heels on the rung of the chair and his little knees cocked up and his little head to one side, picking at his hat-band with fingers no bigger than a child's, and all the time in a kind of helpless amazement—he told me he tried to stop it. He threatened to advertise forbidding anybody to give her credit. Then she had a spell. She's strong on spells, it seems—flopping down on the floor, eyes rolled up and limbs rigid, you know. She told him she'd commit suicide if he advertised, and frightened what was left of the soul out of him.

"He's just a chrysalis man, you know," she went on, nodding energetically at the detective—"all wrapped up in timidity; can't get out of his shell. He couldn't stop her from spending money, but he could take money out of the safe; so he did. That's the whole story. From beginning to end, it is simply an absurdity. He once got up courage to forbid Gleason & Smith here selling her goods on credit. She bluffed them into letting her have the goods, and went home and had a spell. That's the way it went."

Again she looked up at the clock.

"You see, bills accumulated—little bills, but more than he could pay. He waited and waited as long as he could. Finally somebody threatened to sue him, and he was afraid that would cost him his job. Mercy is not expected in this plant," she added, holding her chin a thought his fingers higher and flashing at the figure in the swivel-chair.

"He took two hundred dollars out of the safe to pay the bills. More bills accumulated, and after a while he took another two hundred dollars. Of course, at first he could deceive himself. He could say he'd conquer his wife and keep his expenes in hand, and finally save enough to pay up what he had taken. But after a time he knew that was hopeless and he never could get out. Then this ridiculous affair of the counterfeiting came in."

"Yes; that's the odd part of it," said the man.

"You must understand," she went on, "that he began taking money eight years ago. You can see how absurd it all is from that! Only three thousand in eight years—which is less than four hundred dollars a year! A sad joke rather than a crime, I should call it! Well, he had taken several hundred dollars, and he was mortally afraid, of course, that he would be found out—that somebody else would count the cash and find it short. So one day a young man in the office here happened to show him a circular he had got through the mail. This circular offered to sell counterfeit money. It said one could order so much counterfeit money, which would be sent by express C.O.D., and the person to whom it was addressed would pay the amount agreed upon at the express office and get the package."

"An old game," the detective remarked.

"I suppose so," she replied. "This young man regarded it as a joke; but Pershing got the circular from him and sent on to the address and ordered a thousand dollars in counterfeit ten-dollar bills. The package came, and he paid a hundred and fifty dollars to get it out of the express office; but when he opened it there was nothing inside except an old newspaper folded up the size of bank-notes. But somehow that ridiculous notion of counterfeit money stuck in the poor little man's head. It seemed to him if he could put counterfeit money in the safe in place of the money he'd taken, no one would find him out. That was all he could think of, you see—tormented as he was by fear of exposure. So he worked two whole years!"

SHE bent toward the detective, her face aglow with sympathy, and repeated with a touch of awe: "Two whole years! Just think of that—working all alone, in secret, every spare minute he could get—and every minute fearing he would be found out! Why, it's just like a poor little mouse tunneling through a stone wall to get away from a cat! He photographed a ten-dollar bill, you know, and, after failing again and again, finally got plates that would print something that looked like a bank-note. Then he had an awful search to get paper that would look something like bank-note paper. Finally he got what you see."

She nodded toward the six bundles on the table.

"But you're quite sure he has destroyed the plates?" the man inquired.

"Oh, perfectly!" she affirmed. "He told me all about it, and I know every word was the truth. It was four years ago that he got his plates and hid them in the attic of his house. Then, as he took more money he made more counterfeits. But by and by, you see, the counterfeits didn't console him at all. He didn't feel that they were any protection. He saw that they'd be discovered some day, and pretty certainly be charged to him. It got so the fear of being detected was with him all the time. When he left the office at night he would say, 'Well, it will come to-morrow.' Last September the amount got to be three thousand dollars. Then he said he'd go no further. He'd let the bills pile up. He'd just sit down and fold his hands and wait for it to happen. Then he destroyed his plates. And when he found last night that he had been detected, he was not surprised at all. He'd been expecting it so long that he just accepted it passively, with a sort of relief."

Jacob Green tilted up his chin, thrust his fingers through his beard from the under side, and observed:

"If it was a relief to him, why the devil did he lock me and Stillman in the vault?"

The question seemed to disconcert her. Another wave of quick color went over her face, and she gently bit a tiny piece of her lip.

"Well," she answered lamely, "he was, of course, a trifle startled."

She looked once more at the clock, which now showed four minutes past ten, and frowned a little.

"You see, when he found he had been detected—" she resumed, pulling herself together for the explanation. But she was interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Come in!" Jacob Green called impatiently.

A YOUNG man thrust his head inside to report, apologetically, that Miss Venner's chauffeur was outside with a package which he said he must deliver at once.

"Bring it in, please," said Sara.

A moment later the young man returned with a fancy pasteboard candy box tied with a red ribbon, which Sara took and laid upon the table.

"About his shutting you in the vault, Mr. Green," she resumed with greater confidence: "It was purely instinctive. He was prepared for it and resigned to it; yet, when it happened, he naturally shied away. Seeing you and Mr. Stillnan in the vault, he clapped the door shut on you instinctively and ran away."

"Very interesting," the Government agent remarked to her impassively; and to Jacob Green he observed, with like um-passiveness:

"Of course, your idea was right. The man is there."

The observation some way struck disagreeably on Sara's nerves. She regarded the man a moment with puckered brows; then turned to the figure in the swivel-chair.

"So there's the whole story, Mr. Green. It's simply one of those ridiculous affairs that will sometimes happen. Pershing's no more a criminal than I am. He's merely helpless. And I'm ashamed through and through—when I think of all the money there is around here to be spent for trifles—of that poor little scared rabbit of a man going on year after year with his petty stealing and his petty counterfeiting, and always in mortal terror of being caught, just to get three or four hundred dollars a year that he couldn't keep his silly, selfish wife from spending. It cries shame to every one of us! The three thousand dollars that he owes the company, you can charge to me."

The president rolled his head in his clasped hands to look her more in the face and replied:

"If a man steals from this company, I'll prosecute him. If he embezzles ten cents, let him look out for me!"

Abruptly he brought his chair down, leaning toward her and clapping on his knees, so that he reminded her of a wiry dog ready to fight.

"I sit here and drive this machine. Nobody's hanging any posies on Jacob Green. Ever hear anybody remark what a nice man I am? You never did. But the machines drill right along. The implements go out. This shebang can have my bones, and you know the dividends go to you more than to me, so far's that's concerned. But if I had to run it half a second on south wind and spring poetry and chocolate creams," he added, with a glance at the fancy pasteboard box beside her, "instead of on steel billets and oak timber and hard cash, why I'd quit so quick it would make your head swim. I know you're charming as well as anybody

Continued on page 13

The Girls Behind the Covers

People Who Live in Queer Places

---

A Page of Prophets

A Ridiculous Affair

Continued from page 8

else does. I know you're beautiful and generous," he went on, with a tight, savage little nod, ruthlessly ignoring her pink face. "But I've rapped your knuckles raw every time you've tried to stick a finger in the works because sentiment don't go here for a two-cent postage stamp. I'll put on a cotton night-gown and get me a lyre and trot out in the street and sing for crackers when sentiment does go. And if I won't let sentiment go for you, do you think I will for that block-headed, thieving little wart Pershing? Do you suppose that grasshopper can steal me blind for eight years, and then get away with it by telling me a sentimental story about his domestic difficulties? He can't bump me over with a yarn. He's a thief, and he'll take the thief's medicine!"

Turning to the detective, Sara cried:

"You see! He is a heartless brute!"

But, instead of any sympathetic response, the detective's heavy-lidded eyes regarded her with a peculiarly fishy look and he replied coolly:

"It would make no difference at all whether he was heartless or not. This is a case of counterfeiting—exactly as much as if Pershing had passed the money anywhere else. The United States Government takes charge of all cases of counterfeiting, and permits nobody on earth to interfere. You couldn't stop it, you know, to save your life."

FLASHING and dilating with indignation, and trembling a little, she retorted:

"I see! You deceived me, then! You just wanted to lead me on to talk!"

"Of course I wanted to find my man," he admitted impassively. "Your conversation convinces me Mr. Green's idea was right."

Looking at the president, he inquired:

"Is the man you spoke of ready?"

Mr. Green pushed a button on his desk, and, when the young man reappeared at the door, asked, "Is the policeman there?"

"Yes, sir," said the young man. "Your car is waiting."

The Government agent rose, put on his hat, and took up his chewed cigar. Sara, who had been watching breathlessly with wide eyes, keyed tense with alarmed uncertainty, sprang to her feet, her lips apart in an unuttered cry.

"Be sensible, now," the man advised her. "You can't possibly do any good."

And Jacob Green impatiently admonished her:

"Don't be foolish. You can't stop the Government. You can only make a spectacle of yourself. Of course, Pershing ran right to you last night. I was sure of it. Your talk shows it. How else could he have told you his story? Every train has been watched. He hasn't left town. You've got him hidden in your house. This Government agent is going to get him. You can't stop it."

Whereupon Sara went quite wild. She gave a little cry and ran toward the door; then whirled about and ran back toward the table. And the treasurer sprang forward and blocked her way.

"It will do you no good to make a fuss about it, Miss Veneer," he said sternly, frowning heavily at her. "It was clear to me from your story the man must be in your house. You'll only make yourself ridiculous if you try to interfere. This embezzlement happened in my office. I'm as much interested as anybody in seeing the man caught. I propose to go along search the house—I happen to be familiar with it. The only sensible thing for you to do is to sit right here quietly—out of the way—until it's all over with. Anything else will just get you into trouble uselessly."

Sara confronted the treasurer a moment, her eyebrows drawn together; then she gave up.

"I see! Three men against one woman! Have your own way, then; but, remember, I shall get Pershing from you yet!"

With that she turned her indignant back upon them and walked over to the window, where she stood looking out into the falling snow until the detective and the treasurer left the room, and for a minute afterward.

DURING the minute Jacob Green wheeled around to his desk.

"What can't be cured must be endured, Sara," he commented philosophically. "Make yourself at home and excuse me while I work."

"I'll telephone," she said, wheeling around.

"Not to your house," he replied without looking up. "I'll save you from getting yourself mixed up in this mess if I can."

After a moment he added: "I signaled Stillman to have the door here locked on the outside. It's better for you to stay in here awhile."

There was a moment's silence; then Sara said convulsively: "All the same, you're a brute."

Although his back was turned, the president was indefinably aware of her at intervals in the next three quarters of an hour. He heard her walk to the table, and thought she got her box of candy. Then she moved softly about the room. By and by she was over at the grate, where she stood a long time, occasionally poking the fire.

But she was sitting at the table again when the treasurer entered, and she sprang up expectantly.

"If he was there," said the treasurer, frowning, to Jacob Green, "he must have got away. We searched the house from cellar to garret without finding him."

"And where is the bulldog?" cried Sara eagerly.

"If you mean the detective," the treasurer replied, frowning heavily at her, "he has gone over to Pershing's house to see if he can find the counterfeit plates."

And at once Sara cried:

"Oh, Joe! That was splendid! You've been splendid all through!"

She seemed as eager as ever, but in a quite different way—smiling so that dimples came in her cheeks, and bending a little toward the treasurer, shining with fond admiration.

The treasurer still frowned at her, but the frown looked merely foolish. He turned red in the face and stammered something inarticulately.

But she only laughed outright, clapped her hands together, and cried:

"I told you they couldn't get him away from us!"

With that she stepped swiftly nearer, caught his hand, patted it, and laughed brazenly up into his red face.

THE president, who had observed these phenomena with astonishment and uneasiness, dug a hand into his beard and observed sarcastically:

"I thought you two were not speaking."

"Speaking!" Sara exclaimed, with a return to the indignant mood. "We did have a misunderstanding—but speaking now? After he saved poor little Pershing from you last night? Well, I should say we would be speaking after that! Of course, I sent for him as soon as Pershing told me. It took courage to do that—with you, Jacob Green, as ruthless as you are! His mind worked like lightning, too. There was poor little Pershing in Joe's office, and there you were, all ready to gobble him up. And, just on the spur of the moment, to tell Pershing to lock you and him in the vault and run to me—do you think I wouldn't be speaking to a man capable of doing that?"

Upon that, the paralyzed treasurer began stammering foolishly:

"Of course—of course—why, you see, I didn't expect her to let out like this."

He gave a hollow, idiotic sort of laugh and stammered on:

"Of course, you see—of course, I hated to throw you down, Mr. Green. But, you see—well, she had quarreled with me, you see. Of course, you see, that cut me all up. You see, I knew if I let Pershing be sent to jail she never would forgive me, you see. But—well, on the other hand, you see you see, on the other hand, if I saved Pershing she'd give me credit for it. You see, it was a choice between Sara and you. Of course, nobody but a lunatic could hesitate, you see."

SARA shamelessly patted his hand and laughed again, so the room rang with it.

"But I had him frightened to death last night," she declared with triumph. "I told him I'd get three thousand dollars in good money to put in place of the counterfeits, and he'd either got to fix a way for me to get hold of the counterfeits or just grab them himself. Worried you some, didn't it, Joe?" she demanded, laughing.

Jacob Green swung swiftly in his chair and looked down the long table.

"Oh, yes, we fooled you that time, Jacob Green!" Sara triumphed. "Of course, when he telephoned there was something in the office I wanted to see, I knew what he meant. Then he reminded me I could get money from the bank at ten o'clock and have it sent up here. He can think faster than you can, Jacob Green! And I was just on the point of spoiling it all by grabbing the notes in front of your eyes—I was that indignant and confused when you said you were going to my house. But he headed me off, you know. Hasn't he been splendid all through? And you misled them at the house so they couldn't find Pershing, didn't you, Joe?"

"Yes, I did," said the treasurer helplessly.

"And now it doesn't make any difference," Sara added radiantly. "They can get him whenever they like, for they haven't that much evidence against him."

To show how much "that much" was, she measured off a hair's breadth of pink fingernail.

JACOB GREEN had been looking down the long table. Six bundles of bank-notes lay there, as before; also there was Sara's candy box, uncovered and empty. But, even at that distance, he knew the bank-notes that lay there were perfectly genuine ones, and that Sara's chauffeur had brought them up to her from the bank in the candy box. He had no need to examine the grate where Sara had stood for some time, occasionally poking the fire.

"Not that much evidence!" Sara crowed. "There's no embezzlement, for there's your three thousand dollars in good money. And there's no counterfeits. What do you say to that?"

The president twisted his beard and growled into it:

"I say you're a couple of young fools; and I'm an old one or I'd have suspected this."

He swung around to his desk and added:

"What can't be cured must be endured. Get along with you and let me work."

Sara stooped over his bowed back and whispered, bubbling:

"You know you'll come to the wedding, and be glad of it."

The Prize Mother-in-Law

WHEN Victor Williams of Norwood, Ohio, read in the paper that a mother-in-law prize contest was going on, it didn't take him a minute to make up his mind. He reached for the bureau drawer where the best note-paper was, and started in:

The lady in question, Mrs. J. A. Thompson, happening to come in just then, declared that such letter-writing was all foolishness.

"I did nothing at all more than anybody would have done, mother-in-law or no mother-in-law." said she.

But Mr. Williams knew what he was about, and the letter went off to the contest.

As the days went by, the good old mother-in-law joke, with the dignity of centuries on its head and the every-day active support of thousands of funny sheets, began to feel a hit sick. From every corner of Ohio, from every mansion, duplex, bungalow, cottage, and farmhouse, letters poured out addressed to the judges of the Mother-in-Law Contest.

Each one contained such stories of devotion and self-sacrifice that even the judges might he observed pricing India shawls and nice gray gloves and other trifles suitable to feminine middle age.

Then came the notable morning when the mail brought the news that, of all the three thousand entrants, Mr. Williams' favorite had carried off the prize.

Mr. Williams, grinning broadly, said that it was no surprise to him at all. He knew what family the prize would go to the minute his eyes lighted on that piece in the paper.

"I only hope there will be an international contest on the same lines. If there should be, in you go again, mother!" quoth her proud son.

Said the judges, in large type:

"We will hereafter refuse to laugh at the old-fashioned mother-in-law joke, for we have found that among mothers-in-law there are the most unselfish heroines."

And the heroine herself, Mrs. Thompson?

She chuckled softly, and went into the kitchen to toss off a batch of doughnuts.

Nothing Scares Her

EVERYBODY in Indiana knows Esther Griffin White, editor, owner, publisher, reporter, poet, and advertising manager of the Little Paper of Richmond.

For the Little Paper comes right out and says what it thinks; and the man who does queer things in Town Council or doesn't treat his clerks right, or the wife who doesn't do up her garbage in paper—anybody at all who does anything unsocial or generally wicked—gets a good talking to from E. G. W. right on the front page of the Little Paper in 30-point strong black type.

On the other hand, the person who does the square thing is sure to receive the orchids from the same editor, same page, same type.

And that is why the Little Paper has made such a tremendous hit: nobody knows what it will say next.

Miss White isn't the product of a finishing school, university, or a course in journalism. She hasn't any kind of "pull" back of her, financial or social. She just took to newspaper work because she had something to say, and went through the usual mill, from describing bridge teas to "Sunday feature stuff."

Then she went to New York and gave the big dailies there the "once-over." That was enough. Miss White didn't like them at all: they were all too big, too complicated, and too much in a hurry.

"I shall have a paper of my own," said Miss White on her way back to Indianapolis. That was a year ago. The Little Paper was the result. It comes out once a week and sells for five cents. In it one finds everything discussed and disposed of, from street-paving to symphony concerts. Editor White is a natural born booster, and just at present she is engineering the beginnings of a drama league in Richmond.

Awhile ago there was a dreadful state of affairs in the steam and hand laundries

of Richmond that required quite a bit of attention from the Little Paper. But Editor White straightened it out—got better pay and better conditions for the girl employees, and found time besides to dine with several celebrities that happened into town. For this editor isn't too much the reformer to like a good dinner. Besides all which, she has published a book on "Indiana Bookplates" that has been sold on four continents.

Miss White is a member of the Berlin Ex Libris Society, the American Book-plate Society, the National Arts Club New York, and she is, as she proudly tells you, "the worst golfer in Richmond."

They Earn Motor-Cars With Their Scissors

PEGGY NEWELL is an international cut-up with an earning capacity of $130 a week. In other words, she is a silhouettist of exceptional ability.

After three months of apprenticeship she went to Chicago, where she made an arrangement with one of the large department-stores, taking forty per cent. of all the money she made.

Six months of practice, during three months of which she was earning $35 a week or better, fitted her for any sort of pace in the silhouette business; so she and her husband, Baron Scotford, journeyed to San Francisco, where they secured the exclusive silhouette concessions on the Zone, among all the other amusement enterprises. They set up separate establishments, and those who did not patronize Peggy spent money with the Baron.

With paper folded so she can cut four silhouettes simultaneously, Peggy makes a full figure in three minutes, or a bust in a minute and a half; and her likenesses are truly wonderful. She mounts the cuttings on neat cards, and charges fifty cents for four full-figure pictures, or twenty-five cents for four bust pictures. Her earning capacity averages about twelve cents a minute when she is busy.

Peggy says that silhouetting offers a profitable field for the girl or boy who has talent for drawing. Good judgment of profile is necessary. Children make the best subjects, because they pose most naturally. Persons with grotesque or irregular profiles make the best silhouettes, because there are distinct features to outline.

The entire equipment of the silhouette artist consists of a pair of shears with short jaws and long handles, a supply of mounting board, and a quantity of paper coated black on one side. The paper is folded over twice, and the cutting is done from the seam edge, the fold holding the cutting together until the last bit is done with the shears.

There are only six professional silhouettists in the world. As a means of earning a livelihood Peggy thinks silhouetting is good enough for her.

THE little woman with the big shears in the tiny office—Mrs. Florence du Bois, of Newark, New Jersey—is a successful designer of children's dresses. She makes little dresses, and she makes big money. Some designers make just a little money; but more of them earn big salaries, and some earn for themselves houses and automobiles. It's the ideas that buy houses and automobiles.

"There are many ways a girl can get a start," Mrs. du Bois explains. "She may have shop experience. She may go to a designers' school in New York. She may make up little dresses and take them to the big department-store buyers—peddle them till the buyers know her work. She may make the dresses and go directly to customers with them. But she must have ideas!"

Some years ago Mrs. du Bois was in Milwaukee with her three little children to care for. She went on the road, selling dresses. One morning she found herself alone in Newark without work. She set to work in a little boarding-house room, cutting out and putting together some children's dresses. She took them to the buyer of a big Fifth Avenue store. The solemn buyer said: "I'll want some—I'll write to you."

Mrs. du Bois went back to her room and oiled her sewing-machine, hoping for an order for perhaps a dozen dresses. The next morning the postman came round the corner with a letter from the buyer. The buyer wanted 193 dresses!

That was a busy morning for Mrs. du Bois. For—and possibly this has something to do with her "arriving"—it didn't occur to her that the order was too big for her to handle. Help she must have, not with the ideas but with their execution. So she reorganized a run-down factory; and now all she does is to cut out little dresses with big shears, and time pattern-makers, the salesmen, and the shops do the rest.

"If I were to tell a girl with ambition what she should do to be a designer," says Mrs. du Bois, "I'd say, first of all get shop experience, and then set to work making dresses. If she has ideas—and energy—she will arrive."

Behind the Bolted Door?

By ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

Illustration by Henry Raleigh

"MRS. FISHER'S murderer," repeated the Doctor, "was not near her body, or even near the pool, until some hours after she was dead."

"Laneham!" cried the Judge. "Then you mean that he had some one else do it for him?"

"No, nothing of the sort. Nothing of the sort," he repeated, noticing their look of consternation. They were tense with excitement.

"Go ahead," said McGloyne impatiently; "well, go ahead an' tell us."

The young people alone seemed not to want to hear. There were too many things, now, that they had to say to each other. But, for the time, they had to put such things behind them. The Doctor began his explanation:

"There are, broadly, three questions to be answered: Who killed Mrs. Fisher, how he did it, and how access was obtained to the apartment.

"For most of you I suppose the first question is already answered. If, under the influence of a seance,—which I may now tell you was largely hocus-pocus,—if, after a performance that to every one else was almost meaningless, a man rushes forth and seeks the nearest opportunity to commit suicide, that alone would appear to be evidence enough. I believe it's even an old legal maxim that suicide is confession.

"It was Fisher who killed his wife. I had every suspicion of it the night of the murder. And every day since then has simply furnished new confirmation.

"In every crime, the psychanalyst looks first for the man morally capable of committing it. Fisher was morally capable of it, all right. I felt sure of that. But, on the other side, there seemed to be something that absolutely guaranteed his innocence—the fact that he was not in the apartment either for hours before or for hours after a murder which was plainly one of brutal violence. Nor was he the kind of man who would ever take the chance of hiring an accomplice."

He turned to Bishop.

"Judge, you will remember that, when I took up the case, the first thing I set myself to look for is what we call 'evidence of the destruction of evidence.' The criminal will half the time betray himself, if you look closely enough, by his very determination to be sure he has left no trace behind. He betrays evidence which to no one else could possibly be evidence. And the first thing our professor Fisher did, after he came home that night and found that his wife had been most foully murdered, was to slip away to his own rooms and burn a magazine.

"We have another saying about crime psychology. It is this: If you are looking for clues, look for the unusual. Well, there was something that, I think, was a bit unusual. When I found the ashes of that magazine—and was still able to decipher the one word in large letters on the back of it, 'mund'—its ashes were still warm. It was a virtual certainty that no one else but Fisher could have burned it. But, if I had needed further confirmation, I was given it next day, when I found that the ashes themselves were gone. I pretended in his hearing that I believed the Casa Grande house-men had removed them. But I may tell you now, Inspector, that I knew you well enough to be sure there wasn't any chance of your allowing that. I made up my mind that, if I could get hold of another copy of that magazine, I would have at least a beginning of knowledge. Miss Hope was able to find it for me. And what it contained I'll tell you in due course. In the meantime many other things had taken place.

"For one thing, we had found Jimmy. From the first I believed him innocent, and for this simple reason: He had stayed to give Willings that rifled money letter, when there was every probability that Willings would open it at once and discover that the money had been taken. Did a criminal or the accomplice of criminals ever take that chance? Against that big fact, his record had no weight whatever.

"Jimmy implicated Maddalina. And now, before going any further, let us see what our problem really was.

"IT was baffling simply because there were so many elements in it that seemed mutually contradictory. A ghastly murder had been committed, and an attempt upon the jewel safe, both in the same afternoon. Yet the attempted robbery did not take place until twenty minutes after the murder; apparently the robbers were unaware that a murder had been done.

"Before the entrance of the jewel thieves into the apartment, somebody or something else had entered, and had knocked crazily on the walls and called upon his God. The thing—whatever it was—came before the jewel thieves and also after them. Fisher, whom I already suspected, showed clearly enough, when he heard the voice and the knocking, that he knew no more about it than the rest of us.

"A tangled sort of situation, wasn't it? Here were jewel thieves, a murderer, an apparition, and Fisher, all of them mixed up in some way with the murder, and yet each of them apparently having no knowledge of or connection with the rest.

"What thread could we lay hold of in such a tangled skein? Maddalina seemed to offer the best chance. I had an idea also that we might find some useful addresses written on her walls."

McGloyne gasped, and Laneham turned to him smilingly:

"Oh, I have no gift of second sight, Inspector. I'm merely giving you a little racial psychology. Goddard of Vineland would say I stole it from the Binet tests, which are tests that show our mental capabilities by age, and by nationality. One of the first facts those tests have brought out is that no Italian—or almost no other southern European with little education—can remember our five- and six-number American addresses. If you came from a town or village, as she did, where there are no house numbers of any sort, the idea of having to carry in your mind anything like that is appalling. Go down to any four-room flat in Little Italy, and you'll find, somewhere, an address book on the walls or furniture. They won't trust paper; it might be lost or burnt. Maddalina had some education, but it was an even toss that the rule would hold with her.

"Well, we won the toss: we caught Maddalina, as you know, and with a bit of opportune hypnosis she told us much of what she had to tell. What was it?

"First, that it was Maddalina who had extracted the bank-notes; second, that Mrs. Fisher had suddenly become suspicious of her. Also, Maddalina's love-letter showed clearly that she had at least one accomplice. The inference was that she had been doing the 'inside' work.

"Finally, through Maddalina and Jimmy together, we learned that the very morning of the murder Mrs. Fisher made a will. In her haste she had Jimmy and Maddalina witness it. And, since at the same time she sent a note to the Judge here, asking him to call in the afternoon, it was reasonable to believe that she wanted to see him about the same thing. And so we reach our next step.

"For why this sudden, this ghastly sudden feeling on her part that she must make a will—or, rather, make haste if she was to make a new one? What did she fear? And why? The facts are these: As Judge Bishop can tell you, she made her former will when she married Fisher. She then believed herself in love with him. In that first will she made him practically her sole inheritor. As the Judge can also tell you, she had been intending to alter that for some time."

"She had," said Bishop; "and that was the thing I was holding back. Not only had she come to find life intolerable with the man; she had grown vaguely to fear him. I don't mean that she could actually believe she was in danger from him—at least, not until the last. But she had taken a resolve that he should not profit by her death—and I think she had let him know it. Oh, I know; I should have told all that. But it seemed to me I would be directly accusing the man, without a tittle of evidence—when he had been away the whole day of the crime, and when, obviously, he expected to find her alive when he came home that night. For he did, Laneham, he did!"

"No question of it," said the Doctor. "I can tell you positively he did not expect her to meet her death until the morning!"

"Good Lord!" gasped Glasbury.

The Judge and even the big Inspector himself were obviously shaken.

"But get on with it," urged the big fellow; "get on with it!"

"WE have not finished with the will," said Laneham. "What was it, that morning and a few hours before her death, that made her suddenly resolve to make that new will, and at once? That is something we can never know. But, just as the man in the death-cell can pick out the man who is to kill him among a dozen, so, I'm satisfied, she read the thing in Fisher's eyes. So far as Jimmy knows, she had had no quarrel with him that morning. Fisher himself assured us that they had 'made things up' after their last, and accordingly he was bringing Potter home for dinner and the opera. Doubtless the devil had pasted from her with the best expressions of affection he could summon. But you can't arrange murder without betraying at least some faint, heart-chilling shadow of it to the victim you have marked. And in some way, by some instinct, she half guessed she had time to make the new will. But Fisher's arrangements were already made. By then, as I'll show you in due course, his trap was set. First, come back to all I had to work upon: his actions after the crime.

"I say again, he had shown clearly that he knew nothing of our safe-breakers, or of any secret access to the rooms, or of the owner of that terrifying voice. At the first suspicion he was for having Willings railroaded to the chair. A little later it was Jimmy. And later he was quite as ready to give an exhibition of believing that Maddalina and Mr. Glasbury, in their turn, were guilty. No psychiatrist on earth was ever fooled by such flimsy pretenses. But, meanwhile, I had resolved to test him out in another way—by letting him feel, for a little while at any rate, that he was himself suspected.

"Till then, of course, he didn't know that I was giving any thought to those ashes. He had burned his magazine; the ashes he had got rid of also. He believed firmly that all had gone unnoticed. Well, you'll remember, Inspector, as we were going down in the Casa Grande elevator on a certain occasion, I decided to speak of them.

"It nearly knocked him over. It was just after he had heard the

---

voice and one who didn't know could easily attribute his sudden sickness to that. I thought at first he was going to give me another case of collapse. Of course, when he could get words to answer at all, he denied. He knew nothing of any ashes—he did not believe there had been any. But I had got what I wanted. He knew himself suspected.

"And then, in order to make sure I hadn't overdone it,—to give him the feeling that I merely suspected him among others, immediately afterward, and in his hearing, I proceeded to bring suspicion, and unworthy suspicion, upon those two unfortunate West Indians of the Casa Grande elevator staff. Doubtless you still believe it was one of them who tried to murder me."

"Why, of course," said Willings. "Who else?"

"They're as innocent as you are," the Doctor continued. "It was Fisher who tried to kill me."

"He? Fisher?"

"No one else. Yesterday he hurled himself down the same shaft where he tried to throw me. He had gone back to the ninth floor, you remember. And no doubt he saw me enter the stairway. It was dark enough for his purposes. I suppose he felt that my death would be attributed to the same demon apparition that was being blamed for the death of his wife.

"BUT the story is already too long; there's a lot of detail that I must leave until later. It will be enough, for the present, to give you the main lines.

"From the beginning I had resolutely rejected all explanations that depended on the supernatural. I do not say that I was not myself affected by some of our experiences. I was. But always, next morning and in the light of reason, I determined not to be influenced by them. There seemed to be no possible way by which any one could get into those rooms—or get out of them again; but we knew that somebody had got in to kill Mrs. Fisher, and poor Hooley also. Very well; I worked accordingly. And, by pure chance, just at that time Miss Hope gave me Glasbury.

"The next step suggested itself. If you want to learn about a man, his actions are one source of information, his correspondence is another. Glasbury's correspondence gave me, first, that blackmailing letter—and, incidentally, the gentlemen responsible for the attempt on the jewel safe and the death of Hooley. Second, it gave me my first guess at the common interest that had really drawn Mrs. Fisher and Glasbury, here, together."

He walked to his desk, and came back with a bit of paper half hidden in his hand.

"Glasbury, you told us that in your collaborating Mrs. Fisher let you do all the actual writing, but you both brought memoranda and suggestions to work over together. You believed that you destroyed them all, but I think not. Is not this one of them?"

And Laneham produced the first "murder note."

"Why, yes, it is." Glasbury glanced at it and as quickly thrust it away from him. "Some other time, Doctor," he said faintly, "if you will; for the present, I'd rather leave all that."

"I know. I only want to ask you this: Isn't this the explanation—that there was some one in the play you felt must die? 'We have now reached the point,' you wrote, 'where it must be either murder or suicide.'"

"Yes."

"And Mrs. Fisher added: 'Couldn't it be made to look like an accident?'"

"Yes; that is her writing. She felt I was making it too horrible."

"But the death's-head?"

Glasbury again put it away from him.

"Doctor, that was a joke! I found it funny to be putting such a subject down for an afternoon's discussion, so I decided to add an illustration. We often laughed together over things like that."

"I see. It was perfectly natural, perfectly. And I sha'n't trouble you again. Only this: From the moment I learned that you had destroyed that play, I suspected the explanation might be there."

And then Laneham turned back to the others.

"Two things still remain—the unknown door, and the actual method by which the murder was committed. D. Hope—Willings—I doubt if you want to go back to the Casa Grande on any such business now?"

It was very evident that they did not.

"All right; for the present, it will he enough for the judge and the Inspector and me to go alone. We'll go first, Glasbury, to your rooms in the Casa Reale."

A few minutes more and they were on their way.

And as they went Laneham again took up his tale:

"We are going to the Casa Reale. But from there we shall enter the Casa Grande through the door itself. We've examined the walls often enough and carefully enough on the Fisher side; but we never examined them on the Glasbury side. We tested the paneling in the Fisher room. Every oak strip was solid. Not one had been tampered with. That any door, or the edges of any door, could be hidden behind them seemed impossible—till you remember that a door may open only in one direction. There is the same paneling in Glasbury's study. We are now going to examine it."

The Inspector seemed about to speak, but Laneham anticipated him. "I know what you are going to say," he continued. "If there were a door, would not its very thinness, as compared with the rest of the wall, betray it from the Fisher side? It would, if the door were of the materials that ordinary doors are made of. Gentlemen, I have as yet to see the thing myself. I have been proceeding by pure logic if you like, by mathematical certainty. But we are now here, and need talk no more."

And, stepping into a Casa Reale elevator, they went on up.

MCGLOYNE was the first to reach the paneled wall. He began to try it with his hand. The third strip opened as on a hinge,—in truth, a second kook showed that it was hung on three tiny hidden hinges,—and when the strip was turned back it showed not merely the door edge but the lock and bolt. Two feet to the right, another upright strip hid the pins of the door. And at the top and bottom the horizontal strips, likewise hinged, did the rest. The door was still unlocked; and, taking hold of a sort of counter-sunk latch, the big Inspector swung it open.

"Well, by gee!" he said; "an' whose work is this?"

"Why, Glasbury told us that: it's the work of 'Throaty,' the safe man.

"Right you are!"

"He'd been putting in hidden work all his life—and heavy door and metal work, at that. What easier than to do a job like this? As you see, he simply cut the section of the wall out. With his he could go through such soft-tile stuff like old cheese. And, when he had hinged it up and fixed his paneling as a cover, he simply used that whole section of the as the door itself. That is why—considering the safe-like solidity of the bolt-work—no amount of sounding told you anything.

"But we'll come back to this later. In the meantime, we'll go on through to the Fisher side and the swimming-pool, and learn the rest."

Once more, however, Laneham had a preliminary explanation to make.

"In a sense," he said, "all we have been through has been the mystery it was simply and solely because of several facts that the various witnesses—with the best of intentions and against all warnings—kept to themselves. And the one thing in that way still to tell is this: Two days before the murder, Willings saw Fisher buy a length of fine platinum wire. It was in an electrical supply house. It was a perfectly legitimate thing to buy; there was no reason Fisher shouldn't have bought it. Yet, simply because he showed some uncalled-for agitation at being seen buying it, Willings must make up his mind to say nothing about it. The evidence showed, as he believed, that Fisher could have had nothing to do with the crime. Therefore, why speak of something that could only throw unjust suspicion oil the perfectly innocent?

"Well in a sense, I wasn't circumstantially certain myself that Fisher was the murderer. That was why I fixed up the seance. But if I had known of that platinum wire I don't think I should have needed to look for that German magazine. But that's all passed now—come and see for yourselves."

HE led them through to the swimming-pool.

"The platinum wire was attached here."

He mounted the plant stand pointed to a discoloration just discernible on one of the thick insulated wires that ran out to the big central lighting bell.

"Thence it was carried under the stand here, and along the floor, to one of those metal fittings beside you—that nearest faucet, probably. And the fineness of the wire would make it practically certain she would never notice it. Now, if will try the water still in the pool, you will find it salt. And that salt, also put there by Fisher, was one more needed preparation. Once it was there,—without going into any electrical technology,—Mrs. Fisher had only to touch the water, with her hand upon one of those metal fittings, something she was morally certain to do when stepping either in or out, and her death was certain. In fact, it was the voltage shock that caused the swelling and discoloration about her throat. Then, as she fell, she struck the faucet with the side of her head, and received what seemed to be the real wound. The platinum wire was naturally fused and left no trace-save the little pellet of metal that we found two days ago."

"And the magazine?" asked "Where does your magazine come in?"

"That magazine," answered Laneham, "contains an account of a similar crime committed in lower Austria. I have no doubt it was what gave Fisher his whole idea and method. And the fact that it is the most obscure of German medical journals—with not ten subscribers, I suppose, in all America—made it seem to him that he was perfectly safe in taking the chance."

THE END

He'd Rather Save a Dog's Life than a Man's

"I MEAN it seriously. I believe there is more satisfaction in saving a dog from drowning than a man."

Richard or Dick Cox, standing on the float in front of his boat-house at the foot of Dyckman Street, New York, made this statement as he looked out over the Hudson River.

Dick Cox is not thirty-five years old, and he has to his credit the saving of more than four hundred lives. Among boating people and life-savers he is known as a man who never refuses to go to the aid of the distressed, no matter how bad the weather or how dangerous the circumstances under which he has to work. He has been presented with five medals from the Volunteer Life Saving Corps, one from an individual, and the highest of his honors is the medal presented by the Brazilian Government for bravery exhibited in saving a native of that country. This medal means that Dick Cox would receive five dollars a day from the government should he at any time find himself in Brazil and in straitened circumstances.

With all this, Dick is a modest man, and it is not an easy matter to persuade him to pin on his medals for a photograph.

Dogs More Appreciative than People

"YES," he continued, squinting his eyes at the sun,—"yes, I must confess that there is more satisfaction in saving a dog. Why? Well, it is a matter of appreciation—a thing rarely ever shown either by men or women who have been rescued.

"Perhaps you would think that a man would at least say 'thank you' when you have saved his life; but such instances are few and far between, and out of the number that I have saved I can almost count on my fingers those who have shown the slightest appreciation of what had been done for them.

"One night—I remember the instance well—a party of four started across the Hudson in a canoe: two girls and two young men. Neither of the girls knew how to swim, and only one of the men knew how to take care of himself in the water. They started late—about half past eleven. I was in bed, when I heard screams and calls for help.

"Rousing my wife, we got out the launch and started to them, calling out to them to keep their heads—that we were coming.

"We found the canoe upside down. The man who could swim was exhausted in his efforts to save one of the girls, and the other two were trying to cling to the side

of the canoe, which kept slipping from their grasp. We got one of the girls just as she became unconscious from the shock and fright. Well, we pulled them into the launch, and tied the canoe on to the boat.

He Forgot to Save Her Hat

"IT was pretty difficult getting the girl back to consciousness; my wife had hard work. While she was trying to get this girl round, what do you think? The others were at one side of the boat, and the men were consoling the other girl for the loss of her parasol. Not a word of thanks had they said, and when we got them all on the dock and the girl righted around, the first thing she said on opening her eyes was: 'Where is my hat? I paid ten dollars for it. Did you save it?'

"When she learned that the hat was gone she became absolutely angry, and they all left the boat-house in a sulky, ungracious mood. Now, what do you think of that? Why, when you save a dog he jumps about you, licks your hands, and tries in every way to tell you how much obliged he is. But, nine times out of ten, a man will say, 'Why the dickens didn't you get that hat? Now I have to go down in the cars looking like an idiot!'

Why Will Fools Rock the Boat?

"WHAT is the cause of most of the accidents?" I asked Dick Cox.

"Just this," he answered. "Carelessness in the boat, or ignorance. Many a person goes out in a canoe who doesn't really know how to handle it, and to go canoeing in the Hudson one must know a good deal about a boat. The Hudson River is very changeable, and when a big wind comes up, it is not a simple matter to cross in one of these little affairs. Then, fooling about in the boat—changing seats and such things—brings about a great many accidents.

"More than once I have witnessed drownings that need not have occurred if the victim had known the first thing about swimming, floating, or treading water. Two minutes more, if they could have stayed up, would have saved them.

"Why people will take such chances on the water, risking their own and others' lives, is a thing that I can not understand; and yet, every day of the boating season this is done by thousands of persons, and all the examples of the danger of ignorance will not effect a cure.

"And that is another reason why I would rather save a dog than a man. An animal is not a victim of his own fool-hardiness, but of that of man; yet, even this being the case, the dog's instinctive sense of gratitude is strong."

Even in winter Dick Cox keeps up his work of life-saving. One instance of his bravery occurred several winters ago, when the ice was plentiful in the river. A couple of boys ventured out in their canoe. They crossed the river successfully, but on the return trip they were caught in the ice. Had it not been for Dick Cox, who risked losing his own life and ruining his boat, their canoe would have been ground to pieces in the ice-pack and they would have lost their lives. In such instances, Dick says, the average man saved becomes very much distressed, after he has been put ashore, concerning the amount of paint that has been rubbed from the sides of his canoe.

They Have Nothing to Do With Each Other

WHY must we always print pictures together of people who belong together? Why not occasionally print pictures of people who wouldn't speak to each other if they met on the street—or the railroad track?

Take these two, for instance. On the left we have Mrs. Samuel Walters of Florin, Pennsylvania, who has been carrying the mail for the United States Government forty-four years and is the only woman in the State to have that honor.

On the right is A No. 1, the most aristocratic tramp in the United States. He claims to have traveled 500,000 miles on $7.05. Doubtless if you go down to the station in your town and look on the walls you'll discover his mark—"A No. 1." He rides the bumpers, but always carries clothes enough to look spruce and neat when he arrives in town.

To make the story read right, we should say that A No. 1 was riding on the very train that took up this mail-bag which Mrs. Walters is hanging out; but this is a truthful magazine.

Selling Suburban Lots

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

"IN 1911 I signed a contract for some lots in New Jersey," writes a man from New York City, "and now I am anxious to realize ready money one the same. What, in your estimation, is the best possible method of procedure?"

There are probably at least ten thousand people in New York City alone who would like to discover the best possible method of getting a little ready money out of lots that they contracted to buy several years ago. There is no satisfactory answer to their eager question. If I knew any, it could be patented, and my fortune would be made.

There is no best method, for there is no good method. Obviously, the first and only step for a man to take who wishes to dispose of real estate anywhere is to put it in the hands of all the local real estate agents of repute. It costs little or nothing to ask an agent to sell property for you; the expense comes when he finds a purchaser, and the difficulty comes in his finding one. The simple, obvious thing for this owner to do is to take a ferry-boat across the Hudson River, board a trolley car that will quickly take him to the little village where his lots are situate, call upon two or three agents, and place his lots in their hands for sale. If he is very cautious, he will first inquire at a local bank as to the standing of the agents.

A Few Rules

THERE are a few simple rules about a real estate that need to be repeated very often. 1. The purchase of a house and lot for use as a home may be, and usually is, a wise and wholesome investment. 2. The purchase of land by a person who expects to farm it himself, provided he has the requisite knowledge and ability to work, is usually proves a wise investment. 3. The purchase of a first mortgage upon income-producing land and buildings usually proves a wise investment. 4. The purchase of income-producing land and buildings for sale to others or for operation, or the purchase of unimproved land for development and sale to others, by persons trained in, and giving their whole time to, the real estate business, often proves a successful profession or business. 5. The purchase of land and buildings for rental by persons unfamiliar with the technique of the real estate business often proves of doubtful wisdom. 6. The purchase of non-income-producing land by persons unfamiliar with the real estate business is merely foolish.

How Real Estate Values Differ from Stock Values

THERE is no best method, or any sure or satisfactory method, of selling unimproved lots; and why should there be? After all, the value of such a piece of property is largely guess-work. There is no one great central market in which it can be a appraised, as there is for certain stocks and bonds. Every lot is different from every other lot. Pieces of real estate, except perhaps certain prairie sections in the West, are unlike one another. Most of them are too small for men of large affairs, expert knowledge, and large capital to bother with. But every share of stock of a large corporation, of the Pennsylvania Railroad as an example, is like every other one of nearly 10,000,000 shares. They are all exactly alike, and all have precisely similar value. Thus there are always people to buy and sell.

Each piece of land is too separate, distinct, different, and individual to be disposed of easily. No one human being or even a whole profession can hope to know the value of them all. Probably there are 60,000 real estate dealers of one kind or another in New York City; and yet, a dealer in one section would know nothing about the value of a lot in another.

For this reason, no one has ever been able to devise any method of making land more marketable. Thousands of articles and scores of books have been written on such subjects as "How to Sell Real Estate"; but they apply only to agents, dealers, professional operators, the original promoters and exploiters. No one has ever written an article telling the inexpert "investor" how to get rid of a lot.

Packing a Piano through a Forest

THERE was music in the air when the piano shown in the picture above reached its destination in the Angelus National Forest, three thousand feet above the sea.

Its owner, who is manager of one of the popular summer camps in the mountains near Sierra Madre, decided that a piano would add to the enjoyment of the evenings spent at the camp. When professional movers estimated that it would cost more than the value of the piano to take it to the camp, he tackled the problem himself.

The lyre was taken out of the piano, so as to divide the weight into two fairly equal parts. These were carried by stage as far up the mountains as the stage could go. Then each part was strapped to two pack burros in the manner shown in the picture. These sure-footed beasts, winding their way slowly along the twisting paths, brought the piano sage to its mountain home.