The Fable of a Certain King Who Sought a New Pleasure

NOW, in a great country there lived a certain King who ruled over vast possessions.

He had one daughter, a beautiful princess. And behold, though the King possessed everything that money could buy,—houses and lands and cattle and automobiles, and servants,—he was weary of life. For he said, There is no pleasure in it.

And he wrote a proclamation, and caused it to be published in his dominions, that whoever would invent a new pleasure for his amusement should receive the hand of his daughter in marriage.

Thereupon appeared a young man who bowed low and said: "O King, live forever. I have invented a new pleasure; but to enjoy it you must do precisely as I say."

Whereupon the King's heart was very glad. He smiled upon the young man and promised.

The next morning the young man was early at the palace, and had the King out of bed before daybreak, and the princess and all the little princes.

Together they journeyed a long way by foot and street-car into the country. They saw a wonderful sight in the sky, and the young man explained tot eh King that it was called a sunrise. They passed brooks, and the princes took off their shoes and stockings and waded in them. They wandered through cool woods and picked flowers.

Finally, at about the middle of the day, the King said: "I have a strange feeling under my belt which I have never felt before." And the young man answered have never had it because you never got enough fresh air into your system before to create it."

And the little princes, too, began to cry out that they also had queer feelings under their belts.

Whereupon the young man produced a large basket covered with a white cloth, and opened it. And, behold, there were sandwiches, and fruits, and olives, and cold chicken, and coffee in a tin bucket, and cake, and divers other foods, all daintily packed.

And the King could not restrain his hand, but dove in and ate for half an hour or more; and then lay under the trees and looked up at the sky and smoked.

And the princes raced about the woods and played Indian, and no one watched over them nor bade them nay; for there was nothing they could possibly harm.

And toward nightfall they journeyed back to the palace; and the little princes, who had always to be pampered and read to at night to get them to sleep, fell asleep on their beds with their clothes on. And the King, having had a bath and a rub-down, settled back on the royal piazza with a 50-cent cigar in his mouth, and smiled for the first time in months, and called for the young man.

And the young man appeared and said: "Your Majesty, it was some day, was it not?" And the King admitted it was.

"Thou hast made good," saith the King, "and my daughter, the beautiful princess, is inside at the piano. But, first give me the bill for this wonderful new pleasure; for I will pay for it."

And the young man handed him a bill for one dollar and twenty-three cents.

Whereupon the King was exceeding a wroth, and cried out: "Dost think I am a cheap skate? Is a pleasure that costs only one dollar twenty-three fit for a King?"

And he called the Captain of the Guard and ordered that the young man should be shot at sunrise.

Moral: You and I have some peachy times, when we were kids, on those old picnics with sandwiches that the ants crawled over and coffee full of pine needles. But we wouldn't dare take our kids on a picnic—perish the thought. The neighbors would think we are cheapskates.

Pack up the dinner-coat, mother. We're off to Atlantic City with the year's savings.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

Legs by the Ton

By WALT MASON

IN '61, when civil strife was threatening the nation's life, his comrades saw J. Hanger fall, his leg all shattered by a ball. Then to the rear he carried was, where army surgeons with their saws, and also with their snickersnees, implored him to look pleasant, please, and they removed the wounded limb, which meant much agony to him.

When he recovered from his wound, with thoughtful eyes he looked around. He realized that thousands more on those red fields of strife and gore, amid the din of war's alarms, would lose their legs, and also arms. "Good artificial limbs they'll need when they have ceased to fight and bleed, and I," he said, "will surely try to have for them a large supply."

Then for himself he made a limb, and found it was a boon to him. This happened fifty years ago; and he has seen his business grow until his limbs display their worth in all the countries of the earth. In Washington six stalwart sons assist him making tons on tons of instruments which give life charms to those who've lost their legs or arms. In half a dozen towns branch shops are filling orders without stops, and now in London and Paree the sign of Hanger you may see.

He can relieve the black despair of countless hosts of soldiers there, and to that end his workmen toil by day and burn the midnight oil. The British government has made a contract with him, and his trade among the crippled men of France with every day sees an advance.

And thus, because a man was shot in '61, when war was hot, because a bullet broke a bone, a splendid industry has grown—an industry that gives to men, robbed of their limbs, new hope again.

You Know What I Mean

By GEORGE PATTULLO

Illustrations by Denman Fink

MY theme this morning, friends, is taken from the Book of Youth, and the text: Are women artful?

Are women artful? Are they, or are they not, craftier than the nimble fox?

Has the lisping, blue-eyed darling who prattles at play in the sand-pile, or pulls with innocent, infantile glee the tail of the neighbor's pup—has she latent resources of guile that surpass those of the furry denizens of the forest? Has she, in a word, got any two-legged adult who ever walked lashed to the mast in subtlety? Has she or has she not? For the child is mother to the woman.

To put this query in yet another form: Would the cunning of a shiny-pated bachelor, aided howsoever by his stealthy sense of danger, avail him aught against the sweet wiles of a maiden who took it into her head that he had nice eyes? As in a dream he hears "Because" acceptably rendered by the soprano soloist of the First Baptist Church, and they are walking back down the aisle between rows of grinning, weeping relatives. You know what I mean.

Our subject thus broached, let us approach its discussion in a spirit of humility, of seeking after truth. Let us consider a specific case.

THERE was a woman of Arizona named Eunice Wiggins, who lived hard by the city of Bizbee. Her father had lands and chattels in plenty, and his cattle grazed a hundred hills. In fact, Old Man Wiggins owned about everything in those parts that wasn't nailed down.

Eunice was nineteen, and only passing fair to look upon; which was a grievous thing, inasmuch as she was pitted against a soft daughter of Eve just returned from a girls' college in the North, who was of a great and wondrous beauty, and skilled in every art that can beguile the heart. Her name it was Lois, derived from the baptismal cognomen of Sally Jo, and she was daughter to Landis Grady, a Southern gentleman who had been too proud to work during twenty years, but contrived to get in on the ground floor of a copper mine and woke up one fine morning the possessor of a cool million. Having long been poor and necessarily respectable, Landis tried manfully to efface that memory.

Study these two carefully, friends. Weigh well their merits and motives—without levity, with favor to none. On the one hand, an untutored girl of direct, masculine processes of thought, brusque speech, and shy soul; on the other, a lovely creature whose power lay in her seeming weakness, who was feminine to her pink finger-tips. Eunice was sun-burned and vigorous; her rival a lily in flesh and blood. They were about equal in fortune.

WHAT a marvelous thing is the heart of a woman! Both of these ladies, friends, loved a tall, blond young man then inhabiting those regions, but a native of Maine. Both fell for this big dub, who was an engineer in the mines. He had long eyelashes and a languid, indifferent manner, and there was something about him that was sure death to girls between eighteen and twenty-two. After that most of them get to taking other things into their calculations: they speculate shyly on whether his business will hold up, or could he be broken to nice home habits? You know what I mean.

To pass on. We have the principals before us. I ask you, friends, to which would you unhesitatingly award the palm of victory? To Eunice Wiggins or Lois Grady? And you would be right. On the face of it, luckless Eunice never had the ghost of a chance.

But did this simple child of nature despair? Did she resign herself to tears and permit the other to carry off the prize? Nay, she did not; you little know women so to think. No sackcloth and ashes for Eunice—she girded up and got busy. She employed craft.

Which brings into our faithful narrative two chunky black mules, dubbed Musketeer and Teddy respectively. They were Eunice's absolute property, and the only individual I ever heard envy her possession was a half-breed cook, who once expressed an intense desire to own Musketeer, to the end that he might carve his heart out.

Old Man Wiggins bought the mules from a Scotch rancher near Douglas, and gave them to Eunice on her nineteenth birthday.

"You've been roarin' for something to drive," said the fond parent. "Now go to it. But if they break your neck, don't come bellerin' to me."

His daughter had them hitched to a buckboard, and started blithely out of the ranch down the valley. Luckily, it was forty miles long, for Musketeer and Teddy took a long breath and then ran away.

"It's a lovely day for a ride," remarked Miss Wiggins placidly, bracing herself.

The buckboard took the ford of the San Pedro in a smother of spray, and went careening toward Mexico. She let them run. It would have been impossible to stop the pair, and she wasted no strength in the effort, but contented herself with keeping them in the clear. There was a flush in her cheeks and her lips were pressed tightly together. Those were the only symptoms of excitement she showed.

When they had galloped about a thousand miles or so, Musketeer began to weary of the fun and slowed down. Of course Teddy did likewise.

"Is that so?" said Miss Wiggins sweetly. "I guess not. You started this."

And, leaning forward, she whacked them on the rump. Musketeer promptly lashed out with his heels, and she hit him again for good measure. The mules re-doubled their efforts.

"Gee, it'll take me a week to get back home," murmured the lady.

Nevertheless, she kept them at it. The second the pace showed signs of flagging, Eunice stood up and heartened the mules with the butt of the whip.

VERY soon the affair lost its zest for Musketeer. By nature he was indolent and adverse to work, and running at somebody's behest was work of the hardest kind. A short dash by way of surprise, an overturned buggy and scared driver, were enjoyable; but this business of galloping along after you wanted to quit was something else. Repeatedly he tried to stop. Each time Eunice laid on with an arm that never tired.

Upon her failure to return to dinner, anxiety seized the entire outfit, with the exception of Old Man Wiggins.

"Shucks!" he observed, tranquilly blowing on his coffee. "That gal's all right. But I'd shore hate to be them mules."

The facts justified him. Musketeer and Teddy came stumbling back about sundown, all in and looking like the wrecks of a misspent life. Their black hides were gray with dust and dried lather; their nostrils flared red with the strain of breathing. Lolling in the seat was Miss Wiggins, with her feet cocked up, and she caroled a ditty that ran:

But it happened that he run ag'in' a bullet made of lead,
Which was harder than he bargained for, and now pore Bill is dead.
And when they brung his body home a bar'l of tears was shed.

"Well?" queried her father.

"They're a little bit rough and don't pull together like they'd ought," she reported. "But it wouldn't surprise me if they'd make a sweet team."

They could be ridden to the saddle also, if you knew how. Eunice could climb aboard either of them with impunity; but certain risks attached to Musketeer's hurricane-deck for strangers.

On a day I ventured to ask Eunice for a quiet mount.

"Just over to Naco to send a telegram, and right back."

"Best take Teddy," she said. "He's got an easy gait."

We went down to the corral, and I requested her to pick out the quadruped; so far as I was concerned, Musketeer and Teddy looked exactly alike. When a fellow sees two small black mules of the same size, equally calm, equally lazy, similarly tailed, eared, and hoofed, how the mischief can he be expected to distinguish?

"You don't know 'em apart?" asked Miss Wiggins softly. Oh, the perfidy of women!

"Uh-uh. Mules are mules to me."

"Then I'll catch you one," she said, and I thanked her. I thanked her!

She led the one I was not going to use away from the corral, out of sight. Why, I could not conjecture. Immediately he began to bray fiendishly, and the brute I was engaged in saddling answered every note.

"Stand still!" I bawled furiously. "How the Sam Hill can I cinch this, with you reaching for high C?"

The force of my reasoning appealed to him. Then I led Teddy outside and mounted.

---

My plan was to go southeast. His was to go northwest, whither his team mate summoned. We debated the difference awhile, and I dusted my clothes and yelled to Eunice.

She reappeared with an expression of astonishment that would have completely fooled a man with a shred of faith in her.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she exclaimed. "How did it happen?"

"I jumped off to look at the view over that alfalfa field," I answered with enthusiasm.

Meanwhile she was inspecting the mules attentively.

"Why," she cried, "we must have made a mistake. You got Musketeer instead of Teddy."

"It was no way to treat a friend," I answered with dignity.

"Did he hurt you much? But, of course, he's so tiny, he couldn't. Get your saddle and we'll put it on this one."

"I think I prefer to drive," I remarked gloomily. "Perhaps your father will let me go in the wagon with the cook."

She sniffed and retorted: "Well, it might be better."

'Twas a cowardly thrust; I knew what she meant, for she was gazing straight at my waist-line. And in that moment certain air-castles that I had been rearing for a month or longer dissolved in thin air.

"Don't get mad," pleaded Eunice. "But, honestly, you ought to take it off. Now shouldn't you?"

"How'm I to get to Naco?"

"I'll go with you. Does that suit you? You ride Teddy and I'll take Musketeer. They're perfect lambs if you don't separate 'em."

"All right," I assented, completely mollified. "There's only one thing I ask you to remember: I am an only child."

LATER, as we ambled peacefully toward the border town, I remarked casually:

"You admire thin men, then?"

For some reason, Eunice flushed.

"Not especially. What did you ask that for? But I never could stand bay-windows."

I pondered her words a space.

"What a pretty girl Lois Grady is. I never saw such eyes!"

"It all depends on what you call pretty," rejoined Eunice coldly.

"But Lois is a raving beauty, any way you figure. I heard Guthrie say she could give cards and spades to any girl he ever saw."

"That doesn't prove anything," was the unruffled reply; but I knew she could cheerfully have throttled me. "Keep away," she added, as my mount's affection for his mate brought us together on the trail.

"He's going," I continued, "to take her to the picnic at Lewis Springs next month. It begins to look like business, doesn't it?"

My companion did not deign to answer. We jogged along, and she presently broke out with intense earnestness: "It sure does beat the Dutch!"

"What's the answer?"

"Why, the idiots men make of them-selves."

"Right-o. Proceed; your tale interests me."

"All a girl's got to do is to act like but-ter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and the big boob'll think it's real. They're all alike. The weak, clinging-vine stuff—"

She was so worked up that she couldn't continue. I cracked my quirt cheerily and grinned.

"You think you're mighty smart, don't you?" snapped Eunice.

"It's just natural for me," I replied.

The subject was immediately dropped, but we understood each other. And an idea dawned upon me: they sometimes do. Supposing that Eunice were to contend against Lois for the engineer? My blood warmed to the thought. It would be worth seeing, that duel.

But why either should want him was beyond me. Admitting that he was handsome after a fashion, what else was there to the fellow? And even in the matter of looks—personally, I considered him too slight. I prefer a man of robust physique.

In the beginning, Guthrie had come to the Paddle ranch from Bizbee as one of a house-party, as they called it—he held some kind of a job in the Copper Queen there. Up to then Eunice had cared rather less about men than jackrabbits. Yet, after the first glance passed between the two, it was all over for one of them. The engineer smiled, his eyes asking questions, as they always did; and a blush crept up under Eunice's tan. There was an odd, frightened glint in her eyes.

Then Lois Grady, another guest from town, reached out and grabbed him. Though fresh from the seclusion of school, she was a seasoned campaigner. Lois could slay with a look; she had a different attack for every victim and a capacity for divining a man's blind side that was uncanny. It was a positive pleasure to he led on and jilted by Lois—she did it so painlessly.

And she was ravishing. With her soft brown beckoning eyes, her glowing copper hair, and creamy skin—I pride myself on being a wary old fowl, but no earthly inducement could have made me trust myself alone with Lois in the moonlight.

Again I ask you: what chance had Eunice against this practised man-killer? Eunice wasn't even attractive, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. She was too overflowing with health and driving energy.

Her notion of encouraging a man was of the weirdest. It was to treat him rather worse than an objectionable dog. That is too primitive. It does all very well for some staunch hearts, but it never gets very far with the average lump of clay. Brainy as these independent women are, in the useful art of ruling men a wabbly-chinned bud of the old-fashioned species has them out on a raft with the waves rolling mountain-high. It is so. Lois knew more about the masculine nature with one hand tied behind her back than Eunice could have learned in a thousand cycles.

The latter rebuffed the engineer from the outset. She was keen to annex him, yet drove him off. Explain that who can.

Before Guthrie had the opportunity to appreciate the fine, supple figure under the old brown riding-skirt and baggy waist, she had repelled him by a brusque speech. He said something pretty, and she snapped at him. He never plumbed the soft depths of her blue eyes, never even perceived the curving lashes, entirely overlooked the peach-bloom of her cheeks: and all because Eunice gave him other things less pleasant to think about. What more natural than that he should drift toward Lois? The water was fine, the wind calm, and he didn't see the net.

When the party broke up, Guthrie bade his hostess adieu and, heaving a sigh of relief, rode gaily to the railway with Miss Grady. Eunice stood gazing after him, her quirt tapping her riding-boot.

SUCH was the situation on the sparkling morning she and I rode side by side to Naco on Musketeer and Teddy. Lois was a lap in the lead and going strong, with a clear track. Only a miracle could stop her.

"Did dad tell you?" demanded Eunice suddenly.

"He told me a story about a clothing drummer," I answered with caution. "It was a bird."

"Oh, I thought you knew. He's going to start on a tour of the range, and he's fixing to take all of us with him. I believe dad thinks it'll bring good luck. We need rain terribly."

"How long will this camping trip take?"

"About four days. Why?"

"Nothing of any importance. Merely that I have to earn three meals a day, and picnics provide only temporary sustenance."

"Please come," begged Eunice.

"Who else is going?"

"The Spiegel girls and Annielee Joyce and Dr. Ellis and Lois and Mr. Guthrie and—"

"Stop! Lois? Are you going to invite Lois?"

"Why not? She's one of my oldest friends."

Here was food for thought. Why should Old Man Wiggins give a picnic?

"Your father never thought of this," I asserted stoutly. "Whose idea is the trip, anyway?"

"Now, don't try to be too clever," re-plied Eunice. "That's one thing about you I don't like."

I bestowed a shrewd gimlet glance upon her.

"There's some deviltry afoot here, woman."

"Do you think so?"

"But how can Guthrie get off?"

"He'll be on his vacation."

"All right," 1 agreed. "You can count on me holding the sponge for you."

"The only thing I ask of you is that you'll promise not to be fresh."

"I won't utter so much as a cheep," I assured her solemnly.

THE trip was not to start until Tuesday, and Eunice spent most of the interval with her precious hybrids. She drove them to a buggy, or rode one, with the other leading at the end of a rope.

"What's up?" I inquired.

"Just training 'em. As long as they're together they're perfectly happy, but the minute you part them they'll start to bray. Musketeer is the worst. He'll pitch unless he's with Teddy."

"So I believe."

"Get on him a minute," she urged. "I want to find out something."

"I've got an appointment with your father at the barn."

"'Fraid-cat! Scared of a little creature like that!"

"There's nothing to grip," I rejoined hotly.

"Huh!"

"Besides, it's a shame to trifle with their affection. The love they exhibit one for the other is a beautiful thing—a sublime thing. Talk about Damon and Pythias, talk about Perkins and Roosevelt—but perhaps we'd better not."

"No, I reckon you're right. Go on, then, and talk to dad. I'll bet it's to drink some cold beer—he always hides it. Come along, Teddy. We can do without him."

On Sunday morning: "What am I to ride on this trip?"

"Baldy."

"Good! And which one does Guthrie draw?"

"The Bar 9 sorrel."

"You're a sinister woman, Eunice. Don't you know that old skate's the roughest horse south of the North Pole?"

"Well," she remarked tranquilly, "if he doesn't like him he can have Musketeer."

And then a great white light burst upon me.

THE guests from town arrived on the Burro Express Monday afternoon, and I drove one of the light wagons in which they were carried to the ranch. There were the Spiegel girls, Judge Elmore and his wife, Annielee Joyce, Dr. Ellis, Guthrie, and young Elmore; and last came Lois herself, with all her war-paint on. She was dressed regardlessly. It didn't take half an eye to see that she was out to end the suspense.

Early in the morning our friends from the other ranches straggled in, and we loaded the pack-mules and started. It was a goodly cavalcade when strung out, and Old Man Wiggins regarded us with a smile of mingled pride and hope. I am firmly persuaded that Eunice could never have induced him to put up for the trip had he not entertained the expectation that it would bring rain. Not that he is stingy, but he likes to get value for his money. You know what I mean.

"Who give you that Bar 9?" he growled, on espying the lank engineer astride the sorrel.

"Your daughter. What's the matter with him?"

The cowman rolled a fishy eye toward his hopeful child.

"Just like her ma," he muttered, and sighed.

It soon became apparent that some of our guests were uncomfortable. Guthrie seemed very unhappy. He had a thoughtful air that struck me forcibly. Every time the Bar 9 put his feet down, I saw him blanch. That sorrel was to ordinary horses as a freight-car to a Pullman, as a jitney to a limousine. But the engineer was game. He never once tried to shirk the pace and managed to reply to his companion's chatter with admirable aplomb.

There is, however, a limit to human fortitude; the membranous integument is not inexhaustible. You know what I mean. By the time we reached the Wolf Place, where we were to stop for lunch, Guthrie's smile was a wan, piteous thing. He groaned when he slid off, and did not offer to help Lois down. Dr. Ellis hastened to remedy that oversight. The engineer looked worried. He impressed me as a man with a secret sorrow.

There was no hurry, and we dallied long over the meal. Guthrie squatted near. Lois, and with delightful grace she fed him olives on the end of a hat-pin. All of which was very charming, but bad tactics: I was surprised that she should he guilty of it. For, while she queened it, others had to carry food to the pair, and Eunice was solicitously caring for each guest. She brought a cushion for this one, coffee for that; selected a wing of the fried chicken for a third; helped the cook at the fire; and later rolled up her sleeves and sot to washing the dishes. I was filled with admiration. Don't misunderstand me. I wouldn't say that Eunice seldom performed these duties ordinarily; but on this occasion she surely did go in for it strong. You know what I mean. Besides, she had wonderful arms.

Now, no mere man can long withstand attention to his wants. And then, the contrast between the two girls' behavior was so marked. More than once Guthrie turned to watch Eunice.

Rested, and inclined to be drowsy, we made ready for departure in midafternoon. Most of the work fell on Old Man Wiggins, the cook, Eunice, and myself; the others didn't know how.

"Look at your man," I whispered to her, when we were mounted.

The engineer was still on the ground, and evidently determined to stay there until the last possible moment.

"Let's go," cried our host.

Guthrie clenched his teeth and crawled stiffly up on the Bar 9 and ranged beside Lois Grady.

The afternoon passed as the morning had done. We moved comfortably up the lower slopes of the Huachucas,—Old Man Wiggins far in the lead with Judge Elmore; the pack-animals next; then the party strung out in couples. For lack of a better, Eunice had put up with me for comrade. The engineer clung loyally to the side of Lois; yet I thought I could discern a difference. He was less eagerly attentive. A man can't sustain tender warmth when three square inches of raw surface—you know what I mean.

The camp was pitched for the night in a narrow cañon because of a pool formed from the drip of its walls, and I went to hobbling the beasts, while Eunice gathered fire-wood and got the cook started. Apparently the others regarded hobbling as a whim of nine to pass the time; at any rate, none volunteered to help.

You do all the work, said Eunice, pausing to watch me.

"Somebody's got to do it," I answered shortly.

She continued to stand over me awhile, and then resumed her task with redoubled energy. The other girls didn't stir a hand. They eased down on the ground with moans of relief and waited for somebody to put up the tents and cook supper and make them comfortable.

GUTHRIE was scarcely any better, but he had a reason. Indeed, I thought he was going to collapse when he dropped off the Bar 9, for he let out a groan, and when he tried to walk his knees bent under him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said the sympathetic Eunice.

"It's all right. Just cramped. I haven't ridden much lately," he replied, with a horrible grimace—game all through.

Now, it is my opinion that three things

---

lead all human activities in revealing what is in a man. Golf is one, camping out is another, and I forget the third.

Lois lost considerable of her popularity the first night out. She appropriated two of our meager supply of pillows and settled herself against a tree. Then she pouted adorably and inquired why no nasty man brought her a drink. Guthrie went to fetch her one; but there was a certain grimness about the leisurely manner in which he did it.

ALL the other women did some small part toward preparing the meal or cleaning up. Lois frankly told them to go as far as they liked, because she didn't understand that kind of thing, and never would.

When darkness fell we relaxed, sitting about in groups. Some sang; three of the men did close harmony; the elders got up a game of rummy on a blanket by the light of a lantern; a few sank gradually into soulful, whispered communion. I started to tell Eunice a story, but she wouldn't let me finish it.

Pretty soon Lois bore the engineer off to the pool in order to see the moonlight in its depths. The other girls watched them go and voted it coarse work. Guthrie didn't act a bit like a man with his heart in the game. I fancy he found it tough to be properly fervid.

Next morning he was so stiff that he creaked at every move. The sky was

a dull, depressing gray when Old Man Wiggins routed us out, and it was bitter cold. Yet Eunice emerged cheerfully, glowing and radiant—the finest antidote for an early-morning grouch that ever met the human eye. One wanted to hug her—in a perfectly open, proper fashion. You know what I mean. It was the same feeling that prompts a woman when she sees a chubby baby; she longs to squeeze and squeeze it.

Well, I believe that the engineer experienced some such urging when he saw the maiden in the dawn. He drew a deep breath, like a swimmer going down to sound bottom, and came to heel.

"Let me help you," he offered, despite his aching joints.

Eunice treated him with brisk heartiness, carefully refraining from any expression of sympathy, though the poor wretch turned pale every time he had to stoop.

"Thanks," she said to him smilingly, when breakfast was ready. "Now please call the others."

Guthrie did so by the simple expedient of beating on a tin pan with a stick, and in due course they emerged from the tents: All were heavy-eyed and dismal.

Last to come was Lois—every one else had finished eating. She was low in spirits. Six A. M. improved neither her temper nor her looks. The engineer allowed Doc Ellis to wait on her.

As I brought up the horses for saddling, I saw Eunice conferring with her father.

"All right," he grumbled. "Hey, young feller,—you Guthrie,—we'll pack beddin' on your hoss. You can ride one of the mules. He'll be easier."

Guthrie perked up instantly.

"What're you doing?" I inquired, as Eunice led her horse toward the spring.

"Going to give him a drink."

"He's been watered already."

She paid no attention, but proceeded on her way. I was puzzled until she came back, and I perceived that he was limping.

"You'll have to catch Teddy for me, dad," she said. "And we can pack this one."

Her father opened his lips, thought better of it, and made an inarticulate noise in his throat.

WE broke camp at last, and the engineer drew dutifully alongside Lois. As Teddy was very near, Musketeer offered no objection to the arrangement. However, presently Eunice saw fit to lope to the rear to commiserate with Annielee Joyce, whose nose was blistered from the sun. And then trouble started.

Musketeer gazed all around with a pained expression. His pal had forsaken him! He must follow. His was a single-track mind. He turned about deliberately and headed back. Guthrie sawed on the reins and kicked him in the ribs with his heels. The mule was patient under the abuse, but continued his course, and the engineer began to ply the quirt.

That was different. Musketeer's ears subsided on his neck and he let out a demoniacal bray. Next he took a couple of mincing steps and humped. It loosened Guthrie in the saddle, and before he could get righted the mule pitched him off. Free, he sped with loud whinnies of joy to rejoin the friend of his bosom.

How we all whooped! Guthrie picked himself up, scarlet and furious; and the first person he discerned, when the mists cleared, was Lois. She was limp from laughing. Bad tactics again—very. A man can overlook anything quicker than humiliation; and Guthrie was vain. He turned sharply around, and there was Eunice, gravely anxious with womanly sweetness to be of service. She was leading Musketeer.

"I'm so sorry," she said. 'But any one can be thrown when he isn't expecting it. Did he hurt you?"

The engineer liked the salve to his vanity, and replied: "Not at all. He got me when I wasn't looking for it." Then he began to pull sand-burs out of his knees.

"Shall I catch you a horse?" continued Eunice innocently.

Guthrie turned red again.

"No," he answered grimly. "I'll ride him. No mule can treat me like that."

And, with the air of a hero leading a forlorn hope, he seized Musketeer's bridle and swung up. The mule stood passive. He rubbed his ear contentedly against Teddy's neck, and noticed his rider not at all.

"HE seems all right now," Eunice remarked hopefully. "Suppose we try him on a trot."

The trot was even more satisfactory. Musketeer's gait was like a rocking-chair. The two moved up to the head of the column.

Lois detected this manoeuver immediately and called out! "Oh, Mr. Guthrie. Donald!"

The engineer turned his head inquiringly.

"Come here and I'll show you what you asked about," she cooed. "I've just found it."

Guthrie's expression indicated that he was unable to recall anything he had especially desired to see, but he dutifully responded by jogging Musketeer and clucking "giddap." The mule wouldn't giddap. His rider managed to rein him about six feet behind Teddy, but further than that he would not go. And when Guthrie ventured once more to raise the quirt, he tucked his tail.

The engineer didn't like the symptoms. He shouted some excuse to Lois, and permitted Musketeer to have his way.

"He seems to prefer it near you," he remarked naïvely. "You seem to soothe him."

Eunice smiled. After a moment the engineer spoke again:

"It looks as if he were determined I should ride with you, Miss Wiggins. Do you mind?"

"I reckon I can stand it," said Eunice brusquely, her cheeks scarlet.

SHE did, in fact, bear up well. On the night of the fourth day out, as we neared the ranch headquarters in brilliant moonlight, the two passed me, and I heard her call him "Donald." It wasn't the name so much as the sickening tone: I knew the last sad rites had begun.

While I was glumly debating the advisability of inaugurating a discreet flirtation with Lois by way of consoling her, Eunice reappeared abruptly beside me. I saw she was agitated.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Where's Guthrie?"

"I don't know and I don't care. Oh, Dick, I wish—"

At that moment there was a commotion in front.

"It's Musketeer," she said breathlessly. "He's trying to throw him off. Run and change with him, Dick."

Perhaps I didn't make the dirt fly! When I got back on the mule, I too was breathless—couldn't speak, in fact. We jogged along silently. I was thinking of Guthrie's face. No conqueror ever wore that look.

"Dick, do you hate me?" asked Eunice.

"What's the answer?" I retorted. There was a lump in my throat.

She gave a little squeak and said brokenly:

"You're so thoughtful—and—and—cheerful—and—and dependable—and—and—"

"Hold on!" I exclaimed roughly, reaching out for her bridle. "Let's drop farther back. That sounds fine. What else am I?"

"Yes, you are, too. I've watched. You're always helping others. You can't fool—me—any more. You—cynical! You're nothing but a big-hearted boy, and—"

"Well, there's no use crying about that."

"And he," she sobbed, whisking out her handkerchief—"he's only a conceited, self-centered—"

And then I grabbed her. She gave another little squeak and pushed me away; but it was done feebly.

"Don't say it now," she begged.

"I wasn't going to say a word," I protested.

So we rode knee to knee down the silver-shimmering path of the moon, that led straight to paradise, and eggs-and-bacon at 7 A. M., and the sweet tyranny of a well bossed home.

Are women artful, or are they not? You know what I mean.

Titus the Trader

By FORREST CRISSEY

DOWN in Defiance, Ohio, is a young man named Titus Johnson, who, not long ago—as a country boy of seventeen—suddenly faced about as black a situation as ever confronted the hero of a Wall Street Crisis, out of which came an experience in getting ahead that has all the clearness, simplicity, and illuminating power of a Bible parable.

The father of Titus was a lawyer of the old school, a "first citizen" in the town of Defiance, a place then of less than ten thousand inhabitants. He owned a big farm in another county, into which he had sunk a small fourtune for clearing. But his borrowing power was good at the bank, and his profession brought him a steady income. So he and his neighbors looked upon his home place, barely within the corporation of limits, as a luxury that he could afford.

From its sixty acres he was never known to get, on his own initiative, a single

dollar's worth of salable produce of any kind; but, just to give the hired man something to do, Mr. Johnson bought a few cows and allowed the "hand" to start a small milk route. Besides, Mr. Johnson wished his boy Titus, then in short trousers, to become interested in farming, against the day when he would inherit the big farm clean of debt.

Then, out of the clear sky, the panic of 1897 smote the little town, and lawyer Johnson discovered that the bottom had dropped out of land values, that all the money he had invested in his larger farm, like the farm itself, was gone, and that a mortgage of $5000 remained unpaid on the home place. His health failed rapidly under the strain, and with his health went his credit at the bank.

When the family council over the ultimatum from the insurance company that held the mortgage was ended, Titus stole up to his father and handed him six ten dollar bills, saved from the proceeds of the milk route. The father choked and said nothing. It had suddenly dawned upon the lad that his father had become an old man! And what would his mother do if the old home was taken away?

"I Can Make It Pay"

THE next afternoon Mr. Moore, a large, kindly man from the head offices of the insurance company, visited the farm. Mr. Johnson told him how Titus had saved sixty dollars and had given it to help out. Mr. Moore looked the boy over carefully, and invited both boy and father to visit him that evening at the Crosby House. There he drew out from young Titus the conviction that he could swing that mortgage and sometime burn it in the old homestead fireplace. Eagerly the boy outlined his plans to his astonished elders.

"I know that I can make the farm pay," slowly insisted the lad.

"Son, I'm going to give you the chance. I'll let the mortgage rest in your father's name—but the fight is up to you. I want you to run that farm on your own judgment—just as if you owned it yourself. That's the agreement. Now, go to it!"

The father nodded assent.

Titus went home, he has confessed, feeling that he had suddenly become a man. When the thought of making the old farm pay had first come to him, he had accepted it as a foregone conclusion that he would have to quit college. He would hew close to the line, and work with a lantern in hand at both ends of the day. He took a quick inventory: a debt of five thousand dollars on one hand, and on the other a reasonable amount of equipment, three horses, eight cows, and sixty acres of land that had never paid a profit.

There were no creameries in or about Defiance, and few farmers were producing more milk than they could convert into dairy products. Mainly they "packed down" butter. In short, Titus was the first to see a chance in trading in milk. He started out one night after supper and began canvassing for his supply. The second night, when he returned at ten o'clock, he had contracted for twenty-seven gallons a day at eight cents. He sold that milk in hulk to the hotel, and exactly doubled his money.

As soon as he saw that his supply could be expanded to meet his sales, he began to hustle systematically for more business. Until then his customers were the rejects from the routes of his competitors—those that were considered "poor pay" or "kickers." But Titus was a persuasive sales-man, and, once he got a customer, he furnished good milk and good service, and held his trade. Often, in rain and storm, he drove into the country, gathering milk, and returning to the farm at nine or ten o'clock, only to rise in the morning before dawn to get his wagon ready for the trip through the sleeping town.

Then his father suddenly died; and if the young shoulders of Titus had before carried a heavy burden, the load was now doubled. Next, two of his best cows died, and the hired man said: "Sorry, Titus, but it's no use holding out any longer. I'm on my way, and you'd better quit."

"Not on your life!" answered Titus. "I've just started." He coaxed the hired girl to take a hand at the milking, and incidentally to teach him that neglected art.

"When I get on my feet," resolved Titus, "I'll make things so comfortable for my help that they'll stick to me through thick and thin."

Cutting Corners

THE struggle at this period of his experience developed Titus specially along two lines: he learned how to cut expenses to the bone, and how to buy and sell. Instead of "choring round," he spent every moment of his spare time figuring out how he could cut corners. Right here is almost the whole secret of business success.

Just as an example of the turns that he made, take the matter of taxes. His father had been content to have the place considered within the corporate limits of the town—feeling that this enhanced the land value and secured better fire

protection. But Titus could not find anything that looked like a water hydrant within hose-reach of his buildings; so he had the county equalizer set him "out of the corporation," and thereby he cut his taxes in half.

Next he went after his feed bills with a sharp knife, and found that the malt refuse was being "dumped" from the local brewery. Promptly he secured a wagon-load of this sprouted barley, hauled it to his farm, and discovered that it remained sweet for several days. He learned, too, that the larger breweries dried this substance and sold it at twenty cents a bushel. Promptly he closed a contract with the home brewery for all he could use at four cents. This reduced his feed cost more than half, and greatly increased his milk supply.

Meanwhile he was playing the David Harum in his trades. He found diversion—and money too—in continual trading. It was his only pastime, and he developed a keen passion for it. Here was an outdoor sport that paid handsomely.

He decided to put up his own ice—so he made a dicker with a competitor for the use of an ice-plow and other tools. By this turn he secured his ice supply for the year for about $25—a fraction of what it had cost him before.

When the Old Cow Died

HE picked and packed away in the cellar a big crop of Baldwin apples. Converting Baldwins into money had never been thought of in that household; but when the two cows died, Titus, in his dilemma, had turned to these apples. His instinct for making a good trade checked him from selling them at the moment because the price was not right. To avoid selling them on a poor market he borrowed the money with which to buy two cows. Two months later he drove into town with a load of apples, and went to the one "fancy grocery." The word Baldwin was a magic word, and he sold his entire crop at two dollars a bushel, and took home with him a check large enough to pay the cow note as well as half the year's interest on the mortgage.

This instinct for a good trade had put money in his purse from the very day he went into business, and was the trait in Titus that did most to smooth his way. One year, some time later, when bran was bringing $28 a ton, Titus sold a dozen tons that he had bought for $19. Another year, when cotton-seed soared to $37, he produced a half carload for which he had paid only $29 a ton. He borrowed money to buy a crop of corn fodder still in the field, and two days later sold it for one half more without having touched it.

Titus was a trader—a farmer, but a financier first. And, all this time, he was trafficking in milk and cream. Nearly every summer since he began he had managed to pay his help from his profits in dealing in cream to be used for ice cream. He even supplied his competitors with milk and made his toll on the transaction.

When there is a big event in town, Titus is always first on the ground to take advantage of it. Barnum and Bailey's circus was due to arrive in his town one Monday morning, and, by wire the night before, Titus got an order for $30 worth of milk. He drove to the farm of one Andy, owner of a good herd five miles from town. He wanted to buy, he said, $15 worth of milk. The old farmer looked him over incredulously, and then announced that, though he had Saturday night's milk and Sunday morning's milk and Sunday evening's milk, he would not sell a quart of it on the Lord's day. "Well, I'll just wait till midnight, then," countered Titus. Which he did.

By sheer energy, shrewdness, and keeping eternally after details, Titus kept getting ahead. He bought milk in ever-increasing quantities, and developed his route until it embarrassed his competitors.

He knew how much each cow ate, what she should produce, and what she did produce. Those that failed to justify by this standard were eliminated. He bought carefully, and raised all his best heifer calves.

The one thing that worried Titus when he was building up his "blooded" herd was the shelter his cows had to accept.

Why He Bought a Church

BUT when the enterprising pastor of the Presbyterian congregation raised the funds for a new church, and advertised that the old one would be sold at public auction, Titus saw a hope. The old church had been put up sixty-five years before, and its beams, he knew, were as solid as the day they were joined together with dowel-pins. Titus found that he had the bidding all to himself.

He secured the old church for $150—every cent of which he had to borrow. Inside of a fortnight he had dismantled it, hauled it in sections down the river road, and reassembled it in the shape of a barn—a barn that became the local model of what a dairy barn should be. To-day it crowns the ridge, and holds more than a hundred tons of clover or alfalfa. Below the loft is a big, clean milking room, equipped with plenty of windows, a ventilator system, and a concrete floor.

The steel stanchions that Titus installed were the first of their kind ever seen in that corner of the Buckeye State, and his litter carrier was a revelation to his farmer neighbors. Later he installed the first feed carrier over seen in that locality. And yet, complete, Titus found the barn cost him only $1200. He borrowed the money to build it, but that barn has paid for itself several times over. "If I can make money earn more than the interest I have to pay, I'll borrow every time!" he declares.

A "Rest Room" for Cows

THE farmers coming and going along the river road, past the new barn, began to notice the young milkman who was "doing queer things." Some of then ridiculed him when he announced his belief in sheltering his cattle—they declared it was foolish to "baby" them. Titus smiled agreeably, and went ahead in his

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plan to provide what he now considers one of the most profitable investments he has ever made. He calls this investment his "rest room." It is little more than a roofed shelter—a huge open box-stall—without a floor, and with a large watering-tank, where his cows have a chance to exercise and drink in the snug shelter of the big barn.

A business trip to another locality convinced him that the silo was the greatest of all modern discoveries for the dairy farmer. Three years later he could count eighteen of these modern citadels of soil fertility within a radius of five miles from his own place.

Profits in Off Season Porkers

TITUS introduced another innovation to his community. Of course he kept hogs—no farmer with half his thrift and foresight would neglect the most profitable of all farm animals. As soon as he began to operate his swine herd on the two-litter-a-year plan, all his neighbors insisted that it was a fool fad of paper farmers and totally impractical. But it has increased his profits greatly—not only by increasing his output of porkers, but by securing higher prices; because his "off season." pigs are ready to sell at a time when the market is not glutted with porkers.

Defiance is the junction point of three rivers, and one of these had power facilities that remained long undeveloped. Finally a power dam was built across it, and it happened that the transmission wires had to pass over the Johnson farm. A representative of the company was quite willing to give Titus a tempting lump sum for the right of putting in the steel uprights. But Titus the trader had been doing some figuring, and suggested that he would rather have a perpetual contract for power at a certain low rate. The company assented.

He bought a 7 1/2-horse-power motor that develops 10-horse-power when this three-phase current is sent through it, and he uses that motor for many purposes—cutting ensilage, sawing wood, pumping water, watering the garden, and running the cream separator, and for operating the washing machine in the kitchen.

Titus has another little motor of 1/2 horse-power that offers a lesson in economy. This tiny power-maker was his first experiment. He used it merely to supplement nature. When the wind didn't work the windmill the little motor took up the task. And then the ingenious Titus rigged up a gear-wheel with which he pumped water into a cooling tank and used the overflow to irrigate his vegetable garden. He now contemplates putting in quite an extensive system of artificial irrigation, and also a small and inexpensive electrical heating apparatus to warm his hog houses at the time of winter farrowing. Only a little artificial heat is needed, but that little often means the saving of a whole litter of new-born pigs. A gasolene engine to do all his work would cost him $800, and would need continual watching and repairs. With his motors doing all the required work, the reading of his meter recently showed that the cost for three months was $2.70.

Titus is strong for practical efficiency, and the waste of labor, materials, or products hurts his sense of thrift. On his initiative, he and his competitor in the milk business long ago decided that they need not waste time and labor and travel in attempting to cover the same territory. They effected a satisfactory division of the town. They also buy much of their feed jointly, and also their bottles.

About the time that Titus saw the effect of his own kind of farming on his soil, and also saw those results repeated to some extent by neighboring farmers who adopted his methods, he did considerable serious thinking on the subject of future laud values in his neighborhood. As these methods were more generally adopted and more faithfully and intelligently followed, there was bound to be a big increase in the market value of the farms. The fertility of the soil was being rapidly restored and the farms made to produce richer crops and larger profits.

Not Afraid of Mortgages Now

IT was not in the cards for the young man who had bought bran at $19 and sold it at $28 to allow an upward movement in farm values to pass without bringing him profit. Therefore Titus the trader began to annex farms. He paid $25 an acre for one, and later refused to sell for $150. Another he leased for five years, and was immediately offered $1000 for the lease. He played a progressive game of mortgage-making and mortgage-lifting, and he now farms 750 acres—not all his in fee simple, to be sure, yet a goodly portion of it is. He isn't as much afraid of a mortgage now as when he started to milk the original one off the old homestead.

"Cows and clover are my best jack-screws," he says. "They raise the actual land value as well as the price."

He now has an unlimited market for all the milk be can produce from his hundred cows, at the neighboring creamery. He keeps fourteen horses, rides a thoroughbred Kentucky saddle-horse that a packer would envy, and has remodeled the old house until there are few comforts or luxuries known to a country gentleman or his help that he does not enjoy. He likes farming, and when he sees a husky boy leaving the farm for the city, he smiles and concludes that "cows and clover will do for me."

"A lot of farmers," declares Titus the trader, "are like a one-legged man. They are unequally developed—strong in production, but weak on planning and business management; they are successful growers, but they fall down on buying and marketing. Consequently they limp and hobble when they might get over the ground at a swinging pace if they were only balanced up on the business side. Farming is business—don't forget that! If I hadn't had this drilled into me at the start, I never would have been able to lift that first mortgage. And it's about the most complex business in the world too. It calls for a kind of management that is flexible, not cut and dried."

The big thing about Titus is not that he was born with a wonderful gift for farming or for trading. There is nothing in his family history to indicate that he was blessed with a natural equipment above the ordinary in either of these particulars. He did not come of a line of money-makers. But the story of Titus the trader—of the boy who milked the mortgage, fattened the farm, and revolutionized the farm methods and values of a whole community—is a parable of the power of application.

He just had to save the home farm for the sake of his father and mother. He knew that to do this he must do more that hustle and toil—he must think and observe everything about him from the viewpoint of whether or not it might be made to yield an honest profit; he must approach everything that came his way with a question as to whether it might not be made to yield him a few desultory dollars. Titus the trader holds that making money is largely a matter of consistent application; that if the average man cares enough about it he can take a profit fron a hundred things close to his hand.

Not that he thinks making money is the biggest thing in the world. He doesn't. Being able to stand between his father and complete financial shipwreck was worth more to him than the money he made—far more!

There is something decidedly cheering in his contention, backed by his own experience, that any average boy or man can make money if he goes after it hard enough—and make it honestly, too.

The Government Will Give You a Job

WHEN the government gets you a job, you are not set to raising potatoes if your soul yearns to mend roads; nor are you put to puddling if you hanker to milk cows. You are sent where you want to go, to do what you want to do; because the government believes that "when a man gets the sort of a job that is suited to his trade or calling the country gains, and so does he."

It is nine years since the United States started to introduce the manless job to the jobless man. Things were begun in rather a small way. The United States Employment Bureau was then a two-roomed affair run by a commissioner and two clerks. Now it covers a floor in the New York Federal Building, and circles the country like an endless chain through the medium of eighteen employment zones situated in the principal cities, each zone being in charge of an immigrant inspector. There are also sub-branches and sub-sub-branches represented by some 60,000 post-offices, which create a network of communication between employers needing help and workers wanting employment. Either employer or workman may obtain at any post-office in the country a blank application supplied by the Department of Labor, which may be sent free through the mails after it is signed and filled out. These applications are then "matched" at the nearest sub-station.

The Beet Patch Needs Attention

"I HAVE a fine beet farm in Missouri," writes a farmer, "and I want a young man to run it." The clerk in charge then hunts through the files marked "Agricultural Employment Wanted" until he finds a chap who loves beyond anything to grow beets, and sends him to the farmer. And the result in most cases justifies a long, lingering, hard-to-kill belief in human nature.

To illustrate: There was one Anton Nijik, who came "out of Russia" some six years ago. Anton's people in the Volna district had been farmers since Ivan the Terrible, and Anton went to an employment agency and asked for work on a farm. He was hustled on to a train bound for the Pennsylvania oil-fields. This he discovered after an hour's travel. What did he do? Got off the train and walked back to New York. There he told his troubles to a countryman he met on the wharves, and was advised to let the government find him work. That night, quite happy, Anton started for Illinois to work on a farm for $18 a month (a lot of money when translated back into rubles), busily studying a Russian-English glossary given him by Commissioner S. E. Green, who had underlined some two hundred words and phrases likely to be useful to him. Anton reached Illinois with a working knowledge of English, and the farmer gave him $25 the first month instead of $18.

A few weeks ago Anton revisited New York and called on the Commissioner. He was meeting his mother and sweetheart, he said, to take them to his own farm. Yes, he had a nice little farm and a thousand dollars in the bank. They were all going to be very happy. Was the Commissioner surprised? Not particularly. His theories were justified, that was all. He got out a ledger and wrote therein: "Anton Nijik. No. 876, Class I. Good example of ordinary intelligence and right sort of job. Value as citizen direct result of employment suited to calling."

The Bureau plays a picturesque and interesting part in facilitating the harvest in the Middle West. Beginning late in May, a vast army converges into the grain country. The mobilization and disposition of the units of this great wave of workers is the duty of the Bureau. Working north as the season progresses, the harvest hand, guided by the Bureau, can work from May in Texas through August in Canada at top wages.

Let us consider one of these units, Fred Luscher, and note how the Bureau kept him in work for twelve months. Fred was a nomad, but, amazing to relate, liked work. So from May to August he followed the harvest; in August and September he gathered peaches in Michigan; in November, December, January, and February he went lumbering in Minnesota; and in March and April he cultivated fruit lands in Oregon.

Mental Labor Is Given, Too

NOR does the United States concentrate all its energies on manual labor. There is a certain young woman in Wisconsin, heiress to a large slice of bank stock and one of the finest farms in the State, who owes her good fortune entirely to the government's success in finding in her just the person to fill the void in the declining lives of a childless old couple. This, according to L. F. Post, Assistant Secretary of Labor, is the plain, unvarnished truth.

Almost every kind of a job has been obtained for almost every kind of a job-hunter at one time or another by the Bureau.

Suppose you were a clerk or a stenographer or an accountant or a hosiery salesman or an expert "soda-slinger" or a garment-maker or a carpenter or mechanical engineer, or anything else that you can fancy, out of a job. After bracing Commissioner Green you might have to go out to Waco, Texas, or Emporia, Kansas, to be sure; but, nine chances out of ten, somewhere in the United States the Commissioner would know of somebody looking for just what you had to offer.

Of course it is not possible to land with a jump into a railroad president's chair, and the Bureau is trying hard to dispel that idea. But, the Bureau is discovering plenty of people ready and anxious for good, old-fashioned jobs, and is kept busy introducing some 5000 such persons to some 5000 such jobs daily in all parts of the country.

The Mystery at Woodford's

By WADSWORTH CAMP

Illustration by Arthur I. Keller

QUAILE advanced slowly toward Barbara's motionless figure. The main fact—the shameful truth—was beyond contradiction. She had concealed herself in a remote part of this house after the limping footsteps had frightened Josiah Bunce. But he couldn't cry out her guilt as long as a chance remained that she might explain her presence here. He would give her that chance if he could keep the others downstairs.

He stooped and raised her wrists. The flesh was cold under his touch; but she stirred almost immediately, opened her eyes, and endeavored to get to her feet.

"Barbara! he said. "What are you doing here?"

She had struggled to her knees. She paused there and leant back against the wall, breathing harshly.

"You mustn't ask that."

"You will tell me," he said.

But she shook her head. She made herself go on, with odd, uneven pauses between the words.

"You've not forgotten that you love me—that you—promised to trust me? You won't let them know I'm here?"

He was certain then that she held the explanation of Woodford's ghost—a solution infinitely more abhorrent than that spectral one from which he had always shrunk.

"Then you did that," he breathed. "It was you who made the limping footsteps that frightened Bunce."

She glanced up with unstudied bewilderment.

"How can you think that? No. I heard them. They frightened me, too. I ran here."

"I want to believe you—"

He broke off and grasped her elbows.

"Tell me," he begged. "Don't you see you've got to tell me?"

With an impetuous vehemence, she tried to free herself. Her breath caught.

"Let go my arm. You hurt. You lied last night. You are going to tell—"

McHugh's shout reached them from the lower floor.

"Quaile! Quaile! You found some-thing up there?"

"What are you going to answer?" she whispered.

He made one last effort.

"You won't explain?"

"No; but if you tell them—"

He let her arms go. He steadied his voice and called:

"Nothing, McHugh—nothing. I'll he right down."

She braced herself against the door-jamb and hid her face.

"I can't wait," he said. "Will you be able to get out unseen?"

Her head moved affirmatively. He looked back from the door.

"Barbara! Barbara! Why did you come here?"

SHE gave no sign. She did not move. So he went slowly along the hall and down the stairs. He sought no excuse for his action. She had challenged the fairness of his own attitude toward her. He had kept that clean. He had responded to the trust she had placed in him last night. His reward seemed removed forever beyond his grasp. He mustn't think of that. As far as possible, he must strangle thought; for McHugh waited for him at the foot of the stairs, and the former detective had sharp eyes.

"You been gone long enough to find a regiment of ghosts, Quaile."

Quaile managed to answer:

"I wanted to make sure. You and Watson found nothing?"

McHugh spread his hands.

"Never anything but shadows where those footsteps limp."

Quaile at his heels, he walked into the library. Josiah had drawn his rug about his knees. Now and then he shook as if he experienced a sharp chill. Quaile was grateful for the lowered blinds, which kept a too revealing light from his face.

"What am I to do'?" Josiah sniveled. "I can't sit here night and day waiting for him to come back."

McHugh sat down.

"Let's get to cases. There's nobody in this house except us four. You've said there was no one here—no servant even —when you sent Watson on the errand."

"Yes; I'm sure."

"How long before we came in did you hear the footsteps?"

"Not more than five minutes. Watson got back right away."

McHugh glanced at the butler.

"You saw nobody, Watson—nobody coming down the steps or from the kitchen entrance?"

"No, sir."

McHugh frowned. He spoke, Quaile thought, with a pronounced reluctance:

"What had you been doing, Bunce—I mean, just before you heard this thing like Woodford walking?"

The recluse reached out and lifted from the table a copy of the newspaper containing the ghostly story of the theater.

"I remember—I was reading this again. I had sent Robert some little time before to find you and bring you back. I was pretty hot, Mr. McHugh. I was going to give you the devil."

McHugh cleared his throat. His irresolution became more noticeable.

"Were you by any chance talking to yourself?"

Quaile caught the trend of his questions.

"Maybe I was," Josiah said.

"Try to think what you talked about," McHugh urged.

"I don't know," Josiah said reflectively. "I was pretty mad. I—I think I said Woodford's ghost would have a fine chance on my property."

He seemed to appreciate the significance of his words. The ashen shade of his cheeks increased. McHugh glanced at Quaile.

"Bunce," he said solemnly, "get over your temper with me. The only place to lay that ghost is right in your theater. Dress rehearsal's to-night. Things are coming to a head. We're all worked up enough. I don't want interference to-night or to-morrow."

"Yon seem honest," Josiah muttered; "but if I hadn't heard that thing—"

Continued on page 15

What Is Your Favorite Drink?

Girls Who Movied Up

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What They Do Besides Preach

Her Sammy

By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX

Illustrations by Robert McCaig

IN the teeth of a gale so violent that the old Southern town seemed to stand aghast, Frank Lamar fought his way across Court House Square. He was going for the first time to his office. The tempest followed hard upon a Christmas season so bland and sunny that flowers bloomed in the yards and neighbors hailed one another from their porches.

Half way across the square he stopped with overcoat flapping to let two mudsplashed buggies pass. In the first he recognized the sheriff, with a prisoner bundled up beside him. In the second sat a solitary woman wrapped in a shawl.

There was something inexpressibly dreary in the little procession. Across the deserted square it passed, like a tragic pantomime. Its slimy trail remained on the pavement in daubs of black swamp mud. Frank ducked his head, held on to his hat, and made for the curb.

Here he ran into one of his many cousins, Joe Cunningham. Joe caught him by the lapels of his coat and shouted above the wind:

"Know what that was just passed? A case ready made for you, you lucky dog! That fellow named Raines killed another named Groome in Hell Bole Swamp last night. The General got old man Raines off years ago; they're sure to come to you. Good luck!"

Lamar looked him grimly in the eyes. "I'm not in the business of saving murderers' necks!"

"Oh, come off!" expostulated Joe.

"I mean it!"

"Frank Lamar—your father was the greatest criminal lawyer this circuit ever produced. The stiffest jury ever got together was so many blitherin' babies in his hands. What you goin' to do? Sit up an' suck your thumbs? God, I wish I had your chance!"

"Ever looked at our homicide record, Joe?"

Cunningham regarded him narrowly for a moment. Then he pulled his overcoat close about his neck and lunged on like a man who, having done his duty, has nothing more to say.

FRANK did not have to hang out his shingle. That had been done fifty years before. Above the offices, that were on the second floor, it hung, rasping and creaking: "Lamar & Milledge, Attorneys at Law." General Lamar had been dead a year. Mr. Milledge was in his dotage. Frank had stepped into the heritage and traditions of the firm.

He climbed the narrow steps and entered the reception-room. Hank, the old negro who had made fires for the General, had been handed down to the son. The place was quite warm. Frank hung his coat on the peg where for fifty years his father had hung his. He warmed his hands over the pot-bellied stove. He looked about at the few law books and smiled grimly. His father had had small need of them. Law books do not tell how to bring tears to the eyes of jurors.

He went into the private office and sat down in his father's chair. How many tragic stories had been told in that little room! How many frightened women sent away with the hopeful "I'll get him off!"

He had wheeled round to open the desk when he saw for the first time an enlarged picture of his father hung above it, a surprise Christmas present from his uncle. It showed the truculent hair, the fiercely proud eyes, the mouth generously loose. It showed the massive shoulders—and it showed the crutch.

Frank bit his lip. The crutch might have been left out. True, the General had carried a war wound to his grave; but his intimates knew that a stick might have answered. The crutch had been one of the General's properties in those florid court-room dramas where he was the center of the stage. It had fastened all eyes on an old soldier turned proclaimer of mercy and forgiveness. The crutch, the broad emotionalism, the sophistries,—yes, the perjuries, if need be,—had robbed the gallows of many a wretch.

A TIMID knock at the hall door interrupted his bitter thoughts. With four strides he crossed the waiting-room and flung the door open. The woman he had seen in the square stood there shivering. Frank took her by the hand and led her to the stove, where he placed a chair for her. The cold that brings the blood tingling to healthy cheeks had driven hers to the heart.

"Let me have your coat and shawl," he said gently. "You'll warm quicker."

He hung them up. They were pathetically thin and worn.

"Raines is my name." She shivered convulsively. "I've drove fo'teen miles since befo' daybreak. You look like the General, for a fac'," she quavered. "I'd 'a' been all broke up if you hadn't. The General was always folks' friend when they was in trouble. I'm all shudderin', so I can't hardly talk. No—it ain't the cold. It's worryin' 'bout my boy, my Sammy."

"Well, you must cheer up, Mrs. Raines," said Frank, with the optimism of strength and youth. "So many times things turn out better than we think they will. Just come in here where you won't be interrupted."

She preceded him into the private office, and meekly took her chair, as so many trembling women had taken theirs before her. Frank sat down facing her.

"He was the youngest of seven, " she said. "Some folks say a mother loves the eldest boy most. I don't know. Sammy was always frail, a sickly little fellow trottin' round after his ma's skirt. Maybe it was that made him more precious. I don't know."

Frank Lamar leaned forward. The woman's head was bowed. She was talking, not to him, but to herself.

"Maybe it's knowin' how much you love makes you love. A body knows when they see another 'bout to die. Three times when he was little we thought he was a-goin' to die. The Lord was merciful an' drew him out'n the grave."

There was a moment's silence. Frank could hear his watch tick in his pocket.

"When he growed up, an' his pa died, an' the others lef' home an' married, Sammy stayed on with his ma. I reckon, bein' as he was frail, be was skeered to strike out. I mind once seein' some birds in a nest, an' all flew away but one. The mother kep' hoverin' round him. He was frail, I reckon, an' skeered to fly. Sammy always seemed like that to me—up to las' night. Oh, God—if it was just yistiddy this time!"

Frank cleared his throat.

"He killed a man last night, I hear."

"That's what folks say. It don't seem like it can be true. Ned Groome was so big an' strong an' bullyin', an' Sammy, though he's got a man's years, so slim an' genteel. I helped him git ready for the party las' night at Dave Simmonses. I heated water for him to shave with. I had given him a cravat for Christmas. I tied it for him. I never seen him more merry than what he was last night."

Frank was growing uneasy. The woman's mind had taken refuge in petty details. About the shooting he had gained no information whatever.

"How did the shooting happen, Mrs. Raines?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know," she wailed. "Folks say different things."

"Mrs. Raines, did Groome shoot?"

She jerked like a sick person when the doctor's probing finger touches the spot. The General never would have asked that.

"Folks differ," she repeated.

"Mrs. Raines—you see, we must get down to facts. Do any of them say that Groome shot?"

She began to tremble.

"He would 'a' shot!" she cried excitedly. "Them was Sammy's furst words. I was settin' by the fire waitin' for him, when he broke in, white as a dead man. He fell down on the flo' an' buried his face in my apron. It broke me up, Mr. Lamar." She got out her poor old handkerchief. "Oh, it broke me up!"

Frank looked at her with pitying despair. Here was hopeless, sodden tragedy. There was abjectness in her grief, in the unloveliness of her knotted hands, in the thinness of her dead gray hair. Life had dealt unjustly with this woman.

Then she raised her face, and a light almost beautiful shone in her pale eyes.

"Excuse me, Mr. Lamar," she said gently. "I was thinkin' 'bout Sammy."

JUST then there floated into the room the sound of women's laughter. Frank rose hurriedly and went into the waiting-room. Three of his cousins were there.

"It's snowing!" cried Ethel, the prettiest. "First time since I was a little girl! The stores are turning out! There'll be snow-balling! Come, Frank, don't look so glum and businesslike. Nobody's working to-day. Come along!"

A second girl ran to him with his overcoat spread out.

"We're going to wallow you! No use to pretend to be busy ! Revenge! Revenge!"

"There's a woman crying in there," said Frank.

"It's a poor woman—Mrs. Raines," explained Frank. "Her son killed a man last night."

"Oh!" shuddered Ethel. Then she smiled radiantly into his face. "Oh, Frank," she whispered. "You look splendid, like your father. Poor, poor woman! But we expect big things of you."

Frank patted her little gloved hand.

"What do you mean by big things? Run home and get a warm cloak for the woman. She was nearly frozen. Send it back by Hank."

When he reëntered his office he found Mrs. Raines composed.

"It do seem kinder strange," she said wistfully, "that folks kin be so happy. But they're young. Thar's Bessie Martin that Sammy was goin' to see. Bessie ain't so light-minded this mornin'."

"Was Groome going to see her?" asked Frank quickly.

"Yes; he was tryin' to cut po' Sammy out. But that don't make no difference! Oh, Mr. Lamar," she pleaded, "if you just knew Sammy! How patient he is, always splittin' up wood, milkin' the cow when the weather's bad, never grumblin'. When I was down with rheumatism he 'tended me like he was a woman."

"Did he?"

Frank's eye flashed. He glanced at his father's picture, and his heart thrilled. He knew just how it would be if his father were living. The drama was enacted in his mind with all the vividness of life:

The General rises on his crutch and stumps over to the jury. The jurors straighten up. Throughout the courtroom there is a scraping of chairs and a clearing of throats. "Your Honor—gentlemen of the jury!" The voice, low at first, rises vibrant. The plea is for a boy who cared for his sick and widowed mother. The shooting is forgotten. The room is spell-bound by the voice of that crippled, mighty man, tender, pleading, then impassioned, overpowering, sweeping every heart with it in a torrent of emotion. When the voice ceases the room for a moment seems peopled by the dead. The jury retires. There is an hour of suspense. The jury returns. The verdict is—"Not guilty!" The room is in an uproar. A mother falls into the arms of her son!

Could he, Frank Lamar, do this? He believed he could. The tragic mother had put fire into him.

At a knock on the door he started. It was Hank with the cloak.

"This is for you," he said to the woman. "You won't get so cold going back."

Her thanks shocked him into introspection. Where was he drifting? He had learned nothing of the merits of the case. He excused himself and went into the other room. Hank was poking up the fire.

"Hank," he said, "go to the jail, find the sheriff, and tell him I want to see him for a few minutes. Hurry!"

He lit his pipe and paced the room. The sheriff was not long arriving. He

---

came puffing into the room, a full-cheeked, red-faced, big-whiskered man. He was plainly surprised. General Lamar had had little dealing with those who capture and prosecute.

He knew all about the case, he declared. He had talked to the people who were at the party. Groome had danced all evening with a girl, Bessie Martin. The shooting had come off out in the road. Groome didn't have a gun.

"What sort is this Raines?"

"A cat! Hits quick an' in the dark."

FRANK went grimly back into the office and sank into a chair. Before him sat the woman, her hands folded in her lap. Instinct must have instructed her to keep quiet now. Her frail presence was more eloquent than words. When at last the lawyer turned his face toward her, his eyes, not hers, pleaded for mercy.

"Mrs. Raines,"—his voice was metallic and strained, his throat dry,—"did my father ever defend your husband in court?"

"Yes—oh, yes; he got him off. It do seem strange—"

"It is not strange, Mrs. Raines. It is to be expected. If your husband had been punished, would your son have killed?"

"Oh, God. That don't do no good now! You're talkin' 'bout what's past. It's Sammy I want! It's too late now. Oh, you can't go back on us, you that was so kind!" She caught his hand convulsively. "It's a mother that pleads, Mr. Lamar—a poor, broken mother!"

Lamar gently unclasped her hands and rose.

"I will defend him,—wait a moment, Mrs. Raines,—I will bring out any extenuating circumstances I can find. But I will not distort a single fact."

"You'll git him off?"

"That rests with the jury, Mrs. Raines."

"But you'll make the jury see what he means to his mother? You'll tell them—"

"No! That I will not do. I must be plain. Your son killed an unarmed man. I think your son ought to be—oh, Mrs.

Raines, I am not the lawyer you want!"

"Nobody else will do," she moaned— "nobody but the General's own son. Oh, if the General was only livin'!"

"If he were—God knows, he could not feel more. But I will not, I can not, do what he would do!"

For the first time, she showed a spark of anger.

"Why didn't you tell me that? Why was you so nice?"

"I am very, very sorry. I didn't know the facts. I wanted to help you. I hoped—"

The woman staggered to her feet. Anger had given place to terror.

"I must be a-goin' " she wailed. "I feel—" She retreated into the waiting-room. Instinct cried out to him to follow her, to cheer. her. He dared not. There he must stand. His future hung in the balance. If he got her Sammy off, he would continue his father's work as a perpetuator of murder and crime.

He heard her totter down the steps. He closed the door. He looked up at the picture of General Lamar.

"Father," he said hoarsely—"oh, father, I understand!"

The eyes of the father seemed to reproach him. For the first time in fifty years, a woman shad gone out of that room more terrified and dismayed than when she entered.

He drew himself up. His breath came fast. A vision came into his mind.

"I can do it!" he said.

He arose, hurried into the waiting-room, put on his hat and coat, and ran down the steps into the street. Beyond the merry-makers he saw her standing before a lawyer's sign.

With wildly beating heart Lamar hurried toward her.

"Oh," she moaned, "it's got to be you—you or nobody. I can't go to him thar in jail—my poor, poor boy!"

Frank swallowed the lump in his throat. "I'll defend him, Mrs. Raines," he said, and caught her as she swayed.

SINCE the days of General Lamar the court-room had not been so crowded. The benches were packed, the aisles jammed, the windows full of heads. The space within the bar rails was filled with lawyers. It was an epic day in the county-seat. Had the mantle of a powerful father descended to the shoulders of his son?

The patience of the multitude was marvelous. Cramped, uncomfortable, stifling, they hardly shifted a position. From far and near they had come—sallow folk from the swamps, cave-men with tangled beards, dapper young people from the town, packed together, waiting, straining their necks to get a sight of the little group at a table.

Here sat the mother, the son, and the young lawyer. The woman was in cheap black, a heavy veil concealing her face. She did not stir, she did not speak, she hardly seemed to breathe. Next to her, Sammy Raines, thin, frail, sunken-cheeked, sat hunched forward. His hands were folded in front of him on the table. Not once did he glance at his mother or his lawyer or at the crowd about him—only at his convulsed, sweating hands that had dealt violent death.

Lamar looked straight ahead. His papers were all arranged before him. The supreme moment of his life had come. By a mighty tie his fortune was knit with that of this woman and her son. The clumsy mill of justice was beginning to grind. What would be its product?

Frank glanced at the silent prisoner and his mother. His heart swelled with tenderness. He was so much more than their lawyer. He must make them understand what it meant, for the good of their souls. The dragon's teeth of other murders must not be sown that day.

In the afternoon, for the first time, he faced a witness. There was a subdued movement throughout the court-room.

"Was not Ned Groome a powerful man and a bully?" he asked.

The frantic objection of the prosecutor was overruled by the judge.

"Yes."

"Did you ever' hear Ned Groome ridicule the prisoner, Sammy Raines?"

"Oh, yes—that was Ned's way. He used to mock Sammy Raines because Sammy limped and stuttered."

"Did he make fun of Sammy before Bessie Martin?"

"Yes, sir."

"Silence in the court!" cried the judge, and pounded the rail with his gavel.

"You may come down," said Lamar. "Mrs. Raines, will you take the stand?"

He assisted her to the chair. He made her throw back her veil. For the first time, men looked into the care-worn face of the mother.

She told her story. Sammy was all she had left. Sammy was—

The prosecuting attorney sprang to his feet, apoplectic with objections.

"You may come down, Mrs. Raines," said Lamar gently.

THE light from the setting sun streamed red through the high Gothic windows when Frank Lamar rose and walked toward the jury. Old men declared that he looked as the General had looked before the war—tall, strong, masterful. He chose a spot where the light fell full on his face. The judge looked down on him with unconcealed admiration. He spoke quietly, and the jury listened like children.

"Your Honor, gentlemen of the jury! Two men are on trial here to-day—Sammy Raines and myself. You are Sammy Raines' jury. This court-room full of people, this mother and her son, is the jury that is to sit on my case this day!"

Then he spoke of the determination he had formed when he took up his father's practice. He told them of Mrs. Raines' visit to his office. "Ah, gentlemen of the jury!" he cried. "What were my resolutions in the face of the mother's grief? She won my heart, gentlemen!" He struck his breast a powerful blow. "She won my heart!"

He searched the face of every juror. They drew closer to him, leaning forward in their chairs. They were his—he could mold them, as he pleased. The sense of tremendous power flooded him like a tidal wave. The blood rushed into his cheeks, his eyes blazed.

He turned and pointed to Sammy Raines.

"Look at that poor boy, gentlemen of the jury. A powerful man bullied him, mocked his deformity, stole his sweetheart away. He had so little, so little. That was snatched from him. Only his mother remains to plead for him. We have strong bodies and minds, you and I. We have loved ones, homes, honors. Let us look with compassion on Sammy Raines, gentlemen of the jury!"

A juryman with the beard of a patriarch wiped his eyes with a red bandana handkerchief. Another cleared his throat. A third shifted uneasily, like a man afraid he is about to make a spectacle of himself.

"Sammy Raines!" cried Lamar.

At the call the young man raised his quivering face.

"You know it was an awful thing you did, Sammy?"

The chest of the criminal rose and fell. Three times he nodded his head. Then he fell forward on the table, and the woman threw her protecting arms about him.

"Mrs. Raines!"

The woman looked up from her son.

"The law says, Thou shalt not kill.' This law was handed down by the great Judge of us all on Sinai. To escape from its punishment is to defy God himself. Do you want your Sammy to stand before the awful judgment defiant?"

The woman gasped.

"Our laws were given us by God himself in order that we might live together and protect ourselves from ourselves. Why have not the kinsmen of Ned Groome slain your Sammy? The law stayed their hands. If they had done so, what would you demand of this court, Mrs. Raines?"

His eyes were intent on the woman's bewildered face.

"What would you demand of it, Mrs. Raines?" he repeated.

"But the law does not take revenge. The law makes examples. If Sammy goes free, other mothers' sons will be in danger. Your Sammy himself slew a mother's son. If men are allowed to kill one another, what woman will dare bring a son into the world? Will you ask one thing for your son, and another thing for other mothers' sons?

"Mrs. Raines, you are a God-fearing woman. Can you stand before the judgment and declare that Sammy was justified in killing Ned Groome? Will you dare look your God in the face and say: `I begged these gentlemen of the jury to let him off. It didn't matter to me that other boys were placed in danger. I did not care whether or not it was good for me, or good for my neighbors, or good for my Sammy. I just wanted him, that's all.' Can you look your God in the face and say that, Mrs. Raines?"

THE woman stared at him. The dawn of a new understanding was breaking in her eyes.

"Can you, Mrs. Raines, can you?"

"No!" she sobbed. "Oh, God, no! He's right, Sammy. Listen to me, my son. Mr. Lamar is right. There ain't no malice here, Sammy, my boy, my baby boy!"

Lamar turned to the jury.

"Gentlemen, the fate of the boy is in your hands."

The lights were on when the jury re-returned with the verdict, "Manslaughter." Sammy Raines rose mechanically and received the sentence, five years at hard labor, then sank into his chair, his mother's arms about him, her crooning voice in his ear.

Amid the congratulations of friends that pressed about him, amid the dazed confusion of shuffling feet and shoving crowds and eager eyes, two things remained in Frank Lamar's memory. One was the simple, halting thanks of Sammy's mother; the other the whispered congratulations of the old judge:

"My boy, you have something greater than your father's crutch!"

No More Tears for Tears

A BUSY woman journalist doesn't have much time or enthusiasm left over at the end of a strenuous day for a bout with the darning ball or the mending basket. That's why the Mind-Your-Mending Shop started. Miss Eve vom Baur used to come home from her day's work (editing the woman's page of the Evening Sun) sometimes with a three-cornered tear, sometimes with the lining loose from her coat, and always, always with a little hump of thread where a button used to be. She didn't have time to look after these small atrocities herself. So Miss vom Baur simply had to buy suit after suit and frock after frock and blouse after petticoat.

One day she talked this matter over with Mrs. J. Searle Barclay, Jr., and the two of them deduced that there ought to be hundreds of other people in a city like New York, both men and women, who were suffering in the same acute way. So, between them, they started the Mind-Your-Mending Shop, and the junior partner's mending pile was the first consignment listed.

This shop does everything for the business woman that she never has time to do for herself. It does everything for the bachelor man that he has never had any one do for him since he grew up. "Our shop is better to a man than a wife is," say its owners modestly; for the more mending and darning a man wants done the better we are pleased. We never scold. We smile."

Men Come in Person

FOR a woman it's a saving in both time and money, they say at the shop, to have her clothes attended to. She only has to buy about half as many when she keeps them in good repair, and that means she only has to shop half as much. Shopping bores the business woman to distraction. As a rule, the women patrons of the Mind-Your-Mending Shop send around a postcard asking that their mending be called for.

Men, on the other hand, are apt to bring their mending themselves. Sometimes they open it up and, pointing out the defects, explain with great detail what they want done. One man insists that all his colored socks be darned with black because that was the way his mother did them. Sometimes it takes quite a long discussion for a man to tell just how he wants a coat patched or the buttons moved over. Many of the men who are waiting in line stand with their socks draped over their arms, with charming informality, although there are some who wouldn't open their bundles for worlds, nor have them opened in their presence. They blush at the thought; so they do them up in a tight little wad and tie them tight with string. These with a brief nod and a whispered word they leave at the desk and hurry forth to dive into the nearest subway station.

The manager of the shop sits behind a counter in a little office between the two big work-rooms, noting in a book each package received and any suggestions its owner makes in regard to repairs. Her customers say it gives them a sort of a "homey" feeling to bring their mending in to her. "This is the only domestic hour in my life," said one business man the other day, gratefully handing over a frayed bath-robe.

Besides all matter-of-course repairs, this shop loves to tackle new problems. One day a woman lawyer came in.

"What can I do," she asked, "to keep my dresses smart and fresh when I have to pore over musty law books every day for hours?"

The shop manager made a note. "We'll think about it," she said.

Finally Miss vom Baur solved the problem by inventing the "savafrock," a long, smartly made coat of China silk, which reaches from the chin to the heels. The lawyer looked so chic in it that the shop immediately began to manufacture the "savafrock" by wholesale.

Last week a regular man customer brought in forty-three old-fashioned four-in-hand ties. They were of beautiful material, but out of style. "They are just the patterns and colors I like," he said plaintively, "but my folks won't hear of my wearing them any more." Those old four-in-hands were promptly made over into forty-three nifty little new bow ties which made their owner's eyes sparkle.

They All Wanted to Help

ONE day a gentle old man appeared with a knitted lavender silk scarf, worn almost threadbare.

"Could you possibly repair this?" be asked. "It is dear to me."

Every one of the dozen girls in the shop wanted to have a hand in restoring that scarf. One girl dry-cleaned it. Another shopped to get silk to match the worn lining. Another put the lining in. Another tied new fringe on the ends. There was a bare suggestion of lavender flower fragrance about the tie, and a fifth girl brought fresh lavender flowers and kept the tie in them till its owner returned. When he came in, all the girls stopped their machines and the shop was still as he picked up the tie and held it to the light. "It looks," he said slowly, "just as beautiful as it did the day she made it for me. And, do you know, the lavender fragrance has lasted all these years."

The Mending Shop's customers are charged at the rate of thirty cents an hour for machine work and fifty cents an hour for hand work. Which means, you see, that mother is a potential millionaire.

The Mystery at Woodford's

The Mystery at Woodford's

Continued from page 8

He looked up with a certain slyness. His tone was uncomfortable.

"I'd like to be there myself to-night."

McHugh grinned.

"You, Bunce! They tell me you haven't been out of this house for fifteen years."

THE unkempt head bobbed up and down.

"But I don't want to sit here waiting for that thing to limp back."

His sinewy fingers strained about the chair-arms.

"You are straight, Mr. McHugh, aren't you? You're not playing tricks on me? It isn't advertising?"

"Don't be a fool," McHugh grunted.

"I'd like to be there," he mused. "I'll send Robert, anyway. I wish he was here now."

"He spoke of returning before we left," Quaile said. "When he's heard your experience he may be less doubtful about trusting us."

"We'll wait," McHugh said, "for I want to have a free hand from this minute."

It wasn't long before Watson answered Robert's ring. The younger brother looked anxiously into the distrustful eyes.

"Have these people been bulldozing you, Josiah?"

McHugh held up his hand.

"Cut the comedy. Tell him the facts, Bunce."

Josiah recited in detail his experience of the footsteps and the cat, while Robert listened incredulously.

"Sounds like Woodford as I remember him," he said, "but—"

He walked to the mantelpiece, and for a long time stared at the fire. McHugh grew restless.

"I got to be running along," he announced. "So, if you've anything to say, better get it off your chest."

"Frankly," said Robert, turning, "I don't believe in footsteps without feet."

"That's what I want to get at."

"And you're to be there, Robert," Josiah said. "The dress rehearsal's to-night. They won't play tricks on you."

"Yes, I'll go," Robert answered. "If somebody's trying to make a fool of you as well as of us, you'll find me a strong ally. "If you're on the level, as you put it, Mr. McHugh, you will find me a lenient judge."

"Then you'll be one," McHugh grunted.

"YOU look," McHugh said, when he and Quaile reached the street, "more upset than Josiah."

"It does worry me," Quaile answered.

He knew the uselessness of trying to make excuses. He refused to accompany McHugh to his office. He pleaded the necessity of rest, and hurried home.

But when he had stretched himself on his bed, the need of sleep was vanquished by his turbulent recollections. Wilkins evidently shared his agitation. He heard the leading man moving around in the next room. He went in. A pungent fog of cigarette smoke whirled in the draught from the door. Wilkins swung around as Quaile entered.

"Perfect rot, my not being able to rest, when I know McHugh will probably keep us up most of the night!"

"I can understand," Quaile answered; "but all that smoking's beastly for your nerves."

"Confess I'm doing it to keep them up," Wilkins said. "Wish to the devil Joyce hadn't ordered me to approach the big scene without a sense of fear. I'm to forget that Woodford fell dead playing it, and that Carlton dropped the same way forty years after. You know, that's the deuce of a proposition to put up to a man."

Quaile agreed. "It is nervy of you," he said, "to take it on at all."

"No," Wilkins answered. "I might have thrown McHugh down, but I'm dashed if I could treat myself that way."

Quaile acknowledged that he, too, had found rest impossible. He suggested that they go to his club and cut in a bridge game.

"Something to think about," he said. "I mean, if we don't keep our minds on the game our partners will give us plenty to worry over."

Wilkins accepted eagerly, and they went to the club. They struggled along, as Quaile had prophesied, to the wrath of their partners, until it was time to return to the apartment.

While he dressed, and during their hurried dinner, Quaile's ears were alert for the telephone.

WHEN they reached the theater, Wilkins went through the alley; but Quaile paused on the sidewalk, gazing with a feeling of wonder and encouragement at the transformed façade of the old building. It seemed impossible that where there had been so much darkness, so much dinginess, there should have sprung up such light, such motion, such eagerness.

Most amazing of all, a long line of men and women curved along the sidewalk, up the steps between the slender columns, and to the open box-office window. Such an advance sale was without precedent. Whether McHugh wished it or not, the publicity centering about the occult was bearing golden fruit.

The stained-glass doors glowed with a subdued light from within. For the first time, Quaile realized that he no longer need use the somber alley through which many times he had walked reluctantly to face the old building's manifestations. He walked through one of those pleasant doors.

The house was quite ready for a performance. Its former aspect was one with a morbid dream. Its manifestations assumed the same unreal quality. Surely things would proceed normally to-night. Surely Wilkins would come through.

SUCH thoughts, however, survived only as far as the passage to the stage. As soon as he had started through, he became aware of that customary repellent odor— the shadow, as Dolly always said, of the perfume Woodford had used.

There was more beyond to destroy his fugitive contentment. McHugh, Dolly, and Mike stood in the center of the stage. The flashing borders and the brilliancy of the new scenery pointed the contrast of the drawn faces and the distrust of these two who had known Woodford.

"What's up now?" Quaile asked them.

"The brainless idiots!" McHugh muttered, with an artificial scorn. "They've been seeing and feeling things again."

Mike's face worked.

"But I did see it, Mr. McHugh."

"What?" Quaile asked.

"A figure, sir. Like him—like Mr. Woodford, except that it was white fire."

Dolly placed her hand on the property-man's arm. He shook from head to foot. He could not keep his mouth still. He was a picture of unconditional fear.

"Just my luck, Quaile, to have you hear that," McHugh lamented. "I won't have a steady pair of knees in the house. You've done enough damage, Mike. Chase back to your job, if your legs'll carry you."

"He's right, Dolly put in. "I warned

---

you this morning, and to-night the cat is closer."

She looked swiftly around.

"As close as the day Mr. Carlton died."

McHugh flung up his hands, but behind his bluster Quaile saw the real extent to which his anxiety had been spurred.

"Shut up, Dolly, and get to your dressing-room. Mike, do as I tell you! Back to your door."

Dolly went, with extreme unwillingness, her eyes searching, searching.

McHugh met Mike's appealing glance with an angry wave of his hand.

"It's taking too big chances," Quaile said, when the property-man had gone.

"Maybe so; but I got to take them."

"How did Mike see the—the thing?"

"It was when he came down to open up," McHugh explained. "He says he saw the thing like what you saw come out of Woodford's old dressing-room between the stage-door and the passage.

"And Woodford's dressing-room?" Quaile said. "Surely you haven't put Wilkins there?"

McHugh glared.

"Certainly not. Wilkins is where he dressed the night we took the pictures. Dolly and Barbara were together that night, but now I've made them all comfortable."

Quaile could guess the point of McHugh's circuitous announcement.

"You mean?"

McHugh cleared his throat.

"That I've assigned Barbara to Woodford's old room."

Quaile flushed, tempted to take issue with the manager on that arrangement.

"You think it safe, McHugh?"

"Why not? Nothing's been after Barbara but you, that I know of."

It wasn't easy for Quaile to press the point. His recollection of Barbara hidden in the Bunce house smothered his resentment. He tried to speak indifferently:

"Is she here yet?"

McHugh's frown was sufficient answer. He glanced at his watch.

"Quarter of eight. If that girl throws me down—"

HE snapped the case shut.

"I thought you might know something about her movements, you're so darned friendly with her."

"I know nothing," Quaile said.

"Don't you suppose she understands," McHugh asked fiercely, "that if she fails me I'm beaten?"

"You mean," Quaile asked with dry lips, "that you would accept that as the final proof against her?"

McHugh's tone was ugly:

"I usually mean just about what I say."

He crossed the stage in the direction of Wilkins' dressing-room. Quaile deliberately chose the other side, and walked toward the alley door. He was glad to leave McHugh. He paced rapidly among the new litter of scenery.

He clenched his hands. Perhaps Barbara had not left the Bunce house unobserved. Suppose Robert, Josiah, or the butler had discovered her and had turned her over, as those men would, to the authorities for punishment? Lashed by this fear, he strode to the stage-door.

"Mike," he said, "you're sure you've had no word from Miss Morgan?"

Mike glanced from the door. "Who's that coming now, sir?"

Quaile stepped out.; A. furtive figure had entered the mouth of the alley. Although the place was very dark, the figure clung to the thicker obscurity of the theater wall. It approached slowly. Once or twice, Quaile thought, it stopped altogether. Mike drew back.

"I think, sir, it is Miss Morgan."

Quaile turned away, not wishing to believe, yet convinced that Mike was right. She came up, breathing as if she had been running. He spoke to her gently, but she seemed not to hear. As she hurried through the stage entrance he saw that she was dressed exactly as he had last seen her in her hiding-place at the Bunces'.

"You got out," he whispered, close to her.

McHugh slipped from behind a piece of scenery. To all appearances, he had been waiting as anxiously as Quaile. Barbara stepped back.

"Maybe better late than never," McHugh grumbled. "You hustle, Barbara, or you'll hold the show up."

She bowed her head. Quaile scarcely caught her voice.

"I can't go on, Mr. McHugh."

"The devil you can't!"

"I can't—I can't!" she repeated dully.

She seemed exhausted. She grasped the door-knob of Woodford's dressing- room. She leaned wearily against it.

McHugh didn't disguise his temper.

"You cut that temperamental stuff," he cried, "and get in your clothes, or you'll never play on Broadway again; and that's only the beginning of what will happen to you."

"Don't, McHugh," Quaile begged.

"I can't blame him," Barbara said, "but it makes no difference. I won't go on with it."

"Maybe you'll tell us why?" McHugh sneered.

For the first time, she looked directly at him.

"Because I'm afraid."

"What of?"

"Of this place," she whispered. "Of the thoughts—of the ghosts in this place."

The dead level of her tone, which expressed an absolute sincerity, shocked Quaile. He drew McHugh to one side.

"Keep quiet," he said, "and let me talk to her alone. I may change her mind."

McHugh's jaw receded; his flush died away.

"Do that, Quaile, and we'll forget the harsh words all around. Wish I knew what was going on between you two."

"It's of small consequence now," Quaile said, and went slowly back to Barbara.

"What is it you wish?" she asked. "You won't be long? I want to go home. I want to get away from this place!"

"You must stay."

"Oh, no," she said; "I shall not stay."

"The future means nothing to you?" he asked.

She laughed harshly.

"The future! That amounts to very little. It's the present I'm afraid of."

"You mean—"

"The shadows here, and what has happened on that stage; and what may happen again."

"Yet you say you know nothing about it. Then you will do this for my sake." Slowly she shook her head.

"It was you," he said, "who didn't tell the truth last night."

She turned away.

"There's no use talking of that. We must never talk of that again."

He failed to hide his bitterness.

"Leave me out of it. Think of yourself. Barbara, you are going on to-night, and, if we rehearse that scene without another tragedy, you are going on for the opening to-morrow night."

She stammered:

"You—you're commanding me!"

"Since there's no other way."

She cried out angrily:

"And I refuse."

He spread his hands.

"Your refusal sends me to McHugh. A man has died. Another is threatened. I must give what information I can."

Her lips parted.

"You'd tell him—"

"About your secret presence at the Bunces' this afternoon; if necessary, about that hidden thing that screamed in your home last night. You force me to it."

HIS words might have had a tangible power. They repelled her, step by step.

"You sha'n't," she breathed.

"You mean you'll go on?"

She shuddered.

"I tell you, I'm afraid. You wouldn't make me go on?"

His victory was less palatable than defeat would have been.

"McHugh!" he called hoarsely.

There was a stir at the rear. The manager hastened toward them.

"I hate you," she said. "I hate you!"

Her laughter had the quality of a sob.

"And they want me to mimic tragedy—on the stage."

---

"Well?" McHugh asked; coming up. Quaile looked away.

"She will tell you."

"What's the word, Barbara?"

Quaile would not glance back. He wouldn't face again her fear and her uncertainty. He heard her speak. He had not realized how vital her answer had become to him.

"I'm going on, Mr. McHugh."

McHugh exploded joyously.

"Good girl! I knew you'd come to your senses. You'll be a Mrs. Siddons yet."

She spoke through chattering teeth:

"In which dressing-room did my maid leave my things?"

"I've put you," McHugh answered, "in Woodford's dressing-room."

She stiffened. She raised her hands defensively.

"You won't make me go there!" McHugh touched the faded gilt star on one of the panels.

"Say, you're hard to please. I'm giving you the star dressing-room. Actresses cry for it."

"Woodford's room!" she murmured.

"Sure. Wasn't he a star? No more talk, now; we're losing time."

McHugh's stubborn manner told Quaile that he had a subtle purpose in forcing the girl to use that cheerless room.

"There are plenty of places upstairs," she said.

McHugh frowned. "They're not ready."

He opened the door and stepped past her into the blackness of the little room. Quaile heard a click, and light flashed on stained and desolate walls. The only signs of occupancy were a number of bottles and boxes on the table, and Barbara's clothes, arranged by the maid in the closet of which the door stood half open.

She glanced in once. Holding her breath, she crossed the threshold.

"After all," she whispered, "what difference does it make?"

She closed the door.

McHUGH turned to Quaile, about to question, perhaps to accuse. Quaile could not face that now. Before the manager could speak, he had slipped into the passage. He hurried through, aware of a new, strange humming sound that echoed in the narrow space. But the memory of the last words Barbara had addressed directly to him filled his ears. "I hate you," she had said. "I hate you!" Yet he had guided his course by the single beacon of her welfare.

As he stepped into the auditorium, the explanation of the new sound challenged him to a saner mind. At last a small audience had collected in Woodford's. There were managers or their representatives, critics, friends of McHugh's and the company's, a group that held itself aloof and to which Quaile was attracted by one or two nods of welcome.

Robert Bunce was in the midst of the group. Probably he had brought these people, for they were wealthy, of assured social position. With their evening dress and their laughing chatter, they gave an added touch of cheerfulness to the auditorium.

Quaile went over and spoke to the few he knew. Robert shook his hand, impressed, no doubt, by his acquaintance with friends of his own.

"Well, young man," he said pleasantly, "things are normal enough out here. How about the mystic regions back?"

"I wouldn't venture to prophesy," Quaile answered.

Robert glanced around retrospectively.

"Many, many years since I've seen a dress rehearsal here. Not a rehearsal, I believe, since Woodford's last revival of this play. My Lord! Am I that old?"

"I've read about it," one of the women cried. "Woodford fell dead in the third act."

Robert put his finger on his lips.

"Sh-h, my dear. Mustn't recall unpleasant memories to-night. I was no older than you when that happened. You know, Mr. Quaile, my brother was tempted to leave his shell. He would have appreciated this. I must say, it surprises me to see how much life there is in the old place."

Quaile turned at a quiet footfall behind him. Tommy approached the group.

"The boss wants you, Mr. Quaile," said Tommy. "We're nearly ready, back there. I'm going to give 'em the first call in a jiffy."

Quaile excused himself and followed Tommy down the aisle and through the passage. McHugh and Joyce waited for him at the other end. The presence of the psychist added to Quaile's uneasiness.

"You'd better get yourself settled, Joyce," McHugh was saying. "Stay back here or go to the auditorium—anywhere you think you'll be most useful."

Joyce's face was heavy and serious.

"I've done my best with you," he said. "I've told you it is wretchedly unsafe to do that scene. But you're your own master. I'll sit in the box I used the other day, if you don't mind. You think it won't be long now?"

"Not over five or ten minutes."

"Then I'm off."

Quaile regretted the Englishman's departure. It left him, in a sense, at McHugh's mercy, vulnerable to questions for which he had no answers. Nor did McHugh hesitate.

"Why did you rush off?"

"Because I didn't feel like talking."

"You'd better talk now," McHugh snorted. "Seems to me I have a right to know why one of my actresses throws the glove in my face, then turns around and takes water from you."

"You would have aroused the antagonism of a Quaker," Quaile answered, ill at ease. "And, as you've guessed yourself, there was more reason why Miss Morgan should have listened to me."

McHugh flushed.

"That means nothing. You know something about that girl you haven't told me."

Quaile laughed outright.

"I can certainly fling those words in your teeth."

"We're going to have it out," McHugh went on. "You'll give up what you know, or—"

A shrill cry from behind the closed door of Woodford's dressing-room cut across the manager's angry words.

"Barbara!" McHugh cried.

As Quaile sprang for the door, he heard Tommy's feet clattering on the iron stairs, his monotonous voice sing-songing the first call. The cry, then, had not penetrated to the other dressing-rooms.

He raised his hand, and, afraid to forecast the response, rapped on the panel beneath the faded star. Through the silence that followed, he heard a gasping sound. There was no other answer.

"Get in," McHugh ordered.

Quaile grasped the knob, turned it, and opened the door on complete darkness. The gasping sound was more audible. He entered, groping through the obscurity.

"Who put out this light?" McHugh roared.

QUAILE heard him stoop and strike a match. The flame glimmered on Barbara. She sat in front of the dressing-table, in the costume of the period of Woodford's youth. Her head had fallen forward. Her difficult breathing persisted. Her right hand hung limply at her side. Immediately she raised it and hid it in the folds of her gown.

McHugh reached up and snapped the control of the electric fixture. There was no response.

"Mike!" he shouted. "Mike!"

The match expired. He struck another one as the property-man paused on the threshold, glancing in with frightened eyes.

"This light's burned out. Get a new bulb here."

Mike refused to enter.

"I put a new globe in this morning," he said.

"It was a frost. Get another double-quick."

Mike turned, shaking his head. Suddenly the room was full of light. The globe burned brightly again.

"The devil!" McHugh muttered. "Go away, Mike. Don't try to argue with me."

He closed the door and advanced

---

toward Barbara. Her breathing was quieter, but the chalky whiteness of her face made Quaile afraid to speak. McHugh had no scruples.

"You make all that fuss just because the light went out?"

At first she did not answer; but, if that were all, it furnished sufficient excuse for Quaile.

"None of the other lights in the house were affected," he said. "There was no reason for this one to go out and come on again."

Barbara turned slowly.

"It was your fault," she managed to say.

McHugh was insistent.

"What for, besides the light?"

"Because," she said, with that same effect as of chattering teeth, "when the light went out, I knew—I wasn't alone in this hateful room."

She bent forward against the table, burying her head in the curve of her left elbow. Her right hand, Quaile noticed, still remained hidden in the folds of her gown.

"How were you so sure," McHugh asked, "that there was somebody in the room?"

"I heard footsteps," she said: "the footsteps we heard the other night—footsteps that limped."

McHugh placed his hand on her shoulder.

"Go on," he said more gently. "Then you screamed."

But she shook her head.

"Not then."

McHugh started.

"What more could have happened?"

Her voice gathered strength:

"Something sprang at me. I couldn't see it or feel it; but I knew it was there, lithe and—and black." She took her hand from the folds of her dress. Glancing up, she slowly raised it, exposing the under side of the wrist.

QUAILE stooped swiftly, and, without touching it, examined the white skin. In one place it was scarred with a long, jagged scratch, and against the pallid flesh one or two drops of blood stood out.

She hid her hand again. Quaile looked at McHugh.

"A cat!" he said. "That was done by a cat."

McHugh nodded.

"No question."

Quaile saw his unfriendliness and antagonism for Barbara replaced by a bewildered pity, a genuine remorse. To him too, unquestionably, this attack suggested Barbara's total ignorance of the theater's mystery—destroyed, beyond a loubt, his suspicion of her connection with it. The manager, in fact, hurried Quaile's thought into words.

"I'd bet a house and farm you're not acting now, Barbara. And that door's not been opened since you first came in. I own up, I've had my eye on it all the time. That cat has got to be in this room still."

"And whoever limped," Quaile said.

He spread his hands toward the bare, stained walls and the closet where the door stood open, permitting a thorough view of its interior.

"Spookier than ever!" McHugh mused.

Barbara raised her head.

"I didn't want to come in here—I didn't want to go on."

McHugh took her hands.

"You forget what a cross old cuss I've been, Barbara. Remember, I've got a lot on my mind. I'll make it up to you. I'll star you on Broadway in letters big enough to make Sarah Bernhardt look ike a chorus girl."

"You mean," she whispered, "that I lave to go on?"

"Sure. You're nervy; you're not going to let me be beaten by a pack of shadows."

"Oh, I can't! I can't!"

She glanced appealingly at Quaile. He, as thoroughly as McHugh, after what had just happened, answered to an unaccountable ambition to avoid defeat.

"McHugh is right," he said softly. "You must go on."

She began to fumble among the makeup paraphernalia on her dressing-table.

"My maid!" she said wildly. "I had Mike telephone her. Why isn't she here? And I won't stay in this room. I can't do that for you."

"All right," McHugh agreed. "When your maid comes, have her move your things. Double up with Dolly, and I'll have another room fixed for you in the morning."

THERE was a discreet tapping at the door. Quaile opened it, and the silent maid of Barbara's apartment, dressed as always in black, stalked in. Quaile left the room. After a moment McHugh followed him.

"Makes me feel like a criminal, Quaile. I guess I'm a bum manager, after all."

"This has upset your calculations?"

McHugh didn't answer directly.

"Wouldn't it yours?" he flashed.

"If you'd only be frank, McHugh! If you'd only been frank from the beginning! Tell me what's in your mind."

McHugh kept his face averted.

"Don't think hard of me because I'm a clam. I'm trying to be as good a sleuth as I know how, but no detective ever went up against a proposition like this."

He walked away. His step faltered. He did not once look back.

Barbara's door opened. She walked out. She passed close to Quaile, but she did not glance at him. She hurried past and took up her position at the entrance she must use in the first act. McHugh's voice came, extraordinarily repressed for him:

"All set. Curtain in two minutes."

Quaile walked through to the auditorium, and sat apart in the last row. The spectators were scattered in little groups now among the seats, expectant, almost silent. He envied their ignorance of what he had just experienced.

The footlights blazed. The curtain waved and arose with a deliberate smoothness. The stage was exposed. The rehearsal began. Quaile watched, absorbed by the picture.

Little by little, as the play progressed, a curious idea took possession of him. The surroundings, the archaic costumes worn by these actors and actresses who revived old passions and old humors, seemed, to his sensitive imagination, actually to have brought back to the theater its atmosphere of half a century ago.

Barbara alone retained the power to draw him hack to the present. She played with a feverish haste. Her movements were uneven. Once, when she cried in Dolly's arms, he knew her grief was real.

THERE were no interruptions. The first act hastened to its close. The curtain fell. Quaile glanced at his watch, computing the brief time that would elapse before they faced the big scene of the third act. He saw Joyce leave the box and go back, but he remained where he was. He didn't want to go back. He didn't want to face Dolly, with her assurance of a cat; or Barbara, with its marks upon her arm; or Wilkins, who ran the gravest risk and constantly confessed his understanding of it.

The guests were noisy in their approval. Robert strolled up and sat with him during a portion of the entr' acte. He was warmly congratulatory.

"You've kept the spirit," he said. "There are very few changes. Still, it doesn't creak. McHugh must realize— and that's the best argument in his favor—that the play doesn't need such ridiculous publicity. Anyway, things seem to be going smoothly enough. You know, Mr. Quaile, it rolls the years back. This place seems to me as it was then."

"I've been thinking something like that," Quaile answered moodily.

The curtain rose. The second act ran

---

its course. Now the players were not so sure of their lines. From time to time the voice of Tommy, prompting, reached Quaile. It was clear that the strain increased.

Quaile counted the minutes during the second entr'acte. He watched hypnotically as the curtain rose on the third act. The piece ran quickly toward the big scene. He longed for McHugh's power to stop the play before it should be too late. He had seen Carlton die precisely as Woodford had died. Now Wilkins, for the first time, would follow those directions, would repeat those lines.

It wasn't to be borne. He agreed with Barbara and Dolly. It was like a murder to drive Wilkins to that point.

With an effort he restrained his desire to cry out. He recalled McHugh's cleverness. the man must know what he was about.

Wilkins made a brave defense, but the panic against which Joyce had warned him was frequently discernible in his voice and his actions. His control, however, was greater than Carlton's had been. Nevertheless his strength seemed to have evaporated. He was like the one who has suffered from a destructive fever.

Dolly's eyes sought again—perpetually sought something she never saw. Barbara's steady watchfulness of Wilkins was no less disturbing. As if her glance included nothing else, she stumbled about the stage, supporting herself against pieces of furniture, clinging now and then to the draperies across the doors.

This increasing apprehension, this unwillingness to proceed, impressed itself upon the audience. Men and women made restless movements, glanced at each other uneasily, commenting in low tones. But more than any one else Joyce appreared moved. He was bent far forward over the railing of the box. His fingers were white and tense against the red velvet. His glance was absorbed by Wilkins.

ALMOST before Quaile realized it, the company, for the first time since Carlton's death, had entered that tragic scene. It was the genuine anguish of Barbara's denunciation that aroused him. As Wilkins strode to the mantelpiece and snatched up the heavy candlestick, his gesture had the abandonment of a blind despair. Dolly screamed her line:

"Marjorie! Look out!"

Quaile started from his chair. The cry had the broken ring of a dreadful sincerity Its warning was for Wilkins rather than for the girl.

Barbara, however, continued with the directions Quaile had copied from Woodford's yellow script. She backed to the wall, raising her hands against Wilkins. Her gasping voice scarcely carried across the footlights:

"Be careful! What are you going to do to me?"

Wilkins turned, lifting the candlestick, about to spring for her. His open mouth had an appearance of gaping wonder. The line, which death had forbidden two men to speak, started form his lips in a hoarse whisper:

"Pay what debts I can. Kill you, if the strength—"

The candlestick slipped from his fingers and clattered on the boards. His whisper failed. He crumpled and fell to the stage, without a cry, without a saving gesture.

Quaile, half way down the aisle, paused, crushed by the sudden blackness that descended upon the house. And through this rapid and unexpected night tore screams and the incoherent movements of panic. But, above it all, from teh stage he could hear the measured beat of limping footsteps.

To be continued next week

"I Have a Few Hundred Dollars"

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

I have a few hundred dollars to invest. Can you give me a list of good $100 bonds of electric light and power companies which are available?

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A Good $100 Bond

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Write for Slattery & Co., 40 Exchange Place, New York, for booklet explaining "The Twenty-Payment Plan," which enables one to buy bonds, New York Stock Exchange, Curb Market, and active unlisted securities, with small initial deposit, followed by convenient monthly payments. Ask for booklet 19-E, including statistical book on 50 motor stocks.

The partial-payment method of sacing and investing is interestingly described in Booklet L-2, entitled "The Partial-Payment Plan," which will be sent to any applicant by Sheldon, Morgan & Co., members New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York. The firm also offers to supply information about any security.

The bond market at the present time offers possibilities for absolutely sound investment at from 5 to 6 per cent. interest rates, and prospects for appreciation in values. In their booklet "How," E. F. Coombs & Co. (successors to Beyer & Co.), 122 Broadway, New York, describe a small payment plan for the purchase of investment bonds in denominations of $100, $500, and $1000 which enables investors to take advantage of current prices without increasing the cost of the bonds.

The Citzens Saving & Trust Co., of Cleveland, Ohio, will furnish to our readers, upon request, Booklet P, which contains some very interesting information on banking by mail.

Terse, frank, timely comment on finance, especially reflecting the point of view of the small investor, is the platform of The Odd Lot Review—published weekly. Sample copies will be sent on application to the publishers, 61 Broadway, New York City.

Baruch Brothers, members New York Stock Exchange, 60 Broadway, New York, have issued for distribution to investors an interesting booklet on Odd Lots which outlines their Partial-Payment Plan.

A Market Digest which reviews the important changes in the high-grade Outside and Inactive securities market has been issued for distribution to investors by Ebert, Michaelis & Co., Dept. E. W., 61 Broadway, New York.

Any one interested in the Motor Stocks should send to L. R. Latrobe & Co., 111 Broadway, New York City, for their Booklet E. E. 6. This firm also has a Partial Payment Plan for the purchase of all Curb and Stock Exchange Securities, which they will send on request.

An investors folder entitled "Questions and Answers" on securities is issued for free distribution by J. Frank Howell, 52 Broadway, New York. Write for your copy of this timely folder, E. W. 27.

"What to Do with $20" is the title of a booklet on Scientific Saving. It shows how quickly money accumulates when used to buy bonds on the instalment plan. The bonds are kept in a safe-deposit vault for the purchaser until he completes the payment. Write to P. W. Brooks & Company, Dept. 19, 115 Broadway, New York City.

Public utility issues are commanding a great deal of attention. Williams, Troth & Coleman, Investment Securities, 60 Wall Street, New York, offer public utility preferred stocks, yielding 5 to 8 per cent., and common stocks with enhancement possibilities. This offering is outlined in "Current Letter B," a copy of which will be supplied on written request by the above-named firm.

Dawson, Lyon & Co., 42 Wall Street, New York, have recently opened an investment department, and will send upon request, a circular describing a few carefully selected mortgage bonds and preferred stocks wielding form 5 to 7 3/4 per cent. This firm has for several years been dealing in all unlisted securities.

Mr. Atwood [?] written a financial booklet [?]