Have You Ceased to Study? If So, Good Night

A MAN named Brown and a man named Black graduated from high school and entered business in New York at the same time.

Both made rapid progress. At twenty-five each of them was drawing $2500 a year.

"Coming men," said their friends. "If they are so far along at twenty-five, where will they be at fifty?"

Black went on. At fifty he is president of his company, with an income of $25,000 a year.

But something happened to Brown. He never fulfilled the large promise of his youth: at fifty he had hardly advanced beyond his thirty mark.

What was it that happened to these two men, of equal education and—so far as the world could judge—equal ability?

I will tell you.

Brown became satisfied. He ceased to study: which means that he ceased to grow.

Black has told me that when he reached $5000 a year he said to himself: "I have made a good start. Nothing can stop me if I keep my health and keep growing. I must study, study, study: I must be the best informed man on our business in the United States."

There is the difference. One stayed in school: one did not.

The position you attain before you are twenty-five years old is of no particular credit to you. You gained that simply on the education your parents gave you—education, that cost you no sacrifice.

But the progress you make in the world after twenty-five—that is progress that you must make by educating yourself. It will be in proportion to the amount of study you give to your work in excess of the amount the other man gives.

Analyze any successful man and you will find these three great facts:

He had an aim:

Lord Campbell wrote to his father, as an excuse for not coming home over the holidays: "To have any chance of success, I must be more steady than other men. I must be in chambers when they are at the theater: I must study when they are asleep: I must, above all, remain in town when they are in the country."

He worked:

"I have worked," said Daniel Webster, "for more than twelve hours a day for fifty years."

He studied:

Vice-President Henry Wilson was born in the direst poverty. "Want sat by my cradle," he says. "I know what it is to ask my mother for bread when she had none to give. I left home when ten years of age, and served an apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving one month's schooling each year, and at the end of eleven years of hard work a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought me $84."

Yet in those eleven years of grueling labor he found time to read and study more than one hundred books.

Really big men check themselves up each autumn, at the beginning of each new business year.

"This year," they say, "I am going to master one new subject. I am going to pursue such and such studies, which will increase my ability and earning power."

The bigger they are the longer they keep themselves in school. Gladstone took up a new language after he had passed seventy.

Have you left school?

As a matter of fact, did you grow mentally last year at all? What definite subject are you going to devote your evenings to this year?

"As a rule," said Disraeli, "the most successful man in life is the man who has the most information."

How much will you increase your stock of useful information in the business year that is opening now?

Bruce Barton, Editor.

The Truth About Laughter

By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

THE next time you see anybody laughing heartily at a humorous drawing, a funny incident in a moving-picture play, or the lines and action in a farce, don't fall into the common mistake of thinking that he ought to be more restrained in his expression of the amusement he feels. Instead, try to become a hearty laugher yourself, if you are not one already.

The prejudice against laughter as "bad form" can not be too vigorously opposed. It is a mischievous prejudice. Its result is to deprive people of an invaluable agent in maintaining mental and physical health. The increase in functional nervous and mental troubles, so evident in recent years, must certainly be attributed in part to the anti-laughing training many persons receive in youth. Also, the feeling against laughter has undoubtedly had a bad effect on the working ability of many people, by aggravating nervous stress and robbing them of a natural tonic that is most helpful to body and mind alike.

And, to make matters worse, opposition to laughter has grown with changed conditions of life that make laughter ever more necessary.

Just what happens when a person laughs?

Laughter Relieves Tension

IN the first place, there is an immediate feeling of relief from mental and bodily tension. It is an interesting fact, not generally appreciated, that the mere seeing or hearing of anything that appeals strongly to one's sense of humor instantly gives rise to peculiar physical conditions of more or less intensity. These have been variously described. Some years ago an investigator at Clark University asked a number of people how they felt the moment before they laughed. One replied that he always felt "a ticklish sensation in the stomach." Another spoke of "a funny feeling coming up from the stomach." A third had "a creepy feeling inside, spreading over the whole body." A fourth "must laugh or burst." A fifth found it "an immense strain to hold in." A sixth "felt full of something to the point of bursting." A seventh experienced "a quiver, thrill, or creepy feeling, passing up from the stomach to the mouth." And so on.

These feelings ceased as soon as those experiencing them laughed. They were, that is to say, manifestations of nervous energy seeking an outlet. This outlet they obtained in laughing, expressly provided as a natural safety-valve. To be sure, if one's sense of humor be entirely blotted out, so that nothing ever seems "funny," the physical sensations ordinarily finding a vent in laughter are not experienced. Then their repression would not cause nervous stress and disturbance, because they would not be there to be repressed. But, observe, it is not simply from this special form of nervous strain that laughter brings relief—it is from nervous strain in general.

Indeed, it seems scientifically sound to affirm that the sense of humor is given to man largely for the purpose of causing a sudden increase of nervous activity such as to compel, through laughter, a complete let-down of nervous tension. When a man laughs, his whole organism, so to speak, takes a momentary holiday. This is one of the principal reasons why the cultivation of laughter is so important in our own day and land.

As everybody knows, conditions of life in this strenuous, complex civilization of ours are conditions of great strain. People have more to think about than used to be the case; there are more occasions for worry; the demands of modern professional, commercial, and industrial life are much more severe than in the primitive days of the founders of the Republic. Every opportunity of giving mind and nerves a chance for momentary rest should be eagerly seized. And, of all means offered by nature for attaining this desirable end, few compare with laughter. It may not be "refined" to laugh, but it is decidedly hygienic.

Besides, laughter has more than the negative value of securing temporary freedom from strain. It has a positive value of the utmost importance.

A Hearty Laugh Is a Tonic

EVERY time a person laughs—laughs heartily and unaffectedly—some noteworthy changes occur in the organs and processes of his body. "A hearty laugh,"—I quote from an eminent medical authority, who is alive to the helpfulness of laughter from the doctor's point of view—"moves the diaphragm up and down vigorously, empties and ventilates the lungs, stimulates the heart mechanically by its action upon the intra-thoracic viscera, and is one of the best tonics that we have for the circulation in the abdominal cavity, and probably also for the important nervous mechanisms centered there."

Nor is the physical action of laughter confined to these local results. It has a directly stimulating effect on the whole muscular system, prompting and making easy a vigorous bodily movement. Through its beneficial effect on the lungs and the stomach, it improves the quality of the blood-supply to the brain. As a result the brain becomes better nourished than it would otherwise be. Consequently—except only in the case of a brain structurally inferior—it is rendered better able to meet the incessant and extreme demand of modern life for quick, accurate, and forceful thinking.

Here another factor enters to double the favorable influence exercised on mind and body by laughter.

Everybody who is a hearty laugher is well aware that laughter, unless it be too prolonged, engenders a most pleasurable emotional state. It makes a man "feel good" mentally as well as physically.

Recent scientific researches have definitely established that pleasurable emotional states stimulate every vital process healthfully. They promote the digestion of food, its assimilation, the elimination of the waste products of digestion, the circulation of the blood, the action of the internal glands of secretion, etc. This means greater physical vigor, and it also means greater efficiency for one's daily work, whether that work be mental or manual. Hence laughter, psychologically as well as physiologically, is good for every man.

Let me pause a moment to add that these facts throw a luminous light on that much discussed problem, the frequency and ardor of laughter in childhood.

Children, unless their exuberance is too sternly repressed by unwise parents, always laugh more than adults. They find causes for laughter in anything and everything—in much that is not laughter-provoking at all to grown-up men and women.

Usually this is accounted for on the ground that children are care-free, that the reasoning faculty is not adequately developed in them, and that they are full of animal spirits. Now, in addition to all this, it becomes possible to see in their tendency to an abounding laughter the working out of a beneficent design. They may laugh because they are care-free, unthinking, and high-spirited; but they also laugh in order to help their bodies grow, and in order to help promote the development of their minds, both by easing the strain of learning and by keeping their brains well nourished.

It Helps Children to Grow

ACCORDINGLY, children ought to be encouraged to laugh instead of being trained to be non-laughers, as too often is the policy nowadays. The trials and problems of life will soon put a sufficient check on their mirthfulness. Parents, for that matter, ought to make it a point to keep alive in their children the saving sense of humor. In later life the children will not need laughter to help them grow, but most assuredly they will need it to help them keep healthy and at a high level of working efficiency. Gloom and weakness go together; laughter and strength walk hand in hand.

More and more, it is to be observed, medical men are recommending laughter to their patients. That veteran New York physician, Doctor James J. Walsh, who has never had the reputation of being a "faddist," is loud in his praises of its upbuilding power. He even advises those who are weak in the sense of humor to practise laughing as a daily exercise.

"It seems almost absurd," he admits, "that a physician should tell patients that it will do them good to practise smiling, to take every possible opportunity to laugh, and even to take frequent glances into a looking-glass to see that they are not pulling long faces.

"The difference between a feeling of

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melancholy and one of gladness consists mainly in the position of the outer angles of the mouth. The putting into practice of the maxim not to let the sad lines dominate the countenance, but to insist on keeping the others there as far as possible, means much for the correction of internal feelings of depression and discouragement that may be badly interfering with the flow of nerve impulses from the brain to the body."

And, speaking specifically of the effect of hearty laughter on digestion and circulation, he adds:

"There is no doubt that the exercise for the diaphragm afforded by hearty laughing, with the stimulation of the intra-abdominal circulation consequent upon vigorous diaphragmatic movements, is an important element in producing a healthy state of the important organs of the human economy contained within the abdominal cavity.

"Doctor Abrams, in his book, 'The Blues, Causes and Cure,' attributes this disturbing condition of depression, so familiar to those who have much to do with nervous patients, to a disordered blood and nerve circulation in the splanchnic [the abdominal] area, and calls it, scientifically, splanchnic neurasthenia.

"This undoubtedly sums up an important element in the causation of a great many depressive conditions. Most of them are banished by frequent laughter, which, with its exercise of the diaphragm, tends to stimulate splanchnic blood-vessels and nerves."

Bearing facts like these in mind, can it longer be doubted that people make a great mistake when they deliberately restrain every impulse they may have to laugh? What they then are doing is to deny themselves an unfailing means of respite from the strain of thinking and the strain of living. And by refusing to laugh they also refuse to make use of a wonderful mechanism intended to help them think and live better.

Still further, if everybody followed their example, this world would be a distinctly unpleasant place in which to live. For laughter, besides being of the greatest importance to every individual, is in addition an indispensable social lubricant and adjuster.

Social Value of Laughter

THE social helpfulness of laughter is, indeed, hardly secondary to its helpfulness to the individual. Some philosophic students of the subject—notably the eminent French thinker Bergson—are so impressed by its social helpfulness as almost to lose sight of its value as regards the physiological effects it has on the one who laughs. Bergson's view, to state it in a few words, is that the main purpose of laughter is to act as a social corrective. We laugh, he says, at the mechanical, the stupid, the artificial in ourselves and in our fellows, in order to correct these blemishes in us and in them.

This undoubtedly is true. Laughter does have the value of a social corrective. But it is of still greater value as a developer of social sympathy. When children laugh while they play, they are unconsciously coming to a closer, more intimate understanding of one another. Their laughter quickens their sense of human solidarity; it educates them to sympathize more truly with their associates. This function laughter retains through all ages of life. Every man who laughs with and at his friends, in unmalicious "jollying," knows full well, at least subconsciously, that his laughter and theirs helps to cement the seal of friendship. In social intercourse of every sort, in the business of the marketplace as in the hour of leisure, laughter has a smoothing, easing influence.

Big Pay for Laugh Makers

AND, most fortunately, notwithstanding the efforts of those who would have mankind forgo the habit of laughter, there is warrant for the belief that this good habit can never be successfully attacked. I said in the beginning that there never was a time when men had greater need of laughter than to-day. Signs are not lacking that the people to-day instinctively appreciate this.

More than ever before, laugh-makers are in demand—as witness, for example, the fabulous sums earned by Charlie Chaplin and Bud Fisher. No newspaper would feel complete without its humorous paragraphs, if not its comic supplement. Theatrical managers and the makers of moving-picture plays compete feverishly in the production of laughter-inciting comedies and farces.

In all this the foes of laughter see only evidence that ours is a frivolous, degenerate age. In reality, it is evidence that ours is one of the wisest of ages—an age too wise to be cheated out of its splendid aid to successful living, the birthright of laughter.

The Valor of Ignorance

By EARL DERR BIGGERS

Illustrations by Frank Snapp

OLIVER WINTERSLIP bought his neckties—beg pardon, his cravats—at August's in Cambridge. For any one who knows Cambridge and August's that is a complete characterization. For the benefit of others it may be added that each cravat cost him four dollars, which was exactly four dollars more than he had ever earned in his life. There you have him.

He was one of the great unemployed, was Oliver. If that suggests to you those who stand in the bread line forget it. The idea is preposterous—Oliver was a Winterslip.

He belonged to the unemployed of the low racing cars, the Newport tennis-courts. True, there had once been a movement afoot to put him to work. It cropped up a year after his graduation from Harvard. His father called him into the library of the quiet house on Beacon Street, Boston, and informed him that on the morrow he would enter the employ of Winterslip & Winterslip, stocks and bonds.

AIDED by an alarm clock borrowed from the butler, Oliver actually made the effort. In less than a week his father realized that in introducing Oliver and the office he had hung a millstone about his firm's neck. He arranged to have Oliver's name shifted from the waiting list to active membership in two good clubs—it wouldn't do to have him hanging round the house—and then invited his son to resign from stocks and bonds. Since he was not to receive a salary at first, Oliver withdrew without suffering the humiliation of having silver cross his palm. In business, as in all things, he retained his amateur standing.

So there began for Oliver a period of sportive leisure. Golf, tennis, automobiles filled his thoughts. In time motor cars became too common to please him, and, hearing of a man at Scituate who taught flying, he bought him an aëroplane.

At the beginning of winter, a year ago, Oliver was torn, as usual, between the beckoning pleasures of Florida and California. For a time he considered flipping a coin; but he finally determined to solve the problem by visiting each in turn. As he sat at breakfast one morning in December, enjoying the peace of mind following this decision, a letter with the legend "Opened by Censor" stared up at him from the pile beside his plate.

He picked it up. The postmark was Paris, the handwriting that of his friend Ben Coolidge, who had played next to him on a scrub football team. Oliver smiled; he liked Coolidge.

For the love of Mike [Coolidge began, in that admirable diction encouraged by the Harvard English Department], where are you? The war will be over the first thing you know, and you'll have missed all the fun. All the fellows are here. We're having a bully time. Bill Tucker's in the Foreign Legion; so is Dud Perry. I got turned down, so I'm driving an ambulance. But you—say, you know how to manage an aëroplane. Do you realize what that means over here now? You can have anything you want. Pull strings, fix it with the French ambassador, and come on in—the water's fine. We're expecting you.

Oliver's breath came quickly as he read. Reaching the end of the letter, he rose from the table and paced the floor. Before him opened a vista of thrills, of excitement, beside which Florida tennis was child's play. Why hadn't he thought of it himself?

It was because he thought so little—but he didn't know that. He had apprehended the existence of a war. For a time he had read about it faithfully; it had been like a football game, with the teams swaying back and forth across the muddy field. Then it had settled down to the trenches with paltry five-yard gains, and Oliver had become one of the great army whom it bored.

But now—what a chance! How lucky that he had learned to manage an aëroplane.

He went into the library. His mother

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sat there, reading a newspaper. This may seem an unusual occupation for a woman of her environment; but she was an unusual woman.

"Mother," cried Oliver, "I just had a letter from Coolidge. He's over on the other side, driving an ambulance. Tucker and Perry are in the Foreign Legion. Everybody's over there. I'm going too. Do you mind?"

His mother looked at him. She was indeed unusual; a woman of brains, fine sensibilities, ambitious for her son— But let us not dwell on these things. She was looking full at Oliver, and I should like to keep tragedy out of this as much as possible.

"You want to—to drive an ambulance?" she asked.

"Better than that," glowed Oliver. "I can get into an aviation corps. Ben says it will be easy."

His mother did not speak for a moment. She had not been one of those bored by the war; she had read daily of the French, of French mothers. At that instant she thought that her son might have felt the heat of the flames, and while her heart sank in terror, there was a thrill of exultation too. Poor lady!

"On the French side?" she asked.

"Naturally," said Oliver. "All the fellows are on that side: Coolidge and Perry and—"

Then she knew. It was not that Oliver had felt the heat of the flames, not that he had seen and recognized heroism and suffering—it was nothing at all save that he had found a new game to play. But was it not possible that, once he gained that bloody theater, something might happen, some great light break— It will be seen that Oliver's mother was also an optimist.

"Oh, Oliver," she said, "I shall be un-happy to have you go. But if you feel you must—"

"I'll be all right," Oliver assured her. "Don't you worry. I'll be careful."

Later in the day he told one other in Boston of his intention. This was Agatha Price, the girl the entire Back Bay, including Agatha herself, was patiently waiting for him to marry. Oliver was taking her for a drive in his car at the time.

"I'm glad you're going to do something for France," she said. "Everybody is—it's quite the thing this winter. Florence Enwright is going over as a nurse. I rather wish that I—surely I know as much about nursing the wounded as Florence does."

Oliver made no reply. He had a selfish little feeling that he wanted this thing to himself; Agatha had no right to interfere. So the girl made no more reference to her own ambitions. She said that she hoped Oliver would come out all right, and wasn't it a beautiful day for December?

ABOUT a week later Oliver took a midnight train for New York. The good-by scene with his mother, which he had rather dreaded, passed off splendidly. She was quite matter-of-fact and calm; even smiling when he left her in the hall. There was an odd light in her eyes.

Oliver carried a letter from the French Ambassador practically promising him a commission. Influential friends had secured it for him. The Ambassador had been somewhat bewildered; he had been given the feeling, subtly, that France was honored by this condescension from a Winterslip. But he had been touched too, and he had agreed, by mail. He had not seen Oliver.

On the day following his arrival in New York, Oliver was booked to sail on a French liner.

He would have sailed, too, if he had not run into Maurice Martin, sleepy-eyed from society. Maurice had been one of that exclusive club in Cambridge—the club of the giddy hat-bands and the Saturday nights devoted to champagne. Maurice said Oliver simply must stay over a week.

"Costume ball at the Plaza," he explained. "Benefit French midinettes. I'm going as Sir Galahad." He reached for his highball. "It's for France, you know," he added.

Oliver was quick to see that he could serve the stricken by canceling his passage, so he arranged to sail a week later.

In the meantime he hung round the club, a hero in prospect. There was a martial spirit in the air. Talk was all of artillery, ammunition, our woeful lack of preparedness. Young men gazed fiercely into the future.

The gorgeous evening of the ball arrived. Oliver had been puzzled as to his costume, but he finally hit on the happy idea of going as Sir Galahad. He felt that Martin could not object; the knight was public property.

As it turned out, Oliver was the hit of the evening. Not only was he a Winterslip: he was a Winterslip about to fly for France.

The next day, at noon, he stood on the deck of the French liner and watched his hopelessly plebeian and totally unprepared country fade into the January mist. At last he was on his way toward the advertised thrill.

There is no intention to relate here, as in a diary, Oliver's trip over, his adventures at the front. Stirring as some of those adventures were, it is Oliver himself who forbids—good old Oliver, unimaginative, uninteresting, colorless. But now and again, reader, you and I will steal up softly, and, opening the door, we will glance into Oliver's mind. Then we will close the door and steal away. When our courage returns, we will creep up again—

THE initial adventure of this sort impends. After dinner that first evening on the boat, Oliver encountered near the rail a young Harvard man whom he had seen in New York; and who was going over for work in the ambulance corps. The young man was not of Oliver's crowd; their meeting was an accident. His name was Carter, or some such thing.

"I hear you're to be in the aviation corps," the boy said. "Gad—what a chance! I wish I had it. They're wonderful, aren't they?"

"Who?" yawned Oliver.

"Who? The French. What a fight they've made!" And Carter walked excitedly back and forth on the moonlit deck. "No complaints—no kicks—just gone out and died. Talk about efficiency—that's efficiency with the heart behind it. I'm proud to live in the same world with them."

"Really?" said Oliver.

"Did you read about Fère-Champenoise—how they died there?"

"Really—I—" Oliver stared with disapproval at this disgracefully emotional young man.

"Go as far as you can, and stick there—that was the order they got. And they did. Whole regiments dead on the field—dead like gentlemen, with their bodies between the enemy and Paris."

"Never heard of it," said Oliver.

"You're fighting for something when you fight for them," blazed Carter. "Lord, I envy you! I'll be back of the lines myself—back there picking up wounded—well, I can tell my kids about that, anyway."

He came close.

"Do you know," he said, "I threw up a good job to come over here. I'll be broke when this is over. And proud of it."

Oliver yawned again.

"Beg pardon," he said. "Up until five G. M.—dancing, you know. Can't stand this society life. Ho-hum—think I'll turn in."

NEXT, the grand reunion. Oliver in Paris, dining with Coolidge and the crowd.

"I knew you'd come," said Coolidge. "As soon as we got into it, I said to myself: This would be meat and drink for Oliver."

"Thanks for the letter," said Oliver. "Mighty kind of you. It's great to see you all again—great to be here."

"What about back home?" asked Coolidge. "Are they getting ready?"

"Not at all," Oliver told him.

"They make me sick," said Coolidge. "It'll come, I tell you. And then—"

Shortly to their table came a member of their set at home who was yet not like them—Warren, a cool, serious youth, head of a division of the ambulance.

"Oliver!" he cried. "You here?"

"Why not?" inquired Oliver, annoyed.

"Oh—no reason, I suppose," said Warren. "But—how did you happen to come?"

"Why—Coolidge wrote me a letter—"

"Exactly. By the way, Ben—Wilmot was hit by a shell today. They don't think he'll pull through."

"Wilmot—never heard of him," said Coolidge.

"No?" Warren stared at him gravely. "A fine chap."

"Poor fellow," said one of the others.

"If he goes," said Warren, "at least he'll know what he died for. By the way, Oliver—see that bunch of correspondents over there? The one with the glasses is here to get material for fiction. You ought to meet him."

"Why?" inquired Oliver blankly.

"Oh—I don't know; but he's having a mighty good time."

"Have a drink," suggested Coolidge.

"No, thanks," said Warren, and walked away.

"Seems a bit on his ear," puzzled Oliver. "Always was odd. By Jove—there's Helen Ferris."

They greeted Miss Ferris. She was of a very haughty New York family—they all knew her. Over to nurse soldiers, she told them. A Red Cross heroine—flushed and excited and happy.

"I've just been assigned to a hospital," she said. "Go out to-morrow. I'm to work under Lady Trevor. I can hardly wait to begin."

ON the following night Oliver dutifully went to the Ritz to dine with his uncle, Percy Winterslip. Uncle Percy was a large, red-faced, commanding man who had lived in England for many years. He was bursting with indignation.

"Had to get out of London," he raged. "Couldn't stand it. What is the Administration thinking of?"

"I don't know," answered Oliver.

"I fancy you don't," said Uncle Percy. "I fancy nobody does. When England entered the war—that was our cue. Neutral—bah!"

He took a drink to steady himself.

"And our course as the war ran on—inexplicable. I wonder, Oliver, if the people at home realize the embarrassment we Americans on this side have been caused. Hang it—I can't go into my clubs in London any more. I'm a member of three—and I can't go into any of them. Not that anybody says anything, of course—but they imply. They imply, and I have to blush for my country. There's an election coming over home—I should like to have a talk with the voters."

He stared with popping eyes into space.

"I'm sorry, of course," said Oliver. "It's all rather a scandal among the best people in Boston and New York."

"Ah, Oliver," said his uncle, "your

coming over here has helped. That's the sort of thing that has cheered us. By the way, I contributed three cars to the ambulance corps. If you happen to run across them you might let me know if they're proving useful. I can send more of the same make if they're holding up."

"But how will I know which are yours?" Oliver asked.

"My name's on them," glowed Uncle Percy. "Each car has a plate with the donor's name. A splendid idea—"

After dinner his uncle went to the hotel door with Oliver. He swore because there was no taxicab to be had.

"Why stop at the Ritz," he demanded loudly of the porter, "if the ordinary comforts are denied one?"

"No matter, uncle," said Oliver. "I'll walk."

"Good night," said Uncle Percy. "Good luck, my boy. I haven't been home in ten years. But, by the Lord Harry, if this thing keeps up, I'll go back next election to cast my vote."

Oliver walked to his hotel. He suddenly felt that he must lose no more time in getting at the enemy—for Uncle Percy's sake. But he had a vague feeling that he would serve Uncle Percy better if he flew over Washington and dropped bombs on the White House.

AT the big aviation camp just outside of Paris, they were unwinding the red tape, clearing away the difficulties, to the end that Oliver might fly for France. The delay annoyed him. Despite some jolly parties with his friends, Paris was getting on his nerves. It was horribly quiet—and so many women in black. And children—this frightful habit of putting mourning on children—it was not fair to onlookers; so depressing. Uncle Percy had said the same thing.

Finally Oliver was admitted to membership in an aviation corps. For a time he was tried out cautiously. Assigned to the defense of Paris, he flew only in the neighborhood of that city. Then he was sent down to the trenches, and allowed to take part in the work of directing the fire of the big French guns.

It was during this period that he chanced to be, one evening, at a hospital base where one of the ambulance squads

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was quartered, and he walked among the cars, trying to find those donated by Uncle Percy and discover how they were holding up. Each car had a plate bearing the donor's name; but, unfortunately, the plates were so plastered with mud that Oliver could not make out any of the names. In the course of his inspection he came upon Carter, the boy who had crossed with him. Carter was strangely engaged.

"Hello," said Carter. "How are you making out? They gave me a new car to-night, and I'm getting it ready."

And he stooped, seized a handful of mud, and began to plaster it over the plate hearing the name of the donor.

"What on earth are you doing?" Oliver inquired.

"I'm erasing the name of the gracious gentleman who gave us this car," the boy said. "We do it to all of them—it's by way of a christening. You don't suppose I'd go out there on the firing line with this libel on our generosity gleaming in the sun, do you?"

Oliver stared at him. Over them hung a calm and placid moon, lighting that little square where a hundred worn automobiles were parked. The windows in the buildings all about were dark and sinister—all save those in the city hall, where men in agony were fighting for their lives.

"I don't understand," said Oliver.

Carter's face seemed old and haggard in the moonlight.

"If you and your bunch understood," he said, "there wouldn't be any plates; and I shouldn't have to wallow in this mud."

Oliver said afterward that Carter was a queer fish.

TWO days later Oliver was admitted to the company of the men who killed. On a glorious winter afternoon, with the sun a faint yellow above him, he took part in a raid on a railway station back of the enemy's lines. He had five bombs, and he landed them all before the planes of the enemy put him to flight. It was exhilarating to fly there in the blue sky, to watch the insects below him scurry in terror at his approach, to feel that he had done his duty well.

He was commended for bravery by his captain. And indeed he was brave—but not especially worthy of praise for it. For he was utterly lacking in imagination; he could not picture death.

FOR more than a month he served faithfully and well. Then, returning one evening from an inspection of the enemy's lines, he met over the trenches of his own side a German plane. He knew his duty, and he did it. The German fired first, and caught Oliver in the left shoulder. Oliver showed his mettle then. Still keening a firm control of his machine, he fired and brought the German down.

When he himself had landed safely, Oliver went over and looked at his vanquished foe. He saw a handsome blond boy who might have been in his own club; he noticed, too, that he wore a wedding ring. For a moment Oliver felt a trifle faint; then they began to crowd around him.

They dressed the wound in Oliver's shoulder and sent him back to Paris to recover. He read in the order of the day that he was down to receive the Cross of War.

Uncle Percy was not in the French capital when Oliver got there. He had returned to London—presumably to stand in the street forlorn before his clubs. But with the news of Oliver's exploit he wrote joyfully that he was received everywhere again, and that he was a proud man.

Paris was lonely. Coolidge had gone back to the States; so had most of Oliver's other friends. In the street one day he met Helen Ferris. She was quite pale and said little, except that she had made a horrible mistake and was sailing for home the next day. Oliver, always tactful, asked her how she liked hospital work. She walked away from him, not speaking, a kind of dumb terror in her eyes.

SPRING had come. The trees along the Champs Élysées were green again; in the Tuileries flowers were blooming. But Oliver, who had known other springs in Paris, was the more depressed. This was so different. No more happy luncheons in the restaurants of the Bois; no more lazy afternoons under the gay sidewalk awnings of the boulevard cafés. The city was tense, waiting for the end. It felt now that the end would be good, but through what seas of blood must it yet pass?

Daily Oliver grew more dispirited. He remembered that at home tennis and golf had come again. He began to long for his own country, for the peace of it. The result was that he applied for his discharge from the aviation corps, and got it.

Two nights before he left, a woman friend of his mother gave him a farewell dinner in her apartment; and there he met the lovely daughter of the Count de Virney. His mother's friend had told him that the Count's daughter had expressed a desire to meet him, to thank him for France. And when Oliver saw the girl he thrilled.

She was fair, slim, vivacious despite the cloud of sorrow in her eyes. Once he had seen her, Oliver told himself that to sail for home two days later was impossible. Her smiles were all for Oliver; the dinner was the most perfect he could remember. And after it was over, on a balcony that looked out on the Seine, she tried to tell him what was in her heart.

"You will never understand," she said softly, "what your coming and the coming of others like you has meant to us over here. Though we never sought your aid, you knew and understood. When the horrible flood broke over our borders, you, thousands of miles away, safe beyond the sea—you thrilled at the suffering of France. To offer one's life for one's own country, that is only duty: to offer it for another country, that is splendid, that is beautiful."

"Pardon me," said Oliver. Suddenly, and for almost the first time in his life, he felt horribly uncomfortable. "You're quite wrong; you don't understand—"

"You know what this war has meant to me and mine," the girl went on. "We do not often speak of it, but my two brothers fell in the battle of the Marne. One—he was a hundred feet in advance of his regiment—and the bayonets—" She covered her face with her hands, then looked up proudly. "I love to feel that it is because they died that Paris is Paris tonight."

"You have been wonderful—you French," cried Oliver. "Please don't speak of me the way you have. You've got me all wrong. I'm ashamed to say it, but you ought to know the truth. Old Ben Coolidge wrote me a letter—"

"You would be modest—yes," the girl said. "I understand. But when I heard of what you had done—you, the friend of my friend—I said I must come here tonight. Without my family, alone, as girls do in your country—is it not so?—I resolved to come here and to thank you for France. You—"

"No," cried Oliver, very warm and unhappy. "You mustn't—you don't understand. Old Ben Coolidge wrote me a letter—that's all. He said all the fellows were over here. I had nothing else on—so I came. Don't you see how it was? I came to be with the bunch."

The girl stared at him with wide eyes.

"I—I do not believe it, monsieur," she said.

"But it's true," said Oliver miserably. "Old Ben wrote the letter—"

"Tell me—" She stood very straight and solemn in the moonlight. "If your friends had been—on the other side—"

"Oh, but they wouldn't," said Oliver. "We've had a lot of good times in Paris. Of course they'd all be on this side—"

"But if they had not—"

"I—I don't know, really," stammered Oliver. "I wanted to be with the bunch—"

The girl turned away from him. He waited, breathless.

"Forgive me if I am rude," she said. Monsieur—you have killed for a sport. There is a word in your language to describe it—a very ugly word. I will go now—lest I speak it."

She stepped through the window, and Oliver was left alone on the balcony. For a time he stood, wounded, unhappy, and gazed out over the darkened city. Into his mind came the memory of many things he had witnessed since coming to this stricken country—a mighty pageant of sorrow. A great shame filled his heart.

When he went inside, the daughter of the Count de Virney was gone.

OLIVER sailed for home on the appointed day. There was some disposition on the ship to make a hero of him, but it met with no encouragement from him. Finally he came again to Boston, and on the evening of the day of his arrival he found himself alone with his mother in the library.

"Did you see Agatha to-day?" his mother asked.

"No," said Oliver briefly.

"Agatha is very much wrought up about the war." His mother smiled slightly. "She is collecting money, to buy mouth organs for the soldiers in the trenches."

"Huh," said Oliver.

"I met Ben Coolidge last week," went on Mrs. Winterslip. "He told me you were having a bully time over there. I think those were the words he used." She paused, waiting for Oliver to speak; but he said nothing. "Oliver," she went on, "was it true? Did you have—a bully time?"

"No, I did not," said Oliver. He came and stood by her chair. "I started out, all right—but at the end I woke up. I woke up to myself, and to Coolidge—to the whole empty-headed bunch of us who had gone over there because it was a popular thing to do. Oh, some of the fellows know why they're over there—a fellow named Carter; I met him on the boat. But the rest— It's great sport—for the rest. And I was one of them. Mother," he said, "you must have known—why did you let me make a fool of myself?"

"Because I hoped," smiled his mother, her eyes shining. "And all that I hoped for seems to have happened. Tell me, Oliver, just how it happened."

"There was a French girl," said Oliver. "Rather beautiful, too. Wonderful eyes. She told me what I was—told me plainly, though she didn't use the word."

He was silent for a moment.

"Next Monday," he said, "I'm going back to New York. I've got a job doing relief work there—fifty a month it pays, and the money goes back into the treasury of the association. I shall miss all the tennis, of course—and the work isn't very spectacular; but I want to square myself—"

"With—the French girl?" asked his mother.

"If it isn't too late," he said. "Anyhow—with you—with myself. And when that's ended—I'm going to ask father to take me back at the office. I'll really try this time."

He stooped, and kissed her.

"I think now I'll take a little walk," he said. "I want to—think."

He went out. His mother heard the outer door close behind him. She sat at the window, gazing out at that well-bred river that flows to a historic harbor. She was a happy woman. For the son she had hoped for, had dreamed of, seemed to be hers at last.

Salt in the Great War

DOWN from the ages comes the belief that salt has some mysterious curative power. Perhaps it originated by analogy from its preservative effect on foods. At any rate, in history we find salt wherever the whipping-post as used—salt rubbed in the raw wheals upon the victim's back. To him perhaps if was only an additional torture; but the general belief was that it insured a clean, quick healing.

In Russia, to-day, salt follows punishment with the knout. In times of primitive methods of healing it was observed that sailors wounded in battle recovered more quickly than soldiers, because brine was the only water available with which to wash them. Hot salt water was our grandmothers' remedy for a toothache. It has also been prescribed by a distinguished specialist, the sort of person who regrets that radium would not fit your case. Even the staid Encyclopœdia Britannica says that the salt-saturated steam in which salt-makers work "seems specially preservative against colds, rheumatism, neuralgia, etc."

Gangrene Cured by Salt

AND now, in the great European War, one of the most famous English physicians has found a use for salt: to cure infection and drain gangrenous wounds of their poison. Shortly after the death of his eldest son, Sir Almroth E. Wright, M.D., F.R.S., was appointed consulting physician of the expeditionary force.

Every atom of his imagination, his concentration, and his determination has been devoted to the work of saving wounded soldiers. In the research laboratory of General Hospital No. 13, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, he attacked the one big problem of the war: how to prevent or cure infection in wounds. And he found the answer.

For years chemists have known of a principle called osmosis—the tendency of any two liquids, capable of mixing, to mingle if separated only by a permeable partition. And, if they are of different consistency, the thinner liquid will flow into the thicker much faster than the thicker liquid will flow into it. By this known rule, wounds are being drained and the most dangerous cases of gangrene totally cured.

Wherever there is a wound there is a flow of lymph—a substance which, in a clean wound, tends to soothe the torn tissues and also to seal the wound. Now, this is just what must be guarded against. A wound must not be sealed with bacteria inside it; the danger of such a course is evident. So the injured part is placed in a 5 per cent. salt solution—common, ordinary salt—with the addition of 1/2 per cent. of citrate of soda to help prevent the coagulating of the lymph. Then, by the continuous working of the process of osmosis, the denser solution "draws" the lymph from the wound, and with it the bacteria and all poisonous substances. In other words, it exerts a steady sucking process not only at the opening of the wound but through all the surrounding tissue.

How the Remedy Is Applied

HAVING made this discovery after months of the most exhaustive work, the next thing was to invent practical means of applying it. In this some of Sir Almroth Wright's aides helped.

One device is a cup that can be filled with solution and inverted over a small wound. Another—and this is Sir Almroth Wright's own—is a scheme for keeping a bandage wet by making of, the bandage itself a siphon leading to a vessel of solution placed on a higher level than the wound. For deep and involved cavities, earthen pipes lead into the depths of the injured tissues, and by this simple siphon a continuous flow of the solution into the infected area is secured.

On March 30, 1915, Sir Almroth Wright delivered an address before the Royal Society of Medicine, detailing his various discoveries, and demonstrating by actual experiments the methodology of his treatment. It is interesting to note the strength of his recommendation:

"I may perhaps be allowed to say ... with regard to the simple 5 per cent. salt solution... that it has in this war proved itself preëminently useful. When brought into application upon a dry and infiltrated wound, or a wound that is foul and covered with slough, it resolves the induration, brings back the moisture to the surfaces, and cleans up the wound in a way that no other agent does. Applied in gaseous gangrene in the form of a wet dressing to incisions which have been carried down into infected tissues, it causes lymph to pour out of the wounds and arrests the spread of the infection. And, again, applied in gaseous gangrene to an amputated stump in cases where it has been necessary to leave infected tissues behind, it reverses the lymph stream and draws out the infected lymph—saving life in almost desperate conditions."

It is good to know that prizes and honors are falling to Sir Almroth Wright's lot. In 1913 he received the Hungary prize for researches on immunity and vaccine therapeutics; in 1914 the Osiris prize given by the Institute of France; in 1915 the Lecomte triennial prize awarded by the Paris Académie des Sciences. This last achievement of his seems almost beyond recompense.

Who's Who in the Animal Kingdom

The Girl Beyond the Trail

By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

Illustrations byWladyslaw T. Benda

SCARCELY had David sensed the girl's words of warning than he was on his feet. And now, when he saw her, he thanked God that his head was clear and that he could fight. Even yesterday, when she had stood before the fighting bears and he had fought Brokaw, she had not been whiter than she was now. Her face told him of their danger before he had seen it with his own eyes: it told him their peril was appallingly near, and there was no chance of escaping it. He saw, for the first time, that his bed on the ground had been close to the wall of an old cabin which was in a little dip in the face of the mountain.

Before he could take in more, or discbver a visible sign of their enemies, Marge had caught his hand and was drawing him to the end of the shack. She did not speak as she pointed downward. At the edge of the valley, just beginning the ascent, were eight or ten men, and at that distance it was not difficult to make out Hauck and Brokaw.

David could not determine their exact number, for as he looked they were already disappearing under the face of a lower dip in the mountain. They were not more than four or five hundred yards away. It would take them a matter of twenty minutes to make the ascent to the cabin.

He looked at Marge. Despairingly she pointed to the mountain behind them. For a quarter of a mile it was a sheer wall of red sandstone. Their one way of flight lay downward, practically into the faces of their enemies.

"I was going to rouse you before it was light, Sakewawin," she explained, in a voice dead with hopelessness. "I kept awake for hours, and then I fell asleep. Baree awakened me, and now—it is too late."

"Yes, too late to run!" said David.

A flash of fire leaped into her eyes.

"You mean—"

"We can fight!" he cried. "Good God, Marge—if I only had my own gun now!" He thrust a hand into his pocket and drew forth the cartridges she had given him. "Thirty-twos! And only eleven of them! It's got to be short range for us. We can't put up a running fight, for they'd keep out of range of this little pea-shooter and fill me as full of holes as a sieve."

She was tugging at his arm.

"The cabin, Sakewawin!" she exclaimed with sudden inspiration. "It has a strong bar at the door, and I remember the clay has fallen in places from between the logs, leaving openings through which you can shoot. We must take Tara and Baree in with us."

He was examining Nisikoos' rifle.

"At a hundred and fifty yards it's good for a man," he said. "You get the beasts and the pack inside, Marge. I'm going to take a dilemma by the horns and eliminate two or three of our friends from this shoot-fest as they come up over that knoll down there. They won't be looking for bullets this early in the game, and I'll have them at an advantage. If I'm lucky enough to get Hauck and Brokaw—"

DAVID'S eyes had selected a big rock twenty yards from the cabin, from which he could overlook the slope to the first dip below them; and as Marge darted from him to get Tara and Baree into the cabin, he crouched behind the boulder and waited. He figured that it was not more than a hundred and fifty yards to the point where their pursuers would first appear, and he made up his mind that he would wait until they were nearer than that before he opened fire.

Not one of those eleven precious cartridges must be wasted, for he could count on Hauck's revolver only at close quarters. It was no longer a time for doubt or indecision.

Marge led Tara into the cabin. Baree had crept up beside David, and lay flat on the ground close to the rock. A moment or two later the girl reappeared, ran across the narrow open space to David, and crouched down beside him.

"You must go into the cabin, Marge," he remonstrated.

"I'm going to stay with you, Sakewawin."

HER face was no longer white. Her eyes shone as she looked at him; and—she smiled. A child! His heart rose chokingly in his throat. Her face was close to his, and she whispered:

"Last night I kissed you, Sakewawin. I thought you were dying. Before you I have kissed Nisikoos; never any one else."

Why did she say that, with that wonderful glow in her eyes? Was it the death climbing up the mountain? Was it because she wanted him to know—before that? A child!

She whispered again:

"And you—have never kissed me, Sakewawin. Why?"

His fingers relinquished their grip on the rifle. Slowly he drew her to him, until her head lay against his breast, her shining eyes and parted lips turned up to him, and he kissed her on the mouth, not once but a dozen times, and then held her back from him and looked into her face.

"Because—" he began, and stopped.

Baree was growling. David peered down the slope.

"They are coming!" he said. "Marge, you must creep back to the cabin!"

"I am going to stay with you, Sakewawin. See, I will flatten myself out like this—with Baree."

She snuggled herself down against the rock, and again David peered from his ambush. Their pursuers were well over the crest of the dip, and he counted nine. They were advancing in a group, and he saw that both Hauck and Brokaw were in the rear, and that they were using staffs in their toil upward, and did not carry rifles. The remaining seven were armed, and were headed by Langdon, who was fifteen or twenty yards ahead of his companions. David made up his mind quickly to take Langdon first, and to follow up with the others who carried rifles. Hauck and Brokaw, unarmed with guns, were the least dangerous just at present. He would get Brokaw with his fifth shot—the sixth if he made a miss with the fifth.

A thin strip of shale marked his hundred-yard dead-line, and the instant Langdon set his foot on this David fired. A fierce yell of defiance rang from David's lips as Langdon whirled in his tracks and pitched down among the men behind him. He rose up boldly from behind his rock and fired again. In that huddled and astonished mass he could not miss. A shriek came up to him. He fired a third time, and he heard a joyous cry of triumph beside him as their enemies rushed for safety toward the dip from which they had just climbed.

A fourth shot, and he picked out Brokaw. Twice he missed. His gun was empty when Brokaw lunged out of view. Langdon remained an inanimate blotch on the strip of shale. A few steps below him was a second body. A third man was dragging himself on hands and knees over the crest of the coulée.

Three—with six shots! And he had missed Brokaw! Inwardly David groaned as he caught the girl by an arm and hurried with her into the cabin, followed by Baree.

THEY were not a moment too soon. From over the edge of the coulée came a fusillade of shots from the heavy-caliber guns of the mountain men that sent out sparks of fire from the rock.

As he thrust the remaining five cartridges into the chamber of Nisikoos' rifle David looked about the cabin. In one of the farther corners the huge grizzly sat on his quarters, as motionless as if stuffed. In the center of the single big room was an old box-stove partly fallen to pieces. That was all.

Marge had dropped the sapling bar across the door, and stood with her back against it. There was no window, and the closing of the door had shut out most of the light. He knew that she was breathing quickly, and the wonderful light that had come into her eyes was still glowing at him in the half gloom.

It gave him fresh confidence to see her standing like that, looking at him in that way, telling him without words that a thing had come into her life which had lifted her above fear. He went to her and took her in his arms again, and again he kissed her sweet mouth, and felt her heart beating against him.

A SPLINTERING crash sent him reeling to the center of the cabin with Marge in his arms. The crash had come simultaneously with the report of a rifle, and both saw where the bullet had entered through the door six inches above David's head, carrying a splinter as large as his arm with it. He had not thought of the door. It was the cabin's one vulnerable point, and he sprang out of line with it as a second bullet crashed through and buried itself in the wall.

In the log walls were the open chinks that Marge had told him about; and David sprang to one of these apertures, wide enough to let the barrel of his rifle through, and looked in the direction from which the two shots had come. He was in time to catch a movement among the rocks on the side of the mountain a couple of hundred yards away, as a third shot tore its way through the door, glanced from the steel top of the stove, and struck two feet over Tara's back.

There were two men up there among the rocks, and their first shots were followed by a steady bombardment that fairly riddled the door. David could see their heads and shoulders and the gleam and faint puffs of their rifles; but he held his fire. Where were the other four, he

Continued on page 15

8—Counts and Countesses: Count Them—8

Their Business Is Picking Up

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Does It Pay to Study at Home?

A Business You Can Start

I WAS in my first year at high school when the idea of making money out of my hobby first came to me.

For a number of years my mother and I had been successful in raising cosmos of a size and color that were the wonder and admiration of our town.

When I decided to try to make my knowledge of the culture of this beautiful flower yield me a profit, my friends didn't scoff, but encouraged me in every way.

I started by having a plot 35 x 90 feet spaded up and richly fertilized; then I planted seeds of the giant cosmos that I had gathered from my best plants of the previous season.

The weather favored me, and the plants were soon appearing above ground, and grew amazingly.

I used to get up at six o'clock, work at cultivating the young plants until seven, then stop for breakfast and a period of study before going to school.

In the late afternoon I worked another hour in the garden. When October came my plants were over seven feet tall and blossoming in profusion.

My first sale was made through the mail. Hearing that a family in a near-by town was planning to give a big reception, I mailed them six beautiful white blossoms, with a letter stating that I could supply any quantity they might want, all of the quality of the samples, at the rate of two cents each. They telephoned an order the next day for 500 blossoms, to be delivered in three days' time.

I gathered the plants early in the morning of the day on which they were to be used, packed them carefully, and had them delivered by our grocer, who sent an automobile to town daily.

Four days later I received a check for ten dollars in payment, with a polite note complimenting me on my business ability and the beauty of my blossoms. Before the season was over I had sold ninety-five dollars' worth of flowers. Then I stopped selling flowers and let them go to seed, which I gathered, and stored away.

The following spring I put an advertisement in the local paper stating that I had seed of my giant cosmos for sale. I sold fourteen dollars' worth in this way, and had enough left to plant a plot a little larger than my first one, besides which I planted several other varieties of flowers, and set out grape-vines and currant bushes. My brother helped me with this work, and I paid him ten cents an hour and promised him a ten per cent. share of the profits. In four years I had my garden in such shape that it was paying me nearly $300 a year.

I have now given up this work and am studying nursing in a New York hospital; but I feel that I could go back to horticulture and with two hundred dollars capital soon have a business the profits of which would amount to a thousand dollars a year.

Autumn is the time to prepare for next year's garden. Don't put off until spring, but begin now by letting your best plants go to seed. Gather the seed carefully, and after they are thoroughly dry put in envelops marked with the name of the flower and the date when they were gathered.

If you have no choice plants of the varieties you wish to grow, purchase your seeds from a reliable dealer. But, above all things, prepare this fall for your next year's work.

Fish that Fight for Prizes

TO see a fish-fight, one must go to Siam. It is the national sport, and to the Siamese it is as fascinating as is cock-fighting to the Malays. The men of that country will stake on fish-fights not only all the money they have, but even their wives and children.

It is no uncommon thing, in Siam, to see a man slinking along the street with a peculiar bulge distending some part of his clothing. The bulge represents a small glass bowl of water containing a fighting-fish which the owner is anxious to match against somebody else's finny champion.

The reason for the concealment is that fish-fighting is a government gambling monopoly in Siam. Licenses to exhibit fish-fights are sold, bringing a considerable annual revenue to the coffers of the King. The unlicensed fish-fight is like a cockfight in the United States: the managers and spectators are liable to be arrested and jailed.

Just as cocks are bred for fighting, so are these fishes in Siam, where a special race of game fighting-fish has been developed. They are so tiny that they are commonly kept in tumblers of water, and fed with mosquito wrigglers and other aquatic insects.

Despite their small size, no living creatures are more fiercely pugnacious. It is the males that do the fighting, always in the manner of the duello. The object sought by each of the combatants is to maim and mutilate its adversary. They go at each other in rough-and-tumble fashion, like two roosters, trying, with their strong jaws and sharp teeth, to inflict disabling injuries by biting off fins.

The fins and tails of these fighting-fish are huge relatively to the size of the little creatures. In the breeding season the males enhance their brilliant markings with a lustrous olive-green hue, overlaid by fleeting prismatic color-flashes, which seem to be controlled by the fish—the tail and fins outlined in brilliant red and yellow.

Fish that Build Nests

BUT there are other points in which the fighting-fish of Siam is remarkable and even extraordinary. For one thing, it is an air-breather—not depending, as do other fishes, upon oxygen liberated by plants. Hence it will thrive, and reproduce its species, under conditions that for other fishes would be impossible. No other kind of fish is so easy to breed in captivity.

These Siamese fighting-fish have been bred for centuries in small glass bowls and other such receptacles, being fed with earth-worms and chopped raw meat when house-flies, mosquito larvœ, or other insects were scarce. It is necessary, however, to separate the female from the male, except in the breeding season, because the latter will attack even his mate when offspring are not in prospect.

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the nest-building habit of this finny species. It makes a veritable fairy nest of air-bubbles, which, extruded from the mouth of the male, are coated with a gelatinous matter that gives them permanency, like soap-bubbles blown from a prepared fluid. The female lays her eggs in the mass of bubbles thus prepared, and her mate guards them until they hatch. Indeed, after they are hatched, he will not allow her to approach the young until they are big enough to take care of themselves.

Beware the Shyster Lawyer

By GEORGE F. WORTS

WHEN the young man who had been struck from behind by a skidding taxicab woke up in the hospital on the following afternoon, the first person to rush to his side was a man he had never seen before in his life.

After the cordially sympathetic stranger had uttered a few words, the injured man wondered if the accident, besides breaking him physically, had played tricks with his memory.

Addressing him by his first name, the stranger spoke in tearful accents about how sorry "everybody" felt.

"Who do you mean—everybody?" inquired the man on the cot—who was a newcomer to the city.

"And everybody's mighty sore about the way that taxi-driver steered into you," went on the stranger, ignoring the question. "They all say you ought to sue that taxicab company and collect big damages." His face fairly radiated significance.

While the injured man was turning this pleasant thought over in his mind, his caller took out a fountain pen and some paper.

"We all think you ought to collect big damages," went on the man genially, "and it just happens that I represent a firm of live-wire lawyers who make a specialty of such cases as yours. You've got a surefire case, but you will need sharp lawyers to squeeze the last penny out of it for you. That's why we want to handle your case. Just sign along this dotted line. Right along here. This is a retainer. It gives me the authority to begin the investigation. We won't charge you a cent if we lose. If we win we'll take part of it. We'll split the proceeds—fifty-fifty. Why, you ought to make $1500. It's a cinch!"

The victim signed the retainer.

The taxicab company, knowing the character of their assailants, decided to take the case to court. The "live-wire" attorneys demanded $5000 damages, and were awarded $1000. According to the verbal agreement, the injured man should have received $500. Did he receive $500? Decidedly not. After the "costs" and the "fees" and the "incidentals" were subtracted, he received a check for $185.

Knowing nothing about illegal practices, he gulped—and accepted the check.

The Beautiful Heiress

THE foregoing example illustrates the shyster lawyer's way of doing business. A more lurid example of his methods was revealed recently when the inner workings of a certain notorious murder trial were brought to light.

The attorney for the defense, through sheer luck, which was made evident by one of the rarest displays of stupidity and carelessness that a New York courtroom has ever enjoyed, freed his client.

During the trial the newspapers had a great deal to say about a mysterious woman who, it was understood, was supplying the funds to carry on the defense. She, with the trial, made excellent newspaper copy. Her true identity was not disclosed until after the trial, when this beautiful, mysterious "heiress" appealed to the Bar Association for help. She was the attorney's "runner," and he had not paid her for securing the client.

Because of insufficient evidence the lawyer was not disbarred.

Ordinarily the shyster lawyer does his client more harm than good. The case rarely interests him; he takes it because of its rich possibilities of extortion.

Pretend for the moment that you have been arrested and are totally uninformed upon the law. Let us see how the shyster will pry you away from your money.

You are arrested for a minor crime—a misdemeanor—such as going swimming without an adequate bathing suit. The shyster will elbow his way to you at the very rim of the magistrate's desk.

At that moment you have no money in your pocket. Your attorney will see that you are comfortably disposed behind bars; then he will take up his post of watchful waiting and systematic bleeding.

Have you any relatives or friends with money? Yes, one or two. How much can you get? About one hundred dollars. Very well; get it.

You can rest assured that you will remain behind the bars until all the available money is in the shyster's hands. The saddest part about this experience will be its climax. When you go to court for trial, your attorney, just as often as not, will instruct you to plead guilty. He has "things fixed" with the judge and you will be given a light sentence.

The Case of Pat

ONE of the boldest efforts on the part of disreputable lawyers to filch money from unsuspecting clients came to the attention of the Bar Association recently, and resulted in the disbarment and public disgrace of one of its members.

This man had secured a client who was arrested, charged with disorderly conduct. The offender, whom we shall call Pat, was an Irishman, a street-car motorman in the Bronx. He had been saving every penny, planning to return to Ireland as soon as his bank account justified it. But within a week or two of the date he had set for embarking he had offended a policeman.

Pat was locked up, pending trial. His bail was set at $300. Pat confessed to his attorney that he had $850 in the bank. The attorney advised his client that if the bank-book was available, its presentation in court would suffice for bail. This was the first step in the lawyer's crooked scheme. Pat produced the bank-book.

The shyster returned later with the information that a withdrawal slip issued by Pat on his bank account was demanded by the judge. After a brief argument, Pat complied. The lawyer hastened to the bank, filled in the slip above his client's signature, and drew out $700.

Meanwhile Pat languished in jail. A few days later, because of lack of sufficient evidence, he was freed. This unexpected turn of affairs caught the lawyer unprepared. But he rose to the occasion. Through another shyster, he informed Pat that the police were on his trail again, and that the only thing for him to do was to flee the country. The lawyer even bought a steerage ticket to Ireland, which his shyster friend presented to Pat.

This time, however, the shrewd Irishman refused to be tricked. The boat sailed. The lawyer breathed easier. And then Pat called at his office. He was refused an interview, so he took his case to higher authorities. After being compelled to return the money to the indignant Irishman, the lawyer was disbarred.

The undiluted shyster, the lawyer who will give you not even the semblance of a square deal, can be avoided by the observance of two simple rules:

Never hire a lawyer who solicits your patronage under suspicious circumstances.

Never hire a lawyer until some one whose advice you can rely upon vouches for his integrity.

Never Too Late to Save

IN a country as prosperous as this, any man ought to be ashamed of himself who reaches old age without money in the bank.

That idea came to Samuel N. Kerr, but it came to him rather late. In fact, he was seventy-four years old when he suddenly realized that he hadn't saved any money. Now he's nearly eighty, and owns a house worth $2100, has paid all his debts, and has money in the bank.

"When I was a boy," says Mr. Kerr, "an old man told me that if I saved just a tenth of what I earned I would die a rich man. But I spent every cent I earned, and that was around $3000 a year for twenty years. My wife and I raised three children and spent the rest on ourselves. That sort of thing kept up until one day—I was seventy-four then—I suddenly came face to face with the cold fact that I was an old man.

"My earning power had been cut down by age, and for a life-time of toil we had just $300 saved. I knew that if I didn't face about pretty soon I'd find myself without a home.

"We invested our $300 in a little house with four rooms and a bath and a garden.

"Fortune favored us. The garden gave us plenty of vegetables, and that helped wonderfully on the grocery bill. In four years the little house was paid for. And we're still saving; because we like the habit."

A Four-Mile Railroad

THE shortest independent railroad "system" in America is owned and operated by residents of Quincy, the county-seat of Plumes County, California. The rate per mile is the highest in the world—four bits for a ride of four miles.

As almost every family in Quincy subscribed for stock in the railroad and is therefore entitled to annual passes, the trains are often so well filled with pass-holders that the commercial travelers' and other unfortunate cash-payers are compelled to stand up.

The rolling stock of the road consists of two locomotives and half a dozen cars; and each of the two trains makes two round trips each day, connecting Quincy with the main line of the Western Pacific. The road never has any trouble with its employees over the question of an eight-hour day, and all the stockholders are well satisfied with it. Whether or not it pays in money, they are grateful to it for putting their town on the railroad map.

The Girl Beyond the Trail

Continued from page 8

wondered? Without doubt Hauck and Brokaw were now armed with the rifles of the men who had fallen, and he had six to deal with. Cautiously he thrust the muzzle of his gun through the crack and watched his chance, aiming a foot and a half above the spot where a pair of shoulders and a head would appear in a moment.

His chance came, and he fired. The head and shoulders disappeared, and with an exultant cry he swung his rifle a little to the right and sent another shot as the second man exposed himself. He too disappeared, and David's heart was thumping wildly in the thought that his bullets had reached their marks, when both heads appeared again and a hail of lead spattered against the cabin. The men among the rocks were no longer aiming at the door, but at the spot from which he had fired, and a bullet ripped through so close that a splinter stung his face and he felt the quick, warm flow of blood down his cheek. When the girl saw it her face went white.

"I can't get them with this gun, Marge," he groaned. "It's wild—wild as a hawk! Good God!"

A crash of fire had come from behind the cabin, and another bullet, finding one of the gaping cracks, passed between them with a sound like the buzz of a monster bee. With a sudden cry he caught Marge in his arms and held her tight. "Is it possible—they would kill you to get me?"

He loosed his hold of her, sprang to the broken stove, and began dragging it out of the line of fire that came through the door. The girl ran to help him. He had no time to urge her back. In ten seconds he had the stove close to the wall, and almost forcibly he made her crouch down behind it.

"If you expose yourself for one second I swear to heaven I'll stand up there against the door until I'm shot!" he threatened.

DAVID'S brain was afire. He was no longer cool or self-possessed. He was blind with a wild rage, with a mad desire in some way to reach with his vengeance those human beasts who were bent on his death, even if it was to be gained at the sacrifice of the girl.

He rushed to the side of the cabin from which the fresh attack had come, and glared through one of the embrasures between the logs. He was close to Tara, and he heard the low, steady thunder that came out of the grizzly's chest. His enemies were near on this side; their fire came from the rocks not more than a hundred yards away. And all at once, in the heat of the great passion that possessed him now, he became suddenly aware that they knew the only weapons he possessed were Nisikoos' little rifle and Hauck's revolver. Probably they knew also how limited his ammunition was. And they were exposing themselves. Why should he save his last three shots? When they were gone and he no longer answered their fire, they would probably rush the cabin, beat in the door, and then—the revolver! With that he would tear out their hearts as they entered.

He saw Hauck, and fired. A man stood up within seventy yards of the cabin a moment later, firing as fast as he could pump the lever of his gun; and David drove one of Nisikoos' partridge-killers straight into his chest. He fired a second time at Hauck—another miss—and flung the useless rifle to the floor as he sprang back to Marge.

"Got one. Five left. Now—damn 'em—let them come!"

He drew Hauck's revolver. A bullet flew through one of the cracks, and they heard the soft thud of it as it struck Tara. The growl in the grizzly's throat burst forth in a roar of thunder. The terrible sound shook the cabin; but Tara still made no movement, except now to swing his head with open; drooling jaws. In response to that cry of animal rage and pain, a snarl had come from Baree. He had slunk close to Tara.

"Didn't hurt him much," said David, with the fingers of his free hand crumpling the girl's hair. "They'll stop shooting in a minute or two, and then—"

Straight into his eyes from that farther wall a splinter hurled itself at him with a hissing sound like the plunge of hot iron into water. He had the lightning impression of seeing the bullet as it tore through the clay between two of the logs. He knew that he was struck; yet he felt no pain. His mind was acutely alive, yet he could not speak. His words had been cut off, his tongue was powerless.

THE girl did not know that he was hit for a moment or two. The thud of his revolver on the floor filled her eyes with the first horror of understanding, and she sprang to his side as ho swayed like a drunken man toward Tara. He sank down on the floor a few feet from the grizzly, and he heard the girl moaning over him and calling him by name. The numbness left him, and slowly he raised a hand to his chin, filled with a terrible fear. It was there—his jaw, hard, un-smashed, but wet with blood. He thought the bullet had struck him there.

"A knockout," were his first words, spoken slowly and thickly, but with a great gasp of relief. "A splinter hit me on the jaw. I'm all right."

He sat up dizzily, with the girl's arm about him. In their three or four minutes of forgetfulness neither had noticed that the firing had ceased. Now there came a tremendous blow at the door. It shook the cabin. A second blow, a third—and the decaying saplings were crashing inward.

David struggled to rise, fell back, and pointed to the revolver.

"Quick—the gun—"

With a gasping cry, Marge sprang to it. The door crashed inward as she picked it up; and scarcely had she faced about when their enemies were rushing in, with Henry and Hauck in their lead, and Brokaw just behind them.

With a last effort, David fought to gain his feet. He heard a single shot from the revolver, and then, as he rose staggeringly, he saw Marge fighting in Brokaw's arms. Hauck came for him, the demon of murder in his face; and as they went down he heard scream after scream come from the girl's lips, and in that scream the agonizing call of "Tara! Tara! Tara!"

Over him he heard a sudden roar, the rush of a great body—and with that thunder of Tara's rage and vengeance there mingled a hideous, wolfish snarl from Baree. He could see nothing. Hauck's hands were at his throat. But the screams continued, and above them came now the cries of men—cries of horror, of agony, of death; and as Hauck's fingers loosened at his neck he heard with the snarling and roaring and tumult the crushing of great jaws and the thud of bodies.

Hauck was rising, his face blanched with a strange terror. He was half up when a gaunt, lithe body shot at him like a stone flung from a catapault, and Baree's inch-long fangs sank in his thick throat in one savage, snarling snap of the jaws.

David raised himself, and through the horror of what he saw the girl ran to him, unharmed, and clasped her arms about him, her lips sobbing all the time: "Tara—Tara—Tara—" He turned her face to his breast, and held it there.

It was ghastly. Henry was dead. Hauck was dead. And Brokaw was dead—a thousand times dead—with the grizzly tearing at his huge body. Out of that pit of death David stumbled with the girl. The fresh air struck their faces. The sun of day fell upon them. The green grass and the flowers of the mountain were under their feet. They looked down the slope, and saw disappearing over the crest of the coulée two men who were running for their lives.

IT may have been five minutes that David held the girl in his arms, staring down into the sunlit valley into which the last two of Hauck's men had fled; and during that time he did not speak, and he heard only her steady sobbing. He drew into his lungs deep breaths of the invigorating air, and he felt himself growing stronger as the girl's body became heavier in his embrace, and her arms relaxed and slipped down from about his shoulders.

He raised her face. There were no tears in her eyes, but she was still moaning a little, and her lips were quivering like a crying child's. He bent his head and kissed them, and she caught her breath as she looked at him with eyes that were limpid pools of blue, out of which her terror was slowly dying away.

She whispered his name. In her look and that whisper there was unutterable adoration. It was for him she had been afraid. She was looking at him now as one saved to her from the dead, and he

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felt the thrilling pressure of her hands at his blood-stained cheeks.

A sound behind them turned his head, and fifty feet away he saw the big grizzly ambling cumbrously from the cabin. They could hear him growling as he stood in the sunshine, his head swinging slowly from side to side like a monstrous pendulum—in his throat the last echoing of that ferocious rage and hate that had destroyed their enemies. And in the same moment Baree stood in the door, his lips drawn back and his fangs gleaming, as if he expected other enemies to face him.

Quickly David drew the girl beyond the boulder from behind which he had opened the fight, and down on to a soft carpet of grass thick with the blue of wild violets. The big rock shut out the cabin from their vision.

"Rest here, little comrade," he said, stroking back her wonderful hair. "I must return to the cabin. Then—we will go."

"Go!"

She repeated the word in the strangest, softest whisper he had ever heard, as if in it all at once she saw the sun and stars, the day and night, of her whole life. She looked from his face down into the valley, and into his face again.

"We—will go," she repeated, as he rose to his feet.

She shivered when he left her, shuddered with a little cry which she tried to choke back even as she visioned the first glow of that wonderful new life that was dawning for her. David knew why. He left her without looking down into her eyes again, anxious to have these last terrible minutes over with. At the open door of the cabin he hesitated, a little sick at what he knew he would see. And yet, after all, it was no worse than it should be: it was justice. He told himself this as he stepped inside.

He tried not to look too closely, but the sight, after a moment, fascinated him. If it had not been for the difference in their size he could not have told which was Hauck and which was Brokaw. It seemed incredible that claw and fang could have worked such destruction. He sprang suddenly back to the door, to make sure that the girl was not following him. Then he looked again.

It was Henry's rifle he picked up. He searched for cartridges then. It was a sickening task. He found nearly fifty of them on the three, and went out with the pack and the gun. He put the pack over his shoulders before be returned to the rock, and paused only for a moment when he rejoined the girl. With her hand in his, he struck down into the valley.

"A great justice has overtaken them," he said, and that was all he told her about the cabin; and she asked him no questions.

AT the edge of the green meadows below they stopped where a trickle of water from the mountain-tops had formed a deep pool, and, following this trickle a little up the coulée it had worn in the course of the ages, David found a sheltered spot and stripped himself. To the waist he was covered with the stain and grime of battle.

In the open pool Marge bathed her face and arms, and then sat down to finish her toilet with David's comb and brushes. When he returned to her she was a radiant glory in the gold and brown fires of her disentangled hair. He stood a step off and looked at her, his heart filled with a wonderful joy, his lips silent. The thought surged upon him in an overmastering moment of exultation that she belonged to him, not for to-day or to-morrow, but for all time; that the mountains had given her to him; that among the flowers and the wild things that "great, good God" Father Roland had spoken of so often had created her for him, and she had been waiting for him here, pure as the wild violets under his feet. She did not see him for a space, and he watched her as she ran out her glowing tresses under the strokes of his brush.

And once—ages ago, it seemed to him now—he had thought that another woman was beautiful, and that another woman's glory was her hair! He felt his heart singing. She had not been like this. No. Worlds separated those two—that woman and this God-crowned little mountain flower who had come into his heart like

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the breath of a new life, opening for him new visions that reached even beyond the blue skies. And he wondered that she should love him.

She looked up suddenly and saw him standing there. Love? Had he in all his life dreamed of the look that was in her face now? It made his heart choke him. He held open his arms silently as she rose to her feet, and she came to him in all that burnished glory of her unbound hair; and he held her again close in his arms, kissing her soft lips, her flushed cheeks, her blue eyes, the warm sweetness of her hair. And her lips kissed him.

He looked out over the valley. His eyes were open to its beauty, but he did not see. A vision was rising before him, and his soul was breathing a prayer of gratitude to the missioner's God.

It may be the girl heard his voiceless exaltation, for she whispered:

"You love me a great deal, my Sakewawin?"

"More than life," he replied.

Her voice roused him. For a few moments he had forgotten the cabin, had forgotten that Brokaw and Hauck had existed, and that they were now dead. He held her back from him, looking into her face, out of which all fear had gone.

"We must go now," he said, forcing himself to break the spell. "Two have escaped, Marge. It is possible, if there are others at the Nest—"

His words brought her back to the thing they had passed through. She glanced in a startled way over the valley. Then she shook her head.

"There are two others," she said; "but they will not follow us, Sakewawin. If they should, we will be over the mountain."

She braided her hair as he adjusted his pack. His heart was like a boy's. He laughed at her a joyous disapproval.

"I like to see it—unbound," he said. "It is beautiful."

It seemed to him that all the blood in her body leaped into her face.

"Then—I will leave it that way," she cried softly, her fingers working swiftly in the silken plaits of her braid. Unconfined her hair shimmered about her again. And then, as they were about to set off, she ran up to him with a little cry, and without touching him with her hands raised her face to him.

"Kiss me," she said. "Kiss me, my Sakewawin!"

IT was noon when they stood under the topmost crags of the southward range, and under them they saw once more the green valley with its silvery stream, in which they had met that first day beside the great rock. It seemed to them both a long time ago, and the valley was like a friend, smiling up at them its welcome and its gladness that they had at last returned.

The girl pointed off through the blue haze miles to the eastward.

"Are we going that way?" she asked.

He had been thinking as they had climbed up the mountain. Off there, where she was pointing, were his friends and hers; between them and that wandering tribe of the totem people on the Kwadocha there were no people. Nothing but the unbroken peace of the mountains, in which they were safe. He had ceased to fear their immensity, was no longer disturbed by the thought that in their vast and trackless solitudes he might lose himself forever. After what had passed, their gleaming peaks were beckoning to him, and he was confident that he could find his way back to the Finley and down to Hudson's Hope.

What a surprise it would be to Father Roland when they dropped in on him some day, he and Marge! His heart beat excitedly as he told her about it, described the great distance they must travel, and what a wonderful journey it would be, with that glorious country at the end of it—the Château, home. And— "We'll find your mother then," he whispered.

They talked a great deal about her mother and Father Roland as they made their way down into the valley; and whenever they stopped to rest she had new questions to ask, and each time there was that trembling doubt in her voice: "I wonder if it's true." And each time he assured her that it was.

"I have been thinking that it was Nisikoos who sent to her the picture you wanted to destroy," he said once. "Nisikoos must have known."

"Then why didn't she tell me?" Marge flashed.

"Because it may be that she didn't want to lose you—and that she didn't send the picture until she knew that she was not going to live very long."

The girl's eyes darkened, and then—slowly—there came the softer glow back into them.

"I loved Nisikoos," she said.

It was sunset when they began making their first camp in a cedar thicket, where David shot a porcupine for Tara and Baree. After their supper they sat for a while in the glow of the stars, and after that Marge snuggled down in her cedar bed and went to sleep. But before she closed her eyes she put her arms around his neck and kissed him good night.

For a long time after that he sat awake, thinking of the wonderful dream he had dreamed all his life, and which at last had come true.

DAY after day they traveled steadily into the east and south. The mountains swallowed them, and their feet trod the grass of many strange valleys. Strange, and yet now and then David saw what he had seen once before, and he knew that he had not lost the trail. They traveled slowly, for there was no longer need of haste; and in that land of plenty there was more of pleasure than inconvenience in their foraging for what they ate.

In her haste in making up the contents of the pack, Marge had seized what first came to her hands in the way of provisions, and fortunately the main part of their stock was a twenty-pound sack of oatmeal. Of this they made bannock and cakes. The country was full of game. In the valleys the black currants and wild raspberries were ripening lusciously, and now and then in the pools of the valleys David would shoot fish.

Both Tara and Baree began to grow fat, and with quiet joy David noticed that each day added to the wonderful beauty and happiness in the girl's face, and it seemed to him that her love was enveloping him more and more, and there was never a moment now that he could not see the glow of it in her eyes. It thrilled him that she did not want him out of her presence for more than a few minutes at a time.

They had been ten days in the mountains when, one evening, sitting beside him, she said with that adorable and almost childish ingenuousness which he loved in her:

"It will be nice to have Father Roland marry us, Sakewawin." And before he could answer, she added: "I will keep house for you two at the Château."

He had been thinking a great deal about that.

"But if your mother should live down there—among the cities?" he asked.

She shivered a little, and nestled against him.

"I shouldn't like it, Sakewawin—not for long. I love this—the forests, the mountains, the skies." And then suddenly she caught herself, and added quickly: "But anywhere—anywhere—if you are there, Sakewawin!"

"I too love the forests, the mountains, and the skies," he whispered. "We shall have them with us always, little comrade."

ON the fourteenth day they descended the eastern slopes of the Divide, and he knew that they were not far from the Kwadocha and the Finley. Their fifteenth night they camped where he and the Butterfly's lover had built a noonday-fire; and this night, though it was warm and glorious with a full moon, the girl was possessed of a desire to have a fire of their own, and she helped to add

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fuel to it until the flames leaped high up into the shadows of the spruce and drove them far back with its heat. David was content to sit and smoke his pipe while he watched her flit here and there after still more fuel, now a shadow in the darkness, and then again in the full tire-glow. After a time she grew tired and sat beside him, and for an hour they talked in whispering voices that trembled with their happiness.

WHEN at last she went to bed and fell asleep, he walked a little way out into the clear moonlight, and sat down to smoke and listen to the murmur of the valley, his heart too full for sleep. And out of that murmur there came to him, suddenly and softly, a voice:

"David!"

He sprung up. From the shadow of a dwarf spruce half a dozen paces from him stepped the figure of a man. He stood with bared head, the light of the moon streaming down upon him, and out of David's breast rose a strange cry, as if he saw a spirit of the dead:

"My God! Father Roland!"

They sprang across the little space between them, and their hands clasped. David could not speak. Before he found his voice, the missioner was saying:

"I saw the fire, David, and I stole up quietly to see who it was. We are camped down there not more than a quarter of a mile. Come! I want you to see—"

He stopped. He was excited; and to David his face seemed many years younger there in the moonlight, and he walked with the spring of youth as he caught David's arm and started down the valley.

A strange force held David silent—an indefinable feeling that something tremendous and unexpected was impending. He heard the other's quick breath, caught the glow in his eyes, and his heart was thrilled. They walked so swiftly that it seemed only to him only a few moments when they came to a little clump of low trees, and into these Father Roland led David by the hand, treading lightly now, his breath breaking in excited little gasps.

In another moment they stood beside some one who was sleeping. Father Roland pointed down, and spoke no word.

It was a woman. The moonlight fell upon her, and shimmered in the thick masses of dark hair that streamed about her, concealing her face. David choked. It was his heart in his throat. He bent down. Gently he lifted the heavy tresses, and stared into the sleeping face that was under them—the face of the woman he had met that night on the Transcontinental!

Over him he heard a gentle whisper:

"My wife, David!"

He staggered back and clutched Father Roland by the shoulders, and his voice was almost sobbing in its excitement as he cried whisperingly:

"Then you—you are Michael O'Doone—the father of Marge. And Tavish—Tavish—"

His voice broke. The missioner's face had gone white. they went back into the moonlight again, so that they would not waken the woman.

OUT there, so close that they seemed to be in each other's arms, the stories were told, David's first, briefly, swiftly: and when Michael O'Doone learned that his daughter was in David's camp he bowed his face in his hands and David heard him giving thanks to his God.

And then he told what had happened. In his madness Tavish has believed that the chance which had taken him so near to the home of the man whose life he had destroyed was his last great warning; and before killing himself he had written out fully his confession for Michael O'Doone, and had sworn to the innocence of the woman whom he had stolen away.

"And, even as he was destroying himself, God's hand was guiding my Margaret to me," panted the missioner. "All those years she had been seeking for me, and at least she learned at Nelson House

about a Father Roland whose real name no man knew. And at almost that same time, at Le Pas, there came to her the photograph you found on the train, with a letter saying our little girl was alive at this place you call the Nest. Hauck's wife sent the letter and picture to the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and it was sent from inspector to inspector until it found her at Le Pas. She came to the Château. I was gone—with you. She followed, and we met as Metoosin and I were returning. We did not go back to the Château. We turned about and followed on your trail, to seek our little Marge. And now—"

FROM out the shadows of the trees there broke upon them suddenly the anxious voice of the woman:

"Napao! Where are you?"

"Dear God, it is the old sweet name she called me so many years ago," whispered Michael O'Doone. "She is awake. Come!"

David held him back a moment.

"I will go to Marge," he spoke quickly. "I will wake her. And you—bring her mother. Understand, dear Father? Bring her up there, where Marge is sleeping—"

The voice came again:

"Napao! Napao!"

"I am coming—I am coming, dear!" cried the missioner.

"Yes—I will brign her—up there—to your camp."

And as David hurried swiftly away he heard the sweet voice saying:

"You must not leave me alone, Napao—never, never, never, so long as we live!"

DOWN on his knees beside the girl, David waited many minutes while he gained his breath. With his two hands he crumpled her hair; and then, after a little, he kissed her mouth, and then her eyes; and she moved, and he caught the sleepy whisper of his name.

"Wake," he cried softly. "Wake, little comrade!"

Her arms rose up out of her dream of him and encircled his neck.

"Sakewawin," she murmured. "Is it morning—"

"Yes; a gl [?] Wake!"