Your Clothes, as Some One Has Said, are Your Quickest Asset

THIS is an extract form a last year's letter to me:

I am sorry to see an editorial by you urging young men to pay more attention to their clothes, when there are so many more important things in the world for you to write about. Doesn't the average young man pay too little attention to what he really is and too much to what he appears to be? We look to you to hold up the Lincoln ideal rather than the Beau Brummell ideal.

This man is right, in part. It is the business of this magazine to hold up the Lincoln ideal.

We who love Lincoln would not change one single line in the portrait of him that we carry in our hearts.

His homely face and slouching figure and unkempt person are a part of the treasure of our lives. We would not remove one wrinkle; we would not smooth out one crease.

We love him so much that we are not afraid to tell the truth about him. And the truth is that Lincoln succeeded, not because of his slovenly appearance, but in spite of it.

Seward underestimated him: Stanton gibed at him: Welles and Chase and the others had to be convinced by months of association that their first impression of him was unfair.

How much easier Lincoln's task, how different the attitude of his associates might have been, had it been possible for Lincoln to look what Lincoln really was.

Even his young secretary, John Hay, who worshiped him, spoke of him with affectionate amusement as the "gorilla," and found it hard to take quite seriously the man who would rush into his room at midnight, with a ragged night-gown flapping about his knees.

Foreign ambassadors left his presence with a keen appreciation of the man's innate dignity and power.

But foreign peoples saw just the baggy trousers, the unkempt coat, and the scraggly beard, and thought him the freak figurehead of a hopeless cause.

Disraeli, who helped rule England while Lincoln ruled America, was Lincoln's exact antithesis.

He thought too much about his clothes. He dandified appearance and his foppish mannerisms were one of the influences that kept him from the premiership long after he had become the ablest individual in his party.

Too little attention to his clothes hindered Lincoln: too much attention hurt Disraeli.

It is to regard as unimportant a matter that has proved its power to help or hurt the lives of the world's great men?

Carlyle's old German professor in Sartor Resartus talks about the "omnipotent virtue of Clothes":

"You see two individuals, one dressed in fine Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue; Red says to Blue, 'Be hanged and anatomised.' Blue hears with a shudder and (O wonder of wonders) marches sorrowfully to the gallows. How is this? . . . Thinking reader, the reason seems to me two-fold: First that Man is a Spirit and bound by invisible bonds to all men; secondly that he wears clothes which are the invisible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual a plush gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a Judge? . . . Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth. . . . Nay, if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing, a visible Garment for that divine Me of his, cast hither, like a light particle, down from Heaven?"

There you have the true philosophy of clothes. They are but an extension of the body, which is itself only a clothing for and a symbol of the soul.

The wise man will not so robe that symbol that it obtrudes itself: much less will he so neglect its robing that it reflects unjustly the spirit and character of the Man within.

He will seek so to dress his body that it may be the perfect, efficient instrument of his Soul—giving him poise and self-respect and confidence in the presence of other men.

To achieve that happy medium of good taste is not easy.

It requires thought, and repays it.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

TWO COUNTRY DOCTORS

By FORREST CRISSEY

THE question of how far and fast the country doctor can go on the speedway of professional success is sure to provoke an instant mention of the name Mayo. In this connection its preëminence is as indisputable as was that of Abou Ben Adhem after the angel had given that model of modesty his new rating.

There is something in the sound of the word Mayo that suggests Mahomet. Then the name of the persistent Oriental prophet leads straight to the thought that probably the most remarkable example of compelling the mountain to come to Mahomet is the success of the two country doctors known the world over as the Mayo Brothers. They have made Rochester, Minnesota, the greatest surgical center in the world.

The atmosphere of this clinic is decidedly penetrating; it travels far. You can recognize it as distinctly in Chicago as in Rochester, if you happen to board the right train in the big Northwestern station. This train might well be called the Mayo special. The approved opening of a conversation with a fellow traveler is:

"What are you going up for?"

Here is a conversation lately overheard in the smoking compartment of a Pullman car of this train, about an hour after it had left Chicago:

"Going up for an operation? So'm I. Guess I'll not get much sleep to-night. A man just went out who had my trouble, and he's been telling me, for almost an hour, what he went through. He got on my nerves with his description of the details. Horribly depressing! But my case must be different. You see—" Then his listener was given a graphic description of the two cases.

The World's Surgical Center

WHEN you alight from the train at Rochester you see a typical Western town, its main street wide and well paved, and set with buildings that seem lower than they are because of the unusual width of the thoroughfare. Suddenly you realize that it is unlike any other town, in that it appears to be a focal rallying point for the world's afflicted. The train empties out its cargo of stricken humanity—some with the sign of death showing already in their faces, others showing merely the lassitude of long suffering.

Then, as you move along the street to one of the hotels, this sense that you have arrived at the great Sanctuary of the Stricken grips still harder. Literally, people are arriving by train, by automobile, by carriage, and on foot—as varied a tide of pilgrims as ever sought the refuge of a famous shrine. Watch the registers of the hotels, and you will find that this country town calls its tide of transients from far and near, from the great cities of the Old World as well as from every part of America.

The breakfast-room of at least one of these Rochester hotels is no place for a bashful man. The morning meal there is best described as a kimono party; and its conversational revelations are marked by less reserve than even the toilets of the break-fasters.

The professional and personal genealogy of the Mayos is without a suspicion of metropolitan taint. The "Old Doctor," father of the Mayo brothers, was a country doctor of the old school. How he happened to locate on the open prairies just outside Rochester, no one seems to know—possibly because it was an amazingly healthy spot on which to raise a family!

But even the bracing climate of that region could not entirely eliminate the demand for a family physician. Babies would insist upon being born; men would occasionally get kicked by horses or cut by reapers, and the hardships of a pioneer country could be relied upon to produce at least a small crop of physical disorders demanding the attention of a "general practitioner."

Two of the greatest dates in American history are set forth in these characters: 1861-1865. There is no need to change this hyphenated legend to suggest two of the most important entries in the birthday book of American surgery; for William James Mayo made his initial demand upon medical science in 1861, and Charles Horace Mayo raised the Rochester birth-rate by one in 1865.

In time "the boys" came into town, attended school, and helped behind drug-store counters. There is no discoverable tradition in Rochester or elsewhere that plays them as youthful prodigies. They were sufficiently sons of their father, however, to acquire the conviction that he was about their measure of what a country doctor should be, and that there was nothing more worthy and worth while than being a good doctor, a capable "physician and surgeon."

Perhaps the biggest hunch that destiny gave to "Old Doctor" W. W. Mayo in helping to shape the future of his sons was his impulse to get a chance for more surgery practice than naturally drifted into his office. He persuaded the head of a Catholic order that Rochester was in the center of a great region

almost destitute of hospital facilities. The result of his persistence was the building in his home town of St. Mary's Hospital. All this happened when the Mayo boys were young. By the time they were entitled to practise, their father had made more than a local reputation as a surgeon in the hospital that owed its existence to him.

The surgery that the elder Mayo practised was as comprehensive as the ailments of a hardy pioneer community. When the sons were graduated and ready to begin their life-work in earnest, they were shrewd enough to see that here was an opportunity for them to get a remarkably wide contact with the field of surgical requirements. They joined their father in his work, and enrolled themselves in the ranks of the country doctors.

Now about what they have accomplished. The statement that two country doctors doing professional team-work have turned a remote prairie town of the Northwest into the largest surgical center in the world certainly calls for the support of definite details. Its bigness may be suggested by a statement, made to me by a man who should know, that the Mayo organization handled about fifty thousand cases last year. This represents the number of cases that came to them. Probably twenty-five per cent. of these called for surgical operations. An intimate friend of the management says:

"The clinic at Rochester takes care of forty or fifty operations a day. The Mayo brothers personally will not perform an average of more than twelve a day."

$1,000,000 Building Now Inadequate

ABOUT seventy doctors and surgeons are directly connected with this clinic. Among these are many of the most distinguished specialists in America. A few years ago the clinic building and its equipment cost a million dollars; now it is inadequate. There is little reason to doubt that the Mayo medical laboratories are the most complete in America. Their X-ray, microscopic, radium, photographic, and operating departments are marvels, in the eyes of the greatest surgeons in the world.

Probably several thousand physicians and surgeons, from every part of the globe, yearly attend the Mayo clinic. Many of them often remain for weeks at a time. Often a single day brings several hundred cases.

"The day I was there, a few weeks ago," said a visitor, "two hundred new cases were entered and thirty major operations were performed in the hospital proper, not to speak of the numerous minor ones attended to in the hotels, which accommodate about five hundred patients and are considered as the convalescent department of the hospital itself, which has about two hundred beds."

A celebrated laboratory scientist told me:

"As I sat there in the great waiting-room, with its pleasant array of palms, potted plants, and wicker chairs and tables, I counted a hundred and sixty-one patients. Only the new candidates are received in this great hall, which resembles a splendid hotel lobby. My count was made at seven-thirty in the morning."

All Information to the Profession— None to the Lay Public

THIS is enough to suggest the wholesale scale on which the business of surgical practice is carried on in the establishment of the foremost "country doctors" in America. By what means could two young country doctors build so immense a surgical practice?

The answer is so simple that it sounds like a platitude. By sheer ability, by uncompromising professional thoroughness, by the consistent following of an ethical policy so high and unassailable as to compel the respect and approval of the entire medical fraternity. At the outset of their hospital practice the Mayos determined that their only contact with the lay public must be at the point of the knife, so to speak, and that everything in the nature of publicity should be confined within the ranks of the profession. They early adopted the policy of making every case that came to them yield the maximum of surgical and scientific knowledge—first to themselves, and then to the profession in general. Here is where their professional thoroughness brought them rich results.

To-day, for example, the Mayos are known as great goiter specialists. How was this particular reputation obtained? The first case of the kind that came to them was studied with unsparing thoroughness. Its special features were made a matter of detailed and elaborate record. The operation was successful. This

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patient sent the Mayos two or three others suffering from the same affliction. These were studied and recorded with equal thoroughness. Shortly there appeared in a medical journal a paper on goiters that carried conviction to its professional readers. It left with them the impression that Charles Mayo, up in Rochester, Minnesota, certainly knew something about this peculiar form of physical malady. Months later another paper appeared from the same source, giving a still wider survey of the subject. It indicated that every case of this kind had been followed up to the fullest extent.

"Once a Mayo case, always a Mayo case"—in the sense that the scientific interest of these surgeons in a case stops only at the grave, no matter how long the patient may live. This is one method by which the Mayos have managed to learn so much in a short time, and to become leading specialists in numerous lines of surgical practice in a comparatively brief period of years.

The rigidity of the Mayo policy in refusing the lay press a line of information concerning themselves or their work, and at the same time withholding nothing from seekers within the medical profession, is one of the achievements that mark William Mayo as a master organizer, a remarkable executive. His genius for organization, for building men and methods into a working scheme of high efficiency, is so pronounced that it is safe to say that he would probably have made as capable a head for any of the great industrial corporations of this country as for the Mayo hospital. And still he is himself a wonderful surgeon.

The remarkable business system that this man has developed is built to serve a double purpose: First, to protect the high surgical skill of this great clinic from being dissipated upon details, and especially upon business details; to conserve every moment of time, every ounce of energy, at the command of its surgical staff for operations—and operations fitted to the professional capacity of each individual surgeon. Second, to deal out individual justice to each patient, and fix a fee that will fit the financial circumstances of each case.

Size of Fee Depends on the Patient's Circumstances

PERHAPS there is not another business institution in the country that has so accurate and searching a knowledge of the personal and financial circumstances of its "customers" as has the Mayo organization. In the words of one who knows the workings of this system: "There is

no more use attempting to 'put one over' on the Mayos than there is in trying to cheat death at the final show-down."

Expert questioners cross-examine every applying patient—whether multimillionaire or day laborer—with merciless thoroughness, and the answers secured are checked from various other sources that almost invariably reveal any attempt to mislead or conceal.

The motto over the door of the Mayo examination-room should read: "There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed." Another familiar and suitable legend for that room would be: "Let the punishment fit the crime."

That there is a consistent and unsparing effort made by the Mayo organization to make every charge strictly in accord with the personal circumstances of the patient might he illustrated by a score of incidents.

The cross-examination of a certain man whose wife was there for treatment developed the statement that he was earning two hundred dollars a month; that they had four children; that the wife had been ill for two years, and that it had taken all their savings to get to Rochester.

"But," he added, "I can borrow a little money to pay as much as a couple of hundred dollars. Will you operate for that?"

"No! We'll not operate for borrowed money."

"Then will I have to take my wife back?"

"No. You take care of your children. We'll take care of your wife. You don't need to pay us anything. We don't need that kind of money."

In another instance the "follow-up" investigation showed that a patient who had paid $150 for an operation was in an unexpected financial pinch and the way ahead looked dark for him. He was astonished to receive a check from the Mayos refunding the full fee.

A medical man tells me this incident:

"I went up there to have a certain operation performed. If I had paid for the plates used in the examination the bill for them would have been $80 and my whole bill as a layman would have come to fully $250. On the train, returning, I came in contact with a man whose case was almost an exact parallel to my own, and he had been charged only $15 for his operation and treatment. He was an evangelist receiving $1500 a year."

The Rule Cuts Both Ways

IT should be clearly understood that these cases are not cited to give or to warrant the impression that the Mayo brothers are conspicuous in their profession for the amount of charity work that they do. There are probably thousands of other country practitioners whose charity work represents a larger proportion of their entire practice. And certainly there is an equal army of city surgeons and doctors who give their services as unstintedly on a charity basis. These cases are given merely to emphasize the fact that these remarkable surgeons follow the accepted standard of their profession and make their charge fit the income of each patient.

There is a general understanding that, excepting when special circumstances come in for consideration, the bill for an operation of any importance is generally about ten per cent. of the patient's annual net income. This impression is not known to be authentic. One point, however, is certain: if a patient is entitled to treatment on a charity basis, he need have no fear of an inability to secure recognition of this fact from the Mayos.

On the other hand, the system works as effectively in the opposite direction. A certain multimillionaire took his daughter to Rochester in his private car for an operation. His first act, according to an informant who is worthy of belief, was to hand out his check for ten thousand dollars. Yet this did not save him from being put through the "information mill." As a result of that ordeal he was later informed that his bill was many times the amount of the check with which he was credited.

For a patient to attempt to secure surgical attention from the Mayos for a low fee when he is able to pay well or liberally is to incur a special penalty in the final price, according to members of the medical profession who know the facts.

"There is simply no such thing," declares a great hospital authority, "as deceiving the business end of this organization concerning a patient's financial affairs. It can't be done."

But the marvelous business ability that dominates this institution is most important to the public in the particular that it conserves for patients the full hundred per cent. benefit of the mechanical ability, the operating skill, of the great experts of the Mayo organization. Excepting for the physical contact in the operating-room, the surgeon has nothing whatever to do with the patient—who is brought in to him with a "history card" that tersely but fully diagrams his trouble as determined by the diagnosticians and other experts who have made the examinations. These histories are generally read by the surgeon designated on them the night preceding the operation—and perhaps again immediately before the patient appears on the operating-table. After the operation the patient is taken to the ward, bed, and nurse assigned by the medical department.

Future of the Mayo Organization

CONTRAST the efficiency of this system with the methods of the average hospital, where the operating physician not only makes the diagnosis and passes upon the business arrangements, but "fights it out with the family" as to the operation, and then has the care of the convalescent, to say nothing of handling the financial end of the transaction.

It would appear that the two country doctors who have created this astonishing surgical organization must be so dominating in their personalities that the Mayo institution could be described only as a "two-man concern." In this estimate the public is bound to be disappointed. The same genius that has built such a structure of efficiency has brought together an organization of experts wholly capable of perpetuating it. Provisions have already been made to the end of endowing it with three million dollars and passing it over to the University of Minnesota when the Mayos are through with it.

All this is told to indicate that a country doctor can travel quite a way if he has the stuff in him, and that a location in the tall grass is by no means a fatal handicap to professional success. It is an indorsement of neither medicine, surgery, nor the Mayo institution—at least, so far as the author is personally concerned.

A Jury of Her Peers

By SUSAN GLASPELL

Illustrations by Howard E. Smith

WHEN Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big woolen scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round her head her eye made a scandalized sweep of her kitchen. It was no ordinary thing that called her away—it was probably farther from ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County. But what her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for leaving: her bread all ready for mixing, half the flour sifted and half unsifted.

She hated to see things half done; but she had been at that when the team from town stopped to get Mr. Hale, and then the sheriff came running in to say his wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too—adding, with a grin, that he guessed she was getting scarey and wanted another woman along. So she had dropped everything right where it was.

"Martha!" now came her husband's impatient voice. "Don't keep folks waiting out here in the cold."

She again opened the storm-door, and this time joined the three men and the one woman waiting for her in the big two-seated buggy.

After she had the robes tucked around her she took another look at the woman who sat beside her on the back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the year before at the county fair, and the thing she remembered about her was that she didn't seem like a sheriff's wife. She was small and thin and didn't have a strong voice. Mrs. Gorman, sheriff's wife before Gorman went out and Peters came in, had a voice that somehow seemed to be backing up the law with every word. But if Mrs. Peters didn't look like a sheriff's wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff—a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs. Hale's mind, with a stab, that this man who was so pleasant and lively with all of them was going to the Wrights' now as a sheriff.

"The country's not very pleasant this time of year," Mrs. Peters at last ventured, as if she felt they ought to be talking as well as the men.

Mrs. Hale scarcely finished her reply, for they had gone up a little hill and could see the Wright place now, and seeing it did not make her feel like talking. It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were lonesome-looking trees. The men were looking at it and talking about what had happened. The county attorney was bending to one side of the buggy, and kept looking steadily at the place as they drew up to it.

"I'm glad you came with me," Mrs. Peters said nervously, as the two women were about to follow the men in through the kitchen door.

Even after she had her foot on the door-step, her hand on the knob, Martha Hale had a moment of feeling she could not cross that threshold. And the reason it seemed she couldn't cross it now was simply because she hadn't crossed it before. Time and time again it had been in her mind, "I ought to go over and see Minnie Foster"—she still thought of her as Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright. And then there was always something to do and Minnie Foster would go from her mind. But now she could come.

THE men went over to the stove. The women stood close together by the door. Young Henderson, the county attorney, turned around and said, "Come up to the fire, ladies."

Mrs. Peters took a step forward, then stopped. "I'm not—cold," she said. And so the two women stood by the door, at first not even so much as looking around the kitchen.

The men talked for a minute about what a good thing it was the sheriff had sent his deputy out that morning to

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make a fire for them, and then Sheriff Peters stepped back from the stove, unbuttoned his outer coat, and leaned his hands on the kitchen table in a way that seemed to mark the beginning of official business. "Now, Mr. Hale," he said in a sort of semi-official voice, "before we move things about, you tell Mr. Henderson just what it was you saw when you came here yesterday morning."

The county attorney was looking around the kitchen.

"By the way," he said, "has anything been moved?" He turned to the sheriff. "Are things just as you left them yesterday?"

Peters looked from cupboard to sink; from that to a small worn rocker a little to one side of the kitchen table.

"It's just the same."

"Somebody should have been left here yesterday," said the county attorney.

"Oh—yesterday," returned the sheriff, with a little gesture as of yesterday having been more than he could bear to think of. "When I had to send Frank to Morris Center for that man who went crazy—let me tell you, I had my hands full yesterday. I knew you could get back from Omaha by to-day, George, and as long as I went over everything here myself—"

"Well, Mr. Hale," said the county attorney, in a way of letting what was past and gone go, "tell just what happened when you came here yesterday morning."

MRS. HALE, still leaning against the door, had that sinking feeling of the mother whose child is about to speak a piece. Lewis often wandered along and got things mixed up in a story. She hoped he would tell this straight and plain, and not say unnecessary things that would just make things harder for Minnie Foster. He didn't begin at once, and she noticed that he looked queer—as if standing in that kitchen and having to tell what he had seen there yesterday morning made him almost sick.

"Yes, Mr. Hale?" the county attorney reminded.

"Harry and I had started to town with a load of potatoes," Mrs. Hale's husband began.

Harry was Mrs. Hale's oldest boy. He wasn't with them now, for the very good reason that those potatoes never got to town yesterday and he was taking them this morning, so he hadn't been home when the sheriff stopped to say he wanted Mr. Hale to come over to the Wright place and tell the county attorney his story there, where he could point it all out. With all Mrs. Hale's other emotions came the fear now that maybe Harry wasn't dressed warm enough—they hadn't any of them realized how that north wind did bite.

"We come along this road," Hale was going on, with a motion of his hand to the road over which they had just come, "and as we got in sight of the house I says to Harry, 'I'm goin' to see if I can't get John Wright to take a telephone.' You see," he explained to Henderson, "unless I can get somebody to go in with me they won't come out this branch road except for a price I can't pay. I'd spoke to Wright about it once before; but he put me off, saying folks talked too much anyway, and all he asked was peace and quiet—guess you know about how much he talked himself. But I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked about it before his wife, and said all the women-folks liked the telephones, and that in this lonesome stretch of road it would be a good thing—well, I said to Harry that that was what I was going to say—though I said at the same time that I didn't know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John—"

Now, there he was!—saying things he didn't need to say. Mrs. Hale tried to catch her husband's eye, but fortunately the county attorney interrupted with:

"Let's talk about that a little later, Mr. Hale. I do want to talk about that, but I'm anxious now to get along to just what happened when you got here."

When he began this time, it was very deliberately and carefully:

"I didn't see or hear anything. I knocked at the door. And still it was all quiet inside. I knew they must be up—

it was past eight o'clock. So I knocked again louder, and I thought I heard somebody say, 'Come in.' I wasn't sure—I'm not sure yet. But I opened the door—this door," jerking a hand toward the door by which the two women stood, "and there, in that rocker"—pointing to it—"sat Mrs. Wright."

EVERY one in the kitchen looked at the rocker. It came into Mrs. Hale's mind that that rocker didn't look in the least like Minnie Foster—the Minnie Foster of twenty years before. It was a dingy red, with wooden rings up the back, and the middle ring was gone, and the chair sagged to one side.

"How did she—look?" the county attorney was inquiring.

"Well," said Hale, "she looked—queer."

"How do you mean—queer?"

As he asked it he took out a note-book and pencil. Mrs. Hale did not like the sight of that pencil. She kept her eye fixed on her husband, as if to keep him from saying unnecessary things that would go into that note-book and make trouble.

Hale did speak guardedly, as if the pencil had affected him too.

"Well, as if she didn't know what she was going to do next. And kind of—done up."

"How did she seem to feel about your coming?"

"Why, I don't think she minded—one way or other. She didn't pay much attention. I said, 'Ho' do, Mrs. Wright. It's cold, ain't it?' And she said, 'Is it?'—and went on pleatin' at her apron.

"Well, I was surprised. She didn't ask me to come up to the stove, or to sit down, but just set there, not even lookin' at me. And so I said: 'I want to see John.'

"And then she—laughed. I guess you would call it a laugh.

"I thought of Harry and the team outside, so I said, a little sharp, 'Can I see John?' 'No,' says she—kind of dull like. 'Ain't he home?' says I. Then she looked at me. 'Yes,' says she, 'he's home.' 'Then why can't I see him?' I asked her, out of patience with her now. "Cause he's dead,' says she, just as quiet and dull—and fell to pleating her apron. 'Dead?' says I, like you do when you can't take in what you've heard.

"She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited, but rockin' back and forth.

"'Why—where is he?' says I, not knowing what to say.

"She just pointed upstairs—like this"—pointing to the room above.

"I got up, with the idea of going up there myself. By this time I—didn't know what to do. I walked from there to here; then I says: 'Why, what did he die of?'

"'He died of a rope round his neck,' says she; and just went on pleatin' at her apron."

HALE stopped speaking, and stood staring at the rocker, as if he were still seeing the woman who had sat there the morning before. Nobody spoke; it was as if every one were seeing the woman who had sat there the morning before.

"And what did you do then?" the county attorney at last broke the silence.

"I went out and called Harry. I thought I might—need help. I got Harry in, and we went upstairs." His voice fell almost to a whisper. "There he was—lying over the—"

"I think I'd rather have you go into that upstairs," the county attorney interrupted, "where you can point it all out. Just go on now with the rest of the story."

"Well, my first thought was to get that rope off. It looked—"

He stopped, his face twitching.

"But Harry, he went up to him, and he said, 'No, he's dead all right, and we'd better not touch anything.' So we went downstairs.

"She was still sitting that same way. 'Has anybody been notified?' I asked. 'No,' says she, unconcerned.

"'Who did this, Mrs. Wright?' said Harry. He said it businesslike, and she stopped pleating at her apron. 'I don't know,' she says. 'You don't know?' says Harry. 'Weren't you sleepin' in the bed with him?' 'Yes,' says she, 'but I was on the inside.' 'Somebody slipped a rope round his neck and strangled him, and you didn't wake up?' says Harry. 'I didn't wake up,' she said after him.

"We may have looked as if we didn't see how that could be, for after a minute she said, 'I sleep sound.'

"Harry was going to ask her more questions, but I said maybe that weren't our business; maybe we ought to let her tell her story first to the coroner or the sheriff. So Harry went fast as he could over to High Road—the Rivers' place, where there's a telephone."

"And what did she do when she knew you had gone for the coroner?" The sheriff got his pencil in his hand all ready for writing.

"She moved from that chair to this one over here"—Hale pointed to a small chair in the corner—"and just sat there with her hands held together and looking down. I got a feeling that I ought to make some conversation, so I said I had come in to see if John wanted to put in a telephone; and at that she started to laugh, and then she stopped and looked at me—scared."

At sound of a moving pencil the man who was telling the story looked up.

"I dunno—maybe it wasn't scared," he hastened; "I wouldn't like to say it was. Soon Harry got back, and then Dr. Lloyd came, and you, Mr. Peters, and so I guess that's all I know that you don't."

HE said that last with relief, and moved a little, as if relaxing. Every one moved a little. The county attorney walked toward the stair door.

"I guess we'll go upstairs first—then out to the barn and around there."

He paused and looked around the kitchen.

"You're convinced there was nothing important here?" he asked the sheriff. "Nothing that would—point to any motive?"

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The sheriff too looked all around, as if to re-convince himself.

"Nothing here but kitchen things," he said, with a little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things.

The county attorney was looking at the cupboard—a peculiar, ungainly structure, half closet and half cupboard, the upper part of it being built in the wall, and the lower part just the old-fashioned kitchen cupboard. As if its queerness attracted him, he got a chair and opened the upper part and looked in. After a moment he drew his hand away sticky.

"Here's a nice mess," he said resentfully.

The two women had drawn nearer, and now the sheriff's wife spoke.

"Oh—her fruit," she said, looking to Mrs. Hale for sympathetic understanding. She turned back to the county attorney and explained: "She worried about that when it turned so cold last night. She said the fire would go out and her jars might burst."

Mrs. Peters' husband broke into a laugh.

"Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder, and worrying about her preserves!"

The young attorney set his lips.

"I guess before we're through with her she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about."

"Oh, well," said Mrs. Hale's husband, with good-natured superiority, "women are used to worrying over trifles."

The two women moved a little closer together. Neither of them spoke. The county attorney seemed suddenly to remember his manners—and think of his future.

"And yet," said he, with the gallantry of a young politician, "for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?"

The women did not speak, did not unbend. He went to the sink and began washing his hands. He turned to wipe them on the roller towel—whirled it for a cleaner place.

"Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?"

He kicked his foot against some dirty pans under the sink.

"There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm," said Mrs. Hale stiffly.

"To be sure. And yet"—with a little bow to her—"I know there are some Dickson County farm-houses that do not have such roller towels." He gave it a pull to expose its full length again.

"Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands aren't always as clean as they might be."

"Ah, loyal to your sex, I see," he laughed. He stopped and gave her a keen look. "But you and Mrs. Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were friends, too."

Martha Hale shook her head.

"I've seen little enough of her of late years. I've not been in this house—it's more than a year."

"And why was that? You didn't like her?"

"I liked her well enough," she replied with spirit. "Farmers' wives have their hands full, Mr. Henderson. And then—" She looked around the kitchen.

"Yes?" he encouraged.

"It never seemed a very cheerful place," said she, more to herself than to him.

"No," he agreed; "I don't think any one would call it cheerful. I shouldn't say she had the home-making instinct."

"Well, I don't know as Wright had, either," she muttered.

"You mean they didn't get on very well?" he was quick to ask.

"No; I don't mean anything," she answered, with decision. As she turned a little away from him, she added: "But I don't think a place would be any the cheerfuler for John Wright's bein' in it."

"I'd like to talk to you about that a little later, Mrs. Hale," he said. "I'm anxious to get the lay of things upstairs now."

He moved toward the stair door, followed by the two men.

"I suppose anything Mrs. Peters does'll be all right?" the sheriff inquired. "She was to take in some clothes for her, you

know—and a few little things. We left in such a hurry yesterday."

The county attorney looked at the two women whom they were leaving alone there among the kitchen things.

"Yes—Mrs. Peters," he said, his glance resting on the woman who was not Mrs. Peters, the big farmer woman who stood behind the sheriff's wife. "Of course Mrs. Peters is one of us," he said, in a manner of intrusting responsibility. "And keep your eye out, Mrs. Peters, for anything that might be of use. No telling; you women might come upon a clue to the motive—and that's the thing we need."

Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a show man getting ready for a pleasantry.

"But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?" he said; and, having delivered himself of this, he followed the others through the stair door.

THE women stood motionless and silent, listening to the footsteps, first upon the stairs, then in the room above them.

Then, as if releasing herself from something strange, Mrs. Hale began to arrange the dirty pans under the sink, which the county attorney's disdainful push of the foot had deranged.

"I'd hate to have men coming into my kitchen," she said testily—"snoopin' round and criticizing."

"Of course it's no more than their duty," said the sheriff's wife, in her manner of timid acquiescence.

"Duty's all right," replied Mrs. Hale bluffly; "but I guess that deputy sheriff that come out to make the fire might have got a little of this on." She gave the roller towel a pull. "Wish I'd thought of that sooner! Seems mean to talk about her for not having things slicked up, when she had to come away in such a hurry."

She looked around the kitchen. Certainly it was not "slicked up." Her eye was held by a bucket of sugar on a low shelf. The cover was off the wooden bucket, and beside it was a paper bag—half full.

Mrs. Hale moved toward it.

"She was putting this in there," she said to herself—slowly.

She thought of the flour in her kitchen at home—half sifted, half not sifted. She had been interrupted, and had left things half done. What had interrupted Minnie Foster? Why had that work been left half done? She made a move as if to finish it,—unfinished things always bothered her,—and then she glanced around and saw that Mrs. Peters was watching her—and she didn't want Mrs. Peters to get that feeling she had got of work begun and then—for some reason—not finished.

"It's a shame about her fruit," she said, and walked toward the cupboard that the county attorney had opened, and got on the chair, murmuring: "I wonder if it's all gone."

It was a sorry enough looking sight, but "Here's one that's all right," she said at last. She held it toward the light. "This is cherries, too." She looked again. "I declare I believe that's the only one."

With a sigh, she got down from the chair, went to the sink, and wiped off the bottle.

"She'll feel awful bad, after all her hard work in the hot weather. I remember the afternoon I put up my cherries last summer."

She set the bottle on the table, and, with another sigh, started to sit down in the rocker. But she did not sit down. Something kept her from sitting down in that chair. She straightened—stepped back, and, half turned away, stood looking at it, seeing the woman who had sat there "pleatin' at her apron."

The thin voice of the sheriff's wife broke in upon her: "I must be getting those things from the front room closet." She opened the door into the other room, started in, stepped back. "You coming with me, Mrs. Hale?" she asked nervously. "You—you could help me get them."

They were soon back—the stark coldness of that shut-up room was not a thing to linger in.

"My!" said Mrs. Peters, dropping the things on the table and hurrying to the stove.

Mrs. Hale stood examining the clothes the woman who was being detained in town had said she wanted.

"Wright was close!" she exclaimed, holding up a shabby black skirt that bore the marks of much making over. "I think maybe that's why she kept so much to herself. I s'pose she felt she couldn't do her part; and then, you don't enjoy things when you feel shabby. She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively—when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls, singing in the choir. But that—oh, that was twenty years ago.

With a carefulness in which there was something tender, she folded the shabby clothes and piled them at one corner of the table. She looked up at Mrs. Peters, and there was something in the other woman's look that irritated her.

"She don't care," she said to herself. "Much difference it makes to her whether Minnie Foster had pretty clothes when she was a girl."

Then she looked again, and she wasn't so sure; in fact, she hadn't at any time been perfectly sure about Mrs. Peters. She had that shrinking manner, and yet her eyes looked as if they could see a long way into things.

"This all you was to take in?" asked Mrs. Hale.

"No," said the sheriff's wife; "she said she wanted an apron. Funny thing to want," she ventured in her nervous little way, "for there's not much to get you dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to make her feel more natural. If you're used to wearing an apron—She said they were in the bottom drawer of this cupboard. Yes—here they are. And then her little shawl that always hung on the stair door."

She took the small gray shawl from behind the door leading upstairs, and stood a minute looking at it.

SUDDENLY Mrs. Hale took a quick step toward the other woman.

"Mrs. Peters!"

"Yes, Mrs. Hale?"

"Do you think she—did it?"

A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs. Peters' eyes.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, in a voice that seemed to shrink away from the subject.

"Well, I don't think she did," affirmed Mrs. Hale stoutly. "Asking for an apron, and her little shawl. Worryin' about her fruit."

"Mr. Peters says—" Footsteps were heard in the room above; she stopped, looked up, then went on in a lowered voice: "Mr. Peters says—it looks bad for her. Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech, and he's going to make fun of her saying she didn't—wake up."

For a moment Mrs. Hale had no answer. Then, "Well, I guess John Wright didn't wake up—when they was slippin' that rope under his neck," she muttered.

"No, it's strange," breathed Mrs. Peters. "They think it was such a—funny way to kill a man."

She began to laugh; at sound of the laugh, abruptly stopped.

"That's just what Mr. Hale said," said Mrs. Hale, in a resolutely natural voice. "There was a gun in the house. He says that's what he can't understand."

"Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was needed for the case was a motive. Something to show anger—or sudden feeling."

"Well, I don't see any signs of anger around here," said Mrs. Hale. "I don't—"

She stopped. It was as if her mind tripped on something. Her eye was caught by a dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table. Slowly she moved toward the table. One half of it was wiped clean, the other half messy. Her eyes made a slow, almost unwilling turn to the bucket of sugar and the half empty bag beside it. Things begun—and not finished.

AFTER a moment she stepped back, and said, in that manner of releasing herself:

"Wonder how they're finding things upstairs? I hope she had it a little more red up up there. You know,"—she paused, and feeling gathered,—"it seems kind of sneaking, locking her up in town and coming out here to get her own house to turn against her!"

"But, Mrs. Hale," said the sheriff's wife, "the law is the law."

"I s'pose 'tis," answered Mrs. Hale shortly.

She turned to the stove, saying something about that fire not being much to brag of. She worked with it a minute, and when she straightened up she said aggressively:

"The law is the law—and a bad stove is a bad stove. How'd you like to cook on this?"—pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster trying to bake in that oven—and the thought of her never going over to see Minnie Foster—

She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: "A person gets discouraged—and loses heart."

The sheriff's wife had looked from the stove to the sink—to the pail of water which had been carried in from outside. The two women stood there silent, above them the footsteps of the men who were looking for evidence against the woman who had worked in that kitchen. That look of seeing into things, of seeing through a thing to something else, was in the eyes of the sheriff's wife now. When Mrs. Hale next spoke to her, it was gently:

"Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We'll not feel them when we go out."

Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang up the fur tippet she was wearing. A moment later she exclaimed, "Why, she was piecing a quilt;" and held up a large sewing basket piled high with quilt pieces.

Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks out on the table.

"It's log-cabin pattern," she said, putting several of them together. "Pretty, isn't it?"

They were so engaged with the quilt that they did not hear the footsteps on the stairs. Just as the stair door opened Mrs. Hale was saying:

"Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot it?"

The sheriff threw up his hands.

"They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or just knot it!"

There was a laugh for the ways of women, a warming of hands over the stove, and then the county attorney said briskly:

---

"Well, let's go right out to the barn and get that cleared up."

"I don't see as there's anything so strange," Mrs. Hale said resentfully, after the outside door had closed on the three men—"our taking up our time with little things while we're waiting for them to get the evidence. I don't see as it's anything to laugh about."

"Of course they've got awful important things on their minds," said the sheriff's wife apologetically.

They returned to an inspection of the blocks for the quilt. Mrs. Hale was looking at the fine, even sewing, and preoccupied with thoughts of the woman who had done that sewing, when she heard the sheriff's wife say, in a queer tone:

"Why, look at this one."

She turned to take the block held out to her.

"The sewing," said Mrs. Peters, in a troubled way. "All the rest of them have been so nice and even—but—this one. Why, it looks as if she didn't know what she was about!"

Their eyes met—something flashed to life, passed between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed to pull away from each other. A moment Mrs. Hale sat there, her hands folded over that sewing which was so unlike all the rest of the sewing. Then she had pulled a knot and drawn the threads.

"Oh, what are you doing, Mrs. Hale?" asked the sheriff's wife, startled.

"Just pulling out a stitch or two that's not sewed very good," said Mrs. Hale mildly.

"I don't think we ought to touch things," Mrs. Peters said, a little helplessly.

"I'll just finish up this end," answered Mrs. Hale, still in that mild, matter-of-fact fashion.

She threaded a needle and started to replace bad sewing with good. For a little while she sewed in silence. Then, in that thin, timid voice, she heard:

"Mrs. Hale!"

"Yes, Mrs. Peters?"

"What do you suppose she was so—nervous about?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Hale, as if dismissing a thing not important enough to spend much time on. "I don't know as she was—nervous. I sew awful queer sometimes when I'm just tired."

She cut a thread, and out of the corner of her eye looked up at Mrs. Peters. The small, lean face of the sheriff's wife seemed to have tightened up. Her eyes had that look of peering into something. But next moment she moved, and said in her thin, indecisive way:

"Well, I must get these clothes wrapped. They may be through sooner than we think. I wonder where I could find a piece of paper—and string."

"In that cupboard, maybe," suggested Mrs. Hale, after a glance around.

ONE piece of the crazy sewing remained unripped. Mrs. Peters' back turned, Martha Hale now scrutinized that piece, compared it with the dainty, accurate sewing of the other blocks. The difference was startling. Holding this block made her feel queer, as if the distracted thoughts of the woman who had perhaps turned to it to try and quiet herself were communicating themselves to her.

Mrs. Peters' voice roused her.

"Here's a bird-cage," she said. "Did she have a bird, Mrs. Hale?"

"Why, I don't know whether she did or not." She turned to look at the cage Mrs. Peter was holding up. "I've not been here in so long." She sighed. "There was a man round last year selling canaries cheap—but I don't know as she took one. Maybe she did. She used to sing real pretty herself."

Mrs. Peters looked around the kitchen.

"Seems kind of funny to think of a bird here." She half laughed—an attempt to put up a barrier. "But she must have had one—or why would she have a cage? I wonder what happened to it."

"I suppose maybe the cat got it," suggested Mrs. Hale, resuming her sewing.

"No; she didn't have a cat. She's got that feeling some people have about cats—being afraid of them. When they brought her to our house yesterday, my cat got in the room, and she was real upset and asked me to take it out."

"My sister Bessie was like that," laughed Mrs. Hale.

The sheriff's wife did not reply. The silence made Mrs. Hale turn round. Mrs. Peters was examining the bird-cage.

"Look at this door," she said slowly. "It's broke. One hinge has been pulled apart."

Mrs. Hale came nearer.

"Looks as if some one must have been—rough with it."

Again their eyes met—startling, questioning, apprehensive. For a moment neither spoke nor stirred. Then Mrs. Hale, turning away, said brusquely:

"If they're going to find any evidence, I wish they'd be about it. I don't like this place."

"But I'm awful glad you came with me, Mrs. Hale." Mrs. Peters put the bird-cage on the table and sat down. "It would be lonesome for me—sitting here alone."

"Yes, it would, wouldn't it?" agreed Mrs. Hale, a certain determined

naturalness in her voice. She had picked up the sewing, but now it dropped in her lap, and she murmured in a different voice: "But I tell you what I do wish, Mrs. Peters. I wish I had come over sometimes when she was here. I wish—I had."

"But of course you were awful busy, Mrs. Hale. Your house—and your children."

"I could've come," retorted Mrs. Hale shortly. "I stayed away because it weren't cheerful—and that's why I ought to have come. I"—she looked around—"I've never liked this place. Maybe because it's down in a hollow and you don't see the road. I don't know what it is, but it's a lonesome place, and always was. I wish I had come over to see Minnie Foster sometimes. I can see now—" She did not put it into words.

"Well, you mustn't reproach yourself," counseled Mrs. Peters. "Somehow, we just don't see how it is with other folks till—something comes up."

"Not having children makes less work," mused Mrs. Hale, after a silence, "but it makes a quiet house—and Wright out to work all day—and no company when he did come in. Did you know John Wright, Mrs. Peters?"

"Not to know him. I've seen him in town. They say he was a good man."

"Yes—good," conceded John Wright's neighbor grimly. "He didn't drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him—" She stopped, shivered a little. "Like a raw wind that gets to the bone." Her eye fell upon the cage on the table before her, and she added, almost bitterly: "I should think she would've wanted a bird!"

Suddenly she leaned forward, looking intently at the cage. "But what do you s'pose went wrong with it?"

"I don't know," returned Mrs. Peters; "unless it got sick and died."

But after she said it she reached over and swung the broken door. Both women watched it as if somehow held by it.

"You didn't know—her?" Mrs. Hale asked, a gentler note in her voice.

"Not till they brought her yesterday," said the sheriff's wife.

"She—come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself. Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—flutterly. How—she—did—change."

That held her for a long time. Finally,

Continued on page 21

"I HAVE NO TIME TO READ"

All Right—We'll Do Your Reading for You. $300 Worth of New Books and Magazines Are Read Every Week for These Two Pages

WILL IMMIGRATION DESTROY AMERICAN BEAUTY?

"I SCANNED 368 persons as they passed me in Union Square, New York, at the time when the garment makers of Fifth Avenue were returning to their homes," says Professor E. A. Ross in The Old World in the New (Century Company). "Only thirty-eight of these passers-by had the type of face one would find at a county fair in the West or South. There was much facial asymmetry. Among the women, beauty, aside from the fleeting bloom of girlhood, was quite lacking. In every face there was something wrong—lips thick, mouth coarse, upper lip too long, cheek-bones too high, chin poorly formed, the bridge of the nose hollowed, or the whole face prognathous.

"It is reasonable to expect an early falling off in the frequency of good looks in the American people. Even aside from the pouring in of the ill favored, the crossing of the heterogenous is bound to lessen good looks among us.

"Herbert Spencer said: 'When the varieties mingled diverge beyond a certain slight degree, the result is inevitably a bad one.' The human varieties now being collected in this country are too dissimilar to blend without producing a good many faces of a 'chaotic constitution.'"

WHAT YOU CAN HAVE FOR NOTHING

IF you expend a small amount of mental effort and twice the amount of will power, the high cost of living need not trouble you.

The Monthly Health Letter of the Life Extension Institute lists under things we can have for nothing:

It costs nothing to stand erect and breathe and walk properly.

It costs nothing to have fresh air in your home.

It costs nothing to do setting-up exercises every day.

It costs nothing to masticate one's food thoroughly: this insures better digestion, and less of the expensive, highly flavored food is consumed; money and health are saved.

It costs nothing to cleanse the teeth thoroughly after each meal. By so doing you may save not only dentists' bills, but surgeons' and doctors' bills.

It costs nothing to eat some crusty foods that give proper employment to the teeth and thus save dentists' bills.

It costs nothing to choose the kinds of foods that the body needs.

It costs nothing to keep out of your body substances, like alcohol, that are known to be injurious.

It costs nothing to adjust your diet so that the more expensive flesh foods are not taken in excess.

It costs nothing to avoid dosing yourself with patent medicines.

It costs nothing to avoid eating, between meals, candy and sweets that are liable to irritate the stomach and otherwise affect the digestion and metabolism.

It costs nothing to feed the mind with wholesome mental food, instead of trash or morbid literature that easily decomposes and poisons your whole life.

PUT YOUR FUR COLLAR ROUND YOUR ANKLE

EVERYBODY wants red cheeks, a good disposition, a clear and cheerful mind, and a good figure. Well, then, says Dr. William Lee Howard in Breathe and Be Well (Edward J. Clode), learn how to breathe. Fresh air expels the waste from the lungs, brings oxygen to the blood, and floods red corpuscles into every corner of the body to cleanse and rebuild.

The man who laughs heartily is unconsciously a taker of deep breaths.

"I knew Mark Twain personally; saw much of him when he was in his physical prime. When he laughed or even talked animatedly, you could see his big midriff heave and take in huge quantities of oxygen.

"Yet Mr. Clemens wasn't a large man. But his engine power was great, and enabled him to do a tremendous amount of work at an age when most men are commencing to let up."

Here are Dr. Howard's breathing directions:

"When you get outdoors, with head up and shoulders back, gradually commence to breathe deeply and slowly. Fill your lungs until you feel you'd 'bust,' and let them empty themselves without force. Then walk as many steps as possible without breathing. You'll find the deepest pit of your lungs gasping for many long draughts of fresh air. Do this until you feel that your collar-bone has been moving and the lower ribs make you feel that they are all there."

Do not wear tight neckwear, nor develop a tender white neck by swathing it in woolens. As for the girl or woman who must wear those high fur collars reaching to the eyes and muffling the nose—"put them around the ankle," says Dr. Howard. "Anyhow, they will be more noticeable there."

HOW TO WRITE FOR A NEWSPAPER

WHEN you begin to write for a newspaper, forget what you learned at college. Your English professor taught you to save the best for the last. Your copy-reader teaches you to put the best at the first.

The young reporter must remember that an essential requirement of the modern newspaper is that it be easy to read, says Grant Milnor Hyde in Newspaper Editing (D. Appleton & Company). He must throw his explanations into the middle and drag his emphatic phrases to the front. He must forget to write the kind of style that is most effective when read aloud, and learn to write the kind that is most effective when read silently and rapidly.

"Coming to the office with a thorough training in the writing of two-hundred-word themes, he must learn to write for a column two and one sixth inches wide. This means that the narrowness of the column makes his paragraphs look twice as long. As nothing is so uninviting to a newspaper reader as a long, heavy paragraph, he must learn to use short, compact ones.

"He must write concisely; to do this he must think concisely. He must question the value of every word. He must try to make one sentence do the work of two.

"He must use specific instead of general terms. Instead of saying, 'Many persons rushed to his aid,' he will interest the reader and be more likely to be believed if he states just how many.

"Interest demands more vivid expression," says the author. "How many verbs there are in English to express a man's manner of walking; and yet, how many reporters are satisfied with 'he crossed the street.' For almost every action in the world English has a verb, and the more of them a story contains the more interesting it will be."

THE CHILD SOLDIERS OF SERBIA

SERBIA is conquered now, but her peasant soldiers are the most relentless fighters in the world, writes Dr. Earl Bishop Downer in The Highway of Death (F. A. Davis Company). The Germans or English know by the science and art of war when they are defeated, but as long as a Serbian has a finger to pull a trigger with, he can't feel that the fight is over—he is not "counted out."

"One of the divisions of the Serbian army is the child bomb-throwers, ranging from twelve to fifteen years. These child heroes take their places in the first-line trenches with the Committadjii (troops of mountain brigands), their only weapons being hand grenades, which are strapped about the waist. When the enemy is near enough these grenades are hurled by the child soldiers into their midst.

"Near Shabatz, a small child barely five years old was playing innocently in the street in close proximity to a group of Austrian soldiers, who were standing idly holding conversation, when suddenly this child tossed one of those deadly missiles into their midst, with disastrous results. Several officers were killed.

"I have operated on and cared for several of these child heroes, and they bear their terrible pain from shrapnel wounds with bravery and stoicism—without the faintest whimper, and manfully suppressing tears."

THE MOST MISERABLE DAY OF HER LIFE

HAPPY is the bride the sun shines on" was not written of the Chinese bride. One day is as good as another, for "a Chinese girl's marriage-day is usually the most miserable in her life," says Mrs. Daly in her book, An Irish-woman in China (Frederick A. Stokes Company). "For days beforehand she has been in the hands of 'dressers,' who soaked her face in hot water, applied powder and rouge, dressed her hair elaborately, and early on the wedding morning arrayed her in heavy satin robes, richly embroidered, placing a heavy crown and tinsel veil upon her head.

"The bride can not partake of any food, she must fast all day long; every one is at liberty to tease her, examine her clothes, and generally test her temper. There is clashing of cymbals, playing, singing, and much talking. The poor child is quite worn out by the end of the day."

When to all this tiresome clamor is added the fact that the bride has never seen her husband, the picture is intolerable to the Occidental mind.

But a change of affairs is coming.

"Of late years," says Mrs. Daly, "a number of progressive young women formed a club, the members of which were pledged to commit suicide rather than marry a man of whom they knew nothing. About one hundred young women have actually fulfilled this pledge."

---

THE PERSONALITY OF HAROLD BELL WRIGHT

"BROWN as a berry, over six feet high, slim, erect, and with a gray eye as alert as an Apache's, Mr. Wright looks less like an author than any man of that class I ever have met."

So wrote Bailey Millard in the Bookman of Harold Bell Wright, painter, preacher, king of best sellers.

"He was born in Rome, New York, forty-four years ago. As a boy of fifteen he worked in a book-store in a Middle Western town, and for his salary had the privilege of reading as many books as he could lay his hands on. He read Buffalo Bill, Shakespeare, Browning, and Mrs. Southworth. Then he read Ruskin, and decided to be a great painter. With his brushes and tubes he went out into the Ozark Mountains and began to paint pictures.

"One night he went to a school-house to attend 'meetin'.' The minister failed to appear. Some of the congregation had come from long distances, and they did not want to go away without a little spiritual uplift of some kind. So one of the deacons sidled over to the young artist and said, 'You look like an eddicated man; will you preach to us?' Wright said that preaching was not exactly in his line, but that he would make a stab at it."

He preached all winter. He was his own janitor, and paid for the lights. Just as he was beginning to make a little money in a commercial way from his painting, he was offered a pastorate in Missouri at eight dollars a week. He took it. After a while he received a really good offer for his work as commercial artist, and another of a pastorate in Kansas. He took the pastorate. Then—he didn't know why—he began to write fiction.

Seven million copies of his novels have been sold. His last, When a Man's a Man, was written in the hospital where he was taken after an automobile had broken all his ribs.

THE MIND OF WOMAN

"ALMOST every man," says Mr. W. L. George in his Intelligence of Women (Little, Brown & Company), "believes in the mystery of woman. I do not. I do not believe that there is either a male or a female mystery; there is only the mystery of mankind."

It is true, admits Mr. George, that there are well marked differences between the male and the female intellect. But these differences are superficial and temporary: they will tend to vanish as the environment of woman changes.

For instance, women as a rule show themselves at a disadvantage in dealing with general ideas. But this is because for so long women have been discouraged from having any general ideas.

"The French king who said to his queen, 'Madame, we have taken you to give us children, and not to give us advice,' was blowing a chill breath upon the tender shoot of woman's intelligence. Neither he nor other men wished women to conceive general ideas, and so women became incapable of conceiving them or understanding them."

Women have for centuries been found illogical by the more reasonable sex. But man as well as woman, says Mr. George, is quite capable of saying that it always rains when the Republicans are in power, should he happen to be a Democrat.

"A singular and suggestive fact is that woman generally displays pitiless logic when she is dealing with things she knows well. An expert housekeeper is the type; there are no lapses in her argument with a tradesman.

"In 1450," says Mr. George, tracing the great increase in the intelligence of women, "she had no education at all. In this she was more like man than she ever was later, for then knights could not read, and learning existed only among priests. In those days women sang songs and brought up babies."

Two hundred and fifty years later the well-to-do woman had become somebody: she could even read, though she mainly read such tales as "The Miraculous Love of Prince Alzamore." Sometimes she took a bath.

Round about 1850 she turned into the perfect lady who kept an album bound in morocco leather, and wrote verses.

To-day it is another picture: woman in every trade; woman demanding and using political power; woman governing her own property.

"If the world is to be remolded," concludes Mr. George, "I think it much more likely to be remolded by woman than by man, simply because, as a sex, he is in power, and the people who are in power never want to alter anything."

WHAT TO AVOID IN FURNISHING A HOUSE

THE first requisite of a well decorated home is restfulness, according to Grace Wood and Emily Burbank in The Art of Interior Decoration (Dodd, Mead & Company).

Therefore, the first thing for the beginning decorator to learn is to spell good taste like this: harmony, simplicity, and space.

If you want your house to seem more like a home and less like a museum, here are some valuable rules:

A plain paper is the most effective background for pictures.

Avoid using on your walls articles primarily intended for other purposes.

The place for china is the dining-room. If dining-room and sitting-room connect by a wide opening, use the same color scheme in both, thus getting the effect of space.

Do not place rugs at strange angles.

Make your rooms alive by having your clocks running.

Don't forget that every room is a stage setting; so do not bestow a Louis XVI bedroom on your cave-man husband.

"If you would have your rooms interesting as well as beautiful," say these authors, "make them say something. Before you buy anything, try to imagine how you want each room to look when completed. Get the picture well in your mind, as a painter would. Think out the main features, and the details will adjust themselves."

NOTHING DISCOURAGED THIS MAN

WHEN Honoré Balzac was only a struggling young man, he had to prove to his doubting parents that he would some day be Honoré de Balzac, the famous French novelist. They had given him two years in Paris, at $300 a year, in which to show that he was the genius he thought he was. How he proved it is described by Albert Keim and Louis Lumet in their book on Balzac (Frederick A. Stokes Company), translated from the French by Frederic Taber Cooper.

At the end of the two years Balzac went home triumphantly carrying his tragedy, "Cromwell," which was to prove his right to a literary career. He had asked his parents to invite in some friends to witness his triumph; but his father, and particularly his mother, were wary, and invited very few. This was fortunate.

As he solemnly began the reading, coldness and consternation grew on the faces about him. At the close, one of the friends told him bluntly how poor was his work, and the others all agreed that he could not write.

Balzac declined to accept their judgment, and begged his father to submit the work to a certain dean of literature. "After a conscientious reading," said his sister, "the good old man declared that the author of 'Cromwell' had better follow any other career in the world than that of literature."

But Balzac never lost faith in himself. No one ever knew how he got the money, but he slipped back to Paris, hired a room, and wrote his first novel. When it was published he suggested to his sister that she should recommend it as a masterpiece to the ladies of Bayeux, but asked her not to lend the sample copy he would send her, lest it hurt the sales of the book.

Novel after novel he wrote during the rest of his life at a rate that would have exhausted any other writer. In order to keep up his tremendous pace, he indulged in a continuous orgy of coffee.

"He had a big alarm clock," wrote a friend whom he often visited while writing, "for he slept very well and very soundly, and he set the alarm for two o'clock in the morning. Then he prepared himself some coffee over a spirit lamp, together with several slices of toasted bread; and then started in to write in bed, making use of a desk so constructed that he could freely draw up his knees beneath it. He continued to write in this manner until five o'clock in the evening, taking no other nourishment than his coffee and slices of toasted bread.

"At five o'clock he arose, dressed for dinner, and remained with his hosts in the drawing-room until ten o'clock, the hour at which he withdrew to go to bed. And he never in the least modified this settled routine."

The coffee, which after twenty years naturally had a disastrous effect on his health, he selected and prepared himself.

"At last I have discovered a horrible and cruel method," he wrote, "which I recommend only to men of excessive vigor, with coarse black hair, a skin of mingled ochre and vermilion, squarish hands, and legs like balustrades. It consists in the employment of a decoction of ground coffee taken cold with little or no water on an empty stomach. This coffee falls into your stomach, which is a sack with a velvety interior, lined with little pores and papillæ; it finds nothing else, so it attacks this delicate and voluptuous lining; it maltreats those delicate walls as a truck-man maltreats a pair of young horses; the plexus nerves inflame, they burn and send their flashes to the brain. Thereupon everything leaps into action; thoughts and ideas rush pell-pell over one another like battalions of the grand army on the field of battle; recollections arrive in a headlong charge; the artillery of logic hurries up; flashes of wit arrive like so many sharpshooters; and the action develops."

DOES YOUR BOY STEAL?

WHEN you miss a quarter from your pocket-book and find it afterward in the pocket of your eight-year-old youngster—when he comes home some afternoon munching candy which he has taken from the corner drug-store—it is not proof that he is morally defective. He may have acted under a "compulsion or obsession" whose roots run back into his very early infancy. What he needs, as William Healy points out in his book, Honesty (Bobbs-Merrill), is probably an examination by a trained psychologist.

"I remember one boy who has made a fine stand against his stealing impulsions," says Mr. Healy. "Worst of all for him to conquer was the temptation to take money from unprotected news-stands. During some moments of high emotional excitement with other boys he had been shown the possibilities of stealing in this way. From that time on he found it difficult to pass a stand where pennies were lying. He never premeditated any such thefts. It never occurred to him until he was there on the spot and saw the money. The few times he gave in he felt deep chagrin afterward and wanted to go back and replace what he had taken."

What was the treatment for this case? Unfortunately, only the time-honored methods of "pleading, scolding, and punishment. If pennies on news-stands were the hindrance to this boy's salvation, could not this have been overcome if he had had a little stand of his own? To modify the underlying phases of mental life by creating new experiences is the main thing.

"Often the child who takes small amounts in the home may not do so if he has a small allowance of his own. I have been much struck at times by the amount of trouble and expense a family may go to in making complaint to a juvenile court of a child's stealing little sums at home, when it never occurred to them that half the amount they expended might prevent the child from thieving for a long period."

What Happens When Armies Retreat

By WILLIAM G. SHEPHERD

"'TAIN'T no disgrace to run when you are scared," is a sentiment, expressed by one of our famous colored songsters, that found a considerable and affirmative response around parlor pianos some years ago.

But to run and not be scared—there's an achievement that has taxed the most brilliant generals in the war in Europe. It is only by personally influencing his own troops that a general can keep them from being frightened in a retreat. No general can logically say to his soldiers:

"You fellows will have to run, but don't get excited; there's no danger." They will believe either one of these statements made singly, but the two do not go together.

I have been in the ruck of four retreats in the Great War. It happens that two of them which partook of the nature of routs were Austrian, while the two which were more orderly were accomplished by Ally forces.

In the Austrian retreats, the generals waited too long; they permitted the danger to become so apparent that the stupidest soldier in the army could not be persuaded that it was not time for him to get away from where he was. In the Ally retreats I mingled with soldiers who either did not know they were retreating, or who objected to being called away from their guns and trenches, not recognizing danger in the death that confronted them.

Every soldier, every railroad man, every artilleryman, every wagon-driver in the great retreat of the Austrians from Przemysl in November of 1914 knew that the time had come for him to get himself away from Przemysl if he could. Commander-in-chief von Hertzendorf was unable to keep the danger a secret. It was necessary for him, before giving the word to retreat, to remove as many as he could of his sick and wounded from the threatened town. For a week before the retreat wounded soldiers were sent out of the city afoot to find their way, as best they could, through the Carpathian passes back to the town of Sanok, fifty miles away.

I saw these bandaged, suffering hundreds climbing and slipping in the wet red clay, taking days to accomplish a journey that might have been done in two hours on the railroad. The roadside shrines—little wooden crosses bearing crude figures of the Christ—attracted them as does a lighted window a benighted traveler, and some of them who dragged themselves to these outdoor altars stretched out there and died in the mud. Soldiers who were well and strong saw these things.

When Soldiers Retreat in Fear

IT is terrifying to a soldier to learn that as soon as he is sick or wounded he will be discarded and turned out in the open to care for himself or to die like an animal. The Austrian soldiers figured that von Hertzendorf would not permit wounded soldiers to be treated in this way if he could avoid it. They estimated that he was choosing the lesser evil in sending them out of Przemysl. And if this cavalcade of misery were the lesser evil, what might be the greater? Surely it must be something to be afraid of.

I saw the Crown Prince of Austria, now the Emperor, come into Przemysl one Saturday in an automobile that skidded dangerously over the wet, mud-

covered cobble-stones of the neglected streets. At seven o'clock the next morning he attended a mass said for the men who had been selected to remain in Przemysl after the Russians had surrounded it. Incidentally, four months later the Russians captured 140,000 of the men who had been the subjects of those prayers. That mass put the finishing touches on the alarm that was spreading through the Austrian forces.

"When are we going?" "When do we got out of here?" "How long is this general going to keep us here?" "The Russians must be getting nearer; their guns are louder to-day." "The Cossacks are with the Russians." We heard such remarks on all sides.

When the order to retreat came the next day, it was a frightened army that set out unctuously to obey it. "Retire," said the general; and retire we did, though not very rapidly. Even the railroad seemed paralyzed with fear; trains moved, cow-catcher to caboose, five minutes at a stretch, and then halted for an hour in a wholesale blockade. We traveled nineteen miles in the first twelve hours. On the wagon road, alongside of the railway line, thousands of wagons moved, with the drivers shouting and beating their tired horses. All order and system broke down.

Before the rout was over, so the coffee-house stories in Vienna had it, two train-loads of wounded men, shunted on a side track, were forgotten and died without care. Men perished along the road of exhaustion.

The second retreat was the departure of the Austrians from Serbia a month later. Again von Hertzendorf waited too long. His army of Serbian invasion, with an impetus which he did not try to check, was forcing back the Serbians, who seemed to make no resistance. I went along in this forward Austrian rush, riding in a springless, seatless wagon, sleeping in school-houses or whatever other building afforded shelter, sharing the belief of the soldiers around me that Serbia had been overwhelmed and her army dispersed. But the Serbians reached the mountains, where they got new ammunition and a new toe-hold. It was too late, again, for von Hertzendorf to try to persuade the troops that there was no cause for fear. Hatless, gunless, waterless, foodless, the Austrian soldiers, each man for himself, found their way back to the Save River and crossed to the shelter of Hungary. Since these two retreats the German-Austrian forces have, of course, regained all the ground, and more, that was lost on those two occasions.

A year later, on a hill in Bulgaria, near the town of Kostorino, a French soldier, of the army of General Sarrail, stopped me as I walked along a mountain road, and said:

"Pardon me, monsieur, but it is so long since I have seen any man in the comfortable clothes of a civilian that I feel I must speak to you."

I have always insisted that a war correspondent can make more friends in a golf costume than in a war correspondent's garb.

"Mon Dieu! Are you a tourist?" This from another soldier.

"Don't be a fool. He must be a correspondant de guerre." This from a third.

They invited me to their dugout on the mountain side, gave me a hot drink consisting of nineteen parts rum and one part tea, and then started to pump me.

"We go from here to-morrow. Have you heard that news back in Salonica?"

I had not.

"I hear that we are to be taken to Egypt to fight along the Suez Canal. Egypt is beautiful in the winter."

I had heard no such rumor.

"Well, then, have you heard at headquarters that we are to be moved at all?"

No, I hadn't.

"Well, we are sure we are going some place away from here. All the soldiers are talking about it."

Didn't Know They Were Running Away

THESE men were under a good general. The next day they were to retreat toward Greece: they were going to run and not be scared. Thirty thousand of them were going to fall back ninety miles without a flutter of fear, though outnumbered six to one. In their retreat from Serbia I sat with these Frenchmen at their camp-fires and in their tents, talking with them, playing poker; but never once did I hear a private soldier mention the idea of retreat.

"I made one error in that retreat," General Sarrail told us, after his troops had safely reached Greek soil. "Near Krivolak I permitted a large store of supplies to accumulate within six hundred meters of the enemy, and I lost twenty men who tried to save them. Otherwise I am satisfied with the results."

The fourth retreat was that of Colonel Vassich, the defender of Monastir, and the last Serbian commander to leave the soil of his native land. It was the blind faith of the Serbians in Colonel Vassich, and their unreasoning obedience, that made their retreat from the southwestern corner of Serbia an orderly one.

"Here is where we make our last stand," Colonel Vassich explained to three American correspondents whom he took to the front two days before his retreat. We saw that a trench which ran along the face of a hill skirted a small stone monument, in such a way that the monument itself, a queer piece of carving standing solitary in the bleak Macedonian countryside, formed a shelter for several of the small band of Serbians whom the Colonel had selected to hold off the Bulgar rush.

"This monument, you see, marks the spot where two thousand Serbians were killed or wounded when my troops took the city of Monastir from the Turks in the last Balkan war three years ago. If a Serbian wouldn't be willing to die fighting with that monument in view, there wouldn't be a drop of fighting blood in his body," added the Colonel.

They were mostly middle-aged men in the trench. They kept their eyes fixed on the six-mile valley that spread between them and Prilepe.

"Don't let them come too fast," Colonel Vassieh told them, as he went along the trench. "The best Bulgarian cavalry will come across that valley. Think, my children, of being able to stand off the Fourth Cavalry."

He was referring to Prince Cyril's own regiment, every man of which is said to be as handsome as as hero in "Graustark."

"I am depending upon you to hold them," were his parting words.

Some promised verbally to do it; others smiled cheerfully; one old man patted his rifle.

We passed down behind the hill, and sat on the ground to eat. During the meal a band of soldiers came with a dozen oxen, hitched them to a three-inch gun that stood in a field near by, dragged it from its cellar-like hiding place, and moved into the roadway, a leisurely and grotesque cavalcade. It was all part of the retreat, the moving of this gun; but it was done as deliberately as a house-moving. For miles along the range of hills that formed Colonel Vassich's line the same activity was under way; but no one was frightened. There was something in the personality of this thin, pale commander—he was ill, and was wrapped in a blanket and a huge muffler than seemed to suggest to the minds of his soldiers the nobility of death itself.

They Died for Their Army

WHEN the time came to run, two days later, the line of middle-aged men in the trench beside the monument, did not fall backward; it fell instead, after a time, earthward—wiped out by the Bulgarian fire. And the remainder of Colonel Vassich's army, knowing that the front line would fight to the finish, moved to safety, without panic, while the men on the hillside were dying.

In reality, there are only three kinds of retreats, and I have described them all. One is the retreat in which the men see the danger and run in panic; another is the retreat in which the men do not see the danger, but move blindly, under orders; and the third—the Serbian kind—is the retreat in which men, seeing the danger, but trusting their commander, turn backward with as much coolness as they might, in going forward, turn to the right or the left to avoid an obstacle. Only the great leaders can conduct a retreat like that.

SECOND-STORY WORKERS

HAVE YOU NAMED ANY OF YOUR CHILDREN AFTER US?

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PEOPLE WHO DON'T MIND THE WEATHER

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

TUGS THAT PUNCH THE TIME-CLOCK

IF you had ten thousand horses working on odd jobs, you would want to be sure that they did not spend most of their time eating oats in the stable. Yet, until a large railway system installed its new system of telephone despatching, the tug department of the company spent money freely to feed idle tugs that in power represent

more than ten thousand horses.

Telephones on these boats are now saving the company about five hundred dollars a day.

This road, like most systems running into the port of New York, maintains a number of tugs, steam lighters, and barges to transfer freight between New Jersey, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. Each tug is approximately one thousand horse-power, and costs about ten dollars an hour to operate.

Under old methods, when a boat finished a job of towing it was often ten miles from its next job, and three or four miles from a telephone booth from which the captain could communicate with the railway offices. By installing telephones in the pilot-houses of each company vessel and plugs at each company dock and at other vantage points in Manhattan and surroundings, a tremendous waste has been done away with.

With the new system, when a tug finishes a job the captain steams immediately to the nearest plug, according to his telephone map. As soon as the boat is warped to the dock a man springs ashore with a flexible cable and makes the connection at the "jack" on the end of the pier. The captain may then call his despatcher from the pilot house, and the latter, in his office at St. George, Staten Island, is able to give him first-hand orders.

All railroad tugs work twenty-four hours a day, and, with the exception of those of the Baltimore & Ohio, all of them waste a large amount of time getting orders. Why the telephone engineers and the railroad men have not installed the telephone despatching system before is one of the little wonders of commerce, now that it has been done. The Lehigh Valley is following on the heels of the first to instal the system, and other carriers are making plans to do the same thing.

FREAK ROOTS FOR SHIPS

THE shipbuilding business in Canada is booming. German merchant fleets helpless in locked harbors, the ravages of the submarine, and the accelerated demand for ocean freight carriers are responsible.

The majority are wooden vessels built

of British Columbia timber, and will enter the lumber-carrying trade. In the construction of these ships, huge angle-brackets of wood were necessary to support the main decks. In order to be of sufficient strength the wood must be used in a single piece.

Unfortunately, trees do not grow at right angles. It was found, however, that some of the giant trees had roots at right angles that would suffice. Timber cruisers spent months unearthing these in sufficient number.

SALT FOR WOUNDS

CONSIDERABLE interest has been aroused by the successful treatment of one hundred and ten men wounded in the battle of Jutland by salt solutions in preference to the usual antiseptic dressings.

Some months ago, says Chamber's Journal, Sir Almroth Wright created a sensation in medical circles by announcing that far better results were obtainable by the use of weak solutions of salt for washing and sterilizing wounds than by the use of antiseptic dressings.

The method is simple. A gauze wick is threaded through the wound, and a warm solution of salt falls upon the wick from a small glass tube connected to a suitable reservoir, such as a vacuum bottle. In its passage through the wick the solution washes or irrigates the wound, carrying away all poisonous matter, and discharging into a suitable receptacle.

It is interesting to note that this practice is a modern adaptation of a treatment that has obtained in rural districts since time immemorial. The treatment is painful but usually effective. An ugly gash is dressed with crude salt rubbed well into the wound, while slight injuries, such as those induced by splinters and rusty nails, are dressed with bread soaked in either hot or cold water to which a quantity of salt has been added, the poultice being renewed when the dressing begins to dry. The salt acts as both a sterilizing and a healing agent, and is usually quite efficacious.

The Other Brown

By ADELE LUEHRMANN

Illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock

WHEN her visitor had gone, Alba lingered in the drawing-room. Sympathetic and considerate as her hostess was, she did not want to see her, or any one, just yet. She felt unnerved, uncertain. She needed a little time to accustom herself to her new outlook. All the morning she had been telling herself that either Eric Brown was not in New York, or, if he were, would at once prove his innocence. But now—

Where was he? Why could he not speak out and clear himself of the terrible suspicion that had fallen upon him? Why could he not come to her himself? Why must he send a stranger?

These questions she thrust from her mind again and again. She must not question anything. She believed in him. At the right time he would come forward. That was what his friend had said. And was she to have less faith, less patience, than a friend?

At last she went upstairs. Since she was to tell the police what she knew of Eric Brown, she must first tell the señora.

"Señora!" she called softly. "Señora!"

AT once a door was opened, and Bianca Gil appeared, hurrying forward. "Will you come into my room again?" Alba asked. "I want to tell you about the young man who was here. Oh, I want to tell you, really," she added, as Bianca paused uncertainly. "Please come in."

And when they were seated in the cheerful guest-room, she began at once:

"I don't know the name of the young man who was here—he didn't tell me. But it doesn't matter about him. He only came to bring me a message from Señor Brown."

At the name, Mrs. Gil gave a start, and stared blankly, as if she doubted whether she had understood.

"You're surprised," said Alba. "But, of course, you didn't hear about last night—about the police questioning me."

"No—I have heard nothing," said Bianca. "I had no idea that you knew this young man."

"Yes, I know him—I know him very well." A faint flush rose to the girl's cheeks. "That is—I haven't known him long," she corrected herself, the color deepening in her face. "But," she ended simply, "we love each other."

"Oh! Oh, my dear child!"

BIANCA leaned forward, half starting from her seat, her quick, expressive hands outstretched as if to snatch the young creature before her from the suffering her avowal portended. Then she sank back again with a helpless gesture. "Oh, my dear—my dear!"

"Of course I know how it must seem to you," said Alba, with quiet earnestness. "But if you knew him you would know that he is innocent of my step-father's murder. Last night, when I refused to answer the questions that were asked me about him, it was not because of any doubt of him—I realize now that it may have looked that way. But I was afraid they might arrest him on suspicion, and keep him in jail for months and months, as they do often. And I couldn't bear the thought of that."

"I see," said Bianca, who during the girl's calm recital had recovered her own composure. "And he sent you a message?"

"Yes; by a friend. He had heard about last night, and sent word that it was not necessary for me to shield him any longer, that everything would be all right."

"And where is he now?"

"I—don't know. Oh, señora, I realize how it looks!" the young voice cried in sudden distress. "But he will explain soon. He will clear himself of this terrible suspicion. I'm sure of it! But he can't now. There's some reason. I don't know what it is. But there's something in his life—some secret—" She broke off and, rising, moved away, her hands tightly clasped in a sudden access of emotion. "It's that. I know it's that," she repeated, as if arguing with herself. "The same thing that is keeping us apart."

The older woman stood up, took a step or two, then paused. The astonished, wondering look that her guest's words had called into her face gave way to one of concern. The girl's back was toward her, and she felt that to advance now might be an intrusion. She had the feeling that her own presence was forgotten. At last she sat down again and waited.

"Where did you meet him, dear?" she asked gently, when she saw the girl turning back to her.

"In Mexico—just a little while ago," the reply came quickly. "I'd like to tell you about it. I know you would understand then what he is—how brave he is. That he isn't a murderer. That he couldn't be!"

She moved forward a little, eagerly. "I'd like to tell you about it, " she repeated.

"Of course; I'd like to hear."

Bianca extended an inviting hand toward the seat beside her, and Alba sank into it gratefully.

"Oh, señora," she cried, seizing her companion's hand. And then for a time she said nothing more—just held the

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warm hands tightly, as if feeling that some of her own faith in the man she loved must pass thus to her friend.

"You met in Mexico City?" the señora prompted finally.

Alba shook her head. No, at the O'Hara rancho, she said. She and Dolores O'Hara had been together at Santa Ysobel's. Dolores was ill, and Alba had gone to stay with her a few days before leaving for New York. In that section, near Arrazas, there had been no trouble with bandits, and Dolores and her mother had not been afraid to be alone with the children and the peons. But that night a rumor came that some Zapatistas were in the neighborhood. The peons deserted. The telephone wires were cut, they could not call for help. And they were women—foreign women. They could only pray. . . .

"Then he came."

She spoke the words with a quick intake of breath, as if that arrival had been a miraculous event; and her eyes looked as Elsa's might have when the swan-boat appeared.

HE had been at Arrazas, and, hearing that they were women alone, had come to guard them until the aid he had sent for should arrive. But they must find a better shelter than the ranch-house. They had fled to the hills, to a narrow, rocky passage into which only two men at a time could enter. But, with Dolores sick and the children to carry, they had been slow. Their crawling figures were seen.

"For hours and hours we crouched there. Little Tony O'Hara and I loaded the rifles we had brought. And he shot down the men as they tried to reach us."

There was no mistaking, in her utterance of the pronoun, who was meant. And it was always so that she designated him—as if he had been a wonder-knight without a name. And, indeed, it was not until later that she had learned his name. It was after their besiegers had withdrawn at the approach of the Constitutional troopers sent to their rescue. They heard the hot exchange of bullets from the valley below, where the rancho lay, and then the hoof-beats of the bandit horses growing fainter and fainter. He had ventured from cover then, and she had followed; and for a little while they had been alone together.

"The moon was shining," said the girl softly; and then nothing more. But to her friendly listener nothing else was needed. It had been a night of romance such as can happen only in times of danger. And on the young, fresh mind had been impressed an image of heroism and gallantry that could hardly in a life-time be obliterated. Any view of her lover discordant with her own could simply have no reality for her. Understanding that, the older woman's heart ached.

"Then," said the girl, as if she had put into words what had gone before, "he asked: 'What is your name? Mine is Eric Brown.'"

"'I am Alba Yznaga,' I answered.

"'Yznaga!' He said it just like that, señora! And he dropped my hands—and stared at me—as if what I had said was impossible—horrible. And then—then—"

Bianca Gil leaned forward.

"Yes? Go on," she said.

"Then little Tony and his mother came out, and—we were not alone again—until next day in Mexico City—in the Alameda. He wrote to me asking me to meet him there."

"Yes?" said the señora again.

"He told me that he loved me, but—could not marry me. There was something in his life that made it impossible for him to marry now—or ever, perhaps. But he would love me always. And he said he was coming to New York too, and that perhaps we could see each other sometimes, like that, in a park; but that he could never, never come to my home."

"Why?"

"I don't know—I don't know!" Her voice broke. "And now this terrible thing has come to us!"

She covered her face and sat in dumb misery. For a time Bianca Gil watched her silently. At last, she said:

"Didn't he tell you anything about himself—about his family?"

Alba shook her bowed head.

"Do you know whether he has a—brother?"

"No, señora, I don't know anything about him," said the girl sadly. "But I know what he is!" she exclaimed, looking up. "Don't you understand now that he couldn't be a mur—"

THE question was cut short by a tap on the door. The señora rose quickly, as if glad of the interruption. It was the maid, come to announce Dr. Tierney.

"Go down, my dear—I will come in a few minutes," said Bianca.

"But, Alba!" the doctor reproached her affectionately. "To leave the convent without consulting me!"

"But with Señora Gil!" protested the girl. "I've known her since I was a child.

"Is that so?" said Dr. Tierney, reassured. "Who is she?"

"Her husband is a lawyer, a Mexican. But she used to be father's secretary, and we were great friends when I was little. She has been wonderful to me—I can't tell you! But how is Naña? Have you seen her this morning?"

The doctor nodded.

"She is not so well as I expected," he said. "Your father's death gave her a very serious shock. But that is natural, I suppose. That Inspector—what's his name? Cooley—was there this morning, trying to see her. Of course I did not permit it, but—"

He looked sharply at the girl.

"The Inspector thinks Naña knows this man Brown and—"

"Naña! She has never even seen him!"

Alba straightened herself in her chair. She knew what was coming, and she was ready. Last night the doctor had asked no questions because of her great excitement; but she knew that he meant to ask them now. And she knew exactly how she would answer them. To the señora she had given her full confidence, shown all her heart; but she would do that with no one else. Dr. Tierney was a dear, but he was a man. And as for that Inspector!

She told her story then, the same she had told Mrs. Gil, but with a difference. It ended, for one thing, at just the point where her other listener had begun to find it most interesting. And there was no moon in it and no mystery.

"And you can't believe, doctor dear," she challenged in conclusion, "that that man is a murderer!"

Dr. Tierney did not reply at once. His shrewd eyes were watching. He could see well enough without a moon.

"And when did you see him next?" he inquired, as if it were the most obvious question.

"I have never seen him since."

She said it without the flutter of an eyelash. She had planned to say it; to say anything else would have led she could not tell where.

"Oh," murmured the doctor, with an unconscious sigh of relief.

IT was not so had as he had feared, then. Yet it was natural that such a spectacular performance should have caught a young girl's interest. She could hardly know that some of the greatest scoundrels of history had been romantic dare-devils. But, before he had time to drop a hint to this effect as an antidote for any lurking poison in her mind, Bianca Gil appeared, and the words on his lips gave place to a greeting and thanks for her kindness to their young friend.

The talk shifted then to Mexico. He had heard from Alba, he said, that Mrs. Gil had formerly lived there. He too had spent a few years there,—in Mexico City,—but that was long ago, and he had never since been back. Oh, yes, in some respects he had liked Mexico—life there had its charm. But, on the whole, he had been glad to leave and come to New York, to a wider field of opportunity. Had Mrs. Gil been long in New York? Some years? Indeed!

And, as his nimble tongue ran on, his

---

eyes, shifting now and then to include Alba in the talk, or darting here and there about the room, came back always with a puzzled, searching scrutiny to Bianca Gil. Where had he seen her before—this slender, graceful, charming woman with the pale, delicate face? Twice he half rose from his chair to leave; but curiosity had him in its grip, and each time he subsided.

In the end he surrendered completely.

"Dear lady," he said abruptly, "where have we met before?"

There was a moment of hesitation before she answered him. Then her dark eyes widened slightly, and she asked with a faint note of surprise:

"Have we met?"

"We have," he returned, smiling. "What was your maiden name?"

"Bianca Grassi."

"Grassi!" He gave her a sharp look as he echoed the word. "Was your mother American? Had she a boarding-house in Mexico City?"

"Why—yes! Perhaps it was there you saw me," she answered; but this time her surprise struck him as not quite spontaneous.

"Perhaps," he assented. "But that was twenty years ago—and more." He paused, appraising the slim figure and smooth brow. You couldn't have been much more than a child then," he said.

She smiled slightly in deprecation of the compliment.

"Twenty years ago I was seventeen," she replied frankly.

"Not really!" said Tierney. And after a moment: "I think I heard that your mother died."

She nodded.

"When I was twenty. I gave up the house then. I couldn't run it, a young girl alone. It was just after that that I went to Mr. Welles-Hewitt as his secretary."

"Ah, yes; Alba has told me. It is very fortunate for her that you have found her again." He was watching her closely now. "There are no friends like old friends, you know."

"It is very fortunate for me to have found her," Bianca said warmly, extending an affectionate hand toward her young guest.

Alba responded eagerly, allowing herself to be drawn into the embrace of the friendly arm.

"I don't intend ever to let you lose me again," she declared.

There was a pause, while the doctor's glance shifted several times from one to the other of the two dark heads so close together. Then Alba spoke:

"I think it was wonderful of you to recognize the señora after such a long time. Think of it—twenty years!"

"But she didn't return the compliment," replied the physician, a bantering smile veiling his persistent scrutiny of Bianca's face.

She met his gaze squarely now, replying seriously:

"In a house like ours, with strangers coming and going constantly, different doctors were called in. I must have seen so many of them—"

"And I so few patients!"

"Oh, I didn't mean that!" she protested.

"Of course you didn't, dear lady. But it's the truth."

He changed the subject then, touching for a minute or two on such matters connected with her step-father's death as would require Alba's immediate attention. Then he took his departure.

A LITTLE later Bianca Gil, alone in her own room, stared fixedly at her image in a mirror. Had she changed so little in all these years? The chance of being recognized by Dr. Tierney had not seriously troubled her. She had known that sooner or later he might hear her unmarried name from Alba and through it learn her identity; but that he would remember her face had not seemed possible.

"And he suspects," she said to herself. "He suspects that I know."

How strangely, she thought, things sometimes came about in life—how unaccountably! Years of silence and separation; then, suddenly—they were all together again. It was she who had broken the long silence by telling her husband. But for that, he would not have gone to the Welles-Hewitt house last night; she would not have brought Alba from the convent; she and Dr. Tierney would not have met to-day—or ever, perhaps.

Suddenly an impulse seized her, and, crossing to her desk, she took from a locked drawer a bunch of keys, and with them left the room and hurried up to the attic of the house. There, far back among a cluster of trunks, she singled out a small, shabby one with a rusty lock that yielded unwillingly. Once opened, however, her fingers searched its contents quickly and brought out a small photograph, which she carried to the window.

It was a snap-shot picture of a young man in tennis flannels, caught evidently during the progress of the game by some one standing near; for the full face it showed was very distinct, and the boyish figure was standing on tiptoe, the racket hand raised for instant action.

For several minutes Bianca Gil studied the face closely, screening first the lower half, then the upper, then the rim of blond, sunlit hair. Satisfied finally with her examination, she replaced the picture in the trunk, locked it in, and returned downstairs.

Tim Scarborough contemplated the message he had just decoded with a wry smile.

"It was coming to me," he told himself.

He had committed the folly of jumping at conclusions, and had deservedly landed on his head. If the Chief said Gil had nothing to do with the Mexican plot, it was because he had positive information to that effect. And the announcement as to Welles-Hewitt could be based on nothing less final than the British Embassy's own statement. The two facts together put the Englishman's murder outside the range of federal concern.

So far, there had been no important developments, a fact due, perhaps, to Cooley's having, for some inscrutable reason, kept Brown's name and other details out of the papers. Miss Yznaga, to be sure, had found her tongue; but her account of her meeting in Mexico with Brown—Eric Brown, she said his name was—had thrown no light whatever on the murder. It had, however, cast a most favorable light on Brown.

"I'm going to give the whole story—every detail of it—to the papers to-night," Cooley told Tim. "Been working on a different tack. You see, I had Miss Yznaga go through the papers in that wallet to see if any were missing; but she couldn't tell—didn't know what the old man had in it. And then that old housekeeper—I was counting on getting something out of her, too. But she's up at the convent in bed, and Dr. Tierney won't let anybody see her.

"Anyhow, I see I ain't going to get anything out of her or the girl," the Inspector had concluded. "So now I'm going to try what publicity will do. Of course, I've asked London and Mexico City what they know about these people; but, with war going on everywhere, there's no telling when we'll hear anything."

Miss Yznaga's removal from the convent to the home of the Gils had surprised Scarborough; but Cooley had told him that she and Mrs. Gil were old friends.

From the men who were trailing Lars Johansen he had had as yet no word. But he knew they had been unable to report, having followed the millionaire to Spitzen on an early train that morning.

The one remaining clue, the license number of Gil's second cab, had yielded only the information that Gil had taken that cab at the same elevated station at which he had left the first. The intervening hour was still unaccounted for.

Miles Redding, the District Attorney, had been only recently elected to his office. He was a small man, of business-

---

like appearance and emphatic speech, and with quick eyes that met one squarely, through round shell spectacles.

"If you know anything about this Welles-Hewitt case, Mr. Scarborough, sit down and talk," was his welcome, when Scarborough was admitted to his office.

Briefly and concisely he told what he know, ending with his setting of men to trail Johansen and Gil.

"I've had no reports from these men as yet," he said. "And, unless you wish to retain them, I will discharge them before I go back to Washington."

You are not going back!" said the District Attorney decisively. "I'm going to borrow you."

He unhooked his telephone receiver.

"Get me Washington," he ordered.

"No objection to staying, have you?" he asked Tim.

"None at all, Mr. Redding," said Tim, in a quiet tone that gave no hint that his heart was leaping joyously. "But you must remember that we don't yet know positively that the man I saw on the train is the one you are after. Cullop, who saw them both, insists that he is not."

"But they look enough alike for him to have mistaken one for the other. Then they are the same man or brothers. I'm

inclined to believe the former. Your friend Cullop was so taken by surprise that his opinion is not reliable. Besides, a man who has just committed murder would look somewhat different from his normal self.

"I want this murder cleared up. As for those men of yours, keep the ones trailing Gil. Let the others go. Your suspicions of Mr. Johansen were quite justified by the circumstances, but there is no question about him. I've known him for years. I'll find out from him what Gil was doing at his house. I'11 call him up now."

The telephone bell cut him off.

"It's Washington!" he threw at Tim as he answered.

"It's all right," Redding announced presently, snapping the receiver back on its hook. "Now, how do you propose to work? Can you get along with Cooley?" He eyed his new employee quizzically.

"Oh, the Inspector's all right," drawled Tim, with a smile of understanding. "I was talking to him a while ago, and he said he was going to give the whole story to the papers to-night. I think that's a good move. There may be people who know Brown—" He paused. "Mr. Johansen may know Brown," he suggested.

The District Attorney nodded.

"I've thought of that. I'm counting a lot on Johansen. But you said he went to Spitzen this morning, and won't be back until to-night. And we can't get any results from the newspaper story until to-morrow. And it's only three-thirty to-day. What are you going to do now?"

"Well, if it's up to me," said Tim, "I'm going to Spitzen."

"Good idea."

"MR. JOHANSEN will be down in a few minutes, sir."

Miles Redding nodded to the servant who had brought the message; then from his roomy arm-chair continued to inspect his surroundings.

He had never been in the room before, nor in the house. His acquaintance with Lars Johansen, though long and cordial, had not extended to the latter's home or social life. Indeed, it had seemed to him that the old man had no social life. One never heard of him apart from his various business interests, his philanthropies, or his art collections. For many years, now—ever since the tragic death of his son, and his wife's death,—he had lived alone.

This was the library. A smallish room for so large a house, it was, in spite of its rich furnishings, simple in effect and very livable. Whatever art treasures it contained—and the whole house was said to be crammed with them—there was no evidence that space had gone merely for exhibition purposes. Topping the long, low book-shelves were half a dozen landscapes, mellow and unobtrusive, and in addition to these pictures only two others: two portraits. One, the head and shoulders of a fair-haired, middle-aged woman,—the dead wife, of course,—hung over a writing-table in one corner of the room. The other hung above the fireplace.

IT was upon this second portrait that the District Attorney's attention finally settled, and he got up and walked over to it, for a closer view. It was full-length and life-sized, and showed a youth of twenty years or thereabouts, slim and muscular. He was standing, poised on the toes of white canvas shoes, a tennis racket upheld expectantly in one hand, his thick blond hair blown back by the wind from his tanned and reddened forehead, his blue eyes smiling and alert.

An odd pose to have chosen for perpetuation—especially at the hands of the famous painter whose name was signed to the canvas. But Redding knew the explanation. He knew the portrait had not been done from life, but from a photograph—a snap-shot taken at college and selected by Carl Johansen's parents after his death as the most satisfactory likeness they had of him.

The circumstances of that death Redding also knew, having heard them from his father, one of Lars Johansen's attorneys at the time.

Just graduated as a mining engineer, young Johansen had announced his intention of prospecting for gold, and he and his father had quarreled in consequence. The boy had then left home without warning and without a word as to his destination; and his father, knowing that he was short of funds, had waited calmly for his return in a more tractable mood. But Carl had not come back, and for four year's no trace of him could be found. Then suddenly the news came that he was dead. His body had been found by some American prospectors in a shack on his Mexican mining claim, where it had been left by the Indians who had murdered and robbed him.

Among his letters, one had revealed the fact that he was married, and Lars Johansen had at once sent to Mexico to find the wife. After several months of searching—for the letter provided neither address nor postmark as guide—it was learned that the wife had died a few days after giving birth to a dead child. She had been a very young Italian girl, whom Carl Johansen had met and married in a boarding-house in Mexico City, and had left there for her own safety on returning to his work in the mountains.

With the burial of the wife and baby beside his son's body, all that Lars Johansen's great wealth could do was

---

finished. And, stricken with sorrow and regret, he had next to stand by helpless and see his wife grieve herself into her grave, leaving him to go through the long years alone. For he had never again formed any close human relationships.

"Good evening, Miles."

Redding spun round with a start. In his absorption he had failed to hear his host's approach. They shook hands then, and, after a few inconsequential inquiries as to each other's health and what not, Johansen said:

"Sit down, Miles. I'm very glad you've come. It's about that murder case, your note said."

In spite of his half century of residence in the United States, Lars Johansen still spoke English with a trace of accent. He was nearing seventy, but was physically and mentally vigorous, and showed it in every action and every word. As he dropped into a seat opposite the District Attorney, he leaned forward with alert expectancy.

"I wanted to talk to you about that Mexican lawyer, Valentin Gil," Redding began, going on then with entire frankness to explain the situation. "I have not yet confronted Gil with our knowledge of his first call at the Welles-Hewitt house," he said in conclusion. "I wanted to talk with you before bringing the matter to an issue—because of his coming here last night."

"I see," said Johansen. "I'm glad you came. In fact, I had just about made up my mind to go to you."

"To me!" Redding sat up. "Then you know something?"

"Well—I can't say that I do. It is possible that what I shall tell you will only add a fresh complication," Johansen returned. "But first let me explain my connection with this affair. This lawyer, Gil, was arranging for my purchase of a mine from Welles-Hewitt and his reason for coming here last night was to tell me of the murder and the consequent interruption of negotiations. He stayed barely ten minutes. Of his earlier call at the Welles-Hewitt house I know nothing. And I don't know who this Brown is, nor what took him to Spitzen. It was not business with me or for me. And, let one add, I know nothing whatever of Welles-Hewitt's affairs. You must remember that Gil bears an excellent reputation, and that, although he fell under suspicion of the federal authorities, they were not long in finding themselves mistaken."

"Of course!" Redding agreed. "And if Gil had not lied—if he had admitted his first call to the police last night, and explained it—we'd have no cause to suspect him. Brown is the murderer, that's clear enough, and the Mexican may not be concerned in any way with the crime or him. But he is hiding something. What is it?"

THERE was a pause. The older man regarded the younger with a quizzical look.

"Well, Miles," he replied presently, "you're a lawyer and I am a business man, and I dare say you, as well as I, can recall occasions when you wouldn't have found it agreeable or expedient to take the police into your confidence."

"Exactly, sir—exactly!" Redding interrupted. "I realize that Gil may have had a perfectly innocent reason for his silence. That is why I decided to come to you before dragging him into the case. I have a very strong feeling about personal liberty. But—would Gil take the risk his silence involves for any innocent reason? He must realize that there is every chance of that first call coming to light—through his taxi driver or—"

"But isn't the very fact that he went to the house in a taxi evidence that it was for no guilty purpose?"

"Yes, it is," admitted Redding, with a troubled frown. "I give you my word, Mr. Johansen, I don't know what to think! But you have something to tell me, you said. Is it about Gil?"

Johansen nodded.

"I don't know that it has any value. But I had decided to go down and thresh my suspicions out with you, to find out if there was anything in them. You see, I have had an odd feeling about Gil ever since he came to me some days ago with his proposition to sell me the Rosalba mine."

"Rosalba! That's Miss Yznaga's name," exclaimed Redding.

"Indeed," said Johansen. "It's Spanish, and means 'white rose.' The Rosalba is a small silver mine in Mexico. But the girl must have been named for it, and not it for her; because I happen to know that it was named by its first owner and passed into the hands of Miss Yznaga's father before she was born. I am informed about its history, because I have been trying for years to buy it. My wanting it was largely a matter of sentiment—it is not very valuable—and I had offered an exceedingly liberal price. But it was always refused. And I could never understand why. Welles-Hewitt gambled notoriously; he was often hard pressed for money and had never had the means to work the mine properly. The refusal of my offer looked like sheer idiocy. But when Gil told me that he and his step-daughter had finally changed their minds, owing to the unsettled conditions in Mexico, the explanation was plausible enough. I agreed to the terms, though I thought them excessive, and I also agreed to keep the transaction a secret until it had been fully settled."

"A secret?" Redding questioned, surprised.

"It was an odd condition, I'll admit; but I had got the impression that Welles-Hewitt was erratic, and I interpreted this demand as merely another evidence of it. Besides, I was very anxious to get the mine, and was not disposed to find fault with things."

"You said you had a sentimental reason for wanting it," Redding suggested tentatively, after a slight hesitation.

"Yes."

JOHANSEN'S glance turned upward for a moment to the portrait of his dead son.

"My reasons are not exactly a secret, Miles," he explained. "But they are not in any way concerned in this case, and to go into them now would only confuse you."

"I see," Redding acquiesced; and then, for a time, nothing was said. Johansen's thoughts seemed to have wandered from the subject in hand, and his guest, mindful of that brief glance at the portrait, waited for him to continue of his own accord.

"I can not tell you, Miles," he resumed at last, "just why I became suspicious of the Rosalba's owners' sudden willingness to sell. But I feel very strongly that there was something queer about it—something hidden. Perhaps it was that demand for secrecy. Or it may have been the fact that I never met Welles-Hewitt personally—that Gil seemed determined I should not. And then, when Gil came last night and told me the man had been murdered—"

Johansen broke off, and with a wave of his hands seemed to pass the puzzle over to his companion.

Redding looked at him in wonder.

"You think there is a connection between the murder and the mine?" he asked.

"I don't know, Miles—I don't know. I know only that for nearly twenty years I have tried to buy that mine. The first time, my offer was accepted and the papers were drawn up; then Mrs. Welles-Hewitt changed her mind. The Rosalba, you understand, was hers and her daughter's, left them by the father. Well, I attributed her refusal to feminine caprice or sentiment, and bided my time. And when, two years later, she died, leaving her share in the mine to her husband, I renewed my offer, fully expecting it to be accepted; because Welles-Hewitt had been made executor and his step-daughter's guardian, and had absolute control. But again I was refused—my offer was not even considered. Since then, from time to time, when I have learned that Welles-Hewitt was losing heavily at cards, I have again broached the matter—always with the same result. And I had finally given up hope, when suddenly Gil appears with his offer. I accept it. The details are agreed upon. And then, on the very eve of the sale, comes the murder."

"To prevent the sale, you think?"

"Oh, I don't say that! I merely offer you these suggestions for what you think they may be worth."

"I think they may be worth a good deal," said Redding emphatically. "I am very glad I came to you; you have started me thinking along new lines. But have you no idea what the reason was for the persistent refusal to sell the mine?"

"None whatever. It was the most unaccountable obstacle I have ever met with. For, mind you, these people were sometimes in actual straits. And, as I have said, the mine was never worked to advantage. For a few years they realized fairly well from it through a profit-sharing arrangement they had with a mining company, and those years they spent abroad. But the company did not renew the contract when it expired, and then the political troubles started in Mexico and the mine was shut down altogether. It was then that I made my last offer to buy it. Welles-Hewitt was in Europe at the time, living a hand-to-mouth existence by gambling. He had the girl with him. She was old enough then to be of use, I suppose, as a lure. She is good-looking, I believe."

"Very beautiful, they say."

"Yes, so I have heard; I have never seen her," said Johansen indifferently. "But I saw her mother once. She was handsome—a dark, voluptuous creature, with bold black eyes, very attractive to a certain type of man. They ran what was practically a gambling house in Mexico City before her death. After it Welles-Hewitt tried his hand at legitimate business for a few years. But when he went abroad, after making the arrangement I have spoken of with the mining company, he returned to his favorite occupation. And I haven't a doubt of his purpose in taking a house in New York."

"Well," said the District Attorney, "you are giving me news!"

"Oh, this will all come out in the police investigation. Of course, I am not talking for publication, Miles. I only want you to understand clearly what sort of people these are, and why, considering that, the refusal of my offers for the mine has been so incomprehensible to me."

FOR a time there was silence. The District Attorney sat frowning thoughtfully until, rousing himself at last and realizing that his host was waiting for an answer, he said:

"I was thinking of the girl. It seems so horrible for her—all you have been telling me. Because I understand from the men who have seen her that she is quite refined and charming and modest."

"Is that so?" said Johansen. "That is a pity. But, of course, Welles-Hewitt was a gentleman—at least, he was born one, in the English sense. And I dare say she has had advantages. But her father, Luis Yznaga, ran a small select gambling house in London. In fact, he was killed in a quarrel over a card game. Then the mother went to Mexico City, where the girl was born a few months later. But these facts you will get in the reports from Mexico and London."

"I am very glad to have them to-night," Redding declared, rising to go. "As I have said, you have started me on a new line of thought. There's another question I'd like to ask, however. Since you have been in touch with Welles-Hewitt so long, perhaps you know something about his housekeeper, Mrs. Martinez? She seems to have been with the family for years, and both Inspector Cooley and the detective, Scarborough, think she knows more about the case than any one else. Scarborough, in fact, thinks she knows who Brown is; and that, of course, is the very crux of the mystery."

But Lars Johansen shook his head.

"I don't believe I ever even heard of her," he said.

To be continued next week

Kind Words from John Luther Long

A KIND word from any man makes our day happy: and when the man happens to be a famous man like the author of "Madam Butterfly," our joy is all the greater.

Ashbourne, Pa. To the Editor:

Thank you for what seems the best of your many good little sermons on the inside of the cover. It is likely that a good many people will breathe better and be better for it.

For Jack London's letter, too. I, too, was very fond of him—personally and per literature.

I keep on wondering how long you will be able to keep up your ineffable spirits. Forever, I hope.

Very sincerely yours, John Luther Long

A Jury of Her Peers

Continued from page 7

as if struck with a happy thought and relieved to get back to every-day things, she exclaimed:

"Tell you what, Mrs. Peters, why don't you take the quilt in with you? It might take up her mind."

"Why, I think that's a real nice idea, Mrs. Hale,' agreed the sheriff's wife, as if she too were glad to come into the atmosphere of a simple kindness. "There couldn't possibly be any objection to that, could there? Now, just what will I take? I wonder if her patches are in here—and her things."

They turned to the sewing basket.

"Here's some red," said Mrs. Hale, bringing out a roll of cloth. Underneath that was a box. "Here, maybe her scissors are in here—and her things." She held it up. "What a pretty box! I'll warrant that was something she had a long time ago—when she was a girl."

She held it in her hand a moment; then, with a little sigh, opened it.

Instantly her hand went to her nose.

"Why—!"

Mrs. Peters drew nearer—then turned away.

"There's something wrapped up in this piece of silk," faltered Mrs. Hale.

"This isn't her scissors," said Peters, in a shrinking voice.

Her hand not steady, Mrs. Hale raised the piece of silk. "Oh, Mrs. Peters!" she cried. "It's—"

Mrs. Peters bent closer.

"It's the bird," she whispered.

"But, Mrs. Peters!" cried Mrs. Hale. "Look at it! Its neck—look at its neck! It's all—other side to."

She held the box away from her.

The sheriff's wife again bent closer.

"Somebody wrung its neck," said she, in a voice that was slow and deep.

And then again the eyes of the two women met—this time clung together in a look of dawning comprehension, of growing horror. Mrs. Peters looked from the dead bird to the broken door of the cage. Again their eyes met. And just then there was a sound at the outside door.

Mrs. Hale slipped the box under the quilt pieces in the basket, and sank into the chair before it. Mrs. Peters stood holding to the table. The county attorney and the sheriff came in from outside.

"Well, ladies," said the county attorney, as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries, "have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?"

"We think," began the sheriff's wife in a flurried voice, "that she was going to—knot it."

He was too preoccupied to notice the change that came in her voice on that last.

"Well, that's very interesting, I'm sure," he said tolerantly. He caught sight of the bird-cage. "Has the bird flown?"

"We think the cat got it," said Mrs. Hale in a voice curiously even.

He was walking up and down, as if thinking something out.

"Is there a cat?" he asked absently.

Mrs. Hale shot a look up at the sheriff's wife.

"Well, not now," said Mrs. Peters. "They're superstitious, you know; they leave."

She sank into her chair.

THE county attorney did not heed her.

"No sign at all of any one having come in from the outside," he said to Peters, in the manner of continuing an interrupted conversation. "Their own rope. Now let's go upstairs again and go over it, piece by piece. It would have to have been some one who knew just the—"

The stair door closed behind them and their voices were lost.

The two women sat motionless, not looking at each other, but as if peering into something and at the same time holding back. When they spoke now it was as if they were afraid of what they were saying, but as if they could not help saying it.

"She liked the bird," said Martha Hale, low and slowly. "She was going to bury it in that pretty box."

"When I was a girl," said Mrs. Peters, under her breath, "my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—before I could get there—" She covered her face an instant. "If they hadn't held me back I would have"—she caught herself, looked upstairs where foot-steps were heard, and finished weakly—"hurt him."

Then they sat without speaking or moving.

"I wonder how it would seem," Mrs. Hale at last began, as if feeling her way over strange ground—"never to have had any children around." Her eyes made a slow sweep of the kitchen, as if seeing what that kitchen had meant through all the years. "No, Wright wouldn't like the bird," she said after that—"a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too." Her voice tightened.

Mrs. Peters moved uneasily.

"Of course we don't know who killed the bird."

"I knew John Wright," was Mrs. Hale's answer.

"It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs. Hale," said the sheriff's wife. "Killing a man while he slept—slipping a thing round his neck that choked the life out of him."

Mrs. Hale's hand went out to the bird-cage.

"His neck. Choked the life out of him."

"We don't know who killed him," whispered Mrs. Peters wildly. "We don't know."

Mrs. Hale had not moved. "If there had been years and years of—nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful—still—after the bird was still."

It was as if something within her not

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herself had spoken, and it found in Mrs. Peters something she did not know as herself.

"I know what stillness is," she said, in a queer, monotonous voice. "When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died—after he was two years old—and me with no other then—"

Mrs. Hale stirred.

"How soon do you suppose they'll be through looking for the evidence?"

"I know what stillness is," repeated Mrs. Peters, in just that same way. Then she too pulled back. "The law has got to punish crime, Mrs. Hale," she said in her tight little way.

"I wish you'd seen Minnie Foster," was the answer, "when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons, and stood up there in the choir and sang."

THE picture of that girl, the fact that she had lived neighbor to that girl for twenty years, and had let her die for lack of life, was suddenly more than she could bear.

"Oh, I wish I'd come over here once in a while!" she cried. "That was a crime! That was a crime! Who's going to punish that?"

"We mustn't take on," said Mrs. Peters, with a frightened look toward the stairs.

"I might 'a' known she needed help! I tell you, it's queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together, and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it's all just a different kind of the same thing! If it weren't—why do you and I understand? Why do we know—what we know this minute?"

She dashed her hand across her eyes. Then, seeing the jar of fruit on the table, she reached for it and choked out:

"If I was you I wouldn't tell her her fruit was gone! Tell her it ain't. Tell her it's all right—all of it. Here—take this in to prove it to her! She—she may never know whether it was broke or not."

She turned away.

Mrs. Peters reached out for the bottle of fruit as if she were glad to take it—as if touching a familiar thing, having something to do, could keep her from something else. She got up, looked about for something to wrap the fruit in, took a petticoat from the pile of clothes she had brought from the front room, and nervously started winding that round the bottle.

"My!" she began, in a high, false voice, "it's a good thing the men couldn't hear us! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a—dead canary." She hurried over that. "As if that could have anything to do with—with— My, wouldn't they laugh?"

Footsteps were heard on the stairs.

"Maybe they would," muttered Mrs. Hale—"maybe they wouldn't."

"No, Peters," said the county attorney incisively; "it's all perfectly clear, except the reason for doing it. But you know juries when it comes to women. If there was some definite thing—something to show. Something to make a story about. A thing that would connect up with this clumsy way of doing it."

In a covert way Mrs. Hale looked at Mrs. Peters. Mrs. Peters was looking at her. Quickly they looked away from each other. The outer door opened and Mr. Hale came in.

"I've got the team round now," he said. "Pretty cold out there."

"I'm going to stay here awhile by myself," the county attorney suddenly announced. "You can send Frank out for me, can't you?" he asked the sheriff. "I want to go over everything. I'm not satisfied we can't do better."

Again, for one brief moment, the two women's eyes found one another.

The sheriff came up to the table.

"Did you want to see what Mrs. Peters was going to take in?"

The county attorney picked up the apron. He laughed.

"Oh, I guess they're not very dangerous things the ladies have picked out."

Mrs. Hale's hand was on the sewing basket in which the box was concealed. She felt that she ought to take her hand off the basket. She did not seem able to. He picked up one of the quilt blocks which she had piled on to cover the box. Her eyes felt like fire. She had a feeling that if he took up the basket she would snatch it from him.

But he did not take it up. With another little laugh, he turned away, saying:

"No; Mrs. Peters doesn't need supervising. For that matter, a sheriff's wife is married to the law. Ever think of it that way, Mrs. Peters?"

Mrs. Peters was standing beside the table. Mrs. Hale shot a look up at her; but she could not see her face. Mrs. Peters had turned her face away. When she spoke, her voice was muffled.

"Not—just that way," she said.

"Married to the law!" chuckled Mrs. Peters' husband. He moved toward the door into the front room, and said to the county attorney:

"I just want you to come in here a minute, George. We ought to take a look at these windows."

"Oh—windows," said the county attorney scoffingly.

"We'll be right out, Mr. Hale," said the sheriff to the farmer, who was still waiting by the door.

Hale went to look after the horses. The sheriff followed the county attorney into the other room. Again—for one final moment—the two women were alone in that kitchen.

Martha Hale sprang up, her hands tight together, looking at that other woman, with whom it rested. At first she could not see her eyes, for the sheriff's wife had not turned back since she turned away at that suggestion of being married to the law. But now Mrs. Hale made her turn back. Her eyes made her turn back. Slowly, unwillingly, Mrs. Peters turned her head until her eyes met the eyes of the other woman. There was a moment when they held each other in a steady, burning look in which there was no evasion nor flinching. Then Martha Hale's eyes pointed the way to the basket in which was hidden the thing that would make certain the conviction of the other woman—that woman who was not there and yet who had been there with them all through that hour.

FOR a moment Mrs. Peters did not move. And then she did it. With a rush forward, she threw back the quilt pieces, got the box, tried to put it in her hand-bag. It was too big. Desperately she opened it, started to take the bird out. But there she broke—she could not touch the bird. She stood there helpless, foolish.

There was the sound of a knob turning in the inner door. Martha Hale snatched the box from the sheriff's wife, and got it in the pocket of her big coat just as the sheriff and the county attorney came back into the kitchen.

"Well, Henry," said the county attorney facetiously, "at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to—what is it you call it, ladies?"

Mrs. Hale's hand was against the pocket of her coat.

"Knot it," was her low reply.

He did not see her eyes.

In Answer to Many Letters

THE article by Edwin Balmer, entitled "Picking Salesmen by Science," published in a recent issue of this magazine, brought us a flood of letters from sales-managers in all parts of the country.

We are glad to say, in answer to these, that Mr. Balmer will follow the article by two others in the spring, further developing the same theme.

Are You One of These Three Men?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

THIS magazine receives many questions that require for their answer common sense and sound judgement rather than expert financial knowledge.

For a man of thirty-five, receiving an annual salary of $2000, on which salary a family of three is dependent, do you consider $150 a year sufficient to put into life insurance? Would you consider the same man to be going beyond his means in living in a $7000 house, with a mortgage of about $5000, which he can reduce by $300 a year?

I am on a salary of $2000 a year, have some money in a savings account drawing 3 per cent., and would like to get it started working. Have given consideration to Steel Common, Inspiration Copper, and Union Pacific, but have hesitated buying on account of the high market. Would you advise buying straight out, on the twenty-payment plan, or on margin? I would not care to start in with more than $500, which or straight-out purchasing seems pitifully small.

I am thirty-six years of age, married, and have a boy eight years old. I am district sales manager of the Blank Motor Company, working on a salary and commission. I have $2000 cash in the savings bank, and find that I am able to save about $200 a month after taking care of $15,000 straight life insurance. Would you outline some plan for me to invest $200 a month? What do you think of Rock Island, M. K. & T., Western Maryland, Tennessee Copper, Midvale Steel, Goodrich common, Saxon Motor, and Republic Truck?

It is impossible to answer the first question without knowing the man's prospects for the future. If he is unlikely to receive a larger salary eventually, he is living in too expensive a house. Opinions differ as to the amount of insurance advisable on any given income, and it might be difficult on a $2000 income to save more than $150 for insurance without sacrificing the present comfort of the family.

A man whose only income is $2000 a year would be most foolish to take all of his savings out of the bank and buy Steel, Inspiration Copper, and Union Pacific, meritorious as all three stocks are. Everybody except millionaires should keep a nest egg in the savings bank.

Of the three stocks, Union Pacific is the most stable, and is almost certain to pay large dividends. Steel and Inspiration are almost sure to pay big dividends for some time to come, but they are more or less speculative stocks, liable to fluctuation in price.

If one has $500 in cash there is no sense in taking the risk of buying stocks on margin or even on the part-payment plan. There is nothing "pitifully small" about $500. It will buy four or five shares of high-grade stocks, and make a splendid beginning in the way of investments.

The same simple principle applies to the last inquiry. The first and only savings should always be most carefully guarded. The poorer you are, the fewer risks you can afford to take with your money.

Common-Sense Advice

THE automobile sales-manager has considerable life insurance and a fair-sized savings account. His monthly surplus of $200 looks pretty big. He is far more justified in taking chances with it than the writer of the first letter. All of the stocks he is thinking of buying are more or less speculative, several of them excessively so. On two the of the railroad stocks he will have a "Dutch dividend"; that is, he will have to pay an assessment. Yet there is no denying the speculative possibilities of nearly all of these stocks.

No one can lay down hard-and-fast rules to govern another man's life; but it seems unfortunate that a relatively young man making such large earnings should not invest them in something more solid. The practical, common-sense proceeding for this man is to put $100 a month into the more speculative class of stocks, and the other $100 into the 5 or 6 per cent. type of investments.

Men who make "big money" in their own business, and especially those who have done it rather quickly or recently, almost always think they can duplicate their success in their investments. History proves otherwise. There is no end of wisdom in the old idea of salting away one's savings.

Free Booklets that You May Have for the Asking

Arrangements have been made by which any reader mentioning this magazine may have any or all of the following booklets on request.

Write Slattery & Co., Inc., 40 Exchange Place, New York, for current issue of their fortnightly publication, Investment Opportunities, which describes many sound and attractive investments. Ask for 38-E, including booklet explaining the Twenty-Payment Plan.

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

John Muir & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange, whose main office is at 61 Broadway, New York City, are devoting special attention to helping investors who hold securities to place their funds on a permanent investment plane. Circular S-33, dealing with the subject, will be sent on request.

An analysis of the preferred stocks of industrial corporations whose prosperity is not dependent upon the continuation of the war, is issued by Michaelis & Co., 61 Broadway, New York. Circular P-6, describing these stocks sent upon request.

A new circular, showing how to obtain a dividend every month through the Odd Lot method, has been issued by Hartshorne & Picabia, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City. Ask for circular O-14. The firm also offers special inducements in the way of advice to small investors.

The Odd Lot Review presents concisely and in a readable manner financial news and views written tersely and in plain English, such as will interest the average man and which he can understand. Sample copy will be sent on request to 61 Broadway, New York City.

The new 1917 Dividend Calendar shows approximate ex-dividend and divided payable dates, of shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange and New York Curb. This Calendar and weekly market observations are sent on request, free of charge, by Baruch Brothers, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 60 Broadway, New York City.

People are appreciating the importance of placing their surplus funds in high-grade securities based on real estate. Phelps-Eastman Company (Investment Bankers), 502 McKnight Building, Minneapolis, Minnesota, offer 6 per cent. first mortgages on improved Montana farm land. An interesting booklet on the subject will be sent to any address free of charge.

All investors interested in the remarkable progrss of public utility bonds should write to P. W. Brooks & Co., 115 Broadway, New York, for a copy of their magazine, entitled Bond Talk, which deals with the fundamental principles of investment and the advantages of public utility bonds. Ask for "Bond Talk" E.

Bankers and business men all over the country read the Bache Review to keep in touch with the financial situation. It contains comprehensible, reliable, and able views of current events as they affect business finance, and investments. It is issued weekly by J. S. Bache & Co., 42 Broadway, New York. Sent on application.

Investors desiring to acquire $100 bonds of the best known issues, and of a class that is legal for investment by Trustees and Savings Banks, should send for the special list E that has been prepared by Merrill, Lynch & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City.

Of special interest to investors is the January Public Utilities Letter, issued by Williams, Troth & Coleman, 60 Wall Street, New York City. This may be secured without charge by writing for Report "JN."

Any one interested in the security market should send to L. R. Latrobe & Co:, No. 111 Broadway, New York, for their statistical books on Copper Stocks, Motor Stocks, Standard Oil Stocks, Investor's Guide (270 pages), or Weekly Market Letter. This firm will mail you any one of these books free on request. Partial-Payment Plan.

A special letter on Argentine Conditions and Argentine Railway Securities, with full reports, is available to all investors without charge. Send to Messrs. C. W. Pope & Co., 15 Broad Street, New York City, for letter "E."

Information on popular-price issues, $100 bonds and dividend securities, is supplied by Coleman & Reitze, 50 Bond Street, NEw York, in their weekly publication, the Financial Review. Copy sent one request. Address Dept. E. W.

The investor who realizes that in these days of $100 bonds there is no excuse for investing small amounts rashly, should send to E. R. Coombs & Co., 120 Broadway, New York, for a copy of The American Investor. This publication is devoted exclusively to sound investment principles, appropriate for every one.

Have you read Mr. Atwood's financial booklet, "Making Your Money Work for You"? It is written especially for our readers, and if you will write him, inclosing five cents in stamps, at 95 Madison Avenue, New York, he will send you a copy.