ARGONAUT STORIES

MOON FACE

John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind—cheek-bones wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the circumference, flattened against the very centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes, and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at the wrong time.

But be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it, in any such sense. The evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain individual, one whom the very instant before we did not dream existed; and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say: “I do not like that man.” Why do we not like him? And we do not know why; we only know that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John Claverhouse.

What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He was always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right, curse him! Ah! how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to laugh myself—before I met John Claverhouse.

But his laugh! It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under the sun could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of me, and would not let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking or sleeping it was always with me, whirring and jarring across my heart-strings and the very fibres of my being like an enormous rasp. At break of day it came whooping across the fields to spoil my pleasant morning reverie. Under the aching noon-day glare, when the green things drooped and the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and all nature drowsed, his great “Ha! ha!” and “Ho! ho!” rose up to the sky and challenged the sun. And at black midnight, from the lonely cross-roads where he turned from town into his own place, came his plaguy cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep and make me toss about and clench my nails into my palms.

I went forth privily in the night-time and turned his cattle into his fields, and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove them out again. “It is nothing,” he said; “the poor, dumb beasties are not to be blamed for straying into fatter pastures.”

He had a dog he called “Mars,” a big, splendid brute, part deerhound and part bloodhound, and resembling both. Mars was a great delight to him, and they were always together. But I bided my time, and one day, when opportunity was ripe, lured the animal away and settled for him with arsenic and beefsteak. It made positively no impression on John Claverhouse. His laugh was as hearty and frequent as ever, and his face as much like the full moon as it always had been.

Then I set fire to his hay-stacks and his barn. But the next morning, being Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful.

“Where are you going?” I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads.

“Trout,” he said, and his face beamed like a full moon. “I just dote on trout, you know.”

Was there ever such an impossible man! His whole harvest had gone up in his hay-stacks and barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in the face of famine and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in quest of a mess of trout, forsooth, because he “doted” on them! Had gloom but rested, no matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine countenance grown long and serious and less like the moon, or had he removed that smile but once from off his face, I am sure I could have forgiven him for existing. But, no, he grew only more cheerful under misfortune.

I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise.

“I fight you? Why?” he asked, slowly. And then he laughed. “You are so funny! Ho! ho! You’ll be the death of me! He! he! he! Oh! Ho! ho! ho!”

What would you? It was past endurance. By the blood of Judas, how I hated him! Then there was that name—Claverhouse! What a name! Wasn’t it absurd? Claverhouse! Merciful heaven, why Claverhouse? Again and again I asked myself that question. I should not have minded Smith, or Brown, or Jones—but Claverhouse! I leave it to you. Repeat it to yourself—Claverhouse. Just listen to the ridiculous sound of it—Claverhouse! Should a man live with such a name? I ask of you. “No,” you say. And “No” said I.

But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of his crops and barn destroyed, I knew he would be unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd, close-mouthed, tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage transferred to him. I did not appear, but through this agent I forced the foreclosure, and but few days (no more, believe me, than the law allowed) were given John Claverhouse to remove his goods and chattels from the premises. Then I strolled down to see how he took it, for he had lived there upward of twenty years. But he met me with his saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading in his face till it was as a full-risen moon.

“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed. “The funniest tike, that youngster of mine! Did you ever hear the like? Let me tell you. He was down playing by the edge of the river when a piece of the bank caved in and splashed him. ‘Oh, papa!’ he cried; ‘a great big puddle flewed up and hit me.’”

He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee.

“I don’t see any laugh in it,” I said, shortly, and I know my face went sour.

He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light, glowing and spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone soft and warm, like the summer moon, and then the laugh—“Ha! ha! That’s funny! You don’t see it, eh? He! he! Ho! ho! ho! He doesn’t see it! Why, look here. You know, a puddle——”

But I turned on my heel and left him. That was the last. I could stand it no longer. The thing must end right there, I thought, curse him! The earth should be quit of him. And as I went over the hill, I could hear his monstrous laugh reverberating against the sky.

Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to kill John Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such a fashion that I should not look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling, and I hate brutality. To me there is something repugnant in merely striking a man with one’s naked fist—faugh! it is sickening! So, to shoot, or stab, or club John Claverhouse (O that name!) did not appeal to me. And not only was I impelled to do it neatly and artistically, but also in such manner that not the slightest possible suspicion could be directed against me.

To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week of profound and strenuous incubation, I hatched the scheme. Then I set to work. I bought a water-spaniel bitch, five months old, and devoted my whole attention to her training. Had any one spied upon me, they would have remarked that this training consisted entirely of one thing—retrieving. I taught the dog, which I called “Bellona,” to fetch sticks I threw into the water, and not only to fetch, but to fetch at once, without mouthing or playing with them. The point was that she was to stop for nothing, but to deliver the stick in all haste. I made a practice of running away and leaving her to chase me, with the stick in her mouth, till she caught me. She was a bright animal, and took to the game with such eagerness that I was soon content.

After that, at the first casual opportunity, I presented Bellona to John Claverhouse. I knew what I was about, for I was aware of a little weakness of his, and of a little private and civic sinning of which he was regularly and inveterately guilty.

“No,” he said, when I placed the end of the rope to which she was tied in his hand. “No, you don’t mean it.” And his mouth opened wide, and he grinned all over his damnable moon-face.

“I—I kind of thought, somehow, you didn’t like me,” he explained. “Wasn’t it funny for me to make such a mistake?” And at the thought he held his sides with laughter.

“What is her name?” he managed to ask between paroxysms.

“Bellona,” I said.

“He! he!” he tittered. “What a funny name!”

I gritted my teeth, for his mirth put them on edge, and snapped out between them: “She was the wife of Mars, you know.”

Then the light of the full moon began to suffuse his face, until he exploded with: “Well, I guess she’s a widow now! Oh! Ho! ho! E! he! he! Ho!” he whooped after me, and I turned and fled swiftly away over the hill.

The week passed by, and on Saturday evening I said to him: “You go away Monday, don’t you?”

He nodded his head and grinned.

“Then you won’t have another chance to get a mess of those trout you just ‘dote’ on.”

But he did not notice the sneer. “Oh, I don’t know,” he chuckled. “I’m going up to-morrow to try pretty hard.”

Thus was assurance made doubly sure, and I went back to my house literally hugging myself with rapture.

Early next morning I saw him go by with a dip-net and gunnysack, and Bellona trotting at his heels. I knew where he was bound, and cut out by the back pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the top of the mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, I followed the crest along for a couple of miles to a natural amphitheatre in the hills, where the little river ramped down out of a gorge, and stopped for breath in a large and placid rock-bound pool. That was the spot! I sat down on the croup of the mountain, where I could see all that occurred, and lighted my pipe.

Ere many minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the bed of the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in high feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper chest-notes. Arrived at the pool, he threw down the dip-net and sack, and drew from his hip-pocket what looked like a large, fat candle. But I knew it to be a stick of “giant”; for such was his method of catching trout. He dynamited them. He attached the fuse by wrapping the “giant” tightly in a piece of cotton. Then he ignited the fuse and tossed the explosive into the pool.

Like a flash, Bellona was into the pool after it. I could have shrieked aloud for very joy. Claverhouse yelled at her, but without avail. He pelted her with clods and rocks, but she swam steadily on till she got the stick of “giant” in her mouth, when she whirled about and headed for shore. Then, for the first time, he realized his danger, and started to run. As foreseen and planned by me, she made the bank and took out after him. Oh, I tell you, it was great! As I have said, the pool lay in a sort of amphitheatre. Above and below, the stream could be crossed on stepping-stones. And around and around, up and down and across the stones, raced Claverhouse and Bellona. I could never have believed that such an ungainly man could run so fast. But run he did, Bellona hot-footed after him, and gaining. And then, just as she caught up, he in full stride, and she leaping with nose at his knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst of smoke, and terrific detonation, and where man and dog had been the instant before there was naught to be seen but a big hole in the ground.

“Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing.” That was the verdict of the coroner’s jury; and that is why I pride myself on the neat and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse. There was no bungling, no brutality; nothing to be ashamed of in the whole transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more does his infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, and no more does his fat moon-face rise up to vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my night’s sleep deep.

A CAGED LION

In front of the entrance a “spieler” stood on a starch-box and beat upon a piece of tin with a stick, and we weakly succumbed to his frenzied appeals and went inside. We did this, I am sure, partly to please the “spieler,” who would have been dreadfully disappointed if we had not done so, but partly, too, to please Toppan, who was always interested in the great beasts and liked to watch them.

It is possible that you may remember Toppan as the man who married Victoria Boyden, and, in so doing, thrust his greatness from him and became a bank-clerk instead of an explorer. After he married, he came to be quite ashamed of what he had done in Thibet and Africa and other unknown corners of the earth, and, after a while, very seldom spoke of that part of his life at all; or, when he did, it was only to allude to it as a passing boyish fancy, altogether foolish and silly, like calf-love and early attempts at poetry.

“I used to think I was going to set the world on fire at one time,” he said once; “I suppose every young fellow has some such ideas. I only made an ass of myself, and I’m glad I’m well out of it. Victoria saved me from that.”

But this was long afterward. He died hard, and sometimes he would have moments of strength in his weakness, just as before he had given up his career during a moment of weakness in his strength. During the first years after he had given up his career, he thought he was content with the way things had come to be; but it was not so, and now and then the old feeling, the love of the old life, the old ambition, would be stirred into activity again by some sight, or sound, or episode in the conventional life around him. A chance paragraph in a newspaper, a sight of the Arizona deserts of sage and cactus, a momentary panic on a ferry-boat, sometimes even fine music or a great poem would wake the better part of him to the desire of doing great things. At such times the longing grew big and troublous within him to cut loose from it all, and get back to those places of the earth where there were neither months nor years, and where the days of the week had no names; where he could feel unknown winds blowing against his face and unnamed mountains rising beneath his feet; where he could see great sandy, stony stretches of desert with hot, blue shadows, and plains of salt, and thickets of jungle-grass, broken only by the lairs of beasts and the paths the steinbok make when they go down to water.

The most trifling thing would recall all this to him just as a couple of notes have recalled to you whole arias and overtures. But with Toppan it was as though one had recalled the arias and the overtures, and then was not allowed to sing them.

We went into the arena and sat down. The ring in the middle was fenced in by a great, circular iron cage. The tiers of seats rose around this, a band was playing in a box over the entrance, and the whole interior was lighted by an electric globe slung over the middle of the cage. Inside a brown bear—to me less suggestive of a wild animal than of lap-robes and furriers’ signs—was dancing sleepily and allowing himself to be prodded by a person whose celluloid standing-collar showed white at the neck above the green of his Tyrolese costume. The bear was mangy, and his steel muzzle had chafed him, and Toppan said he was corrupted of moth and rust alike, and the audience applauded but feebly when he and his keeper withdrew.

After this we had a clown-elephant, dressed in a bib and tucker and vast baggy breeches—like those of a particularly big French Turco—who had lunch with his keeper, and rang the bell and drank his wine and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief like a bed-quilt, and pulled the chair from underneath his companion, seeming to be amused at it all with a strange sort of suppressed elephantine mirth.

And then, after they had both made their bow and gone out, in bounded and tumbled the dogs, barking and grinning all over, jumping up on their stools and benches, wriggling and pushing one another about, giggling and excited like so many kindergarten children on a show day. I am sure they enjoyed their performance as much as the audience did, for they never had to be told what to do, and seemed only too eager for their turn to come. The best of it all was that they were quite unconscious of the audience, and appeared to do their tricks for the sake of the tricks themselves, and not for the applause which followed them. And, then, after the usual programme of wicker cylinders, hoops, and balls was over, they all rushed off amid a furious scrattling of paws and filliping of tails and heels.

While this was going on, we had been hearing from time to time a great sound, half-whine, half-rumbling guttural cough, that came from somewhere behind the exit from the cage. It was repeated at rapidly decreasing intervals, and grew lower in pitch until it ended in a short bass grunt. It sounded cruel and menacing, and when at its full volume the wood of the benches under us thrilled and vibrated.

There was a little pause in the programme while the arena was cleared and new and much larger and heavier paraphernalia were set about, and a gentleman with well-groomed hair and a very shiny hat entered and announced “the world’s greatest lion-tamer.” Then he went away and the tamer came in and stood expectantly by the side of the entrance. There was another short wait and the band struck a long minor chord.

And then they came in, one after the other, with long, crouching, lurching strides, not all good-humoredly, like the dogs or the elephant, or even the bear, but with low-hanging heads, surly, watchful, their eyes gleaming with the rage and hate that burned in their hearts, and that they dared not vent. Their loose, yellow hides rolled and rippled over the great muscles as they moved, and the breath coming from their hot, half-open mouths turned to steam as it struck the air.

A huge, blue-painted see-saw was dragged out to the centre, and the tamer made a sharp sound of command. Slowly, and with twitching tails, two of them obeyed, and, clambering upon the balancing-board, swung up and down, while the music played a see-saw waltz. And all the while their great eyes flamed with the detestation of the thing, and their black upper lips curled away from their long fangs in protest of this hourly renewed humiliation and degradation.

And one of the others, while waiting his turn to be whipped and bullied, sat up on his haunches and faced us and looked far away beyond us over the heads of the audience—over the continent and ocean, as it were—as though he saw something in that quarter that made him forget his present surroundings.

“You grand old brute,” muttered Toppan; and then he said: “Do you know what you would see if you were to look into his eyes now? You would see Africa, and unnamed mountains, and great stony stretches of desert, with hot blue shadows, and plains of salt, and lairs in the jungle-grass, and lurking places near the paths the steinbok make when they go down to water. But now he’s hampered and caged—is there anything worse than a caged lion?—and kept from the life he loves and was made for”—just here the tamer spoke sharply to him, and his eyes and crest drooped—“and ruled over,” concluded Toppan, “by some one who is not so great as he, who has spoiled what was best in him, and has turned his powers to trivial, resultless uses—some one weaker than he, yet stronger. Ah, well, old brute, it was yours once, we will remember that.”

They wheeled out a clumsy velocipede built expressly for him, and, while the lash whistled and snapped about him, the conquered king heaved himself upon it and went around and around the ring, while the band played a quickstep. The audience broke into applause, and the tamer smirked and bobbed his well-oiled head. I thought of Samson performing for the Philistines and Thusnelda at the triumph of Germanicus. The great beasts, grand though conquered, seemed to be the only dignified ones in the whole business. I hated the audience who saw their shame from behind iron bars; I hated myself for being one of them; and I hated the smug, sniggering tamer.

This latter had been drawing out various stools and ladders, and now arranged the lions upon them so they should form a pyramid, with himself on top.

Then he swung himself up among them, with his heels upon their necks, and, taking hold of the jaws of one, wrenched them apart with a great show of strength, turning his head to the audience so that all should see.

And just then the electric light above him cackled harshly, guttered, dropped down to a pencil of dull red, then went out, and the place was absolutely dark.

The band stopped abruptly, with a discord, and there was an instant of silence. Then we heard the stools and ladders clattering as the lions leaped down; and straightway four pair of lambent green spots burned out of the darkness and traveled swiftly about here and there, crossing and recrossing one another like the lights of steamers in a storm. Heretofore, the lions had been sluggish and inert; now they were aroused and alert in an instant, and we could hear the swift pad-pad of their heavy feet as they swung around the arena, and the sound of their great bodies rubbing against the bars of the cage as one and the other passed nearer to us.

I don’t think the audience at all appreciated the situation at first, for no one moved or seemed excited, and one shrill voice suggested that the band should play “When the Electric Lights Go Out.”

“Keep perfectly quiet, please!” called the tamer out of the darkness, and a certain peculiar ring in his voice was the first intimation of a possible danger.

But Toppan knew; and as we heard the tamer fumbling for the catch of the gate, which he somehow could not loose in the darkness, he said, with a rising voice: “He wants to get that gate open pretty quick.”

But for their restless movements the lions were quiet; they uttered no sound, which was a bad sign. Blinking and dazed by the garish blue-whiteness of a few moments before, they could see perfectly now where the tamer was blind.

“Listen,” said Toppan. Near to us, and on the inside of the cage, we could hear a sound as of some slender body being whisked back and forth over the surface of the floor. In an instant I guessed what it was; one of the lions was crouched there, whipping his sides with his tail.

“When he stops that, he’ll spring,” said Toppan, excitedly.

“Bring a light, Jerry—quick!” came the tamer’s voice.

People were clambering to their feet by this time, talking loud, and we heard a woman cry out.

“Please keep as quiet as possible, ladies and gentlemen!” cried the tamer; “it won’t do to excite——”

From the direction of the voice came the sound of a heavy fall and a crash that shook the iron gratings in their sockets.

“He’s got him!” shouted Toppan.

And then what a scene! In that thick darkness every one sprang up, stumbling over the seats and over each other, all shouting and crying out, suddenly stricken with a panic fear of something they could not see. Inside the barred death-trap every lion suddenly gave tongue at once, until the air shook and sang in our ears. We could hear the great cats hurling themselves against the bars, and could see their eyes leaving brassy streaks against the darkness as they leaped. Two more sprang, as the first had done, toward that quarter of the cage from which came sounds of stamping and struggling, and then the tamer began to scream.

I think that so long as I shall live I shall not forget the sound of the tamer’s screams. He did not scream as a woman would have done, from the head, but from the chest, which sounded so much worse that I was sick from it in a second with that sickness that weakens one at the pit of the stomach and along the muscles at the back of the legs. He did not pause for a second. Every breath was a scream, and every scream was alike, and one heard through it all the long snarls of satisfied hate and revenge, muffled by the man’s clothes and the rip, rip of the cruel, blunt claws.

Hearing it all in the dark, as we did, made it all the more dreadful. I think for a time I must have taken leave of my senses. I was ready to vomit for the sickness that was upon me, and I beat my hands raw upon the iron bars or clasped them over my ears against the sounds of the dreadful thing that was doing behind them. I remember praying aloud that it might soon be over with, so only those screams might be stopped.

It seemed as though it had gone on for hours, when some men rushed in with a lantern and long, sharp irons. A hundred voices cried: “Here he is, over here!” and they ran around outside the cage and threw the light of the lantern on a place where a heap of gray, gold-laced clothes writhed and twisted beneath three great bulks of fulvous hide and bristling black mane.

The irons were useless. The three furies dragged their prey out of their reach and crouched over it again and recommenced. No one dared to go into the cage, and still the man lived and struggled and screamed.

I saw Toppan’s fingers go to his mouth, and through that medley of dreadful noises there issued a sound that, sick as I was, made me shrink anew and close my eyes and teeth and shudder as though some cold slime had been poured through the hollow of my bones where the marrow should be. It was as the noise of the whistling of a fine whip-lash, mingled with the whirr of a locust magnified a hundred times, and ended in an abrupt clacking noise thrice repeated.

At once I remembered where I had heard it before, because, having once heard the hiss of an aroused and angry serpent, no child of Eve can ever forget it.

The sound that now came from between Toppan’s teeth and that filled the arena from wall to wall, was the sound that I had heard once before in the Paris Jardin des Plantes at feeding-time—the sound made by the great constrictors, when their huge bodies are looped and coiled like a reata for the throw that never misses, that never relaxes, and that no beast of the field is built strong enough to withstand. All the filthy wickedness and abominable malice of the centuries since the Enemy first entered into that shape that crawls was concentrated in that hoarse, whistling hiss—a hiss that was cold and piercing, like an icicle-made sound. It was not loud, but had in it some sort of penetrating quality that cut through the waves of horrid sounds about us, as the snake-carved prow of a Viking galley might have cut its way through the tumbling eddies of a tide-rip.

At the second repetition the lions paused. None better than they knew what was the meaning of that hiss. They had heard it before in their native hunting-grounds in the earlier days of summer, when the first heat lay close over all the jungle like the hollow of the palm of an angry god. Or if they themselves had not heard it, their sires before them had, and the fear of the thing bred into their bones suddenly leaped to life at the sound and gripped them and held them close.

When for a third time the sound sung and shrilled in their ears, their heads drew between their shoulders, their great eyes grew small and glittering, the hackles rose and stiffened on their backs, their tails drooped, and they backed slowly to the further side of the cage and cowered there, whining and beaten.

Toppan wiped the sweat from the inside of his hands and went into the cage with the keepers and gathered up the panting, broken body, with its twitching fingers and dead, white face and ears, and carried it out. As they lifted it, the handful of pitiful medals dropped from the shredded, gray coat and rattled down upon the floor. In the silence that had now succeeded, it was about the only sound one heard.

As we sat that evening on the porch of Toppan’s house, in a fashionable suburb of the city, he said, for the third time: “I had that trick from a Mpongwee headman,” and added: “It was while I was at Victoria Falls, waiting to cross the Kalahari Desert.”

Then he continued, his eyes growing keener and his manner changing: “There is some interesting work to be done in that quarter by some one. You see, the Kalahari runs like this”—he drew the lines on the ground with his cane—“coming down in something like this shape from the Orange River to about the twentieth parallel south. The aneroid gives its average elevation about six hundred feet. I didn’t cross it at the time, because we had sickness and the porters cut. But I made a lot of geological observations, and from these I have built up a theory that the Kalahari is no desert at all, but a big, well-watered plateau, with higher ground to the east and west. The tribes, too, thereabout call the place ‘Linoka-Noka’ and that’s the Bantu for rivers upon rivers. They’re nasty, though, these Bantu, and gave us a lot of trouble. They have a way of spitting little poisoned thorns into you unawares, and your tongue swells up and turns blue and your teeth fall out and——”

His wife Victoria came out on the porch in evening-dress.

“Ah, Vic,” said Toppan, jumping up, with a very sweet smile, “we were just talking about your paper-german next Tuesday, and I think we might have some very pretty favors made out of white tissue-paper—roses and butterflies, you know.”

THE RACE BOND

The whistle of the steamer saluted three times—twice short and once long—the sun which rose over the deep green mountains of Costa Rica. The signal was answered in due time. A small tug put off from the long iron pier. There was a launch at the end of its tow line, a big, flat scow of a lighter. It came out across the smooth mother-of-pearl stretch of water, jerking and bobbing over the great Pacific swells. The tug shot by the steamer, the launch threw loose the tow line, and as it came alongside the forward cargo hatchway, a lanchero pitched another rope up to the boatswain.

There followed delay. There must of necessity follow delay when the crews and captains of launches are West Coast natives—Mexican stevedores at the very best—and most of the sailors on the steamers the same. The first-officer, down on the main deck, gave orders, there was a creaking of hawsers on the strain, the rattle and squeal of blocks and tackle, and the rumble of moving freight in one of the forward cargo-spaces. The captain, immaculate in ducks, came out from his cabin. He went to the rail and looked over at La Libertad, where the white and red of its long, low houses showed clear in the daybreak among the glistening palms. Then he looked down. There were eight or ten lancheros in the lighter helping to confuse the very simple process of making her fast, or perched upon the gunwale observing with the vague placidity of their kind.

The captain had no opinion of Central American natives of any sort, much less of lancheros. He considered these ones with rather more than usual disgust.

“What’s the matter with them fellows in that launch, Marsden,” he inquired of the first-officer.

Marsden was peering down into the black hole of the hold. He drew away and looked up to the rail of the hurricane deck. “Played out, sir,” he told him; “they were loading the San Benito until she put out last night at eleven.”

The captain had no sympathy for them on that, or any other score. His eye was without mercy, as he took stock of them again. “Hullo—one of them is white,” he said. It was meant, as before, for the first-officer, but it was entirely audible to the lancheros.

The first-officer looked over into the launch, and the man who was white looked up at him. Then the first-officer turned away. “Yes, sir,” he said.

He walked to the hatchway edge. “Quartermaster,” he called. A voice from the hold answered him. “Send up those boxes of nails first,” he ordered.

There followed a banging in the cargo-space, the boatswain’s whistle began its shrill little calls, which would keep up all day, a donkey engine puffed, and a windlass rattled in the bowels of the ship; the big hook on the end of its rope swung down the hatchway, and presently a net-sling full of boxes was hoisted and deposited on the main deck.

“T. S. & Co., over X, one—Garcia, three times—Y in a diamond, two times—J. S. & Co., over X, four.” The first-officer marked the boxes with his chalk as he called their address and number, the checky for the port authorities and the freight-clerk for the ship kept tally and record in their own books; the net drew taut again at the boatswain’s whistle, and the first load of cargo swung overside and was lowered into the launch.

The first-officer went to the side and watched it. It was the white man who unhooked the sling, who spilled out the boxes, and sent the sling back empty, all with a promptness that no native lancheros could have hoped, or would have dreamed of, attempting to attain. These looked rather more than usually dead and alive. Nominally, he was not the capitan of the launch, but it was clear that he was the self-constituted boss of it. The captain of the steamer said as much—“Must make their heads swim, that fellow.”

The mate answered “Yes, sir,” again; but another net full of boxes was coming up. He went back to them. “J. S. & Co. over X, two times—Y in a diamond, one,” he called. The checky and the freight-clerk registered; and the work of the day was well under way.

But in spite of the one white man in the launch below it did not go with the speed the mate would have desired. The crew of the alternating launch was demoralized and worthless to the last degree. “Half dead—and it’s a fiesta besides, so they’re half drunk, too,” he remarked upon it to the captain. He pushed his cap back with the visor on his crown, and ran across his wet forehead the sleeve of a coat which had begun the day white. It was two o’clock of an October afternoon, and the heat was one of these things the fullness whereof can only be realized from having been experienced, which mere imagination is powerless to present.

The lancheros were fumbling aimlessly at a load of steel rails. There was no white man in this lighter, and the management of it showed as much. Three rails were swung clashing together down on some crates that smashed like match-boxes under them. The mate raised his shoulders. It was not his business—so long as the breakage was not done on the ship, he was not accountable for it. Checky and the capitan of the “lanch” could settle that on shore.

“What’s in those crates?” the captain inquired.

“Merchandise—breakable,” answered the first-officer, cheerfully.

“Brutes,” commented the captain. He gave expression to his views on black-and-tan lancheros in general.

The mate nodded. He bent over the hatchway. “Quartermaster,” he called, “send up somebody with a marlinspike to mend this sling.” Then he went over and looked down into the launch. “Despacio abajo, hurry up—eh?” he shouted by way of suggestion to four lancheros who were pulling two ways on every rail, and had managed to drop into the water a rope sling, which it was affording them much concern and confusion, and the others much chattering and amusement, to fish out again.

Marsden did not appear to be in a communicative mood, but the captain was oblivious to moods after the manner of the insistently good-humored and talkative.

“It must be infernally unpleasant for that white fellow to work with the dogs,” he opined.

“I expect so,” said Marsden. It was not a tone encouraging a pursuance of the subject. But the captain did not know it.

“The capitan won’t stand his bossing some time,” he kept it up; “there’ll be a row, and the whole crew’ll take only too much pleasure in sticking their knives into him. He looks steady. Must be in a pretty bad way to come to that. Don’t know that I ever saw a white man in the fix along here before. He’d better get out of it while his skin’s whole.”

“Wonder who he is?” he asked, presently. It was in the nature of an inquiry addressed to no one in general, and the mate in particular. The mate did not answer. He was concerning himself about a delay in the hold, and called down some orders which were superfluous, in view of the fact that the boatswain had just gone scuttling down the ladder to attend to things himself.

The captain, however, was not put off. He had nothing to do. “Do you know?” he asked, when the mate came below him again.

“Know what, sir?” Marsden was thinking his own thoughts. He had not paid much attention.

“Who that fellow is?”

“Man named Stanwood,” said the first-officer, and he tried to head the captain off by another order to the hold. It was accompanied by profanity. The delay was nobody’s fault, but, as is frequently the case, the oaths expended in one direction were inspired from another.

It was a pity the captain couldn’t go aft and work a reckoning, or talk to the passengers. Not that he objected to the captain. The captain was a very good sort. It was the topic Marsden disliked.

“Stanwood—rather imposing for a lanchero in there with all them black brutes, aint it? Not that he’s any cleaner, though. Who told you it was that?”

“Nobody,” said Marsden; “I know it.”

It broke in upon the captain then that he was being discouraged. “Oh!” he said. There followed a pause. “You’d better have a new rope through that block there when you’re ready to hoist those iron chimney stacks.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the mate. The captain strolled off to the quarter-deck to watch the second-steward fishing for sharks.

But time was not hanging heavy on Marsden’s hands. There was a look of bad weather, and if they were to get off that night, as might prove highly desirable, there had got to be a lot more hustling than the lancheros seemed capable of.

The launch alongside had about all it could carry, and its capitan was calling for the tug, the soft, mournful note of his conch shell floating over the water to the shore. Marsden, by way of losing no time himself, ran up to the hurricane-deck and on to the bridge, and the whistle screeched across the blue-green of the sea, glinting in the sun, across the little port among its palms, and beyond through the lush jungle of the piling mountains, where the trees and vines and undergrowth matted in the moist, breathless temperature of a green-house. There were black clouds piling up behind the mountains, and rolling low into the great cañons and clefts of palm and fern trees. Marsden eyed them as he went below again.

The launch alongside was loaded and sent adrift, to be picked up by the tug and towed back to the wharf. The tug was bringing out the other one—the one in which Stanwood was of the crew. Marsden wished that he were not. A man may have been your enemy. He may have brought about your finish. You may have thought for years that nothing could be too bad for him. But all the same—if he is a white man, one of your own kind, be he never so much of a scoundrel, it is not good to see him working among Central American lancheros, under a capitan of the same breed. It is a trifle too low. He is one of your own race, after all, and it hits you through the race.

Marsden stood considering, keeping his balance as the ship rolled, at an angle of forty-five degrees to the line of the deck, backward or forward, according as she went to weather or to lee. It would have taken quite all the attention of a landsman to manage the feat at any effort, and with that he would probably have gone upon his skull or his nose. But Marsden was not even thinking about it. He was thinking of the time that Stanwood had bribed a Guatemala high official—with money already a long way from clean—and had thereby established in that misgoverned little country his altogether baseless claim to Marsden’s own sugar finca and refinery. It was the kind of thing that can be, and is constantly being, done south of twenty-three. And all your American citizenship can not avail to save you; rather, in fact, the other way—one of the mishaps of which you take your chance when you go to those countries to make a fortune, away from the hustle of colder climes. But it had been a blackguardly trick, nevertheless. And it had done for Marsden financially for good and all. He had thought himself in luck afterward to get the opportunity to ship to San Francisco on a P. M. steamer as a hand. He had been down to his last real then.

It had done for him in other ways, too. Even now that he had got his master’s license, and worked up by quick stages to first-mate—well—his people on the other side of the continent lived a different sort of life, went in for another and more conventional style of thing. So did the people of the girl he had meant to make mistress of his beautiful sugar plantation. He had been in love with her since his school-days at home—pretty much ever since he could remember, so far as that went. But it had obviously been out of the question to expect her to marry a deck-hand. He had stopped writing to her before long. It had been better for her. As for himself—it didn’t matter much. His own life was very thoroughly spoiled, anyway. And the girl had married—a man of her own sort, which he himself had ceased to be.

He owed all that to Stanwood. He owed a good deal to Stanwood. He had always intended to pay it some day, too—at the first chance that should present itself. Was this the chance? Perhaps.

Evidently wrong-doing had not prospered Stanwood. He had probably come out with that degraded, dirty gang, in that “lanch” which stunk of bilge water and other filth beyond a white man’s stomach almost, for no other reason than to get an opportunity to stow, or to ask a passage up—as Marsden himself had been obliged to ask five years before. He would not try it now, of course. He had nerve enough for about anything, but hardly enough for that. He would have to wait at least a week for another ship and another first-officer.

It happened, nevertheless, that Marsden wanted another sailor. At the last port, Corinto, one of his men had gone ashore to see one of the sick mothers he kept along the coast, and that had been the last seen of him. Marsden was anxious to fill the vacancy, but Stanwood should not have it. He could work with the launch gang a while longer. It was small enough punishment for his misdeeds.

The launch swung alongside. Stanwood was in her. He was having an altercation with the capitan, too, and the capitan had been taking more tequila, apparently. It would be the course of wisdom for the Gringo lanchero to hold his peace and his tongue, if he were not looking for a speedy exit from a bad sort of life. The capitan and his gang would like nothing better than severally and collectively to stick knives into him.

Once again the launch went off, discharged her cargo, and came back for another load. This time it was before the other launch was quite ready to be towed away, so she made fast, bow and stern, to her, and the idle lancheros fell to eating some food they had brought with them as they waited. They crouched together in a group, getting a good deal of fun out of it. There were the inevitable frijoles and bread and bottled coffee, and there was besides a most unwonted treat, a leg of mutton. They passed it from one to the other, and each gnawed at it with his gleaming teeth, grinning over the game.

Stanwood crouched among them. But he was not having fun out of it. He was not grinning. He scooped up the common mess of black beans with scraps of crust. He was ragged and dirty as they were. But he did not take his degradation with their good humor. He looked sullen and lean and hungry.

Marsden watched him. It was not a pleasant sight, and he felt a kind of sick disgust and pity. But he wanted to see if the bone of meat would go to the white man in the end, and if the white man would take it. It came to the last of the natives. He picked it all but clean with a show of keen enjoyment. There were a few shreds left. He examined them. Then, with the insolence of a base breed having the upper hand, he tossed it over at Stanwood. It struck him on the chest. Marsden could see the killing hate in his eyes, and the shutting of his teeth under the ragged black beard. Then—and he was conscious of a deep relief—he saw him pick up the bone, stand in the scow, and drop it over into the water.

Marsden turned away. It was not only of relief that he was conscious, but of a killing hate of the half-breed lancheros equal to Stanwood’s own, as well.

The clouds which, at noon, had been rising behind the mountains and dropping dark into the valleys and cañons, had spread half over the sky. There was a low, whining wind, growing steadily stronger. And the seven thousand miles of sea stretching unbroken to the west was sending in heavier ground swells to the open harbor. The steamer went heaving from side to side. Even the sailors were finding it not always easy to keep their footing. And it was now that the great iron chimney stacks had to be brought up. It would not have been a small matter at the best. At present it was extremely dangerous. The loaded lighter had gone off. The tackle had been changed on the block of the foremost derrick to new hemp, yellow and strong.

There was the huge clangor and rumble of hollow iron striking against iron down in the cargo-space. The mate had taken out his own whistle. The responsibility was too great to be intrusted to subordinates here. He shrilled one order after another, or shouted them in nautical English and strange Spanish, and they were answered from the depths of the hold. The monster tube rolled into the opening guided by a man naked to the waist, on whose brown torso, swelling with muscles, the sweat rolled and glistened. The stack rose slowly upward—roaring its vast basso protests as it struck—fifty feet long, a yard in diameter, heavy, unwieldy, plunging as the ship rolled to starboard, down and down, and back to port, down and down again.

It was a formidable thing, all but unmanageable even there. But once clear of the hatchway it flung itself, charging and swinging and threshing, with the great iron bellow of warning. The sailors jumped from its way. There was only the mate to handle it. The ship gave a heavy lurch to starboard. The chimney whirled and lunged toward him with a vibrating song of onslaught, and the voice of the white man in the launch below called an involuntary “Look out!” An instant of the hesitation of fear and the mate would have been struck overboard by all the force of the great cylinder of iron. But he put out his hand and pushed it, and it swung off harmlessly enough, as docile as it was formidable.

The little whistle shrilled, the derrick moved its long arm around and out, and the stack hung overside, directly above the launch. The lancheros had retreated to the sides, ready to scramble out of the way, or to jump overboard, if need should be. They stood looking up at it uneasily. If the rope were to break or slip, if the mate were to give a wrong order——

Suddenly the steamer came over to starboard with a deep roll, and the great stack dropped with her. The mate saw the chance of mishap. His whistle piped a sharp, quick order to hoist. The lancheros cowered, their arms over their heads—all but Stanwood. He stood watching a chance. The stack swung and whirled, gigantic and awful, not a foot above his reach. But the rope had been just too short. The ship heaved back, and with a reverberation of metal thunder as it struck against the hull, the cylinder swung up again.

Courage came back to the capitan of the lighter then, and with it all his powers of mean impertinence. He shouted up curses at the first-officer. They were vile, as curses can only be vile in that “language of prayer.” And the first-officer understood them perfectly. But he had no time to take notice of them. The ship had got to get off that night. And the stacks had got to be unloaded. But it was far from simple to get even this first one lowered into the launch. Several times they dropped it almost to its place, then, because the empty scow bobbed one way in a swell, and the ship another, it had to be hoisted once more. And once the windlass refused to work at a signal. There was a delay until it could be repaired. The capitan of the lancheros waxed more impertinent and abusive; the tequila with which he had been refreshing himself on shore was beginning to take its violent effect. In the absorption of his abuse of the ship and all its crew, he forgot to order his own men. The stack was coming down once again, with a fair chance of landing squarely in the bottom at last—if the lancheros should be quick enough at guiding it. But they were doing nothing, frightened half out of their little available senses. And their capitan was yelling foul words aloft. It was a critical instant. The white lanchero knew it. He gave an order. It was all the men needed—a head. They made to obey. But the boss, in the madness of tequila, turned on his white hand. Was he the capitan? Was he in command? He had the signal conch shell in his hand. He brought it down with a cracking blow on Stanwood’s head.

The first-officer, watching the critical descent of the iron monster with all his attention, saw Stanwood spring at the boss’s throat, saw the knives of the other lancheros drawn, saw them swarming astern to the rescue of their fellow, ten of them against one. And the iron stack was swaying just above them. Another starboard roll—they would be crushed under it. And another moment lost and the Gringo would have ten knives in his neck and back. The little whistle shrilled sharply twice, and even as its order was obeyed and the windlass reversed, the first-officer was sliding overside down the manrope, had kicked himself off from the hull, and landed in the launch.

It was a short fight. The first-officer had his six-shooter, the white lanchero his knife, like another. The natives were fierce with blood lust, and the drunkenness of knife gleam and tequila. But it was a matter of coolness and of the dominant race. Before the captain on the hurricane-deck could run to his cabin for his carbine, it was over with. Two lancheros had disabling bullet wounds, and the rest had retreated to the bow, all the flush of fight gone out of them, whipped and cringing and scared.

The first-officer and the white lanchero stood astern. They had been cut, and the ducks of the first-officer were red. Blood oozed through the lanchero’s rags. He got breath for a moment clutching at the gunwale. Then he turned to the first-officer. “Thank you,” he said.

Marsden looked at him, slowly, from his shaggy black hair to his bare feet. “Don’t mention it,” he answered. Then he looked up at the ship. “Unhook that stack for the present, and send down the chair for us,” he ordered, coolly.

He considered his left arm. The blood was bubbling out just above the elbow. He knew what it meant. He had seen the thing before. It would be all right once a tourniquet should be put above it. But before that, before the doctor could get down in the chair, he would very likely faint. He was feeling light-headed already—and his eyes were glazing over. He shut his right hand hard above the wound.

“You can’t stay with this, Stanwood,” he told the lanchero. His voice sounded to himself far away and dead. He was not altogether sure what he was saying. He glanced up. Away and away overhead in a vague distance of hot blue, the chair was beginning to lower. He must make haste. He spoke carefully, with precision, swaying unsteadily as the launch rolled.

“We lost a man at Corinto,” he went on; “we—need an—other. You can ship to Frisco with us if——” he staggered, then caught himself, “if you—like.”

The chair with the doctor touched the bottom of the scow. The first-officer had fallen, and was lying quite still. The white lanchero was bending over him, clenching his two hands tight about the wounded arm.

THE RAJAH’S NEMESIS

In my travels abroad I once encountered an extraordinary illustration of the shifts to which Nature will resort in her efforts to overcome the inconvenience arising from a deprivation of the tools with which she is accustomed to work; and the facts of the case are sufficiently peculiar and tragic to warrant their relation.

I was summoned from Calcutta to proceed to the heart of India, being wanted by a certain rich and powerful rajah to perform a dangerous surgical operation upon one of the women of his household. I found the rajah to be a man of lofty character, noble and generous; but, as circumstances afterward developed, he was possessed of a sense of cruelty purely Oriental and in sharp contrast to the extreme indolence of his disposition. He was so grateful for the success which attended my mission that he urged me to remain his guest at the palace as long as it should please me to stay; and, as may be surmised, I thankfully accepted the invitation.

One of his servants early attracted my notice, for he was a man of marvelous capacity of malice and vindictiveness. His name was Neranya, and I am certain that there must have been a large proportion of Malay blood in his veins; for, unlike the Indians (from whom he differed also in complexion), he was extremely active, alert, nervous, and sensitive. He had one redeeming trait, and that was love for his master.

Once his violent temper led him to the commission of an atrocious crime—the fatal stabbing of a dwarf. In punishment for this the rajah ordered that Neranya’s right arm (the offending one) be severed from his body. The sentence was executed in rather a bungling fashion by a stupid fellow armed with an axe; and I, being a surgeon, was compelled, in order to save Neranya’s life, to perform a second amputation upon the stump of the arm, which left not a vestige of the limb remaining.

Just here, as a possible partial explanation of the terrible and extraordinary things which followed, I must call intelligent attention to a matter which has long engaged my notice.

We see that when one arm has been lost, the other acquires an unwonted dexterity, thus measurably compensating for the loss. Further, if both arms have been removed, an extraordinary nimbleness is exhibited in the feet, for they come to discharge to a considerable extent the functions of hands—to so great an extent that the toes display a power of prehension which one might suppose had not existed in them since our abandonment, in the evolutionary process, of the tree-climbing habit. Thus, with the toes an armless man may learn to hold a pen and to write, to load and fire a pistol, to cut food with a knife, and convey it to his mouth with a fork, to sew, and to do a hundred other useful things, and some which are purely ornamental, as painting, playing a harp, and the like. I once saw an armless man give his wife a sound thrashing with a rawhide whip.

If, now, one of the legs be removed, the remaining foot will develop an almost redoubled capacity, its agility being marvelous. But suppose that this member, too, should be parted with—has Nature reached the end of her resources? Remember, the dexterity that she developed in those members which remained after the amputation of others was primarily of a character to take the place of that which enabled the others to minister to the needs of life. Granted that both arms and both legs are gone, has Nature, I have asked, reached the limit of her resources, in the accomplishment of an earnest and controlling purpose, praiseworthy or perverted?

Let us inquire into the philosophy of the process by which this compensating dexterity is developed. It is easy for the scientists to tell us that this is done by the concentration of the will and the persistent exercise of the muscles in obedience thereto; but to my understanding this explanation is not sufficient. The principle of life, the amazing persistence of this principle, and the ways in which this persistence is maintained, are all inscrutable mysteries, necessarily and forever beyond our comprehension. It is the fashion of transcendentalism (not followed, however, by the greater scientists) to maintain that we have a spiritual, as well as a material, nature; and by evolution there has grown out of that belief another, that this spiritual nature is imperishable, indestructible—the fashionable, though inaccurate, term is “immortal.” The spirit is assumed to be the ego, the consciousness—that which fixes individuality and determines identity.

Now, we know that mind is consciousness, and that the mind has its seat within the brain. But the brain is identical in its chemical, structural, molecular, and functional characteristics with the nerves which lead from it and ramify throughout the body; therefore the mind, and consequently the spirit, ramifies throughout the body; and hence it follows that if the spirit is indestructible and should be separated from the body (by death or otherwise) it must have the essential form and appearance of the body. The fact of our being unable to see it presents no obstacle to the argument; for we are unable to see countless things which we are certain exist. The argument thus put in logical shape may account, by unconscious synthetical reasoning, for the prevalent belief, seemingly inherent, that the spirit retains the form of the body after death; for there is no other conception of the human spirit’s form—we never imagine it as having the shape of a ball, or a comet, or a balloon, or a cloud, or as being formless.

Then it must follow that, assuming the spirit to be indestructible and as having the form of the body, the amputation of a limb does not exterminate that part of the spirit which occupied that limb; but as the indivisibility of the spirit must be admitted as an essential factor of identity and individuality, that part of the spirit which had occupied the amputated limb must always be present in the place where the limb had been, and must there, in that place, possess all the consciousness and intelligence which belonged to it before the limb was amputated.

This argument may be pursued to some astonishing conclusions which do not vitally concern the purposes of this relation. I might be asked, for instance, if the potentiality of a spirit is dependent upon its possession and control of a body, of what avail is it to speculate upon the unseparated existence of the spirit of an amputated limb? But there are some who declare that this dependence need not and does not always exist.

This, it must be understood, is not the line of argument pursued by scientists, for they have a purely materialistic explanation for all the singular phenomena resulting from amputation; but are they not inconsistent? They admit the inscrutable mystery of the principle of life and all its countless corollaries, and yet they glibly explain the evidently marvelous results of a serious interference with the normal operation of that principle, as in the case of amputation. Is it not possible that there is danger of too much explanation of these wonderful mysteries?

Let us proceed with the strange story of Neranya. After the loss of his arm, he developed an increased fiendishness, an augmented vindictiveness. His love for his master was changed to hate, and in his mad anger, he flung discretion to the winds. He was so unruly and violent in disposition that he could not conceal his feelings. The rajah, a proud, scornful man, increased Neranya’s hate by treating him with contempt and scorn, which had the effect of driving the wretch to frenzy. In a mad moment he sprang upon the rajah with a knife, but he was seized and disarmed. To his unspeakable dismay the rajah sentenced him for this offense to suffer amputation of the remaining arm. It was done as in the former instance.

This had a temporary effect in curbing the man’s spirit, or rather in changing the outward manifestation of his diabolic nature. Being armless, he was at first largely at the mercy of those who ministered to his wants—a duty which I undertook to see was properly discharged, for I felt an interest in this horribly perverted and distorted nature. This sense of helplessness, combined with a damnable scheme for revenge which he had secretly formed, caused Neranya to change his fierce, impetuous, and unruly conduct into a smooth, quiet, insinuating manner, which he carried so artfully as not only to secure a peace and comfort which he had never known before, but also to deceive those with whom he was brought in contact, including the rajah himself.

Neranya, being exceedingly quick, nimble, and intelligent, and having a tremendous will, turned his attention to the cultivation of dexterity in his legs, feet, and toes; and in due time he was able to perform wonderful feats with those members, such as I have noticed already. His capacity especially for destructive mischief was restored.

One morning, the rajah’s only son, a young man of an exceedingly lovable and noble character, was found dead in bed. His murder was a singularly atrocious one, the body being mutilated in a sickening manner; but, in my eyes, the most significant of all the mutilations was the entire removal and disappearance of the young man’s arms. In the wild distraction which ensued in the palace upon the discovery of the mutilated body, the importance of that one fact was overlooked. It was the basis, however, of a minute investigation, which I made, and which, in time, led me to the discovery of the murderer.

The murder of the young man nearly proved the death of the rajah, who was thrown into a serious illness, which required all my skill and attention to combat. It was not, therefore, until his recovery that there began a systematic and intelligent inquiry into the murder. I said nothing of my own discoveries and conclusions, and in no way interfered with the work of the rajah and his officers; but, after their efforts had failed and I had completed my own work, I submitted to the rajah a written report, making a close analysis of all the circumstances, and closing by charging Neranya with the murder. (I still have a copy of that singular report, and I regret that its length prevents its insertion here. It deals with unusual facts and is an illustration of the value of special knowledge and pure reason in the detection of crime.) My facts, arguments, and deductions were so convincing that the rajah at once ordered Neranya to be put to death, this to be accomplished by slow and frightful torture. The sentence was so cruel, so revolting, that it filled me with horror, and I implored that the wretch might be shot. Finally, purely through a sense of noble gratitude, the rajah yielded. When Neranya was charged with the crime, he denied it, of course; but, seeing that the rajah was convinced, and upon being shown my report (which embodied a knowledge of anatomy and surgery that he had never dreamed of), he threw aside all restraint, and, dancing, laughing, and shrieking in the most horrible manner, confessed his guilt and gloated over it—all this, believing that he would be shot on the morrow.

During the night, however, the rajah changed his mind, and sending for me in the morning, informed me of his new decision. It was that Neranya’s life should be spared, but that both his legs should be crushed with heavy hammers and then that I should amputate both limbs as close to the trunk as possible! I was too much astounded to utter a protest; and, besides there was grounded within me that unyielding, and often inhuman, medical principle, which counts the saving of life at any cost the highest duty. I may add that, appended to this horrible sentence, was a provision for keeping the maimed wretch a prisoner and torturing him at regular intervals by such means as afterward might be devised.

Sickened to the heart by the awful duty which confronted me, I nevertheless performed it with success, and I must pass over in silence the hideous details of the whole affair. Let it suffice to say that Neranya escaped death very narrowly, and that he was a long time in recovering his wonted vitality. During all these weeks the rajah neither saw him nor made inquiries concerning him, but when, as in duty bound, I made an official report that the man had recovered his strength, the rajah’s eyes brightened, and he emerged with deadly activity from the stupor of grief in which he so long had been plunged. He ordered certain preparations made for the future care of his now helpless victim.

The rajah’s palace was a noble structure, but it is necessary here to describe only the grand hall. It was an immense room, with a floor of polished stone and a lofty arched ceiling. A subdued light stole into it through stained glass set in the roof and in windows on the sides. In the middle of the room was a fountain which threw up a tall, slender column of water in the centre, with smaller jets grouped around it. Across one end of the hall, half-way to the ceiling, was a balcony, which communicated with the upper story of a wing, and from which a flight of stairs descended to the stone floor of the hall. This room was kept at a uniform temperature, and during the hot summers it was delightfully cool. This was the rajah’s favorite lounging-place, and when the nights were hot, he had his cot brought hither and here he slept.

This hall was chosen for Neranya’s permanent abiding-place; here was he to stay as long as he might live, without ever a glimpse of the face of nature or the glorious heavens. To one of his restless, nervous, energetic, discontented nature, the cruelty of such confinement was worse than death; but there was more yet of suffering in store for him, for at the rajah’s order there was constructed a small iron pen, in which Neranya was to be kept. This pen was circular and about four feet in diameter. It was elevated on four slender iron posts, ten feet from the floor, and was placed half-way between the fountain and the balcony. Around the edge of the pen was erected an iron railing, four feet high, but the top was left open for the convenience of the servants whose duty it should be to care for him. These precautions for his safe confinement were taken at my suggestion, for, although the man was deprived of all four of his limbs, I still feared that he might develop some extraordinary, unheard-of power for mischief. It was provided that the attendants should reach his cage by means of a movable ladder. All these arrangements having been made and Neranya hoisted into his prison, the rajah emerged upon the balcony to see him, and the two deadly enemies faced each other. The rajah’s stern face paled at the hideous sight which met his gaze, but he soon recovered, and the old, hard, cruel, sinister look returned. Neranya, by an extraordinary motion, had wriggled himself into an upright position, his back propped against the railing. His black hair and beard had grown long, and they added to the natural ferocity of his aspect. Upon seeing the rajah his eyes blazed with a terrible light, his lips parted, and he gasped for breath. His face was white with rage and despair, and his thin, distended nostrils quivered.

The rajah folded his arms and gazed down upon the frightful wreck which he had made. Neranya returned the gaze with blazing eyes. Oh, the pathos of that picture, the inhumanity of it, the deep and dismal tragedy of it! Who might look into that wild, desperate heart and see and understand the frightful turmoil there, the surging, choking passions, unbridled but impotent ferocity, frantic thirst for a vengeance that should be deeper than hell! Neranya gazed, his shapeless body heaving, his eyes ablaze, and then, in a strong, clear voice which rang throughout the great hall, with rapid speech he hurled at the rajah the most insulting defiance, the most awful curses. He cursed the womb that conceived him, the food that nourished him, the wealth that brought him power; cursed him in the name of Buddha and all the prophets, in the name of heaven and of hell; cursed him by the sun, the moon, and the stars, by all continents, oceans, mountains, and rivers, by all things living; cursed his head, his heart, his entrails; cursed him in a furious outpouring of unmentionable words; heaped insults and contumely upon him; called him a knave, a beast, a fool, a liar, an infamous and damnable coward. Never had I heard such eloquence of defiance, curses, and vituperation; never had heard so terrible a denunciation, so frightful and impetuous an outflow of insults.

The rajah heard it all calmly, without the movement of a muscle or the slightest change of countenance, and when the poor wretch had exhausted his strength and fallen helpless and silent to the floor, the rajah, with a grim, cold smile, turned and strode away.

The days passed. The rajah, not deterred by Neranya’s curses often heaped upon him, spent even more time than formerly in the great hall, and slept there oftener at night, and finally Neranya, wearied of cursing and defying him, maintained a sullen silence. The man was a study for me, and I noticed every change in his fleeting moods. Generally his condition was one of miserable despair, which he attempted bravely to conceal. Even the boon of suicide had been denied him, for when he was erect the top of the rail was a foot above his head, and he could not throw himself over it and crush his skull on the stone floor below; and when he had tried to starve himself the attendants forced food down his throat, so that he abandoned such attempts. At times his eyes would blaze and his breath would come in gasps, for imaginary vengeance was working within him; but steadily he became quieter and more tractable, and was pleasant and responsive when I conversed with him. Whatever the tortures the rajah had decided upon, none had as yet been ordered, and although Neranya knew that they were in contemplation, he never referred to them or complained of his lot.

The awful climax of this terrible situation was reached one night, and even after this lapse of years I can not approach a description of it without a shudder.

It was a hot night, and the rajah had gone to sleep in the great hall of the palace, lying on a high cot. I had been unable to sleep in my apartment, and so I stole softly into the hall through the heavily curtained entrance at the end furthest from the balcony. As I did so, I heard a peculiar soft sound above the gentle patter of the fountain. Neranya’s cage was partly concealed from my view by the spraying water, but I suspected that the unusual sound came from him. Stealing a little to one side and crouching against the dark hangings of the wall, I could faintly see him in the dim light which illumined the hall, and then I discovered that my surmise was correct—Neranya was at work. Curious to learn more, I sank into a thick robe on the floor and watched him. My sight was keen and my eyes soon became accustomed to the faint, soft light.

To my great astonishment Neranya was tearing off with his teeth the bag which served as his outer garment. He did it cautiously, casting sharp glances frequently at the rajah, who, sleeping soundly on his cot, breathed heavily. After starting a strip with his teeth, Neranya would by the same means attach it to the railing of his cage and then wriggle away, much after the manner of a caterpillar’s crawling, and this would cause the strip to be torn out the full length of his garment. He repeated this operation with incredible patience and skill until his entire garment had been torn into strips. Two or three of these he tied together with his tongue, lips, and teeth, and secured the ends in a similar way to the railing, thus making a short swing on one side. This done, he tied the other strips together, doubling some which were weak, and in this way he made a rope several feet in length, one end of which he made fast to the rail. It then began to dawn upon me that he was going to make an insane attempt—impossible of achievement without hands or feet, arms or legs—to escape from his cage! For what purpose? The rajah was asleep in the hall——! I caught my breath. Oh, the desperate, insane thirst for revenge which consumed the impotent, miserable Neranya! Even though he should accomplish the impossible feat of climbing over the railing of his cage and falling to the stone floor below (for how could he slide down the rope?), he would in all probability be killed or stunned; and even if he should escape these dangers it would be impossible for him to climb upon the cot without rousing the rajah, and impossible even though the rajah were dead! A man without arms or legs might descend by falling, he never could ascend by climbing. Amazed at his daring, and fully convinced that his sufferings had destroyed his reason, I watched him with breathless, absorbing interest.

He caught the longer rope in his teeth at a point not far from the rail. Then, wriggling with great effort to an upright position, his back braced against the rail, he put his chin over the swing and worked toward one end. He tightened the grasp of his chin upon the swing, and, with tremendous exertion, working the lower end of his spine against the railing, he began gradually to ascend. The labor was so great that he was compelled to pause at intervals, and his breathing was hard and painful, and even while thus resting he was in a position of terrible strain, and his pushing against the swing caused it to press hard against his windpipe and nearly suffocate him.

After amazing effort he elevated the lower end of his body until it protruded above the railing, the top of which was now across the lower end of his abdomen. Gradually he worked his body over, going backward, until there was sufficient excess of weight on the outer side, and then with a quick lurch he raised his head and shoulders and swung into a horizontal position. Of course, he would have fallen to the floor below had it not been for the rope which he held in his teeth. With such nicety had he calculated the distance between his mouth and the point of fastening, that the rope tightened and checked him just as he reached the horizontal position on the rail. If one had told me beforehand that such a feat as this man had accomplished was possible, I would have thought him a fool. I continued to watch with intense interest.

Neranya was now balanced on his stomach across the top of the railing, and he eased his position somewhat by bending his spine and hanging down as much as possible. Having rested in this position for some minutes, he began cautiously to slide off, slowly paying out the rope through his teeth. Now, it is quite evident that the rope would have escaped from his teeth laterally when he slightly relaxed his hold to let it slip, had it not been for a very ingenious device to which he had resorted. This consisted in his having made a turn of the rope around his neck before he attached the swing, thus securing a three-fold control of the rope—one by his teeth, another by friction against his neck, and a third by his ability to compress it between his cheek and shoulder.

A stupendous and seemingly impossible part of his task was accomplished. Could he reach the floor in safety? Gradually he worked himself backward over the rail, in momentary imminent danger of falling; but his nerve never quivered, and I could see a wonderful glitter in his eyes. With something of a lurch, his body fell against the outer side of the railing, and he was hanging by his chin. Slowly he worked his chin away and then hung suspended by the rope, his neck bearing the weight of his trunk. By almost imperceptible degrees, with infinite caution, he descended the rope, and finally his unwieldy body rolled upon the floor, safe and unhurt!

What next? Was this some superhuman monster who had accomplished this impossible miracle? Would he immediately spring to invisible feet, run to the rajah’s bedside, and stab him with an invisible dagger held in an invisible hand? No; I was too philosophic for such mad thoughts; there was plenty of time for interference. I was quick and strong. I would wait awhile and see what other impossible things this monster could do.

Imagine my astonishment when, instead of approaching the sleeping rajah, Neranya took another direction. Then it was only escape after all that the miserable wretch contemplated and not the murder of the rajah! But how could he escape? The only possible way to reach the outer air was by ascending the stairs to the balcony and leaving by the corridor, which opened upon it, and surely it was impossible for Neranya to ascend that long flight of stairs! Nevertheless, he made for the stairs. He progressed by lying on his back, with his face toward the point of destination, bowing his spine upward, and thus causing his head and shoulders to slip nearly an inch forward, straightening his spine and pushing forward the lower end of his back a distance equal to that which his head had advanced, each time pressing his head to the floor to keep it from slipping. His progress was slow, painful, and laborious, as the floor was slippery, rendering difficult the task of taking a firm hold with his head. Finally, he arrived at the foot of the stairs.

It was at once manifest that his purpose was to ascend them. The desire for freedom must have been strong within him. Wriggling to an upright position against the newel-post, he looked up at the great height which he had to climb and sighed; but there was no dimming of the bright light in his eyes. How could he accomplish the impossible task before him?

His solution of the problem was very simple. While leaning against the newel-post, he fell in a diagonal position and lay safe upon the bottom step on his side. Turning upon his back, he wriggled forward along the step the necessary few inches to reach the rail, scrambled to an upright, but inverted, position against the rail, and then fell and landed safely on the second step. This explains the manner in which, with inconceivable labor, he accomplished the ascent of the entire flight of stairs.

It being evident that the rajah was not the object of Neranya’s movements, the anxiety which I had felt on that account was entirely dispelled, and I watched Neranya now only with a sense of absorbing interest and curiosity. The things which he had accomplished were entirely beyond the wildest imagination, and, in a sense, I was in a condition of helpless wonder. The sympathy which I had always felt for the unhappy man was now greatly quickened; and as small as I knew the chances of his ultimate escape to be, I nevertheless hoped that he would succeed. There was a bare chance that he would fall into the hands of the British soldiery not far away, and I inwardly prayed for his success. Any assistance from me, however, was out of the question; nor should it ever be known that I had witnessed the escape.

Neranya was now upon the balcony, and I could dimly see him wriggling along as he slowly approached the door. The rail was low, and I could barely see him beyond it. Finally he stopped and wriggled to an upright position. His back was toward the hall, but he slowly turned around and faced me. At that great distance I could not distinguish his features, but the slowness with which he had worked, even before he had fully accomplished the ascent of the stairs, was evidence all too eloquent of his extreme exhaustion. Nothing but a most desperate resolution could have sustained him thus far, but he had about drawn upon the last remnant of his strength.

He looked around the hall with a sweeping glance, and then upon the rajah, who was soundly sleeping immediately beneath him, over twenty feet down. He looked long and earnestly, sinking lower, and lower, and lower upon the rail. Suddenly, to my inconceivable astonishment and dismay, he toppled over and shot downward from his lofty height. I held my breath, expecting to see him crushed into a bloody mass on the stones beneath, but instead of that he fell full upon the rajah’s breast, crashing through the cot, and hurling him to the floor. I sprang forward with a loud cry for help, and was instantly at the scene of the disaster. Imagine my indescribable horror when I found that Neranya’s teeth were buried in the rajah’s throat! With a fierce clutch I tore the wretch away, but the blood was pouring out in torrents from the frightfully lacerated throat, the chest was crushed in, and the rajah was gasping in the death agony. People came running in, terrified. I turned to Neranya. He lay upon his back, his face hideously smeared with blood. Murder, and not escape, was his intention from the beginning; he had adopted the only plan by which there was a possibility of accomplishing it. I knelt beside him, and saw that he was dying—his back had been broken by the fall. He smiled sweetly into my face; and the triumphant look of accomplished revenge sat upon his face even in death.

THE MAN-HUNTERS’ REWARD

“That isn’t a bad reward!”

“No; if a fellow could catch him, he would make pretty good wages. Let’s see,” and the second speaker began to read the postal-card that the postmaster at Hard Scrabble had just tacked to the door of the store that constituted the “office,” so that every one might read:

$500 Reward will be paid for the arrest and delivery of Rube White to the sheriff of Yavapai County. He is about twenty-five years old, six feet tall, and slim, with light complexion, and has a big scar on the right side of his face. He is wanted for robbery and other crimes. If killed in resisting arrest the reward will be paid on satisfactory proof of his identity. When last heard from was making for the Tonto Basin country.

By the time the reader had finished, a crowd of half a dozen or more men surrounded him.

“Now, if that feller is headed for the Tonto Basin country, it wouldn’t be much of a trick to take him,” said the first speaker, reflectively, as if debating with himself the advisability of making the attempt.

“If you hear me, he ain’t going to be taken in, and the feller that tries it is going to have his hands full. They have been after him for two or three years and aint got him yet. They say he’s right on the shoot,” remarked another of the crowd.

“Well, a feller ought to know him as soon as he sees him, from that description,” hazarded the first speaker, “if he got up close enough to see the scar; and then all he’d have to do would be to turn loose at him if he didn’t throw up his hands when you told him. Besides, nobody but him would try to cross over the mountains into the basin with this snow on the ground. Blamed if I don’t think I’ll go after him.”

“Well, somebody ought to round him up,” asserted some one in the crowd; “he’s been foolin’ roun’ hyah long enough, jes havin’ his own way, sorter as if the country belonged to him. Durned if I wouldn’t go with you, Hi, if I didn’t have to take this grub over to the boys in camp.”

“Well, if any of you want to go, all right. I’m going,” replied the man addressed as Hi.

It was not the first time that Hi Lansing had been on such expeditions. He was one of those men for whom danger seems to have a fascination. At his remark, Frank Crandall, a young fellow who had been standing quietly by, volunteered to accompany him. The crowd turned toward him with more interest than they had thus far evinced during the entire proceedings. It was but a few months since he had come among them, fresh from the East, to take charge of one of the mines which had been closed down by the winter’s storms. For weeks he had been cooped up in the isolated settlement, and he longed for something to break its monotony.

“Well, get your horse and gun, and come,” replied Hi, and, in an instant, the two men had left the room to arm and equip themselves for the chase, while the loungers gathered around the stove to discuss the probabilities of their success. In a few minutes, the two men rode past the door, each armed with a rifle and six-shooter, and the crowd, stepping out, bade them good-by, with the oft-repeated warning: “Be keerful and don’t let him get the drop on ye.”

The crust of the unbroken snow cracked crisply under foot as the two rode on fast, leaving the little settlement in their rear. For some time neither spoke; but, at last, the silence was broken by Lansing, asking his young companion: “Did you ever try this kind of thing before?”

“No,” replied the young man; “I never have.”

“Well, then, you want to be keerful. If you don’t lose yer head, you’re all right. The only danger is that we may run on him before we know it.”

“And if we do, what then?” asked the young man.

“Well, he will probably commence shooting, and if he does, and you arn’t hit the first rattle out of the box, why you want to git off’n your horse and git behind something and shoot back. If ther aint anything to git behind, keep your horse between you and him, and keep a-shooting. Whatever you do, don’t let go of your gun. But what we want to do is to see him first, and then we’ve got the play on him, and all you have to do is to tell him to throw up.”

“And if he don’t throw up?” asked Crandall.

“Why, then you let him have it. The reward will be paid just the same.”

The apparent indifference with which Lansing spoke of the entire matter, much as if he were discussing the best method of hunting a wild animal, shocked the young man; but he had committed himself too far to withdraw. Besides he had that feeling that all men have when they are young—the curiosity to know whether or not he could rely on himself when danger threatened.

“We should strike his trail on the hills here, if he is really headed for the basin country,” said Lansing. They had been riding for several hours in silence through the snow, unbroken by aught save the scattered pines that here and there dotted the mesa. Before them towered the mountains through whose passes the man whom they were after would have to pass in his search for safety in the half-settled wilds beyond.

As the two men rode along, scanning in each direction the snow-covered mesa, Lansing suddenly wheeled his horse to the right, and when Crandall joined him he pointed to a narrow trail where two horses had passed through the snow.

“That’s him. He’s driving one horse and leading another, and he hasn’t passed by very long, either. See, the snow hasn’t had time to drift in it,” said he.

With the discovery his whole demeanor had changed. A new look came into his eyes, and his voice sounded strange. He even grasped his weapons in a manner different to that he had heretofore displayed. “He’s right ahead, and we want to look out,” the older man continued, as they began to follow the trail. As they approached the summit of each hill they would stop their horses, and Lansing would dismount and crawl to the top so that he might look, without being discovered, into the valley beyond, in order that they might not come on the fugitive too suddenly.

They had traveled this way for several miles, when, reining in his horse, Lansing pointed to what seemed an old road leading off to the right of the one they were following, and said: “That’s the ‘cut-off’ into the basin. I thought he would take it, but he probably doesn’t know the country. You had better take it and ride on ahead until you strike the road we’re on again. Then if you can’t find his tracks, you had better ride back to meet me until you do. I will follow the trail up.”

The young man tried to expostulate with Lansing for the great risk he was assuming, in thus following the trail alone, but his companion was obdurate, and, cutting the argument short by again warning the young man to be on his guard, he rode on, following the trail in the snow, while the younger man, finding objection useless, took the “cut-off” road. He had no difficulty in following it, and he wondered why the man they were in pursuit of had not taken advantage of it. The whole pursuit seemed almost like a dream to him. The snow, unbroken save by his horse’s footfall, stretched away mile after mile in every direction, with here and there a pine through whose branches the wind seemed to sob and sigh, making the only noise that broke the stillness of the wintry afternoon. It added to this feeling. Not a thing in sight. He began to depict in his own mind the manner of man they were pursuing. He had almost forgotten his name. After all, what had the man done that he, Frank Crandall, should be seeking his blood? Perhaps, like himself, the man had a mother and sisters to grieve over any misfortune that would overtake him. These and a hundred kindred thoughts passed through his mind. The sun was fast declining as he passed from the “cutoff” into the main road again. The air was getting chilly with the coming of evening, and the snow in the distance took on colors of pink and purple where the rays of the setting sun touched the mountain peaks. He scanned the main road eagerly to see if the man they were in pursuit of had passed, but the snow that covered it was unbroken. Then he rode back on the main road, in the direction from which he had come, to meet his comrade and the fugitive. He had just ascended one of the many rolling hills, when, in the distance, he discovered a man riding one horse and driving another. At the sight his heart almost stood still. He dismounted, and leading his horse to one side, concealed him in a clump of young pines. Then he returned to the road-side and waited. The man was urging his horses forward, but they seemed to be wearied, and made but slow progress. Crandall felt his heart beat faster and faster at the length of time it took the man to reach him. He examined his revolver and rifle, cocking each, to see that they were in order. It seemed to relieve the tension of his nerves. After he had done this, he knelt down so that he could fire with surer aim, and waited. He did not care much now whether the man resisted or not. If the fugitive resisted, he would have to stand the consequence of resistance. It was nothing to him. He could hear the footfall of the approaching horses in the snow, and he cocked his rifle so as to be ready. The setting sun shone full in the man’s face, but Crandall forgot to look for the scar that the notice had said was on the right cheek, although he had resolved to do so particularly. When he first discovered the fugitive, he scanned the road behind him to discover Lansing, but the nearer the man approached, the less Crandall cared whether Lansing came or not. He let the man approach nearer and nearer, so that his aim would be the more accurate. He could not afford to throw away the first shot. The face of the man grew more and more distinct. He seemed to be oblivious to his surroundings. Crandall felt almost disposed to let him pass, but the thought that every one would think him a coward if he did so, spurred him on, and, rising erect, he ordered the man to surrender. The horse that the man was driving in front of him, frightened at Crandall’s appearance, swerved from the road, leaving the two men facing each other. For an instant, Crandall looked straight into the other’s eyes. Then the man raised his rifle from the pommel of the saddle, and Crandall fired. The horse which the man was riding sprang from the road, and, at the same moment, its rider’s gun was discharged. The smoke from Crandall’s own gun blew back into his eyes, and he turned from it to follow the movements of the man at whom he had fired. As he saw the man still erect in his saddle, he felt the feverish haste to fire again come over him that men feel when they have shot and missed, and know that their life may be the forfeit of their failure. He threw another cartridge into the chamber of his rifle, and raised it to his shoulder, but before he could fire, the man reeled from his saddle and fell, while his frightened horse galloped off through the pines.

Crandall stepped toward him, holding his rifle prepared to fire again, if necessary. As he did so, the man raised his hand and said, simply: “Don’t fire—you’ve got me.”

The snow was already red with blood where he lay. For the first time, Crandall looked for the scar that the description said was on the right cheek. For an instant he did not see it, and his heart seemed to stop beating with the fear of having made a mistake, and when, on drawing nearer, he saw that it was there, that only the pallor which had spread over the man’s face had made it indistinct, he could have cried out with joy at the feeling of relief that passed over him.

“Are you badly wounded?” he asked.

“I don’t know how bad it is. It is here somewhere,” the man said, placing his hand on his breast, as if not certain of the exact spot. “It feels numb-like,” he added. Stooping down, Crandall unbuckled and took off the man’s pistol-belt and threw it into the snow, where lay his rifle, and then he tore open the man’s shirt. As he did so his fingers came in contact with the warm blood, and he involuntarily drew back, with a feeling of disgust.

“Did you find it?” asked the man, who was watching him closely, and who had observed the movement.

Recalled to himself by the question, Crandall again tore at the shirt, exposing the breast. Where the blood did not cover it, it looked like marble, despite the dark hair on it. He could not see the wound, on account of the blood, until he had wiped the latter from the breast, and then he found it.

“What do you think of it?” the man asked.

“There it is,” replied Crandall. He could not say more. The appealing tone in the man’s voice for some hope—some encouragement—made him feel faint and sick.

“What do you think of it?” the man repeated, in a querulous voice, and, as he did so, he coughed until his mouth filled with blood, and he spat it out on the white snow.

Crandall shook his head and walked toward where his horse was tied. He felt that if he watched the wounded man any longer he would faint. Noticing his walking away, the wounded man said: “For God’s sake, don’t leave me. Now that you have killed me, stay with me, and don’t let me die like a dog.”

The voice was one of entreaty, and Crandall returned and seated himself in the snow by the man’s side. The sun had gone down, and the twilight had come on, bringing with it the chill of night. Crandall covered the wounded man’s body with his overcoat, and raised his head from the snow. Almost unconsciously he noted that as the patch of red made by the blood grew larger and larger, the face of the wounded man grew whiter and whiter. He never took his eyes from Crandall’s face, while his breath came quicker and shorter, as if he breathed with labor. With each breath the blood seemed to bubble from the wound in the breast. One of the man’s hands fell from under the coat that covered him. As Crandall raised it from the snow, its coldness sent a chill through him. Once he had asked the wounded man if he could do anything for him; but the man had only shaken his head in reply. Crandall felt like reviling himself for what he had done, and wondered why the wounded man did not reproach him. Even when he expressed his sorrow at having shot him, the dying man had said, gently: “Don’t mind it. It’s too late now.”

The twilight gave way to darkness, and still he sat there. He could not hear the dying man breathe without leaning over his face. He did not do this but once, though, and then the dying man had opened his eyes and looked up into his face, inquiringly. Crandall would rather have stayed there until morning than to have caught that look again.

Suddenly he heard a voice call to him. He started as if he had been fired at, but it was only Lansing. As he answered the call, Lansing rode forward and, seeing the outstretched form on the snow, said: “By God, you got him!”

“Hush!” replied Crandall, fearful lest the wounded man would hear the exulting tone which grated on his own ears as nothing had ever before done. But not minding the admonition, Lansing dismounted, and striking a match held it close to the man’s face. It was pale and cold, and the half-opened eyes were glazed. They did not even reflect the light made from the match, but from the partly opened mouth a tiny stream of half-congealed blood seemed to be still flowing down over the beard.

“That’s him, and it’s a pretty good day’s work we have done by earning that reward,” said Lansing, coolly, as the match went out.

Somehow, though, as Crandall lay awake through the night, within a few yards of the body, to keep the wolves from it so that it would be unmarred in the morning when they would lash it to a horse and take it into the settlements for identification, he wondered why Lansing could sleep so soundly. As for himself, the rigid form, covered with only a saddle-blanket, lying where the snow was red instead of white, was always before his eyes, even when he closed them.

CONSCIENCE MONEY

In January the darkness settles early in Paris. It was not yet five, and it was closing in, soft and sudden. This particular night it was rendered denser by the light rain that was falling—one of those needle-pointed, noiseless rains that come in the midst of a Paris winter and persist for days.

Celia Reardon came home through it, letting her skirts flap against her heels. The package of sketches she had not sold to the dealer on the Rue Bonaparte was under her arm. From beneath the dark tent of her umbrella she looked straight before her down the vista of the street, glistening and winking from its lamps and windows. The light, striking clearly on her face, revealed it as small, pale, and plain, with a tight line of lip, and eyes sombrely staring at nothing. She made no attempt to lift her sodden skirt or avoid puddles.

Walking heavily forward through the early dusk, she was advancing to meet the giant Despair.

This was on her mind, and, to the observant eye, in her face. Celia knew of only one way to evade the approaching giant. It was by the turn that led to the river. Many people, in their terror at his approach, took this turn. She had seen them in the morgue in the days when she was new to Paris, and went about seeing the sights like a tourist.

After the dealer on the Rue Bonaparte had given her back the sketches, telling her it was impossible to sell them, she had turned downward toward the quais, and came out there, under the skeleton trees, where the book-stalls line the wall. The dark, slumberous current of the river swept by under the gemmed arches of its bridges. It was carrying away all the foul and useless things of the day’s tumultuous life, all going helter-skelter, pell-mell, to the oblivion of the sea.

She thought of herself going with them, whirling about in the currents, serenely indifferent to everything that tortured her now. The thought had a creeping fascination. She drew nearer, staring down at the water, stabbed with hundreds of quivering lights, and saw herself—a face, a trail of hair, a few folds of eddying drapery—go floating by. A sudden gust of wind snatched at her umbrella, and shook a deluge from the tree boughs, fretting the surface of the pools. It roused her, and she turned away shuddering. She would wait and meet the Giant face to face.

As she turned into the impasse where her studio was, she felt that he was getting very near. The long walk had tired her. Since yesterday her only food had been the free tea at the Girls’ Club. Her door was the last on the left-hand side, and broke the face of what looked a blank wall. Near it a bell-handle hung on the end of a wire. On the fourth floor she opened a door that had her card nailed to it.

The studio was dark, only the large window showed a dim, gray square. She lit the lamp, and then, suddenly, in the recklessness of her desperation, the fire. There were eight pieces of wood and six briquettes in the box. She would burn them all. She would burn the bed and the chairs, but she would be warm to-night. To-morrow was twelve hours off.

The light showed the emptiness of the chill, barn-like room. The walls alone were furnished, decorated with a series of life-class studies, some made twenty years before, when she had been the star of one of the Julians. Now these spirited delineations of nakedness, unlovely and unabashed, offered silent testimony to the brilliant promise of Celia Reardon’s youth. To-night she only thought of the fire and cowered over it—a little, pale shadow of a woman, near upon middle age.

For hours she sat watching the flames dart up through the holes in the briquettes. The warmth consoled her. She grew dreamy and retrospective. Her thoughts went slipping back from point to point, in the glamourous past, when she had been hung in the Salon, and sold her pictures, and was an artist people spoke of who would some day “arrive.” From those radiant days of youth and hope, things had been gradually declining to this—one by one stand-bys failing and her old patrons leaving, rich Americans who ordered copies growing scarcer and scarcer. Finally no money to hire models, bad food, and, in consequence, declining health, poor work that failed to find a market; pride coming to her aid and withdrawing her from the help of friends; furtive visits to the Mont de Piete, and more dreaded ones to the dealers on the Rue Bonaparte; and to-night the end of all things.

It was late when she slept. Waking in the gray dawn she found herself lying cramped and cold in front of the white ashes of the fire, and crept shivering to bed. There she slept on till after midday. She felt weak and stupid when she rose, and her dressing took a long time. She began to realize that her state was nearly as bad physically as it was financially.

It was better to walk about the streets till the hour for tea than to freeze in the studio. She put on her hat and jacket, relics of better days to which she desperately clung, and went forth. In the night the thermometer had fallen and the rain had turned to snow. She buried her chin in her collar and tried to walk briskly. She thought she would go to the Louvre, which was warm, and sit there till four, when she could come back to the Girls’ Club. Both walks were long, but the hour’s rest at the Louvre would strengthen her, and there was still the faint possibility of meeting some one she knew who would order a copy.

She felt singularly tired when the long flank of Catharine de’ Medici’s part of the old palace came into view with the river sucking at the wall. All the surroundings were gray and motionless like a picture, and in the midst of this dead immobility the swift, turbulent tide rolled on, a thing of sinister life, calling to her as it sped. Midway across the bridge she stopped to look down on it, and then stood gazing, fascinated, unable to tear herself away.

Close to her, on the coping of the wall, an image-seller had set out his wares. They were a dream of fair women, classic and modern. The solemn majesty of the great Venus was contrasted with Phryne hiding her eyes in a spasm of modesty. Clytie, with the perfect fall of her shoulders, rising from the lily leaves that fold back as if unwilling to hide so much beauty, stood droopingly beside the proud nakedness of Falguière’s Diane. The boy who presided over this gallery of loveliness—a meagre Italian, his face nipped with frost—stood a hunched-up, wretched figure, his eyes questioning the passers-by.

Presently one of these halted in the hurrying march with an eye on Clytie. The boy drew his hands from his pockets, and with piteous eagerness held out the bust. The tones of his voice penetrated Celia’s dark musings, and she looked that way.

The buyer was a lady, young, and of a curiously soft and silly prettiness. She displayed all of a Parisienne’s flawless finish. Her cheek, by art or nature, was like a magnolia petal; her hair showed burnished on its loose ripples. Beneath the edge of her veil her uncovered mouth appeared, fresh as a child’s, serious, and charmingly foolish. Her chin rested on a fluff of white tulle and was a white of a warmer tint. There was dubious debate in her glance as it paused on the figures. She looked the incarnation of sweet indecision. Presently she decided on Clytie, and said she would take it with her. Celia knew she had bought the head from a sudden, careless pity for the boy’s red nose and chilblains. If she had peddled sketches on the bridge, with her nose red and her toes coming through her boots, she, too, would have made money, she thought, as she hungrily wondered how much the boy had made by his sale.

The lady unclasped the little bag that hung by a chain to her wrist, and searched for money. She was evidently careless, and carried many things therein. Suddenly she jerked out a whisp of pocket-handkerchief, and under it found the cache where the money had been secreted. She bent her face to search for the desired coin, and so did not see that with the handkerchief a five-franc piece had been twitched out.

Celia did see. She saw it spring out, and then drop into a bank of snow, noiselessly, as if purposely to avoid detection. She made a step forward to pick it up and return it. And then she stopped—a thought went through her like a zigzag of lightning. Cupidity, born of hunger, burst into life in her, and nailed her to the spot, her mouth dry, her eyes vacant of expression. For the first time in her life Temptation gripped her.

The traditions of generations of seemly New England forbears cried out upon her and struggled within her. But she stood her ground. The coin lying in the snow seemed of more importance to her than everything else in the world.

As the lady passed away, Celia drew near the images. The boy was rearranging them. When his back was turned she bent down and groped in the snow. Then rose with her face red.

She crushed down the shame that surged in her, and turned to leave the bridge. There is a Duval on the Boulevard St. Germain, and she almost ran to it, thinking as she went of what she would order. She would spend two francs and a half, allowing a twenty-five centime pourboire for the girl.

It was not the crowded hour, and she had no need to hurry. She ate sumptuously and slowly, and began to feel the revivifying tide of life flowing back into her starved body. The Giant began to look dim and distant. The river called no more. In the leisurely French fashion she sat a long time over her meal. The day was darkening to its early twilight as she emerged and fared down the boulevard.

She was walking slowly down the great street, her body warmed, the cries of her hunger stilled, when the enormity of her act began to force itself upon her. She refused to acknowledge it at first. Hunger was sufficient excuse. But not so much her conscience as her sense of dainty self-respect insisted on her shame. She was a thief. Her whiteness was stained forever. She had never before done anything for which to blush or to lie. Her poverty, her discouragement, her pitiful, proud struggles, had always been honest. She would as soon have thought of murdering some one as of stealing from them.

Now she had done it. One moment’s temptation had marked her forever. As the money had fallen into the snow something in her had fallen, never to rise.

Pursued by harassing thoughts, she half-unconsciously wended her way toward the river. Here, unencumbered by houses, daylight still lingered. The gray afternoon was dying with a frosty brilliance. In its death throes it exhaled a sudden, angry red which broke through the clouds in smoldering radiance. Its flush tinted the sky and touched the tops of the wavelets, and Celia felt it on her face like the color of shame.

As she stood staring at it, her pallor glazed with an unnatural blush, an inspiration came to her which sent a tide of real color into her face. A manner of redeeming herself suddenly was revealed to her. She would give the rest of the money to the most needy person she met that evening. She would walk the city till she found some one more deserving of it than she. Then she would give all she had—share her theft with some other pauper to whom two francs would mean salvation.

She felt instantly stimulated and revived by a return of self-respect. Either side of the river would be rich in case of heartbreak and hunger. Standing in the middle of the bridge, she looked from the straight line of gray houses on the Quai Voltaire to the vast façade of the Louvre. Then some whim impelled her to choose the side of the city where wealth dwells, and she walked forward toward the guichets of the old palace.

The city had on the first phase of its evening aspect of brilliantly illumined gayety. People were dining; she caught glimpses of them over the half-curtains of restaurant windows. Women in voluminous wraps were making mincing exits from the hotel doorways to waiting fiacres. There was the frou-frou of skirts, whiffs of perfumery, the shifting of many feet under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli.

Passing the entrance of one of the largest hotels, she was arrested by a familiar voice, and a richly clad and rustling lady deflected her course from the carriage that awaited her at the curb toward the astonished artist. Celia felt a curious sensation of fatefulness when she saw in the face before her that of an old patron, long absent from Paris. The lady gave her a warm greeting; she wanted to see her to-morrow, apropos of some copies to be made. Had Celia time to make the copies? Well, then, would she come to lunch to-morrow and talk it over?

The little artist blinked in the glare of the doorway and the lady’s diamonds. She would.

And now would she go to the theatre with the lady? Only her niece was with her, and they had a box.

No—Celia could not do that. She had—er—business—business that might keep her up very late.

The carriage rolled away with the lady and the niece, and Celia turned up one of the side streets that lead to the great boulevard. So Fortune was going to smile on her once more. All the more reason to square things with her conscience. She grasped her purse tightly and looked about her as she passed up the narrow thoroughfare. Misery often lurked ashamed in corners. She knew just how and why.

A few moments more walking, with an occasional turn into cross-cuts, brought her into the spacious widening of the ways before the Gare St. Lazare. It was particularly lively inside the depot inclosure, as the boat train for Calais was soon to leave. There was an incessant rattling of carriages piled high with trunks, and a great disgorging of travelers, who ran staggering up the steps weighted with the amazing amount of hand luggage indispensable to the Continental tourist.

Certainly it did not look a promising place in which to seek distressed humanity. Celia turned away and began to walk upward toward the street which flanks the building on the left, and winds an ascending course toward Montmartre. It was badly lit, sheltered by the vast blank wall of the depot, and showed only an occasional passer-by, and the lamps of a long line of waiting fiacres.

As she advanced into the semi-obscurity of this dark byway, a carriage rattled up and stopped precipitately near the side entrance into the yard. A man sprang out and then turned with a sort of elaboration of gallantry and helped out a woman. Celia idly noted her trim foot as it felt for the step, her darkly clad, elegant figure, then her face. It came with a shock of familiarity on its smooth, rounded prettiness; now, however, no longer placid, but deeply disturbed. Under it unwonted currents of feeling were corrugating the brow and making the lips droop. Only an eye used to note faces would have recognized it as that of the woman who had bought the head of Clytie a few hours before.

Celia loitered, and then drew back into the shadow of the wall. The woman was evidently in the grip of mental distress. Apprehension, indecision, terror almost, were stamped on her mobile and childish countenance. The man stretched his hand inside the carriage and pulled out two valises. He spoke to her, shortly but with slightly veiled tenderness, and with a start like a frightened animal she drew back into the shadow. He paid the driver, and then, standing between the bags, he drew out his pocket-book and gave her some murmured instructions.

She suddenly interrupted him in a louder key.

“I have my ticket,” she said, “I bought it this afternoon. I passed Cook’s, and went in and bought it.”

“You bought it yourself?” giving her a fatuously loving look from under his hat-brim, “you were afraid we would perhaps be late? Dear one, how thoughtful!”

“I don’t know what I thought. Oh, yes, I do. I thought if I went in to buy it here with you I might see some one I knew. That would be so dreadful.”

“Of course, you must not go in with me. You must wait here. Keep back in the shadow there while I’m gone.”

“Here—take it—Oh, I’m so nervous! Take it, and get yours, and then come back.”

She feverishly clawed off the little bag she wore on her wrist, and thrust it into his hand. Though less obviously so, the man was also nervous. He clutched up his valises, and put them down; then glanced uneasily up and down the street’s dim length.

“I’ll go alone and buy mine,” he said, “and put the bags in the compartment. I’ll be gone a few moments. You wait here, and don’t move till I come for you.”

“Oh, of course, not. I shouldn’t dare. And please hurry. I don’t see how I will ever be able to get in. At any moment I might meet some one I know. Think of what that would be! I had no idea this was going to be so terrible. It’s not easy to do wrong.”

“Do wrong?” echoed the man, in a tone of tender, though somewhat hurried, reproof. “Don’t say such foolish things. We have a right to happiness. Oh—er—haven’t you got a veil you could put on when you enter the Gare? It would be better.”

A bell rang within the building, and the woman gave a suppressed shriek.

“Oh, go—go!” she cried wildly. “Don’t stop to talk now. That may be the train. What would happen if we missed it?”

The bell struck him into action, too, and he hurried off, swaying between the two heavy valises.

Celia, from her station near the wall, was too smitten by the sudden revelation before her to have will to move. So she was eloping, this baby-cheeked creature, whose kindly impulse had prompted her to buy the Clytie from the frost-nipped boy on the bridge. Without any natural predisposition in that direction, she was going the way of the Devil, and even at this stage stood aghast, bemused, and terrified at what she had done.

The Frenchwoman moved forward into the light, and stood for a moment watching her departing lover. Then she began to send fearful glances up and down the street. Celia thought she could hear her breathing, and the thumping of her heart. It was not hard to see how she had been cajoled and overruled.

Suddenly, from the fullness of her heart her mouth spoke: “Oh, I want to go home.” She spoke aloud, making at the same moment a gesture of clasping her hands. Her face took on an expression as near to resolution as possible. Its flower-soft curves stiffened. Her lover was gone, and her hypnotized will was struggling to life.

She turned desperately toward the line of carriages and beckoned to the cocher of the nearest one, then dropped the raised hand to her wrist, where the bag had hung. It encountered nothing, and in a moment she remembered that her purse was with the man.

“Good God!” she said, and this time the violent Gallic ejaculation sounded appropriate.

As the carriage rattled up, Celia came out of the shadow. She spoke excellent French, and the Parisienne might have thought her a fellow-countrywoman. “What is the matter?” she said, quietly. “Do you feel sick?”

“No—no—but my money is gone. I gave my purse to my friend, and now I want to go back.”

“But he’ll be here again in a minute.”

“That’s just it—in a minute. And I must go before he comes back, and I have no money.”

“You can always pay the cocher at the house.”

“Not now—not to-night.”

She was far past a regard for the ordinary reticences of every-day life, but the humiliation of her admission was in her face. “My husband—he’s there, with only one old servant. He thinks I’m in the country with my mother. So I was till this afternoon. If I come home unexpectedly with no money to pay the cocher, he will be surprised. He will be angry. He will want to know all about it—I can’t explain it or tell more lies. I was mad when I said I’d go. I didn’t realize—Oh, good heavens!” with a sudden burst of agonized incoherence, “here he is! He’s coming and that will be the end of me.”

Celia turned. Against the bright background of the depot entrance she saw the Frenchman’s thick-set figure coming rapidly down the steps. He had got rid of the valises, and was almost running.

“Quick,” she said, and turning to the waiting carriage wrenched open the door.

“Get in,” she commanded. The terrified creature did so. She was ready to be dominated by any imperious will. Celia stretched her arm through the window, and into the little gloved hand pressed the two-franc piece, then cried:

“You can tell the cocher the address when you get started. Don’t stop him till you get some way off. Go,” she cried to the man, “down by the Rue Auber—don’t waste a minute. Fly!”

The cocher flicked his horse with the whip, and it started. At the window a pale face appeared, and Celia heard the cry: “But your name, your address? I must send the money back.”

“Never mind that,” cried Celia, “it isn’t mine. It’s conscience money.”

The fiacre rolled down the street, and, plunging into the mêlée of vehicles, wound its way through the press to the Rue Auber. A man standing on the sidewalk drew the stares of the passers-by as he gazed blankly this way and that. A woman quietly picked her way across the carrefour, toward the station where one takes the Vaugirard omnibus.

THE JACK-POT

There were five of us in the party—six, counting Long Tom, the guide. After two days’ hard climbing, which the burros endured with exemplary fortitude, we arrived at the little valley high up in the mountains, through which threaded the trout-stream.

“Jest you all go over into the cabin there and make yourself comf’ble, while I ’tend to gettin’ this stuff unpacked,” said Long Tom; “there ain’t no one there. My pardner, he’s down below.”

“The cabin appears to be two cabins,” said the colonel, as we approached it.

“That is for economy in ridge-poles,” said the doctor; “sleeping apartments on one side and kitchen on the other. In the space between, you keep your fishing-tackle and worms.”

We entered the right-hand section of the twin cabin, which proved to be the kitchen side. There was not much furniture—a table of hewn logs, a chair of bent saplings, and a rough bench.

However, we did not notice such furniture as there was, for each member of the party, as he stepped over the high threshold, had his attention instantly attracted by the stove, and a brief roundelay of ejaculations went along the group.

“Well, that staggers me,” said the stock-broker.

“H’m,” said the professor, in a mysterious tone, and rubbed his chin.

The stove was a plain, small cooking-range, rather old and rusty. The strange thing about it was its position. Its abbreviated legs stood upon large cedar posts, which were planted in the floor and were over four feet in height. This brought the stove away up in mid-air, so that the top was about on a level with the face of the colonel, and he was a six-footer.

We formed in a circle about the stove and stared at it as solemnly as a group of priests around a sacrificial tripod. We felt of the posts—they were firm and solid, showing that the mysterious arrangement was a permanent, not a temporary, one. Then we all bent our necks and opened our mouths to look up at the hole in the roof, through which the stove-pipe vanished.

Suddenly the stock-broker burst out into a laugh.

“Oh, I understand it now,” said he.

“Understand what?” asked the colonel, sharply.

“Why Long Tom has his stove hoisted up so high from the floor.”

“So do I,” said the doctor; “but I suspect that my explanation is not the same that any one else would offer.”

“Well, I will bet that I am right,” said the stock-broker, “and put up the money.”

“I am in this,” said the judge; “I have a clear idea about that stove and will back it.”

“Make it a jack-pot,” said the colonel; “I want to take a hand.”

The stock-broker drew a small yellow coin out of his pocket and dropped it on the table.

“He has the stove up there,” he said, “to get a better draught. In this rarefied mountain air there is only a small amount of oxygen to the cubic inch, and combustion is more difficult to secure than in the lower latitudes. I have heard that if you get high enough up, you can’t cook an egg—that is, I mean, water won’t boil—or something like that,” he continued, thrown into sudden confusion by the discovery that the professor’s eye was fixed upon him with a sarcastic gaze.

“Is that supposed to be science?” demanded the professor.

“Well,” said the stock-broker, doggedly, “never mind the reasons. Experience is probably good enough for Long Tom. He finds that he gets a better draught for his stove by having it up in mid-air, so he has it there.”

“The right explanation,” began the professor, “is the simplest. My idea is that——”

“Excuse me,” interrupted the stock-broker, tapping the table; “are you in this pot?”

The professor made a deposit, and proceeded:

“Have you noticed that our host is a very tall man? Like most men of his height, he hates to bend over. If the stove were near the floor, he would have to stoop down low when he whirled a flap-jack or speared a rasher of bacon. Now he can stand up and do it with ease. Your draught theory is no good; the longer the pipe, if it is straight, the better the fire will burn.”

“Professor,” remarked the colonel, “I regret to have to tell you that your money is gone. Long Tom told me, on the way up, that his partner did all the cooking, and he is a man of rather short stature.” The colonel then paid his compliments to the jack-pot, and continued: “Now, my idea is that the stove heats the room better there than on the floor. It is only a cooking-stove, to be sure, but when the winter is cold it makes this room comfortable. Being up in the middle of the space, it heats it all equally well, which it could not do if it were down below.”

The doctor greeted this theory with a loud laugh. “Colonel,” he said, “you are wild—way off the mark. Hot air rises, of course, and the only way to disseminate it is to have your stove as low as possible. According to your idea, it would be a good plan to put the furnace in the attic of a house instead of in the basement.”

“I think,” said the colonel, “that I could appreciate your argument better if you would ante.”

“The pot is mine,” said the doctor, as he deposited his coin; “you will all adopt my idea the moment you hear it, and Long Tom, who will be here in a minute, will bear me out. This room is very small; it has but little floor-space, and none of it goes to waste. Now, if he had put the stove down where we expected to find it, Long Tom could not have made use of the area underneath, as you see he has done. On all sides of the supporting posts, you will notice there are hooks, on which he hangs his pans and skillets. Underneath, there is a kitchen-closet for pots and cooking-utensils of various sorts. What could be more convenient? Under your ordinary stove there is room only for a poker and a few cockroaches.”

The judge, who had been listening to the opinions offered by the others with the same grim smile that occasionally ornamented his face when he announced that an objection was overruled, now stepped forward and dropped a coin on the table. He then rendered his decision as follows:

“It appears that none of you have noticed the forest of hooks in the roof just over the stove. They are not in use at present, but they are there for some purpose. I imagine that during the winter huge pieces of venison and bear’s-meat dangle over the stove, and are dried for use later. Now, if the stove were on the floor, it would be too far from the roof to be of service in this way.”

“Here comes old Tom,” shouted the colonel, who had stepped to the open door while the judge was speaking.

The old trapper put down the various articles of baggage with which his arms were loaded and came into the kitchen-cabin where we all stood. He glanced at the group and then at the stilted stove in our midst.

“I see you air all admirin’ my stove,” said he, “and I’ll bet you’ve been a-wonderin’ why it is up so high.”

“Yes, we have,” said the professor; “how did you know it?”

“People most allus generally jest as soon as they come into the place begin to ask me about it—that’s how I knowed.”

“Well, why is it up so high?” demanded the stock-broker impatiently, with a side glance at the well-developed jack-pot on the table.

“The reason’s simple enough,” said Long Tom, with a grin that showed his bicuspids; “you see we had to pack all this stuff up here from down below on burros. Originally there was four j’ints of that stove-pipe, but the cinch wasn’t drawed tight enough on the burro that was carryin’’em, and two of’em slipped out and rolled down the mountain. When we got here and found that there wasn’t but two pieces left, I reckoned that I would have to kinder h’ist the stove to make it fit the pipe—so I jest in an’ h’isted her. And thar she is yet. Say, what’s all this here money on the table for?”

There was a deep silence which lasted so long that Tom ventured to repeat his question about the money.

“It is a jack-pot,” said the doctor, sadly, “and as near as I can make out, it belongs to you.”

THE SEATS OF JUDGMENT

That Two Eyes are Better than One in the Dark.

“Thou hast the writings of Le Toy, Wau Shun?” asked Sam Lee of his brother-highbinder, as the latter issued from the receiving hospital of San Francisco.

“Verily, or thou hadst heard my dogs bark within,” replied Wau Shun.

“And Lee Toy?”

“Lee Toy died babbling of wings, and of the white babe whose life he saved from fire this day at the price of his own, and whose father stood beside him weeping like a woman.”

“Was ever the like seen before!” exclaimed Sam Lee. “That Lee Toy, the bravest of the brave, the keenest hatchet of our ‘tong,’ should fail his brethren, and break his oaths, and worship the white babe whose abduction he had undertaken—and that the babe’s father should weep for one of our people!”

“Ay, and, what is of more importance, that Lee Toy should have given me the writings that would have hanged us, who compassed his passing! Eh, Sam Lee?”

“Yea, Wau Shun; and compassed also the hanging of Quong Lung—nay, turn not so suddenly in a narrow lane, my brother, for I have but one eye, as thou knowest, and that can not abide swift movement in the dark on the part of a man whose life is forfeit”; and Sam Lee drew a darkling revolver from his blouse.

With a deft movement, Wau Shun, who had the advantage of two eyes—though they looked in different directions and were hard to meet—threw Sam Lee’s hand up, and snatched the pistol from him.

“’Twere easy to slay thee now, Sam Lee; and ’twere profitable, too—if only Quong Lung were out of the way.”

“Ay, if Quong Lung were only out of the way; but Quong Lung lives and waxes fat, and Wau Shun is his slave!”

No more was said. They turned into a narrow alley near the top of Jackson Street, Wau Shun walking in the rear. As soon as they had entered the shadow produced by the narrowness of the lane and by its angle to the lighted main street, there was a sharp report, and Sam Lee fell on his face, and coughed like one who is stricken through the lungs.

The swarms that inhabit Chinatown began to buzz. In a few minutes the alley was crowded with curious coolies jabbering excitedly, and in the fifth or sixth row of those who stood round Sam Lee was Wau Shun, watching the blood that welled from the mouth of the dying man and prevented speech.

After Wau Shun had seen the corpse of his brother-highbinder laid out on a slab at the morgue, he treated himself to a couple of jorums of “hot-Scotch,” and sought his den in Cum Cook Alley.

Lighting a dim candle, he proceeded to barricade himself, and to conceal his light, by means of a coverlet that was held in its place, on his side of the door, by iron bars that crossed and recrossed each other.

When all was snug, he drew from an inner pocket the roll of papers given to him by Lee Toy, which set forth the names of the several highbinders who belonged to his “tong,” the various loppings accomplished by their “hatchets,” and, in a special supplement, the instigations to certain notorious crimes by their master-mind, Quong Lung.

Lighting a brazier, he tore out his own record from the writing, and committed it to the flames. But that which related to Quong Lung he placed in a receptacle cunningly concealed in the threshold of the door.

Then, extinguishing his light, he sallied forth with the rest of Lee Toy’s confessions in his pocket, to speak with Quong Lung, who had awaited him these many hours with patience—and wrath.

The Lesser Discipline.

The dawn of Christmas Day was rosy when Wau Shun reached Quong Lung’s store. The bells throughout the city of San Francisco were once more frantically announcing the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem, as Wau Shun gave the signal of “The Brethren” on Quong Lung’s electric bell. It was answered by a deep voice that came through a speaking-tube, the end of which was so cleverly hidden that none but the initiated could find it: “Peace attend thy feet! What brother needs succor?”

“Thy servant, Wau Shun.”

“Enter, Wau Shun,” and the door was opened by some mechanical contrivance, and closed, as soon as Wau Shun had crossed the threshold, with a snap suggestive of a steel trap. Pressing a concealed button, Wau Shun lit an incandescent lamp that showed him how to avoid the thread, the breaking of which would have precipitated a hundred-weight of iron on the head of an intruder. At the end of the passage thus illuminated was a door, to which he applied his pass-key and entered an apartment that was a reflex of its occupant, in whom East and West were met. The room was decorated and furnished in accordance with the tastes of a Chinese gentleman of high culture; but the illumination was supplied by electricity, and a long-distance telephone, of the latest pattern, stood at the elbow of the stout, spectacled Chinese merchant, who sat on a great ebony chair, gravely smoking a cigar.

This was Quong Lung, the famous head of the high-binders of the See Yups—the most powerful “tong” in San Francisco—and who owed his bad preëminence to the fact that he was absolutely unscrupulous, using even his devoted friends as stepping-stones to his ambitions. Then, too, he was a “Native Son of the Golden West,” and used the idioms and swore with the ease of a born Californian. He had friends—old school-fellows and college chums—among the executive of San Francisco, and, by means of his more intimate knowledge of what was happening, he was enabled to humiliate his rivals and punish his enemies.

“Thou hast done well, Wau Shun,” he began, “and deservest well—but dry tongues can not speak.”

Pouring out some whisky for himself, he pushed the bottle across to Wau Shun, who had now seated himself on the other side of the table.

“Thy servant is enriched by thy approbation, Most Powerful,” replied Wau Shun, draining his glass after Quong Lung had drunk.

“The passing of Lee Toy by way of fire was excellently done, Wau Shun—most excellently done. And where is Sam Lee?”

“He is aweary and sleepeth, Great Master,” answered Wau Shun, whose squinting was suddenly accentuated.

“May his sleep refresh him! But the end of Lee Toy, as I have already said, was surpassingly excellent, Wau Shun. I learnt by this”—and Quong Lung pointed with his cigar to the telephone—“I learnt by this of the firing of the house of the white devil, whose babe Lee Toy guarded, and how Lee Toy died to save the devilkin.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” interrupted Wau Shun, chuckling softly, and helping himself again from the bottle.

“And the writings of Lee Toy?” asked Quong Lung, after a while.

Without a word Wau Shun laid a packet on the table.

“But these pertain to Sam Lee only,” exclaimed Quong Lung, after he had examined the roll of papers; and his nostrils dilated slightly. “Thou hast, doubtless, others that relate to thee and to me.”

“Now, nay, All-Seeing; the packet is as Lee Toy gave it to me—so Sam Lee will tell thee.”

“If the dead may speak,” said Quong Lung, deliberately.

The other turned toward him with amazement and horror in his looks. It was admirably done, but it did not even attract the attention of Quong Lung, who quietly flicked the ash from his cigar, and went on: “And thou wast seen by two of our brethren in the crowd that witnessed the end of Sam Lee; and ’twere easy, too, to find witnesses who saw thee slay Sam Lee.” Then, after a pause, he went on: “Moreover, only fools tell lies to such as me. None may sit on that chair and lie to me—only lift not thy voice at the proof of it, lest death come to thee suddenly!”

The next moment the horror-stricken highbinder was writhing under the spell of an electric current, strong enough to prevent him from relaxing his hold on the arms of his chair, which he had grasped as he tried to spring to his feet.

After Quong Lung had disarmed his victim, he said: “Thou wilt be here two days hence, and at the same hour, with the other writings of Lee Toy! Two of thy brethren await thee on the street, and will see to thy punctuality. Drink once more, Wau Shun, thou hast need. Ho, ho!”

Sweet Counsel and “Black Smoke.”

“Roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mince pies, plum pudding, cheese-straws, a choice between beer and champagne! Well, Quong Lung, and what do you want of me, you prince of plotters?”

The speaker had all the outward and visible signs of one who was a slave to opium; but under the influence of Quong Lung’s Christmas dinner his eyes sparkled and his spirits rose to a high pitch.

“Nothing, nothing, Jim—at least nothing to speak of; and we won’t speak of it until we have had a small black coffee, and—a small black pipe. By the way,” he went on, “Miss Ah Moy and Miss Shun Sen will come in presently with the coffee and pipes.”

Quong Lung’s guest, James Ray, was lank, and sallow, and of uncertain age, because of his terrible vice, and his hair was prematurely gray. He had been an electrical engineer of high promise until he became an opium-fiend. Even his clothes betrayed his failing, no less than his scanty and feeble beard and mustache and his leaden complexion. He had attended the same Eastern college as Quong Lung, and had imbued the latter with a taste for Shakespeare and Byron and the Psalms of David; together they had graduated from Yale; and then Quong Lung, recognizing the ability of his friend and the possibilities of electricity in the career of a highbinder, had introduced Ray to the fascination of opium-smoking; and so—through the uses of adversity—he held the latter in pawn for his own nefarious ends.

“Why all this magnificence, Quong Lung?” inquired Ray, after Ah Moy and her colleague had brought in the coffee and the implements pertaining to “black smoke.” “You have but to say the word, old man, and, like Ariel, ‘I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’”

Now the hiring of Ah Moy and Shun Sen to twang their samyens for the delectation of white devils, and hand them coffee and sing to them, “came high,” for the damsels were famous in their way and in great demand.

“This is too small a thing for you to notice, Jim,” replied Quong Lung; “nothing is too good for my friend.”

“Why didn’t you add, ‘the earth is my lord’s and the fullness thereof,’ and crush me with your compliments? As though I were a damned coolie!”

There was some petulance in Ray’s voice, as he gave way to the feeble irritability that attends the constant use of narcotics and stimulants by all except Orientals. He rose to his elbow from the mat on which he was smoking, and threw the pipe on its tray, like a spoiled child. But Quong Lung took no notice of the little outbreak, and Ah Moy put the pipe to his lips with her own fair hands and soon coaxed him into complacency. When a look of contentment had once more settled on his face, Ray said, deprecatingly: “It was the ‘dope’ that spoke, Quong Lung, and not I; forgive me, old man! And now, what do you want?”

Quong Lung motioned to the girls to withdraw, and when he was alone with Ray he said: “Jim, I shall hang unless you help me.”

“You must be in a bad fix, indeed, Quong Lung, if you depend on my small arts to help you. Explain.”

“Certain papers implicating me are in the possession of one of my blood-hounds, who has shown himself recalcitrant and ungrateful—the damned dog! By means of the battery yonder, which you rigged up for me, I frightened the brute considerably this morning, and he will be here again two nights hence with such of the papers as his fears may compel him to part with; but if his courage should revive, as it may, and if he should come without the documents, I want to put him under the stress of telling me where they are to be found, and then I desire that he should never speak again!”

Quong Lung darted a look full of dangerous meaning at Ray.

“Why don’t you employ your regular bull-dogs to attend to this unpleasant affair, Quong Lung?”

“Because their methods are coarse and their weapons clumsy.”

“But it is deuced risky to be an accessory before the fact in a murder case, my friend.”

“No, no, Jim, not murder! Call it, rather, ‘the sudden death of an unknown coolie, from unknown causes.’”

“And the consideration for me?”

“Two hundred dollars now,” said Quong Lung, laying a pile of notes on the platform on which they were smoking, “and two hundred more after the thing is over.”

“And if I refuse?”

Quong Lung shrugged his shoulders, and said, in an indifferent tone of voice: “Life without opium, and without means of obtaining it, were hell, as you know. Besides, so many accidents are constantly happening in Chinatown.”

“Very well,” replied the other, rising languidly to his feet and thrusting the notes into his pocket; “very well. You must let me have entire possession of this room for the next two days, and provide such assistance and implements as I may require.”

As he was leaving the room he stopped to smell a tuberose that stood on a bamboo flower-stand. The passing act seemed to give him an idea, for he turned suddenly to Quong Lung, saying: “See to it, Quong Lung, that you provide plenty of punk-sticks for the eventful night. You will need them, I am thinking. And be good to this green brother,” pointing to the tuberose.

Concerning Cherries and Tuberoses.

An hour before the time set for the arrival of Wau Shun, Ray called Quong Lung into the room wherein he had labored almost incessantly during the past two days.

“All’s done,” he said, “save only the payment of my dues.”

“Proceed,” returned Quong Lung, laying ten double eagles on the table and seating himself on his favorite ebony chair.

Ray eyed him curiously while he pocketed the money, and the Chinaman, who seemed to notice everything, rose quickly from the chair and said, with a smile:

Eh Jim? Now show me your trick.”

“Should somebody you dislike sit on the chair you have just left, Quong Lung, pressure on this button”—pointing to an innocent-looking cherry painted on a panel that hung on the wall—“would connect the chair with the electric-light wires that pass over your house, and make your objectionable guest the recipient of—say, three thousand volts.”

“And then?”

“And then—slightly altering the words of your favorite poet, to describe the result—‘his heart would once heave, and forever stand still’; and nobody would know how your highbinder died.”

As Ray left the room, he was again attracted to the tuberose. After smelling it, he turned round and called to Quong Lung, saying: “But you will not leave this innocent in the room, Quong Lung; its odor would be ruined by the punks you will burn, and by other savors.”

Then gravely saluting Quong Lung, James Ray left the Chinaman’s house, and made his way to the office of the chief of police of San Francisco, for even a dope-fiend has a fragmentary conscience.

The Greater Discipline.

While Ray told his story to the chief of police, with all the circumstances and detail that would exonerate him and implicate Quong Lung, the latter met Wau Shun at his outer door, and, holding him by the hand, escorted him to his chamber, which was dim with the smoke of many burning punks, the odor of which filled the air.

“Those who are true to me, Wau Shun, will always find that my ‘ways are ways of pleasantness, and all my paths are peace,’” said Quong Lung, softly, misquoting the Psalmist.

“Thy house, Far Reacher, is the well-known dwelling of pleasantness and peace.”

When Quong Lung would have seated Wau Shun on the chair of which the highbinder had such a lively recollection, the coolie shook his head, saying: “Nay, who is thy slave that he should sit in the presence of the Most Powerful. The ground thou treadest is good enough for him.” And Wau Shun squatted on the floor before his chief.

“There is no harm in the chair, Wau Shun,” said Quong Lung, seating himself on it carelessly, “no harm unless, indeed, the sitter tells lies or have deceit in his heart.” Then, after a pause, he went on: “The writings of Lee Toy—thou hast brought them?”

“Of a surety,” replied Wau Shun, producing a packet of papers from his blouse.

After Quong Lung had looked through them, and satisfied himself that they were authentic and complete, he said: “Wau Shun, the white devils say that virtue is its own reward; but that would be poor reward for such virtuous actions as thine. Thou shalt drink with me first, and then expound to me how I may lighten the burden of obligations thou hast laid on me.”

He went to the table, and pouring out two glasses of spirits, he advanced with them on a tray to the squatting coolie.

After they had drunk, Quong Lung resumed his seat, and lighting a cigar, he said: “It is not meet that he who hath saved my life this day should crouch on the ground like a dog. Let Wau Shun take my own particular chair, whereon none have sat save those I would honor—nay, I insist”; and Quong Lung pointed to the great chair of ebony, broad enough to accommodate two men such as himself. It was adorned with a shield of bronze, richly carved and inlaid, that formed its back; and it stood on a dais of burnished copper, and might have been the throne of an Oriental potentate; and behind it was a mirror which reflected the exquisite carving on its back.

When Wau Shun, after much protestation, had ensconced himself in a corner of the great chair, Quong Lung once more filled the glasses, and again they drank in silence.

“And now, Wau Shun, though I can not weigh my gold against thy services to me, yet, I pray thee, name some reward that will not put me to shame to bestow on thee.”

“Will the payment of fifty dollars afflict thee, my lord?”

“Nay, Wau Shun, that is the due of but a part of thy merits—the slaying of Sam Lee, for instance. Here is more for thy other many good deeds,” and Quong Lung tossed on the table a heavy bag that chinked opulently. “Moreover,” he continued, “now that Lee Toy, our keenest hatchet, is dead, some worthy successor to him must be found, and who so worthy as Wau Shun, the slayer of the uncommon slain, Lee Toy?”

“Further, Instigator,” interrupted Wau Shun, squinting atrociously, for the liquor had begun to mount to his head; “further, it seems to me that if anything happened to thee—which God forbid!—I might be found worthy to sit in this thy chair by reason of thy recommendation, and—my worthiness.”

“Of course, of course,” said Quong Lung, looking at the point of his cigar and crossing his knees. “The See Yups have need of strong men, and who so strong as Wau Shun! Drink once more to thy worthiness.”

After they had disposed of the liquor and smoked awhile, Wau Shun said, familiarly and half-insolently: “Quong Lung, thou owest me reparation for thy insults of two nights ago; and seeing thou art seated on the chair of humiliation” (here Wau Shun lapsed into impudent vernacular), “you must needs do as I say or be twisted out of shape.”

“What!” exclaimed Quong Lung, putting one hand carelessly behind his head and resting the other against the adjacent wall, whereon was a painted panel that glowed with cherries—“what! wouldst thou plague me?”

“Nay, but I would discipline you,” said Wau Shun, thickly; “I would discipline you with cramps, if need were.”

“And cramps only?” asked Quong Lung, toying with the flower-painted panel. “’Twere dangerous to play with me so lightly. Cramps can not touch me and are for fools alone.”

“Then I would kill you otherwise, smooth, fat hog!”

“Have at thee, Wau Shun!” exclaimed Quong Lung, fiercely, pressing the fatal cherry; and Wau Shun, sitting in the corner of the gorgeous chair, stiffened into a frightful attitude, and then began writhing dreadfully. To the heavy, punk-laden atmosphere of the room was added an odor of burning flesh.

Quong Lung rose from his seat and crossed the room to where his victim was being electrocuted. “Ho, ho, ho!” he laughed softly; “excellent Jim, most excellent Jim!”

As he watched the grim murder enacting before him, he saw, reflected in the mirror behind the chair of doom, the door that led into the room slowly open, and James Ray and a detective well known to Quong Lung entered swiftly.

“Throw up your hands, Quong Lung!” commanded the officer, as he covered the Chinaman with his pistol.

Taken in the midst of his crime, Quong Lung started and, backing against the fatal chair, he fell on the seat beside his victim, with a yell, as the tremendous current shot through him, killing him instantly.

“Turn off the current, Ray. For God’s sake, be quick!” shouted the officer, as the bodies writhed and twisted on the chair of death.

“Yes, yes,” came the leisurely reply, as Ray took the tuberose from the flower-stand; “there will be plenty of time after I have removed this sweet tenderling from this horrible atmosphere.”

A DOUBLE SHOT

Pat McCann came up from the plains into the hills in a bad humor with himself and the world. He had tried to be a cow-puncher and had been promptly bucked off; he had tackled the cooking problem and only escaped mobbing by resigning his job; now he had dragged his little, squab form, with its hanging arms, up into the hills to try mining. He applied to the first camp he came to. King, the foreman, gave him a job.

Early the next morning he and another man walked down the gulch through the sarvis bushes for half a mile, turned abruptly to the right, climbed the uneven length of a zigzag trail, and at last halted near the top of a ridge. The pine trees, slim and tall, grew out of the unevenly carpeted ground, through which cropped irregular slices of a red-brown, crumbling rock. At the very crest was a dark-gray “dike” of quartzite, standing up steep and castellated for a height of thirty feet or more. This was the “hanging wall” of the prospective mine. Down through the trees were glimpses of vast, breathless descents to other ridges and other pines far below. Over the dike was nothing but the blue sky.

The two men had stopped within a hundred feet of the top. The old hand went over to a rough lean-to of small trees covering a rude forge, from beneath which he drew several steel drills of various lengths and a sledge-hammer, which he carried to a scar in the face of a huge outcropping rock. After dumping these he returned and got a can of water and a long T-shaped implement of iron. The two men then set to work.

McCann held firmly while the other struck. After each blow he would half-turn the drill. When a dozen strokes had been given, he poured a little water in the hole, and thrust the drill through a bit of sacking to keep it from splashing. The other man jammed his hat down closely over his forehead and struck fiercely, alternately breathing in and grunting in rhythmical succession. When the hole became clogged with fine, gray mud, McCann carefully spooned it out with the T-shaped instrument, wiping the latter each time on his trousers. While he did this his companion leaned on his sledge or threw chunks of rock, with wonderful accuracy, at the squirrels that ran continually back and forth on the ridge. As the hole grew deeper, longer drills were used, until at last the longest of all left barely enough above the surface of the rock to afford a hand-hold. With that the miner expressed himself satisfied. He then brought three cylindrical packages wrapped in greasy paper.

“What’s them?” McCann inquired.

The miner grunted contemptuously.

“Hercules powder,” he replied. He pronounced the proper name in two syllables.

With a sharp knife he cut these into lengths of about three inches each, and dropped them one by one into the hole in the rock. He then rammed them home with a hickory ramrod, just as all old miners will insist on doing. Because of this a large percentage of old miners have no fore and middle fingers on their right hands. The last piece he split, inserted in the crack a bit of fuse, on the end of which was a copper cap, dropped it in, and then carefully chinked-in with the wet grit which had been spooned out of the hole.

“Mosey for cover, Irish!” he said, and touched it off.

From behind his tree McCann saw the sputtering fuse disappear. The next instant the rock seemed to bulge, splitting in radiation as it did so, and then the smoke belched forth in a canopy, filled with fragments of quartz. Following the miner, he found a jagged opening in the rock. Then they sharpened their drills at the forge and went at it again. By night they had fired two more blasts, and had made a start toward a shaft. After the third, Bob, the miner, said, glancing at the West: “That’ll do, Irish.”

They caçhed the tools, caught up the water-bucket, and swung rapidly down the trail. Bob was ahead, slouching along with the mountaineer’s peculiar gait, which seems so lazy, and yet which gets over the ground so fast. In a very few moments he reached the gulch below, plunging from the bare, rock-strewn hillside under the pines to the lush grasses and cool saplings of the cañon bed, as from a desert to a garden. He looked around to say something. McCann was gone.

“Well, I’m damned!” he ejaculated, and yelled loudly.

After a moment’s pause, from far down the opposite slope came a faint whoop. Bob sat down on a fallen tree, and waited philosophically, shouting at intervals. In a little while the Irishman came charging frantically up the gulch, tearing along through the vines and bushes at full speed, so terrified that he passed within ten feet of Bob without seeing him. The latter watched him surge by with an odd little twinkle in his eye. Then suddenly he shouted again. Pat slowed up, looked about for a moment vacantly, and then his rugged Hibernian face broke into a multitude of jolly wrinkles.

“Arrah, it’s yerself, darlin,” he said; “Oi thought it’s Pat McCann as is goin’ t’ slape wid th’ mountain lines this night!”

“You stick t’ me,” was Bob’s only comment.

After a short climb the men reached the camp on a knoll overlooking two confluent gulches. There was the superintendent’s office, the cook-house, the bunkhouse, the blacksmith’s shop, the stables, and the corral—all of logs. Supper was served at sundown. The men filed in, took off their coats, and sat down without a word. As each one finished eating, he arose, put on his coat again, and sauntered outside, filling his pipe as he went. Finally the whole gang was gathered at the bunk-house, smoking, telling laconic stories, or playing cribbage—the great American game in the mountains.

As the last comer, Pat was told to water the horses. He went boldly into the corral with a rope, and was kicked flat. The boys straightened him out, and, after he had regained his breath, gave two of the horses’ halters into his hands. Except in the main cañons of the Black Hills there is no surface water, the creeks all running down along the bed-rock. As a consequence, wells are necessary even in the upper hills. Pat first let a horse get loose, then he lost the bucket down the well, then he fell in himself in trying to fish it out. The boys fished him out with some interest. So manifestly inadequate an individual it had not been their fortune to meet before, and they looked on him as a curiosity. On the spot they adopted Pat McCann much as they would have adopted a stray kitten or puppy, and doubtless in somewhat the same amused, tolerant state of mind.

The next morning Bob and Pat cleared away the débris of the three blasts, wrenching off the broken, adhering bits with a pick, and shoveling them out. King came up with an axe-gang and built a rough, square breastwork of logs down the hill, to catch the quartz as in a bin. They also squared a number of timbers, and tongued the ends. These were to timber the shaft.

All this interested the little Irishman. He recovered his spirits, and his Old World blarney came back to him. The clear, fresh air of the hills, the abundant food, the hard work, the sound sleep, the reaction against the taciturnity of the men, and the calm grandeur of the mountains, filled him with animal spirits. He imagined he had found his vocation at last. He wanted to do everything. In time he learned to strike with the sledge, although it was only after long practice on a stake that he could induce any one to “hold” for him; he sharpened drills—after a fashion; he even helped in the timbering-up. The only thing lacking was the “shooting” of the charges. He had an ambition to touch the thing off. This King roughly forbade.

“That fly-away fool to risk his neck that way?” he said; “I guess not! He don’t know enough now to make his head ache. When I want a wild Irishman too dead to skin, I’ll let you know. I don’t want that man to have the first thing to do with the powder. Understand that!”

What King said went in that camp. Besides, the men knew him to be in the right. Pat was the unluckiest man alive, and the most awkward. He was sure to be in any trouble there was about—in fact, as Jack Williams said, he was a sort of lightning-rod for the whole camp in the way of trouble; every one else was sure of exemption, if there was only one man’s share of difficulty dealt out. So McCann pleaded in vain.

This went to his heart. He would have given his black-thorn shillalah from Dublin to have been looked upon as a full-fledged miner. He used to put on all the airs of one in Sweetwater when he went down there once a week, swaggering about in copper-riveted jeans, with his hat on one side, conversing learnedly though vaguely on “blow-outs,” “horses,” “foot-walls,” and other technicalities, hauling out of his pockets yellow-flecked bits of quartz—in short, “putting on dog” to an amazing extent. But as he turned past the stamp-mill of the Great Snake and began to scale the heart-breaking trail that led to the top of the ridge, his crest began to fall. As he followed the narrow, level summit for the three miles of its length, standing as it were in the very blueness of the air, his spirits began to evaporate. When he took the shorter and gentler descent to the camp, the old conviction had returned with sickening force. He was not a miner. He had never “shot.” He used all his persuasive powers in vain. For one thing, the men were afraid to disobey King. For another, they liked Pat, and, having a firm faith in his “hoodoo,” were convinced that his “shooting” and sudden death would be synonymous terms. So Pat abandoned persuasion and tried craft.

The old shaft on which he and Bob had first begun work had been carried down fifty feet. Appropriate cross-cuts and drifts had been made to exploit the lead. It was now abandoned. Bob and Pat were put to work at another spot in the same lead a little farther along the ridge. The place marked out for the first blast was between two huge bowlders, or rather between the two rounded cheeks of one bowlder. The passage between them was perhaps five or six feet wide. One end led out in a gradual descent to the broad, open park of the ridge top, the other dropped off abruptly three or four feet to another level place. Around the corner of the first the miners kept their tools and forge; down the second they planned to drop when the blast was fired; and there they had built a little fire, it being, on that particular day, in the lee of the rock.

The hole had been all drilled before Bob discovered that he had forgotten to bring any powder; so, cursing, he started down the passage to get some from the sheet-iron powder-house in the draw. Hardly was he out of sight before McCann, chuckling softly to himself, pulled from under a shelving bit of rock the missing powder. With this he loaded the hole; he arranged the fuse, and then dropped down the ledge to get a brand from the fire. It was nearly out, so it took a few moments to start a torch. However, he was in no hurry, as it was some little distance to the powder-house, and Bob could not possibly return inside of half an hour. At last he coaxed a bit of pine into a glow, and turned to climb back. A startling sight met his eyes.

When Bob went to get the powder he stopped at the forge for the water-pail. As he stooped to pick it up, something struck him a sudden blow in the thigh that knocked him over and set the blood flowing—he said afterward he thought the bone was broken. When he could see, he looked about to find what had hit him, and discovered not ten feet away the long, tawny body of a puma.

The great cat lay watching him through half-shut eyes, lazily switching its tail back and forth. From the depths of its throat came a deep rumbling purr. He tried to rise, but could not. Then he turned over on his left side and started to crawl painfully through the passageway of the rocks. The beast opened its eyes and followed stealthily, step after step, still switching its tail, and still purring. It was in a sportive mood, and played with its prey, as a cat plays with a mouse. Inch by inch the man pulled himself along, leaving a trail of blood. At last, within a few feet of the ledge, he stopped; he could go no further. The puma, too, paused.

At this moment Pat McCann, a blazing pine-brand in his hand, looked over the ledge. Bob saw him and faintly warned him back. The puma saw him too. The purring ceased, and the lithe muscles tightened under the skin. The game was over. The animal was preparing to make its spring.

It did not occur to the little Irishman’s fighting soul to retreat. His comical features stiffened; his little blue eyes fairly snapped. Slowly he drew himself up on the ledge, keeping his eye fixed on the puma, until he stood erect, then he shifted his brand mechanically into his left hand, and drew his sheath-knife. He did not know that the fire was his best weapon, and Bob was too weak to tell him. The brand, held point downward, began to blaze. The puma’s great eyes shifted uneasily at this, and its muscles relaxed. It was evidently discomposed. Pat did not await the attack, but stepped forward, holding his knife firmly.

When within a few feet of the animal, Pat hesitated and stopped. His nerve was still unshaken, but he did not know how to begin. The puma still sniffed uneasily at the blaze, but had recovered from its first fear, and was again gathering its powers for a spring. For a moment there was absolute silence, and Pat heard through the still air the sharp chatter of a squirrel and the clank of the ore-team’s whiffle-trees from the ore road far below. While he stood thus uncertain, the fire from the pine, having run up along the torch, began to burn Pat’s fingers. Without moving his head or shifting his eyes, he dropped it gently—plumb upon the fuse he had so carefully arranged a few moments before. Then he took a step backward to avoid the smoke. There was a splutter and a flash, then a sudden roar. The man and the beast were hurled violently in opposite directions, and a volcano of rock shot high in the air and showered down again.

The axe-gang found the puma very dead and Pat very hard to revive. The whisky-and-water method brought him around at last. He looked hazily about him in evident bewilderment until his eye caught sight of the dead animal, and then his face lighted up with eager joy.

“Glory to God, Oi’m a miner!” he shouted. “Oi’ve ‘shot’ at last!”

TEN THOUSAND YEARS IN ICE

While lounging listlessly along the sea-wall one afternoon about the beginning of August last—the eighth, I think it was—enjoying the sunshine and inhaling the sea-breeze, my attention was attracted to an unusual bustle and commotion on the quay of Section Two. I could see from where I was that considerable exertions were being made to transfer some heavy object from a vessel moored alongside the quay to the quay itself. As I got nearer I discovered by the name on the stern that the vessel was the whaling-bark Marion, and that the object which the crew, assisted by a number of longshoremen, were making such efforts to get on shore was an immense rectangular block, measuring some nine feet in length by about four in breadth and thickness. Had it been a block of granite, the men could not have worked harder, prying it with rollers and levers along a gangway made of a dozen or so of stout planks laid abreast from the ship’s deck to the quay. As, however, this object, whatever it was, was swathed and enveloped with a plentiful supply of sacking, I could form no opinion as to its nature.

While standing abstractedly by, looking on and speculating as to what this very heavy object might be, and wondering what it could be doing aboard a whaler, I was tapped gently on the shoulder by somebody, and, looking round, my eyes rested on a heavily bearded and bronzed individual in pea-jacket and rough trousers, with a laughing eye, who said, cheerily: “What! don’t you know me?”

I was certain I had never seen the man before, though something in the voice sounded familiar. My doubts, however, were speedily set at rest by this individual exclaiming: “Don’t you recollect Joe Burnham? Has a year made such a difference? If so, I’m glad of it. You couldn’t have paid me a better compliment.”

“Can it be possible?” I said, in surprise, as I grasped his hand; “why, Joe, who would have expected to meet you coming off a whaler? And with a heavy beard, too!”

“Why, I thought you knew all about it,” he returned, with equal surprise; “just wait a minute,” he added, as he turned to give some directions to the men who had now got the heavy object safe on shore, and were proceeding to hoist it upon a dray.

While he was thus engaged, I recalled some circumstances which served to explain the unexpected and original appearance of my friend.

Joe Burnham, the son of the well-known millionaire mining-man, had, I knew, been recommended to go abroad for change of air about a year before, owing to failing health arising from too intense application to study. This, however, was all I knew, and I had no idea that he had concluded to take his change of air aboard a whaler. But knowing his taste for scientific pursuits of any and every character, I can not say that I was very much surprised to meet him again as I had just done. At any rate, the trip had certainly been most beneficial, as he had changed from a sickly and rather delicate student to a hale, hearty, and robust man.

“Yes,” he remarked, as he came back from the dray, which was now moving slowly off, the four sturdy horses which drew it evidently straining under the weight with which it was loaded, “my doctor prescribed absolute freedom from brain-work of any kind. He shook his head when I suggested Europe. There was too much, he said, to be seen in Asia, or, in fact, in any other quarter of the globe, to insure the perfect repose he thought necessary. Even a prolonged yachting excursion did not meet his views. That, he said, would be worse than anything else. Its very monotony and loneliness would drive me to cogitation. The sea part of it, he admitted, was capital. If a sea voyage could be combined with excitement and something to do—but would I work? Then some lucky inspiration seemed to flash across my mind, and I asked him if there were any objections to a whaling trip. ‘The very thing,’ he said; ‘you have plenty of money and can go more as a passenger than as a sailor. You won’t have much time to study on board that kind of a vessel, and I’ll risk all the chances you get to indulge in the study of the flora and fauna of the Arctic.’ And now you see how it is that I happen to be disembarking at the present moment from the stanch bark Marion.”

“You seem to have got plenty of baggage, anyhow,” I returned, motioning toward the dray, which was now fast retreating in the direction of the city; “your share of the blubber, perhaps,” I added, banteringly; “or maybe specimens of the flora and fauna of the Arctic, which your doctor cautioned you against.”

“Partly right and partly wrong,” said Burnham, sententiously and somewhat seriously; “you may have got nearer the truth about that queer parcel than you think. But this is no time or place to speak about it. Come up to the house to-morrow forenoon, if you have time, and I will show you something that will astonish you. I particularly wish you to come,” he added, with emphasis; “you will be amply repaid for doing so by what you will see. Meantime, I have something more to arrange on board this vessel.” So saying, he crossed the gangway and disappeared.

Next morning about ten, in accordance with my friend’s invitation, I ascended the steps of the Burnham mansion, rang the bell, and sent in my card. I was evidently expected, as the servant requested me to follow him, and led the way downstairs. There, in a small court-yard sacred to himself, and in which, together with two apartments opening thereon, my friend conducted his experiments, I found him in his shirt-sleeves, superintending the disposition of the ponderous mass which had excited my curiosity the day before on the sea-wall. The workmen had just succeeded in hoisting it on to a strong and massive trestle-work, some three feet from the ground, and upon this the nondescript, oblong package, swathed with sacking and bound with ropes, now rested.

“There!” said Burnham, as he settled with the men and turned the key of the door leading into the ordinary court-yard of the house; “the most laborious part of the job is over. It was no easy matter getting the package up here. But now, as publicity at this stage must on every consideration be avoided, I must ask you to stand ready to lend me a hand when necessary. Better leave your coat in the laboratory or in the studio—which you please—you can suit yourself.”

The “laboratory” and the “studio” were the respective names of the two rooms opening onto the court-yard where we were now standing, which was itself separated, as I have said, from the main court-yard of the building by a tolerably high wall, opposite which were the entrances and windows of the rooms aforesaid, which had been originally intended for outhouses of some sort. The other two sides of this little court-yard were blind-walls of the house itself. Certainly, if secrecy were the requisite aimed at in my friend’s enterprise, whatever it might be, a happier place could not have been chosen. The “laboratory” and the “studio,” while each opened on the court, and while there was also intercommunication between the rooms, differed greatly in interior arrangement, as well as in the uses to which they were put. The laboratory was fitted up with benches, tables, and shelves, littered with chemical, optical, electrical, and photographic apparatus, zoölogical and botanical specimens, et hoc genus omne; a perfect scientific chaos, in short, without a semblance of law and order. The studio, on the other hand, was richly and luxuriously furnished and kept in scrupulous order by Burnham’s own valet, who, I noticed, however, was not there at this time.

Passing into the laboratory first, I noticed that a trestle-work similar to that in the court-yard stood in the centre of the floor, and that it was surmounted by a shallow pan of zinc, fitted at one end with a waste-pipe, like that of a bath-tub, leading to the gutter of the court. I was still further surprised to note, when I passed on into the studio, that the centre of that chamber also contained what might be termed a supplement to the trestle-work, in that the furniture had been moved to one side to make room for an improvised table on which rested an ordinary mattress. In addition to this a bureau-bed had been unfolded and set in readiness at one of the walls, while a blazing fire burned in the grate, although the day was anything but cold. Before I had time to speculate upon the meaning of all these mysterious preparations, I heard Burnham calling, so throwing my coat on a settee I hastened to join him. I found him engaged in firing up a small portable steam-engine that stood in one corner of the yard, and in affixing to the exhaust-pipe of the cylinder another pipe, several feet in length, with a movable arm, evidently for the purpose of ejecting steam in any desired direction.

“Now,” he said, as he completed the connection, “while the boiler is getting up steam, you and I must get to work and uncover our package. I expected Dr. Dunne here before this, but doctors, you know, are always entitled to latitude in non-professional matters.”

So saying, he took a knife and began to cut away the ropes from the package, I following his example. Then we removed layer after layer of sacking, the air growing, I thought, all the time sensibly colder, till upon removing the last of the sack-cloth—we could not, of course, remove the wrapping on which the weight rested, but merely contented ourselves with ripping the top open and letting it fall on either side—what was my surprise to see before me an immense oblong block of blue, pellucid ice. But who shall express my feelings when, a moment after, I discerned imbedded in the heart of the transparent crystal the form of a man.

But let me describe what I saw. There, lying on its back in the middle of the frozen slab, was unmistakably the body of a man, but so wonderfully life-like in every detail that it was as difficult to believe that the man was dead as it was to conceive how he had come into his present position. The eyes were dark and wide open, and whether or not it was due to some peculiar refracting qualities of the medium through which they were observed, they did not look glassy or seem to have lost their lustre. The short, thick, curly black locks that clustered about the forehead, and the closely trimmed beard that fringed the cheeks, looked as natural as they could have done in the heyday of life. But just as inexplicable was the dress. It was composed of some light material such as is worn in hot climates, and had more in common with the ancient Greek chlamys, or the Arab burnous, than with any other type of dress that I recall. Such colors as it had were tasteful and resplendent, and had lost none of their original freshness. The feet were shod with sandals, and a gemmed ring still sparkled upon one of the fingers of the right hand. It was the face and figure of a handsome man of thirty, or thereabouts, and the whole posture was so indicative of repose as to indicate that, whoever he might be, he had met his end calmly and without pain.

I turned mechanically toward Burnham and saw that he was watching my surprise and smiling.

“Well, what do you think of my package,” he asked; “was it worth the trouble of bringing it here from the Arctic circle?”

“I must congratulate you on your specimen,” I returned; “it will certainly be a great acquisition to our scientific men and antiquaries. But how are you going to preserve it? Won’t you find it rather a difficult matter to keep the ice in a state of congelation—and expensive, too, I should think?”

“That is not my intention,” he replied; “I mean to thaw him out.”

“And then?” I queried.

“Resuscitate him.”

I looked at my friend to see if he were not joking, but could detect no sign of mirth about his face.

“Why not?” he said; “that man in the ice there is as organically perfect as you or I are. No fibre or atom of his organism has undergone any change since he came into the condition he is now in. Say that he met his death—if indeed he is dead—by drowning, and the water he was drowned in was subsequently frozen, he is no worse off at this moment, even though he has been lying where he is thousands of years, than the man who was drowned five minutes ago. And I hold, and my friend Dr. Dunne agrees with me——”

Dr. Dunne, one of the most scientific physicians and surgeons in the city, as is well known, entered the court-yard at that moment, after giving a secret knock, and apologized for his tardiness.

“My friend, Dr. Dunne, I say, agrees with me, that our treatment of drowned, or so-called drowned, men is all wrong, and that they can be resuscitated hours after death has apparently supervened, if the proper measures are taken. Drowning is simply a case of arrested function, that is all. Provided the organism is sound, why should it not be made to perform its functions again? Does a temporary stoppage ruin a watch if the works are all right? If so, what are doctors and watch-makers for, I should like to know? Is it not so, doctor?”

“At all events we can try,” rejoined the doctor, impressively; “I am heartily glad of such a favorable, such an ultra-favorable, opportunity, I should say, of testing the efficacy of my treatment of drowned men upon so promising a subject.”

“But what about the freezing, doctor?” I ventured to remark, for the coolness with which the whole subject was treated reminded me painfully of my own deficiencies of scientific lore and rendered me proportionately modest. “I have always understood that frozen limbs are as good as dead, and that amputation alone can save the life of the rest of the organism in such a case. It seems to me that when the whole body is frozen, so much the worse.”

“So much the better,” returned the doctor, warmly; “it is much easier to work where the conditions are homogeneous.”

By this time the steam escaping from the safety-valve of the portable engine showed that the pressure was considerable, and Burnham, who had previously shifted the slide-valve so that the steam would pass straight into the exhaust, now wheeled the engine opposite the block of ice, pointed the lateral pipe, which he had connected with the exhaust, and which he manipulated on its joint by means of a fork, toward the side of the block, turned the globe-valve and let the jet of blue vapor play upon the ice. The court-yard was soon thick with clouds of steam, but the huge ice-block kept dwindling away as the steam was directed upon one point or the other, by wheeling the engine round it, till in less than half an hour the court-yard was little better than a puddle and nothing remained of the ice-block but a crystal envelope, a few inches thick, around the inclosed body, so deftly and skillfully had Burnham directed the steam-jet upon all portions alike.

“We shall now have to exercise more care,” he remarked; “the remaining ice must be removed in a more gentle manner. Help me to carry the body into the laboratory.”

So saying, we all lent a hand and transferred the ice-bound body to the zinc tray upon the trestles in the laboratory, in which a roaring stove-fire had previously been lit, and the temperature of which, when the doors were shut, was like that of a Turkish bath.

“There!” ejaculated Burnham, who, though in his shirt-sleeves, was perspiring freely and panting after his work; “so far, so good. Let us go into the studio and sit down and rest while our guest”—I was struck with the quaintness of the epithet as applied to the corpse in the next room, as also with the emphasis Burnham gave it—“sheds the remnant of the crystal mantle he has worn for who shall say how many thousand years. It will take at least half an hour before he is completely thawed out, and meanwhile, if you like, I will tell you how I managed to run across him in the Far North.”

We were all curious to know, so Burnham gave the following details:

“After leaving San Francisco in March, last year, we sailed North with the intention of reaching Behring Sea by the time the ice broke up, hoping to do well enough with whales and seals to return before the season closed. I had, of course, made my arrangements with the captain, going as a volunteer, to do duty or not as I pleased, and living in the cabin. We had the usual adventures which are part and parcel of a whaler’s experience, and which I will not bother you with, as they are not germane to the question, and I found my health improving wonderfully under the influence of the fresh air, exercise, and excitement.

“By June we had passed Behring Straits and then cruised for a good many weeks in the open sea beyond; but our luck was bad, and, owing to trying to better it before we left, we waited too long; worse than that, we were caught by a storm which blew us nearly due north for several days to a point some hundred miles east of Banks’s Land and the Parry Isles; and before we knew where we were, we found ourselves shut in by the ice, luckily in the lee of some bluffs, forming part of a small island only a few square miles in extent, to which circumstance alone we could attribute the escape of our vessel from being crushed by the ice-pack. Subsequent observations showed that we were in longitude 162 degrees W. and about latitude 76 degrees N.—a point, by the way, rarely reached by navigators even under the most exceptionally favorable circumstances. There was nothing for it, however, but to make the best of a bad job and prepare to winter it out with the best grace we could. Luckily we had plenty of provisions—I had looked after the matter of commissariat, personally, before embarking—and I think I may safely say that few whalers ever wintered in the Arctic circle better equipped in that respect than we were.

“As you can readily imagine, the life of a ship’s crew, ice-bound, during the long, dark, northern winter is not an enviable one. Suffice it to say that we got through it with probably less than the ordinary amount of hardship, and were very glad to catch a glimpse of the sun about the beginning of April, as it looked like a sign of release, though the captain did not think the ice would break up for at least six weeks longer. There was now some pleasure in rambling, as there were a few hours of sunlight to do it by, and I used to make the most of it, as one might get an occasional pop at a seal or otter, and not unfrequently the captain—we were by this time great chums—would accompany me.

“One day in May we were tramping along, gun in hand, over the ice-fields, going over some new ground to the east of the ship, when we came upon a patch of remarkably clear and transparent ice, about a mile from the vessel. This was the more peculiar as the generality of the ice in our neighborhood was rough, jagged, opaque, and usually coated with snow. Looking down casually as we were crossing this patch, my eye was arrested by the curious spectacle of the body of a man embedded in the ice, some sixteen or eighteen feet below the surface. I called the captain’s attention to the phenomenon, and, getting down on our hands and knees, we spent a good while in examining the strange object as well as we could, and speculating upon how it could have got there. What puzzled us most was the white clothing upon the body, the captain’s theory being that it was the corpse of some officer of consequence, belonging, perhaps, to some government expedition, whose shroud had burst its canvas casing after being consigned to the deep, and which had afterward drifted there with the currents and frozen fast. I, however, whose eyes were keener, could see that the dress upon the body was no shroud, and that the features, instead of being livid, bloated, and swollen, like those of a corpse that had been some time in the water, were clear-cut, fresh, and untouched by decay. I became anxious to obtain a nearer view of this strange discovery, and at length prevailed upon the captain to let me have the use of half a dozen of the crew to dig down through the ice till I could satisfy my curiosity regarding it. Accordingly, next morning we set to work with pick and shovel to sink a shaft in the ice, and it was only the work of an hour or two before we were within two feet of the body.

“At this distance I renewed my examination and became the more and more impressed and mystified as I did so. But my astonishment was still further increased when, upon gazing downward through the pellucid depths below, I saw, or thought I saw, the dim outlines of buildings, just as they might seem from the top of some tall monument. I thought I could detect lines of streets and squares, the buildings on which were white as of marble, their architecture seeming to approach the Grecian in type. Gardens and trees, too, I thought I saw, but the light of the low sun was so feeble that I did not know whether it might not all be due to the fantastic forms of sea-weed, and that imagination was doing the rest. As it was, however, the impression I received served to increase my interest in the mysterious object beneath me.

“I now resolved to secure possession of this wonderful windfall, from a scientific standpoint, which luck had thrown in my way; and by dint of promising a liberal reward to my assistants I succeeded in persuading them to dig round and below the body, leaving the block, which we just now melted, only supported securely enough at its ends to keep it from breaking down, till such time as we were prepared to remove it. Here, again, I had a bitter altercation with the captain, when I mooted my design of carrying off my prize. It was absurd, he said, preposterous, to think of packing a huge block of ice, containing only the dead body of a man, and of no earthly use to anybody. Did I think that whalers were fitted out for costly voyages into polar seas for the fun of the thing? Look at the room it would take, if nothing else. No; he must draw the line there; he would be d——d if he gave his countenance to any such nonsense as that, science or no science.

“I now saw that it was neck or nothing. There is nothing so obdurate as a sea-captain, if he sets his foot down, and by long association I knew my man. I determined to try him on a new tack, and to go to almost any length in doing so, partly through the spirit of opposition which is strong within me, and partly because I had already formulated, in a vague manner, the scheme which we are now carrying into practice. I felt a deep conviction, too, that I was in some mysterious way working out mysterious ends, and that gave new strength to my resolve.

“‘Captain,’ I said that evening as we sat in the cabin, ‘what do you estimate that your present trip is worth?’

“‘Worth nothing as yet,’ he answered, with a growl; ‘worse luck to it.’

“‘I mean what would you take for the net earnings of the voyage, provided somebody bought your chances for what you might pick up upon the return?’

“The captain studied. It was plain that I had given his ideas a new turn. Perhaps he divined the bent of mine.

“‘Well,’ he said, at length, ‘there would be the crew to be considered, as well as myself, in a case of that sort. We’re all working on shares. Captain gets half, and the other half of the net proceeds are divided pro rata among the petty officers and crew. What would suit me mightn’t suit them.’

“‘Well, what could you reasonably expect to take on the home voyage with average luck?’ I said, returning to the charge.

“‘Half a dozen sperm-whales wouldn’t be out of the way,’ returned the captain, cheerily; ‘might get more. Catch might range anywhere from twenty to forty thousand dollars.’

“‘Call it thirty thousand,’ I said; ‘would that be a fair average?’

“‘Well, there’s twenty-two of a crew. That would net about seven hundred dollars apiece for their share. I don’t think they would growl at that. Fifteen thousand would suit me, and I think I should be very well out of it, for that matter. But why do you ask such questions?’

“‘Read that,’ I said, for answer, and shoved a slip of paper across the table.

“‘Why, what’s this?’ said the captain, taking up the slip of paper and reading:

Pay to the order of J. F. Manson, captain whaling bark Marion, the sum of thirty thousand dollars ($30,000) and debit

“‘Simply a check for your possible gains on the return voyage, captain. I want the use of your ship as far as San Francisco. Everything satisfactory, I suppose. Good-night.’ So saying, I strolled into my stateroom, leaving the worthy captain to deliberate upon my proposal.

“Next morning I purposely got up late; but by the earnest and many-voiced conversation which I could faintly hear, upon the deck above me, I knew that the seed I had sown was germinating, if not bearing fruit.

“Well, to cut a long story short, my proposal was accepted; the ice-block dug out and conveyed to the vessel with a good deal of trouble; my check certified and cashed in Victoria, where most of the crew were paid off, and——here we are. Now, suppose we adjourn to the laboratory and see if our guest has completely thawed out yet.”

The strong heat from the stove had, in truth, very nearly finished what the steam had begun. Though there was still a shell of ice surrounding the body, it was little more than a shell, and Dr. Dunne recommended that the next stage in the treatment should be approached with all expedition. Burnham, accordingly, went off to prepare a bath in the bath-room adjoining the studio, and when he hailed us, the doctor and myself carried in the zinc tray with the body and deposited the latter in the bath.

“We must proceed very slowly,” said the doctor, as he stood by, thermometer in hand; “I shall begin with a temperature of fifty and increase it very gradually—say, in half an hour or so—to blood heat. All the internal organs are, of course, frozen; the lungs, too, are doubtless full of ice, and the first thing to be done is to relieve them of the water. Not the least remarkable feature, gentlemen,” he continued, turning to us, “is that this body must have been frozen almost before—in my theory, certainly before—it was drowned. But how to account for this? That is the point. It is certainly beyond the range of our scientific experience, nor can we conceive of any natural or chemical force powerful enough to effect such a result. This man, too, is clad in the garb of a tropical, or sub-tropical, region. These are evidently his every-day clothes which he is wearing. He must have been both drowned and frozen almost simultaneously. The drowning and the freezing must have been nearly coincident events—at all events, within an hour or two of each other. I can not see into it. I give it up,” concluded the doctor, with a shake of the head.

“Still,” said Burnham, “have we not something of a parallel in the elephants which, some years ago, were found embedded in the ice to the north of Siberia, just as this man was? The elephant is a tropical animal, and can scarcely be credited with going to the North Pole on a pleasure trip. How do you account for that?”

“Perhaps,” suggested I, “it was a case of the mountain coming to Mahomet in both instances. Perhaps the pole came to them. Suppose that through some unknown natural cause, or some outside cosmical agency, the axis of the earth should change abruptly, as it is probable that it is now doing gradually, and that what were formerly the equatorial regions became the polar, and vice versâ, what would naturally follow? In the first place, the oceans and seas would be hurled over the continents in tidal waves miles high. Only mountaineers dwelling in the highest altitudes would escape. That would be the first result. The second would be that the waters upon what were formerly the tropical regions would be frozen. The third would be——what we see before us now in that bath.”

“Very ingenious, certainly,” remarked the doctor, dryly; “but we have got no time for speculation now. Let us attend to business. Our friend here should be pretty thoroughly warmed through by this time. Please lend a hand to get him on the operating-table.”

Accordingly, we removed the body from the bath to the mattress in the studio, the room having been meanwhile closed and its temperature raised to blood heat.

“We must first get the water out of the lungs,” said the doctor, as he reached for what looked something like a stomach-pump, but which, instead of the suction tube, terminated in a diaphragm made of some elastic substance, which he applied to the open mouth of the body, pressing it closely with his left hand, at the same time asking me to compress the nostrils tightly. The flesh was now warm, soft, and yielding. The doctor then drew back the piston of his pump and a stream of water followed through the discharge tube. This was repeated several times, till the lungs were pronounced free from water.

A consultation now followed between the doctor and Burnham.

“The blood in the veins and arteries,” said the doctor, “though it has undergone liquefaction, is probably, to a certain extent, coagulated. Though why,” he continued, musingly, “should such be the case? At any rate, let us see.”

He then took a lancet from his instrument-case and proceeded to make an incision in the median vein of the left arm, when, to his manifest joy, as I could see, a few drops of blood spurted out.

“Yes! it is as I thought,” he exclaimed, joyfully; “the blood has not coagulated. It is a simple case of drowning, and, to all intents and purposes, our friend here is no better and no worse off than if he had been asphyxiated by water only a few hours ago. Mr. Burnham, I congratulate you,” taking that gentleman by the hand and shaking it with the utmost enthusiasm, “upon being instrumental in providing a subject for resuscitation—for resuscitate him I do not doubt that I shall, now that I have direct evidence that the blood has undergone no chemical change—a subject, compared with which a mere, ordinary case of drowning sinks into the most infinitesimal insignificance; for—who can tell?—perhaps this man has lain in this condition for hundreds, aye, for thousands of years; perhaps he belongs to a remote prehistoric age, for ice, the great embalmer, knows neither time nor seasons, and a thousand years are to it but as one hour. Whatever our friend here is, or has been, he will presently be one of us; he will open his mouth and unlock the secrets of the past. He will tell us how he came to be in his present plight. He will add another page to the world’s history.”

I felt myself catching all the doctor’s enthusiasm, and now hung upon everything that he did with breathless interest.

“The next step,” said the doctor, “is to stimulate the heart’s action and restore the circulation. To do this will require our united efforts. You, Mr. Burnham, will take charge of the battery and apply the electrodes; our friend here”—signifying myself—“will assist in inflating the lungs; I will attend to the circulation. Your battery is ready, is it not, Mr. Burnham?”

The battery, with its auxiliary apparatus for intensifying the current, was brought round and placed on a table close by. Dr. Dunne then made an incision in the breast so as to expose the breast-bone, or sternum, and another in the back, in the region of the third vertebra. To the former of these the negative pole of the battery was applied, and to the latter the positive electrode.

“Where is that phial, I wonder?” interjected the doctor, looking over his medicine-chest, and taking out bottle after bottle; “ah, here it is,” he said, at last, “here is the substance on which I rely to restore the action of the heart and give new life to our friend here. It has only lately been introduced into the pharmacopœia; but since its introduction it has done wonders in cardiac affections. It is distilled from a plant which grows only in East Africa. Its name is strephanthus, and its effect is to accelerate the action of the heart. It is now my purpose to inject a portion of this powerful stimulant into the median vein, which I have just opened, in our friend’s arm, whence it will be conveyed to the heart. Meanwhile, you, Mr. Burnham, and our friend here will induce artificial respiration in the lungs, so that the blood may be oxygenated after it has been expelled from the heart by the spasmodic valvular action which the strephanthus will excite in that organ. Now, let us each attend closely to his allotted duty.”

My part consisted in inflating the lungs by means of a tiny bellows, the nozzle of which had been introduced into the larynx, till such time as the breathing should become automatic and the rise and fall of the lungs regular. At a given signal from the doctor, Burnham turned on the current, the electrodes having been previously placed in position, and, at the same instant, the chest expanded. I plied my bellows as the breast rose, and a second afterward it collapsed, the discharged air rushing back through the larynx with a whistling sound. Three seconds afterward the chest rose automatically again, and again I assisted its rise by inflating the lungs as before. This was kept up for some dozen or more respirations, occupying in all about two minutes.

Meantime, the doctor was intently engaged with a syringe and graduating glass at the left arm of the body. So absorbed was he in his occupation that he seemed oblivious to everything else. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, with an exclamation which startled us.

“We have won!” he shouted; “see! the blood is circulating.”

I looked down at the arm, and, sure enough, blood was spurting in a thin jet from the lower extremity of the vein which the doctor had severed. In my excitement I had withdrawn the bellows from the mouth, but there was no further use for artificial respiration, as the chest was now rising and falling automatically and in regular cadence. The doctor now tied up the severed vein, sewed up the incision in the arm, and, after dressing the patient—for such he must now be called—in a suit of Burnham’s underwear, we lifted him into the bureau-bed that had been prepared at the side of the studio next the fire.

“There is nothing more to be done,” said the doctor, simply; “he will wake by and by of his own accord, and will then need some nourishment. Soup and stimulants will be the proper thing to administer at first.”

Burnham went out and returned presently with a tray containing the desired refreshments. We now waited anxiously for the awakening, which must sooner or later come. The breathing, which had hitherto been labored and stertorous, was becoming easier, the color was returning to the cheeks, and the occasional twitching of the muscles showed that our strange patient was on the point of awaking. At length he turned on his side, opened his eyes, stared fixedly at us, and then uttered an exclamation in some foreign tongue. Burnham got up, wheeled a table to the side of the bed, set the tray of refreshments upon it, and motioned him to help himself, at the same time pouring out a glass of wine. Here Dr. Dunne interposed.

“No,” he said, smiling; “after a fast of so many thousand years I certainly must prescribe hot water as an initiative. It is absolutely necessary for the stomach to begin with.”

The hot water was brought, and our patient, evidently comprehending that he was under medical treatment, shifted his position in bed so as to recline upon his elbow, took the tumbler which was handed him, and, after eying it critically, raised it to his lips and tasted the contents. A shade of surprise and faint protest passed across his features as he elevated his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, and swallowed the potion.

“Now let him attack the viands if he wants to,” said the doctor, as our guest’s eye roved somewhat greedily, I thought, over the table. Burnham pushed the tray a little nearer, no second invitation being necessary, and the bowl of soup that had been brought, together with a couple of glasses of old Madeira, speedily disappeared. This duty having been performed, our guest became voluble. He gesticulated and spoke, and, to judge by the inflexions of his voice and the character of his gestures, he was, I should say, appealing to us for an explanation of his presence there and of the strange objects which met his gaze. It need scarcely be said that we could not understand one word of what he was saying, though the voice was clear and mellow and the syllables of his words as distinct and sonorous as ancient Greek, though they bore no other resemblance to that language.

“Suppose we bring him pen and ink and see if he can write,” suggested Burnham, and the idea struck us as a peculiarly happy one.

Pen, ink, and paper were accordingly set upon the table. Our patient eyed the articles curiously for a moment or two, took up the pen, and examined the steel nib with an expression of critical approval, then took up a sheet of paper, examined its texture, and smiled, at the same time spreading it out before him. It was evident that he comprehended what was required of him, for he dipped the pen into the ink and wrote a few words upon the paper, guiding the pen, however, from right to left, according to Oriental usage. The characters partook more of the Chaldaic, or ancient Sanscrit, than any other type. As it was, none of us could make them out. Our guest watched our efforts at deciphering with an amused smile, but when one of our daily papers was handed him by Burnham, this quickly changed to an expression of rapt attention and intense interest. He did not, however, handle the sheet like a savage, but like one who knew the object of it, examining the words and letters with the closest attention, evidently to see whether he could gain any clew to their meaning. After a minute or two he gave up the task, and then, tapping his forehead with a tired expression, smiled at us, lay back on his pillow, and was soon fast asleep.

“He will be all right by evening,” remarked the doctor; “and then,” turning to Burnham, “what will you do with him? Introduce him to the Academy of Sciences, I suppose?”

“Not just yet,” returned Burnham; “I have no objection to some inkling of our wonderful prize getting out—our friend here,” alluding to me, “will, no doubt, attend to that—but I certainly shall not bring him before the public in any way, nor even introduce him to our scientific men, till I have educated him to some little knowledge of our language. There will, I think, be no difficulty about that. He is evidently a man of superior intelligence, and I shall go right to work in the same way as if he was any ordinary foreigner cast upon our shores with no knowledge of our language and I myself equally ignorant of his. It is merely giving names of objects, he learning my name for the object, I his. In that manner we shall speedily arrive at a solution of the all-absorbing question who this remarkable being is whom we have rescued from the jaws of death, and who, to all intents and purposes, has been dead for—who can tell?—how many ages past.”

The events I have here detailed occurred on the ninth of August last. Since that time, my friend Burnham has been enthusiastically engaged in carrying out the project which he mapped out on the day of the resuscitation of his remarkable patient and guest. His tailor was called in, and, when Mr. Kourban Balanok, as the stranger calls himself, left Burnham’s studio three days after, he did so as a nineteenth-century gentleman, and is now installed in Burnham’s house as one of the family. People may have noticed the young, handsome, and distinguished stranger to be seen occasionally walking arm-in-arm with Burnham on Kearny or Market Street, but none would guess that he had lain in the North Polar ice in the neighborhood of ten thousand years. Such is the case, however, and, as he is fast acquiring an intimate knowledge of the English language, we may confidently look forward to the appearance, in the near future, of a detailed account of the economy of the prehistoric world, and of the vast cataclysm which swamped it and left Mr. Kourban Balanok embedded in the ice.

LEAVES ON THE RIVER PASIG

The Boulong casco lay on the Quiapo Market, which is on the left bank of the Pasig, just below the suspension-bridge. The Chinese junk—tradition says—was modeled after a whimsical emperor’s shoe, consequently the cascos of the Philippines, being really junks without sails, are not very dainty bits of naval architecture. As a rule, they are not accorded the dignity of a name; but this one was known as the “Boulong casco,” because it was owned and manned by members of one family. Santiago Boulong was steersman, his three sons were polemen, and Simplicia, the daughter, was el capitan—her father said, affectionately. Their permanent home was a little nipa-thatch shelter at the stern of the vessel.

The men had gone ashore shortly after the mooring—the father on business, the sons on pleasure bent—and Simplicia, much to her disgust, was left on board. She was a Tagalo girl, of the light-complexioned type, pretty even when judged by our standards, of which fact she was aware.

“The river, the river,” she said to herself, petulantly, “always the river. I was born on the river, and I have been going up and down the river all my life. When we come to Manila I may go ashore for a few hours only, and then the river again—and the lake. And Ramon is a fool!”

It was a clear, warm night, and the rippling water of the Pasig glistened in the moonlight, so that she could see the leaves rush by in clusters. Ramon had said: “Think of me when you see the leaves on the river—the bright green leaves from the dear lake country. It seems sad to think that they must float down past the city where the water is fouled, and then out—far out—to be lost on the big salt sea.” But Ramon was always saying queer things that she could not understand.

The murmur of drowsy voices came from the crowded huts of the market-place. Oh, how long till morning! She wanted to buy some bits of finery there, and then to stroll through the city, especially along the Escolta, where there were stores that exhibited splendors from all countries. She hoped that one of her brothers would hire a carametta the next evening, and take her to the Lunetta, where the wealthy of Manila congregated to enjoy the cool night air and the concert. A band of Americanos played there every evening.

They were wonderful men, these Americano soldiers, much taller than Filipinos or Spaniards, and many of them had blue eyes and hair of the color of gold. The pride of kings was in their stride, and they looked as though they feared nothing.

Farther on down the river at the Alhambra Café, where the Spanish officers once gathered to hear the music of Spain, the orchestra played a new air that delighted her. There was a burst of cheering. The music was “Dixie,” and the demonstration was made by some Tennessee volunteers, who always gave something reminiscent of the old “rebel yell” whenever they heard it. From the Cuartel Infanteria, across the river, the American bugles began to shrill a “tattoo.” Their music was wonderful—everything pertaining to these big, bold men was wonderful, she thought.

Something bumped against a side of the casco, and Simplicia hurried over to order away a supposed ladrone. She leaned over the side with such abruptness that the wooden comb slipped from her heavy mass of black hair. It fell a dusky curtain, and brushed the upturned face of a man. He was not a little brown Filipino, but a tall Americano, fair and yellow-haired. He laughed a soft, pleasant laugh. She drew herself backward with a frightened cry, but his eyes held hers. The man was standing in a small canoe, steadying his craft by holding on to the casco.

“Buenas noches,” he said, smiling. He spoke Spanish, but not like a Spaniard or a Tagalo. Simplicia smiled, faintly. She knew that she should go into the nipa cabin, but this handsome man looked so kind and—Ramon was a fool. And her father and brothers were selfish, and——

So Simplicia returned the salutation, and stood leaning over the bulwark tasting the delirious delight of her first flirtation. The man—he was a college boy until the United States Government gave him a suit of khaki and the right to bear the former designation—thrilled with joy at the delicious novelty of the situation. He was in a city that was at once the tropics and the Orient, and over which hung the glamour of departed mediæval days. For several hundred years guitars had tinkled on that river, and voices had been lifted to laticed windows. The air was laden with ghosts of everything but common sense and scruples.

A bugle across the river caused the man to recollect that he was under certain restraint. “I must go,” he said, but he did not release his hold on the casco.

Simplicia’s eyes were big and bright in the moonlight. He stretched out one arm and drew her face toward him. She tore herself away, and stood breathing hurriedly through parted lips.

“Mañana por la noche,” said the soldier. He plied the paddle vigorously, and the canoe glided away. But he looked back, longingly, for Simplicia’s lips were very soft and warm.

She stood gazing after him till the canoe vanished into the shadow of the Cuartel Infanteria. The unseen bugle softly wailed “taps,” the call that bids the soldier rest. It is also sounded over graves.

The sun beat down fiercely on the Pasig. Canoes toiled up and skimmed down the river. Lumbering cascos, their crews naked to their waists, were poled painfully along. The Quiapo Market was astir with a babble of tongues, the barking of dogs, and the incessant challenge of hundreds of game-cocks. The little brown people bought, sold, and bargained with the full strength of their lungs.

Simplicia, as purser of the casco, was in the market purchasing provisions, but she spent most of her time near the stall of a Chinese vender of fabrics. After much haggling, she became the possessor of a dainty bodice of silk and piña cloth.

Most of the girls who visited the market-place seemed to be drawn to that spot, for there Simplicia met a friend who had left the lake country a little later than herself.

“Ramon will come down the river to-night,” said the friend, breathlessly, delighted to carry a message of that sort. “He has written something that he thinks they may print in La Libertad. Isn’t that wonderful? You must feel so proud of him. For a man to be able to write at all is wonderful—but for the papers!”

Apparently there were no words in the Tagalo dialect strong enough to express the girl’s admiration. Simplicia tossed her head, loosening the hair, a frequent happening. She caught the heavy tresses quickly, and almost forgot for an instant everything but the last time they had fallen.

“Are you not pleased?” asked the other girl, in astonishment. She was dark, and not pretty from any point of view.

“Oh, yes,” drawled Simplicia, “but Ramon is very tedious sometimes, and the lake country is very dreary. We will go into the city this afternoon and see the Americanos.”

They saw many Americanos—State volunteers clad in blue shirts and khaki trousers. The city was full of them. They occupied all the barracks formerly the quarters of the Spanish soldiers, and they crowded the drinking-resorts. Along the Calle Real they came upon companies drilling, and on the Lunetta they saw an entire regiment on dress-parade.

Simplicia, though she scanned every soldier’s face, did not see the stranger of the previous night, nor did she see a face that seemed nearly as handsome.

“They say,” mused the other girl, “that the men of Aguinaldo will drive these Americanos out of Manila if they do not go of their own accord soon.”

Simplicia laughed scornfully, and pointed toward the troops. The men were in battalion front, standing at “present,” and the sun glistened on a thousand bayonets.

“But there are only a few Americanos and there are many thousands of Filipinos,” said the girl.

“The Americanos will take what they want and nothing can stop them,” announced Simplicia, decisively. “Let us go to our cascos.”

The twilight gathered on the river. In the north the sky was lit by continuous flashes of lightning. Myriads of stars were overhead, and the Southern Cross was viceroy of the heavens, for the moon had not yet come into her kingdom. The water noisily gurgled by, and Simplicia waited. Which would come first, the tedious Filipino school-master lover or the stranger? Would the Americano come again?

She watched every canoe that passed, but they were all going up or down. The moon appeared and clearly revealed the river’s surface. Simplicia fixed her eyes on the shadow of the Cuartel Infanteria. Something emerged from it and glided rapidly through the stream. It was a canoe, and it was being paddled with strong, sure strokes toward her. Her heart beat tumultuously, and she almost cried out in her delight.

He came, and, fastening his canoe, swung himself aboard the casco. Her arms were about his neck in an instant, and her beautiful tresses escaped the comb again.

They sat in the shade of the nipa thatch talking in low tones. His arm was round her waist. Her head rested on his shoulder. He puffed with deep breaths of enjoyment a cigarette that she had daintily lit for him. The intoxication of the country was in his brain—the devil that whispers, “There is nothing but pleasure, and no time but now.”

The plunk-plunk of a guitar close by startled them both. Simplicia trembled violently.

“It is a foolish man who is always singing to me,” she explained.

A clear, musical voice rose in a song, and the soldier checked a question to listen, for the voice and the song charmed him from the first note. The song was in Spanish, and, though he was by no means perfect in the language, he caught the meaning and spirit of it. It ran something to this effect:

The last words died on the air like the sob or the faint cry of a passing spirit. The soldier sat mute, like one bewitched by fairy music. Simplicia’s lips, pressed against his cheek, brought him back to her.

“I do not care for him. On my soul, I do not!” she whispered. She was pretty, and her arm tightened coaxingly about his neck. His better nature was conquered, and the devil in his blood reigned supreme. The situation suddenly seemed highly amusing, and he laughed a suppressed laugh of recklessness. To be serenaded by a native poet while the arm of the troubadour’s lady-love encircled his neck—verily he would have a great tale to tell some day.

There was a faint sound of a footfall on the deck of the casco. The soldier disengaged himself. A face peeped in through an opening in the thatch, and the American struck it a sharp blow with his fist. He would have rushed after the intruder, but Simplicia held him.

“It is only a foolish man,” she said, “do not follow him. It would make trouble.”

“I would not bring you any trouble,” he said. “What is the matter? You tremble.”

“It is nothing,” she replied. “I love you.”

The soldier’s conscience smote him. He swore that he loved her, and tried to believe that it was true. She seemed almost happy again.

“To-morrow the casco goes up to the lake again, and we will be gone three days. Oh, that is so long!”

“Very long,” he assented.

“But you will wait and think of me always.”

“Yes, I will watch the leaves on the river——”

She shuddered.

“No! no! Do not speak of them. Madre de Dios! I hate the river, and I hate the leaves it drags along. I think I hate everything but you.”

The soldier was young, and this was his first experience with hysteria and woman, which combination often disturbs even wiser heads. It disturbed him exceedingly, but he soothed her finally with the wildest vows and many kisses. He kissed a tress of her long hair as he stepped from the casco’s poling platform into his canoe.

For the second time she watched the canoe till it glided into the shadows. Then she shivered violently, chilled to the bone.

A sergeant of a certain regiment of United States volunteers was prowling along the brink of the Pasig, outside the Cuartel Infanteria’s walls, looking for a pet monkey that had disappeared. Something in the long grass caught his eye, and he stopped. He stepped back quickly and hurried around the corner of the wall, returning with four soldiers.

He parted the grass with his arms, and they saw the dead body of a Filipino girl. Her face was concealed by a disordered mass of black hair, and, pinned to her breast by a rudely fashioned knife that was buried to the hilt, was a miniature insurgent flag.

They tenderly bore the body to the pathway, and the hair fell from the face. One of the soldiers let go his hold and tottered to the ground.

“Harrison’s a softy,” grunted one of the men. “Take hold, sergeant. He’s fainted, I guess.”

The form was placed in an unused storeroom. When the news went round the men came to view it, not out of curiosity, but to show respect such as they would pay to their own dead.

“This is the way I make it out,” said the sergeant, sagely. “The girl was killed by Aguinaldo’s gang, and it must have been because she spoke a good word for our people.”

“And we’ll take it out of their hides when the time comes,” said one of the soldiers, snapping his jaws together, which resolution the regiment unanimously adopted. Even the chaplain refrained from chiding when he heard of it. He knew his flock.

There being no way of finding out anything about the girl, a fund was quickly collected and arrangements made for the funeral. Several hundred soldiers followed the hearse to the cemetery at El Paco.

The regimental chaplain read the regulation burial service, while the men stood with bared heads. They placed at the head of the freshly made mound a plain board that read:

After the last soldier had gone, a cowering thing walked unsteadily up to the grave, and, kneeling beside it, laid down a cluster of green leaves.

“By God! I did love her. I did,” he muttered, continuously. He drew a pencil from his pocket and scratched her name on the board: “Simplicia.”

And his youth was buried there.

THE GREAT EUCHRE BOOM

To Euchretown, Los Angeles County, came Mr. Stoker and his wife. He bought ranches, and, strikingly dressed, drove about in the rubber-tired buggies of real-estate agents; while Mrs. Stoker, a handsome young woman, sniffed the social air. Just what should she do to win, with éclat, the commanding place in the local feminine view? For her no slow progress to social supremacy! Rather the Napoleonic sweeping away of rivals.

At that stage of its rise from a desert to a paradise Euchretown was belied by its name. A sombreness hovered over the thought of the place; the method of life was Puritanic. Euchre? One would have thought there was never a deck in the town.

“I don’t want to be un-Christian,” snapped the wife of Reverend Hummel; “but I wish that Mrs. Stoker had never stuck her foot in this town.”

Mrs. Hummel was out of place linked to a preacher. Fairly well had she clothed her mind in the prevalent Puritanic mood; but in her heart she was different. As for social leaders, she was the one, and she knew it.

“Why, Jennie,” complained the Reverend Hummel, a pale gentleman with eyes that ever bespoke a receptive surprise at his debts; “your words ring evil. And then the term you employed—stuck. How, pray, could Mrs. Stoker stick her foot?”

At this moment the maid (employed despite the mortgaged condition of Hummel’s real estate) ushered in Mrs. Banker Wheelock.

“And have you heard the news about Mrs. Stoker!” cried Mrs. Wheelock, as Mr. Hummel, wandering away, hummed “Throw Out the Life Line” in a fumbling voice. “Oh, haven’t you got an invitation?”

“What is it?” said Mrs. Hummel, darkly.

“A euchre-party! Everybody!”

Mrs. Hummel’s arms dropped limp.

“But, of course,” she said, “nobody will go.”

“They’re all wild about it!” ejaculated Mrs. Wheelock; “Mrs. Stoker is said to have struck the psychological moment.”

Mrs. Hummel started up.

“There hasn’t been a card-party for years!” cried she; “where’ll she get her decks? Does she carry around a trunk full? Or will she clean out the saloons? But——” and the tears leaped up to her lashes, “I wouldn’t be un-Christian about it.”

Mrs. Wheelock arose and laid her hands on Mrs. Hummel’s arm.

“Of course, dear, you know the only reason you wouldn’t be invited is that you’re the preacher’s wife,” soothed she; and then, with a puzzled air: “That must be the reason.”

Now the maid brought in an envelope. It was Mr. and Mrs. Hummel’s invitation to Mrs. Stoker’s euchre-party. The eye of Jennie met that of Mrs. Wheelock, as a partial relief made its way into the breast of the preacher’s wife.

“Did you ever hear of such impudence?” she breathed.

Mrs. Stoker had a new green cottage with nine Corinthian pillars (capitals enormously ornate) along her front porch. Within, electric lights, white-pine woodwork, brilliant floral tributes of Axminster carpets, and bird’s-eye maple furniture combined to produce an effect luxurious, irrefutable.

“Oh, yes,” natty Stoker was saying to the men, “I gave him three thousand for his ten acres. Wheelock, run over to the city with me to-morrow and look at the Pasadena Villa Tract. I’ve a mind to pick up a bunch of those lots.”

“O Mrs. Hummel!” came Mrs. Stoker’s winning voice, and everybody listened. There was the purple-draped hostess flowing toward the preacher’s wife. “I was dreadfully afraid you wouldn’t come! I’m so” (powerful kiss) “glad you did! And dear Mr. Hummel?”

“To-night he works on his sermon,” said Mrs. Hummel, beaming about on the faces of the alert and delightfully surprised company. “I persuaded him to run in for me later; for I just came to look on. Of course,” here she turned the sweet lips toward Mrs. Stoker, “you couldn’t expect us to play.”

Mrs. Stoker put new fuel in her smile to Mrs. Hummel; and Mrs. Hummel did likewise further fire up her smile to Mrs. Stoker; and the edified company sat down.

The games went on with a vim that made it seem some hungry gambling spirit, dormant in the town, rose up and reveled. Mrs. Stoker had risked it all on her belief in the psychological moment—and won! The town was ready for sin.

“And that little statue is the prize,” now said Mrs. Stoker, moving about. “Mrs. Hummel, would you hold it up?”

All eyes came round in sneaking way toward Mrs. Hummel, who grew pallid. There, on the mantel, near her hand as she stood to watch, was the statuette—a nude Greek maid.

“Would you mind holding it up? They can’t see,” repeated Mrs. Stoker, louder, fires in her eyes.

Hypnotized, Mrs. Hummel lifted it and saw a price tag, $7.50.

“Why,” said she, forcing into her voice the daring experiment of a note of censure, “I didn’t know there was to be a prize!”

“Oh,” echoed Mrs. Wheelock from a distance, instilling into her tones a strain of triumph, “I didn’t know there was to be a prize!”

“No!” chimed all the women, in mutually sanctioning delight, “we didn’t know there was to be a prize!”

“Just a cheap little thing,” said Mrs. Stoker.

A new brightening of eyes fastened on euchre decks. The games went on with strange excitement; for, lo! all the women had suddenly resolved to win or ruin their nerves in the fight.

“Would you punch—while I look to the sherbet?” whispered Mrs. Stoker to Mrs. Hummel, with new, bald patronage.

The preacher’s wife stared round. The fascination of the game was influencing her. She felt her footing go; she saw the Stoker triumph, the reins gone from her hand. Desperately did she leap at this only chance to cling to the victorious vehicle of pleasure which her rival from this night on was to drive headlong through the Puritanic mood of Euchretown.

Mrs. Hummel punched the cards.

More fierce became the spirit of gaming, until, with final shriek of delight, Mrs. Wheelock won the statue. Followed by jealous eyes she took it.

“Splendid!” she cried, examining the tag and seeing $7.50. Then she passed it round. “Beautiful!” said the women, seeing $7.50.

And the corruption of Euchretown was accomplished.

We pass hastily to the strange fury in its later vigor. From the night of the initiative prize an extraordinary inflation went on apace. Scarcely had a week elapsed (full of gossip at the Stoker’s indubitable success) when Mrs. Wheelock gave a second euchre-party. And when the guests flocked to the banker’s two-story house in the mission style (on the fifty-foot lot which he bought for $1,400 of Jeffreys Sassy), they were yet more morally poisoned to observe, on the cut-glass dish which she awarded to shrieking Mrs. Botts, the half-extinguished price-mark, $9.65.

For six days, $9.65 was a sort of tag to the town’s mental status; when, to the thrilling of all, Mrs. George Botts did suddenly cast out invitations; and at Mrs. Bott’s brilliant affair, Mrs. Stoker, after a dashing race neck-and-neck with six women who all but beat her, won a clock on the bottom of which, mysteriously blurred, the figures $13.75 could, after careful scrutiny, be distinguished.

The value of the prize at the fourth party was $15; at the sixth, $19; at the ninth, $25.50. Agape, the town stared ahead at its coming dizzy course. Then Mrs. Samuel Lethwait, taciturn woman, stupefied the inhabitants of the place by making one flying leap from $25 to $50. Out of the ranks, out of the number of the unfeared had Mrs. Lethwait made her daring rise.

There was an instant’s recoil. Could Mrs. Stoker, Mrs. Wheelock, Mrs. Botts pause now? Their shoulders were at the wheel, their hands on the flying plow which tore up such amazing furrows in the social field. The recoil was but momentary. At the very hour when Mrs. Botts was putting on her hat, sworn to buy a prize worth $60, there fell into her agitated hand an invitation. Mrs. Stoker had sprung to the breach.

A scramble for the cottage of the nine pillars. And behold on the golden lamp there displayed as prize, were the shameless figures, $75.00.

Now had the insanity taken general root. He who fails to understand knows not California. The dangerous mania once contracted, no matter what its form, must continue till the collapse. If the gold fury of ’49, and the equally furious land boom of ’87, are not object-lessons enough, let the sociologist recall the Belgian hares. And if yet he doubts the historical verity of such a cast in the California mind, let him give this euchre boom his careful consideration. As men bid for twenty-five foot lots in San Diego in the insane days of ’87, so did women now bid, under the thin disguise of euchre prizes, for choice positions in the social field of Euchretown. It was the old disease.

In two more leaps the prizes had advanced to a hundred. And, most significant of all, seldom was the price of a prize now paid down. The credit system had saved the day. The people of Euchretown were not millionaires. Few felt able to toss out a hundred with this rapid periodicity. So small first payments, contracts, “the rest in six and twelve,” became the rule.

In the rear dust of this race, panting, tagged Mrs. Hummel. Again and again, contrary to the will of pained Mr. Hummel (who to himself sang “Throw Out the Life Line” in despair), did she attend, punch cards, look on with jealous eye; yet she did not play. She was a buffer whom the sinners held between their gaming and their consciences. Oh, how she longed to give a party that would stagger the general mind!

Now for a fatal three weeks Mr. Hummel was in Oregon. Two sleepless nights his wife spent tossing, then arose feverish, stood on the high pinnacle of temptation, and plunged down.

First she went for a prize. The price had risen to a hundred and forty; she must act quick; now!—lest she be ruined, for the boom waited for no man. At a furniture store she asked information on the contract system. The dealer (who had furnished prizes) was confused; he could not accept the Hummel’s contract. Why? she gasped. Oh, he hastened, it was not for doubts of the Hummel honesty; it was for doubts of the honesty of the community. In the present furious state he did not believe the Hummels would get their salary! Infinitely sorry, infinitely polite was he; and she went away dazed.

But she would do it or die. One more hour of suffering brought her back.

“I’ll mortgage our household goods,” said she, dry-eyed, “till Hummel returns.” And he agreed.

So, Mrs. Stoker’s old slain rival rose up astonishing over the horizon. The chill that ran through the community with Mrs. Hummel’s invitations, gave way to white heat, and everybody, euchre mad, now rushed to the preacher’s home.

Mrs. Hummel’s struggles had been heroic; the house was decorated as never before, the refreshments were beyond any that Mrs. Stoker had conceived. And on the portières (given as a prize) the mark one hundred and fifty dollars stook forth a challenge.

Mrs. Stoker, playing recklessly, lost; and her drawn face suggested nervous collapse and thoughts criminal. But a crisis in the social life of Euchretown was now imminent. There was yet another element to Mrs. Hummel’s victory; a murmur went round of the coming ruin of Stoker. As ladies moved to tables they eyed Mrs. Stoker, and whispered gossip; as men sat down they hinted at revelations, speaking in one another’s ears.

“What is it?” whispered Mrs. Hummel, huskily, to Mrs. Wheelock.

“They say that Stoker is found out; that he gave false title to some land!”

At that moment Stoker’s wild, unnatural laugh was heard.

In the final neck-and-neck sprint to the goal, Mrs. Stoker, gone to pieces, wretched, was distanced; Mrs. Botts carried off the portières; the party broke up, and Mrs. Hummel’s night of sinful conquering passed into history.

When Hummel returned, the news emaciated him. He went to bed and lay ill for a week, and nobody threw out the life line to him. Nay, even the bed he lay on came near to being snatched from under him. And now, with the boom trembling on the verge of collapse, with everybody’s contracts coming due, bills began to rain upon the preacher’s head.

“Jennie,” groaned he, “you have ruined me. See, they haven’t paid my salary, and the furniture man is mad. We will be cast into the street!”

Then there fell into Mrs. Hummel’s hands an envelope—“Mrs. Stoker—at home—Friday night—euchre!”

“Why,” cried Mrs. Wheelock, bursting in with Mrs. Botts, “everybody knows that the Stokers are on the brink of ruin. They say he is fighting like mad to keep his head up—maybe to keep out of jail! This is their final fling. And everybody has learned about her prize. Guess what it is!”

“And guess what it cost!” shouted Mrs. Botts.

“I wouldn’t be un-Christian about it,” declared Jennie, “but I do think swindlers had better hide their heads. What is the thing, then, and what does it cost?”

There was an impressive hush.

“A bedroom set worth two hundred! And she’s let everybody know that she paid cash down for it.”

They all gazed at one another, the fire of gaming in their eyes.

“She is making one last grand play,” said they.

One day of gloom did Mrs. Hummel pass in Hummel’s bedroom, arguing, pleading. To Hummel, he and the whole town were gone to the devil.

“No! Never!” cried he, receiving more duns, and shaken.

But at last toward night he arose and, haunted, went to the furniture store. In the window was the bedroom set, and over it a sign, “The prize for Mrs. Stoker’s euchre-party.” Staring, the emaciated Hummel lost his soul.

“Would it cover the bill,” he whispered, hoarsely, in the dealer’s back room, “if we won it?”

“About,” mused the dealer; “Hummel, since it’s you. I’d call it square.”

And Hummel returned, unsteady on his feet.

Once again the cottage of the Corinthian pillars shone with the brilliancy of a euchre evening. Stoker was making a high play to-night to keep his footing with the men. Mrs. Stoker had rouged to hide the pallor of her cheeks. The house distanced all previous efforts in its decorations, the refreshments were beyond the experience of the most high-rolling citizen of the town.

Behold, in came Mrs. Hummel, her blood up.

“And dear Mr. Hummel?” asked Mrs. Stoker, taking Mrs. Hummel’s hand in both of hers.

“Hummel’s in bed,” said Jennie, tersely; “Mrs. Stoker, I’ll play to-night.”

A moment’s silence, as of a solitude; then a great hubbub, the guests making for tables.

“So glad!” cried Mrs. Stoker; “we’ve always hoped you would!”

“So glad!” shrieked all the women into Mrs. Hummel’s ear; and the games began.

Why dwell on the mad scramble? That night was the culmination. Disgraceful as was the thing in itself, it pales before the disgrace incident to a mood of reckless confession which seized the company. Somebody blurted out that she’d win that two hundred or die. Then a nigh insane man in a corner shouted across the room, to the shocking of all: “Let’s make it poker!”

The laugh that greeted this was spasmodic; and all at once right before Mrs. Hummel on the central table, Mr. Stoker, as though he had lost his mind, and grown wild and cynical, began to deal out—ten-dollar bills from his deck. These Mr. Wheelock snatched up and shook aloft with fearful merriment under the chandelier.

In that instant the boom collapsed. Who could predict the psychological moment? The sight of the ten-dollar bills was too much. Shame rushed into every breast; the reaction began; and henceforth in the hands of everybody but Mrs. Hummel (who, brain on fire, had failed to catch the significance of the moment), euchre fell a limp and lifeless thing.

And that alone is why the preacher’s wife, who scarcely knew her bowers, won the bedroom set.

A sudden, fierce knocking at the door, and in burst an officer.

“I have a warrant for the arrest of John Stoker,” said he.

“I’m here,” said Stoker, sneering and white; and Mrs. Stoker fainted.

Everybody stared; all seized hats; like rats the euchre players slunk away; the Corinthian cottage, like a bedizened but deserted courtesan, stood gaudily shining in the night, alone.

Later the town awoke, as the high-roller awakes next morning with a suffering and repentant head, and the readjustment began. Everybody owed somebody for prizes, as, in ’88, everybody owed somebody for lots. Everybody was a buffer to everybody. The thing let itself down and evened itself up, and nobody was hard on anybody. And thus the euchre boom passed into history.

Now the church people began to rehabilitate their consciences. And Banker Wheelock hit upon a scheme. As financier of the bankrupt soul, Wheelock will ever stand out a genius.

“Why,” said he to Botts, “we did it to help Hummel.”

“True,” said Botts, dazzled; “let’s go and tell him.”

And on a Saturday evening a score of citizens came to Hummel’s house.

Hummel was lying pallid on a lounge.

“We’ve come,” said Wheelock, blandly, “to felicitate you. We couldn’t bear to see you carry that debt, Hummel. We fixed the little thing in what was, I agree, an unprecedented way. But when we schemed beforehand with Mrs. Stoker to give a party and pass the victory on to your wife—Hummel, my friend, our hearts went with it!”

And Hummel, seeing this astonishing loophole for them all, arose to greet the general smile.

“Kind friends,” said he, in trembling relief, “more blessed is it to give than to receive.”

THE SORCERY OF ASENATH

People often ask me why I gave up a promising business career and devoted myself to traveling, in which I find no pleasure; exploring, for which I have no taste; and archæology, which is to me the most tiring of pursuits. The question has never been answered, save by the statement that there is no reason to give, which involves the telling of an incredible story.

There are two or three to whom I would like to tell it. If they survive me, they shall know—to that end, these pages.

It is my conviction that whatever intelligent man has known, he has tried to record in some way—that living truths, new to us, may be gleaned from the stone tablets of races extinct for ages. For such a truth, I am searching. One man found it, but he is dead. His spirit I have called up, as the woman at Endor called up Samuel, and questioned it. He told me that the knowledge had sent it to the world of shades before its time, and had put power into the hands of an evil one, who had bidden it never in any place to reveal to any mortal what it knew.

“Even yet I must obey her,” said the spirit of Paul Glen; “but what you seek is written.”

As yet, I have not read. Many strange things have I unearthed, but never this that I seek.

Now, I will write my story. You who read it may believe or not, as you see fit. I know that it is true.

It is many years now since I went South to visit my sister Helen. I had not seen her since the day of her marriage, three years before, till she met me at the door of her own home and welcomed me in her old sweet and quiet manner. It seemed to me, at the first glance, that her face had aged too much, and that a certain once fine expression—a suggestion of latent determination—had overdeveloped, and marked her with stern lines. From the first moment, too, I feared the existence of a trouble in her life, of which her letters had given no hint.

She seemed, though, cheerful enough. She led the way into a great room that was shaded and cool and full of the scent of lilacs. With a motion of her hand, she dismissed three or four black maids, whom she had been assisting or instructing at some sewing work, and they went out, courtesying and showing their white, even teeth at the door.

A fourth did not leave, but retired to a far end of the room and went on with the sewing. I noticed what a tiny garment she was making, and what a sharply cut silhouette her face made against the white curtain of the window by which she sat.

Helen chatted away, apologizing for her husband’s absence, asking a host of questions, and planning some pleasure for every one of the days of my stay with her. I lay back in my chair, with a feeling of languid content, and listened. When Helen suggested sleep and refreshment, I declined both, feeling no need of anything but her presence and that delicious room, the atmosphere of which was laden with rest as with the scent of the lilacs.

The black woman sat directly in the line of my vision, and I remember now that my gaze never strayed from her. I noticed, idly at first, then with interest, the regularity of her features and the grand proportions of her head and bust. Her hair, brownish in color, with dull copper tints, was as straight as my own, and she had a hand and arm so perfectly molded that, except for their black skin, they might have been those of a lady of high degree. But it was the pride, speaking from every line of that dark face, that most attracted my notice. There was in it, too, an exultant sense of power, and it was the most resolute face, black or white, that I ever saw.

Presently I began to feel that it required an effort to keep the thread of what Helen said, and to reply. Her voice seemed to get faint, then to come in snatches, with an indistinct murmur between them; at last, not at all, though I knew she was still speaking.

I was not unconscious, but perception was contracted and concentrated upon one abnormal effort. From me a narrow path of light stretched down the room to the black woman. She seemed to expand and to grow luminous; a vapor exhaled from her, floated to the middle of the pathway, and there assumed her own form, almost nude, perfect like her face in its every line, motionless as if carved from ebony, but with fierce, impure eyes that looked straight into mine and from which there seemed to be no escape.

Their gaze begot an overwhelming sense of disgust. My soul shuddered, but my body could not move. The evil face smiled. A cloud floated over the form of ebony, slowly passed away, revealing one like polished ivory, but the eyes changed not.

How long their gaze held me motionless and helpless I do not know. Suddenly, something white shut out the vision, and my sister’s voice, now harsh and loud, struck upon my hearing like a lash. Instantly the room assumed its ordinary appearance, the scent of the lilacs greeted me as if I had newly come into the atmosphere, and Helen, in her white dress, stood before me, trembling.

The negress at the window looked at us both with insolent amusement. It was to her that Helen spoke.

“How dared you!” she exclaimed; “oh, that I could punish you as you deserve!”

The girl smiled and slowly drew her needle through the cloth in her lap.

“Go out to Lucas,” commanded Helen. “Go!”

The girl drew herself up, and her face took on an expression of sullen defiance. It seemed for an instant that she would not obey. She clenched her hands, and I heard her teeth grate together. But she hesitated only a moment, then went slowly out of the room. Presently she passed by the window, pushing a heavy barrow full of earth. Lucas, the gardener, followed, carrying a long gad. In a minute or two they passed again, going in the same direction, and afterward again and again. The girl was pushing the barrow around and around the house.

“That is the heaviest and most menial employment I can devise for her,” said Helen; “I wish there were something worse. She grows more impudent every day, but this is the first time she has dared to exert her snaky power upon a white person in my presence. How did you feel while you were under that spell?”

“Now, Helen, for heaven’s sake don’t imagine——”

“I imagine nothing,” she interrupted, in a low voice. “I know that girl. She can do strange things. If ever a human creature was possessed of a devil, she is.”

“Why, Helen!”

She went on without heeding my astonishment. “Every negro on the plantation, except Lucas, is mortally afraid of her. My birds cower in a corner of their cage if she approaches them, the gentlest horse we have will rear and kick at sight of her, and if she goes into the poultry-yard the hens cover up their chicks as if night had come. She has affected others as she did you. She has done worse. When I first came here, she was given to me for a maid; but, not liking her, I took a little mulatto girl who was bright and smart then, but who is now idiotic through fear of Asenath.”

I did not think it best to dispute with Helen, knowing her well enough to be sure that any argument I could adduce against her belief she had already weighed and found wanting. She was not a superstitious woman, nor a hasty one, but one whose very mistakes deserved respect, since she always took that course of action which she believed to be wisest and best, even if it were to her own disadvantage. I simply asked: “Why do you not get rid of her?”

“I have tried, but something frustrates every effort of that kind. Robert objects to sale—it is unusual on this plantation. We once offered her her freedom if she would go away; but she only looked as if she scorned the freedom we could give, and laughed in a way that chilled my blood.”

“She seems very insolent.”

“Insolent—that is a weak word! I sometimes think she is birth-marked with impudence as she is with straight hair.”

“That hair, then, is a birth-mark? I thought it must be a wig.”

“She was born with it and with an insane craving to be white. When a child, she used to scream and shriek over her blackness for hours at a time. Mother Glen whipped that out of her.”

“It is a pity she did not whip out some of her other peculiarities.”

“Mother Glen was much to blame for some of them. You knew Paul Glen, and what a strange, silent being he was—always absorbed in some mysterious pursuits, roving from one lost region to another, coming home, now and then, for a day and leaving, as if for a short time, to be heard of after months of inquiry in Hyderabad, or Jerusalem, or the heart of Guinea. Well, after he came home the last time he made Asenath the subject of numerous psychological experiments. He could mesmerize any one—what other gifts he had is not known; but he called mesmerism child’s play. Mother Glen did not object to his making this use of the girl, because she did not wish to cross Paul and have him go away again. It is my belief that Asenath discovered, through some of his experiments, the existence of an occult power in herself. Before long, she had Paul completely under her control. I had not yet come here; but Mother Glen told me about it, and that any effort to break the spell made Paul perfectly furious. He taught her to read, and to sing, and obeyed her in everything—think of it! After a while he fell sick, but it was thought not dangerously. Asenath nursed him, and he would not eat or drink unless she bade him.”

“That, though, may have been a mere whim, such as the sick often take.”

She shook her head. “You have not heard all: Two of the servants—Mammy Clara and Belinda—declare that they overheard Asenath forbid Paul ever to touch food again, and tell him that she would pretend to bid him eat, but he must not do so. And it is certainly true that he at last refused all sustenance and died of starvation.”

“What a horrible idea!”

“Shortly before Paul was stricken down,” Helen proceeded, “he disposed of all his property—it was in securities of various kinds—and we have never been able to find out what he did with the money he received. Thousands and thousands of dollars took wing somehow. It was never brought here, so she could not have stolen it actually, but I am as sure that Asenath knows where that money is as I am that I live.”

“Now, Helen, be sensible, do.”

“Mother Glen was a sensible woman, and she believed as I do. She said the girl was uncanny. Moreover, she declared to me that Asenath had set out to conquer her as she did Paul, and that it was only by constant resistance that she prevented her from gaining her object. There was a psychic contest between them. Mother Glen’s brain was in a condition of siege for months. It could not stand the strain. She was seized with paralysis and died. I blame Asenath for her death.”

I did not say much in reply. My odd experience of a few minutes before puzzled me. Helen’s account of the girl threw a weird light upon what I felt bound, as a reasonable man, to consider merely curious phenomena, subjective in character and due to some unexplained physical cause. I determined to say a few decided words to Robert Glen about the culpability of allowing his delicate wife to contend with such an annoyance as Asenath, who, if not a sorceress, certainly was a fractious and troublesome servant.

“It is strange that Robert does not remove her,” said I.

Helen’s face flushed and was drawn by a momentary spasm. She looked at me in troubled silence, as if she could not decide to speak what she wished to tell me.

“I am afraid for Robert,” she said at length, almost in a whisper; “there is something in that girl’s demeanor to him that it sickens me to think of—and which I dare not try to explain, even to myself. It seems impossible that she can dare to think that he”—she went on hurriedly, after a pause—“you see, he believes in no psychic powers and is not on his guard. He calls her unearthly pranks mere mischief that a few years’ discipline will take out of her. Robert intends her to marry Lucas.”

She spoke the last sentence quite loudly, and, as the girl and her driver were passing by the window, they overheard. Lucas, a squat, stolid-looking mulatto, with a face like that of a satiated animal, chuckled and poked at Asenath with the gad.

The girl stopped. She threw down her burden, flung back her head, and turned upon Helen a wild and vicious stare. Her face, streaming with perspiration, was full of threat. She gasped for breath from emotion or the heaviness of her toil. She raised one hand, wiped her brow with its open palm, and flung the drops of sweat in a shower at Helen.

“May every drop curse you!” she said, between her labored breaths.

Helen looked at her with quiet scorn. “Go on, Lucas,” she said, calmly.

Asenath shook herself, like a chained animal. She ground her teeth and turned upon Lucas in fury, as if she would rend him. He did not quail, but raised his gad threateningly and pointed to the barrow-handles, and, after a momentary struggle with herself, the girl took them up and went on, panting under her toil.

“She shall continue that until she drops,” said my sister.

“But, Helen, that surely is cruel.”

“Not more so than drawing the fangs of a snake. I have discovered that she is psychically powerless when physically exhausted. All the negroes on the place know this and are rejoicing now—they all feel more secure for knowing that she has been disciplined.”

While she was speaking, I saw Robert Glen coming along the walk to the house. Helen saw him, too. Leaning out the window, she called to Lucas and bade him take his charge “to the old barn.” He hurriedly departed, driving the girl—who now seemed doubly unwilling to drag her load—literally like an ox, and very unsparing of the gad.

Robert greeted me cordially; but it was evident to me that there was a cloud between his wife and him. His ruddy face assumed a stern expression when he looked at her, and his voice had a hard tone when he addressed her. Her manner to him had an appealing, almost fawning, air, which it distressed me to see.

It was some days before I found a chance to speak to Robert on the subject of the girl. I had better have held my tongue, for he was nettled in an instant, shrugged his shoulders, and curled his lip.

“You Northern people know nothing whatever about the management of slaves. Helen leads that girl the life of a toad under a harrow, because the other darkies say she ‘hoodoos’ them, and because my mother had some irrational ideas about demoniacal possession. I declare to you, Tom, that if I did not know Helen’s delicate condition and nervousness were much to blame, I should be ashamed of her treatment of Asenath, who is a good house-servant, and valuable.”

“But she is an annoyance that Helen should not have to contend with now.”

“How is she to be got rid of?” he demanded, impatiently. “We never sell any of the people on this estate, and she won’t take her freedom as a gift. I can’t kill her.”

Then I dropped the subject. When I next saw Helen, she had been crying, and she begged me not to speak to Robert about the girl again.

I saw no more of Asenath for some time, and learned that she had been put steadily to work at the loom, the day following my arrival.

One morning, news came that the loom-house had been entered in the night, all the yarn carried off, the woven cloth cut to pieces, and the loom and wheels so shattered that new ones would be necessary. Even the walls of the building were half-destroyed.

“This is some of Asenath’s work,” said Helen.

Robert, who had been annoyed by the news, now seemed additionally so.

“Pshaw, Helen!” he said sharply; “it would take the strength of several men to do some of this mischief.”

“She has it at command. Lucas shall take her in hand again.”

“No, we will have no more of that,” Robert said, sternly. “Now, hear me, Helen; I have told Lucas that if he obeys you in that respect again he shall be flogged within an inch of his life, and I mean it.”

Helen’s face turned very white, her hands fell into her lap, and she sat as if stricken helpless and hopeless. I hastened away to avoid hearing more, comprehending now what the trouble in my sister’s life was, and with a presentiment of coming evil that would be greater.

It was that very night that, having strolled into the shrubbery to smoke my cigar, I fell asleep upon a rustic bench there and awoke to find it was late at night, with the wind moaning as if a storm were brewing in the cloudy heavens.

As I arose to go to the house, something—that was not visible—seemed to come from every quarter at once and smite me. I felt a sharp, electric thrill, which was followed by a sensation as if I had been flung from a height and raised up again, with some of my faculties benumbed by the fall. My hair stood up, but I felt no fear, only a passive wonder, mixed with expectation. Turning, I saw, by a transient gleam of moonlight, the girl Asenath, standing in the path near by, pointing at me with a long, slender rod. The ray passed and left a black Shadow there, which moved slowly away, beckoning to me. I followed.

The Shadow led me out of the shrubbery and along the wide avenue between the two rows of huts occupied by the negroes, and ended at the mansion house. I had no will or thought but to follow it exactly. It stopped before one of the huts and bent itself nearly double. I, too, bent over, involuntarily, and every muscle of my body seemed to become tense. The perspiration started out of me, and my will was like a bar of steel ending in great fingers, which grasped something and pulled upon it with such force that my inner self was a-tremble with weakness when the tension relaxed, which it did at the opening of the cottage door and the coming out of a little lad—a mere child—who looked ghastly, as one of the dead walking. He placed himself beside me, we followed the shadowy woman to another house, dragged at the invisible cords of another human soul, and brought it out into the night. It was a woman, this time, in scantiest of night-robes.

And so we went on, stopping at every door, and from every door some one came forth, except from that of Lucas. There, grasp as it would, the steel fingers clutched nothing, and the door remained shut.

The woman Asenath muttered to herself, and all the crowd of followers muttered, too. With them, my own lips formed words, of which I did not then comprehend the meaning: “Soulless beast!” We went on beyond the quarters, stopped at the mansion, and dragged at something that resisted with all its strength, which was weaker than ours, for it yielded at last, and came slowly, slowly down the steps and stood among us. It was my sister Helen.

Asenath laughed, and ghastly laughter broke from all, even from Helen herself.

I had no feeling of compassion for her, nor of fear for her or myself, but was simply a force which another exerted. The wills of those who followed Asenath were but strands in the cable of her power, and their strength was in her hands for good or ill.

We followed again—out of the plantation, through a forest of pines, over a bridge that spanned slow-crawling, black water, past a fallen church, surrounded by forgotten graves, to the top of a hill where there were stones laid in the form of a serpent—a great cleft stone, like open jaws, forming the head. There Asenath paused and cast down her rod. She stretched out her hands, and in a moment we were formed into a circle about the rod.

And then once again those fingers of steel grasped something—something that all their strength seemed unable to move. Our breath came in gasps, our forms shook like the leaves of the aspen tree, and in the heart was a fear, too great to be measured, of failure. Long, long the effort lasted—lasted until the will seemed to discard its own puerile strength and to fling itself upon the bosom of impersonal force, seize the reservoir of the universal will, and turn its power in a mighty stream upon the burden of one desire—one unyielding demand that the door be opened. And with that borrowed force came the sense of unlimited strength. Faith was born. We stretched out our arms in gestures of which I can only remember that they were first those of invitation, then of welcome. Nature began to pulsate. There was a sound like the slow, regular beating of a heart, in the chambers of which we were inclosed. The inner life throbbed with it so fiercely that the blood seemed almost to leap from my body. All about us were the movements of awakening birds and insects; from afar came the lowing of kine, the crowing of cocks, and the crying of children, as if they were suddenly startled into fear.

In the centre of the circle appeared a square of strange light. We looked upon it and beheld a place of which the darkness and the light of this world are but the envelopes. We saw there, afar off, a vast crystalline globe, from which extended, in all directions, millions of filaments of clear light. The globe scintillated as a diamond does, and its sparks floated away upon the endless filaments of light. Nearer to us, moving about, were beings not human, and not resembling each other further than that they were all gigantic and all possessed of some human attributes. Some were beautiful, some hideous; but upon every one was stamped—in strange characters that I somehow understood—the words “I only am God.” Upon some the writing was fantastic, as if put on in mockery. Upon others it shone with a clear and cruel radiance that pained the sight. Some bore it faded and dim, as if the pretension it set up had fallen like a leaf into the stream of the ages and been almost forgotten. A great awe fell upon us all, so great that all, except the woman Asenath and myself, fell down and seemed as if dead. The woman trembled and murmured to herself, and again my lips formed her words: “Is it worth while, when human desires are so poor, human life so short?”

Through that door there floated not a voice, for the silence was only broken by a faint, soft hum, like very distant music, but an unspoken command that impressed itself upon the spirit.

“Speak!”

Still the woman hesitated. Suddenly her lips moved again, mine following them: “But only through this can he be won.”

“I would have the desire of my heart,” she said aloud.

“It is thine,” was the silent answer; “to him who knocks at this door shall it be opened, and what he asks for there shall he receive, whether for good or ill. It is the law.”

“I would be fair, like those who enslave me. All that she has”—she pointed to my sister—“I would take from her and have for my own.”

“The power to obtain thy will is thine, whether thou be of the just or of the unjust. The spirit which commands shall be obeyed. It is the law.”

“And is there a penalty to be paid?”

“Thy act is the seed from which its penalty shall grow.”

The woman sighed.

“What penalty?”

“Thou knowest the law.”

Sighing again, bitterly, Asenath stretched out her hand. The square of light went out. Across the spot where it had been, drifted indistinct forms which passed into invisibility on either side. Under their feet ran a serpent of fire, which leaped at the woman. She grasped it, and it seemed to become the rod she had cast down.

I remembered nothing more until I came slowly to myself, stretched upon the bench in the shrubbery, with the morning sun shining into my face. My limbs were stiff, my head ached, and my heart was heavy with a foreboding of evil. It was impossible for me to decide whether the experience of the night was a dream or a reality, but I was sorely troubled; I could not think of Asenath without a creeping of the flesh.

On approaching the house, I saw Robert standing in the doorway. My first glimpse of him set me to trembling with fear of evil tidings, he looked so agitated and distressed. When he perceived me, he wrung his hands and burst into tears.

“Oh, Tom!” he cried, “Helen is dying. She was taken with convulsions early this morning. She does not know me. The baby was born dead, and Helen can not live. I must lose her! Oh, God, I must lose her!”

He ran through the hall and up the stairs, like a wild man. I followed, but the heaviness of the shock was so great that it was but slowly and with a feeling as if the floor was rising up to my face. Asenath was moving stealthily about the hall. I bade her begone. She looked at me like a startled cat, but did not go. A black girl, coming down the stairs, passed me, and I recognized her as the first of the women who had joined our ghastly crowd the night before. She gazed straight before her, with wide-open, horrified eyes, and her face had the same pinched look the hall mirror had shown me upon my own as I glanced into it involuntarily when passing it. At the top of the stairs, Belinda, Helen’s poor little maid, flung herself at my feet and clasped my knees.

“Oh, Massa Tom,” she cried, “she am ’witched. Go an’ git d’ witch doctah t’—tak’—de spell off’n her. Nuffin’ll save her ef yo’ don’t do dat.”

As I stopped to put the poor creature aside, old Mammy Clara, her face streaming with tears, came up to me.

“Massa Tom,” she said, solemnly, “de good God hab tooken Miss Helen. She’s in heben wid her li’l’ baby.”

The blow overcame me. It will be best to pass over that time. I shut myself into my room and bore my agony alone. I went once into the room where Helen lay and looked at her face. It was the face of one in peaceful rest, but it had aged twenty years in twelve hours. Her maids, directed by Mrs. Grayson, an old friend of the family, were ready to prepare her for the grave.

“They think,” whispered Mrs. Grayson, “that she had walked in her sleep. Her feet are scratched and torn, as if she had been among briars barefoot, and the doctors say that her convulsions probably came on from the shock of awakening. She was found at daybreak, unconscious, in the hall, and the outer door was wide open.”

I left the plantation a few days after the funeral, and for years neither saw nor heard directly from Robert Glen. I never could forgive his indifference to Helen’s peace of mind while she lived, nor get over a certain disgust with which his lack of self-control at the time of her death inspired me. I never liked him, and, after that sad time, I had less regard for him than ever. I never told him the story I have written. He would only have pronounced me mad, and I did not wish to obtain that reputation for the mere sake of warning him. Besides, I tried with all my mind to believe the experience of that night a dream, but I found that impossible and was always looking for a sequel to it. The sequel came in its appointed time.

Years passed away. At the outbreak of the war, the Graysons came North. From them, I learned that Asenath had disappeared from the plantation long before, and was supposed to have drowned herself in the black creek and to haunt the plantation in the form of a black-and-white snake. Dr. Grayson blamed himself for her death.

“Some of the Glen negroes,” he said, “told some of mine that the girl was turning white, and that, with the exception of her face and hands, her whole body had changed its color. Now I had heard of such cases, but never had seen one, and in spite of what Buffon and other naturalists say on the subject, felt doubtful of the possibility of such a thing taking place. I rode over to Glen’s one day to investigate the matter. Glen was not at home; but, presuming upon old friendship with him, I saw the girl and told her the object of my call. I wish you had seen her; she flew into an outrageous passion, called me vile names, said there was not a white spot on her person, and that if I touched her it should cost me dear. Of course, I paid no attention to her threats, and called that Lucas of Glen’s to help me turn up her sleeves. Her arms really were white, but before I could half-examine them, she broke away from us and tore out of the house. We followed, but lost sight of her in the shrubbery, and to this day she has never been seen again. The negroes say she drowned herself. Glen, when he returned, seemed to believe so. He took me to task in a most ungentlemanly manner for what had happened, and we have not been on speaking terms since. He has now gone abroad to stay until this little war squall blows over, I hear.”

“I trust that he may—and longer,” I said. The doctor chuckled a little and changed the subject. In secret, I said to myself: “I don’t believe the girl is dead, and I do believe that Robert Glen knows where she is. The sequel will come.”

In ’68, Robert returned home, bringing a wife with him. He wrote me a formal announcement of his marriage, to which I replied with equal formality.

It was rumored that the new wife was rich in her own right; that she was of English parentage, but born and reared in Calcutta. Later, I heard that Robert’s old neighbors had not taken to her at all, and that she had an ungovernable temper, being unable to keep any servant under her roof, except a couple of East Indian women, whom she berated continually in their own tongue, but who could not speak English enough to impart any information about their mistress to her neighbors.

The year after Robert’s marriage, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days with the Graysons. Feeling that I owed Robert the courtesy of a call, I rode over to the plantation, not so much to discharge a social duty as to see the new Mrs. Glen, about whom I noticed, on the part of the Graysons, a marked reluctance to speak. They edged away from the subject, when I brought it up, with nervous looks at each other.

Leaving my horse at the outer gate, I walked along the wide avenue nearly to the house. There was a spectral stillness upon the place. Sadness exhaled from everything, to be drawn in with every breath. The old servants were all gone. I had met the once sleek and stolid Lucas, now rheumatic and ragged, begging in the village. Belinda was in the county asylum, and the others were scattered or dead. The scent of the lilacs was gone from the air—the very bushes were rooted up, and lay, sear and dead, by little heaps of earth. A triangle of cloud in the sky cast upon the earth a triangle of shadow, in the midst of which Robert Glen’s home lay as if it were entranced. No sign of happy life met me; but, as I turned aside to look at a certain bench in the shrubbery, a black-and-white snake ran over my foot.

I went no further. A woman was seated upon the bench—a fair woman, with hair like dull copper reflecting sullen fire, with a face and form perfect as those of the goddesses of old, a face which betokened an indomitable soul which knew the secret of the power wielded by the gods. She was bending over her clasped hands, her face was turned aside in an attitude of eager waiting, and wore a smile that transfigured it. Slowly approaching her, walking as a man walks in his sleep, came Robert Glen. He threw himself at her feet and laid his head upon her knee. She bent to him with a little rapturous caress, and both faces were as happy as those of the people in Paradise.

I turned and went away from the place, and entered its precincts no more. From that hour, I was self-devoted to one purpose—to seek the knowledge that should open the door to her degradation and destruction. In the midst of her success, and in the height of her pride, she should turn black as she was in the day when Lucas drove her. I swore it. So should my friend and my sister, whom she robbed and slew, be avenged.

OLD “HARD LUCK”

Every one admitted he had a good heart in him. Even his bitterest enemy, Kid Alderson, was willing to make that concession, but qualified it by adding that he “was so blamed unlucky and peculiar, a body never knowed when he was in to clear.”

This singularity extended to his name. “H-o-s-s-e-l-k-u-s, accent on the sel,” he was wont to explain, with something like a shade of weariness, when a new operator faltered on his long patronymic.

Eben J. Hosselkus was engineer of Engine Seventeen-Forty-Three.

With the meagre data available, it is difficult to determine whether the name Hosselkus belongs to the Anglo-Saxon, Indo-European, or Teutonic family; but no such uncertainty attached to the origin of its unfortunate bearer. He was an unmistakable Yankee; rather below the medium height, lean and wiry; his mild, light-blue eyes were overshadowed by bushy and frowning eyebrows, and his grizzled mustache bristled with a singular ferocity, which the weakness of mouth and chin immediately belied. The whole man was decidedly contradictory. When first addressed, his manner was brusque and his voice gruff; but, after a few terrible expletives, his tone would soften and his most positive assertions invariably ended with an appeal for confirmation. “Now ain’t it so, for a fact? Now wouldn’t you say so, ’f you’uz me?” he would ask, while his wistful eyes wandered from face to face in search of support or sympathy, perhaps.

He was the oldest engineer on the division, and the most unfortunate. Two decades of brakemen and conductors had twisted and distorted his luckless surname in every conceivable way; but to all appellations, from “Old Hoss” to “Hustle-Cuss,” he ever accorded the same ready response.

Of late years he had been known simply as “Hard Luck.” When a train-crew would reach the end of the division, wan and famished from a protracted sojourn at some desert-siding, the first inquiry of their sympathetic brethren would be: “Who was pullin’ you?” “Old Hard Luck, of course,” was the seldom varied reply.

Old Hosselkus had probably suffered more “moving accidents by flood and field” than any other man ever lived through. And yet he was a thoroughly competent engineer. He was an earnest student of mechanical engineering, and could explain the mysteries of “link motion,” the principles of the “injector,” and the working of the Westinghouse automatic air-brake in a singularly lucid manner. Nothing pleased him better than to enlighten a green fireman upon some knotty point, and the walls of the roundhouse and bunkhouse are still covered with his elaborate chalk and pencil diagrams of the different parts of the locomotive.

As far back as he could remember, it had been the dream of Hosselkus’s life to be a regular passenger-engineer—in railroad parlance, to “pull varnished cars.” This was the goal upon the attainment of which the best efforts of his life had been concentrated, and still, after twenty years’ service, he seemed as far as ever from success. Many times he had almost achieved it, but always something had happened to prevent, some unaccountable and unavoidable piece of ill-luck. Finally, his name became so synonymous with disaster that the “Company” hesitated to intrust the valuable equipment of an express-train and the lives of the traveling public to him. Thus, as the years went by, old Hard Luck had become accustomed to crawling out from under the disgruntled engine of a side-tracked worktrain or way-freight to acknowledge the patronizing wave of the hand, as some former fireman of his whizzed by with a passenger-train or an “officers’ special.” Despair, however, had no place in his heart, and he still reveled in the fancied joys of pulling the fast express, and dreamed of that happy time when, to the customary inquiry as to the time of his departure, he would be able to answer: “I go out on Number Three.”

There is a great difference in engineers; some can step off the foot-board at the end of a long run looking as fresh and clean as at the start, while, to judge from the appearance of others, one would imagine they had made the journey in the ash-pan. Hosselkus belonged to the latter class. It would have required some more powerful solvent than simple soap and water to have removed the soot and grime that had gradually accumulated in the wrinkles and hollows of his countenance during the years of arduous service. There was some excuse for him, however, seeing that so much of his life had been spent upon superannuated “ten-wheelers,” which, as every one knows, are awkward machines to oil, on account of their wheels being so low and close together. Then, too, he had so many accidents. He scarcely ever made a round trip without “slipping an eccentric,” “bursting a flue,” or “burning out his grates,” not to mention more serious mishaps, such as derailments, head and hind-end collisions, or running into slides and wash-outs. Much practice had made him almost perfect in “taking down a side,” or disconnecting a locomotive, while some of his exploits in the fire-box, plugging flues, rivaled the exhibition given by the Hebrew children in that seven times heated furnace of Holy Writ.

But while his extensive experience upon the road had developed habits of self-reliance and a certain readiness in emergencies, it was not calculated to impart that gloss or polish which enables one to shine in society. Hard Luck’s only appearance within the charmed circle had been when he acted as pall-bearer at the funeral of a division superintendent, and upon that occasion he had scandalized his colleagues by appearing without the conventional white gloves, and a hurried and embarrassed search of his pockets only brought to light a bunch of “waste” and a “soft hammer,” articles which, though almost indispensable on a locomotive, are not essential to the success of a well-ordered interment.

Gamblers say that if one is but possessed of sufficient capital, the most persistent run of ill-luck may eventually be broken, and so it proved in Hosselkus’s case.

An “officers’ special,” carrying the leading magnates of the road upon a tour of inspection, was expected, and Engine Seven-Seventy-Seven, the fastest locomotive on the division, and Bill Pearson, an engineer with a record, had been held in readiness for some time to take them out.

The engine, with a full tank of the best coal, had already been run out of the roundhouse, and the train-dispatcher had the freights safely side-tracked, and satisfactory “meets” with the passenger-trains about figured out, when he was interrupted in his study of the train-sheet by a nervous ring at the telephone. The dispatcher answered it himself, and the foreman of the roundhouse announced that Pearson was sick, and unable to take the special out.

“That’s bad,” mused the dispatcher, but added, a moment later: “Well, send the next best man, and get a move on; they’ll be here in ten minutes.”

“They ain’t none,” replied the roundhouse.

“No other engineer?” shouted the dispatcher.

“Well, there’s only Perkins on the yard-engine and Hard Luck just in on Scott’s work-train—might double him out again—that’s all.”

The dispatcher rushed into the adjoining room to consult the superintendent.

It was in the midst of the busiest season, and every available engineer was out upon the road.

“Hard Luck? nonsense!” said the superintendent when he was informed of the situation. “Tell Pearson he must take the special out—this is a nice time for him to get sick!”

The roundhouse was notified, and replied that Pearson was “foamin’ awful—his wife’s got him jacked up and two doctors workin’ on him,” yelled the foreman.

“This is terrible! terrible!” groaned the superintendent. “Perkins is only a boy, we can’t put him on, and Hosselkus will never get over the division without something happening—never in the world!” and the perspiration started upon his forehead. The whistle of the special aroused him to the necessity of immediate action.

“Tell them to put Hosselkus on, and get him out as quick as possible—we are in the hands of Providence anyway, I suppose,” he added to himself.

All was hurry and excitement when the special pulled in. The engine that brought it in was cut off and hurried out of the way, while the huge, well-groomed “Three-Sevens” backed slowly down in charge of Hosselkus, whose heart swelled chokingly as the brazen clangor of her bell pealed out.

But the beginning was ominous. The engine was unfamiliar to him and worked more stiffly than he had expected, so that when he backed down to be coupled on, he struck the train with a momentum that jarred its occupants uncomfortably.

“Lord! Lord!” moaned the superintendent as he wiped his clammy brow and sought to divert the directors’ attention from the mishap by suggesting some needed improvements in the “Company’s” water supply.

Presently he excused himself and went ahead to the engine to interview Hard Luck. He found him with an oil-can in one hand and a bunch of waste in the other, engaged in the important duty of “oiling ’round.”

Hosselkus had had no time to change his greasy jumper and overalls for cleaner ones; his hasty wash had merely imparted a smeary look to his countenance, and the badge on his cap was upside down, but his eyes sparkled beneath their shaggy brows, his mustache bristled savagely, and the whole man was nervously alert as, with a squirt of oil here, a dab of the waste there, and feeling carefully each key and bearing to detect any signs of heating, he worked his way around the mighty racer. He was just finishing his round when the superintendent came up.

“Now, Hosselkus,” said the latter, appealingly, “do be careful and try and get us over the division in some kind of shape—make time, and, for heaven’s sake, don’t break down on the road. If you make a first-class run, I’ll see what we can do about getting a passenger run for you.”

Hosselkus put away his tallow-pot, wiped his hands on the bunch of waste, which he then carefully placed in his pocket to serve as a handkerchief, and at length spoke: “Colonel,” he said, “don’t you lose no sleep over this excursion—we’ll git there in the biggest kind of shape—this mill has got it in her, an’ if I can’t coax a move out of her, I’ll run a stationary the rest of my life. Now, these kid-engineers of yours, they ain’t up in mechanics like they’d oughter be—not but what they’re good boys—mind you, I’m not sayin’ a word agin ’em—but they waste her stren’th—they don’t really savvy the theory. Now——”

“Yes, yes,” hurriedly interrupted the superintendent; “I know, but we must be getting out of here, and don’t forget that passenger run—it’s manslaughter, if not murder in the first degree,” he said to himself, as he hastened back; “but if we escape with our lives, he shall have the run.”

The conductor waved his hand, Hosselkus opened the throttle slightly and the steam shrilled through the cylinder-cocks as the special moved down the yard. Slowly he threaded the network of tracks, cut-offs, and blind switches, and then more rapidly by the long siding opposite the row of cottages, where the families of the conductors and engineers lived. And instinctively he felt the eyes of the women upon him, and that they were saying: “Well, if there ain’t that crazy fool on Pearson’s Three-Sevens, with a passenger special! Wouldn’t that kill you?” for women are jealous divinities—they would not that man should have any other gods or goddesses before them, and, as Hosselkus worshiped only a locomotive, a thing of steel and iron, they made of him a by-word and a reproach. But at that moment, Hard Luck cared but little for their disdain; he only thought of his triumph, and the discordant clanging of the bell of the Three-Sevens sounded in his ears as a pæan of victory. “At last—at last,” seemed to say its brazen tongue.

The last switch was passed, and Hosselkus, forgetting the lightness of his train, opened the throttle so suddenly that the engine fairly leaped forward, while passengers’ necks received a violent wrench.

“This engineer of yours, colonel,” said the general superintendent, spitting out the end of a cigar he had involuntarily swallowed, “is just off a pile-driver, is he not?”

The colonel laughed a joyless laugh. “The fact is,” he replied, “the regular man was taken sick at the last moment, and we had no one but this fellow to put on. He is an old engineer, but not used to the engine. I think he will improve when he gets the hang of it.”

“I hope so—I hope so,” said the general, fervently, as he lit a fresh cigar; “there is evidently room for improvement.”

But presently even the anxious superintendent was forced to admit they were moving. Telegraph-poles, that had appeared and disappeared with majestic deliberation, began to flit by the windows with a frequency and abruptness very unusual in those stately objects; quicker and less rhythmic came the click of the wheels as each rail was passed, and the leaps of the engine at each revolution of the driving-wheels were merged into a continuous, convulsive shudder. The passengers no longer experienced the sensation of being drawn along, but felt as though projected through space, and the more timid clung to their seats to avoid soaring off through the roof. Trainmen who could traverse undisturbed the reeling roofs of a fast freight, made their way through the swaying cars with difficulty.

Old Hard Luck was evidently “getting there,” and the superintendent prayed silently that he might maintain the speed to the end.

At the first stop he went forward to congratulate the engineer. The fireman was under the engine “hoeing out,” and Hosselkus, sooty but triumphant, was “oiling ’round.”

“How’d’s that suit you, colonel?” he cried, as his superior approached; “the old girl’s a-crawlin’, ain’t she?”

“You’re doing fine, Hosselkus—fine, but keep it up—pound her on the back, for the porter tells me the wine is getting low and they’re liable to see something to beef about. Keep ’em a-rollin’, and the passenger run is yours.” The colonel had risen from the ranks, and at times, unconsciously, lapsed into the old dialect.

“Don’t you worry none, we’ll git there. Gimme this mill, colonel, an’ none of the other boys on the division ’ud ever get a smell of my smoke. An’ she does it so easy, reminds of your maw’s old rocker—just handle her right, don’t crowd her, that’s the main point. Now my theory’s like this, we’ll say the cylinder receives so much——”

But the colonel had fled. Hard Luck carried his theory with him, for he never succeeded in obtaining a listener to whom he could expound it.

No accident occurred, however; the speed was maintained, and the special reached Oleson’s Siding so far in advance of the train-dispatcher’s calculations that quite a wait was necessary while Number Three, the east-bound express, toiled up the grade.

Hosselkus lit the headlight, for the sun was impaled upon one of the peaks of the distant Sierras, whose eastern slopes were already purpling with shades of evening.

It was the last stop. Below him wound the tortuous Goose-Neck Grade, with the division terminus at its foot. The run was nearly ended.

Having finished oiling, Hosselkus leaned against the cylinder-head and gazed abstractedly down the track. A brakeman was seated on the head-block of the switch, throwing stones at an adjacent telegraph-pole, and moodily speculating upon the probabilities of “getting in” in time for supper, while an occasional breath of wind from the valley brought with it, from far down the grade, the puffing of the engines on Number Three.

He had succeeded. The record would be broken beyond a doubt; but as the cool breeze of sunset blew in his face, he suddenly became aware of the fact that he was tired, and he remembered then that he had been on the road for over forty-eight hours.

The smell of heated tallow struck him, for the first time, as being a singularly unappetizing odor, and he looked over the huge machine with something akin to dissatisfaction in the expression of his face. He sighed, and the brakeman asked if she was coming—meaning the train.

“No,” replied Hard Luck; “she ain’t showed up ’round the bend yet—I’uz just thinkin’.”

“Well, here she’s a-comin’.”

Hosselkus clambered to his seat, and as soon as the express-train had cleared the switch it was opened by the brakeman, and the special was once more under way.

Leaning uncomfortably now to this side, now to that, and with angry grinding of flange on rail, it swept around the curves with ever-increasing speed. A crashing roar, a flare of yellow sunset light reflected from rocky walls, told of a cutting safely passed, while bridge, and culvert, and trestle bellowed again as the engine cleared them at a bound.

The Three-Sevens devoured the way. Again and again Hosselkus proved the correctness of his theory by the terrific bursts of speed with which the mighty engine responded to his every impulse; but his nerves were no longer responsive to the exultant thrill of triumph. A sickening foreboding griped his heart; yet, whenever he would have shut off steam and slackened speed, an unconquerable impulse restrained him; for, in the exhaust of the engine and the roar of wheels, he fancied he heard one word repeated over and over again, with maddening persistency: “Hurry! hurry! hurry! hurry!” And the fireman, as he shoveled in coal and struggled to maintain his difficult footing, noted with wonder, not unmixed with uneasiness, that Hosselkus was working steam on grades where it was usual to “let them down” under the restraining pressure of the air-brakes.

The lagging summer twilight gradually deepened until the illuminated faces of clock and steam-gauge stood out with pallid distinctness in the gloom of the cab. Lights in lonely section-houses shot past, and occasionally a great flare of red rushed upward from the momentarily opened door of the fire-box. The dazzling light of the furnace revealed old Hard Luck crouching forward on his seat, one hand on the throttle, the other grasping the reversing lever. His features were set and sharpened, and so pale that through its grimy enameling his face looked positively blue. An occasional swift, comprehensive glance took in clock, steam-gauge, and water-glass, and then his eyes were again fixed upon the arrowy torrent of ties that streamed into the glare of the headlight and disappeared beneath the pilot with unbroken, dizzying swiftness. At last a white post flitted by and Hosselkus relaxed. He glanced at the clock, and the next moment a long, wailing blast of the whistle warned the yardmen at the division’s end.

The record was broken; the passenger run was his at last; old Hard Luck had actually got over the division without a mishap and in time never before equaled; but instead of exulting over it, as he shut off steam, he found himself marveling how faint and far away the whistle had sounded; had he not felt the vibration of the escaping steam, he would hardly have believed it was the Three-Seven’s stentorian voice. Undoubtedly there was something wrong; he would have to fix it the first thing in the morning. The engine lurched over the switches, and Hosselkus cursed the sudden fog that had dimmed the switch-lamps so he could hardly tell red from white, but at length he pulled up before the Railway Hotel—fortune favored him to the last, he made a splendid stop.

With a great sigh of relief he leaned back on his seat, while the eating-house gong banged and thundered a hospitable welcome to the belated guests.

“You made a magnificent run, Hosselkus. I’ll fix it with the master-mechanic—you go out on Number Three to-morrow,” called out the superintendent, as he hurried by.

Presently a yardman uncoupled the engine and waved his lantern. “All right!” called out the fireman, who was standing in the gangway.

The engineer made no move.

“What’s the matter?” inquired the switchman, climbing into the cab; “Why in——” The light of his lantern fell upon the engineer’s face; he paused suddenly, for it was white beneath the grime.

Hard Luck was taken from the engine, laid upon a bench, and a physician hastily summoned. Engineers, with smoky torches, and trainmen, with lanterns, crowded around with bated breath, while the doctor listened long and attentively for a sound of life, but only the air-pump on the Three-Sevens sighed softly, as the light rings of smoke from her stack floated up, and up, and up in the quiet air, where still a tinge of twilight lingered.

“Dead!” said the doctor, and the tension was relaxed.

Then they all praised their late comrade, and all agreed that the old fellow had a good heart in him, anyway—that is, all but the doctor, who, as he rose and carefully wiped his spectacles, muttered something about “Organic weakness—told him so.”

The next day, as the superintendent had promised, Hard Luck went out on Number Three—but he went in a box, lashed to the platform of the baggage-car.

THE DOTTED TRAIL

The first time that Dudley Latimer kissed Belle Sharp, the half-Spanish “help” at the P. L. Ranch, he was not in earnest; he would have been the last to say that there was any serious intention in it. He did it partly in a spirit of pure bravado, and partly because the morning was as warm and white as new milk, and she, smiling back over her shoulder as she emptied her pails, looked a part of it. Equally innocent of any harmful intent, she let him after a formal struggle. He was tall and clean, and as handsome as a young Englishman can be when he is in perfect condition, and has a fine, red coat of tan. Then he bade her good-by. He had been at the ranch a week, ranging the hills in a vain hunt for antelope, already then, in the early eighties, becoming scarce. His canvas-covered wagon and his “side partner,” the Hon. Justin Weymouth, waited by the gate.

The Hon. Justin was taking a parting nip with the “Old Man,” and did not see the diversion, and none of the four noticed that Emilio Gonolez, horse trainer and man-of-all-work, was coming in through the kitchen yard carrying an antelope so freshly killed that its throat was not yet cut. Emilio stood and watched. He saw the struggle, heard the girl cry “The gall of you!” saw her color turn as she lifted her face with unwilling willingness, saw her throw at young Latimer, walking away, a look of admiration that he took for something else. Then Emilio slipped round the barn with his quarry, and came upon the wagon in front. Dudley was smiling across the fence at Belle, who had found business in the front yard. For half a minute, Emilio looked what he felt; then smiled as he slipped into view, and said: “I make-a present you thees antelope. He ees fresh. Myself, I shoot heem. He come ver’ close.”

“Careful how you tie it, Emmy,” said the Old Man. “Dump it in for ’em. Well, boys, stacking in the north field. Good-by, and luck to you.”

While Dudley chatted across the fence with Belle, Emilio was explaining to the Hon. Justin how an antelope should be tied and hung for a journey. “Head down so he bleed—the dust bother ver’ leetle—oh, yes, a lee-tle cut on the throat so he bleed slow. That ees bes’. I cut heem.” A slow, red stream trickled over snowy throat and gray jaws. The wagon drove on. Down the road behind it trailed an irregular line of wet dots, the centres for an army of noisy flies.

“Awfully jolly girl,” said Dudley, as they bowled easily along through the red dust. The Hon. Justin puffed at his pipe, and made no answer. He might have said that he hastened their going just because his companion was very young and the girl very pretty. A flock of sage-hens started from the olive-green brush to one side. Justin pulled up, took out his shotgun and followed, Dudley throwing stones to make them rise. A right and left shot brought down a brace. They gathered up the birds, and turned to the wagon, and as they did so, the elder man looked back. Just level with the ranch house, two miles behind, a cloud of red dust veiled the road and lapped far over its edge. Through the thin atmosphere came a muffled rumble, and then a few dots, followed at an interval by another, heaved out of the mass.

“Cattle!” said Dudley. “That’s jolly. I always wanted to see one of those big droves on the foot. Shall we wait for them to pass?”

“I think not,” said the Hon. Justin. “Not until we get to the next ranch. They say that those wild range cattle do singular things.” But still they stood and watched, fascinated by the shimmering, shifting, red cloud, the distant rumble, the glint of a blazing sun on the sabred heads of a thousand Texas long-horns.

Of a sudden the dust-cloud, which had spilled over the road only to the right, away from the ranch fence, widened out, shifted to the left. They had passed the fence corner, and were on open range. No dust arose on that wing; it was hard prairie, tied close by sagebrush. And inexperienced as were their eyes, the two Englishmen could see some commotion running through the mass; the units composing it were spreading hither and thither; two compound dots, mounted men, were swinging wide about them. The rumble grew louder, lulled, rose again, and above the noise came the sound of a dozen shots, fired in quick succession. Away back in his consciousness, Dudley began to regret that they had chosen, in their young British insolence, to travel without a guide, who might explain to them the strange happenings of this incomprehensible country.

Justin started at the sound of a frightened snort in his ear. He turned to see his horses quivering in every nerve. Almost before he could catch its bridle, the near one was plunging and pitching.

“Get the reins!” yelled Justin; “we’d best be out of here.”

The team broke into a dead run. Looking back, Justin saw the cloud ominously, frightfully near. A struggling advance-guard of long-horns heaved out before, and ahead of them were two men, riding like demons, yet ever beating backward as they rode. Then the red veil fell, and there was nothing but a dust-cloud, rolling on nearer and nearer.

When the Englishmen were gone, Belle looked after their retreating wagon, and sighed. She was just realizing, now that the week was past and these clean, courteous, easy-moving beings of another world were gone, that she had been dreaming dreams. Emilio looked also, sometimes after the wagon, sometimes after the girl. When he bent his gaze on Belle he was serious enough, but when his eye ran down the track of bloody dots, he drew his lips back from his white teeth, and smiled. He was holding the reins of his roan bronco; he dropped them to lean over the fence, and looked up the road, away from the wagon.

“What is it that you see up there?” she asked, carelessly, in Spanish.

“Something that your white-haired friend will be glad to see,” he answered. She looked, saw the dust-cloud coming, saw the little, caking pool of blood, and went white in a moment.

“That,” she cried, “that is what your antelope meant! You knew that cattle were coming this way to-day.”

“A thousand head passing up to the White River country. And wild, very wild.”

“They will trample them; kill them!”

“You thought about that when you kissed him,” he sneered; “the blood goes straight, and the wind is right. He will have a run for it—your lover.”

Then the roar of padding feet was louder, and the herd was coming. They were fifty yards away—and a great, white steer, horned in splendor, lowered his muzzle, and bellowed, and tore the earth, and shot out in advance. Another followed, and still another, each breaking into that rocking run, each one stretching out his nostrils to taste the polluted air. They plunged together over the little pool of blood; they rolled over and over, horns tossing, feet stamping, throats acclaim. The leaders crowded against the corral until its foot-wide posts bent and cracked. A deafening roar, the bellow of a thousand mad cattle, and then nothing but a tangled riot, speeding on down the scent, a thousand great, horned hounds after their quarry.

It was the blood stampede that makes half-wild cattle wholly demons. A clap of lightning, a sudden shot, even the appearance of a dismounted man, will send the mercurial herd rushing in panic fear; but let them once scent blood, and all hell is loosed in them. No pack of wolves follows with the relentless fury of range cattle on the trail of blood. Huddled by the barn, still showing his teeth, but half in fright, at the box of demons that he had opened, the man who laid the trail knew all this. And the girl knew it best of all.

She was between him and his horse as she turned on him.

“You did this—you murderer!”

“I will go,” he said; “I will cut it loose—it will stop the cattle.”

“Yes—you! I will go myself.” He jumped at her as she sprang into his saddle. She saw the movement. His lariat hung at the saddle-horn. She brought it down on his wrist. The same movement started the high-strung little roan, already a-quiver with fear. His heels clattered against the bars; Belle, astride like a man, her calico skirts tucked about her hips, was riding after the red cloud, swinging wide into the sage-brush to pass them.

The roan had a dash of the thoroughbred. He was the swiftest thing coursing that day in the four-cornered race between cattle, cowboys, hunted team, and woman, yet he had two hundred yards the worst of his start. But, like a thoroughbred, he caught the bit and shook out his dapple mane, and laid his belly to the earth as he skimmed. Over sage-brush, over treacherous ant-hills, tangling gopher-holes he sped, the reins loose, for he knew his work. Two cowboys, caught in the press, fighting, swearing, striking brutally at heads and horns as they were borne on, called to her in warning; but the roan rounded the pack, shook himself free, and galloped on.

And then Belle saw what she had feared. Knowing their peril, but ignorant of the cause, the two Englishmen were hurrying on ahead, with the carcass still bumping from the tail-board. The cattle in the road, where the running was freer, had gained upon those on the flanks. They were going in a wedge, with the speed of an express train. The cows, fleeter and fiercer than the males, were leading on. Half a dozen cowboys skirmished before, shooting and lashing out desperately, trying to back-fire by a counter-panic, taking chances of life with every gopher-hole. But there was no checking that mass; when a steer flinched before the heavy whip, he was pushed on from behind. And ever they bellowed, with a note of tigers in their voices.

A moment Belle ran before the herd; then calling to the roan, who understood as only a cow-horse can understand, she cut an oblique course across the herd’s face. She gained the road; the herd was behind her, and the roan, gathering his nerve for a final spurt, made for the wagon. She shouted, but the roar behind drowned her voice, and so she reached for the holster, where Emilio kept his knife. As she whipped it out and drew even, reaching for the carcass, the wagon slackened and stopped. Her own horse swerved in his course, and shot past before she could check him.

The off-horse, what with fear and exhaustion, had stumbled and fallen dead. And the wedge was coming on, now but a quarter of a mile away.

Deadly as was their fear, the two Englishmen, who had jumped to the ground, stood and stared to see her turn in beside the standing horse and, without any ceremony, cut his traces and reins. He reared and plunged; Justin caught his bridle.

“Mount quick!” she shouted. And before he could grasp the situation she had pushed Dudley to her roan, almost thrown him into the saddle, and mounted behind.

As the snorting horses bounded away, the roar was almost on their flanks. It rose to its climax in a great, dull crash. Looking back, the girl saw that they were no longer followed. The dust-cloud was a whirlpool that rolled and tumbled over the spot where the wagon had been. For only a minute; the cowboys closed in, and the panic was over. Slowly the men beat back the sullen, sated demons. And when the press split there was no wagon at all—only broken wheels and scattered bits of woodwork, and flattened belongings and blood—blood and gleaming gray hairs trampled into everything.

The two men dismounted and turned to the girl. Then was she first aware of her skirts tucked about her hips, and of the manner in which she had ridden. Her color rose, and she jumped down. She turned redder a moment later when Dudley Latimer took her in his arms and, for the second time that morning, kissed her.

And that time he kissed her in deadly earnest.

THE WHITE GRAVE

Harrison and his wife were evidently tenderfeet. Worse than that, they had never been outside the City of New York before; and why an inexperienced, city-bred young man like Harrison should have attempted to move a year’s outfit, which weighs a ton, over the Chilkoot Pass, and tempt Fate in the bleakness of the Yukon country, no one knew.

The reason really was Harrison’s wife. Tired of a living salary in the city, she was ready, when news of the Klondike gold-fields reached the world in 1897, to catch the gold fever; caught it, and argued Harrison into resigning his clerkship in an insurance company, and into taking her with him to Alaska. They were very much in love, and could not be separated. So they invested their savings in sacks of flour, and blankets, and tins of coffee, and in tickets to Dyea.

They landed there in December. This, of course, was an idiotic time to arrive, but they didn’t know, and there were lots of other idiots just then. When Harrison grasped the fact that he must, himself, pull all his pile of provisions over the desolate mountain range that ran upward in front of him, his heart failed him; as the Yukoners say, he got cold feet. But his wife cheered him. Mrs. Harrison was young, and, therefore, hopeful. Moreover, she was a pretty little woman, with a great mass of flaxen hair, and on her account many a rough packer on the trail gave Harrison a lift with his load in the steeper places.

They struggled on together through storms and snowdrifts. Little by little the outfit neared the summit that had lain eighteen miles from them when first they landed. Every morning Harrison would load some two hundred and fifty pounds on the sled, pull it up the trail seven miles or so, and come back in the afternoon. And the girl, for she was nothing more, would cook their little meals on the sheet-iron stove, and dry Harrison’s moccasins and coddle him, and tell him how like it all was to a picnic, and how she enjoyed the life. Which was not true.

And so they passed through Canyon City, beyond which there is no God, the packers say, and up to Sheep Camp, which is far up in the mountains on the timber line, and beyond which there lies a frozen desolation that supports no living thing—not even the scrubby spruce that can exist on the bare rock in lower altitudes. Here they disappeared from view, because the horses do not go past Sheep Camp, the trail being too rough; and the packers, not seeing them, could bring no word.

Now, there were hotels of a fashion in Dyea at this time, but the entire downstairs part was usually made into one room, and used as a bar, dance-hall, and gambling house. So when Harrison came back down the trail two weeks later at three o’clock in the morning, he had to elbow his way up to the bar in the Comique to ask for a room. The first bartender looked at him inquiringly, for he had seen the Harrisons on the trail, and the teamsters had said they must be over the summit by now. His curiosity got the better of him.

“Are you the party that went up with a little blonde lady three weeks ago?” he asked.

“I may be,” said Harrison.

“She seemed kind of light for this country,” pursued the bartender. “Hope she’s standing it all right. Did she come down with you?”

“I brought her with me,” said Harrison.

“Isn’t she coming in? She doesn’t have to pass through the saloon here if she don’t like. She can——”

Harrison’s hand went to his forehead. “She’s dead,” he said.

A teamster came in the side door and spoke to him, and he followed the man out. So did two of the dance-hall girls and the first bartender. Outside in one of the big freighting sleds lay Mrs. Harrison. Her flaxen hair waved as in life over the girlish face, hard now as marble and colder. The moon shone full upon her, and a snow crystal hung here and there on the little fur parkee that she wore. She might have been a marble Madonna there in the moonlight. Through the open door came the noise of the next waltz. One of the girls slipped in, and the orchestra stopped. Quickly a little group began to gather, but Harrison did not move. He seemed as in a trance, staring open-eyed, mistily, at the frozen woman in the sled.

Presently, Blanche, the girl who had stopped the music, touched him on the arm.

“I know there is nothing much I can do for you,” she said. “I know how it feels; but I thought perhaps you’d like to bring her inside, and you can have my room till you—till the funeral.”

And Harrison thanked her. But next day he moved the body to an empty cabin that stood on the river bank in the pine grove back of the Comique. He could not bury her, he could not give her up, he said. True, she could not speak to him, nor move, but even to have her body with him was something, a kind of comfort. The bitter cold of the Northland, the icy winds that roared in untrammeled fury down the cañon—these had killed her; now they would preserve the beauty they had stilled; keep her forever young, as he had known and loved her. Why should he bury her? And when they spoke to him of burial, he bade them leave him alone.

Only in the afternoons, when there was no dancing in the Comique, Blanche used still to go daily to the cabin in the pines, and brought him a padlock for the door, and a lantern, and other things.

It all might have drifted on in such wise indefinitely, had it not been that in a month Harrison had no money to buy his meals with, and that Blanche asked him point blank about it.

“Why don’t you come over and ask Coughlin for something to do?” she said, when Harrison admitted that he had eaten no dinner that day. Coughlin was the man who ran the Comique.

“What could I do?” inquired Harrison. “I’m only a bookkeeper.”

But that night he asked Coughlin about it. Now twice a day Coughlin put all the gold and bank-notes that were in the cash drawer into his pocket, leaving the silver for change; and he kept his accounts, which were few, in his head; and he didn’t need a bookkeeper. But he was sorry for Harrison; and, besides, Blanche had spoken to him of it, and he wanted to oblige her. For Blanche was popular among the men, and was asked to drink oftener than any girl in the house, and was valuable on that account in a country where one gets a dollar for two drinks. So he told Harrison he could go to work.

“In the morning?” said Harrison.

“Any time,” said Coughlin.

Harrison looked around a moment. “If you’ll show me the books, I think I might look them over now.”

“Books?” said Coughlin, hesitatingly. “There aint any, but I guess you can figure all right in this, perhaps.” He produced a small paper-covered blank book from under the bottle rack. “You’ll find a lead pencil in the drawer any time”; and he bustled over to the faro-bank, satisfied that he had demonstrated his familiarity with the bookkeeping craft. He came back to ask Harrison what wages he was going to work for.

“Anything,” said Harrison. “In New York I got seventy-five dollars a month.”

“That aint much,” said Coughlin. “I never asked any man to take less than three dollars a day and board. You can eat in the restaurant there.” Then he introduced Harrison to Big Joe, the day bartender, telling Joe this was the bookkeeper.

An hour later Joe called Harrison to announce that Red Sheehan had got a drink without paying therefor.

“He never will pay for it, either,” continued the experienced Joe, “but I suppose you’ll put it down in the bookkeeping.”

Harrison seemed a little undecided as to the value of this entry, and his uncertainty settled it, for thereafter Joe never mentioned such items, and as for Coughlin, he continued to dump the uncounted contents of the cash drawer at various times into his pocket, and to pay his debts out of the same receptacle with a total disregard to cash balances, daily receipts, or outstanding accounts, which made Harrison’s methodical hair stand on end.

Occasionally, however, he would ask Harrison how he was getting along, and Harrison, who had debited Red Sheehan’s account with one drink, and who had never had occasion to make a second entry of any kind, generally replied that the work was pretty light.

“That’s all right,” Coughlin would say. “Bookkeepers are mighty handy to have around in case you want to figure some time.”

And so Harrison drew his three dollars a day, and ate in the restaurant, where Blanche usually managed to sit opposite. Then in the evening he sat idle in the Comique, and watched the roulette wheels spin and the cards drop monotonously from the faro-box, heard the metallic call of the dealers and the buzz of the ball in the runaway of the wheel; saw the dancing-girls, in all the glories of scarlet satin, promiscuous affection, and peroxide hair, waltz past; listened to the wandering musicians of the orchestra play some good music and much bad; sat in a chair near the end of the bar, and watched the carnival of sin and revelry around him, and then, about midnight, when he felt entitled to leave, he went back to the lonely cabin, where his wife lay in her changeless sleep, to sit and keep his vigil with her he had loved in life and still adored in death.

In the restaurant he had many conversations with Blanche. “How long will you stay here?” she asked him once.

“Always, I suppose,” he said.

“But this is only a boom town,” she answered. “Next year there will be no one here but the Siwashes, and they will be quarreling among themselves for these buildings.”

“I’ll stay,” persisted Harrison.

“But how can you live? Coughlin is going down the river this summer, and a man must eat. Why don’t you come along with the rest of us? He’ll take everybody that is working here, for he means to open up again in the Yukon country.” Harrison shook his head.

To Blanche he was interesting. Even in the depths to which she had fallen, or rather deliberately descended, there exists an unconfessed desire for the better things of the past, for the moral levels which have been derided and deserted, for the things which are bitter with the sourness of the grapes the fox could not attain to; and to talk with Harrison was a breath from the old world, monotonous, perhaps, but lovable, where she, too ... but she never thought of those things. What was the use? It made her sad, and she would undoubtedly drink more than usual, and get reckless, and buy wine with her salary and percentage money, and be in debt to the house for a month afterward. So she didn’t think much. It didn’t ever occur to her that her interest in Harrison was passing the danger line. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.

A month later, Coughlin announced that the Comique would have a grand closing one week from that night. “The money is about through in this town,” he said, in explanation. “We’ll move on to the gold mines.”

Blanche discussed it that evening with Harrison in the restaurant The news disturbed him.

“You’ll come, too?” she said. He didn’t know. “There’ll be nothing here,” she went on, “and it will be so lonely.”

“I don’t mind the loneliness,” said Harrison.

“But I’ll be lonely.”

“Perhaps Coughlin wouldn’t want me, anyway. I haven’t done a stroke of work while I’ve been here.”

“But he’ll want you if I say so. I’m the best girl he’s got,” said Blanche, modestly, “and if I say so it goes. And I do say so.”

Harrison was silent. He had often thought of this. He had known, of course, that he could not live forever at the Comique. Many times he had decided that death were easier than a final parting from the dead. He had thought that he could never leave her, but now—— Well, the lust of life is strong. We do not know how far the fall is until we stand at the brink and look over. Besides there is no coming back. If we could only try it for a while and return again!

“Harrison,” said Blanche, suddenly, “listen. I think I know what you are thinking, and I know I can not argue such a thing with you. No one could. You know best, and no one else can know anything about it. But I want to tell you one fact that perhaps you haven’t thought of. You want to stay here with her—always. But you can’t. I know it is horrible to talk of, but it is not always winter even in Alaska, and the summer is almost here.” The man winced. “Go to bed, Harrison,” she said; “I can not talk of such things. You know best.”

He went away to the cabin. He knew that Blanche was right. It must be—but the anguish of it. How should he say the last farewell?

At the foot of the mountains that stretch upward from the Dyea sands, he dug a grave, four feet. And that night he would bury her. But his resolution failed him. All night he sat beside the unreplying dead and stroked her icy hands. “To-morrow I will do it,” he said. But the next day he dug again in the grave. It should be six feet. And neither could he say farewell that night.

Then Blanche came over to him. “We leave on Saturday. You know to-day is Wednesday,” she said, and went away quickly, for she saw the sheeted form, and understood something of his pain. On Thursday she came again. Harrison had not been at the restaurant all day, and she carried a tray with her. The cabin was empty, but a note on the table said: “I can not give her up. I could not hide her in a grave of earth. I will lay her on the mountain top above the glacier. Thank you. Good-by.”

Now the glacier lies in a greater crater of the mountains there, above the snow line, five thousand feet above Dyea; and behind it there towers a solitary peak that juts needle-like, head and shoulders over the lesser crags of the crater. Up above the world, far from the sound of man, into the great silence it reaches, where only the northern lights keep the long vigils with its wind-tormented top.

That night when Blanche asked Billy Matthews, who ought to know, being a squaw-man and an old-timer there, how long it would take to go to the glacier, he said the Siwashes called it two days. “And how long would it take to go to the top of the big peak?” Matthews smiled. “Why, no one’s ever gone, sis, and I don’t scarcely think they will.”

But the next day Blanche borrowed the glasses from the trading-post and watched the snow line. About four o’clock a black speck gradually emerged at the timber limit, and showed sharply against the snow-fields that lay beyond. The glasses showed a man with a long bundle upon his back. Blanche closed them, and watched the speck with her naked eye. Slowly it crept to the foot of the great ice rampart, and as it mounted the green precipices, a bank of cloud engulfed it.

Early next morning Blanche searched the mountain with the glasses. The speck had crossed the miles of glacier in the night, and was half way up the mighty pinnacle that lay behind. There it clung to a precarious hold on the storm-swept crag, its ghastly burden still upon its shoulders. Five hundred feet below it lay a great snow-field, hundreds of feet deep. Five hundred feet above it hung the mountain crest. Blanche could see the wind sweep great banks of snow around the speck. The footing must have been slippery, for the speck climbed less than a hundred feet in an hour, and then, as a wind-gust swept a swirling eddy of sleet across the precipice, it fell—fell straight to the eternal snows five hundred feet beneath it, and disappeared. Even with the glasses Blanche could see no hole in the drift, and besides the wind would fill it full again almost at once.

Gray-lipped, she sought out Matthews. “Billy,” she asked him, “how far would a man sink in that snow up there if he fell off the top of the peak?”

“My God, what questions,” said Billy. “How do I know? He’d stay a thousand years, anyway.”

THE JEWELS OF BENDITA

Old Bendito was digging when he found them—“the jewels of Bendita.” He had been ordered by Don Francisco to make a new border around the “Little Lake of the Emperor” (as it is called even to these days), and, grumbling mightily, the old man set lazily to work. Stopping only occasionally to refresh himself with a corn-husk cigarette, Bendito dug away for as much as two hours, when he was joined by his comrade, Andrés, who proceeded to pass the time of day.

“What makest thou, friend? Wherefore dost toil so strenuously with no friend to assist thee, and in the heat of the day?”

“Oh, lazybones! According to that fool, Don Francisco—may the devil fly away with him—I am making a new bordering for the little lake. For why? Only God knows. But these strangers—la Virgen bear witness that—lacking other work, they make a hole in the ground, in order that a poor devil may have to straightway fill it up again!”

Overwhelmed by his own eloquence, old Bendito groaned, emitted a fiery Indian oath, and set to spading. “To that mango tree, and no further, I will dig today!” he muttered. “To the devil with Don Francisco.”

Andrés, sprawling in the sunshine, offered sarcastic comments and encouragements. “Have a care, comrade. Knowest thou not that there is wealth concealed in this same garden of the emperor? Oh, yes! I overheard Padre Diego say so to the Obispo. Be careful lest thou dig it up, little brother.”

In cynical disbelief, Bendito dug away. “Thinkest thou that if riches were here, Padre Diego and the Obispo would leave them untouched? Nonsense. They-of-the-church never allow the paring of a nail to remain, much less treasure. Compose thyself, little Andrés. Once there may have been buried treasure of the emperor. But the nose of the church is sharp, and it smells gold while yet far off.”

At this juncture, Bendito’s spade interrupted conversation with a loud and startling “clink, clank,” and crossing themselves, their faces gray with superstitious terror, both peons fled with all haste from the spot. Their first thought was that a coffin had been uncovered, and only witches and unblessed heretics would be buried here in this unhallowed ground. But, as they ran, another idea occurred to them. They stopped abruptly, and low talk ensued. Then they stole cautiously back to the mango tree, where the spade still stood upright. And while old Bendito dug away, in fear and trembling, but with more energy than he had displayed since the big earthquake (wherein part of his roof came down upon his head), Andrés watched to see that no one caught them. Who knew what might be uncovered? It was well to be cautious.

Firmly embedded in the earth, the men found a large wooden box. Rotting from damp, with its copper bands oxidized, there still showed intact an insignia that caused the Indians to tremble with excitement. And no wonder. They had stumbled upon the buried treasure of an emperor.

They hurried with the wonderful box to a small ruined pavilion at one end of the great melancholy garden. No one ever visited this little rustic building, which the superstitious vowed was haunted by the unhappy emperor. But, forgetful of spirits or other evils, Bendito and Andrés pushed back the door, and, in the half gloom, wrenched open the rotting box.

Out upon Bendito’s faded tilma, spread beneath the box, dropped things that made even those ignorant Indians gasp in greedy terror. How they sparkled and shone—these ornaments that great queens and empresses had worn—the chains of brilliant white stones, necklaces of rubies and emeralds, exquisite ear ornaments, the diamond-studded portraits of royalties, and other fabulously valuable things. There were not more than a dozen articles in all, and yet worth much money, as these men knew. For they had both traveled to the great, rich capital city, on the Paseo, where the wealthy dames wore these same sparkling stones. The two replaced the jewels, their fingers trembling and eyes burning with greed, and begun to discuss the division. And the sun sank low while they argued and disagreed.

Andrés, having no home or family wherewith to bless himself, was not missed that night. But old Juana, the wife of Bendito, being of a suspicious and jealous temperament, at last pricked forth in search of her missing lord. As it was late, there went with her their daughter, Bendita, a flat, squat maiden of sixteen. A good girl she was, but as homely as could well be.

Bendito was not to be found in his usual haunts. Neither the “Caballitos” nor the “Haven of Peaceful Men” cantine knew him, and he was not listening to the music in the plaza. These things being so, the baleful eye of his spouse lit up fiercely.

“The disgraceful old devil,” she muttered to Bendita, “is, without doubt, in the great garden, which is sufficiently retired and convenient for flirtations. We will find him there, doubtless, with the wife of Pepe.”

And there they found him, very dead, but not with the wife of Pepe! Instead, his companion was the equally dead Andrés. They had evidently quarreled over the treasure, and then fought with machetes. Between the two was the wooden box, with copper bands. It was blood-covered, and the women of old Bendito wailed and crossed themselves as they looked upon it and the two men who had fought over it to the death. They hastily flung Bendito’s blanket over him, and, crossing themselves, started to flee.

Bendita, lingering to caress the old man, again noted the box. “It may be that it contains money,” she whispered, and picked it up, though her mother protested.

With rebosos closely drawn, the women scurried homeward, leaving the dead men alone where they had fallen. Heartless of them? Well, no, for in the tropics law and order sometimes mean little, and these women knew well that, if they gave the alarm, they would probably be suspected and convicted of the murder.

Stealthily opened, at midnight, the box proved to contain what old Juana and her daughter mistook for mere white, red, and green glass—no gold and no silver! The old woman, in a transport of rage, sorrow, and disappointment, spit upon the jewels. “Accursed things of mere glass,” she screamed, “to think that my poor Bendito died for such valueless things as you.”

There was great lamentation next morning when old Bendito was found and brought home to his alarmed family. They wept and wailed so that people were very sorry for them, and Padre Diego volunteered, in the goodness of his heart, to say fifty masses, “at a merely nominal price,” for the soul of the departed peon. Andrés, no one seemed to regret, and no masses were ever said over him, at bargain prices or otherwise. And so Andrés and Bendito passed away, by no means the first men to die for the sake of greed and riches.

While the widow and daughter of Bendito considered the “glass jewels” of no value, for all the world wore gold and silver trinkets, they were nevertheless afraid to speak or even hint of them, lest they be suspected of complicity in the murder. Therefore, the box was kept hidden in a secret place, and for a while the widow kept her mouth closed, though she dearly loved to gossip. But the custody of the box, and the consequent secrecy entailed upon her, were entirely too much for poor Juana. She sickened and began to pine for her country, as the Indians so quaintly call their birthplaces.

Wherefore, their belongings were disposed of, and the two women proceeded to their old home, many leagues distant. With them was carried the crumbling box of jewels. Not long after reaching her birthplace, Juana proceeded to die. Toward the last, she grew exceedingly nervous over the “glass jewels,” speculating much as to their value, and declaring that at the worst they might be pawned for a peso or two. And, still babbling of them, the old woman died, and was, in Biblical fashion, “buried with her fathers.”

While not of a superstitious disposition, Bendita began to experience some of her mother’s qualms about the box and its contents. Finally, for its safety, she secretly removed several tiles from the floor of her room, and concealed the jewels therein. Then, satisfied that no one would find them there, she gave no more thought to the matter, for of what avail were the baubles? “One can not eat or drink them,” she mused. “But for their sake my poor father died.”

At this time, Ponciana, the pretty daughter of Pancho, the cargador, returned from Mission school to her proud family. After her there trailed, later, her sweetheart, Amado. And after Amado, in turn, came the deluge. For untoward things began to occur. First was the falling in love of poor homely Bendita. This, of course, was all right; any woman can fall in love with any man, if she so elects. But ordinary decency demands that she at least restrain her passion when the betrothed of another woman is concerned. And it was Amado, Ponciana’s novio, upon whom Bendita needs must cast eyes. Of course, it was absurd. For Bendita was square, fat, and flat (if you can figure to yourself such a combination), while Ponciana was exceedingly sweet and pretty. Besides, she had been taught in Mission school, knew some English and much quaint slang, and was a fascinating little Indian maiden.

“La Ponciana, she knows much,” had been Amado’s glowing description to that potent personage, his mother. “She plays the piano and guitar well, and sings, aye, as do the birds! And she dances in a manner entirely exquisite—and sews and embroiders.”

Despite all this eloquence, however, Amado, after due temptation, heartlessly jilted Ponciana for the unattractive and homely Bendita. It happened thus: Unable to make any impression on the handsome Amado, despite her sighs and eye-rolling, Bendita at length decided to take, as it were, a back seat, and merely view from afar her beloved, who nightly paraded in the plaza with his beloved. And here it was, one evening, that a brilliant thought came to Bendita.

It was an ideal night, “one borrowed from Paradise,” as the poetical Amado had murmured to his Ponciana. Great bright stars blazed in a velvety-blue sky, while silvery moonlight cast a radiance over the beautiful tropical plaza, wherein fountains trickled musically, and glowing flowers of the tropics heavily perfumed the soft, languid air. From the remote band-stand came sweet, faint strains of the exquisite “Angel de Amor,” while the lowered voices of many gay loungers murmured in musical harmony therewith.

Every one seemed so happy that it was no wonder that tears came to Bendita’s eyes, as she sat, alone and neglected, in her solitary corner. “I have so much homeliness,” she thought, drearily; “no one will ever wish me for a novia—ay de mi!”

Again Amado and Ponciana passed by, Ponciana smiling and dimpling. She wore a white mantilla, while on her finger there was a genuine ring of gold, set with a white stone that sparkled in the moonlight. It was the ring of betrothal, that day given. Amado, being poor, had secured it cheaply from a pawnshop. But Ponciana did not know.

As she gayly flitted by, Bendita noted the sparkle of the ring. “It is like the little glass jewels,” she pondered. “How Amado seems to like it! I might—I might wear those at home. They sparkle, too.”

Behold Bendita, therefore, the next night, arrayed even more magnificently than Solomon in all his glory. For Solomon, whatever he may have gotten himself up in, surely never wore such huge diamond ornaments in the ears, such diamonds and rubies in the hair, such magnificent bracelets. All this was topped off by a long string of diamonds and pearls, while outside her mantilla, at the neck, Bendita displayed, in all humility, a necklace of pear-shaped black and white pearls.

Amado, who had served for three years as a pawnbroker’s clerk, alone of the crowd in the plaza knew that the girl’s jewels were real—fabulously rich. “Carrambas,” he thought, excitedly; “she, in those jewels, is rich as a princess. El Señor Vega, alone, would give fifty thousand pesos for them!”

Others, noting the new finery of the homely girl, said smilingly: “What pretty playthings of glass has our good Bendita found?”

A week’s time saw the feckless Amado off with the old love and on with the new. Quick work, it is true, but—consider the extenuating circumstances. To do him justice, he had a plan for securing the jewels (with Bendita, if it had to be), and later, making matters up with his own pretty first love. Two things prevented this, however: first, Bendita rarely wore, touched, or mentioned the jewels, and he was fearful of exciting her suspicions; second, the jilted Ponciana had vanished from the ken of even her own family. No one seemed to know where she was. Old Madre Piedad, in San Geronimo town near by, knew. The latter dame, thought to be a witch, was the girl’s near relative. To her Ponciana had stated merely that some one had injured her; and asked if Madre Maria would keep her quietly hidden, and teach her how to avenge herself. Madre Piedad promised, and the two, with the aid of an ugly, squat, herb-stuffed doll, a brazero of hot coals, and some long pins, set the ball of vengeance in motion.

Meanwhile, instead of preparing for marriage, Bendita fell grievously ill. She lost flesh rapidly, could not eat, drink, or rest, and complained of agonizing pains that shot through her body. A doctor was consulted, but could not relieve her. Then various old women congregated and muttered together—they could do nothing! Of a truth, it could be nothing less than the mal del ojo (evil eye), and with that only old Madre Piedad, of San Geronimo, could cope. Wherefore Madre Piedad was sent for, and entreated.

At dusk she arrived—a bundled-up old dame, her halting steps aided by crutches, and her face shrouded in many tapalos. A large bundle came with her—“medicines,” she gruffly explained. The other women, secretly in deadly terror of her, gladly withdrew at her commands. “If you wish me to make a cure, you must get out and leave me alone with the patient,” she ordered. And not until the premises were clear did she begin operations.

“Arise!” she commanded the suffering Bendita, “arise, and search out the glass trinkets which spirits tell me you have hidden away! Place the trinkets, all of them, in this earthen bowl of water, and let them remain so for eight hours. In the morning drink the water, after removing the glass jewels. You will then be entirely cured, I promise you.”

Dazed and sick, poor Bendita arose from her bed and stumbled about, obeying the old woman’s mandates. All of the jewels were deposited in an earthen bowl, which, half filled with holy water, was placed in the exact centre of the room. Then, swallowing a colorless liquid that Madre Piedad gave her, Bendita was soon fast asleep. The old witch smiled to herself as she listened to the sick girl’s deep, regular breathing. “Well may she sleep,” she muttered, who had shamelessly given a nostrum that would induce eight hours’ sleep.

And now the old body set busily to work. First she deftly manufactured, out of her mysterious bundle, a dummy figure that exactly resembled her own. This she seated prominently before the doorway, so that chance visitors seeing it would, in their fear of her, retire without entering. Quickly she slipped out of her many tapalos and other disguises, and stood forth, straight, young, and lovely—no less a being than the jilted Ponciana! Hastily she removed the jewels from their watery resting-place, transferring them to a stout bag, which she tied about her waist, under a reboso. The bowl she left in its original position, save that into it she cast a small, ragged, rudely made doll, into which had been plunged many pins. This done, she was ready for flight. “Adios, Bendita,” she chuckled, with a wicked smile on her pretty face. “You can have my lover—for I have your rich jewels!”

Various neighbors came next morning to inquire for the sick girl, but were frightened away by the supposed figure of the witch. Bendita herself, waking up entirely cured after ten hours’ sleep, first discovered the trick, and cast forth the dummy figure, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But all was not lost, even if the jewels were gone for aye. Because, drolly enough, Amado was so sorry for the bereft one that he married her, and they have been happy ever after.

And Ponciana? Did you ever happen to see the exquisite Señora de la Villa y Garcia, “of Mexico and Paris,” with her wrinkled old husband, and her beautiful toilettes and jewels? Well, that is Ponciana.

THE MAN-DOG

My first knowledge of the singular being called “Du Chien, the Man-Dog,” began when we were on duty down in the Peché country, a short time after General Taylor’s celebrated “Run on the Banks,” in the vicinity of Mansfield. The cavalry had really very little to do except “to feed,” and await orders. As a result of this idleness many of the officers and men formed pleasant acquaintances with the hospitable planters in whose neighborhood we were located.

One of the planters whom I found to be most congenial was Captain Martas, a French creole, whose father had come from Languedoc. He was himself native-born. He was a man of forty-eight or fifty years of age, and had two sons by his first marriage, who were in the army of Virginia, and a boy two years of age, by his second wife, who was a young and beautiful lady. The housekeeper was a mulatto girl, who was in every physical development almost a perfect being—even her small hands looking like consummate wax-work. She had been taught, petted, and indulged as much, perhaps, or more than any slave should have been, especially by Captain Martas, who uniformly spoke to her more in the tone of a father addressing his daughter, than in that of a master commanding a slave. She was always gentle and obedient. The family seemed to prize her very greatly, and the little boy especially preferred her to his own beautiful mother. I suppose it would be hard for the later generation, who remember little or nothing of the “domestic institution,” to understand how such a pleasant and beautiful confidence and friendship could exist between a slave and her owners, but it was no uncommon thing in the South before the war.

The family was so attractive that I visited it often; but one evening, on my arrival at the house, I found that its peace and quiet had been disturbed by one of those painful occurrences which so often marred the happiness of Southern families, and which really constituted the curse of “the peculiar institution.”

The day before, the beautiful and accomplished wife of Captain Martas had, for some unexplained reason, got into a frenzy of rage with Celia, the mulattress, and had ordered the overseer to give her a severe whipping. The girl had run off into the Black Swamp during the night, and Captain Martas, who imparted this information to me, was in a state of terrible distress by reason of her absence. He did not seem to understand the cause of the trouble, but he could not justify his slave without condemning his wife, whom he seemed to regard with a most tender and dutiful devotion. The only emotion which seemed to master him was a heart-breaking and hopeless grief. I volunteered to hunt for the runaway, and while asking for such information as I thought to be necessary about the neighboring plantations, and of the almost boundless and impracticable wilderness known as the Black Swamp, I saw Celia slowly and quietly coming up the broad walk which led from the portico to the big gate.

She carried in her hand a branch of the magnolia tree, from which depended a splendid blossom of that most glorious of all flowers. She bowed slightly as she came near the portico, and, passing around the corner of the house, entered it by a side door. Mrs. Martas was most passionately devoted to the magnolia, and, from her exclamations of delight, which were soon heard in the hall, we knew that Celia had brought the beautiful flower as a peace-offering to her mistress, and that it had been accepted as such. Very soon the two women came nearer, and from our seats on the veranda we could hear their conversation. A terrible weight seemed to have been lifted from the heart of Captain Martas by the girl’s return, and by the apparent renewal of friendly relations between his beautiful wife and his even more beautiful slave—a relief which showed itself in his face and form, but not in his speech.

“Yes,” said Celia to Mrs. Martas, “it is an old, wide-spreading tree on the very edge of the water, and is glorious with just such splendid blossoms as these. There must be more than three hundred clusters, some that I could not reach being much larger and finer than this one.”

“And you say,” answered Mrs. Martas, “that the air is still, and that the perfume broods all around the tree? Oh, how sweet!”

“Yes,” said Celia, “it is so strong that you can taste as well as smell the wonderful perfume. Few people could bear to stand immediately beneath the shade; it is so sweet as to be almost overpowering.”

“Oh, how I wish I could see it! How far is it, Celia?”

“Only four miles. You can go. It is deep in the swamp: but the pony can follow the ridge all the way. You can go, and get home before dusk. I would like you to see it before a rain makes the road too bad, or the winds come and scatter the delicious perfume that now hangs as heavy as dew all around the glorious tree for yards and yards away.”

“I will go,” she cried. “Tell Toby to bring out Selim, and you can take a horse. Let us go at once. It is getting late.”

“I would rather walk,” said Celia, “so as to be sure that I will not miss the route in going back, although I watched so carefully that I know I can find it on foot.”

Very soon a boy led up Mrs. Martas’s pony, and she went out to the steps and mounted, followed by Celia on foot. The girl held the stirrup for her mistress, and as she did so looked back at Captain Martas with eyes in which shone strange love, pity, and tenderness; but the voice of her mistress called her away, and, even in turning her black and lustrous eyes toward Captain Martas, their expression totally changed, and showed for a fleeting instant the murderous glitter that gleamed from the eyes of a panther when ready for a fatal spring.

I was startled and troubled, and half moved forward to tell the lady not to go; but a moment’s reflection showed me how foolish such an unnecessary and silly interference would seem. A strange mistrust flitted across my mind, but there was nothing on which to base it. I could not give a reason for it, except to say that I had seen the light of a gladiator’s eye, the twitch and spasm of an assassin’s lip, in the eye and mouth of that now smiling and dutiful young slave girl. The thing was too foolish to think of, and I held my peace.

The women passed out of the gate, and went on quietly in the direction of the Black Swamp. Martas and I resumed our conversation. Hour after hour passed away, and the sun grew large and low in the West; still Mrs. Martas did not return. The sun was setting—set; but she had not come. Then Captain Martas called Toby and had him ride to the edge of the wood and see if he could learn anything of his mistress; but Toby soon came back, saying that he saw nothing except the pony’s tracks leading into the swamp, and the pony himself leisurely coming home without a rider. Then Captain Martas mounted, and I followed him. He took the plantation conch-shell, and we rode on into the dark forest as long as we could trace any footsteps of the pony, or find any open way, and again and again Captain Martas blew resonant blasts upon his shell that rolled far away over the swamp, seeking to apprise his wife that we were there, and waiting for her; but nothing came of it.

“They could hear the shell,” he said, “upon a still night like this three or four miles,” and it seemed to him impossible that they could have gone beyond the reach of the sound. But no answer came, and the moonless night came down over the great Black Swamp, and the darkness grew almost visible, so thoroughly did it shut off all vision like a vast black wall.

Then Martas sent Toby back to the plantation for fire and blankets, and more men, and soon a roaring blaze mounted skyward, and every few minutes the conch-shell was blown. Nothing more could be done. I remained with the now sorely troubled husband through the night. At the first peep of dawn he had breakfast brought from the plantation, and as soon as it became light enough to see in the great forest, we searched for and found the pony’s track, and we carefully followed the traces left in the soft soil. The chase led, with marvelous turns and twists, right along the little ridge of firmer land which led irregularly on between the boundless morasses stretched on either side, trending now this way, now that, but always penetrating deeper and deeper into the almost unknown bosom of the swamp. The pony had followed his own trail in coming out of the swamp, and this made it easier for us to trace his way. At last we came to the dark, sluggish, sullen water. It was a point of solid ground, of less than an acre in extent, a foot or two above the water, almost circular in outline, and nearly surrounded by the lagoon. It was comparatively clear of timber, and near the centre rose a grand magnolia tree, such as Celia had described to Mrs. Martas on the evening before. At the root of this tree, bathed with the rich, overpowering perfume of the wonderful bloom above her, lay the dead body of the beautiful woman, her clothes disordered, her hair disheveled, a coarse, dirty handkerchief stuffed into her mouth, and all the surroundings giving evidence of a despairing struggle and a desperate crime. Captain Martas was overcome with anguish, and after one agonized look around, as if to assure himself that Celia was not also somewhere in sight, he sat down beside the body and gazed upon his murdered wife in silent, helpless agony of spirit.

I desired all the men to remain where they were, except Toby, whom I ordered to follow me; and then, beginning at the little ridge of land between the waters by which we had reached the circular space before described, we followed the edge of the ground completely round to the starting point, seeking in the soft mud along the shore for a footprint, or the mark made by a canoe or skiff, for some evidence of the route by which the murderer had reached the little peninsula, or by which Celia had left it.

We found perfect tracks of all animal life existing in the swamps, even to the minute lines left by the feet of the smallest birds, but no trace of a human foot, although a snail could not have passed into or out of the water without leaving his mark upon the yielding mud, much less a footstep or a canoe.

The thing was inexplicable. Where was Celia? How had she gone without leaving a trace of her departure? Had she been there at all? Who had murdered Mrs. Martas? Surely some man or devil had perpetrated that crime. How had the villain escaped from the scene of his crime, leaving not the slightest clew by which it was possible to tell which way he had gone?

I reported to Captain Martas the exact condition of the affair, and told him I knew not what to do, unless we could get bloodhounds and put them on the trail. He said there were no hounds within sixty miles; that all of the planters he knew preferred to lose a runaway rather than to follow them with the dogs. Rumors of the loss of Mrs. Martas had spread from plantation to camp, and two or three soldiers had immediately ridden out to the plantation, and then had followed us to the scene of the crime. One of them said: “If there are no hounds, send to camp for old Du Chien. He is better than any dog.”

The remark was so singular that I asked: “What do you mean by saying ‘He is better than any dog’?”

“I mean that he can follow the trail by the scent better than any hound I ever saw, and I have seen hundreds of them.”

“Is that a mere camp story,” said I, “or do you know it of your own knowledge?”

“I know it myself, sir,” said the soldier. “I have seen him smell a man or his clothes, and then go blindfold into a whole regiment and pick out that man by his scent. I have seen him pull a lock of wool off a sheep, smell it good, and then go blindfold into the pen and pick out that identical sheep from fifty others. I have known him to smell the blanket a nigger slept in, and follow that darky four or five miles by the scent of him through cotton, corn, and woods. He is better than a dog.”

The man looked to be honest and intelligent; and while I could hardly credit such an astounding and abnormal development of the nasal power in a human being, there was nothing else to do; so I told him to take my horse and his own, ride as quickly as possible to camp, and bring old Du Chien with him.

Then we made a litter, and slowly and reverently we bore the corpse of the murdered lady along the difficult road until we reached a point to which it was possible to bring a carriage, in which we placed her in charge of the horrified neighbors, who had by this time collected at the plantation.

Captain Martas insisted on remaining with me and awaiting the coming of Du Chien.

More than two hours elapsed before the soldier whom I had sent for Du Chien, the Man-Dog, returned with that strange creature. He surely deserved his name. He must have been six feet high, but was so lank, loose, flabby, and jumbled-up that it was hard to even guess at his stature. His legs were long and lank, and his hands hung down to his knees. A bristly shock of red hair grew nearly down to his eyebrows, and his head slanted back to a point, sugar-loaf fashion. His chin seemed to have slid back into his lank, flabby neck, and his face looked as if it stopped at the round, red, slobbering mouth. His nose was not remarkably large, but the sloping away of all the facial lines from it, as from a central point, gave his nasal organ an expression of peculiar prominence and significance. When he walked, every bone and muscle about him drooped forward, as if he were about to fall face foremost and travel with his hands and feet.

Briefly I explained what had happened, and thereupon Du Chien, who seemed to be a man of few words, said: “Stay where you are, all of you, for a minute.” Then he started off at his singular dog-trot pace, and followed the edge of the water all the way around, just as I had done, lightly, but with wonderful celerity. Then he came back to us, looking much puzzled. I handed him the coarse, dirty handkerchief which I had taken from the dead woman’s mouth, and Du Chien immediately buried that wonderful nose of his in it, and snuffed at it long and vigorously. Having apparently satisfied himself, he removed the dirty rag from his face and said: “Nigger.”

“No,” said I, thinking of Celia, and looking Du Chien in his little, round, deep-set eyes; “a mulatto.”

“No,” he answered, with quiet assurance; “not mulatto; nigger; black, wool-headed, and old—a buck nigger.”

“What can you do?” said I.

“Wait a minute,” said Du Chien. Then he started off again to make the circuit of the peninsula, but more slowly and deliberately than at first. He threw his head from side to side, like a hound, and smelled at every tree and shrub. He had got about half way around when he reached a mighty tree that grew on the edge of the swamp, leaning out over the water where it was narrowest and deepest, and seemed to mingle its branches with the branches of another tree of a similar gigantic growth that grew upon the other side. He walked up to this tree, saying: “Nigger went up here!” and at once began to climb. The inclination of the great trunk and the lowness of the branches made the task an easy one. Almost instantly, Captain Martas, I, and two or three soldiers followed Du Chien up the tree. Du Chien had gone up some thirty feet into the dense foliage, when all at once he left the body of the tree, and began to slide along a great limb that extended out over the water, holding to the branches around and above him until he got into the lateral branches of the tree on the opposite side, and thence to the trunk of that tree, down which he glided, and stood upon the opposite bank waiting for us to follow. We did so as speedily as possible, and as soon as we were safely landed by his side, Du Chien said: “Single file, all!” and started off, smelling the trees and bushes as he went.

The spot at which we had descended seemed to be a hummock similar to that on the other side, but less regular in its outline; and soon the way by which Du Chien led us became more and more difficult and impassable. Often it seemed that the next step would take us right into the dark and sluggish water, but Du Chien, almost without pausing at all, would smell at the leaves and branches and hurry on, now planting his foot upon a clod just rising out of the water, now stepping upon a fallen and half-rotted log, now treading a fringe of more solid ground skirting the dreary lagoon, but going every moment deeper and deeper into the most pathless and inaccessible portions of the swamp.

For nearly two hours this strange man followed the trail, and we followed him. At last we came to a considerable elevation of ground under which opened a little V-shaped valley made by the water of a branch which drained the high land into the swamp. This valley was rather more than two acres in extent, and seemed to be a clearing. But there was a thick-set growth of sweet gum, holly, and magnolia across the opening toward the swamp, beyond which we could not see.

With quickened steps, and with many of the same signs of excitement manifested by a hound when the trail grows hot, Du Chien followed along this hedge-like line of underbrush, and at its farther end stopped. There, within three feet of where the steep bank ran into the water, which seemed to be of great depth, was an opening in the hedge. He slipped cautiously through it, and we followed him in silence. It was a little garden in the heart of the swamp, lying between the hills and the water. At the apex of the V-shaped valley was a miserable cabin with some fruit trees growing round about it. We gazed upon the scene with profound astonishment.

“Do you know anything of this place, Captain Martas?” said I, in a low tone.

“No,” said he; “several years ago one of my fieldhands, a gigantic Abyssinian, was whipped and ran away to the swamp; I never followed him, and have never seen him since, although every now and then I heard of him by the report of the negroes on the plantation; I suppose he has been living somewhere in the swamp ever since, and, unless this is his home, I can not imagine how such a place came to be here.”

“The nigger is there,” said Du Chien. “If there are a dozen of them I can tell the right one by the smell,” and again he put the old handkerchief to his nose.

“If it is old Todo,” said Captain Martas, “he is a powerful and desperate man, and we had better be cautious.”

We formed a line, and slowly and cautiously approached. We had got within ten or twelve feet of his door, when we saw a gigantic, half-clad negro spring from the floor, gaze out at us an instant with fierce, startled eyes, and then, with a yell like that of some wild beast roused up in its lair, he seized an axe which stood just at the door, and, whirling it around his head with savage fury, darted straight at Captain Martas. It seemed to me that the huge, black form was actually in the air, springing toward the object of its hatred and fear, when one of the soldiers sent a ball from his revolver crushing through old Todo’s skull. With a savage, beastly cry, the huge bulk fell headlong to the earth.

“It is a pity,” said Martas; “I wished to burn the black devil alive.”

At that instant Du Chien cried out: “Look there!” And extending his arm toward the top of the ridge, he started off at full speed. We all looked up and saw Celia flying for dear life toward the forest of the high ground behind the cabin, and we joined in the chase. It was perhaps forty yards up the slope to the highest part, and about the same distance down the other side to the water’s edge. Just as we got to the crest, Celia, who had already reached the water’s edge, leaped lightly into a small canoe and began to ply the paddle vigorously, and with a stroke or two sent the frail bark gliding swiftly away from the shore, while she looked back at us with a wicked smile. In a moment more she would be beyond our reach, and the soldier who had shot Todo leveled his fatal revolver at her head. But Captain Martas knocked the weapon up, saying, in a voice choked with emotion: “No, no! let the girl go! She is my daughter.”

Swiftly and silently the slight canoe swept away over the dark waters of the great, black swamp, now hidden in the shadow, now a moment glancing through some little patch of sunlight, always receding farther and farther, seen less often, seen less distinctly every moment, and then seen no more.

THE AMATEUR REVOLUTIONIST

If you should see bronzed men or men with soldierly bearing frequenting a certain office in a small street in San Francisco, and if you knew who the men were or what they represented, you could predict to a nicety the next Central American revolution, its leaders, and its outcome. That is because San Francisco is the place where everything commences, and many have their end in the way of troubles in the “sister republics.”

Three years ago the present government of Guatemala missed overthrow by just a hair. As the man who had been financing the insurrection said bitterly when the bottom fell out: “If it weren’t for women there’d be no revolutions, and if it weren’t for a woman every revolution would be successful.” He said this to the man who knows more about troubles political where there’s money and fighting than any other man in the world. This man nodded his head with a smile not often seen on his spare face. The financier didn’t like the look, and he growled some more: “They might at least have let me hold the government up for my expenses before calling the whole business off. I could have got everything back and interest on my venture.”

The other man kept on smiling. “That’s the way you fellows look at it. If you can’t win, sell out at a good price. But that don’t win in the long run. One woman can spoil the scheme.”

Two years before this a young woman landed from the Pacific Mail steamer City of Para, and registered at the Palace as from Mazatlan. She had a little maid who giggled and talked Mexican, some luggage with Vienna and Paris hotel labels over it, and the manner of a deposed queen. She signed herself as “Srta Maria Rivas.”

In due time Señorita Rivas left the hotel for quiet lodgings on Vallejo Street. But before she disappeared from the court, a gentle-mannered old man, with knotty hands, called and introduced a companion. “This is the young man I spoke to your excellency about. I present Señor Thomas Vincent.” Then the gray-haired man slipped away, and Thomas Vincent was left looking down into the dark face of Maria Rivas. He did not know why he was there, nor who she was, nor even the name of the man who had introduced him. But he was not sorry.

She let him stand while she glanced him over. Vincent drew himself up at her somewhat insolent manner, and was rewarded by a smile.

“Will you accept an invitation to supper to-night if I press you very hard?” she asked him in smooth English.

Vincent turned his eyes about the court. Then he looked down at her again, and nodded curtly. “Certainly, madam.” He flushed, and went on, “But I failed to catch your name. I am awfully embarrassed.”

She got to her feet, and held out a slender hand. “I am Miss Mary Rivas,” she said, quietly. “My father was formerly the president of Honduras. I went to school at Bryn Mawr, and I met your sister there. That’s why, when I found you were in San Francisco, I asked to have you brought and introduced.”

Vincent looked at her very soberly, almost pityingly. Then he offered her his arm, and they went into the supper-room, where everybody turned to watch their progress, knowing neither of them.

When she removed to the flat on Vallejo Street, Miss Mary Rivas told Vincent to come and take the first dinner with her. “We’ll christen the new place,” she said gayly, “and, besides, I hope you’ll find that I’m really American and can cook.”

That night at nine o’clock when the Mexican maid had departed giggling to the kitchen, Vincent’s hostess leaned forward over the table at which they sat, and rested her elbows on it. Her bare arms framed her face in a sudden way that took Vincent’s heart out of its regular beat. He leaped to his feet when Maria Rivas, dropping her head, burst into a torrent of sobs, her white shoulders heaving as her agony got the better of her.

As he stood there biting his lips she threw back her head and darted up and to the window. He heard her moan, as if she saw and heard something too awful to comprehend. He walked over and stood back of her till she swung round, and he saw the tear-stained face relax and the swimming eyes close. He carried her to the table, and laid her down across it, and rubbed her hands. Then the maid came in, still giggling hysterically, and together they revived her until she sat up between Vincent’s arms and slid from the big table to the floor. Vincent sent the astonished maid out by a gesture of command.

“Now, what’s the matter?” he demanded, hoarsely. “If you’re in trouble tell me.”

She panted before him. “It was what I remembered,” she replied. “How can I forget?”

“After I had been five years in the States papa sent for me to meet him in Colon. I got off the steamer, and he was waiting on the wharf. I knew he would do it just that way. He put on his glasses with both hands and looked at me as if he were very glad, and oh! I loved it, for it was just like it was when I was a little girl and ran into the big room.

“But trouble came in Panama, and papa thought we’d better come up to San Francisco. ‘I’ve been so busy down here one way and another,’ he said, ‘that I’m always suspected of conspiracy. Your mother is dead, and the fun of life is out of it. We will live peaceably as befits an old man and his daughter.’”

Vincent’s voice broke in on her story. “When was this?”

“Five years ago. And everything went all right till we got to Amapala. There a friend of papa’s came on board and showed me a paper. It said papa was not to be allowed to land in Honduras, as he was plotting an insurrection. He put on his glasses to read it. When he looked up at me, he said: ‘We shan’t see where your mother is buried, nor the place where you were born.’ He shook hands with the friend, and said nothing more.

“On the day we were at Ocos, in the afternoon, I saw the comandante come on the steamer with some soldiers. He said he wanted to arrest papa, but that if papa came along willingly he would not use force.

“‘I am under the American flag,’ papa said. ‘I know who has done this. It would mean my death if I went with you.’ Suddenly I heard a shot and then another. I hurried to papa’s room. Outside there were two soldiers aiming into it. I saw papa sitting on his camp-stool and his two revolvers were in his lap. He was hunting for his glasses, but the chain had slipped down. He could not see to shoot. One of the soldiers, after a long time, fired his gun again, and father suddenly picked up his revolvers, and I cried out again. He didn’t shoot, and I know now that he was afraid of hitting me. Then he fell. The soldiers fired again and ran away, panting and yelling to each other. I went in to papa, and he asked for his glasses, sitting up on the floor very weakly. When I found them and gave them to him, the blood was running very fast down his breast. He put on his glasses with both hands, wrinkling up his forehead in the old way, and looked at me very——He looked.... He said, ‘I am glad I could see you, little one ... before I go.’ That was all.”

She went to the window and stayed there, immobile, while Vincent walked up and down behind her. At last she turned around. “That was five years ago. No one has done anything to punish them.”

Vincent, because she was suddenly to him the woman, did what every man once in his life will do for one woman: he sacrificed his sense of humor. With all seriousness he stiffened up. “It was under my flag he was shot down. I’ve served under it. Give me another flag for Guatemala and I’ll go down there and those murderers shall die against a wall, with your flag flying over their heads, its shadow wavering at their feet on the yellow sand.”

Maria Rivas, because she was the Woman in this case, understood perfectly. “A revolution?” she said, very quietly. He bent over her hand gravely and youthfully. His manner was confident, as if he saw very clearly what was to be done and knew how to do it, not as if he had promised a girl with tear stains on her cheeks to overturn a government because of a murder one afternoon on a steamer in a foreign port.

This was the beginning of the affair. Its continuation was in a little town on the Guatemalan coast, where Vincent landed with a ton of munitions of war, marked “Manufactures of Metal,” and thirty ragged soldiers. A month later he had a thousand insurgents and twenty tons of munitions, and his blood had drunk in the fever that burns up the years in hours. The first thing Vincent did under its spell was to march on Ocos and take it. When the town was his and the comandante in irons, the young man took out of his pocketbook a little list of names, made out in Maria Rivas’s hand. He compared this list with the list of prisoners, and ordered out a firing squad. Half an hour later the shadow of the flag made by the Woman in the Vallejo Street flat wavered over the sand on which lay six men in a tangle. Generalissimo Thomas Vincent went out into the sun and looked at the last postures of the six, and then out across the brimming waters of the Pacific. A mail steamer lay out there in the midst of a cluster of canoes, the American flag drooping from her staff.

An Irishman in a major’s uniform came out of the cool of the barracks and stopped beside Vincent. “Another week ought to see us in the capital,” he said slowly. “But I don’t like this business, general. These beggars don’t amount to anything. Why did you order them shot?”

A barefoot girl of some ten years crept around the corner of the sunbaked wall. She picked her way over the sand, darting hot glances fearfully at the two officers. Suddenly she stooped over the crooked body of one of the motionless ones. She tugged at the sleeve of a shirt, and as the face turned slightly upward to her effort, she fell to beating on the ground with both hands, and sobbed in the heat, dry-eyed.

Vincent strode over to her, and gently picked her up. Her quick sobs did not cease as he carried her into the shade, his own face drawn and white. He looked over at the major, who stood gnawing on his stubby mustache. He did not reply to the question until the major repeated it angrily. “It was because ... they deserved it....” Vincent stopped, and then went on, almost inaudibly, “God knows why I did it, and then there’s ... the——” He stopped once more, for the girl’s hard sobs had ceased, and her lithe hand had darted from the folds of her scanty gown to the young general’s throat, and the major saw him set the burden softly down, and then fall forward, the blood pouring around the blade of a knife deep in his throat.

With an oath the major leaped over to him and lifted his head. Vincent’s eyes looked clearly into his. Then the wounded man looked over at the little girl, poised for flight, a dozen feet away. He nodded at her with an air of absolute comprehension, and then died.

THE BLOOD OF A COMRADE

“A short, severe war is less cruel than a long drawn-out fight,” said the captain, easily. “Of course it is! Everybody knows it! So why do the people at home criticise us, and libel and court-martial us because we use every means in our power to prevent further rebellion?”

“They ought to be thankful we don’t use Spanish methods,” said Wilcox, the junior member of the mess. He was only six weeks out of his cadet gray, and a new arrival at Camp Chicobang.

The captain smiled, pleasantly. “No?” he said. “Haven’t we a reconcentrado system similar to theirs? Haven’t we a blockade? We’re merely taking up affairs where they left them, and following Spanish methods in our own way. When this rebellion began, we tried to treat the natives as civilized creatures, but, thank heaven, we’re learning sense at last.”

The subaltern flushed to the roots of his close-cropped hair. “Do you mean to say that any measure, however cruel, is justifiable in war?”

“About that,” said the captain, amused at the boy’s interest in a subject which was a stale one to the rest of the mess. “This business has got to be straightened out, and that’s exactly what you and I are here for. War is wrong; therefore it is cruel and brutalizing. ‘Benevolent assimilation’ talk is all rot, and as for civilized warfare, there’s no such thing. The measures used are adopted as circumstances arise, and must be cruel or barbarous, as the necessity calls for.”

Wilcox was staring at him, half in horror, half in fascination. “And men can talk that way in the twentieth century,” he murmured.

The captain smiled again. “The only way to carry on war with this people is to do to them as they first did to us. As long as we spare them, they’re going to think we’re weaklings, and grow bolder by result. They haven’t any honor; you can’t treat them as white men. Their own methods are what they expect, and their own methods are the only means by which this fighting will ever be stopped. It may involve an awful lot of suffering for non-combatants, but we can’t help that. When the people cry out ‘Enough!’ then the insurgents will lose their support and the rebellion will be at an end—for a while.”

Wilcox was playing nervously with his fork, and biting his lips as if to keep back words he would not speak. He was young, and his high ideals of the calling he had chosen had made him blind to the hard facts with which he was now brought face to face. It was impossible to believe that his own countrymen—officers of the United States army—could be so cruel, so barbarous. He did not care what the captain said; bloody treatment must serve only to alienate this struggling people. If the rebellion had once been handled differently, what was the cause of this reversion to the savage? Had the lust of blood so crazed the white men that they forgot their race, their civilization, their upbringing? Wilcox pitied the Filipinos; they, at least, were fighting for their liberty.

“By the way,” said the captain, “did any of you fellows hear that the general expects to catch Luiz Maha, who killed our policeman down at Binaran, and tried to murder the port commander?”

“Been wounded?” asked some one.

“No, but his wife had a baby recently, so he probably won’t move his quarters so easily. They’ll shoot him on sight.”

“Well, I hope they see him soon,” said the medico. “He’s made more trouble for us than any other insurrecto in that part of the island.”

A sudden sound of running feet was heard through the din of the rain outside. The door of the mess-hall rasped open, and a dripping figure appeared on the threshold.

“The colonel’s compliments to the commanders of K and O Troops, and will they please report to him immediately? Outpost No. 2 has been cut up by insurrectos, and Lieutenant Ellard and men at No. 4 have been captured.”

In the blackness of the night before dawn, a long line of men, lying flat on the soggy earth, wormed their way through the tall, rank grass. On the crest of a steep ascent the leading figures halted cautiously, and one by one the men came to a standstill, each with a hand on the foot of the man ahead. A light was beginning to streak the east when the captain consulted the native guide in a soundless colloquy.

“What does he say?” asked Wilcox, the subaltern. He was wallowing in the mud like a carabao, and his clothes were coated with dirt.

“The hacienda of the insurrecto comandante is just below us,” returned the captain. “They’ll be perfectly unsuspecting, and unless they’ve had time to move on, it’s likely we’ll find our men hidden there.”

In the gray dawn the Americans drew their lines about the little plantation, and lay in an unseen circle a stone’s throw from the brown nipa-hut. The subaltern saw a frowsy woman with two naked children go into the shack. A tall man in ragged white was putting out the wash to dry.

“By the eternal,” whispered the captain, excitedly, “if it isn’t a Spaniard! We’ve had rumors that the Gugus were keeping some prisoners up here as slaves.”

The tall man glanced toward the jungle and saw a line of blue and khaki-clad figures spring into view. His eyes bulged from his head, and he stood motionless with amazement. Suddenly, with a shout of “Vivan los Americanos! Viva la Libertad!” he dashed forward, open-armed. A burly sergeant met him with a knock-out blow on the chin, and the Spaniard staggered back, rubbing his face without resentment. He understood that silence was demanded.

“Over the hill!” he cried, dancing about with pain and excitement. “They’ve just left here with three Americano prisoners. Hurry and you will catch them! Hurry, hurry, but take me with you.”

Once more they dashed into the forest. The subaltern, running beside the rescued man, noticed that his shirt was stained with blood, and the fluttering rags gave glimpses of the raw, flayed skin beneath.

“What does that mean?” he asked in his school-boy Spanish.

The man smiled. Past sorrows were nothing to him now.

“I have been two years a prisoner,” he said. “One receives many beatings.”

“Have you never tried to escape?”

“What was the use? My friend tried, but they caught him and cut off his head—after roasting his legs.”

Wilcox said nothing, but there was a strained look about his eyes. To him the last twenty-four hours had been horribly unreal. Stopping only for food and drink, the troop had followed the track of the insurrectos deeper and deeper into the hills. He had seen his men surprise and shoot down a native in sight of his wife, and as excuse the captain had said that the man was a war traitor, a leader of insurgents, and a persecutor of Americanistas. But Wilcox felt sickened. The captain and the men became repulsive to him. They were like a lower order of beings to which he refused to be degraded. The army was his only outlook, but could he ever be in sympathy with such things as he was experiencing every day?

Suddenly a man in the ranks cried out, and the column came to a jolting halt. The subaltern looked, and turned pale. By the trunk of a moss-grown tree, his arms bound above his head, a rope about his half-naked body, stood an American soldier. Across his mouth from corner to corner a bolo had slashed, and the bleeding flesh hung loosely over the jaw. His head was sunk forward, but he was not dead as his captors had intended he should be after a few days’ lingering.

His “bunkie,” who had first seen the pitiful figure, cut the heavy hemp with his bayonet, but the column waited only a moment. A hospital corps man was left behind with a detail, and the troop took up its march the more cautiously for knowing that it was hot on the trail.

The subaltern felt that his nerves were strained to the breaking point. Through the throbbing whirl of his brain came a sickening thought. If the natives were capable of such a deed as this, how would they treat the other two prisoners? Surely they would not dare to harm an American officer. His mind refused to comprehend the thought of Ellard cold and lifeless. The image of his classmate and chum was too fresh, too vividly active to be rendered null. No, the natives could not be so cruel, they could not be so inhuman. And yet that bound figure by the tree! How slowly the men moved! Why did they linger when every minute might mean life or death to the prisoners?

The men passed over another spur and dropped into the valley below. With every step they moved more cautiously. Tense and alert, the subaltern crept onward, braced for he knew not what. He saw the captain, crawling on all fours, become entangled in a trailing vine, and felt an uncontrollable desire to laugh. It was broad day now, and the heat grew stifling in the breathless woods.

A shout and distant laughter echoed across the valley, and the captain halted abruptly. After a moment’s consultation, the troop divided, and at the head of his creeping file, the subaltern turned to the right. Nearer and nearer sounded the native voices, and the men knew that they were close to the insurgent camp. For ten heartbreaking minutes they wormed their way over the damp, brown loam, now and again catching a glimpse of the little clearing, until they had made a complete half circle.

Slowly they drew near the edge of the trees, and the subaltern heard the sound of hasty digging. A strange look appeared on the set faces of the men, but Wilcox did not notice. He wondered what the natives were doing, fearing to look for dread of what he might have to see, and yet impatient to know if Ellard was alive. He moved his body until, dirt-color himself, he could watch unseen.

Thank God! At the opposite end of the clearing stood Ellard, upright and unharmed. Before him, in the centre of the field, was a rectangular hole like a grave, and the natives were throwing the earth clods into it. Evidently they were burying some one who had died, but why did they seem amused? Brady was nowhere in sight. Was it his body they were burying?

Yelling like an army of blue fiends, the captain’s detachment burst into the clearing. Surprised and confused, the insurrectos turned to flee, and met the fixed bayonets of the subaltern’s men.

As soon as he could break away, Wilcox ran to one side. Ellard was standing as before, still bound hand and foot. His face was half averted, but on it the subaltern saw a look of the most intense horror and dread. With a cry of dismay, he dashed forward, but a naked, brown figure was before him. Twice the shining kris flashed in the air as the defenseless prisoner toppled backward. Then, dodging the subaltern’s bullet, the native turned and fled. Two privates cornered and disarmed him, but before they could put in a finishing blow, Wilcox had shouted: “Hold on there! Wait till I come!”

“As you have mercy, put me out of this life!” moaned Ellard.

The tall, strong, young athlete of a moment before lay helpless on the ground, a bleeding, legless trunk. Sobbing, the subaltern dropped to his knees beside his friend, and beat passionately at the earth with clenched fists.

“Don’t, don’t!” almost shrieked the wounded man. “I stood here powerless to move while they first cut up and then buried Brady alive, but I didn’t cry! Kill me, shoot me, have mercy on me for Christ’s sake, but don’t cry!”

A hospital sergeant came running, the captain, white with horror, at his heels. The fight was over, and a group of men were working at the grave.

Wilcox staggered to his feet, a strange curse on his lips. The beads of sweat plowed deep courses through the grime on his cheeks. Slowly, with infinite deliberation, he reloaded his revolver and strode to where the troopers held the insurrecto on the ground. As he went, he muttered, like a man searching for some forgotten thought, “The measures used are adopted as circumstances arise, and must be cruel or barbarous as the necessity calls for ... as the necessity calls for....”

Three times he fired into the prostrate body. “One for Brady, one for Wright, and one for Ellard!” and then he began to laugh.

UNDER FLYING HOOFS

“Mormon Jack” stretched his generous length in the shade of the bed-wagon, thereby disturbing the sonorous slumbers of Johnny Layton, who muttered imprecations as he rolled over to make room.

“You blasted Mormon renegade,” he growled.

“Why don’t you go and lie down where you won’t be disturbin’ a fellow that has to stand guard to-night?”

“You’re a cantankerous cuss,” Mormon Jack calmly returned. “If I wasn’t a stranger in a hostile camp I’d climb your carcass for them insultin’ observations. Besides, it aint good for a kid to sleep too much. I don’t see how you got the heart to lay here snorin’ like a cayuse chokin’ down, when you could be sittin’ up enjoyin’ this here beautiful scenery that’s bein’ desecrated with bawlin’ cows and buckin’ bronks and greasy, old round-up wagons. You aint got no sense of nacheral beauty, Kid. You’re just about as ornery a varmint as old man Hartley, what once inhabited this same flat.”

“I’ve heard of him,” answered the now thoroughly awakened Layton. “He happened before my time, though. Were you in the country when they cleaned him out?”

“You bet I was!” Mormon Jack replied. “I knew him before he came over here, and I was here and saw his finish. There was high old jinks on this little green bottom that day.”

“So I’ve heard. He wanted to make a sheep-feedin’ ground of the east bench, didn’t he? How was it?” Layton propped himself up on his elbow to listen.

Mormon Jack settled his head comfortably against a rolled-up bed. He rolled a cigarette daintily and inhaled many breaths of smoke before replying.

“Old man Hartley was a bone-headed cuss,” he began, at length, “that wouldn’t learn better—even by experience. He was like a fool buck-sheep that persists in buttin’ everything that gets in his way, no matter how much he hurts his head. It aint the sheep’s fault; it’s the breed of him, and the way he was raised—and I guess that was the trouble with old Hartley.

“I come across him, first time, over in the Hash-Knife country, a little while after they quit drivin’ herds up the Long Trail. The railway come in, and you could bring a bunch of cattle from the Panhandle up there in a week—it took five months on the trail. Likewise, the railway brought farmers and pilgrims and woolly-backs by the train-load, and turned ’em loose promiscus on the country, where they made more trouble with their homestead rights and barb-wire fences than all the Injuns that ever run buffalo or lifted hair.

“It wasn’t long till there was heaps of trouble on the range. A tenderfoot would file on a claim, prove up, and as soon as he got his papers a big sheep outfit would own the land—you know how they do. Pretty soon the big sheepmen began to fence the water-holes, claim or no claim, and hell broke loose. After considerable killin' and burnin' and layin' for each other, they patched up a peace; the sheepmen that didn't get killed off stayed on the creeks where they was settled, and the cow outfits held what was left of the open range.

“That was where old Hartley got in his work. He had a bunch of sheep, and stay where he belonged he wouldn't. He'd slip out on good grass and fence up a spring or little lake that might be waterin' a thousand head of cattle. If a bunch of cows come in to water, he'd sic his dogs on 'em till they'd quit the earth. If a round-up swung his way he'd knock down his fence and move out. It was a big country and hard to watch, but they caught him once or twice, and drove him back where he belonged. They give him all the show in the world to be on the square, but he wouldn't—he wasn't built that way. He swore 'by God' that he had as much right to drive his blatin', stinkin' woolly-backs all over the range as the cowmen had to turn their longhorns loose on the country. He was a big, burly, noisy-mouthed cuss, with the muscle of a pack-mule and the soul of a prairie-dog. He was game, for all his low-down ways, but he went up against the cowmen once too often; a round-up headed him north one day with his sheep and a camp-wagon, and sent a couple of riders along to see that he kept a-goin'. Then they swung around to his home ranch and made a bonfire of it, to show the rest of the ca-na-na's that there'd be no monkey business on the Hash-Knife range.

“I didn't see nor hear of him no more till that fall. Then the layout I was workin' for bought a bunch of cattle over here and sent me to rep for 'em—same as I’m doin’ now. I was huntin’ for the Big Four wagon, which was supposed to be workin’ on the upper part of the White Mud, when I struck his trail. Comin’ north along the creek one day I turned a bend and come on a fellow talkin’ to a girl. It was Stella Hartley. I met her once at a dance on Powder River, and I knowed her the minute I laid eyes on her. She was about as nice a little girl as ever struck Custer County.

“I rode up and says ‘Howdy’ to her, and then I see it was Bobby Collins she was talkin’ to. I knew him, too—one of the whitest boys on earth, and the swiftest woddy that ever turned a cow. ‘Hash-Knife Bob’ they called him, over in Custer.

“‘M’ son,’ says I, ‘I’m sure glad to see you. But how’d you come to stray off into this wilderness?’

“He told me, then, the whole deal, Stella sittin’ on her horse tryin’ to smile, though she was nearer cryin’ than anything else; she’d been sheddin’ tears pretty considerable, as it was. Away along in the winter Stella ’d promised to marry him, but when the old man got to hear of it he just tore up the earth and swore he’d rather see her dead than married to a cowpuncher. Hash-Knife was for tellin’ him to go to the devil and gettin’ married anyway, but Stella wouldn’t have it that way. His wife bein’ dead, she was the only womankind the old man had, and she couldn’t bear to leave him like that. She said to wait awhile and the old man would come around. So in the spring Bob goes to the head of Powder River, and while he was gone the cow outfits put the run on the old man. When Hash-Knife comes back, Stella and the whole Hartley outfit had vanished plum off the earth.

“But Hash-Knife Bob was no quitter. He followed ’em up and located ’em on Milk River. Then he got a job with the Big Four, so’s to be near the girl. He had it figured out that when round-up was over that fall he’d take up a ranch on Milk River, marry Stella, and settle down. But he hadn’t more’n made his plan when old man Hartley breaks out in a fresh place.

“As I said before, old Hartley was a bull-headed old bucko. He was worse’n that; he was pig-headed and sheep-headed; he had the contrary stubbornness of all the no-account animals on God’s green earth. You’d ’a’ thought he’d ’a’ taken a tumble to himself after livin’ so long in a sagebrush country, and ’specially after bein’ run out of one part of it. But, no, sir! his way was the way. He wasn’t content on Milk River—he wanted a whole blamed county to graze over. So he went pokin’ around on the north side, and stumbled onto the Crossin’ here. It looked good to him, and without sayin’ a word to anybody but his herder—who was a knot-head like himself and crazy after Stella—he picks up his traps and sashays in here.

“There was probably seven or eight big cow outfits rangin’ east of the White Mud then, and they’d just got through havin’ a scrap with the sheep-wranglers, alongside of which the fuss in Custer County was about knee-high. Both of ’em had lots of men and money, but the advantage was on the cowmen’s side, for their boys was fightin’ for their livin’, for outfits they’d been raised with, and the sheepherders was in it for coin and because they didn’t know any better. Anyway, the sheepmen backed off after awhile and made peace—said they’d be good, they’d had enough. The cowmen made the White Mud the dead line; there was to be no sheep-camps on the creek or east of it. And the cowpunchers rode the high pinnacles to see that no sheep crossed the line.

“This here, Hash-Knife explained to me, was the way things stood: Hartley was located on the Crossin’ with a bunch of sheep—about twenty-five hundred head. He’d built him a cabin, and had likewise strung a four-strand barb-wire fence across the coulée that led down to the flat. And he was goin’ to stay there, he said. He had a squatter’s right, and if he wanted to live there and fence his place he’d do it. It was government land, and to hell with the cow outfits! He was from Missouri, he was! And up on the bench, about six or seven miles back, the Big Four and the Ragged H was swingin’ up to the Crossin’ with a beef herd apiece, and the wagon-bosses was mad, for they’d heard of old man Hartley.

“‘Old “Peek-a-Boo” Johnson’s runnin’ the Big Four,’ Hash-Knife told me. ‘I got him to let me ride ahead and see if I couldn’t talk some sense into the old man. But it’s no go. He’s got his neck bowed, and he’s fool ’nough to try and run a whizzer on Peek-a-Boo’s riders; they’ll clean him out if he does. I saw Stella ride off as I was comin’ down to the ranch, and when I got through with him I rambled down this way and found her. I want her to stay away from the flat for two or three hours, till the thing is settled one way or the other, but she’s bound to go home. So I guess we’d better be goin’. The wagons ought to hit the Crossin’ pretty soon.’

“We went up on the bench. Stella and Hash-Knife and me, and loped along toward the Crossin’. Pretty soon we could see the two sets of wagons and a bunch of riders headin’ for the creek, the two herds—big ones—trailin’ along behind, about a mile apart. At the head of the coulée I turned my string loose for the horse-wrangler to pick up. With Stella cryin’ and Hash-Knife tryin’ to comfort her, we swung down the coulée to the shack.

“When we got there we found the herder had brought the sheep in to water. They’d moved back off water and was bedded down, bunched close, about half-way between the cabin and the creek. There was three of ’em at the cabin; old Hartley, the herder, and a pilgrim that’d come out to work on the ranch.

“Old Hartley looked pretty black at us as we rode up, but he didn’t have time to say much before the wagons come rollin’ out the mouth of the coulée. They was almost at the house before he knowed it. Then he ducked into the cabin and come out with a Winchester across his arm. The outfit went past without battin’ an eye at him. They went round the sheep and started to pitch camp on the creek-bank. Then Peek-a-Boo and Tom Jordan, the Ragged H boss, come a-ridin’ up to the cabin.

“They was nice and polite about it. They told old Hartley that seein’ he was a stranger they thought he’d probably made a mistake and got over on the wrong side of the ridge. They didn’t want to make any trouble for him, but he’d have to take his sheep off the creek. Sorry to bother him, but it was range law.

“‘You can’t bluff me,’ says Hartley. ‘This here’s government land. I got as much right here as anybody. You dassent run me out.’

“Then old Tom Jordan tells him about the big scrap they’d had with the sheepmen, and how they’d agreed to stay the other side of the ridge, but the old bonehead kept a-shootin’ off about his rights, and how they couldn’t bluff him, till Tom got mad and rode off, sayin’ that he’d see his blasted sheep was across the ridge by sundown.

“Peek-a-Boo stayed talkin’ to him, tryin’ to persuade him to be reasonable, and showin’ him how foolish he was to run up against the cowmen after they’d fought a dozen big sheep outfits to a standstill and whacked up the range fair and square. They talked and talked, old Hartley gettin’ more and more on the peck. Neither of ’em noticed that the lead of the first herd had strung down the coulée—the cowpunchers had done business with the fence. There was probably a thousand head of big, rollicky steers bunched on the flat, and the rest of the herd was pourin’ out the mouth of the draw. Two point-riders was holdin’ ’em up so they wouldn’t scatter.

“Old Hartley saw ’em first. The sight of that big bunch of longhorns on what he called his land made him see red, I reckon. He shoved the lever of his gun forward and back, clickity-click, and started on a run for the bunch, hollerin’ as he went: ‘You can’t drive them cattle across my flat! I’ll kill you, by God, if you do!’

“Peek-a-Boo stuck the spurs in his horse, and started after him, callin’ to him to keep away from the herd. Hartley kept a-goin’ till Peek was about twenty feet from him, then he whirled with his gun to his shoulder, and cut loose, bang—bang! and Peek-a-Boo tumbled off his horse.

“Things happened then. Stella had started after the old man, but Hash-Knife grabbed her and made her stop. When old Hartley dropped Peek-a-Boo, Bob says to me: ‘Mormon, take Stella over to camp. I got to get Peek out of there. Maybe he aint killed, and them steers’ll be a-runnin’ over him in about ten seconds.’

“Hash-Knife had the situation sized up correct. I helped Stella onto her horse and started for the wagons. A lot of riders come like hell across the flat toward the herd, but they was too late to do any good. Just as Hash-Knife picked old Peek-a-Boo up and flopped him across his horse, Hartley begin to smoke up the two riders that was holdin’ the herd—which was bunched tight, ready to run. But he missed first shot, and when he fired the second time they was scuddin’ for the tail-end of the herd, layin’ low along the backs of their horses. As they run they jerked the slickers off the backs of their saddles, swingin’ ’em round their heads, and, yellin’ like Gros Ventre braves strikin’ the war-post, they rode into the herd.

“When them cattle surged first one way and then the other, and then swept across the flat, tramplin’ old Hartley down like he was a lone stalk of bunch-grass stickin’ up out of the prairie, Stella screeched and hid her face in her hands. But I watched; it was horrible and fascinatin’. You’ve seen the ice gorge in the Big Muddy, when it breaks up in the spring; it jams at some narrow place and piles up and piles up till the river below is bone dry. Then the weight of the water’ll bust the jam and there’ll be a grindin’, smashin’ uproar for a minute, and all of a sudden the river is flowin’ peaceful again.

“That was the way them cattle did. They passed over old Hartley like he was nothin’, and struck that bunch of slumberin’ sheep like a breakin’ ice jam. Two thousand strong they was, runnin’ like scared antelope, packed shoulder to shoulder, with horns and hoofs clatterin’ like a Spanish dancer’s castanets, and the gallopin’ weight of ’em made the flat tremble. This wise they passed over the band of sheep, wipin’ ’em out like the spring floods wipe out the snow in the low places, and thunderin’ by the round-up camp hit the creek with a rush that knocked it dry for a hundred yards. The lead of ’em had hardly got to the level before the riders was turnin’ ’em. In fifteen minutes them cattle was standin’ bunched on the flat, puffin’ and blowin’, the big steers starin’ round as if they were wonderin’ what had scared ’em. But they’d done the trick. There was no sheep left to quarrel over—nary one. It was an Alamo for the woolly-backs!

“After we’d found and buried what was left of old man Hartley, we moved up the creek to camp. The herder and the pilgrim hit the trail for Milk River. Poor little Stella sure felt bad on account of the old man, and the boys was all sorry for her. But she had Hash-Knife, and Peek-a-Boo—who wasn’t hurt bad enough to make him cash in—said he’d brand a hundred calves for her on the spring round-up. So I guess she was winner on the deal.

“That’s been eleven years,” Mormon Jack concluded, reminiscently, “and I aint been here since. I didn’t make no protracted visit the first time, but I want to tell you, m’ son, it was sure excitin’.”

THE COLONEL AND “THE LADY”

About an hour before sunset, Colonel Jerry rode furiously into the post. Her sweating pony was streaked with dust, and the colonel was covered with it from head to foot. Except for the rumpled and brief little corduroy skirt and bloomers, her clothing was an exact, if miniature, copy of her father’s. Her wide felt hat had its regulation cord and tassels, there were gauntlets on her small hands, and gaiters on her small legs. The sleeve of her boyish skirt carried its device, and she wore a cartridge belt, a little pistol, and a sword.

She drew her dancing pony sharply up before the group on the porch, and saluted severely.

“And just in time, too!” said the major, who was also the colonel’s father. He looked at her reproachfully. “We were about to send a company out after you! Leave Baby at the side door and go straight upstairs. When you’re presentable come down, and I’ll introduce you to your Boston uncle and aunt. We’ve been watching for you all afternoon. What kept you, you vagabond?”

The colonel, trying to quiet her nervous horse, wheeled about in a manner that made her aunt dizzy. She answered, jerkily: “Trouble, sir—on the reservation! Whoa, there, pretty! Quiet, girl! It seems that—it seems that some of those hogs of Indians got hold—steady, old girl!—got hold of a keg of whisky—somewhere—and—Peters said—hold still, you fool! You’ll have your oats in a minute!—Peters said—that last night—there wasn’t a man in the camp that wasn’t drunk! You will have to excuse me, sir! She’s pulling my arms out!” And she gave her horse its head.

When the two had flashed around the corner of the house, the major smiled, proudly. “What d’ye think of her?” he said, turning to his brother-in-law.

“Well, for a nine-year-old,” said Dr. Eyre, slowly, “she is certainly a wonder!”

The doctor’s wife, a pretty, precise little woman, looked at her own neat little girl, and sighed, profoundly.

“And this—this!” she said, plaintively, “is poor Amy’s child!”

The major looked a trifle uncomfortable, but his young aid spoke, eagerly: “Every one on the post is proud of the colonel! You see, we’ve brought her up here among us, Mrs. Eyre—taught her everything she knows! You can’t take in her good points at a glance—but she’s as square as any man!”

When the little girl presently joined them, her dark hair had been smoothly brushed, her white frock and buckled slippers were irreproachable. She gave a cool and impassive little cheek to her aunt’s kisses, and then, from her father’s knee, soberly studied her kinspeople.

“How like Amy!” said Mrs. Eyre. “You don’t remember poor dear mamma, do you, Geraldine?”

“I was two,” said the colonel. The aid choked.

“Yes—yes—of course!” said Mrs. Eyre. “And she has had no training, has she, Jim? Do you know, darling, that where aunty and cousin Rose live they would think you were a very funny little girl if they heard you talk that way?”

“What way, dad?” said the colonel, quickly.

“And to hear you say what you said this afternoon,” pursued her aunt, calmly.

“To your horse, she means,” supplemented her father, smiling down at her.

“But that horse can act like the Old Harry,” said the colonel, musingly.

“Speaking of horses,” her uncle said, a little hurriedly, “you’ve never seen mine, have you?”

She gave him an eager smile. “No, sir. You know I’ve never been East. But I’ve read about her. I’m very much interested in that horse.”

“Well, after dinner, suppose you and I have a look at her?”

“What!” The colonel was on her feet; “she’s not here!”

“Yes. Came with us to-day. She’s entered for the Towerton Cup.”

The colonel’s pale little face was flushed with excitement.

“You don’t mean The Lady, Uncle Bob? Not the horse that has taken all those prizes? Here on this post?”

“That’s the very one, colonel,” said the major; “we put her in the Ralston stable.”

“The Lady!” said the colonel, dazedly. “The Lady! To think I shall see that horse!”

“Aunts and uncles are nothing to horses,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.

“Well,” said the colonel, “you know every one has aunts and uncles.” The aid grew crimson again. “But this is the only racer that I know. And you’ve put her in the Ralston stable?”

“For quiet,” her uncle said. “It excites her to be in a stable with other horses.”

“And one thing more, colonel,” said her father, firmly; “which you may as well understand right now. You’re not ever, under any circumstances, to mount that horse.”

“All right, sir,” said the colonel, regretfully. “If you say so, that goes. But I’d like to try her.”

Her father gave her a sidelong look.

“Now see here, Jerry. The minute I catch you on top of that horse, you can go to bed without rations, and you needn’t wear your colors for a week after. Understand?”

The colonel nodded. Her face was crimson.

“Hang it, you’re not my superior officer, Jim,” said his brother, smiling, “and if I choose to give my niece a ride or so on my own horse it strikes me——”

“Ah! that’s a different matter,” agreed the major, “only I didn’t want the colonel here to think The Lady was an ordinary riding horse.”

The colonel said nothing. She was, at times, an oddly silent child. But she smiled at her uncle, and loved him at once.

It was almost sunset. Long, clear-cut shadows fell across the clean-swept parade. The watering-cart rumbled to and fro, leaving a sweet odor of fresh, wet earth. Lawn-sprinklers began to whirr in the gardens of Officers’ Row. Chattering groups went by, the level red light flashing on white parasols and brass buttons. All of these strollers shouted greetings to the major and the little colonel. Some came up, and were duly presented to the major’s guests. Jerry sat on the steps, her little dark head against the rail, and exchanged banter with a degree of equality that astonished her aunt. The child’s heart was full. She was to be, for several days, privileged by the sight of the great horse—a week would bring the Fourth of July, with its bands and picnic and evening of unclouded joys, fireworks, ice-cream, bonfires. Besides this, the old general, her especial crony, would arrive in a few days for the holiday.

Dinner was late and long. And the after-dinner cigars were interrupted by many reminiscences. By the time the men reached the porch again, the colonel’s patience was sorely strained. She sat waiting for a long half-hour.

“Uncle Bob,” she began at last, when there was a pause, “are you going to see The Lady to-night?”

“By George, that is so,” said her uncle, rousing. “We must have a look at the old girl. Come, kids.”

Just then the breeze brought them the bugle notes.

“Too bad!” said the aid.

“Oh, confound it, there’s taps!” said the colonel, tears of vexation in her eyes. “You’ll have to go without me.”

And before they realized it, she had said her good-nights and gone upstairs.

“H’m!” said her uncle, reflectively.

“She was probably tired and sleepy,” said Mrs. Eyre, gently.

“She'll be out at that stable at five to-morrow,” said the aid.

And, sure enough, Colonel Jerry appeared at the nine-o'clock breakfast the next day radiant from three hours spent in the great horse's stable.

“Well, colonel,” said her uncle, coming in late, “what do you think of The Lady?”

The plain little face was transformed by a wide smile.

“Oh, Uncle Bob! I never saw such a horse! Baron let me lead her down to water! She's the most beautiful horse I ever saw!”

“You'll be disobeying your father,” he said, smiling, “and running off some day on The Lady's back.” She glanced down at her little sleeve, where the device of a colonel was exquisitely embroidered.

“We'd do a good deal not to have that taken off our sleeve, wouldn't we?” said her father.

“Most anything,” she answered, with her flashing smile.

Her own little horse was sick, but she and Rose rode the big carriage horses every day, and Jerry did her best to entertain this rather difficult guest. The two children found enough in common to spend the days pleasantly. Rose developed a profound respect for her wild little cousin, and Jerry grew to enjoy Rose's company—even though Rose could not obey orders, and held bugle-calls in contempt. Both children, as well as all the others on the post, were planning for the Fourth of July. All their money went for fireworks, they shouted the national songs, they cheered the band that practiced nightly before the house.

The third of July broke hot and cloudless. By nine o’clock, the piazza rail burned one’s fingers, and as the hours went by the heat shut down over the earth like a blanket. A heavy haze hung over the meadows, and lines of heat dazzled up from the far, blue mountains. Jerry, coming out from an hour’s enforced practice on her violin, stretched luxuriously in the heat. The post seemed deserted. The heat beat steadily down; there seemed to be no shadow anywhere. Locusts hummed loudly. Jerry knew that her father and uncle had gone to Hayestown to meet the general. They would be back to a late lunch at three. She strolled around to the stable.

Henry, polishing harness, beamed upon her, and wiped his forehead.

“Git me a fur coat an’ build up the fire,” said he, grinning.

“Shame on you!” said the colonel, plunging her bared arms deep into the trough. “Say, Henry, do you know if my aunt and cousin went with dad and Uncle Bob?”

“Why,” said Henry, with a troubled look, “your aunt and cousin went riding! Full an hour ago! Yes, sir, they left about eleven o’clock. They says they was going to get back about half-past two.”

“Idiots!” said the colonel, contemptuously. “Riding! A day like this! Where’d they go?”

“They says they’d go as far as Holly Hill, colonel, and then have their meal at the spring, an’ then go right over Baldy, and home!”

“Crazy! Climbin’ the hill in this heat!” She looked about the clean, wide stable. “What horses did you give ’em?”

Henry looked very uncomfortable.

“I thought you knew, colonel. I give your aunt Sixpence—he’s up to her weight. But Miss Rose says she was to ride your horse.”

The colonel whirled about, her eyes flashing. “Rose said—my horse! You don’t mean Baby?”

“That’s what she says.”

Jerry turned white.

“But—my goodness! Baby’s sick! The vet said she wasn’t to be ridden!”

“I told Miss Rose I didn’t think the horse was up to it,” said Henry, aggrievedly. “I says to ask you.”

“You fool—you!” said the colonel, blazing. She reached for an old cap, and snatched a whip.

“Give me any horse!” she commanded, pulling down her own saddle. “I’ll follow them! They’ll be at the spring. I’ll bring them home through the woods.”

“Why, there you are, colonel! There aint a horse on this place. It was so hot yesterday that we turned them all out. They’re two miles away, in long meadow. You can’t get a horse on this post.”

Baffled, the child dropped the saddle. She leaned against the door-post, her swimming eyes looking across the baking earth. “It’ll kill Baby, Henry,” she whispered, with trembling lips.

No one was about. Above the Ralston stable some little boys had made a fire in the shade. Jerry clinched her hands in agony above her heart. Then she picked up her saddle, and went resolutely along the path.

“Where are you going, colonel, dear?” called Henry.

She did not answer.

“Oh—Baby! Baby!” she was sobbing as she ran; “I can’t let them kill you! I’ve got to disobey orders!”

The carriage, with the three men in it, was met by the news. A mile from the post a little boy shouted that the Ralston stable, with the wonderful mare inside, was burned to the ground. The old general, bouncing out uncomfortably, kept up a running fire of sympathetic ejaculation. The major, urging on the big grays, freely used his strongest language. But his brother did not speak.

Sweating, dust-covered, panting, the horses tore past Officers’ Row, and stopped at the ruins of what had been the stable. A few fallen beams still smoked sullenly, the sickening odor of wet wood filled the air. A group of men and boys in their shirt-sleeves stood near. At the sound of the wheels, Baron, his face streaked with soot and perspiration, came toward them. “I was off duty, sir!” he said, hoarsely. “I was getting my dinner. We done all we could! We had the hose here in ten minutes, but the fire was too big.”

His master nodded. After a moment he asked: “She was loose?”

“Yes, sir. She must have suffocated. She didn’t struggle——”

“No? Well, I’m glad—of that.” Her owner walked about the ruins. The other men were silent. Finally the major said: “I can’t tell you, old man, how sorry I am!”

“Well, no help for it, Jim. I know you are! Go clean up, Baron, then come talk to me. Shall we go up to the house?”

On the way, he said, sombrely: “I wouldn’t have taken any money for that mare!”

Just at this moment the mare came into the yard, with the weary little colonel astride her. The Lady was tired, her satin flanks were flecked with white, but she knew her master, and whinnied as she came up to him. At the sound, he turned as if shot, and a moment later a shout from both men cut short the colonel’s stammered remarks. Her father lifted her down.

“It takes the colonel, every time!” said he. “What lucky star made you—this particular afternoon!—well, she’s saved your horse for you, Bob.”

“We’ll have to promote you,” said the general, to whom the tired child was clinging.

Her uncle, turning for the first time from the horse, spoke, solemnly: “You saved her, didn’t you? I won’t forget this! You’ll have the finest Spanish saddle that can be made, for this!”

“You can go right on breaking rules at this rate!” said her father, his arm about her. “And now run up and get dressed. You can tell us about it later.”

“I’ll go up, too,” said the general.

“Go right ahead, sir. We’ll go to the stable for a few minutes and make fresh arrangements for The Lady.”

When they at last went out to the long-delayed dinner, the high back chair at the foot of the table found no occupant.

“Late, as usual,” said the major. “Lena,” he added, “go and tell the colonel that dinner is ready.”

“Oh, if you please, major, she’s gone to bed. She come upstairs more than an hour ago. She took her bath, sir, and went right to bed. I ast her did she feel sick, and she says no, but that them was your orders. She wouldn’t let Nora bring her up no tea.” Lena looked reproachful.

“And she cried awfully,” said Rose.

“She never let a tear out of her until I shut the door, Miss Rose,” said Lena, firmly; “and she ast me to put out a dress with a plain sleeve for to-morrow. She shut the windows down so’s she shouldn’t hear the band, but she never cried none.”

The aid winced. The general cleared his throat.

“Well, she’s your child, Fitzgerald. But I think I’ll issue a few orders in this matter myself.”

“You’re my superior officer, sir,” said the major, eagerly.