Chapter II: Part 2

"Sorry, Mr. Slivowitz, but I can't consider it," he said.

"Oh, come now, Mr. Sloane!" protested the dyer, with a laugh, leaning back in his chair. He produced a thick cigar and bit off the end. "These here scruples does you credit, Mr. Sloane, but business is business; and, take it from me, Mr. Sloane, you can't mix business up mit ethics. Them things is all right, but you gotta skin the other guy before he skins you first, ain't it?"

"That may be----" began the secretary, as he moved toward the door.

"_May_ be? Ain't I just told you it _is_?" Slivowitz paused in the act of striking a match to glare. "You needn't to be scared they'll find it out where you come from and fire you, neither, Mr. Sloane," he added, more quietly and with a cunning expression. "I got brains, I have. A little thing like recommends to a smart man like _me_----" The match broke. He flung it into the cuspidor and selected another.

Sloane paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Mr. Slivowitz----" he began again.

"Of course," continued his employer, "I could make it--well, a hundred fifteen, Mr. Sloane. But, believe me, not a cent more, posi-_tive_-ly."

The secretary shook his head decidedly.

"What?" roared Slivowitz. "Y' mean to tell me y' ain't goin' to do it? _All_ right; you're fired anyhow, you understand me." Then with an evil glitter in his eyes, "And if you don't bring by me that formula, you get fired from the Domestic Dye Works; _and you don't get it no job nowheres else, too_! Now, you take your choice." This time the match lighted successfully.

Sloane smiled. "Quite impossible," he said. "I was going to resign in a day or two, anyway."

"Eh?" exclaimed the head of the firm, his jaw dropping and his florid face paling a little. In the face of a number of possibilities he forgot the match in his fingers.

"Yes. You see--you'll know it sooner or later--the Domestic Dye Works sent me here to learn the formula for your royal purple."

And the door slammed shut behind A. Slivowitz's private secretary.

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NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE

By Mary Woodbury Caswell

The short winter day of Alaska was brightening as Gertrude pushed her chair back from the breakfast table and announced that she proposed to go at once for her constitutional. Her brother placidly assented, but Keith interposed with a worried look.

"Hadn't you better go with her, Bob? I suppose I've grown to be an old granny, but since Jacques told us of that outlaw who threatened to kidnap a white girl for his wife, I don't like to have Gertrude get out of sight."

The girl bent over him caressingly.

"Don't worry, dear," she said. "Jacques had been drinking hard when he told you of this mythical exile. Besides, I am no Helen of Troy to be abducted for my beauty. I'd really much rather have Bob stay with you."

And she kissed him, put on warm wraps, took her snowshoes and started for the daily tramp that had kept her fit ever since she had come up on the last boat, hastily summoned by a cable from Bob when her fiancé had his shoulder crushed, and it would be impossible for the young men to return to the States with their stake. She and Bob had nursed him into convalescence, but it had been a hard winter for him, and she did not wonder that he had developed some nervousness, though she considered his fear for her wholly unnecessary, as, indeed, did Bob.

When she was a half-mile from the cabin and a slight rise of ground hid it from her, she saw a dog team approaching, and smiled, thinking that Keith would surely consider that danger was near. As it met her the driver touched his cap, and she had a swift impression of a very different type than she had recently met, and one that made Jacques's fantastic tale seem less absurd. As she involuntarily glanced back she saw, and now with alarm, that the stranger had turned and was coming toward her. He stopped the dogs close to her and inquired courteously, and with a foreign accent:

"Can you tell me, mademoiselle, how near I am to some residence?"

"Our cabin is over the hill," she replied quietly, though with growing terror, which was justified, as he sprang toward her, swathing her in a blanket, so that she could neither speak nor struggle, and placing her on the sled.

She could not have told whether it was hours or minutes before she was lifted, carried into a cabin, and the blanket unfolded from her, while a savage-looking husky dog growled a greeting. Her captor shook off his heavy outer coat, removed his cap, and with exaggerated deference said:

"Mademoiselle, pray remove your parka and permit that I relieve you of your snowshoes. I do myself the honour, mademoiselle, to offer you marriage."

Resolutely conquering her fear, Gertrude looked steadily at him. The man evidently was, or had been, a gentleman; but what must his life have been to bring him to this! As composedly as she could she answered:

"I must decline your offer. Pray permit me to return home."

"Ah, no, mademoiselle. I fear I cannot allow that. As for marriage--as you please, but in any case you must remain here."

"Not alive," she said.

"Ah, but, mademoiselle, how not?" he asked, in mockery of courtesy more pronounced. "It is not so easy to die"--with a sudden bitter sadness.

"There are many ways," she replied. "Here is one."

And, seizing a dog whip lying near, she struck the husky a sharp blow and, as he furiously leaped to his feet, flung herself upon the floor before him. He fastened his teeth in her arm as his master grasped his throat, and the struggle shook the cabin. At last the man broke the dog's hold and dragged him to the door. Gertrude's heavy clothing had saved her arm from anything but a superficial wound, but as he bound it up she said:

"The dog will not forget, and if he fails me I can find another way."

His face, which had paled, flushed a dark red as he hastily spoke.

"For God's sake do not think--but why should you not? You are free, mademoiselle. Such courage shows me I am not quite the brute I fancied I had become, and also that there is one woman in the world whose 'no' assuredly does not mean 'yes.' I will take you home at once, on the faith of a Marovitch."

She stared at him incredulously and said slowly:

"Is it possible--are you Count Boris Marovitch?"

"Yes"--in deep wonder--"that is my name, but how could you know?"

"This letter should interest you," she said. "It is from Varinka. I was at a convent school in Paris with her." And she watched him excitedly as he read aloud the passage she indicated.

"Do you remember my telling you of my cousin Boris, who was sent
to Siberia for killing Prince ---- in a duel? It was supposed
that he was shot while trying to escape, but the guard has
confessed that he was bribed to assist him, and he may be living.
The Czar would gladly pardon him if he would return, his homicidal
tendencies being valuable in the present war crisis. And Olga has
steadfastly refused to marry any one else, so----"

A sharply drawn breath interrupted the reading, and the letter fell to the floor from his shaking hands as he looked at her, his face white and drawn.

"Mademoiselle, it is too much," he gasped. "Your courage--your generosity--I insult you unforgivably and you give me back honour, love, life--I cannot say----" And he sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.

She went over to him and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.

"I am glad you are happy, Count," she said, "and I am sure we shall be very good friends. Please take me home now."

They met Bob halfway, striding along with an anxious face, his rifle over his shoulder. "This is my brother, Mr. Stacey," said Gertrude. "Bob, this is Count Marovitch, of whom Varinka wrote. He starts to-morrow by dog train to the States on his way to Russia."

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THE OLD THINGS

By Jessie Anderson Chase

Like Sir Roger's neighbours peering over the hedge, I had daily observed, over my stone wall, a very old gentleman in his shirt sleeves, who pleasantly gave me the rôle of Spectator. A New-Englander of the elder type, with the heavy bent head of the thinker; but, particularly, with the piercing yet so kindly humorous blue eye that loses none of its colour with age, but seems to grow more vivid and vital with the same years that steal from the hair its hue of life and from the walnut cheek its glowing red.

Such an eye, to a lawyer like myself, accustomed to look for a human document in every human face, seemed the very epitome of eighty years: a carefree boyhood among _contemporaries_--in house furnishings, in barn and pigsty, orchard and gardens; a youth that sees already a new generation in most of these companions of his earthly pilgrimage; a middle age, forced out of the romantic sense of companionship on the road, into the persistent and finally triumphant view of using environment for ends of its own; and then old age, free to return and lavish forgotten endearments upon the "old things!" This or the other "landmark," dear, and familiar from life's beginnings. These periods, all slipping unnoticed into their successors, yet each possessing a distinct and tangible outline and colour, had all had their turn at my neighbour's blue eyes. And the look that comes only at the end, when the life has been prodigal of response and of an unswerving fidelity in the storing up of values--that was the look that I valued as a thing of price.

It was a day of late summer that brought me more directly face to face with its beauty and gravity. The old gentleman appeared, in his shirt sleeves, but with plenty of ceremony in his quiet demeanour, at the door of my little "portable" law office, at the edge of the orchard.

"I am told, sir," he began, "that you are an attorney at law."

I bowed, and offered him a chair but he continued standing.

"I have come," he said, "to request your services in drawing up my last will and testament--that is," he serenely emended, "in case your vacation time is subject to such interruption."

While I was formulating my assent he continued:

"You have no doubt, since coming into this rather communicative neighbourhood, been informed that my son owns the homestead."

The kind, keen old eyes took on a look of what George Eliot names "an enormous patience with the way of the world."

"Everything belongs to John and Mary. But there are one or two little old things that they don't care about. They're up in the lean-to. The old mirror that, as a lad, I used to see my face in over my mother's shoulder, it's still holding for me the picture of my mother smiling up at me. And the old ladder-back chair that she used to sit in and cuddle me; and switch, me, too--and maybe that took the most love of all. That's all. John and Mary don't want them. They're only old things, like myself. It's natural, perfectly natural. At their age I most probably felt just so."

He paused and looked through the lattice, where the reddened vine-leaves were beginning to fall.

"The young leaf-buds pushing off the old leaves. It's nature."

Before sunset--for the old man was strangely impatient--I had his "will" signed, witnessed, and sealed. The old mirror and chair were to go to a wee, odd little old lady, called in the neighbourhood "Miss Tabby" Titcomb because of her forty-odd cats, except for which she lived alone.

"Little Ellen," _he_ called her, as he fondly spoke of their school days together. "Mother would have been well content if we'd hit it off together, Ellen and I. But a boy is as apt as not, when urged one way, to fly off in another; and I was at the skittish age.

"I've never said this before to any man, sir, but I'd have been a better husband to Ellen. Mary was a faithful wife, and better than I deserved. But she was not just aware, like Ellen, of where to bear on hard and where to go a little easy. That's what a man needs in a woman, sir. Ellen always knew just when and where."

The next morning, which was Saturday, I was riding down Bare Hill Road--as it chanced, right past Miss Tabby's--when my horse shied; and that tiny old lady, with an enormous gray cat beside her, rose up from behind the lilac bushes. Bigger people than "little Ellen" have been frightened by Prince's antics, but she quietly put her hand on his restive neck as if he were only a little larger kitten, and then spoke to me in a soft little purr of a voice:

"I've heard--and you'll excuse me--that you're a lawyer, Mr. Alden; and I've a small matter I don't wish to entrust to any one here, being private. It's a letter for Mr. Thomas Sewall, to be delivered upon my demise, which I feel is about to take place." She spoke with a little note of relief, as if from some long strain.

I took the small envelope.

"It's just the cats," she was moved to confide further; "the little ones and the smart ones will all find friends. But the two _old ones_! Mr. Sewall has a notion for the old things. And"--here she hesitated long, while I breathlessly assured her of my best care for the letter--"there's--somewhat in the note _besides_ the cats," she brought out bravely. "You'll make sure it doesn't fall into John and Mary's hands?"

This was Saturday morning. Sunday, as I listened absent-mindedly to the slow toll of the meeting-house bell, my houskeeper remarked, on bringing in my coffee:

"Did you notice, sir? It was eighty-six. There's an old man and an old woman, both just the same age, in the village, died in the night."

The old chair, upon which--when they were young together--the little Tom had been spanked and comforted; and the mirror, still treasuring the picture of the round, saucy phiz over his mother's shoulder, were offered at auction and bid in for a trifle by me. I would have paid gold sovereigns for them, but not into the hands of John and Mary! The cats, likewise, sit by the hearth, on which was burned to ashes the letter "not _entirely_" about their disposal.

And the "Old Things" that cherished these earthly companions? The minister--himself a rare "old thing"--preached a funeral sermon for the two so strangely united by death; and his thin voice, like the tone of an old, cracked violin, still haunts me:

"Their youth is renewed like the eagle's.... And they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

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THE FORCED MARCH

By Hornell Hart

Intermittently, when the snow ceased falling for a moment, Wojak could see the regiments ahead, black against the white fields, crawling interminably over the hilltop under the dull sky. Wojak was a burly, bearded fellow. These winter days pleased him. He liked the tingle that came with marching in the cold air. He liked the dull, rhythmic "scruff" of the hundreds of feet as the regiment swung along, welded by its months of marching into a living unity.

This was his own country they were marching through. His homestead lay not twenty miles away, near this very road. As he trudged along thoughts of Sophy and little Stephan kept slipping into his mind.

At the crest of the hill the regiment came to a halt. Back from the road, half hidden in trees that were cut sharp and black against the snow and the sky, stood the ruin of a house.

"Just so stands my house," thought Wojak. "Behind, among the trees, should be the pigsty to the left, the stable to the right."

He turned and waded through the newly fallen snow toward the dwelling. Charred beams at one end showed where a fire had been checked by the snowfall. In the yard beneath the fluffy new snow the old layer had evidently been tramped. Behind the house he found the pigsty and the stable.

"But the stable is bigger than mine," he murmured.

He looked in. A pile of hay was in the corner, and on it lay some rags. The stable was so dark that Wojak thought he saw a child lying there. He went over to the corner. On the hay was a yellow head, the round cheeks streaked with tears. The child was sleeping, but its breath came in little sobs. With clumsy gentleness the soldier picked the baby up.

"Stephan had curls like that," he whispered.

As he stepped out into the light the child awoke. A chubby arm slipped about the burly neck, and the blue eyes looked at him with the beginning of a smile. But in a moment the fact that this was not father, but a strange man, came over the baby, and he began to sob, not angrily, but with a worn anguish that gripped Wojak's heart.

The company was falling in after the halt when he came to the road. The curly head lay close to his bearded face, and a great clumsy hand protected the little body.

"Where did you get that, Wojak?" growled the lieutenant, staring blankly at the sorrowful little bundle. "Leave the kid and fall in," he commanded. "There's no time for nonsense on this march."

Wojak started to protest, but the habit of obedience was too strong. Sullenly he stood the baby in the snow and took his place in the ranks. The child's sobs turned to a heartbroken wail.

"Forward, march!" commanded the officer, and the company moved away down the road. Wojak looked back and saw the tiny arms stretched out after him while snowflakes settled on the yellow head. Long after the hilltop was hidden in swirling snow he seemed to see them and to hear the wail of the orphaned baby.

* * * * *

The sun was setting when the army bivouacked four miles from Wojak's farm. The orders were that no leaves of absence should be granted; but he knew the sentinel on guard, and home was too near to be left unseen for another four months.

The stars were glittering from an all but clear sky when he slipped silently through the lines and started down the familiar roads toward Sophy and Stephan. Four months was a terrible length of time. The passage of armies had marked the country. The great tree by the cottage of Ivanovicz had been shattered by a shell and had crashed through the roof. Jablonowski's barns had been burned. The windows of the church at the corners were shattered and a great hole had been shot in the steeple. Wojak walked faster, and a twinge of anxiety came over him as he entered the lane that led up to his barnyard. His heart stopped: the thatch of the stable had been burned and only the walls were standing. His eyes strained for a glimpse of the house. It was not there. A few charred beams marked the place where his home had stood.

He ran nearer. Snow had covered everything. Beside the place where the door had been was a white mound with a stick standing in the earth at its head. To the stick was nailed a little shoe. Wojak seized it with shaking hands.

"Stephan!" he choked. "My little Stephan!"

After a while he looked up. Looming above him was a man on horseback who had ridden up unheard through the muffling snow.

"You are under arrest," said the voice of the lieutenant.

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APPROXIMATING THE ULTIMATE WITH AUNT SARAH

By Charles Earl Gaymon

Aunt Sarah was sixty-three years old. Uncle John was sixty-four years old.

If you spoke to Aunt Sarah about any new fringe on the tapestry of the intellectual loom she would say:

"Oh, yes, we 'proximated that line of thought in 1893. It is near, but not quite the ultimate."

If you spoke to Uncle John about Schopenhauer he would reply:

"I don't take much stock in them new-fangled cultivators."

Uncle John and Aunt Sarah had lived together in the old homestead for thirty-eight years.

Aunt Sarah always had intellectual curiosity: she had left the old Baptist church in her girlhood to join a joy cult; she had followed with her mental telescope the scintillating trajectory of William James's flight through the philosophic heavens of America; she had known about eugenics long before the newspapers had made the subject popular knowledge, and she had played in the musty, rickety garret of occultism at a time when the most daring minds in science were sitting tight in the seats of the scornful. But there was a shadow in the sunlight of Aunt Sarah's mental advancement, an opaque spot in the crystal of her mysticism, an unresolved seventh in the harmony of her simple life in the Wisconsin backwoods--

She was married.

She was married to Uncle John!

At six o'clock in the evening of June 1, 1915, Aunt Sarah glanced up from reading Bennett's "Folk Ways and Mores" as Uncle John entered the kitchen door. Uncle John had just come from performing the vespertime chores.

"Pa, we shall have to get a divorce!" said Aunt Sarah, shutting Bennett with determination. "Marriage is a worn-out convention; it is only one of the thousand foolish folk ways that hinder the advancement of science among the masses."

"Very well, ma."

"We _will_ get a divorce."

"I quite agree, ma."

"Don't attempt logic with me, John. I said that we would get a divorce."

Uncle John shook his head. "When will it be?" he asked.

"To-morrow."

Uncle John smiled, dropped his armful of kindling into the wood box behind the kitchen range, and began to lay the Brobdingnagian bandana handkerchief that served them for a tablecloth.

Aunt Sarah finished the preparation of the bacon and onions and set the coffee pot back when it began to boil.

After supper Uncle John read the seed catalogue and Aunt Sarah resumed her Bennett.

The following afternoon Judge Thompson, who lived in the biggest and best house in the little county seat, was surprised to see from his chair in the big bay window an antiquated carriage drawn by a retired farm horse draw up before his cast-iron negro hitching post. In the carriage were Aunt Sarah and Uncle John.

Judge Thompson was on the porch in time to receive his guests.

"We've come to get a divorce," said Aunt Sarah, with a direct gaze; then she added, with the _sang froid_ of one who is wise, "What'll it cost?"

The judge motioned them to seats in the wicker chairs on the porch, and then replied:

"But you must have grounds----"

"Everybody knows it. Incompatibility of temperament."

And the judge, smiling, humoured Aunt Sarah, for he knew her and the community in which she lived. "It will cost you just ten dollars," he said.

"Make out the paper," Aunt Sarah replied.

One hour later Uncle John and Aunt Sarah left the judge's house together, separated for life.

Moses, their horse, looked at them out of the corner of his good eye as they approached the carriage.

Uncle John paused, but Aunt Sarah stepped firmly into the vehicle.

Uncle John followed her and took up the reins.

Moses knew the way home by a clairvoyant sense, and he took that way at his own pace of prophet-like dignity.

At the door of the old homestead Uncle John handed Aunt Sarah down from her seat in silence. Then he put Moses into his stall. And when he returned to the house he found Aunt Sarah beaming upon him through her gold-rimmed spectacles from her place at the table, which was loaded with a supper such as she alone could cook.

Aunt Sarah was jubilant. She was living at last with a man to whom she was not married; no longer was there a blot on the scutcheon of her intellectual progress; no longer did a black beetle mar the pellucid amber of her simple life of Advanced Ideas; no longer could the acolytes, in off moments when they were not engaged in trundling the spheres through the macrocosm, gaze sternly down upon her through interstellar space and say:

"Aunt Sarah is nearly, but not quite, an intellectual."

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THE HORSE HEAVER

By Lyman Bryson

"For why should you be tired?" demanded his wife, splashing her arms viciously in the suds as she finished the day's rinsing. "You've nothing to do but shovel dirt all day and rest when your boss ain't looking."

"Gwan, I'm a hard-working man," said Kallaher. "And, what's more, I can kick about it whenever I want to without any remarks from yourself. I'm tired. When's supper?"

"Supper is any time when I can get my arms dry and get a good breath." Mrs. Kallaher began belligerently to get his supper.

Kallaher stretched his short legs out in front of him and leaned back in his chair. "It was a hard day," he said gently. "As if it wasn't enough to have me breaking my back with the shovel and all, a fool drove his horse too close to the ditch, and the dumb beast fell in on top of me."

"That's likely--now, ain't it?--and you being here to tell about it!"

"Believe it or not, it happened." Kallaher folded his hands across the place where he didn't wear a belt and sighed. "But I put him out again and went on with my work without taking a rest or nothing."

Mrs. Kallaher might have tried again to express her incredulity, but just then old Mother Coogan, next-door neighbour, thrust a red excited face through the kitchen door.

"Mary Kallaher, is your man home?"

"Why shouldn't he be?"

Mrs. Coogan entered and stood, one hand clutching a newspaper, the other pointing dramatically at Kallaher. "It may be so, but he don't look it," she said.

Before they could question her she began reading from the paper: "Mike Kallaher, a ditch digger on the new Twelfth Street sewer, is a small man but a mighty. A horse, driven too near the ditch to-day, fell in. 'Begorra,' said Mike, 'can't a man work in peace?' He laid down his shovel, spat on his hands, and heaved the horse back into the street. The foreman thought he had been hurt when the horse fell in, but he wasn't, and he was not in the least bothered by having to throw him back out again. He went back to his digging."

"Let me see that paper." Kallaher rose and took it from her hand. Slowly he went over the story--which the reporter who wrote it had thought exceeding clever. "Yeh," he said finally, "that's me, all right."

Mrs. Coogan looked upon him with respect. "I never thought much of you before, Mike Kallaher, but you're the only man I know that could pick up a horse." She turned to his wife. "It's no wonder you're a meek woman, Mary, but you ought to be proud of a man like that, sure."

"Are you coming on with supper now?" asked Kallaher in a mighty voice of the speechless Mrs. Kallaher. "Be quick now, or I'll give you what's needing."

Never before had he dared make a threat as if he meant it. His wife was struck with sudden awe. She gasped and hurried silently with the setting on of supper. She trembled and dropped a dish.

"You poor clumsy dub!" roared her husband, towering to the height of five-feet-two. "Are you so weak you can't hold a pot, now?"

"Excuse me, Michael," she murmured. "Excuse me, man. I was excited."

Mrs. Coogan saw with approval that Kallaher was bullying his wife, and went down the street to tell the neighbourhood.

In Mike Kallaher's kitchen--for it had suddenly become his own, after belonging for fifteen years to his wife--a poor, meek, unhappy-looking Irishwoman was obeying orders. She jumped when he yelled at her, which he did every two minutes to see her jump, begged his pardon, brought his pipe, and looked on in silence when he deliberately knocked out the ashes on the newly scrubbed floor. A man who could throw a horse out of a ditch would stop at nothing.

As the new monarch sat in his chair looking contemptuously away from his slave, who was tentatively watching him, there was a knock at the door. Mike's chest had begun to get tired from being swelled out so far, and he let out his breath with a sigh.

A suave young man was admitted. After ascertaining that Mike Kallaher really lived in this place he asked Mike how he was feeling.

"Good," was the truculent answer.

"No injuries from your little adventure this afternoon?"

"Injured, is it? Not a bit--not a bit."

"I'm glad to hear that. I'm assistant manager of the Burke Construction Company. We heard one of our horses fell on you to-day, so I came down to help out if you were hurt. We thought we could afford to pay a few hundred dollars on doctor bills." The young man smiled pleasantly. "But since you're not hurt and are so willing to admit it, we won't have that pleasure. Good-bye." He got up and went.

Kallaher had forgotten to swell out his chest again. He sat drooping in his chair. His wife was no longer tentative.

"Horse heaver, is it?" She advanced, menacing. "Horse heaver? You poor mick! There goes your chance to be a cripple for life and die rich."

She pulled his face up by the front hair and slapped him like a mother.

"Horse heaver, is it? Take that, now!"

And Kallaher took it.

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THE EGO OF THE METROPOLIS

By Thomas T. Hoyne

"You couldn't get her picture?" sneered the city editor contemptuously. "Come, Johnson, get into the game. You're not in Chicago or St. Louis now. This is New York."

Johnson was eating his bread in the sweat of his brow, but he wanted to continue eating. Therefore he said nothing, but lounged off into the local room, empty during the dead afternoon hours.

He was lucky to be working at all. During the couple of weeks he had been wearing out shoe leather chasing pictures for the greatest of all metropolitan morning newspapers he had been told his good fortune a hundred times. He, a perfect stranger in New York, had walked right into a job.

The job should have been tempting only to the rawest cub, but Johnson, a crackerjack reporter, snapped at it. He knew that some of the best newspaper men in New York, crackerjack reporters, were carrying the banner along Park Row.

The afternoon newspapers were boiling over with editions, black type and red crying out that one hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars had disappeared from a vault of the soundest bank in Wall Street and that the cashier was missing. To be assigned to this bank story, to get the chance to show what he really could do, Johnson would have given a finger from his right hand.

He sat on a corner of a typewriter desk, swinging one leg, while he raged inwardly at the insolent city editor. Bread or no bread, he could not work himself into spasms of enthusiasm over a near society woman's photograph for a cheap story. He was too old in the game for such child's play.

The noisy opening of the door between the managing editor's room and the office of the city editor roused him. He heard the managing editor's voice.

"Got any line on that bank cashier?"

"Not yet, sir," replied the city editor, "but every live man on the staff is out on the story."

Johnson flushed as if he had been insulted publicly. How would the old guard in Chicago or Cincinnati retort to such an insinuation against a man who had campaigned up and down the country and had learned the newspaper game as a soldier learns war--in action? He recalled winning out in California, notwithstanding "Native Sons." But to win against the esoteric self-sufficiency of New Yorkers demanded higher fortitude.

"Where can I find the owner of this newspaper?"

Johnson came out of his dream abruptly to answer the insignificant little man who had rambled into the local room.

"He isn't in the building just now," said he patiently.

Owners of newspapers do not receive callers casually. When cranks get through the outer doors now and again it is the duty of some employee to act as buffer.

The visitor lifted a trembling hand to his forehead, shook his head uncertainly, and began to mumble a meandering, inconsequent tale. Amid the aimless words one sentence unexpectedly shaped itself that set the reporter's nerves atingle.

Johnson glanced fearfully toward the city editor's office.

"You want to see the owner of the paper?" he asked softly, the sudden thumping of his heart sounding in his voice. "Come with me."

He grasped the visitor's arm and hurried him out of the local room into the hall, and thence into an elevator.

"This way," he coaxed, when they reached the street level. He led the man out into the crowded thoroughfare, cleverly sheering away from points of danger, as a battleship might convoy a treasure bark.

In the empty local room time dragged. The city editor busied himself in his little office, glaring at his assignment book, studying clippings from afternoon newspapers, and answering calls on his telephone. Once he was interrupted by a woman who laid two tickets for a church fair on his desk and asked to have a paragraph about the entertainment published.

"Johnson!" shouted the city editor arrogantly. His voice merely lost itself in the hollow local room. He rose from his chair irritably and peered through the door of his office, but there was no Johnson on whom to break his wrath.

As evening came on reporters and copy readers straggled in. No one brought startling news in the bank story. The cashier was still missing and there was no trace of him.

The local room burst into nervous life, emphasized by erratic volleys from pounding typewriters and hoarse yells for copy-boys. More than once as the night wore away the city editor stepped from his office to look toward the corner where Johnson usually sat. Each time a vacant chair aggravated his anger.

It was nearly eleven o'clock when the ringing telephone bell called his attention from the proof before him. He jerked the receiver from its hook.

"Johnson, eh? I wanted you half a dozen times this afternoon and evening, but now you needn't come in at all. You're through."

He jammed the receiver back with a glow of satisfaction in having good reason to discharge an incompetent.

The telephone bell rang again. This time the city editor listened.

"You've got the cashier locked up in your room!" he fairly yelled. "All right! All right!"

Shaking with excitement he wheeled from the telephone.

"Brail! Jack! Fredericks!"

He roared the names into the local room in sharp succession.

Like soldiers at a bugle call men sprang from desks where they were working or idling.

"You, Jack, get on the 'phone and take a story from Johnson! He's got the biggest beat that ever was pulled off in the city of New York."

The rewrite man settled himself at the wire.

At the other end of it Johnson, in his room at the cheap hotel where he lived, struggled to be calm in this moment of triumph. He began to dictate.

Near him, well within range of vision, sat his willing prisoner. Not once since they left the newspaper office together had the cashier been out of Johnson's sight. Helpless, hopeless, but with a conscience no longer heavily burdened, the unfortunate man listened now just as he had listened while the reporter, without betraying his source of information, craftily verified by telephone the wandering confession.

Clear and without interruption the stream of dictation poured over the wire. The story was written as a newspaper story should be written, and when it was told it ended.

"That's all," sighed Johnson proudly. "I'll hold him here till two o'clock to make the beat an absolute cinch. Then I'll 'phone the police."

In the newspaper office the rewrite man had hardly drummed out the last line of copy before the sheet of paper was snatched from his typewriter and rushed in the wake of former scudding sheets to the composing room, just in time for the first edition.

"There never was a beat like it," cried the exultant city editor. "I don't see how he landed it."

"It's a great piece of newspaper work," agreed the managing editor. "No man in the country could have done better. Who is Johnson?"

"A new man, but I've taught him the game already. He didn't wait for any assignment--just went right out and dug that cashier up." The city editor's voice cracked with enthusiasm. "That's the kind of newspaper men we turn out in little old New York."

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THE GAY DECEIVER

By Howard P. Stephenson

The only other passenger thumbed his tobacco into a melancholy pipe-bowl.

"What's your line?" he asked.

"Soap and Christmas candles," I said, and held out my cigar for his light.

"Married?"

"Yes, you?"

"Um-m-m-m." And he stretched his legs, drew up his elbows and looked worried.

"When I was making this territory about this time last year," he began, "I met a pretty, wifely little girl, and we were married before I left town. Tarascon wasn't on my regular trip then, but now I have to strike home once a month.

"You see, I was raised in a family of sisters--all older than I, all unmarried. I could never bring myself to tell them about Edyth. They don't know it yet. Live in Cranford, on the Vandalia. My wife thinks I haven't any folks."

"Well?"

He blushed. "There--it--we--I'm going to be a father." Then he did blush.

I laughed, sympathetic. "You can't bear not to let your sisters know?" I ventured.

He nodded and gulped.

"Tarascon," called the brakeman. "Tarascon."

* * * * *

I was on the hot veranda of the Croxton House, at Croxton, some two weeks later, when I felt a modest hand on my shoulder.

"Boy or girl?" were my first words, with a grin.

"Girl," announced the father with pride. "Sophronia Judith Rose. Named for my sisters."

He seated himself, fished in his pocket for his pipe, and smiled nervously.

"They knew it when I got home," he said. "I'd left Edyth's letter in my room. I believe they had been suspecting all along. Well, they never said a thing at supper, but when I went upstairs I saw a string of baby ribbon sticking out of my sample case. The girls had packed it full of things from their hope boxes. Baby things, they were.

"I tried to bluff it out, but I--I couldn't do it, and I'd told them all about it five minutes after I came downstairs.

"We all took the train for Tarascon the next day. Edyth was tickled--said she'd suspected I had sisters. She hadn't, though, of course.

"So I had to name the baby for them. Weighed eleven pounds, too.

"My, I've got to catch that 9:32 for Tarascon!"

He pulled out his watch, then turned the dial to me sheepishly. Under the crystal was a tiny slip of narrow ribbon, baby blue.

"So long," he said. "Mayn't see you again. This is my last trip. The firm's giving me a city job, where I can be with the family."

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IN COLD BLOOD

By Joseph Hall

With the door of her room locked Viola Perrin opened the letter which she had taken from her husband's office table. It was not very securely glued, and she succeeded in loosening the flap without marring the envelope.

When she had read it she dropped the thing upon her dressing table and stared with dry, unseeing eyes into the mirror. Her world had crumbled. She did not burst into tears. She was one of those women who cannot weep. The thing that had happened to her left her racked, writhing, tearless.

Suddenly the horror of the thing struck her with full force. St. John was untrue. He was intriguing with another woman even while he was being the same courteous, attentive husband to her that he had always been. She rose and clenched her hands fiercely. She caught her lower lip cruelly between her teeth. For the first time in her life she wanted to scream.

In an instant she was hot with anger and hurt pride. She rose quickly and dressed for the street. She hurried. She must get away. She had no right in this room, in this house, in the house of a man who did not love her.

Outside she walked to the street car. She had no plan. She did not intend to go to his office. She was simply getting away from his home.

She went into a department store and idly looked at some things without knowing what they were. It was a sale day, and the crowd in the store was immense. She came to herself when a sharp cry sounded at her right and the throng surged in that direction.

A woman had fainted, one of the saleswomen. She was a tall woman, thin and not bad looking. She had been waiting on Viola the moment before, and she had simply crumpled behind the counter without a word. The cry had come from a cash-girl who happened to see her fall. They lifted the woman and carried her limp and pitiful to the elevator, a policeman keeping back the crowd.

She left the store and wandered again aimlessly about the streets. The sidewalks were crowded, mostly with women. It was getting warm, and the women all looked tired and wilted. Lines of them disappeared into certain doors, and Viola, looking in, saw that these doors were entrances to cheap restaurants. It was the lunch hour, and these women were taking their short recess.

The display in the window of one of these places attracted her attention. It contained meats in various stages of preparation and dressing and a wild assortment of vegetables. Some flies had gotten inside the glass and hovered about the viands. She turned away in disgust.

She thought of her own lunch. When she was downtown St. John always took her to lunch with him at one of the hotels. The white napery, the soft lights, the stealthy-footed waiters, the music, the silver sprang into her mind in vivid contrast to the cheap display she had just turned from. She shuddered.

In the palm room of the Brinton with the cool, shadowed comfort about her and an ice before her, the thought of her tragedy returned. She had been evading it all day, putting it away from her, shunning it. But it was always with her, reminding her that her world, the life she had lived, was shattered.

What then? She must go away. It would be better to go quietly, without giving any reason, simply leave. Of course St. John would understand, as would Myrtle Weiss, but their guilt would seal their tongues.

Disappear? And then what? How would she live? What could she do? She was incompetent to teach. She knew nothing about office work. Of course, she could clerk in a store.

Suddenly a vision of what that life would mean to her passed deadeningly before her. She remembered the thin, tall woman who had fainted behind the counter without a word. The lines of wilted workers, hastening in their worn clothes to their cheap lunches, rose before her. She shivered.

For seven years she had lived in the lap of luxury. Nothing had been denied her. She had the best of clothes, the best of service, the choicest of food, the promptest of attention of every kind. Her home was one of the handsomest houses in the most restricted and stylish residence district of the city.

Another thought came to her. No one knew that she had found the letter.

The clock in the palm room showed the time to be one-thirty. St. John, she knew, was out of town.

She rose quickly and left the room. At the office Miss Johnson, the stenographer, had just returned from the dairy lunch across the street. She was powdering her rather unattractive nose. Mrs. Perin smiled at her as she entered her husband's room. Vaguely she envied this homely creature.

The table was undisturbed, exactly as she had left it.

She sealed the letter carefully and replaced it on the top of the little pile of mail upon the blotter.

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HOUSEWORK--AND THE MAN

By Freeman Tilden

"And you live here--all alone?" she said.

"It looks it, doesn't it?" replied Archer, with a little embarrassed grin. "I have a woman come in once a week to clean up. I do the rest--when it gets done. I suppose it looks pretty bad--to you."

She ran her finger appraisingly along the table and held it up. It was covered with dust. She laughed. "Men can't keep house," she said.

She rummaged around until she found a rag that would serve as a duster.

"Now, please don't bother, Miss----" he began.

"I'm married," she corrected soberly. "_Mrs._ Kincaid."

"Well, Mrs. Kincaid, please don't bother to do that. Really, I'm afraid I enjoy dirt."

"Nobody enjoys dirt," was her severe reply. "Not if they can be clean."

He sat and watched her. He couldn't help laughing. With deft hands she seemed to fathom every hiding-place of dust. And he noticed that her cheeks, which had been pale enough when she came in, were becoming radiant.

Pretty soon she turned her attention to the bed. "Well, of all the messes I ever saw!" she exclaimed. "Who ever showed you how to make up a bed?"

"You just watch me," she told him. "Like this--and then like this--then you smooth it out--see?"

"It sure does look better," he admitted. "But please don't poke around in the kitchen. At least spare me that mortification."

She didn't heed his plea. "I thought so!" she exclaimed. "Not a dish washed!"

"I was going to wash them this afternoon," said Archer humbly.

"Huh! don't you know it's twice as hard after you let them stand? Where's the dishcloth?"

"Oh, come now, really, I won't have you----"

She paid no attention to him. "What pretty dishes!" she said, as the hot water began to run.

"Five-and-ten cent store," Archer laughed.

"Really? And they look much prettier than mine. Do you know, I think this is a dear little place."

"Dishwashing is the worst part of it," said the young man.

"Listen," she told him. "Whenever the dishes have egg on them, don't put the hot water on first. Watch me...."

She even insisted on rearranging his little closet of dishes. She cleaned the top of the gas range. Archer vainly tried to prevent her. She was singing now, as she worked. She straightened the pictures on the wall. She averred that she couldn't be happy till she had swept the place from end to end.

After it was all over they sat down facing each other. There was a pink flush of satisfaction on her cheeks.

"And I never knew who lived up here," she began. "I must say you're quiet. These apartment houses are just like a lot of cigar boxes. You know our flat is right underneath."

"It's so decent of you," began Arthur.

"Listen," she interrupted. "I've had a perfectly splendid time. I suppose I must be going now. It's five o'clock, isn't it?"

He nodded.

At the door she stopped and said, "I've often seen you down at the street door, and wondered whether you'd speak some time. You don't think--because I came in here----"

"I think nothing," he said.

"I _knew_ you were that kind of a fellow," she whispered, and fled downstairs.

* * * * *

Kincaid came in at 6:10.

"Supper ready?" he asked.

She threw down the magazine she was reading. "I guess you won't starve! It's nothing but cook, cook all the time, anyway. I'm getting tired of it."

Kincaid said nothing. His fingers were resting on the dining-table. When he took them away there were little patches of varnish showing through the dust.

She went out into the kitchen and wearily put on a torn apron. The sink was full of unwashed dishes. He saw them and was unwise enough to comment on what he saw.

She turned upon him like a flash.

"If you don't like to see them, wash them yourself," she said. "I'm sick of housework, anyway."

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HER MEMORY

By Dwight M. Wiley

Warrington had really no right to be angry.

He was not engaged to Virginia, merely engaged with her in a somewhat tempestuous summer flirtation. Down in his heart he knew it for just that. But he was angry no less, for she had allowed a "hulking ass" newly arrived at the Inn to "hog her whole program and make him look a fool before every one."

"Ah ha!" cried the still small voice, "so it's Pride not Heart." And that made him more angry than ever.

So he went away from the ball-room, out onto the dim veranda, and strode up and down muttering things better left unmuttered. Presently he stopped at the far shadowed end, lit a cigarette, snapped his case viciously, and said "damn."

A demure voice just behind him said "shocking!" and he turned to confront a small figure in a big chair backed up against the wall.

"I repeat, shocking," said the voice--a very nice voice. And giggled--a very ripply little gurgly little giggle.

His anger went away.

"Mysterious lady of the shadows," he said (he was very good at that sort of thing),"does my righteous wrath amuse you?"

He came nearer. He had thought he knew every girl at the Hotel. Here was a strange one, and pretty. Very. He decided that monopolizing Virginia had been a mistake.

"It's not a night for wrath, righteous or otherwise. See!" and she stretched out her arms to the great moon hanging low over the golf links beyond.

He hunted for a chair. This was bully. And when he had drawn one up, quite close:

"Whence do you come, all silvery with the moon, to chide me for my sins, moon maid?"

Without doubt he was outdoing himself.

She laughed softly and leaned toward him, elfin in the pale shimmer of light. "I am Romance," she breathed, "and this is my night. The night, the moon, and I conspire to make magic."

He secured a slim hand. The pace was telling. His voice was a little husky.

"Your charms are very potent, moon maid," he said, "it is magic, isn't it? It--it doesn't happen like this--really."

Their eyes met--clung.

"You--you take my breath," he stammered. "Does your heart mean what your eyes are saying? Don't--don't look at me like that unless you do--mean it."

She didn't answer in words. She, too, was breathing quickly.

He released her hand, and sprang up--half turned away. Then he dropped to the arm of her chair. Swiftly he took her face in his two hands. The throbbing of her throat intoxicated him. "I--I--love me," he stammered.

Her lips moved. A sob more poignant than words. They kissed for a long time.

There were footsteps down the veranda. She drew away. She recognized her mother's voice and Miss Neilson's. She was thinking very quickly. Should she send him away or end it now--end it all now?

"You darling--you darling. I--I love you," he was saying.

She leaned to him. "Kiss me. Kiss me--quickly."

The voices were quite close now.

"Mother," she called, "here I am." She laughed. "But I guess you know I wouldn't run away. Mother, this is Mr.--ah--Brown, and we have been discussing--doctors. Mr. Brown has an uncle in exactly my condition. Hopelessly paralyzed."

She said it calmly. The world reeled. His brain was numb. She was being wheeled away by the nurse. A wheeled chair--God!

"Good-night," she called.

A cripple. He had kissed her. Horrible! He made for the bar.

In her room while the nurse was making her ready for bed, the mother said, "How strange you look, dear. And how--how beautiful."

She flung her arms wide in an intoxication of triumph. "Mother," she half sobbed, "all my life to now I've been just--just a thing. A cripple. Now--now--I am a woman."

"Oh, God!" she cried, her eyes starry. "Life is good--good. For now--now I have--a Memory."

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HIS JOURNEY'S END.

By Ruth Sterry

Fog enfolded the city in a drenching white veil.

It clung to the windows of the Palace Hotel and shut out the light from the bedroom in which a man sat earnestly penning a letter. It seemed to make an effort at entrance as though it would blot from the paper the words he wrote.

"Palace Hotel,
Wednesday morning.

"Dear Miss Arliss,