Chapter III: Part 3

"It seems strange to call you that when I am about to ask you to be my wife. Yet what can I do when I have seen you only once?

"You surely remember, do you not, that one day when you and I met and were held prisoners by the train wreck in the San Joaquin Valley, you said I might call on you when I returned to San Francisco after my trip to the Orient? But you could not have dreamed what your permission meant to the lonely, business-bound coffee merchant who long ago, in the poisonous lands of South America, had shut his heart to women's smiles, and had turned deaf ears to the music of their voices.

"Nor can I ever hope to make you understand what it meant during the long journeying that followed the wreck. The memory of you with your cheeriness, your undaunted smile in all the hardship of that wreck, has brought new life to me.

"For eight months I have dreamed of you day and night. During that time I have not once lost the picture of heated desert waste, the ugly wreckage of the train, the groaning, weeping people--and you, a girl with tender eyes, a smile of sympathy for the unluckiest devil, and ready resourcefulness to ease pain that would have done credit to an army nurse. I have dreamed of you in my home--awaiting my coming with your radiant smile.

"And so, unable to come to you in simple friendship, I thought it best to write first and explain. I wanted to come with your permission granted after you knew that I love you--I love you. I like to write the words, I want you for my wife.

"I stopped on my way from the station to buy all the flowers I could find to send with this note. I chose spring blossoms because they are so much like you.

"I am waiting with mad impatience for your answer. Do not regard my love lightly. It springs from the unspent passions, the unfulfilled ideals of a lifetime. Oh, my dear, speed your answer back to me. Say I may come to you--now.

"Yours to eternity,
"John Marble."

It was three o'clock in the afternoon before the fog lifted. It vanished before the piercing rays of the bright spring sun. At the windows of the Palace Hotel little rays of sunlight struck aslant the glass as though merrily demanding admission. They poured through the windows of John Marble's room and illumined his face as he, with trembling fingers, opened a note a messenger had brought. A single sunbeam fell on the paper, blurring the lines so that he shifted it to read:

"600 Pacific Avenue,
Wednesday afternoon.

"Mr. John Marble,

"Dear Sir:

"We put your flowers on her coffin to-day. She was like the spring blossoms which she loved. They hold your letter to her buried in the depths of their bloom. She had made my life a heaven for five bright months. I am trying to bear God's will.

"Her husband,
"Morrison Grey."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

By Harriet Lummis Smith

Forbes had bribed his way past the gateman and stood on the station platform at the foot of the stairs, his manner drearily resigned. He had come to meet a girl and he did not fancy the job.

"Hang it, man," he had protested, when Keith Chandler, his partner, summoned to New York by a telegram, had deputed Forbes to meet the four o'clock train, and incidentally, his sister-in-law. "I shouldn't know the girl."

"I've never seen her myself," his friend reminded him. "She was in Japan when Agnes and I were married, studying decorative art. Cabled she'd come home for the wedding if we'd postpone it three months." Chandler indulged himself in a smile of reminiscent scorn.

"If Mrs. Chandler would accompany me," said Forbes, brightening. He really liked his partner's wife, partly because her devotion to her husband made unnecessary those defenses he was accustomed to erect about himself in the society of women under sixty. Chandler's answer shattered his hopes.

"If Agnes could leave the baby it wouldn't be necessary to trouble you. But the little thing's under the weather. Nothing serious, but you couldn't bribe Agnes out of the house till the child's herself again. And you won't have any trouble picking Diantha out of the crowd. She looks like Agnes," Chandler ended complacently. "There won't be two of that kind on any one train, my boy."

Forbes, immaculate in his gray business suit, frowningly scanned the crowd hurrying past, the rabble of men with suit-cases on ahead, the women following more deliberately. Heavens, what a swarm of women! Forbes saw himself addressing the wrong girl and snubbed for his pains.

Then all in a moment a figure took on distinction, a girl splendidly tall, who carried herself as if proud of every inch, who walked the station platform in a fashion suggesting that she could dance all night, and go horseback riding in the morning. Yes, she was like Mrs. Chandler, only larger, handsomer, more stunning in a word. Hat in hand he approached her.

"Miss Byrd, I believe."

The girl halted, facing him squarely. He had no time for explanations. A well-shaped, perfectly gloved hand rested lightly on either shoulder. He had a bewildering impression of a tall figure swaying toward him, of a fragrance too elusive to be called perfume, of gray eyes flecked with violet. Then her lips touched his.

"Miss Byrd, indeed!" She was laughing in his face. "You are my first and only brother, young man, and I warn you I shall make you live up to the part." One hand slipped from his shoulder and through his arm. He found himself walking beside her, following the porter who carried her satchels, and listening mechanically to a flow of words which fortunately required no reply.

The affair was a hideous nightmare. Mistaking him for Chandler, whom she had never seen, this unsuspecting girl had kissed him before a hundred witnesses. Most appalling of all, an explanation seemed an unthinkable brutality. When once she knew, she could never look him in the face again. It was essential to keep her in ignorance of her blunder till he left her at Chandler's door.

Not till they were seated in a taxicab did she ask a direct question. This was fortunate, as Forbes had been incapable of an intelligent reply.

"How's the baby, Keith?"

"The baby--oh, yes, the little thing has been slightly under the weather." As he repeated the information imparted by Chandler earlier in the day, Forbes blushed to his ears.

"Little darling!" murmured the girl. "How many teeth has she?"

"Teeth! Oh--I--the usual number, I believe."

"I'm awfully ignorant, Keith. I ought to be ashamed to confess it, but I really don't know what is the usual number for a child of six months."

Vainly she waited for enlightenment. Forbes' answer was a tortured smile. His agonized prayer that she might change the subject was granted all too soon.

"How's Reggie?"

"I beg pardon." Forbes' jaw dropped. His Christian name was Reginald.

"Mr. Forbes. I prefer to call him Reggie. Do you admire him as extravagantly as Agnes does? Then I see I shall be forced to conceal my prejudice to keep peace in the family."

"Prejudice? You are prejudiced against him?"

"Of course. Such a bundle of perfection."

"Oh, no." Forbes spoke with generous earnestness. "He's not that at all. Just an ordinary good sort."

"Then you think I shall like him?"

The innocent question stabbed him. "No," Forbes said after a long pause. "You won't like him." In his heart he felt he was understating the case. She would regard him with abhorrence. Every moment this deception continued, even though practised to spare her feelings, added to her righteous grievance. The pain in his voice as he spoke was a surprise to himself.

"He must be a singular person," mused the girl. "Agnes vows he is perfection. You reassure me by acknowledging him human, and yet you are certain I won't like him. Or is that because I am so unreasonable?"

"Really, Miss Byrd----"

He thought she was going to kiss him again, she leaned toward him so swiftly. His heart stood still though his mood could be hardly characterized as shrinking. But she confined herself to beating a tattoo against his arm with a little clenched fist.

"I won't be Miss Byrd to my only brother, I _won't_! Say Diantha."

"Di-an-tha."

"You say it as if it were Keren-Happuch. Try it again."

He stammered out the three melodious syllables. He was thinking less of her name than of her eyes. There were golden mischievous lights swimming like motes in the blue, and her drooping lashes made black shadows. She turned her head and the curve of her neck was distracting.

"Why, he's stopping," Diantha cried. "Are we there?"

Incredible as it seemed, they were at Chandler's door. "Wait," Forbes said to the driver, his voice hoarse. He took Diantha's arm to assist her up the steps and she looked at him wonderingly.

"Aren't you coming in?"

"Not just now." Forbes forced a smile. It was possible that they would never meet again, and if they did, her friendliness would have been transformed into implacable enmity. He extended his hand. "Good-bye," he whispered.

"_Au revoir._" His agreeable doubt whether her ideals of sisterliness would lead her to something more affectionate than a handclasp was merged in disappointment. The door swung open and she disappeared. Forbes went back to the cab in a dejection only partially dissipated by Mrs. Chandler's note next day.

"Dear Mr. Forbes:

"Can't you dine with us Friday? We have all enjoyed a good laugh over Diantha's absurd mistake.

"Cordially yours,
"Agnes Byrd Chandler."

Forbes' uncertainty as to how far Mrs. Chandler was in her sister's confidence was unenlightened three weeks later when he asked Diantha to marry him. He had waited three weeks, not from choice, but because he had been unable to induce that elusive young woman to listen to him earlier.

She looked past him, her changeful eyes sombre and sad like the sea under clouds. "I can't say yes," she murmured plaintively, "without owning up. And if I own up, you'll want me to say no."

"Diantha!" he faltered. Used as he was to feminine extravagance in speech, her words chilled him.

She turned her tragic gaze on him. "I knew it was you all the time."

"I don't understand."

"That day at the train. Agnes had sent me a kodak picture of Keith and yourself taken on a fishing trip and I recognized you instantly. I had a little prejudice against you to start with, Agnes praised you so preposterously, and then when I saw you looking so bored and superior--oh, I know it was immodest and unwomanly and perfectly horrid, but I just had an intuition of the way you'd gone through life holding women at arm's length, and I made up my mind to give you something to think about."

The confession ended in a half sob. A tear clung for an instant to her curving lashes then fell to her cheek. Forbes leaned closer, murmuring something neither an assurance of forgiveness nor altogether entreaty, but a mixture of both. If it was further food for thought for which he pleaded, he did not ask in vain.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

HOPE

By Edward Thomas Noonan

"Here's a pathetic case of chronic melancholia," the doctor continued, as we walked among the inmates. "That white-haired woman has been here twenty-six years. She is entirely tractable with one obsession. Every Sunday she writes this letter:

"'Sunday.

"'Dear John:

"'I am sorry we quarreled when you were going away out West. It was all my fault. I hope you will forgive and write.

"'Your loving,
"'Esther.'

"Every Monday she asks for a letter, and, though receiving none, becomes radiant with hope and says: 'It will come to-morrow.' The last of the week she is depressed. Sunday she again writes her letter. That has been her life for twenty-six years. Her youthful face is due to her mental inactivity. Aimlessly she does whatever is suggested. The years roll on and her emotions alternate between silent grief and fervid hope.

"This is the male ward. That tall man has been here twenty years. His history sheet says from alcoholism. He went to Alaska, struck gold, and returned home to marry the girl he left behind. He found her insane and began drinking, lost his fortune and then his reason, and became a ward of the State, always talking about his girl and events that happened long ago.

"He is the 'John' to whom 'Esther' writes her letter.

"They meet every day.

"They will never know each other."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

COLLUSION

By Lincoln Steffens

The sacred door of the Judge's chambers bolted open and he beheld the light, lovely figure of a woman trembling before him; brave, afraid.

"Oh, Judge," she panted, but she turned and closing the door securely, put her back against it to hold it shut. And so at bay, she called to him:

"Judge, Judge, can't I tell you the truth? Can't I? My lawyer says I mustn't. He says perjury is the only way. And I--I have done perjury, Judge. So has my husband. And I'll swear to it all in court when we are under oath. But here where we are all alone, you and I, unsworn, with no one to hear, can't I tell you the truth?

"I must. I can't stand the lies. Yes, yes, I know they are merely forms, legal forms. My lawyer has explained that, and that we must respect the law and comply with its requirements. And we'll do that, Judge; we have, and I'll go through with it, if--I mean that it would help me if I could know that you were not deceived by the lies; if I could know that you knew the truth.

"And the truth is so much truer and more beautiful than the lies. Ours is. I loved him, Judge. I love him now. And he loved me. And it wasn't his fault that he fell in love with her. And she didn't mean to--to hurt me so. She was my friend. I brought them together. I was happy when I brought them together, her, my old chum, and him, my lover; and when I saw that they took to each other, I was glad. I never thought of their loving. I didn't think of that till, by and by, I found that they were avoiding each other. I couldn't get them to meet any more. That made me think--it was terrible what I thought.

"I thought--Judge, I knew that they had agreed not to meet any more because they had discovered that they loved each other. He admitted it, when I asked him, finally. So did she, later, when upon my demand, we all three met to speak what was in our hearts.

"That was when I refused to have it so. I wouldn't keep a man who loved another woman. I couldn't, could I? And so I said I would go away and get the divorce and let them be together and, by and by--marry.

"It was all to be clean and honourable and fine, Judge. We didn't know then the requirements of the law. We didn't know we shouldn't have an honest understanding like that. And I--I didn't know that I had to make charges against him that are not true, and that he had to write me letters to prove he had refused to support me; false letters; and coarse. He? Coarse? Judge, he----

"But I'm not complaining. We copied, my husband and I, the letters the lawyer wrote out for us to sign and date back and show to you. We have done our part. I have lived here, in this terrible place, among these other--people. I have been here the required length of time for the 'residence.' I have withstood the looks we get from men--and women. We have obeyed the law, yes, and I will come to your court and swear--I will swear falsely, Judge, to all you ask. I must, mustn't I? I can't go on this way loving a man who doesn't love me. And I can't keep two lovers apart, can I? When love is so beautiful, so right, so good. Don't I know? And it must be pure.

"So I will do my duty, just as my lawyer does his, and as you do yours. Oh, I know; I know how conscientious you all are, and especially you, Judge. My lawyer has told me, again and again, that you know it's all perjury. Every time I wanted to come to you and tell you the truth, he has said that you understood. He forbade me to come; he doesn't know I am here now. But I had to come. I think I might not be able to go through with it if I had not told you the truth myself: How we three have agreed perfectly, he and I and she; how we are to pay each a third of the costs. They were so generous about it, begging to pay all. And I want you to be sure we are all perfectly reconciled to the change; all of us; I, too; perfectly.

"And, Judge, he, my husband, he couldn't, he simply could not have written letters like that. Oh, I'll swear to them; I'll swear to anything, I'll do anything, almost, if--if only you, Judge----"

The Judge rose.

"If," he finished for her, "if only I will understand. Well, I will."

And he went to the door, opened it wide and, as she passed, he bowed to the woman with the respect which, till that day, he had paid only to the Law.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

FAITHFUL TO THE END

By Clair W. Perry

Embarkation of the 10th London Reservists for France was the occasion of a demonstration in the city such as had not been seen since the Canadian contingent crossed the Channel. The call for these fresh troops had a sinister significance. It meant the long-awaited "general advance" from Calais to Belfort was impending. At the quay, where the dingy transports were swallowing up file after file of England's youth, were hundreds of women and girls come to bid a bitter-sweet farewell to their lads, whose vigorous bodies were to be crammed into the hungry maw of war.

Lieutenant Topham, Wing Commander of the aerial division with the 10th, stood apart at the far end of the quay. He had just finished superintending the loading of his machines. He was watching the troops file aboard, hungrily absorbed in the dramatic scenes that passed, one after the other like cinema scenes, when wife, mother, sweetheart, sister, kissed loved ones good-bye. He moved nearer the sloping gangway where were enacted these hasty tender farewells, swift embraces at the foot of the passage, so swift the progress of the tramping files was scarcely halted, each woman, for an instant, giving up her soul in an embrace--and the next instant giving up her son, brother, or mate to his Maker--or his destroyer.

Topham was deeply moved by the scenes. But it was a selfish emotion. There was no one to bid him farewell. For the first time in his careless life he felt the lack. He had no mother, no sister, no sweetheart. His men friends, even, were not there; they had gone on before.

As he moved nearer the ship on which he was to take passage for France, and the wild dash in air for which he had been detailed, to shell the recently established German Zeppelin base near "Hill 60," there came over him a premonition of death and a yearning emotion. He wanted some human being to bid him farewell, some one who placed his life above all else, a woman who cared.

In his abstracted progress he almost ran into the figure of a girl. She was standing close to the moving file, and in her searching eyes, as Topham looked in silent apology, he saw a fire that thrilled him. He noted, too, beauty, and a band of mourning on her sleeve. Her gaze pierced Topham with compelling appeal. The bugle was giving its piercing call, "All hands on." With a sudden impulse Topham stepped close to the girl.

"Are you sending--some one away?" he queried.

She shook her head and touched the band on her arm.

"My father--a month ago--at Ypres," she replied.

"I am going--over there," eagerly explained Topham, "and I have no one. I feel that I--shall never return. I wonder if you---- Will you kiss me good-bye? I promise you I shall never kiss another woman--that I will be faithful--until the end," he finished with wistful whimsicality.

Her smile was like a soft flame. Without a word she stepped close to him and, as he doffed his cap and bent, she clasped him about the neck, drew his close-cropped head down, and kissed him on the lips.

There was no time for words. Topham had to spring for the moving gang-plank. The bugle had sounded its last call for stragglers such as he. The girl who had given him his sweet farewell was swallowed up in the crowd.

Halfway across the Channel Topham found he could not even recall the girl's features, the colour of her eyes or hair. All that remained to him was a dim expression of sweet, yearning womanliness, an abstract conception.

At the transfer hospital, a week later, Topham's shattered, helpless form was laid for a few moments on a cot. His fall from a great height after a desperate duel with a German Taube left him victor and hero but with the shadow of death hovering over him. Numbness mercifully stilled the pain that had gripped him and he lay passive. It was not until he felt the touch of a hand softer than that of the hurrying surgeon who had given hasty "first aid" examination that he opened his eyes. A woman nurse, the only one he had seen so near the lines, was bending over him. He could see only dimly. A mist was over his eyes from the explosion of his engine. Her touch, however, seemed to give him a thrill of vitality. When she moved on he sank into semi-coma, with the feeling of chill. Death bearing down on him. She moved again to his side and he moaned. The grim grip was tightening. Like a boy he was afraid. In the world there was only himself, this woman, and approaching death.

"I am going," he muttered swiftly, as the nurse bent near. "Will you kiss me good-bye? I can promise you--I will be faithful--until the end." His smile was a pitiful effort at humour. He felt her warm lips on his--and then oblivion.

Topham came to himself--save for the memory of a delirium of travel in motor-ambulance and boat--in a clean white bed in a large, lofty room. When his senses cleared he knew he was in England. White-clad nurses moved about the room in which were many other beds containing huddled or stretched-out figures. At his first movement one of the nurses came to his bedside. Her keen glance, under her significant cap, spoke efficiency and warm human sympathy. A few deft touches, a spoon of medicine, a pat of the pillow, and she was gone.

Topham awoke again in the dark small hours when man's vitality is at its lowest ebb; awoke with that familiar depression, as of a chill hand gripping his heart--squeezing his very soul. It was Death, again, groping for him. Only his brain seemed clear. He tinkled, with a supreme effort, the bell at his bedside. A nurse came, her face indistinct in the dim light, and bent over him in an attitude of solicitation.

"What is it?" she asked, and her voice seemed that of an angel from Heaven.

"I--I am almost gone," gasped Topham. "My heart is stopping. I--I am not afraid--but--it is so lonely. I have no one. Could you--kiss me--good-bye?"

He was halted by a swift movement. She had raised his head and he swallowed a draft of something that sent a liquid thrill through him. In a trice his feeling changed from that of a sinking, suffocating soul to that of a man whose life is rushing back into him. The nurse was smiling into his eyes.

"You were going to say," she murmured musically, "that you will be faithful to the end."

Topham opened his eyes wider. That face--the ripe lips--the clear, burning eyes! They were those of the girl at the quay--of the nurse at the transfer hospital--no, of the nurse who had bent over him when he first regained consciousness here--yes, of all three. A deep flush overspread his pallid face.

"You said you would be faithful to the end," she repeated roguishly. He groped for an answer.

"In my mind," he confessed, "I did not know you. But in my heart I must have known you all the time."

Then she kissed him again.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

ARLETTA

By Margaret Ade

It was on a Monday morning in August that Miss Backbay climbed the brownstone steps to the rooming-house conducted by Mrs. Edward Southend in Massachusetts Avenue, Boston. Miss Backbay was short, stout, and sixty, and her face was flushed and scowling.

"I wish to speak with Mrs. Southend," she snapped at the woman who opened the door. The woman, a middle-aged, quiet-looking little woman, glanced at the card and said: "I am Mrs. Southend, Miss Backbay; come this way please."

In the parlour Miss Backbay and Mrs. Southend looked into each other's eyes for a few moments and exchanged a silent challenge; then Miss Backbay leaned forward in her chair and said: "I have come, Mrs. Southend, to talk with you concerning this--this affair between your son and my niece. Miss Arletta Backbay. I have, as you know, brought her up, and I love her as if she were my own daughter. She is the last of the Backbays--the Backbays of Backbay. Our family lived on Beacon Hill when Boston Common was a farming district. The Backbays are direct--_direct_ descendants of William I, King of England--William the Conqueror."

Miss Backbay drew a long, deep breath.

Mrs. Southend was silent.

"I have devoted years of my life," Miss Backbay continued, "to the education of my niece. Nothing has been spared to prepare her for the high social position to which, by her ancestry alone, she is entitled. I am going into this bit of family history so you will understand--so you will see this affair from my viewpoint. I have been exceedingly careful in the selection of her teachers, her associates, and her servants. Your son came to us well recommended by his pastor and by his former employer. I have no fault to find with him as--as a chauffeur, but as a suitor for the hand of my niece he--he is impossible. Absolutely! The thing is absurd. I--I have done what I could to break up this affair. I have discharged him. But my niece has defied me. She assures me that she loves him and--and will marry him in spite of everything. She is headstrong, self-willed, and--and completely bewitched. She has lost all pride--pride in her ancient lineage. Now I have come to you to beseech you to use your influence with your son. Induce him to leave the city--he must leave the city, if only for a year. I--I shall pay----"

"Pardon me, just a moment, Miss Backbay." Mrs. Southend left the room, and in a few minutes she returned carrying a large volume, her fingers between the pages.

"As I listened to you, Miss Backbay, the thought came to me very forcibly that it is a pity--a great pity--that you could not have selected your ancestors as you do your servants--from the better class of respectable working people. But, of course, you could not. You could, however, try to live them down--forget them--some of them, anyway. Listen to this biographical sketch of your most famous ancestor. It is from page 659 of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica': 'William I, King of England--William the Conqueror, born 1027 or 1028. He was the bastard son of Robert the Devil, Duke of Normandy, by Arletta, the daughter of a tanner.'"

Mrs. Southend closed the book with a bang.

"Not much to boast about, is it? We all have ancestors, Miss Backbay, but the less said about some of them the better. And now, if my son wants to go out of _his_ class and mix it up with Robert the Devil and Arletta--why, that's his--his funeral. You'll excuse me now, Miss Backbay. I have my husband's dinner to prepare."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

WHICH?

By Joseph Hall

They were two women, one young, radiant, the other gently, beautifully old.

"But, Auntie, it's such fun."

The older rose.

"Wait."

In a moment she had returned. Two faded yellow letters lay upon the young girl's lap.

"Read them."

Wonderingly the girl obeyed. The first read:

"Dearest:

"I leave you to John. It is plain you care for him. I love you. Just
now it seems that life without you is impossible. But I can no
longer doubt. If you cared, there would be no doubt. John is my
friend. I would rather see you his than any others, since you cannot
be mine. God bless you.

"Will."

The other:

"Beloved:

"I am leaving you to the better man. For me there can never be
another love. But it is best--it is the right thing--and I am,
yes, I am glad that it is Will you love instead of me. You cannot be
anything but happy with him. With me--but that is a dream I must
learn to forget.

"As ever and ever,
"John."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

WHAT THE VANDALS LEAVE

By Herbert Riley Howe

The war was over, and he was back in his native city that had been retaken from the Vandals. He was walking rapidly through a dimly lit quarter. A woman touched his arm and accosted him in fuddled accents.

"Where are you going, M'sieu? With me, hein?"

He laughed.

"No, not with you, old girl. I'm going to find my sweetheart."

He looked down at her. They were near a street lamp. She screamed. He seized her by the shoulders and dragged her closer to the light. His fingers dug her flesh, and his eyes gleamed.

"Joan!" he gasped.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

BEN T. ALLEN, ATTY., VS. HIMSELF

By William H. Hamby

"Lawyers always get theirs." The hardware dealer on the north side spoke with some bitterness and entire literalness. The check for one hundred and seventy-five dollars just wrenched from its stub bore "Ben T. Allen, Atty.," in the middle, and "Peter Shaw Hardware Co.," at the bottom.

Peter, by the aid and advice of counsel, had been resisting the payment of a merchant's tax of five dollars a year which the alleged city of Clayton Center had insisted on collecting. The case had now been in the supreme court two years. This check was merely "on account."

The check had occasioned the remark, but the bitterness back of it was engendered by another case, in which Peter had been prosecuting his claims for the affection of Betty Lane, court stenographer. Attorney Allen appeared against him this time instead of for him, and in both cases Peter seemed to be getting the worst of it.

But that, of course, is all in the viewpoint. At that moment Attorney Allen stood by the front window of his offices, his thick hair tangled like the fleece of a black sheep after a restless night, his soul splashing in a vat of gloom. Betty Lane had just passed through the courthouse yard on her way to work. Nature had made Betty very attractive, but her job had made her independent.

The lawyer was bitterly despondent. Law practice in Clayton Center was no longer lucrative. Although Allen was very dextrous in twisting three-ply bandages around the eyes of the Lady with the Scales, the Lady with the Pencil at the right of the Judge was not so blind. The citizens of Clayton Center had developed a spineless, milksop tendency to settle even their constitutional rights out of court. Besides Betty's seven dollars a day Allen's income looked as ill-fed as a dromedary in an elephant parade.

The young lawyer's heart was so heavy over his light matrimonial prospects that he went out that night with some of the boys and got drunk. In returning at one A. M., singing "It Was at Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party--I was seeing Nellie home," he fell off the board sidewalk and broke the established precedent that a drunken man cannot hurt himself by a fall.

The breaking of one leg was the most fortunate accident upon which a distressed barrister ever fell. It gave him two legs on which to stand in court.

He sued the city immediately for ten thousand dollars' damages on account of the defective sidewalk. His three companions swore positively that there was not only one hole in the walk, but two, and not only two loose boards, but six.

Moreover, it was not a plain fracture of the limb. Allen proved by a liver specialist that the jolt had permanently deranged his liver; a spine specialist testified the jar had injured the fourteenth vertebra; a nerve specialist swore that the shock of the fall and subsequent anguish of mind in seeing his law practice drop away would probably result in a total breakdown.

The jury gave him four thousand dollars' damages--twice what he hoped. And the city attorney, having a fraternal feeling for fractured legal legs, advised the city to pay instead of appeal.

One bright morning, fully recovered and adorned in a natty spring suit, Ben T. Allen went to the courthouse to get an order from the court to the city treasurer for his four thousand dollars' damages.

There was a click of a typewriter in an anteroom. Betty Lane, the court stenographer, was down early working out some notes.

Ben T. Allen went in, laid his hat debonairly on a stack of notebooks, sat on the edge of her desk, and locked his hands around his knees and smiled possessively.

"Why, good morning, Mr. Allen." Betty looked up and nodded. "Allow me to congratulate you."

"For what?"

"Why, haven't you seen the supreme court's decision in this morning's paper? You won your case. Peter Shaw does not have to pay his annual five-dollar merchant tax."

"Good!" exclaimed Allen. "No, I had not seen it."

"Yes," nodded Betty, with something not quite transparent in her smile, "the judge who handed down the decision sustained your contention, that as the notices of election, at which the town was incorporated thirty-eight years ago, were posted only nineteen days instead of twenty, as the law requires, the articles of incorporation were illegally adopted. Therefore, the town is non-existent. Its officers have no right to levy or collect taxes, to sue or to be sued, to receive or _pay out moneys_."

"Good heavens!" Allen felt himself slowly collapsing on the table, sick in every organ described by the specialists.

"Sometimes," smiled Betty, as she glanced out of the window toward the hardware store--"_sometimes_ a lawyer gets his."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

THE JOKE ON PRESTON

By Lewis Allen

"Has the prisoner secured counsel?"

"No, your honour," responded District Attorney Masters.

Judge Horton looked over the tops of his steel-rimmed spectacles, first at the unkempt prisoner, and then around the courtroom.

"The court will provide counsel for your defense. Have you any choice?" he asked the prisoner.

The prisoner had not. He didn't know one man from another in the courtroom. A faint suspicion of a smile showed on District Attorney Master's face. He winked slyly at several of his brother attorneys, and even smiled rather knowingly at the judge when he made the suggestion that the court appoint Mr. Preston attorney for the defense. A titter went around the courtroom at this, and young John Preston flushed to the roots of his yellow hair as he arose and went forward to consult with his client.

"Honest to God, are you a lawyer?" asked the prisoner, in a voice that carried. It took nearly two minutes to restore decorum.

In spite of his embarrassment young Preston thanked the court and asked for a day's postponement in order to acquaint himself with his client's case. This was granted, and after adjournment the District Attorney took young Preston aside, put his hand patronizingly on his shoulder, and said:

"Great Scott, Johnnie, give the poor devil a square deal! The only thing in the world for him is a plea of guilty and a request for leniency."

"Thank you, sir," said Preston rather stiffly, "but I at least want to know something of my client's case."

"Now, now, Johnnie, you must learn to take things in the proper spirit. Every young lawyer must have his first case, and he must expect a certain amount of good-natured raillery over it, and, believe me, it isn't every man fresh from law school who gets a murder case for the very first thing. Be sensible about it, boy. I'm advising you for your father's sake. We were partners, you know."

"Yes, I know," answered Preston.

"Oh, don't be stubborn, Johnnie! Why, dash it all, the prisoner has confessed!"

"A great many innocent men have confessed under the third degree," and young Preston bowed rather too formally and turned on his heel.

"He'll get the chair if you fight the case," snapped the District Attorney.

"He'll get the chair--or liberty, sir," was all young Preston replied, and he hurried over to the jail, where he was secluded in the cell with his client, the prisoner.

It wasn't much of a story the prisoner told. He said his name was Farral, that he was a plain hobo, and that with another hobo he had got into a fight with a freight brakeman who wouldn't let them jump the train. Both picked up lumps of coal to defend themselves, and in the mix-up the poor brakeman's skull was crushed. He managed to shoot and kill the other hobo, but he died before they got him to the hospital.

Young Preston said nothing, for five minutes. Farral became nervous. Finally he said:

"Say, kid, I ain't blamin' you any. You gotter have your first case some time, and so they wished you on me. The only thing to do is to plead guilty to self-defense----"

"Never do," said young Preston. "There isn't a juryman in the county who would agree to justifiable homicide."

"But I confessed, kid; I confessed. Whatcher goin' to do about it now?"

"Just what did you say? Give me the exact words."

"I says to the captain, 'Don't put me through no third degree. I killed him!'"

"What made you say that?"

"They'd put it on me anyway. I thought it would help me."

"What was the name of the man with you?"

"I don't know. I never saw him before."

"His name was Ichabod Jones," said Preston impressively, "and don't you ever forget it. Remember, you have known this man for a long while and that he went under the name of 'Black Ike.'"

Preston talked a half-hour longer with the man and drilled him over and over before he left him.

When the case came up the prosecution introduced witnesses sufficient to prove that the brakeman had been killed and then introduced the confession.

"We rest the case there, your honour," said District Attorney Masters, with somewhat of a flourish.

Young Preston put his client on the stand without delay and had him tell his story of the fight, which was to the effect that it was not he, but the other man, who killed the brakeman.

"What was the other man's name?" asked Preston.

"Ichabod Jones," replied the prisoner; "at least, that's what he told me."

"How did you always address him?"

"I always called him Ike."

"You may tell the court just what you said in this _alleged_ confession."

"I didn't make no confession. I said to the captain, 'Don't put me through no third degree. _Ike_ killed him.'"

And, for all that the prosecuting attorney could prove to the contrary, Ike did.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

THE IDYL

By Joseph F. Whelan

Let us have a day of idyl, you and I,
Upon some mountain-top, with no one by
Save birds and flowers and waving trees that sigh,
And crooning winds whose lyrics never die.

The Poet handed it to the Girl, with rather a quizzical smile. They did not know each other. He had seen her walking along one of the park paths, and the loneliness of her face stopped him. She read the verse, then gazed at him a few seconds, half amused, half annoyed, then wholly joyous. He read compliance in her eyes.

"Rather rude, isn't it?" he asked. "But the desperation of loneliness is heavy on my soul."

They sauntered to the gates and boarded a street car, which whirled them, with twenty other people equally though unconsciously lonely, toward the mountain. She did not speak until they were zig-zagging along a bridle path up the mountainside. Then she unfolded the verse and said musingly:

"A day of idyl! A year ago I thought that every day would be an idyl." And the sweet mouth soured in the churn of memory.

"My dear lady," he said, "memories have no place in a day of idyl. Oh, let me teach you how to live, live, live, if only for an hour! Let's sing the song of nature which is happiness--dance the dance of winds which is joy--think the thought of butterflies which is nothing! Oh, there is happiness everywhere, everywhere--even for you and me!"

They reached a little hillock where a clump of bushes cast a tempting shadow.

"Let's sit down a while," she said, pouring water on a rocket.

For a few minutes they sat in silence. The idyl had not yet begun. From behind them came voices, and a woman's laugh startled the air and the Poet. Nearer came the voices, and the Girl gripped the grasses at her sides. The couple swung jauntily past without noticing them and settled down in the long grass at the foot of the hillock.

The Poet and the Girl were statues. Their faces were averted. From the long grass came the noise of kisses.

The sun slipped away. The air was hot and heavy and all around was the silence of premonition. A bird piped fretfully, and a peevish breeze shook the leaves. The amorous couple in the long grass rose.

"Say," said the man, looking at his watch, "if we're goin' to see that show we've got to hustle."

And they hurried away.

The Girl rose, walked a few yards, then stood gazing on the far horizon of departed time. Then she returned.

"That was my husband," she said.

The Poet sprang to his feet as though released by a spring. His face was gray as the sky.

"God help us both!" he cried. "The woman was my wife."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

WITHHELD

By Ella B. Argo

Every time he had tried to propose to her they had been interrupted.

There was the moonlight night on the beach when a sudden storm sent them scurrying to shelter. Once it was in her mother's drawing-room and callers were announced. He had almost reached the interrogation point while dancing when a colliding couple made them slip, and for weeks a broken ankle made her inaccessible. He might have put the momentous question in writing, but that did not appeal to his sense of fitness.

Lately she felt like Evangeline, since business always took him out of New York the day before she arrived, and twice illness called her home when he was to have met her at some resort. The Evangeline feeling was strong to-night, because he had inexplicably failed to keep his Miami appointment to accompany her mother and herself home, and at the last moment they had decided to come by sea.

Then suddenly off Norfolk she came face to face with him on the deck. She was excitedly responsive to his white-faced, trembling-voiced rapture at seeing her, and they both forgot to make explanations.

It was late, but they paced the deck for an hour, and every moment of that hour she expected him to speak, although one passenger walked disconcertingly near them.

His love had taken on a new humility, for where once he had been masterful, impetuous, he now seemed afraid and looked at her adoringly but despairingly, as though at some inaccessible heaven. She fought between modesty and a desire to encourage him. The hours flew, and he had not even sought a secluded corner. She sent away the maid who came with her mother's summons and lingered another moment for the words she felt were trembling on the lips beneath the love-agonized eyes. He accepted her proud good-night without remonstrance, although he clung to her hand as though he would never let it go.

"This must be good-bye," he said. "The ship will dock before you are up, and I have to make a dash for the train."

No word of future meeting.

Almost all the passengers had landed and her mother and the maid were far ahead in the crowd when she remembered a silver cup she had left in the stateroom. Her way back was barred first by a laughing and weeping reunited Cuban family, and then by a group of men excitedly discussing the quick capture of a murderer who had claimed self-defense in a political quarrel but had run. It seemed the man was prominent, and it sounded interesting, but her mother would worry if she stopped.

The emotional Cuban family was again in her way. The cup was knocked from her hand, and it rolled down the deck. She picked it up and turned to see him framed in a door opened by the restless passenger of the night before.

Then her sun went down in eternal blackness. He was handcuffed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

UP AND DOWN

By Bertha Lowry Gwynne

Rhyolite Rose kept always her curiously unfeminine sense of humour. Standing in the doorway of the Bodega where nightly she accompanied herself on a battered piano, and sang indecorous songs with the voice of a seraph, she listened, vastly diverted, to the crap dealer's flights of fancy.

"Get your money down, boys; six, eight, field or come--play a favourite. Here comes the lucky man! He throwed nine, Long Liz, the ham and egg gal."

Rhyolite was booming, and Rhyolite was fortune-mad. It was Saturday night. Outside on Golden Street crowds surged up and down. There were miners, promoters, engineers, cooks, crooks, tin horns and wildcatters; good women, bad women, and boarding-house keepers. Adventurers all; each confident that to-morrow would bring him fortune.

The Bodega overflowed with a good-humoured crowd that stood four deep at the bar. Around the crap table was a restless throng, drawn by the dealer's recitative, a curious chant detailing the fortunes of Big Dick from Boston, Little Joe, Miss Phoebe, and many more of the fanciful folk that indicate the fall of the dice.

Mining booms a-plenty Rose had seen. For five years she had followed them since she had first appeared in the Klondike a young girl with a lovely face, a gentle voice, and a consuming passion for Scotch whiskey. Each year since then had taken some of the innocence from her face, and set deeper shadows in her eyes; each year found her growing sadder till evening came, and then very gay, indeed; for by night Rose's sorrow, whatever it was, had been drowned in a square bottle.

The pasty-faced crap dealer droned on: "Now and then I earn a small one," he was saying. "Miss Ada, yore maw wants you----"

He faltered, and came to a pause. A shot had sounded on the street outside, and almost instantly the saloon was emptied.

Following the crowd, and still smiling, went Rhyolite Rose. She gathered from snatches of agitated conversation that "Sidewinder," the camp's bad man, in shooting at an unbearable acquaintance, had killed a stranger.

Not dead, but desperately wounded, the man lay on the boardwalk. Rose pushed her way to his side. As she looked down upon him her face blanched, the red of her cheeks standing out in odd relief.

"He's a friend of mine," she said to the men around her. "Take him to my cabin, and send for the doctor."

Rose darted into the saloon, and snatching a decanter of whiskey, saturated her handkerchief with it. As she ran she rubbed the rouge from her face. She passed the little procession, and reaching her cabin made preparations for the man's coming. That done, she dug into a trunk, taking from it a much-crumpled dress. Hastily she put it on.

The unconscious man was laid on the bed, and in a few minutes the doctor came. He gazed at Rose astounded. She was garbed in the habit of a novitiate of a nursing sisterhood.

"What the----" he began. She interrupted him, and underneath her flippancy the man saw real misery.

"It's _Sister_ Rose now," the woman said. "I shed my sins with my scenery. Get me?"

The doctor nodded. Carefully he tended the wounded man.

"There is nothing we can do," he said at length. "He is dying."

"Suits me, Doc," said Rose.

He left, and the woman sat quietly by the bed, her face set, her body tense, waiting. In a little while the man opened his eyes, and she saw that he knew her. She leaned over and lifted him into her arms. His head rested on her thin bosom.

"Little Sister, is it true?" he said in a whisper. "I dream so much. Every night and every night I dream that I have found you. I have hunted for you so long, Little Sister; everywhere; up and down the whole world." His voice died out.

When he spoke again it was with an effort. "The other woman ... she didn't count. When you left I went mad." He raised himself with a burst of strength, his face distorted. "It was the uncertainty, the uncertainty! You were so little," he muttered. "I have looked for you," he repeated, drearily, "everywhere up and down the whole world."

"Never mind." Rose spoke serenely. Subtly, indefinably she had become again a gentlewoman. "Oh, my dearest, _yes_, I forgive you. God has watched over _me_, honey. There is a typhoid epidemic here. The sisters sent me."

The man gave a long sigh. "My little girl, unhurt."

She laid him down, and he drowsed awhile. Just before dawn he stirred.

"Sing, Little Sister," he whispered.

"I am far frae my hame
I am weary aften whiles----"

Rose sang a song of her childhood. Her voice had withstood the ravages of cigarette smoke, whiskey, and overstrain. It rose clear and true,

"Like a bairn to its mither,
A wee----"

"Little Sister!" She bent to hear him.

"I have looked for you everywhere; up and down----" he was dead.

Tearless, Rose sat by the bed a long time. She came to herself with a sudden start.

In the dead man's hands she placed a crucifix; and, kneeling, with little lapses of memory, she recited the prayer for the dead.

Then, as if moved by some force without herself, with eyes staring, she rose from her knees and hurried to the kitchen. She took down from a shelf a bottle of Scotch whiskey. With fingers that trembled she poured herself out a long drink.

"Now and then I earn a small one," said Rhyolite Rose.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

THE ANSWER

By Harry Stillwell Edwards

The dim lights of the old pawnbroker's shop flickered violently as the street door opened, letting in a gust of icy wind. The man who came with the wind closed the door with difficulty, approached the low desk, took off his thin coat, shook the sleet from it and laid it on the counter.

"As much as ye can," he said crisply. "'Tis me last!"

The broker measured the garment with a careless glance and tossed fifty cents on the counter.

"Come wanst more, me friend! 'Tis not enough for the illegant coat."

Pathos did not appeal often to the old dealer, but this time it did. A vibration in the voice exactly fitted the mystery of something buried deep in the subconsciousness. He questioned the other with a swift glance, hesitated, and by the coin laid another like it. The man nodded.

"'Tis little enough, but 'twill do."

He took a pencil from the desk and with much effort wrote a few lines on a bit of wrapping paper. Straightening, he fixed a steady gaze on the old face turned, not unkindly, to his.

"We have known aiche ither more'n a bit. Ye know I'm not th' drunkard nor th' loafer. I know ye aire a har-r-d man--ye have to be in this trade, har-r-d but square. I am off for good and all; 'tis for the sake of the gyrul and the little man. She'll not go home till I lave her. Sind th' money and the line to the place it spells; 'twill pay her way home--they'll take her, without me; they have said it. Will ye do it?"

The old man looked away from him and was silent.

"Yes!" he said, at length.

They waited and then shook hands, for no reason, after the fashion of men.