Chapter VII: Part 7

Young Griggs yanked away and again clutched at the boat. This time the second officer struck him square in the face and he went down.

The boatload of married men was merely cut away, so low was the ship in the water. Then came a lurch, and the waves closed over the great ship.

* * * * *

The next evening the Associated Press sent out, from its St. Louis office, this paragraph:

"Among those lost was H. G. Griggs, junior partner of the Wells & Griggs Steel Co. He leaves a wife and infant son in this city. It is feared Mrs. Griggs will not recover from the shock."

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THE COWARD

By Philip Francis Cook

Johnson stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked carefully at the hut. A few yards back, where the spring crossed the trail, there were tracks of a woman's shoe-pack. It was country where one didn't live long without the habit of noticing things. The tracks were light, mostly toes, and far apart for so small a foot. Johnson knew no woman travelled north so fast, into the wilderness, and without a pack, at that, for diversion, so he had sidestepped from the trail, silently slipped off his tump-line, and circled to the edge of the clearing, about a dozen yards from where the trail struck it. There in the shadow of the pines he searched the clearing with his eyes. No sign of life.

The door of the hut was shut, but a couple of boards had been knocked off one of the window openings. The tall grass was trampled toward the spring. Over to the right was a wreck of a birch, where some one had been cutting firewood. Nothing especially alarming, but Johnson was not popular and a few early experiences had made him cautious. He stood there, silent, for perhaps fifteen minutes, before he started for the door. There was still no sound, and he stepped inside, gun in hand.

A rusty little yacht stove, a few shelves, and a rude table were all the cookroom contained. Beyond was the bunkroom with a large double-decked bunk against one wall, and opposite it the window. Johnson went on in.

In the lower bunk lay the body of a man with a hunting knife sticking in his breast. He lay staring at the ceiling with a rather silly smile, as though he had been grinning, and death had come too quickly for it to fade.

"MacNamara---- My God!"

Johnson was unnerved. It was not often that men die by the knife in the North country. Then a great load seemed to leave his shoulders, for this dead man had sworn, not three weeks before, to shoot him at sight--and Johnson was known to be a coward. No more need he sleep with an eye open, or slip into towns at night. MacNamara, thank God, was dead.

The dead man's pack was in the other bunk, and scattered around the room were hairpins, a small rhinestone ring, and a few other feminine trinkets. "Woman!" said Johnson--and then he saw the note. It was scrawled on the cover torn from an old magazine. It read:

"Ed, you'll find this sure. Mac was going to lay for you and pot you
at the White Rocks. I couldn't find you, so I promised to come here
to Carmels with him. When he climbed in the bunk I give it to
him--the damned fool!"

It was unsigned.

The sun was very near the western hilltop. Johnson went to the woods and returned with his pack; he dropped it near the stove in the cookroom. Then he burned the note. Next he took a small bag of parched corn out of his pack and concealed in it the woman's little things, and put the bag in his shirt. There remained only one thing to do. Without looking at the dead man's face he drew the knife out of his breast and forced his own into the wound. The woman's knife he took to the door and hurled far out into the woods.

There wasn't much daylight left. He closed the door quietly and started for the trail, north.

"I'll have to hurry," said Johnson.

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THE HEART OF A BURGLAR

By Jane Dahl

Noiselessly the burglar drew his great bulk through the window, deposited his kit of tools on the floor, and lowered the sash behind him. Then he stopped to listen. No sound broke the midnight stillness. Stealthily he flashed his lantern around the room in search of objects of value. His quick ear caught the sound of a door opening and hurried footsteps in the upper hall. Instantly he adjusted a black mask and sprang behind an open door. Pistol in hand, every faculty alert, he waited. He heard the soft thud of bare feet on the padded stairs, then laboured breathing nearby.

As the electric light was switched on, brilliantly illuminating the room, he gripped his revolver and stepped from behind the door.

"Hands up!" he cried in a hoarse whisper. Then he fell back with a short, raucous laugh. He was pointing the revolver at a frightened little mite of a girl shivering before him in her thin, white nightgown. The small, terrified face touched him strangely, and, placing his pistol in his pocket, he said, not unkindly:

"There, little girl, don't be so scared--I'm not going to hurt you. Just you be real still so as not to disturb the others until I get through and get away, and you shan't be hurt."

The child looked at him much as she would an obstacle in her path, and attempted to rush past him. He grabbed her and held her tight.

"You little vixen!" he exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you to keep still?"

"But I've got to telephone," gasped the child, struggling to free herself. "Just let me telephone and then you can do what you like with me--but I can't wait--I've got to telephone right away." And she made another effort to reach the telephone on the wall.

Again the burglar laughed. "It's very likely I'll let you telephone for the police. No, missy, you can't work that on me. I guess I'll have to tie and gag you after all."

Fresh terror found its way into the child's face, and, for the first time the burglar realized that he was not the cause of it. She was not afraid of him. She fought and scratched him like a young tigress, striving to free herself, and when she realized how powerless she was in his strong arms she burst into tears.

"Oh! My brother is dying," she cried, "and I want to telephone the doctor. He has convulsions and mamma doesn't know what to do--and you won't let me telephone the doctor!"

At the word "convulsions" the burglar went white--his hands fell nervelessly to his sides--the child was free.

"Call the doctor, quick," he said, placing the child on the chair in front of the telephone. "What room are they in?"

"End of the hall, upstairs," responded the child, with the receiver already off the hook.

In three bounds the burglar was up the steps. He made for the light which shone through a half-open door down the hall, striving to formulate some explanation to offer the mother for his presence in the house. When he gently pushed open the door he saw that none was needed--the woman before him was oblivious to all the world. Dishevelled and distracted, she sat rocking to and fro, clutching to her breast the twitching body of a wee boy. Piteously she begged him not to die--not to leave his poor mummy.

Quietly the burglar came to her side and gently loosened her clasp.

"Give me the baby," he said in a low voice. "He will be better on the bed."

Dumbly, with unseeing eyes, she looked at him, and surrendered the child.

"He is dying," she moaned--"dying--oh, my little, little man!"

"No, he's not," said the burglar. But as he looked at the wide-open, glassy eyes and blue, pinched face of the child he had little faith in his own words.

He placed the baby upon the bed, and turning to the mother, said in an authoritative voice:

"You must brace up now and save your child--do you understand? I can save him, but you must help me, and we must be quick--quick, do you understand?"

A glimmer of comprehension seemed to penetrate her palsied brain.

"Yes, yes!" she said. "What shall I do?"

"Heat a kettle of water, quick. Bring it in his bathtub--and bring some mustard, too. Hurry."

Impatiently the mother was off before the last "hurry" was hurled at her. Now that a ray of hope was offered, and something definite to do, she was all action.

Reverently the burglar removed the baby's nightrobe, and, covering the little body with a blanket, he rubbed the legs and arms and back with his huge hands--very, very gently, for fear their roughness would irritate the delicate skin.

In a short time the mother was back with the hot mustard bath. Together they placed the baby in the tub. His little body relaxed--the glassy eyes closed--he breathed regularly--he was asleep.

"Thank God," breathed the burglar, fervently, though awkwardly, as though such words were strange to his lips.

"He is sleeping," cried the mother rapturously. "He will live!"

As the mother was drying the little body with soft towels the burglar said brokenly:

"I had a little boy once--about his size--two years old. He died in convulsions because his mother didn't know what to do and the doctor didn't get there in time."

A sob of ready sympathy came from the heart of the woman.

"And his poor mother?" she asked. "Where is she?"

"She soon followed--she seemed to think the little fellow would need her over there," he replied in a tear-choked voice.

Half ashamed, he ran his sleeve across his eyes to remove the moisture there. The woman's tears splashed on the quietly sleeping infant in her lap.

Both were startled by the clamorous ringing of the doorbell.

"The doctor!" cried the man, suddenly brought to a realization of his position.

The woman looked at him, and for the first time she really saw him; for the first time the strangeness of an unknown man in the house in the middle of the night was apparent to her. From his face her glance wandered to the chair where the burglar had thrown his mask and tools.

"Yes," he said, answering her look, "I'm a burglar. I heard your husband was out of town, and I came to rob you. You can call the police, now."

"No," the woman interrupted. "Go into the next room and wait until the doctor leaves. I want to help you to a better way of living than this, if I can."

After the doctor had departed the woman went into the next room. The burglar was not there. Going downstairs she found the drawers ransacked and all her valuables gone. On the table was a scrap of paper. On it was written:

"Thank you, madam, for your offer, but I'm used to this life now
and don't want to change."

The woman thought of the sleeping baby upstairs, and a tender smile came to her lips. That robbery was not reported to the police.

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THE REWARD

By Herbert Heron

No one knew just how popular Cobbe was till Dick Walling shot him. It was Cobbe's fault, but Walling didn't wait to explain. Like others, he didn't know the degree of the deceased's popularity but he had a fair idea, and left Monterey as fast as his horse could take him. The animal was the speediest in the county.

He stopped at Parl's on his way up the valley. Parl greeted him cordially. For half an hour they talked. The 'phone rang.

"That's for me. I told Cobbe I'd stop here," and with that Walling took down the receiver.

"Hello! This Mr. Parl's. Oh, yes, you want me. What? Well, I'm damned! Not a sign. I'll watch. Sure. What? How much? Whew!" He ended in a long whistle, and hung up.

"I'll be sliding along now." He shook hands, mounted, and rode toward Monterey till Parl shut the door. Then he circled, and went on up the valley. A thousand dollars reward, dead or alive! He knew now how popular Cobbe was.

They hadn't even waited till the sheriff had failed to get him.

There are few ranches above Parl's, and these have no telephones, so he rode by, unconcerned. Toward midnight he came to a place owned by a girl and her brother. He had loved the girl, but decided that she didn't care for him. The brother liked him, though, and he could get some food for his stay in the mountains till things quieted down and he could leave the country.

The brother came to the door, pale and troubled. "He can't have heard----" The thought was dispelled by the sudden relief on the boy's face.

"Thank God, it's you, Dick! Mary's dying, and----" Walling followed him into the room where the girl lay, high in fever. "I couldn't leave her alone, to get the doctor, but now you can go----" Something in Walling's manner stopped him. "I'll go, and you can stay with her. Are you on Firefly? I'll take him. It'll be quicker." Before Walling could think what to say, the boy was gone. He went to call him back. The girl moaned. What could he do? He couldn't refuse this duty fallen on him from the sky, even if the girl were a stranger; and this was the woman he loved, ... but she was dying.

"Dick!... Oh, Dick!... Dick!..." The voice from the bed startled him. He went softly over to see what she wanted. In her eyes there was no recognition: she had spoken in delirium.

She loved him! But the rush of joy was swept away by the sight of her suffering. He bathed her face and hands. By and by the fever seemed less. She passed into a light sleep.

He made some coffee. While he drank it he had time to think of himself. When the doctor came from Monterey.... The doctor would know, and....

"I must clear out when I hear them coming." Then another thought forced its way in: "Go now, while you've still a good lead. Go now!"

He went to the stable, saddled a horse, and led him out. Then the face of the girl came over him. He left the horse tied to the gate, and went back. She was sleeping still, but brokenly. He couldn't go.

It was a two hours' ride to Parl's, where the boy could 'phone.... If the doctor left Monterey immediately, he'd get to the house about five. It was now nearly two.

The girl slept. Walling knew it was the critical time. If she woke better, she would probably recover. The thought was sweet to him. If she went again into delirium.... He sat still, thinking. The hours passed very slowly.

Suddenly Walling heard a step outside. He had heard no horse coming. He looked out cautiously and saw four men with rifles. Walling cocked his revolver, took down the boy's rifle from the wall and loaded it. He could account for some--and those who were left might depart. It would be a battle, anyway. There was no use being taken alive. Better be shot than hanged.

The leader made a signal. Walling raised his gun. And then--Mary stirred. Her battle, like his, was still undecided. If she slept on, and woke refreshed, she would get well. If not....

Walling laid down his rifle and stepped outside. The men covered him. As he was taken down the road to the waiting horses, the doctor and the girl's brother drove up.

"She's asleep," said Walling.

The boy showed no surprise--he had heard the story from the doctor--but his voice was pitiful:

"Why didn't you?... I didn't know.... Oh, my God! ... and you stayed ... when you could have got away!" He turned to the men with a hopeless look. "It's my fault!" he cried. "He stayed with my sister. I thought she was dying. He didn't tell me he _couldn't_ stay! He'd be safe in the mountains by now.... Oh, my God!"

The leader glanced at his companions. They were stern men, but they were moving uneasily. The situation was unbearable.

"How long have you been here?"

"Since about midnight," answered Walling, though he couldn't see what difference it made. The leader took out his watch.

"Twelve minutes past five now. Say, we've been twelve minutes getting you, that leaves five hours. We'll stay here and rest our horses. At twelve minutes past ten we'll start again. That suit you, boys?"

"What do you mean?" asked Walling.

"I mean you still have your five hours' start; you haven't lost anything by staying with the sick girl."

Walling went back to the house. Mary was still sleeping. He touched her hand. It seemed cooler.

"Tell her I'll write--if I can."

"Good-bye," said the boy.

As he went out Walling saw the men unsaddling their horses. He took off his hat to them as he rode away into the mountains.

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THE FIRST GIRL

By Louise Pond Jewell

They had been talking of the Marsdens, who had just gone down with the torpedoed ship; and among the kindly and affectionate things said about them, the exceptional happiness of their married life was mentioned. Some one spoke of this as being rather surprising, as they had married so late in life; then, naturally enough, another remarked what a different world it would be if every man had been accepted by the first girl he had proposed to. And he added, that sometimes he thought that first choice was one of truer instinct, less tinctured with the world's sophistication than any later one. The bachelor contributed with a laugh that that first girl had one advantage over the wife, no matter how perfect the latter--that she remained the ideal. And then, little by little, they came to the point of agreeing to tell, then and there, in the elegance and dignity of the clubroom suited to the indulgence of their late middle years, each one about that first girl, and what she had meant to him.

The Explorer began.

"I met her in the Adirondacks, and knew her only one summer. After that, I couldn't see her just as a friend--and she was unwilling to be anything else to me. So, all my life, I've associated her with the woods and lakes, with the sincerity and wholesomeness of the great Outdoors. She had the freedom of Diana, and her lack of self-consciousness. I never saw her except roughly clad, but she always suggested that line of Virgil--'She walked the goddess.'

"She was strong and lithe as a boy, could climb mountains, row, play golf and tennis with any of us; and what a good sport. She never fussed over getting caught in drenching rains, being bruised and torn by rocks and thorns; and once when a small party of us lost our way, and had to spend the night on a lonely mountainside within sound of wolves and catamounts, her gayety made a 'lark' of it. She could drive horses with a man's steady hands; she knew the birds by name, and all the plants and trees that grew within miles, and she was familiar with the tracks and habits of all the small creatures of the forest. To me she was--simply wonderful, and, I confess, always has been."

"What became of her?" they asked.

"Later, she married--a man who didn't know a pine from a palm! I always wondered...."

The Diplomat came next.

"That sort," he said, "is a little too independent and upstanding to belong to my type of woman. The rough, tanned skin, the strong, capable hands--big, probably--the woolen skirt and blouse--they'll do very well in a girl chum, for a summer. But when it comes to a _wife_, one's demands are different. The girl I wanted first--and I've never forgotten her; she was a queen--I knew during my first winter in Washington. You talk of Diana; I prefer Venus--wholly feminine, but never cloying. She was the kind that looks best in thin, clinging things. I remember yet a shimmering green and silver 'creation' she wore at the Inaugural Ball. She didn't take hikes with me through scratchy forests, but she'd dance all night long, and her little feet would never tire. She didn't handle guns or tillers, but you should have seen her pretty fingers deftly managing the tea things in a drawing-room, of a winter's afternoon, or playing soft, enchanting airs on the piano at twilight; or, for the matter of that, placing a carnation in a man's button-hole--I can feel her doing it yet! She probably didn't know birds, but, by George! she knew men! And there wasn't one of us young fellows that winter that wouldn't gladly have had her snare him. Only--that was the one thing she didn't do!"

"Didn't she ever do any snaring?"

"Oh--finally. And--the pity of it!--a man who couldn't dance, and had no use for Society! Sometimes...."

"How about you?" the third member of the group was asked, an Engineer of national reputation. "Was there a first best girl for you, too?"

"Guilty!" he replied. "But my account will sound prosaic after these others. You know, my early days weren't given to expensive summer camps, nor to Washington ballrooms. I made my own way through college, and 'vacations' meant the hardest work of the year. But when I was a Senior, all the drudgery was transformed. Paradise wouldn't have been in it with that little co-educational college campus and library and chapel and classrooms; for I found _her_. Just a classmate she was. You tell how your girls dressed; I never noticed how _she_ dressed; it might have been in shimmering green and silver, and it might have been in linsey-woolsey, for all I knew. But--she could _think_, and she could _talk_! We discussed everything together, from philosophy and the evolution of history to the affairs of the day. I spent every hour with her that I could, and in all sorts of places. There's a spot in the stackroom of the old library that I always visit yet, when I go back--because of her. I've never known a woman since with such a mind, such breadth and clearness; and it showed in her face--the face of Athena, not Diana or Venus! I believed that with such a companion at my side, to turn to in every perplexity, I could make my life worth while. But she--saw it differently."

"Is she a feminist now?" slyly inquired the Explorer.

"She, too, married, after a while--a fine fellow, but--anything but a student. I can't help...."

"Mine," said the fourth, the Socialist, "will sound least dramatic of all--though I assure you the time was dramatic enough for me. You talk about your goddesses; my pedestal held just a sweet human girl,--a nurse, serving her first year at the hospital, that time we had the smash-up in '80. And you talk of beauty, and style, and brain; but with me it isn't of a pretty face or graceful form I think when I recall that magic time; and least of all is it of any intellectual prowess. I'm not sure whether she knew the difference between physics and metaphysics, or whether she'd ever heard of a cosine. But she was endowed with the charm of charms in a woman--sympathy. She would listen by the hour while I poured out to her my young hopes and ambitions; I could tell her all the dreams a young fellow cherishes most deeply--and would die of mortification if even his best friend guessed at their existence. She always understood; and though she talked little herself, she had the effect of making me appear at my very best. I felt I could move the world if she would just stand by and watch. But in spite of her kindness and gentleness she turned me down. Many times I've questioned...."

"That was all right for a sick boy," commented the Diplomat, "but for a _wife_, a girl like Alison----"

"'Alison,'" echoed the Engineer, involuntarily, "a nice name, anyway; that was _her_ name."

"Why----" the Explorer mused--"that's an odd coincidence; so was _hers_--Alison Forbes."

"Alison Forbes"--breathed the Socialist--"Alison Forbes--Marsden!"

And suddenly there was a silence, and the four friends looked strangely at one another. For they knew in that moment that there had been in those lives of theirs left far behind, not four first girls, but one--seen with different eyes.

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A SOPHISTRY OF ART

By Eugene Smith

On the station platform in Quanah, one morning, I stopped "waiting for the train" for a moment to watch a man and woman painting on a large signboard across the way. The inevitable wiseacre in the little group of travelling men explained that they were really talented artists, a man and wife.

The husband had contracted--er--a throat affection in their studio back East, and physicians had ordered him to the open air and high, dry altitude of west Texas. So they had come, and were earning expenses, making a series of paintings on signboards, advertisements of a lumber corporation, throughout the Panhandle country.

I walked out across the tracks near where the slightly stooped husband, in overalls, and his little wife, looking very attractive in her neat apron and sunbonnet, were at work.

There was a pathos about the thing that went straight to my heart. The loyal little woman and the stricken husband there in the clear, crisp morning air and sunshine, earnestly striving, undismayed. Something--a common sympathy--thrilled me.

And now the painting seemed artistic. The general idea was a lovely cottage home (built, of course, with Oakley's lumber, as was intimated). But the cottage was not glaringly new--rather mellowed a bit with time, it seemed, and was the more homelike for it.

In the front stood a sweet little woman, looking down a winding road, and in the expression on her face, painted by the real little woman, was joyous hope--almost certainty--of seeing the husband coming down the road to her and home, after his day's work.

The colours of sunset added to the beauty of the conception, which altogether made desirable the having such a little wife to wait for one each evening at such a little cottage home. And that was the purpose of it; when you thought of home-building, you also thought of Oakley's lumber.

The painters were happy in their work--happy as two birds building a nest. The wife, seated on her little stepladder, with palette and brushes, was deftly pointing up the vines about the windows, as all good wives should. She hummed something of a tune, now and then looking gayly down at him, who laughed back up at her from his work on the winding road and distant trees.

A courteous inquiry and my being an Easterner, was a passport into their confidences. "We only paint a little while in the cool of the morning and afternoon of each day," he was saying to my remarks on the weather. "It's dangerous to lay on much paint at a time," he continued, "for the sand ruins it."

"Oh, if it wasn't for the sand storms!" she chimed in. "But we love the country, and the folks, too; they seem so much a part of the out of doors, you know. Though we hope--we expect--to go back home before long." She was looking fondly down at him.

"I had a little trouble with my throat," he explained depreciatively. "But this western air has just about put me in the running again. It's wonderful." I could see the thankfulness in his eyes, as he smiled up at his companion. I didn't blame him for loving life.

In the smoking-car of the belated train we travelling men discussed the case of the painters.

"It's only his throat that bothers him a bit," I denied with some heat. "Besides, he is nearly recovered, and looks it."

"Yes, I know; that's characteristic. It's what they all say when they begin to perk up in a change of climate," persisted the Pessimist in the crowd. "But the average is 100 to 1 against them. I've seen too many lungers out here in this country."

Damn a Pessimist with his statistics, anyhow!

* * * * *

Several months later I made another trip through the Texas Panhandle country, and at each town going up from Quanah toward Amarillo I saw one of the Oakley lumber advertisements prominently displayed on large bill-boards. They were all the same, like the first one; that is, if your glance was but a passing one. But to me, who had grown interested in Art and things artistic, there was a difference in the paintings. Yes, a difference! I wasn't so sure at first. "It's just imagination," I pooh-poohed the idea. But later on----

Anyhow, I soon found myself going directly from the station, on each arrival, to look up the Oakley bill-board. It was never hard to find. Somehow, I just got to wondering--worrying--about the welfare of the young husband, the artist, I had met.

In the first few of the paintings I found portrayed all the life and glad hope and expectancy that I had seen some time before in the one at Quanah.

Then came the inevitable. Strange as it was, I knew that I had been expecting--dreading--it; though rather in the gossip around the hotels than in the pictures themselves, where I really found it. That was the only surprise.

I remember, in Clarendon--the first town after you get up on the Cap-rock of the Staked Plains--there I saw--or imagined--it first. One is ever instinctively wary of eyesight in that land of mirages.

And in each succeeding village and town as I travelled westward and upward, I felt it--saw it--there on the bill-boards, as if painted in half-unconsciously by the artist: a faint trace of querulous doubt in the face of the little, waiting wife, spirit of melancholia lying dull in the picture.

As I was getting out of Goodnight one afternoon--a little ahead of time--in the automobile that daily makes the round trip to Claude, we drove past the Oakley signboard. I was in a hurry to get on to Claude to see the trade before night, and be ready to leave for Amarillo the next morning. But forgetting all this at the sight of the picture on the bill-board, I asked the chauffeur to stop a minute before it.

She was still smiling, the little wife waiting there in front of their home for her husband's return, but the smile was hollow and lifeless. I knew--could see--she was full of uneasiness and dread, and was only smiling to keep up her courage.

"That's quite a lumber advertisement--there," I ventured. The chauffeur was drinking water from the canvas canteen.

"Uh-huh!" he gulped. "I seen 'em painting it."

"A man and woman?"

"Well, yes; but the woman did most of it. I saw her there every day for some time. Once in a while the man--her husband, I guess--would be tryin' to help paint, but he was all in. You could tell it, the way he looked."

I winced at his words. So here it was, confirmed, what I had been hoping was only imagination. Confound that Pessimist!

"They must have painted a good many of these signs; I see them everywhere," I continued, in a disinterested manner.

"There's another'n over at Claude," yawned the chauffeur. "I think I remember hauling them people over in the car."

"Over to Claude?"

"Yes--I fergit. I never pay much attention to the folks I haul," he remarked casually, eying me in a bored way.

Then we drove on.

A day later I arrived in Amarillo from Claude, glad, for it was my trip's end. I started walking uptown from the station to stretch my legs, besides--well, there across the street, on a vacant lot, was the Oakley bill-board, and the picture. The late afternoon sunlight fell full across it.

I looked at the woman in the picture, whom I had come to know for the real little wife, the artist, painting from her heart. She stood smiling, but behind the smile I read doubt and dread realized, and hope--almost--dying hard. For the smile was but a poor attempt, and the joyous expectancy I saw shining in her eyes months before at Quanah was not there now. There was a subtle air of unmistakable despair about her. Her very frailty and dependency and loyal effort to keep her smile wrung from me a quick sympathy.

I turned back to the drab routine of life sadly, and picking up my grips, saw the Pessimist standing on the sidewalk with his detestable knowing look. There behind him came the Wiseacre. It was one of those little coincidences of a drummer's life which so often find the same parties together again.

"I was just looking at another one of the pictures--the last one, I guess," I said suddenly, feeling unashamed of my concern and sadness.

"Last one!" exclaimed the Wiseacre, full of ready information. "Why, man! That's their _first_ one. Here's where they began last year. I saw them in St. Paul three weeks ago, happy as wrens."

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THE MESSAGE IN THE AIR

By B. R. Stevens

The typewriters were clicking busily in the place. Every one seemed honestly, industriously at work.

Looking out of the aperture prepared for the purpose, Lance Allison saw nothing suspicious. Yet Monsieur the General had been so sure that information was leaking, in some mysterious way, from this very room.

Lance had been surprised that the fame of an American detective should have made any impression in France: more surprised when the General, on learning his identity, had personally solicited his aid.

Sitting with ears as well as eyes alert, his quick brain began to dissociate the sound of the typewriters one from another.

That tall girl in black--the one with the pale, pale face, he amended in his thought, so many, alas! were in black--that girl wrote with an even monotony in consonance with her expressionless countenance.

The pert little lass in blue seemed to write each word with an emphasis, for her spacing was noticeable each time.

And so it went, each typist showing some marked peculiarity as his ear picked out the particular rhythm.

His examination had reached the last one, and for the first time he observed its operator closely.... Something familiar and different about that girl.... Not her clothes, nor her coiffure--nothing he could put a finger on.

Then he caught the click of her machine. Different from any of the others, it seemed to jerk out the words and syllables with amazing irregularity, dwelling on one letter, slighting another, pausing between. Here, too, was something hauntingly familiar.

In the meantime men came and went, and Lance's watchful eye followed the slightest movement made by each newcomer. At any moment some signal might give him a clue to the disclosures which the General declared seemed to be made daily.

A timid country lad entered, wiping the dew of embarrassment from his brow. After some awkward hesitation he conferred with one of the clerks, evidently stumbling and halting in his inquiries.

No word of the colloquy reached Lance's ear, but he suddenly became aware of a message in the air--clear, deliberate, reiterated!

_Fifty thousand English left Paris this morning. Destination, Arras._

An hour later the girl who somehow seemed different was confronted in the private quarters of Monsieur the General by Lance Allison, American detective. Bright-eyed and defiant, she smouldered under the guard's restraint.

"You are an American!" There was curt reproach in the detective's tone.

"Well, what of that?" she snapped.

"How came _you_ a traitor to the Allies?"

Then, as she did not answer, he bowed to Monsieur the General. "This girl gave out her information to a young clod-hopper to-day. More than likely some other one yesterday and the day before, or to him in a different disguise. At any rate, they were men who could spell English--or American," he added whimsically.

"But how? How, Monsieur le detective? He approached her not--nor even looked toward her."

"No," smiled Lance, "but he had his ear cocked in her direction." He turned to the seething girl. "Now, make a clean breast of it, Miss. You are done for. What evil spirit prompted treachery in one born under the Stars and Stripes?"

Suddenly the smouldering fire burst into the flame of speech.

"'Twas Jean Armand, the low-down dog! Pretended to love me--_me_! Kissed me--took my hard-earned money for his own comfort. And then--the day he went to the front--he married Elise, a stupid, wax-faced doll!... _Then_ I swore to betray France as he had betrayed me--and I have done it."

"But how?" The General's question was addressed to the detective.

"By the clicks of her typewriter, Monsieur. She practised a peculiar jerky touch so that it would become unnoted. Then when a spy came in--was the hand on the heated brow the signal, I wonder?--she talked to him by the dots and dashes of the Morse code with as much clearness as if the words were breathed into his ear."

"Yes, and it took an American to find me out," she glowed with strange exultation. "These conceited Frenchies were all at sea.... _And_--Jean, the husband of the fat Elise, fell yesterday under a charge from troops I sent to meet his regiment--so--I don't care what you do to me, now. My work is done!"

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IN A GARDEN

By Catherine Runscomb

Dick Halcomb stood waiting on the shady station platform. A little groom appeared, suddenly and breathlessly.

"Sorry to be late, sir," he gasped. "Mrs. Paige and Miss Laura have gone to Mrs. Vingut's garden party, and left word for you to join them."

"Damn!" muttered Halcomb. He had had a hard day in the city, and felt quite unequal to dragging himself about, wilted and irritated, any longer. Really, he considered, settling back into the motor, he was getting pretty fed up with this insatiable lust of Laura's. He wondered whether, when they were married and she was away from her mother, he would be able to instil in her a more normal enjoyment of her pleasures. He thought, vaguely, of not going after all--of awaiting them at the house. But a vision rose before him of Laura all evening wrapped in her delicate fury of aloofness, something too inhumanly polite to be called sulking, but of shattering import to nerves on edge--and he decided grimly that he was too hot, too tired. In the last analysis it was less trouble to go to the garden party.

By this time they were humming smoothly up to the Vinguts' gates. The breeze had cooled the heat of his brow, but his thoughts were growing only more feverish with the passing moments. He halted the chauffeur suddenly: "Let me out here, Lane. I'll walk up to the house--I need exercise."

It was pleasant to stroll along the driveway, to stretch his cramped limbs, and absorb at leisure the careful beauties of the land about him. The lonely graciousness of tall poplar trees, the low-flowering crimson of rhododendrons ministered gratefully to his troubled soul. New satisfaction filled him as he discovered no people in sight. They must be the other side of the house, on the terraces, he thought, restfully. And then, suddenly, he stopped short, staring.

Just ahead in a clearing was an old Italian fountain, gray stone, carved and mellowed by the centuries, water splashing musically into its basin. Sitting on the edge was a tall young girl, the adolescent grace of her body showing clear and white through the classic scantness of her shell-pink draperies. Diana herself she might have been, nymph-robed and formed, her chestnut hair bound about by a silver fillet, her long, white legs, uncovered, dangling in the water. He felt a wild certainty that if he spoke she would melt away into the spray of the fountain. And then she turned her head and saw him.

"You are late," she said, in a very clear, low voice that merged into the plashing water.

"Yes--I am late," he stammered. "I wonder ... who you are?"

She stared into his eyes with the deep, unconscious gravity of a child.

"I am Athena," she answered simply.

"Athena!" he gasped. "Good heavens! Then you _are_ a goddess--or a nymph----"

She laughed--and her laughter sounded in his ear more like the fountain than the fountain itself.

"Oh, no," she reassured him. "We all have Greek names because they are more beautiful."

"'We all'!... Good lord, child, who _are_ you?"

"Why--I am Athena--one of the Morris Dancers. We came to do our Spring Dance for the party."

How absurdly simple, he thought. And yet how insufficiently it explained the wonder of her.

"Why are you here--alone?" he went on. He could do nothing but question her. He had to get to the bottom of her, somehow.

"We're through dancing--and the people tired me."

He sat down on the edge of the fountain, and she moved up beside him, touching him, a divine friendliness in her deep blue eyes.

"How did they tire you--child?" he asked her gently.

"They are all so artificial--and so conscious. We are taught how terrible this consciousness of self and sex is. Hellena Morris teaches us that woman is only really beautiful, really strong, when she is quite unconscious and unstudied."

He eyed the grave little lecturer amusedly.

"Do you understand all that--Athena?" he ventured.

"Why, yes," she said. "We are all very intelligent. It's the wholesome life we lead and the perfection of our bodies."

He threw back his head and laughed.

"I like you when you laugh," she told him suddenly. "I like you to throw your head back, and the kind little crinkles round your eyes. When you are not laughing you look so tired."

"I am tired," he admitted; "tired and disillusioned most of the time. Perhaps it's my unwholesome life and imperfect body----"

He watched her, glowing with unreasoning pleasure at her laugh.

"Humour, too!" he cried. "Child, you are wonderful! Tell me about yourself ... everything. I must know the magic that evolved such perfection."

"Give me your hand," she said. "There!... Now you can understand me better.

"There isn't much to tell. I am seventeen, and have lived with Hellena since I was eight. There are twenty of us. She teaches us ... wonderful things. Not hideous 'accomplishments,' but _real_ things that will help us--Greek and Latin, and the care of our bodies, and the worship of beauty. We all dance, and sing, and play ... and we paint, and write verse, and translate the classics, and read to each other. And we are very strong and hardy, because of our simple lives.... We can beat men at their own games, although we are so slight. We wear few clothes--nothing to restrain or disfigure us. And when we dance we don't learn special steps; we express in ourselves whatever we are dancing--Sorrow, or Love, or Spring. See, I will do you part of our Spring Dance."

She drew her white, dripping legs from the fountain and danced before him--a thing so light and delicate, so breeze-blown and whimsical, so altogether lovely, that his distrust of her humanity returned to him unbearably.

She stopped--a sudden flush of rose and gleam of white--and dropped by his side again.

"And every night," she went on, as though there had been no interruption, "we say our creed: 'I believe in beauty--all the beauty that ever has been and ever will be in the world. And I will worship and serve it with the highest there is in me--always.'"

He could not speak at first. Then finally, unevenly: "I can't presume to praise your theory of life, Athena--any more than I could your dancing. Thank you for them both."

She put her hand on his knee, looking at him, whitely, a little wildly.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Dick," he answered, as simply as she had told him hers.

"I should like to marry you--Dick."

He stared at her.

"So you include marriage--in your scheme of life?" he said dully.

"Yes. Hellena says our marriage laws are terrible, but, while there is no substitute, if we love terribly it is right to marry. I want to marry you, Dick--to be with you always, and take the tired look away from your eyes."

"Child!" he cried. "You don't know me!"

"It doesn't matter," she told him quaintly. "Love often comes this way."

He took her hand against his cheek.

"Dear," he said, "I am thirty-five--a pretty world-stained and world-weary creature. Your radiant youth was given you for a better man than I."

"I love _you_, Dick, I have never loved before."

"Athena, I am ... going to marry ... some one else."

She trembled against him.

"Some one you _love_?" she cried. "Dick, some one you love as you could love me? Is she as young and beautiful? Could she amuse you, and care for you, and adore you always--_always_, as I would?"

"Athena," he said slowly, "there is no one like you ... in the world. I love this ... other girl in my own way. Not as you should be loved, but I'm not fit for such love as that. I can't marry you. Athena--dear--don't make it too hard."

She sat, silent.

Then: "Dick--would you--kiss me?"

He took her gently in his arms.

In the distance people were moving. There was a rustle and a chatter. He let her go suddenly.

"Good-bye--dear," he said.

"Good-bye--Dick," she answered dully.

Once he turned back and saw her--drooping, rose-white, against the old gray fountain.

* * * * *

From the gay group ahead Laura detached herself, ruffled and fluttering.

"You're late enough," she greeted him.

"Yes," he said. Then, with an effort: "Have you seen the--Morris Dancers?"

"Oh, yes; we all did. I think they're rather disgusting--so few clothes and so much throwing themselves about; don't you?"

"You forget," he answered slowly, "that I have just arrived."

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A CLEVER CATCH

By Lloyd F. Loux

She was a thief, and he knew it. He had followed her in her travels, where she posed as a saleswoman. At various times he had thought to capture her, but she evaded him. He feared he had too little evidence, and she was so wily and so clever.

When he saw her sun-kissed hair and inviting lips, he felt abashed to think of associating crime with her, and so he waited for more conclusive evidence. He wished to be sure. How embarrassing it would be to accuse her and then find her innocent!

And yet--he knew she was dangerous. Then one day he realized something odd. He had been robbed! _He_, the cleverest detective on the force, had been robbed! Yes, it was hard to realize. And by the very woman he was seeking to capture. Yes, he knew _she_ must have done it.

Now he would bring her to justice! But how? He had no actual evidence more than his own conviction. Ah, yes! He would put on a bold front and bluff her. Yes, bluff her! How happy he felt. Why, after he had made this capture he would be the proudest man on the force. And he could have the satisfaction of saying he had wrung the confession from her. So he togged up and put on a bold front and a wise air and started out. But suppose she suspected his bluff? Oh, horrors! Imagine his chagrin. The wisest man on the force, and made a plaything of by a baby of a woman! But he was started, and only cowards turn back. Suffice it for us to know that he succeeded and escorted her to the nearest magistrate's office, and she confessed! Yes, and he had the satisfaction of hearing her take oath to the confession. Then the magistrate appointed him to be her keeper for life.

The case was closed with the best wishes of the magistrate.

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STRICTLY BUSINESS

By Lincoln Steffens

"There's an extra, a Christmas girl downstairs, that I think you'll want to keep; she's a worker, but----"

The big store manager looked up at the tall, prim New England woman who was the head of his employment bureau, and he understood. But he's a brute.

"But?" he insisted.

"Her references aren't good."

"Not good?" he said. "You mean they ain't good people?"

"Oh," she exclaimed, "they're good people; they're very good people, but----"

"But?"

"They prefer not to speak, for or against."

"I see," he growled. "A case for bad people. Send her up to me."

And up came the case, another Puritan, slim, alive, afire.

"I know," she began, "I know what you're going to say; every word of it. I'm fired, but, first, I must hear a lecture; the same old lecture. So fire away, but cut it short."

"Won't you be seated?" he said politely.

"Thanks," she mocked.

He rose, and, with a chivalrous bow, begged her to "Please be seated."

"No," she declared decidedly, "I'll take it standing, so I can get out if I don't like----"

"Sit down," he bellowed.

She sat.

He stood glaring at her. "Think I'd let you stand there lecturing and judging me?" he growled. And he lectured and judged her. Then he, too, sat.

"How do you know what I was going to say?" he demanded.

"Because you all say the same thing," she flashed; "everywhere I work. They tell me I'm bad, so I'm discharged, but they all give me that lecture on how to be good--out of a job." She named places she had worked: stores where the managers and the conditions were notorious. "They gave it to me at Freeman's," she sneered, "and," she jeered, "at the One Price Stores! Everywhere I get it, and not only from you bosses. I see the other girls catch on to my story, and, with looks at me, pass it on. 'Poor Thing,' they whisper and, then, of course, the Poor Thing is fired."

She didn't look like a Poor Thing. She looked like a very Brave Thing to this manager of women, but he felt, with his man's intuition, the despair that was washing her courage away. So he was kind.

"How old is the child?" he asked brutally.

"Five."

"Who takes care of it while you're at work?"

"Mother."

"And you support all three?"

"Yes, and," she blazed, "you needn't worry about that. You fire away. I'll make out, somehow. Only don't, don't tell me I'm bad again. I know that, too. Don't I tell it to myself every hour, every day, and, if I forget it for one little hour, doesn't some one remind me?"

He was afraid she'd break, and he didn't want her to; not her. "Too proud, too brave."

"You needn't worry about me, either," he said. "This is a business house, strictly business. No sentiment, and no scruples. We're here to make money, and we're on the lookout for women who'll work and work hard for us. We don't mind a little thing like a little child. Fact is, a little----"

She was lifting from her chair.

"Which is it," he asked roughly, "a boy, or----?"

"A girl," she said, and she dropped back.

"The fact is," he resumed, "a little girl at home makes the mother work harder in the store. And that's the report on you. They say you're a hard worker, so I'd like to keep you on, regular, for life."

She lifted again.

"But----" he said.

"But," she collapsed.

"I don't see," he said, "how you can work hard, regular, if you go on telling yourself that lie every hour, every day; that you're bad."

He got up, huffily. "How bad are you, anyway? How good you been since--during the last five years?"

"As good as I was before," she blazed, springing to her feet.

"Um-m," he calculated. "I'll bet you are, and I'll bet that's pretty good. Good enough for us. We ain't so awfully good ourselves. Quick sales, small profits, and satisfied customers--lots of 'em. That's what we call good."

She was reaching for him again, with hands, with eyes.

"But," he struck, "you can't do much for us and the little girl if you're afraid every hour, every day, that you'll be found out and fired. We got to cut out fear."

"You mean?" she gasped.

"I mean," he thundered, "I mean that you got to cut out that every-hour-every-day business. See? It's rot, anyhow. You're as good as anybody, and if anybody here says you ain't, you come to me and I'll tell 'em this is a women's business, run for profit; and women; including mothers; women, children, and--money. Y'on?"

She stood there staring; comprehending, and he felt that she wanted to break, but----

"Now, now, none o' that," the brute commanded. "Not here. This is business, strictly business. You get back on your job. D'y' hear?"

Yes, she nodded; she heard, and she bolted for the door, but as she opened it she turned and she broke:

"God, how I will work! How I will----"

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THE ADVENT OF THE MAJORITY

By Stella Wynne Herron