Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

"'Hardly had I sheathed the strange weapon and concealed it in the folds of my bodice when the door opened and the woman again entered. I showed her the pages that I had taken and pencilled a note, saying that the formula was complete, but that it would take at least half a day to write it out, as it contained many unfamiliar terms which I should need to refer to a dictionary. For just a moment the woman scanned my face and that of the invalid with that strange air of suspicion that never wholly deserted her.

"'Apparently, what she saw satisfied her, for she signified her pleasure that I had succeeded in gaining the information in so short a time, and added that, as it was now past midnight, I might leave the rest of my work for the next day. Upon this, she led me to a room opening out of her own, indicating that she thought I might feel less lonely if I were near her. Later, I heard the key turn softly in the lock on the outside of the door leading from my room into the hall, and—well, you can imagine that I got very little sleep that night.

"'Early the next morning the woman unlocked my door, and, after I had eaten a hasty breakfast, led me to a library well equipped with reference books, where, so she wrote, I was to finish my work.

"'Then she left me, locking me in once more.

"'I had reached about the middle of the false formula when the door opened and the woman entered in great haste. From her hurried movements and the anxious expression of her face I judged that some new complication had arisen. I was right. Snatching up my pad, the woman wrote, "He is sinking fast. The experiment must begin at once. How much of the formula remains?"

"'I wrote: "Over one half."

"'"Never mind," she wrote in return. "Victor can begin with what you have. Give me the papers. You may finish the rest in my brother's room and bring it to us in the laboratory."

"'As we entered the invalid's room, I tried to exchange a look with the sick man, but the woman drew me away to a large French window at the end farthest from the bed, and, opening the sashes, which swung inward, motioned me to look out. To my surprise, I saw that the bridge that I had noticed the night before as connecting the house and laboratory was approached from this window. It was a rough affair, resembling those used on shipboard, and consisted of a wide plank guarded only by two ropes stretched one on either side of the plank, about three feet above it, as a sort of guard rail. On the laboratory side the bridge terminated at what seemed to be a heavy door, made of one solid piece of timber and provided one third of the way from the top with two small windows, or, rather, panes of glass, about eight inches square. Behind each there was a heavy iron bar.

"'Hastily signifying that I must cross the bridge in order to bring her the remainder of the formula, the woman sent Victor ahead and then turned to follow. Before going she intimated to me that while I wrote I was to remain beside this window where I could see any sign from the workers in the laboratory and be seen by them.

"'For the next two hours nothing was to be heard in the room save the scratching of my pen over the paper and the labored breathing of the dying man. He seemed to be sinking rapidly, but whenever he caught my glance would smile reassuringly, as though to say: "Do not be afraid. All will come right." As the hands of the clock on the mantel approached the hour of eleven, however, he appeared to grow suddenly stronger; a faint color tinged his cheeks, and he half rose in bed, as though awaiting some new developments. On the stroke of eleven he turned to me and signed: "It is time to go."

"'"But there are still a few pages to write out," I answered.

"'"It's all right," he rejoined. "It is enough. Only go—go at once. It is your way of escape."

"'For a moment I hesitated. The words sounded senseless; sick men, I reasoned, had strange fancies. But the glance of his eyes was sane; it was more,—it was convincing.

"'Without another word, I gathered up my papers and started across the bridge. It swayed, but only slightly. There was not the slightest danger of an accident. And yet in my passage across that bridge I trembled violently. When finally I reached the strangely guarded door I had barely strength enough to knock upon the heavy timbers. There was no reply. Evidently they were absorbed in their experiment, I thought, and knocked again. Still no reply, though this time I seemed to hear a faint movement within. I tried to peer through the tiny window-panes in the door. They were somewhat above the level of my face and partly obscured by the iron bars. So I raised myself on tiptoe and, shading my eyes with my hands, looked in.

"'For a moment I could see nothing. Then, as I became accustomed to the gloom, I made out a few objects near by,—a charcoal stove, a table holding a pair of scales, pincers, blowpipe, a graduating glass, and other apparatus with which I was unfamiliar. At the farther end of the table sat a motionless female figure, the head thrown back, one hand clutching a crumpled sheet of paper, while the other hung limply at her side. Directly opposite a man sat, also motionless, his bowed head resting on the edge of the table. As I looked, I fancied the hand holding the paper twitched slightly.

"'I shifted my position. A faint light fell upon the face of the woman. It was that of Mrs. Westinghouse, but white and rigid, with sightless, staring eyes.

"'"They are dead!" I cried, as I rushed back into the room of the dying man. Then, recollecting myself, I succeeded in repeating my words with fingers that trembled so that I could hardly give the signs.

"'For a moment he seemed unmoved; then, with a ghastly smile, he signalled:—

"'"This is your time to escape."

"'"But you—"

"'"Never mind me. All I care for is to keep my secret from them. Remember your vow—and now go—go—and God bless you."

"'I grasped his hand, then rushed from the room. I snatched my hat and coat in the hall below, and ran out of the house and down the road, never stopping until I reached the station. There I took the next train and reached the city only half an hour ago.'"

Here Mr. Gilbert began to light a cigar, as though his story were finished.

"But what became of the dying man—of the mother and son—the little stenographer?"

"Oh, yes, to be sure," said the detective; "you wish to know the sequel. Well, I went up there that day with two or three men and found everything as she'd described it. The mother and son had simply been evidently stupefied by drugs purposely introduced into the false formula, and soon recovered their senses, but the uncle had breathed his last. Mrs. Westinghouse had been smart enough to get a physician, who was there when we arrived, and who, honestly enough, I suppose, ascribed his death to natural causes. We could do nothing from lack of evidence."

"But the secret,—the mysterious formula?"

"Ah, that is the saddest part of the whole affair. Half crazed by her horrible experience in this house, and recalling her vow to make no use of any information gained while there, Miss Wood had no sooner escaped than she tore the true formula into pieces and threw it away. Had she kept it, it would undoubtedly have brought her an enormous fortune, for an expert metallurgist who examined the strange dagger given to her by the dying man pronounced it to be an example of a priceless art,—that of tempering copper to the consistency of steel,—a process understood by the ancients, but lost now these thousands of years."

Her Hoodoo.

BY HAROLD KINSABBY.

It was because the doctor insisted that my system needed ozone that I went to Colorado on a hunting trip. It was there that I met her, and it was there, by the way, that I became convinced that when a man with a lame lung undertakes to hunt ozone in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains he ought to provide himself with a guide. I went alone, and that's why I got lost.

For two days I had tramped, half starved, toward the rising sun, with the hope of reaching some cattle ranch near Denver. On the morning of the third day, as I was trudging through a thick undergrowth, I was suddenly startled by a woman's voice:—

"You didn't happen to spy a little speckled heifer back yonder, did you, stranger?"

It is said that upon the approach of a human being the first impulse of a man who has been lost in the woods is that biblically ascribed to the wicked, namely, "to flee when no man pursueth." But at this time I was too far gone with hunger and weariness to flee from anything.

I simply leaned against a tree trunk and awaited the appearance of the voice's owner. She came riding a bronco across the crest of a hillock. She was slight and wiry, and she wore her huge sombrero and man's canvas shooting-coat with an air that at first suggested the cowboy. A later glimpse of feminine drapery, however, proclaimed her something infinitely more interesting,—a real Rocky Mountain cow-girl in all her glory.

"No," I answered weakly to her repeated question as to the heifer's whereabouts. "No, I've seen neither hoof nor hide of your heifer, which is lucky for you, as I should probably have eaten it if I had."

"You do look hungry," said the strange horsewoman; and as she spoke the bold lines of her aquiline face relaxed into an expression of womanly solicitude.

"Here, take this," she added in a business-like tone, producing from a bag that lay, meal sack fashion, across her saddle, a can of pressed beef and a square foot or so of corn bread. "No," as I tried to speak, "never mind explanations. Have some lunch with me and talk afterwards; that is, if you ain't afraid to eat with a cow-girl.

"You see," she continued, when we were comfortably seated on a moss-grown log that served as a whole set of dining-room furniture, "I know myself what it is to get lost and nearly starve to death. 'Having experienced misfortune myself, I know how to pity others.'"

I choked over a morsel of corn bread and stared at my companion with ill-bred astonishment. A cow-girl who quoted Virgil, even in a translation, was something not dreamed of in my philosophy.

"Yes, I don't wonder that you look surprised," said my hostess good-naturedly. "I suppose I don't look as though I was up in the classics, but the fact is I'm a graduate of Iowa Wesleyan University, and I've studied Latin, Shakespeare, geometry, and all the rest.

"Yes," musingly, "once I expected to pursue a literary career. Indeed, my professors all told me that I might become the George Eliot or Mrs. Browning of America. But that speckled heifer I was asking you about just now knocked all my plans into a cocked hat."

"How was that?" I asked.

"Well, it was like this," said the cow-girl college graduate, as she pushed aside her corn bread, untasted, and, planting her elbows upon her knee, propped her chin upon her palms, man fashion. "In the spring of 1885, several years after I had graduated, my father died, and mother and I came to Colorado and bought a ranch at Plum Creek, some twenty-three miles south of Denver. You see, my father had been an invalid, and ever since I can remember we'd been chasing round from pillar to post, trying to find a climate that agreed with him; so this was really what you might call the first chance I had to go to work in earnest. It was a lovely quiet spot, an ideal place, I thought, for communing with nature and pursuing a literary career. But it was not so to be. Like—what's his name with a tender heel?"

"Achilles?" I suggested.

"Yes, like Achilles, I had one weak spot that was going to be my ruin. I was crazy about pets. Why, if it hadn't been for that weak spot I might be wearing literary laurel instead of lassoing cattle—but this is neither here nor there. What I was going to say was that before I'd been settled on that ranch three days some men came our way driving a herd of Texas cattle to Denver, and, as a late snowstorm came up just then, they decided to camp on good feed in the hills in front of my ranch. That afternoon they came over to our house to buy bread, and while they were there they mentioned to me that they had a nice cow that had just calved, and offered if I would buy the cow to throw in the calf, as they were just going to kill it. Well, here was where my weak spot came in. No sooner did I hear about those animals than nothing would do but that I should have them for pets. Besides, the cow was offered mighty cheap, only eighteen dollars, while I'd been going without milk rather than pay the fifty or seventy-five dollars asked for a milch cow; so now I thought was my chance to close a good bargain and get two nice pets, beside. Yes, sir, I even planned while the men were gone after those animals how I would domesticate them in a few days."

"And it took longer?" I asked.

"Domesticate! I might as well have tried to domesticate an active volcano—but I mustn't anticipate.

"My first impression of my pet cow wasn't exactly encouraging. I had imagined her ambling serenely up to the house, mild-eyed and gentle, with the little calflet trotting at her side. Instead, she was dragged upon the scene by four men who had spent at least an hour in catching her and bringing her to me. The calf, meantime, after an equally exciting chase had been led up and tied to a large plum bush.

"However, I wasn't one to let a little thing like that phase me. I was determined to make friends with that cow; so when, about two hundred yards from the house, the men threw her and took off the rope I advanced with that idea. But I wasn't half so anxious to make friends as the cow was. As soon as she set eyes on me—and if ever an animal had the evil eye, that cow did—she made a bee line for yours truly.

"'Look out,' shouted the men. But I was already footing it pretty lively towards the thicket where the calf was tied, the cow after me, snorting like a steam engine almost in my ear. The next thing that I knew I had slipped and fallen on the ice in the north side of the bushes with the cow on top. I believe that I tried to grab the creature by her horns, with a wild hope that I might hold her down until the men came to the rescue.

"I might as well have tried to hold down a hurricane. As she rose so did I, and was on my feet twenty yards away before she could see where she was at. Just as she rushed from the bush and lunged after me, I saw a rope swing through the air, and the next thing that devil-possessed cow knew she was tied to a clump of thicket and left to meditate upon the evil of her ways."

"What did the men say to this?" I asked.

"Of course they made out that they were awfully surprised at the cow's antics, fearfully scared at my close call, and all that; but I saw them grinning and chuckling as if they were ready to burst as they rode off, and I felt dead sure they'd planned to have a double funeral, cow and calf both, if they hadn't found a tender-foot to unload them on.

"However, I never was one to give in that I was beaten by anything, first off, especially by a cow. Besides, that idea of having two nice pets had got a great hold on me. I made up my mind that if kindness could reclaim that erring cow she should be coddled like an infant. So next morning, bright and early, I started for the plum bush where she and the calf were tied, determined to make peace. Fortunately, two gentlemen, who had heard of the episode of the day before, rode over to see me that morning and joined me on my peace-making expedition. No sooner did the cow see me within thirty feet of her than she gave a fearful surge; the rope that she was tied with—worn thin by rubbing against the tree all night—gave way, and the cow made for me as though fifty devils had taken possession of her and were urging her on.

"I tell you I didn't stop to think about the power of kindness on the brute creation. I simply yelled, 'Murder,' and made for a sand gulch near by as though a band of wild Indians were on my trail. As I reached the gulch and dropped ten feet or so down the steep bank, digging my heels into the loose sand to stop myself, that acrobatic cow sailed straight over my head and lit about twenty yards below. At first I thought that she was dead, but no such luck. In a moment she got up, looking foolish and dazed, but very much alive, and began shaking her head and pawing fiercely, when the two gentlemen reached down and lifted me out, as much as to say, 'This is what I'll do when I get hold of you.'"

"Which she didn't, I hope," I put in.

"No, indeed; you can be precious sure that I took particular care that she didn't have another chance to get hold of me or to get back into the yard again. For an hour or so after she had hoisted herself out of the gulch she stood outside the fence that separated the yard from the field, shaking her head and pawing whenever she saw any of us at the doors or windows. At last, towards evening, she trotted off with a zigzag wabble down the bank towards the creek among the willows, and there she lay in ambush, you might say, so that for a week after we didn't dare to go down to make a garden or do anything else, for fear of having that cow descend like a wolf on the fold."

"And after that week?" I inquired.

"Well, finally she grew bolder, and ventured on the mesa near the railroad track, where she made war on the section hands, and I was warned that I must take her out of the field or they would shoot her. So to prevent her from demoralizing the entire neighborhood I had her killed and used her for beef. And tough eating she was," said my hostess, laughing; "but in any case she was better dead than alive, for there wasn't room for that cow and me in the same country."

"But you've been telling me about the cow. What about the heifer? I thought that you said that she was the cause—"

"Oh, yes. The heifer was the calf. Now, whether the cow disowned the calf, or the calf the cow, I never found out. Anyway, the day that the cow disappeared into the bottom land that little calf trotted up to the house and tearfully begged to be loved. Well, you might have thought I'd had enough of pets for one while, but, no; the helplessness of that poor little calf so went to my heart that for weeks I rode nine miles every day for milk, and fed it to that little creature with my own hands."

"A sort of foster-mother," I suggested.

"Yes, I was a mother to that little orphan calf. But, if you'll believe me, it was a case of 'how sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child,' or however that goes. Yes, sir, that calf followed in the evil course of its mother, only if anything it was worse, sort of like Agrippina and her son, Nero, only this was a daughter.

"You see, the cow was perfectly open about her evil deeds, but the calf was underhanded. After trotting around me, looking as innocent as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, she'd all of a sudden disappear, and come back after a few days with an ear torn and the skin raked off her side; and pretty soon I'd hear that she'd been attacking horses or fighting other cows.

"One day she chased an unlucky workman out onto the railroad bridge and kept him there until a train came along and the engineer slackened enough to take him on and carry him to Plum Station. Another time she got after a tramp that was camping on the bottom land among the willows, and forced him to take refuge in the forks of a crooked tree, where he roosted until one of us went down and called off Miss Bossie. In fact, the only return that calf ever made for all my loving care was to scare away tramps. If I could have kept her around the house just for that purpose she would have been one of the best investments I ever made.

"But as years went by that calf became more and more abandoned to evil. She would wander farther and farther from home, until now I spend half my nights worrying about her and more than half the day following her up and taking her home with me."

"I should think you'd get rid of the creature," I interrupted.

"Kill her? Yes, I suppose that would be the most sensible thing to do, but you know how it is about always loving the prodigal son the most. Yes, sir; wherever that animal goes it takes my heart with it, and, though it's nigh onto eleven years old, I never can think of it as anything but a pet calf."

"And so it was bringing up that heifer that interfered with your literary career?"

"Interfered? Well, I should say so! Back at the start I did publish some poems in the local papers, and I read one or two essays at the Zion Church literaries. But people wouldn't believe they were original. No woman, they said, who spent her time chasing wild cows over the country could write odes to spring and essays on Shakespeare.

"My literary career was killed, blighted in the bud. And, as my income was small and I had to do something to make out a living, I've just turned my hand to anything that came along.

"Instead of gaining fame as the American George Eliot, I've been called Colorado Cow-girl and Bronco Buster. Instead of wielding the pen, I've driven a four-horse stage, branded cattle, broken saddle horses, sung in a church choir, run a blacksmith's shop, kept school, given music lessons, run a hotel, taught painting, carried mail, roughed it on horseback all the way from Colorado to Oregon, and taken a hand in pretty much everything else, except shoveling wind off the roof. But there"—breaking off suddenly—"you aren't interested in all this. What you want now is rest and shelter.

"Take my outfit and make tracks for Wilkins ranch. Just give the pony his head and he'll land you all right.

"It's over that way," rising and gesturing toward the southeast.

I tried to protest against this plan, but the Colorado cow-girl was already several yards away.

"That's all right; meet you later at the ranch," she cried, turning for a moment before she plunged into the thicket. "But first," she added, with almost maternal solicitude, "I think I'll just look around and see if I can't find that little speckled heifer."

In a Tiger Trap.

BY CHARLES EDWARD BARNS.

The royal Malay tiger is no gentleman. If he were, the following would never have been told.

Punda-Tsang was an innkeeper. He was sole proprietor of the Ballawari-Dâk, which is a very big name for a very small native hotel about sixty miles north of Penang, and on the high road to the hunting-steppes of the Bukit, or hill-country. The quaint little hospice clung to the mountain side like a swallow's nest, high over the jungle-bedded Sungei, whose foaming, crashing torrents came down from the upper mountains like an endless charge of white cavalry to the sea. Punda was a good sort of a Malay, which means a bad sort of anything else. That is, he would plunder only on the securest principles, and never quarrel with a bigger man nor a better armed one than he. In this he differed from other Malays, who would plunder and knife upon no principle or provocation whatever, if they thought there was a ten-anna piece in the job.

But a deeper reading of this prosperous boniface of the jungles revealed the fact that he was capable of love,—yes, even a tender, human affection; and that little Iali, his five-year-old daughter, was the object of a worship in his heart even more fervent than that which he bestowed upon the five home-made clay gods before which, in a dark corner of the Dâk, he burned a vast deal of ill-smelling punk. The second year of Tsang's married life had hardly begun when his beautiful wife was bitten by a yellow viper while gathering healing herbs down in the valley. When they found the poor creature she was dying—with a little new-born babe in her arms. This calamity the bereaved husband regarded as a direct visitation of the clay gods in the corner; only the day before he had robbed a Kling hunter of his rifle, leaving the poor fellow to make his way unarmed down to the sea, where he ran upon a pair of half-starved _kukangs_, a vicious species of Malay chimpanzee, in fleeing from which he fell over the cliff and was dashed to pieces. And Punda-Tsang always felt that that yellow viper was sent direct from the land of the judging gods to avenge the blood of the poor Kling hunter. But there was one thing that mitigated the harshness of this vengeance,—the presence of the little child, whom he tenderly cherished, and whom he had called Iali, which is to say "forgiven." But even were not the little creature a messenger of forgiveness to the penitent savage heart, she was more than worthy his worship and love,—this child of the tropic forest, restless and agile as a young panther, with lustrous black eyes and a wild, wayward nature, much spoiled by the wayfarers and fawned upon by the coolies that swarmed about the compound.

One day two British naval officers stopped at the Dâk on their way down from a hunt in the hill country. We were seated under the palms before the bungalow after tiffin, smoking cheroots, while I listened to their exploits with interest. Suddenly four native Malays approached, wheeling a live tiger in a clumsy wooden cage, and halted before the Dâk. They were going to dispose of him to a naturalist down on the coast, who had a method of killing and stuffing animals by which the marvelous luster of their skins was preserved. The forest king was certainly a magnificent specimen. If you have never seen a live tiger fresh from the jungles, take my word for it, the ordinary caged tiger at the Zoo is as much like the former as canned strawberries are like the fresh, lustrous fruit of June. The Englishmen evidently thought so, too, as they concluded to buy him, and swear that they had captured him, and then to present the beast to the London Zoo. They bought the animal for forty Mexican dollars, sent the natives back rejoicing, and started down towards the coast, while Punda-Tsang, not contented with exacting fifty per cent commission from the poor fellows for using his Dâk for a tiger mart, committed the meanest act of his life. He slyly sawed one of the cage bars nearly through in four places. Then he went to work planning to waylay the tiger on his way back to his haunts after he should break loose, which he knew would happen before the Englishmen could get many miles down the valley. He quietly pursued his planning until late that night, when he heard upon good authority that the tiger had broken jail and nearly killed one of his owners. Then he prepared to put his plans into action.

Here we reach the illustration of the first-mentioned fact, of which Tsang was ready to take advantage: that the Malay tiger is no gentleman. He knew that the beast will never walk up leisurely and take his bite like a smooth and oily clubman at a free lunch, but that the very instant that he smells blood he will drop flat, and, even if the feast is a mile away, will begin a slow, creeping journey towards it, wasting hours, perhaps, and working up a terrific hunger in the meantime. When he has approached within twenty feet of the prize, quivering with desire and terrible with greed, he will leap into the air like a cannon ball and plunge down upon his victim. Punda-Tsang knew all this; so he dug a pit down the valley, constructed a network of branches over it, and laid the quarter of a bullock upon it. Then he waited for the tiger to scent the blood and make his slow, crawling journey, knowing that when he made the grand twenty-foot leap he would go crashing through the network into the pit below. Then Tsang planned he would starve the beast, let down a cage baited with more fresh meat, and, sliding the bars from above, haul the captured tiger out and sell him over again. All of this might have happened, but it didn't. Events somewhat stranger and more terrible for Punda-Tsang interfered, doubtless as another direct visitation of the vengeance of the little clay gods in the bungalow corner, half concealed in clouds of punk-smoke.

As little Iali was the innkeeper's constant solace and companion, she went with him to the pit-digging, her father explaining to her the manner of capturing the "four-footed jungle-god," which facts, instead of frightening the child, only helped to increase the stock of her play gods and demons which she molded deftly from the red clay of the ravine. With the appearance of the new moon, that mascot of the Orientals, the pit was baited. For two days nothing was heard of the tiger, and Punda-Tsang began to fear that he had gone back to the hills by another route.

On the afternoon of the third day I sat on the cliff's edge, watching the mists rise from the roaring river bottom, a phenomenon which always accompanies the closing day. Suddenly there was a great shuffling of sandals about the compound, and I knew something extraordinary was taking place. I turned quickly; the big form of Punda-Tsang, the innkeeper, burst upon me suddenly, his flat face as pallid as a demon's, ferocious, but with the ferocity of nameless fear.

"Iali!" cried he hoarsely. "Have you seen Iali?"

"No!" I replied, almost in a whisper. He did not wait, but sped towards the so-called bullock-sheds, which were really caves cut in the solid rock beyond the Dâk. I had become attached to the child, whose marvelous beauty had charmed, and whose weird ways mystified me. But I had never been alone with her, knowing that any accident happening to Iali while in my keeping would result seriously for me—perhaps cost me my life. The coolies were flying hither and thither, making the air ring with their loud wails. Such agitation on the part of these vagabonds roused me to a realization of the child's danger. Suddenly I turned my eyes and thoughts in the direction of the ravine where the tiger trap lay. I recalled vividly the child's interest in the "jungle-god" who was to be captured in the deep pit; and, knowing the little creature's absolute fearlessness, thought that, acting upon some childish impulse, she might have strayed down the narrow path to the pit. Meanwhile the wailing about me increased.

I dropped over the ledge, soon reaching the pathway by a short route. As I penetrated the jungle, now suffused with mist in the ruby glow of the expiring day, I realized with what risks to myself I was entering this dangerous spot, all unarmed. I was still debating whether or not to return for a weapon of defense, when, as I leaped over a soft spot in the red clay, I saw two footprints that shot terror into my heart; one was that of a mammoth tiger, the other belonged to a little child. I dropped down beside them. No. There was no mistaking them, so clear and fresh were both. I rose to my feet, my head whirling, my ears half-deafened by the noise of the jungle insects and the increasing roar of that river beyond. Then I crept forward, scarcely daring to breathe, my heart beating faster and faster with apprehension.

The distance to that tiger pit seemed to be doubled, and the time that elapsed before reaching it everlasting. The crackling of the leaves and twigs on the moss beneath my feet added to my trepidations. Almost before I realized it I had reached the big trap, and then halted short, thrilled by the sound of something human. I looked up. Through the deepening mists and intervening boughs I saw the little child-figure of Iali creeping out upon the withered branches over the pit. For the instant I had no power to move, nor dared I speak, lest, overcome with sudden fright, the frail little one might lose her foothold. Suddenly a new horror disclosed itself. What were those two glaring, cold, yet fiery points just beyond the pit, burning their way through the shadows? My God! It was the tiger. He was lying flat on the ground, couchant, paws extended, quivering, ready for the fatal spring.

In moments like these one's reasoning powers become super-human. I saw that in all probability either Iali or I was to be sacrificed, which one depended merely upon the caprice of the wild beast. I had heard that the calm, steady, fearless stare of a human is more terrifying to wild animals than guns that kill. On the instant I resolved to practise it; it was my only expedient. So I stared at those two coldly bright and glowing points of light like a madman, without a quiver, without a doubt.

Suddenly I saw the little figure waver on the dead branches over the mouth of the pit, and then—oh, horrors! with a weak cry poor little Iali had lost her foothold and slipped slowly through the yielding boughs into the cave beneath. For a moment all was silent. Then I heard her childish prattle. The soft sand had broken Iali's fall and saved her life, while I was brought face to face with the most awful problem of my life. For what seemed hours, I stood like a pillar of stone, the sweat pouring down my neck, my tongue hot and parched. One show of fear would, I knew, be fatal. The "jungle-gods" are keen, like demons, measuring strength with man. How long could I keep up this maddening strain?—how long force upon the king-beast this illusion of my superior will?

Suddenly, as I stood like one in a trance, facing this growing problem, I was conscious of a stir in the reeds and underbrush at my right hand. Though the sound caused me to tremble, I dared not take my eyes from the crouching monster beyond. The next instant, a strange, huge shape crept stealthily out of the underwood, and advanced into the clearing toward the pit,—a ponderous black monster with the body of a beast, but lifting through the grass the head and shoulders of a human colossus. It was a mammoth orang-outang!

The tiger crouched lower. He seemed to be as nonplussed, as stunned by the intrusion of this huge interloper as I was. In motionless silence, he transferred his burning gaze to the mammoth monster.

Advancing to the very edge of the pit, the huge ape slipped, but he recovered. Sly beast! He saw that the branches were only a blind. Then he walked around the edge of the trap, and knelt down like a human being, slowly, deliberately reaching out his long hairy arm till his giant hand clutched that bullock bone. Oh, what joy that calm, providential deed brought to my heart! Then, to my intense relief, the orang slowly dragged the great mass of flesh off the network of branches upon the solid ground.

For a moment longer the gleam of those two terrible eyes, now like peepholes into hell, followed the unsuspecting pilferer. Then came a rustle, a strange shriek like sudden thunder, a bound, and a roar, and the "jungle-god" had sprung into the air, and came down like a flashing avalanche full upon the broad body of the kneeling orang. A single paw struck the mammoth ape in the small of the back, and never shall I forget the sound of that blow which broke the bones of the orang's spine like a cannon ball. With an almost human groan, the rescuer of my life and hers I came to save gave up the booty, together with his own life. Then the tiger, with a final flash of eyes full into my own, snatched up the carcass of the bullock in his flaming jaws, and slid off into the thick of the jungle.

I have often wondered since how things would have turned out if that tiger _had_ been a gentleman.

The Red-Hot Dollar.

BY H. D. UMBSTAETTER.

It lacked three minutes of five by the big clock in the tower when the east-bound Chicago express rumbled into the station at Buffalo. The train had not yet come to a standstill when a hatless man jumped from the platform of the rear sleeping-car and ran across the tracks into the depot restaurant. A few minutes later he reappeared, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a small paper bag in the other.

With these he hurriedly made his way back to the car through a straggling procession of drowsy tourists, who were taking advantage of the train's five minutes' stop to breathe the crisp morning air. The last of these had already resumed his seat when the man without a hat again appeared at the lunch counter, returned the borrowed dishes, and ordered coffee for himself. He had just picked up the cup and was raising it to his lips when the conductor's "All aboard" rang through the station.

Leaving the coffee untouched, he thrust a five-dollar bill at the attendant, grabbed his change, and started in pursuit of the moving train. He had almost reached it when an unlucky stumble sent the coins in his hand rolling in all directions along the floor. Quickly recovering himself and paying no heed to his loss, he redoubled his efforts, and, though losing ground at every step, kept up the hopeless chase to the end of the station. There he stopped, panting for breath. The slip had proved fatal. He had missed the train!

As he stood staring wildly through the clouds of dust that rose from the track, a young woman, evidently deeply agitated, suddenly appeared in the doorway of the vanishing car. Upon seeing him, she made frantic attempts to leap from the platform, when she was seized by a man and pulled back into the car. When the door had closed upon the two the bareheaded man in the station faced about and philosophically muttered:—

"It's fate!"

Then, after pausing a few moments, as if to collect his thoughts, he slowly retraced his steps to the scene of his mishap and began calmly searching for his lost change. Circling closely about, his eyes scanning the floor, he succeeded in recovering first one and then another of the missing coins, until finally, after repeated rounds, he lacked only one dollar of the whole amount. At this point he paused, clinked the recovered coins in his hand, looked at his watch, and then started on a final round. As this failed to reveal the missing piece, he gave up the search, transferred the contents of his hands to his trousers' pocket, and started in the direction of the telegraph office.

He had proceeded perhaps twenty paces when it occurred to him to turn about and cast one more look along the floor. As he did so his eye fell upon a shining object lodged in an opening between the rail and planked floor, a few feet from where he stood. He stooped to examine it, and, seeing that it was the missing coin, reached for it, but found the opening too narrow to admit his fingers. He tried to recover the piece with his pocket-knife, and, failing in this attempt, took his lead-pencil, with which, after repeated attempts, he succeeded in tossing it upon the floor.

With an air of subdued satisfaction, he walked away, and was about to convey the coin to his pocket when a sudden impulse led him to examine it. Holding it up before his eyes, he stopped, scrutinized every detail, and as he turned it over and over the puzzled look on his face changed to one of rigid astonishment. For fully a minute he stood as if transfixed; then, rousing himself and looking anxiously about as if to see if any one had observed him, he hurried to the cashier's desk in the restaurant, and, producing the bright silver dollar, asked the girl if she happened to remember from whom she received it.

She didn't remember, but would exchange it for another, she said, if he wished. Politely declining the offer and apologizing for having troubled her, he said that, as the coin he held in his hand was separating a loving wife from her husband, he wished very much to find some trace of its former owner. The girl looked up, thought for a moment, then, pulling out the cash drawer, and examining its contents, said she might have received it from the conductor of the Lake Shore express which had left for Cleveland at 3.15. She now recalled that when she came on duty at midnight there was no silver dollar among the change in the cash drawer, and that the only one she remembered receiving was from Sleeping-Car Conductor Parkins.

The man thanked her and hastened to the telegraph office, where he sent this message:—

"CONDUCTOR, EAST BOUND CHICAGO EXPRESS,
UTICA, N. Y.

"Please ask lady in section seven of sleeping-car Catawba to
await her husband at Delavan House, Albany.

"A. J. HOBART."

After requesting the operator to kindly rush the despatch, he proceeded to the ticket office, procured a seat in the 5.45 fast mail for Cleveland, and, with his hand clutching the coin in his pocket and his eyes fixed upon the floor, meditatively paced up and down the platform, waiting for the train to arrive.

As he did so he was disconcerted to find himself the object of wide-spread curiosity; even the newsboys with the morning papers favored him with an inquiring stare as they passed. Wondering what was amiss, he suddenly put his hand to his head, which furnished an instant explanation. He was hatless.

Looking at the big clock, he saw that it lacked ten minutes of train time, and, hastily crossing over to the farther track, he disappeared through the west end of the station.

Among the passengers who boarded the 5.45 fast mail for Cleveland when it thundered into the station, ten minutes later, was the bareheaded gentleman of a few minutes ago, now wearing a stylish derby. Once in the train, he settled himself in his seat with a sigh of relief and satisfaction. Not until then did the really remarkable character of the situation dawn upon him. On the very day which he had hailed as one of the happiest of his life he was traveling at the rate of about sixty miles an hour away from the girl he loved devotedly and to whom he had been married just seventeen hours. A queer opening of his honeymoon! In his anxiety to get a cup of coffee for his wife, he had lost his hat, then lost his change, and, lastly, lost the train.

Why did he not follow his bride at once? What mysterious spell had come upon this seventeen-hour bridegroom that he should fly from her as swiftly as the fast express could carry him? His hand held the solution of the problem—simple, yet unexplainable—a silver dollar! It held the secret he must unravel before he could return to her; it was not then that he loved her less, but that this bit of precious metal had suddenly developed an occult power that had turned their paths, for the present, in opposite directions.

At the first stopping place he sent another message, which read as follows:—

"MRS. A. J. HOBART, Delavan House, Albany, N. Y.

"Cannot possibly reach Albany before to-morrow morning.

"ANSEL."

With his brain filled with excited thoughts, the young man entered the sleeping-car office at Cleveland four hours later and asked for Conductor Parkins. He was told that this official would not be on duty before night, though possibly he might be at his home on St. Clair Street.

To the address given him the indefatigable young man repaired at once, and found the genial gentleman for whom he sought breakfasting with his family. He kindly gave audience at once to his visitor.

"This coin, which you gave the cashier of the restaurant in Buffalo," said the latter, revealing it in the palm of his hand; "can you tell me from whom you received it?"

Parkins remembered receiving cash from but two passengers the night before, one a traveling man who got off in Cleveland, and the other a woman whose destination was Erie. The stranger might ascertain their names by consulting the car diagram at the ticket office. "You seem interested in the coin," he added, smiling.

"I am, for a good reason," laughed the young man in reply. "It is separating a man from his wife." And with these engimatical words he made his adieu, with thanks, hastened to the ticket office, and an hour later was scouring the city for one Richard Spears.

The register of the Stillman House contained the freshly written name of "Richard Spears, Providence, R. I.," but that gentleman, when found in his room showing samples of hardware to a prospective buyer, regretted that he could not throw any light on the particular dollar his visitor held up to his gaze, and remembered distinctly that he had given the conductor a two-dollar bill in payment for his berth. He came from a section, he said, where people took no stock in silver dollars.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when a man got off the train at Erie and inquired of the cabmen and depot master regarding a lady who had arrived on the early train from Buffalo. An hour later he was driving along a country road some miles south of the town inquiring for the Wickliffe farm.

As he finally drove up to the house which was his destination he was conscious of a strange excitement. This, he realized, was probably his only remaining chance to trace the coin by whose mysterious power he had been drawn into this wild chase with the hope of identifying its former owner. He took a hasty note of the general features of the place. It had a comfortable, well-to-do look; a two-story house, white, with green blinds. Most of these were closed, as is customary with country houses, but the windows at the right of the big front door, opening on a small porch, were shaded only by white curtains. There was a sound of voices within as he stepped up to the door and rapped.

Mrs. Wickliffe, a pleasant-faced little woman, sat surrounded by three children and a neighbor's wife, to whom she was displaying some purchases. As one of the children opened the door, admitting the stranger into this animated scene, she was standing before a mirror trying on a new bonnet, which was eliciting extravagant praises from the neighbor.

After listening to his story, Mrs. Wickliffe said that her memory was so treacherous that she really couldn't say for certain whether or not she gave the conductor the shining dollar, but that if she did she must have received it from her son in Germantown, Pa., from a visit to whose house she had just returned, and who before her departure had exchanged some money for her. She added that, as she took no interest in coin collecting, a dollar was simply a dollar to her and that she thought a woman was very foolish to take up with a fad which might ruin her happiness.

Her unknown caller thought so, too, admired her taste in millinery, took the address of her son, and, clutching the fatal coin more firmly than ever, drove back to Erie, where he boarded the New York night express.

To the young man who still clutched the silver dollar sleep was impossible. A multitude of exciting fancies crossed his brain. The developments he hoped to bring about, the curious solution of the problem, its effect upon his future, and the future of one so dear to him,—all this murdered sleep for him as effectually as did the crime on Lady Macbeth's soul. It drove him into the smoking-car, where he sank into a seat and planned and conjectured between puffs of Havana smoke until the train reached Albany. So completely absorbed had he become in the solution of this knotty problem in which his accident of the morning had involved him, and so convinced was he that the information must be for the time kept a secret, that he actually began to dread what was clearly inevitable,—the explanation he must shortly make to his wife.

His inclination was to tell her all. His duty to others forbade this. After pondering over the matter, he decided to explain that he had a happy surprise in store for her, one that had an important bearing on their future, and which unfortunately necessitated a change in their plans for a honeymoon in Europe.

This, on reaching the Delavan House, he expressed to a very pretty and very anxious little woman who was awaiting him, together with a good many other things not necessary to this story. And, instead of the steamer for Europe, the reunited pair took a train for Philadelphia. Early the next day the young man presented himself at the office of Dr. James Wickliffe, at Germantown, who smilingly admitted having given the shining dollar to his mother two days before. He had received the coin from a patient, a letter-carrier named John Lennon, and remembered it because of the following strange story, related to him by Lennon himself.

A few days before, the carrier was engaged in delivering mail from door to door along Vine Street, Philadelphia, when a zigzag trip across the street and back again brought him to the narrow stairway of a dingy brick house, in front of which hung an enormous brass key bearing the word "Locksmith." Here he paused to draw a little parcel from his bundle. As he did so he heard something fall with a metallic clink upon the stone pavement. He looked and saw that it was a silver dollar, which rolled toward the gutter and came to a stop close by the curb. Hastening to pick it up, he instantly dropped it with a cry of pain.

_The coin was almost red hot!_

The letter-carrier stood nursing his hand and thinking for two or three minutes. Silver dollars do not commonly drop out of the sky. But that this one should thus fall like a meteorite in a condition too heated for handling was certainly more than surprising—it was astounding! The man looked up at the dingy brick house and examined it attentively, noting that the ground floor was occupied as a green grocery and that all of the windows were shut save one in the third story.

Then he kicked the mysterious coin into a puddle, fished it out again with his fingers, and put it into his trousers' pocket. He was about to investigate further, when some small boys called his attention to the fact that it was the first day of April, whereupon he proceeded on his way. He gave no further thought to the matter until that night, when he found that his thumb and forefinger had been so badly burned as to require treatment.