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The Red Cross Girl and other Stories ...............................................................................................................1

Richard Harding Davis............................................................................................................................1

He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and so he had to die young. Some people

think that a man of fiftytwo is middleaged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never have

grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other brother was Peter Pan.

Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of sperm whales; and we have ransacked the

Westchester Hills for gunsites against the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and medicines,

and tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go elephant shooting in Africa. But we weren't going to

hurt the elephants. Once R. H. D. shot a hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I think he

never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman. Of hunting, as of many other things, he has

said the last word. Do you remember the Happy Hunting Ground in "The Bar Sinister"?"Where nobody

Experienced persons tell us that a manhunt is the most exciting of all sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba.

He hunted for wounded men who were out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of

them and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary member of their regiment just

because he was charming and a faithful friend, but largely because they were a lot of daredevils and he was

To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done a brave thing in his life. He talked a great

deal, and he talked even better than he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I have dusted every

corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his in which he played a heroic or successful part.

Always he was running at top speed, or hiding behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot of water (for

hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was getting the worst of it. But about the other fellows he told the

whole truth with lightning flashes of wit and character building and admiration or contempt. Until the

invention of moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his talk. His eye had photographed, his

mind had developed and prepared the slides, his words sent the light through them, and lo and behold, they

were reproduced on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing and color. With the written word or the

spoken word he was the greatest recorder and reporter of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps, that

ever lived. The history of the last thirty years, its manners and customs and its leading events and inventions,

cannot be written truthfully without reference to the records which he has left, to his special articles and to his

letters. Read over again the Queen's Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of the Germans through

Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too zealously, even for a friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is dead,

But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in due time before the unerring tribunal of

One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact with him is his energy. Retaining

enough for his own use (he uses a good deal, because every day he does the work of five or six men), he

distributes the inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it. Men go to him tired and discouraged,

he sends them away glad to be alive, still gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil himself in a

good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could

distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you

were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly

upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman

in his buggy, or the telephone rang and from the receiver there poured into you affection and encouragement.

But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the temperature of the house, which a

moment before had been too hot or too cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and wellbeing

invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants in the house and in the yard. And the

older daughter ran to him, and the baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a

doublebarrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the disappointments of this

He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid of them. He was afraid perhaps that they

wouldn't find out how much he loved them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and,

unsolicited, climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then the loveliest expression came over his

face, and you knew that the great heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite bliss,

One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a telegram saying that he had a baby of

his own. And I thank God that little Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has

Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was allowed to sit up an extra halfhour so that

she could wait on the table (and though I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with dignity and

without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H. D. thought it was, and in that event he must

abandon his place and storm the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was taking life easy

on the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R. H. D. had never seen our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for

his, they wouldn't grow at all. It wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the iris. And then back he would come

to us, with a wonderful story of his adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen, and leaving behind

him a cook to whom there had been issued a new lease of life, and a gardener who blushed and smiled in the

It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was with us most and we learned to know him

Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very difficult and complicated. And he who had given so

much friendship to so many people needed a little friendship in return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a time

to live in a house whose master and mistress loved each other, and where there were children. Before he came

Now the chimney in the livingroom draws, but in those first days of the builtover house it didn't. At least,

it didn't draw all the time, but we pretended that it did, and with much pretense came faith. From the fireplace

that smoked to the serious things of life we extended our pretendings, until real troubles went down before

It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest spring I ever lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly

after Christmas. The spireas were in bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a sweet violet or

two somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against gray cabin walls proved that

precocious peachtrees were in bloom. It never rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In the middle of

the day it was hot. The wind never blew, and every morning we had a four for tennis and every afternoon we

rode in the woods. And every night we sat in front of the fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and

He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure not in looking backward or forward,

but in what is going on at the moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his knowledge

that Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good Tuesday. He knew it the moment he waked at 7 A.

M. and perceived the Tuesday sunshine making patterns of bright light upon the floor. The sunshine rejoiced

him and the knowledge that even before breakfast there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day

began with attentions to his physical wellbeing. There were exercises conducted with great vigor and

rejoicing, followed by a tub, artesian cold, and a loud and joyous singing of ballads.

At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and, copied in marble, gone down the ages as "statue of

a young athlete." He stood six feet and over, straight as a Sioux chief, a noble and leonine head carried by a

splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a child's. He weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no

fat on him. He was the weightthrowing rather than the running type of athlete, but so tenaciously had he

clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that he could stand stifflegged and lay his hands flat upon the

The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door you must have heard a pen going,

swiftly and boldly. He was hard at work, doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a

stranger to him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had written and published it. R. H. D. had

found something to like and admire in that story (very little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure to tell

you so. If he had liked the story very much he would send you instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be

that you had drawn a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden promise in a half column of unsigned

print, R. H. D. would find you out, and find time to praise you and help you. So it was that when he emerged

from his room at sharp eight o'clock, he was wideawake and happy and hungry, and whistled and

doubleshuffled with his feet, out of excessive energy, and carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and

Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen, dyspeptic gathering of persons who only

the night before had rejoiced in each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is, or ought to

be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest. Discussions of the latest plays and novels, the doings and

undoings of statesmen, laughter and sentimentto him, at breakfast, these things were as important as

Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the day's work (else how, at eleven sharp, could

tennis be played with a free conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper, he

would now pass by those on the halltable with never so much as a wistful glance, and hurry to his

He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you may say, he wrote walking up and down.

Some people, accustomed to the delicious ease and clarity of his style, imagine that he wrote very easily. He

did and he didn't. Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously human, flowed from him without let or

hindrance. That masterpiece of corresponding, "The German March Through Brussels," was probably written

almost as fast as he could talk (next to Phillips Brooks, he was the fastest talker I ever heard), but when it

came to fiction he had no facility at all. Perhaps I should say that he held in contempt any facility that he may

have had. It was owing to his incomparable energy and Joblike patience that he ever gave us any fiction at all.

Every phrase in his fiction was, of all the myriad phrases he could think of, the fittest in his relentless

judgment to survive. Phrases, paragraphs, pages, whole stories even, were written over and over again. He

worked upon a principle of elimination. If he wished to describe an automobile turning in at a gate, he made

first a long and elaborate description from which there was omitted no detail, which the most observant pair

of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with reference to just such a turning. Thereupon he would begin a

process of omitting one by one those details which he had been at such pains to recall; and after each

omission he would ask himself: "Does the picture remain?" If it did not, he restored the detail which he had

just omitted, and experimented with the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and so on, until after Herculean

labor there remained for the reader one of those swiftly flashed, iceclear pictures (complete in every detail)

But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of holiday, R. H. D. emerges from his workroom happy to

think that he has placed one hundred and seven words between himself and the wolf who hangs about every

writer's door. He isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He never was in the least satisfied with

anything that he wrote, but he has searched his mind and his conscience and he believes that under the

circumstances they are the very best that he can do. Anyway, they can stand in their present order until

A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death he had denied himself the luxury and slothfulness

of habits. I have never seen him smoke automatically as most men do. He had too much respect for his own

powers of enjoyment and for the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best Havana tobacco. At a time of his own

deliberate choosing, often after many hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked it

with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the smoke there was in it.

He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch whiskey. But these things were

friends to him, and not enemies. He had toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality

is far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the fact that he was drinking champagne

and not from the champagne. Perhaps I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a will

of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction his conscience pointed; and, although that

ever present and never obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as must all

consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into any action that was impure or unclean. Some

critics maintain that the heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young people. R.

H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of virtue, or renunciation, or selfmastery of which his

Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he had for himself. His great gift of

eyesight and observation failed him in his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get

your biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without any trouble at all. And of your

molehill virtues he made splendid mountains. He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were

going to hurt some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram from him which urged me for

heaven's sake not to forget that the next day was my wife's birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my

own private affair. And when I declared that I had read a story which I liked very, very much and was going

to write to the author to tell him so, he always kept at me till the letter was written.

Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her, he wrote a letter to his mother,

and no swift scrawl at that, for, no matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter that

Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw their arms about each other and rocked

to and fro for a long time. And it hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them; her

heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under fire, or about to become a victim of jungle

fever. He had only been away upon a little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure. We had

found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken arrowhead, and R. H. D. had been absent from

I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give more than a few hints of what he was like.

There isn't much more space at my command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch upon them

all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow

of his bones, and from which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers; those trenchant

assaults upon evildoers in public office, those quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and

dexterous exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view. He was a quickener of the

public conscience. That people are beginning to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one

time looked yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue is owing in some measure to

R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that peace at the price which our country has

been forced to pay for it was infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this

I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface of my subject. And that is a failure which

I feel keenly but which was inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable "personal

interviews" which appear in the newspapers, and in which the important person interviewed is made by the

cub reporter to say things which he never said, or thought, or dreamed of"You can't expect a fifteendollar

There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two men are alike. In what one salient

thing did R. H. D. differ from other mendiffer in his personal character and in the character of his work?

And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and be sure that I am right.

An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording Angel keeps will show one dominant

characteristic to which even his brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer are

subordinate; and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his powers of affection, of forgiveness, of

The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of the worldgone to that Happy

Hunting Ground where "Nobody hunts us and there is nothing to hunt." GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.

When Spencer Flagg laid the foundationstone for the new milliondollar wing he was adding to the Flagg

Home for Convalescents, on the hills above Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover

the story, and with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day in October, full of sunshine

and the joy of living, and from the great lawn in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and

Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the night previous, he had been given

the assignment he had sulked, and he was still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York

from a small upstate college and a small upstate newspaper, but already he was a "star" man, and Hewitt,

"What's the matter with the story?" asked the city editor. "With the speeches and lists of names it ought to run

"Suppose it does!" exclaimed Ward; "anybody can collect typewritten speeches and lists of names. That's a

messenger boy's job. Where's there any heartinterest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver

trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men in pinafores saying, 'This stone is

"When I was a reporter," declared the city editor, "I used to be glad to get a day in the country."

"Because you'd never lived in the country," returned Sam. "If you'd wasted twentysix years in the

backwoods, as I did, you'd know that every minute you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself."

"Of what?" demanded the city editor. "There's nothing to New York except cement, iron girders, noise, and

zinc garbage cans. You never see the sun in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the

middle of the street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except on the women's hats. We

never see the women except in cages in the elevatorsthey spend their lives shooting up and down elevator

shafts in department stores, in apartment houses, in office buildings. And we never see children in New York

because the janitors won't let the women who live in elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a

"How curious!" said Sam. "Now I see why they took you off the street and made you a city editor. I don't

agree with anything you say. Especially are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in

elevators, but they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon you from boxes in the

theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses; they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across

restaurant tables under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in the subway. They are the only thing

The city editor sighed. "How young you are!" he exclaimed. "However, tomorrow you will be free from

your only trouble. There will be few women at the celebration, and they will be interested only in

Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and overfed men, and, with a sardonic

smile, listened to Flagg telling his assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see

"Get HIS speech!" said Sam. "They have Pinkertons all over the grounds to see that you don't escape with

less than three copies. I'm waiting to hear the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint for the first

"There's going to be a fine lunch," said Redding, "and reporters are expected. I asked the policeman if we

Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his armpit and smoothed his yellow gloves. He

"You can have my share," he said. "I cannot forget that I am fiftyfive minutes from Broadway. And even if I

were starving I would rather have a club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New

He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron gates; but he did not reach the iron gates,

for on the instant trouble barred his way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform of a nursing

sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar turned down, white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black

velvet bonnet. A bow of white lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had hair like goldenrod

and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such health and cleanliness and dewiness as blooms only on

She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as swiftly as a cowboy could have covered

Reporters become star reporters because they observe things that other people miss and because they do not

let it appear that they have observed them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out that

which is indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says: "That's most interesting, sir. I'll make a note of

that." And so warns the great man into silence. But the star reporter receives the indiscreet utterance as

though it bored him; and the great man does not know he has blundered until he reads of it the next morning

Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which was the official title of the nursing sister,

would have fallen backward, or swooned, or gazed at her with soulful, worshipping eyes; or, were they that

sort of beast, would have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now Sam, because he was a star reporter,

observed that the lady before him was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would

have guessed that he observed thatleast of all Sister Anne. He stood in her way and lifted his hat, and even

looked into the eyes of blue as impersonally and as calmly as though she were his greatauntas though his

"I am from the REPUBLIC," he said. "Everybody is so busy here today that I'm not able to get what I need

about the Home. It seems a pity," he added disappointedly, "because it's so well done that people ought to

know about it." He frowned at the big hospital buildings. It was apparent that the ignorance of the public

When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in alarmobviously she was upon the point of

Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a reporter because they hope he will print their names in

black letters; a few othersonly reporters know how fewwould as soon place themselves in the hands of a

Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and explanation he glanced at her uniform.

He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving that impression he was distinctly dishonest.

"There was no other reason," persisted Sister Anne. "I mean for speaking to me?"

The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam wondered whether this could be the height of

innocence or the most banal coquetry. The hostile look in the eyes of the lady proved it could not be

"I am sorry," said Sam. "I mistook you for one of the nurses here; and, as you didn't seem busy, I thought you

might give me some statistics about the Home not really statistics, you know, but local color."

Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own. Apparently she was weighing his statement. She

seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly he was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this

young woman that at the mere approach of a reportereven of such a nicelooking reporter as himselfshe

should shake and shudder. "If that's what you really want to know," said Sister Anne doubtfully," I'll try and

help you; but," she added, looking at him as one who issues an ultimatum, "you must not say anything about

Sam knew that a woman of the selfadvertising, cluborganizing class will always say that to a reporter at the

time she gives him her card so that he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young

woman meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her? Much as he might like to do so, he

could not begin his story with: "The Flagg Home for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful of

all living women." No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as there was nothing to say that he would be

allowed to say, he promised to say nothing. Sister Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled, not

because his promise had set her mind at ease, but because the promise amused her. Sam wondered why.

Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the wards of the hospital. He found that it existed

for and revolved entirely about one person. He found that a million dollars and some acres of buildings,

containing sunrooms and hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated by Spencer Flagg only to provide

a background for Sister Anneonly to exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart, the

"Do you really scrub the floors?" he demanded"I mean you yourselfdown on your knees, with a pail and

"We do that when we first come here," she said"when we are probationers. Is there a newer way of

"And these awful patients," demanded Sam"do you wait on them? Do you have to submit to their

complaints and whinings and ingratitude?" He glared at the unhappy convalescents as though by that glance

he would annihilate them. "It's not fair!" exclaimed Sam. "It's ridiculous. I'd like to choke them!"

"You know perfectly well what I mean," said Sam. "Here are youif you'll allow me to say soa

magnificent, splendid, healthy young person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures,

"You are the only one here," said Sam, "who is not! That's Just what I meanI appreciate the work of a

trained nurse; I understand the ministering angel part of it; but youI'm not talking about anybody else; I'm

talking about youyou are too young! Somehow you are different; you are not meant to wear yourself out

"Nopardon me," said Sister Anne; "but your ideas of the duties of a nurse are so quaint."

Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shouldersas delicate as the pinions of a bird.

They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows of rigid white cots, and had come out

into the sunshine. Below them stretched Connecticut, painted in autumn colors. Sister Anne seated herself

upon the marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the flashing waters of the Sound.

Sam looked at herbut, finding that to do so made speech difficult, looked hurriedly away. He admitted to

himself that it was one of those occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was

heightened by the fact that "the woman. was very fair." He conceded that. He was not going to pretend to

himself that he was not prejudiced by the outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his feelings

made by her uniformmade by the appeal of her profession, the gentlest and most gracious of all

professions. He was honestly disturbed that this young girl should devote her life to the service of selfish sick

"If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be arranged; for there are other ways of earning a

"Now what would you suggest?" she asked. "You see," she said, "I have no one to advise meno man of my

own age. I have no brothers to go to. I have a father, but it was his idea that I should come here; and so I

doubt if he would approve of my changing to any other work. Your own work must make you acquainted

Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how far his salary would go toward supporting a wife.

He was trying to remember which of the men in the office were married, and whether they were those whose

salaries were smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy editors, he knew, was very illpaid; but Sam also

knew that Collins was married, because his wife used to wait for him in the office to take her to the theatre,

and often Sam had thought she was extremely well dressed. Of course Sister Anne was so beautiful that what

she might wear would be a matter of indifference; but then women did not always look at it that way. Sam

was so long considering offering Sister Anne a life position that his silence had become significant; and to

"Take typewriting, for instance. That pays very well. The hours are not difficult."

In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel walk as though driving the manicuring

idea into a deep grave. He did not see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.

"You?" protested Sam. "You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who are not fit to wash the streets you

walk on I Good Lord!" His vehemence was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the

gravel walk, his profile toward herand, unobserved, she could study his face. It was an attractive face

strong, clever, almost illegally goodlooking. It explained why, as , he had complained to the city editor, his

chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes full of concern, Sam turned to her abruptly.

"How much do they give you a month?" "Forty dollars," answered Sister Anne. "This is what hurts me about

It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there are so many strong, hulking men who

would count it God's blessing to work for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However,

Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this statement gave him a sense of great

elation, a delightful thrill of relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a complete

strangereven to deceive him was quite within her rights; but, though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to

"I think you are working too hard," he said, smiling happily. "I think you ought to have a change. You ought

"Because," explained Sam, "if you won't think it too presumptuous, I was going to prescribe a day off for

youa day entirely away from iodoform and white enamelled cots. It is what you need, a day in the city and

a lunch where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laughor cry, if you like that betterand

then, maybe, some fresh air in the park in a taxi; and after that dinner and more theatre, and then I'll see you

safe on the train for Greenwich. Before you answer," he added hurriedly, "I want to explain that I

contemplate taking a day off myself and doing all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any of

the other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you will. Only, honestly, I hope you won't!"

The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She did not say so, but her eyes shone and when

"I think that would be quite delightful," said Sister Anne," quite delightful! Only it would be frightfully

expensive; even if I don't bring another girl, which I certainly would not, it would cost a great deal of money.

I think we might cut out the taxicaband walk in the park and feed the squirrels."

"Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young," said Sister Anne. "Since then I have always lived in

"It's so kind of you to consent," he cried. "Indeed, you are the kindest person in all the world. I thought so

"Pity on you!" laughed Sam. "You can't pity a person who can do more with a smile than old man Flagg can

do with all his millions. Now," he demanded in happy anticipation," where are we to meet?"

"Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin too soon," said Sam; "and before then telephone

me what theatre and restaurants you want and I'll reserve seats and tables. Oh," exclaimed Sam joyfully, "it

Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a little wistfully. She held out her hand.

"Not goodby," said Sam heartily, "only until Saturdayand my name's Sam Ward and my address is the

"Sister Anne," said the girl. "In the nursing order to which I belong we have no last names."

"Sister!" repeated Sam, "Sister!" He breathed the word rather than spoke it; and the way he said it and the

way he looked when he said it made it carry almost the touch of a caress. It was as if he had said "Sweetheart!

Sam returned to New York in the smokingcar, puffing feverishly at his cigar and glaring dreamily at the

smoke. He was living the day over again and, in anticipation, the day off, still to come. He rehearsed their

next meeting at the station; he considered whether or not he would meet her with a huge bunch of violets or

would have it brought to her when they were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the latter way would

be more of a pleasant surprise. He planned the luncheon. It was to be the most marvellous repast he could

evolve; and, lest there should be the slightest error, he would have it prepared in advanceand it should cost

The place where they were to dine he would leave to her, because he had observed that women had strange

ideas about clothessome of them thinking that certain clothes must go with certain restaurants. Some of

them seemed to believe that, instead of their conferring distinction upon the restaurant, the restaurant

conferred distinction upon them. He was sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might be that she

must always wear her nurse's uniform and that she would prefer not to be conspicuous; so he decided that the

choice of where they would dine he would leave to her. He calculated that the whole day ought to cost about

eighty dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then earning each week. That was little enough to

give for a day that would be the birthday of his life! No, he contradicted the day he had first met her must

always be the birthday of his life; for never had he met one like her and he was sure there never would be one

like her. She was so entirely superior to all the others, so fine, so difficultin her manner there was

something that rendered her unapproachable. Even her simple nurse's gown was worn with a difference. She

might have been a princess in fancy dress. And yet, how humble she had been when he begged her to let him

for one day personally conduct her over the great city! "You are so kind to take pity on me," she had said. He

thought of many clever, pretty speeches he might have made. He was so annoyed he had not thought of them

He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was full of beautiful courage and selfsacrifice. It

certainly was outrageous that one so glorious must work for her living, and for such a paltry livingforty

dollars a month! It was worth that merely to have her sit in the flat where one could look at her; for already he

had decided that, when they were married, they would live in a flatprobably in one overlooking Central

Park, on Central Park West. He knew of several attractive suites there at thirtyfive dollars a weekor, if

she preferred the suburbs, he would forsake his beloved New York and return to the country. In his gratitude

When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought frontrow seats at five dollars for the two most

popular plays in town. He put them away carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Possession of them made him feel

After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to the matron's room and, wrapping

herself in a raccoon coat, made her way to a waiting motor car and said, "Home!" to the chauffeur. He drove

her to the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors called the pile of white marble that

topped the highest hill above Greenwich, and which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on the

There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted her noisily.

"I have had a most splendid adventure!" said Sister Anne. "There were six of us, you know, dressed up as

Red Cross nurses, and we gave away programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real

nurse and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about it to keep it up, and I kept it up so

One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself on knowing who's who in New York.

"Don't you believe it!" he interrupted. "That man who was talking to you was Sam Ward. He's the smartest

newspaper man in New York; he was just leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who

"He did not know me!" she protested. "It quite upset him that I should be wasting my life measuring out

"I told him," continued Sister Anne, "that I got forty dollars a month, and he said I could make more as a

"And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a manicurist. And he asked me to take a

day off with him and let him show me New York. And he offered, as attractions, movingpicture shows and

a drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the park. And if I insisted upon a

chaperon I might bring one of the nurses. We're to meet at the sodawater fountain in the Grand Central

Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the American public, had come to the Flaggs'

"Nothing," said Anita Flagg. "The reporters have been making me ridiculous for the last three years; now I

That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister Anne stopped by the stairs and

"Call you what?" exclaimed the young man. "I will tell you," he whispered, "what I'd like to call you!"

"You will not!" interrupted Anita. "Do as I tell you and say Sister once. Say it as though you meant it."

"But I don't mean it," protested his lordship. "I've said already what I. . . ."

"Never mind what you've said already," commanded Miss Flagg. "I've heard that from a lot of people. Say

Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as though she were cold.

Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was to ride in the morning, found her

ready for bed but standing by the open window looking out toward the great city to the south.

When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that young woman to shriek with

It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She turned upon the tactless intruder.

"Suppose," cried Anita fiercely, "a man thought you were worth forty dollars a monthhonestly didn't

know!honestly believed you were poor and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth

more than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR millions. Suppose he didn't ask any

money of you, but just to take care of you, to slave for youonly wanted to keep your pretty hands from

working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you met that man among this rotten

"What would you do?" demanded Anita Flagg. "This is what you'd do: You'd go down on your knees to that

man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love meand

"Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!" cried Anita Flagg. "Because I'm a coward. And that's why I'm

At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward, in the local room of the

REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing Sam's story' of the laying of the cornerstone. The copy

editor's cigar was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine ready to fall upon the guilty

word or paragraph, was suspended in midair; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue pencil

swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he

read, the voice of Collins rose in muttered ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these explosions grew

louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his

The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in impatient protest. Sam Ward,

swinging his legs from the top of a table, was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke.

Upon his clever, cleancut features the expression was faraway and beatific. He came back to earth.

At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the room his hands filled with freshly

pulled proofs. He swung toward Collins quickly and snatched up Sam's copy. The story already was

"Read the opening paragraph," protested Collins. "It's like that for a column! It's all about a girlabout a

Red Cross nurse. Not a word about Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It's not a news story at

all. It's an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know what it is. And, what's worse," wailed the

copy editor defiantly and to the amazement of all, "it's so darned good that you can't touch it. You've got to

The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade, were racing over Sam's written words. He

"Run it just as it is," commanded the managing editor. " Use it for your introduction and get your story from

the flimsy. And, in your head, cut out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong with

The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils had ceased, and the staff, expectant,

smiled cynically upon the star reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also smiled, but

"I know it's not news, Sir," he said; but that's the way I saw the storyoutside on the lawn, the band playing,

and the governor and the governor's staff and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside, this girl right

on the job taking care of the sick and wounded. It seemed to me that a million from a man that won't miss

a million didn't stack up against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I wanted to say,"

continued Sam stoutly "was that the moving spirit of the hospital was not in the man who signed the checks,

but in these women who do the workthe nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you called 'The Red

Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the traditions of the profession, snorted

"It's not news," said Elliott doubtfully; "but it's the kind of story that made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the

kind of story that drives men out of this business into the arms of what Kipling calls 'the illegitimate sister.'"

It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to a girl and to be patted on the back by

his managing editor; and it was this combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return for its

congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his business, he was proud of his business; but

never before had it served him so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and incidentally a

million other people, how deeply he honored her; how clearly he appreciated her power for good. No one

would know he meant Sister Anne, save two peopleSister Anne and himself; but for her and for him that

was as many as should know. In his story he had used real incidents of the day; he had described her as she

passed through the wards of the hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the little acts of

The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written; and between the lines she would

read that the man who wrote them loved her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at

which he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and, after many excursions into

the hall, he at last found it. On the front page was his story, "The Red Cross Girl." It had the place of

honorrighthand column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his own story was one of Redding's,

photographs. It was the one he had taken of Sister Anne when first she had approached them, in her uniform

of mercy, advancing across the lawn, walking straight into the focus of the, camera. There was no mistaking

her for any other living woman; but beneath the picture, in bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a strange

"Daughter of Millionaire Flagg," it read, "in a New Role, Miss Anita Flagg as The Red Cross Girl."

For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding the paper so that the picture was hidden, he

walked to the open window. From below, Broadway sent up a tumultuous greetingcable cars jangled, taxis

hooted; and, on the sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of shopgirls stepped out briskly. It was the

street and the city and the life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and affronted him. A girl he knew

had died, had passed out of his life foreverworse than that had never existed; and yet the city went or just

as though that made no difference, or just as little difference as it would have made had Sister Anne really

At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of the house party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page,

booted and ridinghabited, sat alone at the breakfast table, their tea before them; and in the hands of Anita

Flagg was the DAILY REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the table and, with affected

indignation at the impertinence of the press, had pointed at the frontpage photograph; but Miss Flagg was

not looking at the photograph, or drinking her tea, or showing in her immediate surroundings any interest

whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were fastened with fascination upon the column under the heading "The

Red Cross Girl"; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of recent slumber, her lovely lips parted

breathlessly, and on her lovely cheeks the color flowed and faded and glowed and bloomed. When she had

read as far as a paragraph beginning, "When Sister Anne walked between them those who suffered raised

their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces to the rain," she dropped the paper and started for telephone.

"Any man," cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page and the servants, "who thinks I'm like that

mustn't get away! I'm not like that and I know it; but if he thinks so that's all I want. And maybe I might be

She gave her attention to the telephone and "Information." She demanded to be instantly put into

communication with the DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr. Sam Ward. She turned again upon Helen Page.

"I'm tired of being called a good sport," she protested, "by men who aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm

tired of being talked to about moneyas though I were a stockbroker. This man's got a head on his

shoulders, and he's got the shoulders too; and he's got a darned goodlooking head; and he thinks I'm a

ministering angel and a saint; and he put me up on a pedestal and made me dizzyand I like being made

"Be still!" implored Helen Page. "Any one might think you meant it!" She nodded violently at the discreet

"Ye gods, Parker!" cried Anita Flagg. "Does it take three of you to pour a cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell

everybody that you all three caught me in the act of proposing to an American gentleman over the telephone

The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door. "And what's more," Anita hurled after them, "get

Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been at the office and might have gone to the

telephone, and things might have happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC was a morning paper, the only

person in the office was the lady who scrubbed the floors and she refused to go near the telephone. So Anita

Flagg said, "I'll call him up later," and went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for all the

To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On this particular morning Hollis Holworthy was

"You're the very man I want," said Hollworthy joyously "you've got to decide a bet."

"It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you didn't know who she was yesterday, and I said

To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh wound had even been dressed, it should be torn

open by impertinent fingers; but he had no right to take offense. How could the man, or any one else, know

"I'm afraid you lose," he said. He halted to give Holworthy the hint to leave him, but Holworthy had no such

"You don't say so!" exclaimed that young man. "Fancy one of you chaps being taken in like that. "I thought

Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet to escape. "And, instead of your fooling

"She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!" exclaimed Holworthy admiringly. "I thought she was

making it upshe must have made some of it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That

"By Jove!" cried Holworthyand that you invited her to see the movingpicture shows?"

Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket, smiled pleasantly.

"And I thought she was making it up!" exclaimed Holworthy. "We did laugh. You must see the fun of it

"You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita Flaggjust as if she were nobody!"

"I don't think," said Sam, "that was my idea." He waved his stick at a passing taxi. "I'm late," he said. He

abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk, chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he

An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the telephone boy hurried to him, his

"You're wanted on the 'phone," he commanded. His voice dropped to an awed whisper. "Miss Anita Flagg

The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that this was not Sister Anne who

"Say you can't find me," he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned precipitately.

Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had informed every member of the local staff

that Anita Flaggthe rich, the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that

morninghad twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been thrown downand thrown hard!

That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam entered his office he found also there

"Ward," he began abruptly, "I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go. It's on account of that story of this

Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served so loyally this seemed scurvy

treatment. It struck him also that, considering the spirit in which the story had been written, it was causing

him more kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of position did not disturb him. In the last month too

many managing editors had tried to steal him from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious as to the future. So

"I did," returned Elliott; "I liked it so much that I'm sending you to a bigger place, where you can get bigger

stories. We want you to act as our special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work; and if

After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air. He could not believe it was realthat it

was actually to him it had happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events, to come in

contact with men of international interests. Instead of reporting what was of concern only from the Battery to

Fortyseventh Street, he would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and the British Empire,

and so to the whole world. There was one drawback only to his happinessthere was no one with whom he

might divide it. He wanted to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with some one who would

understand how much it meant to him, who would really care. Had Sister Anne lived, she would have

understood; and he would have laid himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to accept

thembegged her to run away with him to this tremendous and terrifying capital of the world, and start the

Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly Anita Flagg could not take her

place. Not because she was rich, not because she had jeered at him and made him a laughingstock, not

because his admirationand he blushed when he remembered how openly, how ingenuously he had shown it

to hermeant nothing; but because the girl he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and

wanted to marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered, ridiculous as it was when

offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous when offered sincerely to a tired, nerveworn, overworked nurse in

a hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could not now make up to him for the girl he

had lost, even though she herself had inspired that girl and for a day given her existence.

Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and as unfair to the real girl as it was

possible for two people to be. His Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in

impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given of her by the little ass,

Holworthy. She was not at all like that. Ever since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and

flatterers, both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who wanted her money and by men who

wanted her. And it was because she got the motives of the latter two confused that she was so often hurt and

As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was addressing an entirely different person, Sam

had got nearer to the real Anita Flagg than had any other man. And sowhen on arriving at the office the

next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram reading, "Arriving tomorrow ninethirty from

Greenwich; the day cannot begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg "he was

able to reply: " Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different person, who unfortunately has since died!"'

When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes tears that sprang from selfpity and

"But why does he do it to me?" Her tone was that of the bewildered child who has struck her head against the

table, and from the naughty table, without cause or provocation, has received the devil of a bump.

Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita Flagg had changed into a very angry young

She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word, but this time it was signed, Sister Anne."

In an hour the answer came: "Sister Anne is the person to whom I refer. She is dead."

Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his adventure. It was not in his nature to be rudecertainly

not to a woman, especially not to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. For, whether her name was

Anita or Anne, about her beauty there could be no argument; but he assured himself that he had acted within

his rights. A girl who could see in a wellmeant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was of no interest

to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon continuing their acquaintance flatter him. As he read them, they

showed only that she looked upon him as one entirely out of her worldas one with whom she could do an

unconventional thing and make a good story about it later, knowing that it would be accepted as one of her

He was determined he would not lend himself to any such performance. And, besides, he no longer was a

footloose, happygolucky reporter. He no longer need seek for experiences and material to turn into copy.

He was now a man with a responsible positionone who soon would be conferring with cabinet ministers

and putting ambassadors At their ease. He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in

marriage by the nobility of England, would understand the importance of a London correspondent. He hoped

someone would tell her. He liked to think of her as being considerably impressed and a little unhappy.

Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had purchased tickets. And he went alone, for the place

that Sister Anne was to have occupied could not be filled by any other person. It would have been sacrilege.

At least, so it pleased him to pretend. And all through dinner, which he ate alone at the same restaurant to

which he had intended taking her, he continued, to pretend she was with him. And at the theatre, where there

was going forward the most popular of all musical comedies, the seat next to him, which to the audience,

appeared wastefully empty, was to him filled with her gracious presence. That Sister Anne was not

therethat the pretty romance he had woven about her had ended in disasterfilled, him with real regret.

He was glad he was,, leaving New York. He was glad he was going, where nothing would remind him of her.

He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The seat Sister Anne was supposed to be occupying was

on his right, and a few seats farther to his right rose the stage box and in the stage box, and in the stage box,

almost upon the stage, and with the glow of the footlights full in her face, was Anita Flagg, smiling

delightedly down on him. There were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging shirtfronts,

and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping plumes upon enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord

Deptford and Holworthy; but the only person he distinguished clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was all in

black velvet, which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing suit; round her throat was a single string of

pearls, and on her hair of goldenrod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a bell, with the curving lips

of a lily. And from beneath its brim Anita Flagg, sitting rigidly erect with her whitegloved hands resting

lightly on her knee, was gazing down at him, smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with excitement.

When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he recognized her, she bowed so violently and bent her

head so eagerly that above her the ostrich plumes dipped and courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam

neither bowed nor courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over his left shoulder, as though he thought

she was speaking not to him but some one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes returned to the

stage and did not again look toward her. It was not the cut direct, but it was a cut that hurt; and in their turn

the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly sought the stage. At the moment, the people in the audience happened to be

Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her profile exposed pitilessly in the glow of the

footlights; saw her lips tremble like those of a child about to cry; and then saw the forced, hard smileand

It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything she did, she kept robbing him still further of all that

For five minutes, conscious of the footlights, Miss Flagg maintained upon her lovely face a fixed and intent

expression, and then slowly and unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the' darkest

recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage by a barrier of women's hats.

"Your friend Mr. Ward," she began abruptly, in a whisper, "is the rudest, most illbred person I ever met.

When I talked to him the" other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved

abominablylike a boorlike a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor? Because I played a joke on him, is

"Hurt you?" exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. "Don't be ridiculous! How could he hurt you? Why

should you care how rude he is? Ward's a clever fellow, but he fancies himself. He's conceited. He's too

goodlooking; and a lot of silly women have made such a fuss over him. So when one of them laughs at him

he can't understand it. That's the trouble. I could see that when I was telling him."

"About what a funny story you made of it," explained Holworthy. "About his having the nerve to ask you to

"Oh!" she said softly. "Soso you told him that, did you? Andwhat else did you tell him?" ,

"Only what you told usthat he said 'the day could not begin too soon'; that he said he wouldn't let you be a

manicure and wash the hands of men who weren't fit to wash the streets you walked on."

"Angry!" exclaimed Miss Flagg. "I should say I was angry, but not with you. I'm very much pleased with

With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at the stage and seeing nothing. He was sorry for

himself because Anita Flagg had destroyed his ideal of a sweet and noble womanand he was sorry for Miss

Flagg because a man had been rude to her. That he happened to be that man did not make his sorrow and

indignation the less intense; and, indeed, so miserable was he and so miserable were his looks, that his friends

on the stage considered sending him a note, offering, if he would take himself out of the front row, to give

him back his money at the box office. Sam certainly wished to take himself away; but he did not want to

admit that he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that the presence of Anita Flagg could spoil his

eveningcould, in the slightest degree affect him. So he sat, completely wretched, feeling that he was in a

false position; that if he were it was his own fault; that he had acted like an ass and a brute. It was not a

When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the second act there was an interminable wait;

but he did not want to chance running into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude to

abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary Sister Anne as of the actual box

party on his near right, who were laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at

himwhether Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense; again making his advances appear

ridiculous. He was so sure of it that he flushed indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.

And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful figure, all in black velvet, towered above

him, then crowded past him, and sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to speakand Miss

Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to give him time; for, without regarding him in the least,

and as though to establish the fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and deliberately to remove the

belllike hat. This accomplished, she bent toward him, her eyes looking straight into his, her smile

reproaching him. In the familiar tone of an old and dear friend she said to him gently:

"This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite enough of it?"

Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or of mockery, but, instead, gentle

For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably, remorsefully.

"It's not Anita Flagg at all," he said. "It's Sister Anne come back to life again!" The girl shook her head.

"No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met and I did say all the, things Holworthy

told you I said; but that was before I understoodbefore I read what you wrote about Sister Anneabout

the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I knew what sort of a man you were. I knew you had

been really kind and gentle, and I knew you had dug out something that I did not know was therethat no

one else had found. And I remembered how you called me Sister. I mean the way you said it. And I wanted to

She lifted her face to his. She was very near himso near that her shoulder brushed against his arm. In the

box above them her friends, scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest. Half of the

people in the now halfempty house were watching them with the greatest interest. To them, between reading

advertisements on the programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky youth in the

The young people in the front row did not know they were observed. They were aloneas much alone as

"I will not!" returned the young man firmly. "But I'll say this," he whispered: "I'll say you're the most

Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared at the bass drum in the orchestra.

When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her box, so that he could meet her friends

and go on with them to supper; but when they reached the rear of the house she halted.

"We can see this act," she said, "ormy car's in front of the theatrewe might go to the park and take a turn

As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but paying no attention to them whatsoever,

"There's only one thing," she said to Sam, "that is making me unhappy; and because it is such sad news I

It is this: I am leaving America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next Wednesday."

"My business is to gather news," said Sam, but in all my life I never gathered such good news as that."

"Because," explained Sam, "I am leaving, Americaam spending the winter in England. I am sailing on

The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at seaas they leaned upon the rail, watching Fire

"This is my unhappiness," said Samand he pointed to a name on the passenger list. It was: "The Earl of

Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his soul. He looked at her

Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pass their examinations, they will deceive and cheat

their kind professors. This may or may not be true. One only can shudder and pass hurriedly on. But whatever

others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior year came up for those final examinations

which, should he pass them even by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He may have been

too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat. It was the professors who cheated.

At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you can score a possible hundred. That

means perfection, and in, the brief history of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has

attained it. After graduating he "accepted a position" in an asylum for the insane, from which he was,

promoted later to the poorhouse, where he died. Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest

they also should attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else. Among these Peter was by far the most

The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects in which you have been examined your

marks added together give you an average of ninety, you are passed "with honors"; if of seventyfive, you

pass "with distinction"; if Of fifty, You just "pass." It is not unlike the grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs,

good eggs, and eggs. The whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be lucky, but the

professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined that, no matter what young Hallowell might do to

prevent it, they would see that he passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of awards. Their

interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much, but because each loved his own vinecovered

cottage, his salary, and his dignified title the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who dared to

flunk the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater, who supported Stillwater, and who might

be expected to go on supporting Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his official

Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an uptodate college president. If he did not actually run after

money he went where money was, and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who possessed it.

And if any threethousand dollarayear professor, through a too strict respect for Stillwater's standards of

learning, should lose to that institution a halfmilliondollar observatory, swimmingpool, or gymnasium, he

was the sort of college president, who would see to it that the college lost also the services of that too

He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June examinations, when on, the campus he met

one of the faculty, he would inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.

"That is too bad!" he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger. "Still, I hope the boy can pull

through. He is his dear father's pride, and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree. Let us

hope he will pull through." For four years every professor had been pulling Peter through, and the conscience

of each had become calloused. They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of him

forever. And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew that of the firing squad that was to aim

The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman. Doctor Gilman was the professor of

ancient and modern history at Stillwater, and greatly respected and loved. He also was the author of those

wellknown textbooks, "The Founders of Islam," and "The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire." This latter

work, in five volumes, had been not unfavorably compared to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire." The original newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back, the doctor had preserved, and

would produce it, now somewhat frayed and worn, and read it to visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it

"Here is a review of the history," he would sayhe always referred to it as "the" history"that I came

In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it was as though the clipping had been

The members of his class who were examined on the "Rise and Fall," and who invariably came to grief over

it, referred to it briefly as the Fall," sometimes feelingly as "the. . . . Fall." The" history began when

Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to Constantine, and in the last two

Volumes finished up the Mohammeds with the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since

Suleiman, Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map. When his history said the Turkish

Empire had fallen, then the Turkish Empire fell. Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume

"In a history of Turkey issued as a textbook," said the chancellor, "I think the RussianTurkish War should

Doctor Gilman, from behind his goldrimmed spectacles, gazed at him in mild reproach. "The war in the

Crimea!" he exclaimed. "Why, I was alive at the time. I know about it. That is not history."

Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus

Hallowell, of the meatpackers' trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus

Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom "the" history certainly had been a closed book. And so

when Peter returned his examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which he had received

it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with malice toward none and, with no thought of the

Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty. In their fear of Chancellor Black they

dared not give the boy less, but they refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single point

higher than was necessary to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five completely knocked out the required

average of fifty, and young Peter was "found" and could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only son

of the only Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private collegethe son of the man who had built

the Hallowell Memorial, the new Laboratory, the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and the

Hallowell Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim hall of the Memorial to his departed

grandfather Peter read of his own disgrace and downfall, the light the stainedglass window cast upon his

nose was of no sicklier a green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter wanted an A.M. or an A.B., not that he

desired laurels he had not won, but because the young man was afraid of his father. And he had cause to be.

Father arrived at Stillwater the next morning. The interviews that followed made Stillwater history.

"My son is not an ass!" is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to Doctor Black. "And if in four years

you and your faculty cannot give him the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can.

In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the son and not of the college; he could have

said that where three men had failed to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say that? Oh, no,

he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college president. Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic,

and like a conspirator in a comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He lowered his voice.

"There has been contemptible work here, "he whispered"spite and a mean spirit of reprisal. I have been

making a secret investigation, and I find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our

college was struck by one man, a man with a grievanceDoctor Gilman. Doctor Gilman has repeatedly

desired me to raise his salary." This did not happen to be true, but in such a crisis Dotor Black could not

"I have seen no reason for raising his salaryand there you have the explanation. In revenge he has made

this attack. But he overshot his mark. In causing us temporary embarrassment he has brought about his own

Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this particular day he was wounded, his spirit

was hurt, his selfesteem humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than that his son

"I don't want the man discharged," he protested, "just because Peter is lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved

by personal considerations, if he sacrificed my Peter in order to get even . . . ."

"That," exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, "is exactly what he did! Your generosity to the college is well

known. You are recognized all over America as its patron. And he believed that when I refused him an

increase in salary it was really you who refused itand he struck at you through your son. Everybody thinks

so. The college is on fire with indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That in itself shows the

malice. Five is not a mark, it is an insult! No one, certainly not your brilliant sonlook how brilliantly he

managed the gleeclub and football touris stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor Gilman went too

What Hallowell senior was willing to believe of what the chancellor told him, and his opinion of the matter as

"They tell me," he concluded, "that in the fall they will give you another examination, and if you pass then,

you will get your degree. No one will know you've got it. They'll slip it to you out of the sidedoor like a cold

potato to a tramp. The only thing people will know is that when your classmates stood up and got their

parchmentsthe thing they'd been working for four years, the only reason for their going to college at

allYOU were not among those present. That's your fault; but if you don't get your degree next fall that will

be my fault. I've supported you through college and you've failed to deliver the goods. Now you deliver them

"I'm going to make sure of that," said Hallowell senior. "Tomorrow you will take those history books that you

did not open, especially Gilman's 'Rise and Fall,' which it seems you have not even purchased, and you will

Peter, who had personally conducted the football and baseball teams over half of the Middle States and

daily bullied and browbeat them, protested with indignation. "WON'T travel with a private tutor!"

"If I say so," returned Hallowell senior grimly, "you'll travel with a governess and a trained nurse, and wear a

strait jacket. And you'll continue to wear it until you can recite the history of Turkey backward. And in order

"In Constantinople," explained Mr. Hallowell senior, "there will be nothing to distract you from your studies,

and in spite of yourself every minute you will be imbibing history and local color."

"I'll be imbibing fever,", returned Peter, "and sunstroke and sudden death. If you want to get rid of me, why

don't you send me to the island where they sent Dreyfus? It's quicker. You don't have to go to Turkey to study

Peter did not wait for the festivities of commencement week. All day he hid in his room, packing his

belongings or giving them away to e members of his class, who came to tell him what a rotten shame it was,

and to bid him goodby. They loved Peter for himself alone, and at losing him were loyally enraged. They

sired publicly to express their sentiments, and to that end they planned a mock trial of the Rise and Fall," at

which a packed jury would sentence it to cremation. They planned also to hang Doctor Gilman in effigy. The

effigy with a rope round its neck was even then awaiting mob violence. It was complete to the silverwhite

beard and the gold spectacles. But Peter squashed both demonstrations. He did not know Doctor Gilman had

been forced to resign, but he protested that the horseplay of his friends would make him appear a bad loser.

"It would look, boys," he said, "as though I couldn't take my medicine. Looks like kicking against the

umpire's decision. Old Gilman fought fair. He gave me just what was coming to me. I think a darn sight more

of him than do of that bunch of bootlickers that had the colossal nerve to pretend I scored fifty!"

Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the campus, gazing at a plaster bust of Socrates which

he did not see. Since that morning he had ceased to sit in the chair of history at Stillwater College. They were

retrenching, the chancellor had told him curtly, cutting down unnecessary expenses, for even in his anger

Doctor Black was too intelligent to hint at his real motive, and the professor was far too innocent of evil, far

too detached from college politics to suspect. He would remain a professor emeritus on half pay, but he no

longer would teach. The college he had served for thirty yearssince it consisted of two brick buildings and a

faculty of ten young menno longer needed him. Even his ivycovered cottage, in which his wife and he

had lived for twenty years, in which their one child had died, would at the beginning of the next term be

required of him. But the college would allow him those six months in which to "look round." So, just outside

the circle of light from his student lamp, he sat in his study, and stared with unseeing eyes at the bust of

Socrates. He was not considering ways and means. They must be faced later. He was considering how he

could possibly break the blow to his wife. What eviction from that house would mean to her no one but he

understood. Since the day their little girl had died, nothing in the room that had been her playroom, bedroom,

and nursery had been altered, nothing had been touched. To his wife, somewhere in the house that wonderful,

Godgiven child was still with them. Not as a memory but as a real and living presence. When at night the

professor and his wife sat at either end of the study table, reading by the same lamp, he would see her

suddenly lift her head, alert and eager, as though from the nursery floor a step had sounded, as though from

the darkness a sleepy voice had called her. And when they would be forced to move to lodgings in the town,

to some students' boardinghouse, though they could take with them their books, their furniture, their mutual

love and comradeship, they must leave behind them the haunting presence of the child, the colored pictures

she had cut from the Christmas numbers and plastered over the nursery walls, the rambler roses that with her

own hands she had planted and that now climbed to her window and each summer peered into her empty

Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the campus, paper lanterns like oranges aglow were

swaying in the evening breeze. In front of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest elms,

and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer succeeded cheercheers for the heroes of the

cinder track, for the heroes of the diamond and the gridiron , cheers for the men who had flunked especially

for one man who had flunked. But for that man who for thirty years in the class room had served the college

there were no cheers. No one remembered him, except the one student who had best reason to remember him.

But this recollection Peter had no rancor or bitterness and, still anxious lest he should be considered a bad

loser, he wished Doctor Gilman a every one else to know that. So when the celebration was at its height and

just before train was due to carry him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the Gilman cottage say

goodby. But he did not enter the cottage He went so far only as halfway up the garden walk. In the

window of the study which opened upon the veranda he saw through frame of honeysuckles the professor and

wife standing beside the study table. They were clinging to each other, the woman weep silently with her

cheek on his shoulder, thin, delicate, wellbred hands clasping arms, while the man comforted her awkward

Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed steadily away. What disaster had befallen the old

couple he could not imagine. The idea that he himself might in any way connected with their grief never

entered mind. He was certain only that, whatever the trouble was, it was something so intimate and personal

that no mere outsider might dare to offer his sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden walk and,

avoiding the celebration at the bonfire, returned to his rooms. An hour later the entire college escorted him to

the railroad station, and with "He's a jolly good fellow" and "He's off to Philippopolis in the morning"

ringing in his ears, he sank back his seat in the smokingcar and gazed at the lights of Stillwater disappearing

out of his life. And he was surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not the students, dancing like

Indians round the bonfire, or at the steps of the smokingcar fighting to shake his hand, but the man and

woman alone in the cottage stricken with sudden sorrow, standing like two children lost in the streets, who

cling to each other for comfort and at the same moment whisper words of courage.

Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse over neglected opportunities, from

prickly heat, and from fleas. And it not been for the movingpicture man, and the poker and baccarat at the

Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In the mornings with the tutor he read

ancient history, which he promptly forgot; and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the movingpicture man

through the bazaars and along the waterfront he stalked suspects for the camera.

The name of the movingpicture man was Harry Stetson. He had been a newspaper reporter, a pressagent,

and an actor in vaudeville and in a movingpicture company. Now on his own account he was preparing an

illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sundayschools. Peter and he wrote it in

collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed it with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the

tutor, and the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks very old battleships. Every

other foreigner had fled the city, and the entire diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at

There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence of the ambassador, CHARGE

D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest. Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for

Hallowell senior was a power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington in favor of a

rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was afraid his father would consider Therapia "out of

"He sent me to Constantinople," explained Peter, "and if he thinks I'm not playing the game the Lord only

In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous. This was fortunate, for poker, as the pashas

and princes played it at he Cercle, was no game for cripples or children. But, owing to his letterofcredit

and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own against men three times his age and of fortunes nearly

equal to that of his father. Only they disposed of their wealth differently. On many hot evening Peter saw as

much of their money scattered over the green table as his father had spent over the Hallowell athletic field.

In this fashion Peter spent his first month of exilein the morning trying to fill his brain with names of great

men who had been a long time dead, and in his leisure hours with local color. To a youth of his active spirit it

was a full life without joy or recompense. A Letter from Charley Hines, a classmate who lived at Stillwater,

which arrived after Peter had endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him from boredom and gave life

a real interest. It was a letter full of gossip intended to amuse. One paragraph failed of its purpose. It read:

"Old man Gilman has got the sack. The chancellor offered him up as a sacrifice to your father, and because

he was unwise enough to flunk you. He is to move out in September. I ran across them last week when I was

looking for rooms for a Freshman cousin. They were reserving one in the same boardinghouse. It's a shame,

and I know you'll agree. They are a fine old couple, and I don't like to think of them herding with Freshmen

"Just learned," he cabled his father, "Gilman dismissed because flunked me consider this outrageous please

The answer, which arrived the next day, did not satisfy Peter. It read: "Informed Gilman acted through spite

Since Peter had learned of the disaster that through his laziness had befallen the Gilmans, his indignation at

the injustice had been hourly increasing. Nor had his banishment to Constantinople strengthened his filial

piety. On the contrary, it had rendered him independent and but little inclined to kiss the paternal rod. In

"Dismissing Gilman Looks more Like we acted through spite makes me appear contemptible Black is a toady

"Is it?" said the son of his father. He called Stetson to his aid and explained. Stetson reminded him of the

famous cablegram of his distinguished contemporary: "Perdicaris alive and Raisuli dead!"

Peter's paraphrase of this ran: "Gilman returns to Stillwater or I will not try for degree."

This alarmed Stetson, but caused Peter to deliver his ultimatum: "Choose to earn my own living am leaving

Within a few days Stetson was also leaving Constantinople by steamer via Naples. Peter, who had come to

like him very much, would have accompanied him had he not preferred to return home more leisurely by way

"You'll get there long before I do," said Peter, "and as soon as you arrive I want you to go to Stillwater and

give Doctor Gilman some souvenir of Turkey from me. Just to show him I've no hard feelings. He wouldn't

accept money, but he can't refuse a present. I want it to be something characteristic of the country, Like a

Somewhat doubtfully, somewhat sheepishly, Stetson drew from his pocket a flat morocco case and opened it.

In a velvetlined jewel case was a star of green enamel and silver gilt. To it was attached a ribbon of red and

"I'll bet," returned Stetson, "I've got something in my pocket that says he did."

He unfolded an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving Arabic letters in gold. Peter was

"It says," translated Stetson, "that his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, bestows upon Henry Stetson, educator,

author, lecturer, the Star of the Order of the Crescent, of the fifth class, for services rendered to Turkey."

"Never try to fool the fakirs, my son," he protested. "I'm a fakir myself. What services did you ever . . . ."

"Services rendered," continued Stetson undisturbed, "in spreading throughout the United States a greater

knowledge of the customs, industries, and religion of the Ottoman Empire. That," he explained, "refers to

myI should say our movingpicture lecture. I thought it would look well if, when I lectured on Turkey,

"But did they believe you," he demanded, "when you told them you were an author and educator?"

Stetson closed one eye and grinned. "They believed whatever I paid them to believe."

"If you can get one of those, "cried Peter, Old man Gilman ought to get a dozen. I'll tell them he's the author

of the longest and dullest history of their fleabitten empire that was ever written. And he's a real professor

and a real author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the five volumes with his name in each. How much did

"Two hundred dollars in bribes," said Stetson briskly, "and two months of diplomacy."

"I haven't got two months for diplomacy," said Peter, "so I'll have to increase the bribes. I'll stay here and get

the decoration for Gilman, and you work the papers at home. No one ever heard of the Order of the Crescent,

but that only makes it the easier for us. They'll only know what we tell them, and we'll tell them it's the

highest honor ever bestowed by a reigning sovereign upon an American scholar. If you tell the people often

enough that anything is the best they believe you. That's the way father sells his hams. You've been a

pressagent. From now on you're going to be my pressagentI mean Doctor Gilman's pressagent. I pay

your salary, but your work is to advertise him and the Order of the Crescent. I'll give you a letter to Charley

Hines at Stillwater. He sends out college news to a syndicate and he's the local Associated Press man. He's

sore at their discharging Gilman and he's my best friend, and he'll work the papers as far as you like. Your job

is to make Stillwater College and Doctor Black and my father believe that when they lost Gilman they lost

the man who made Stillwater famous. And before we get through boosting Gilman, we'll make my father's

In the eyes of the former pressagent the light of battle burned fiercely, memories of his triumphs in

"It's great!" he exclaimed. "I've got your idea and you've got me. And you're darned lucky to get me. I've

been pressagent for politicians, actors, society leaders, breakfast foods, and horseshowsand I'm the best! I

was in charge of the publicity bureau for Galloway when he ran for governor. He thinks the people elected

him. I know I did. Nora Nashville was getting fifty dollars a week in vaudeville when I took hold of her; now

she gets a thousand. I even made people believe Mrs. HamptonRhodes was a society leader at Newport,

when all she ever saw of Newport was Bergers and the MuschenheimKings. Why, I am the man that made

"It's plain to see you hate yourself," said 'Peter. "You must not get so despondent or you might commit

"All kinds," said Peter. "Some in a letterofcredit that my father earned from the fretful pig, and much more

in cash that I won at poker from the pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my living.

Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need to boost Gilman and the Order of the Crescent.

We are now the Gilman Defense, Publicity, and Development Committee, and you will begin by introducing

"In this country you don't need any introduction to the man you want to bribe," exclaimed Stetson; "you just

That same night in the smokingroom of the hotel, Peter and Stetson made their first move in the game of

winning for Professor Gilman the Order of the Crescent. Stetson presented Peter to a young effendi in a frock

coat and fez. Stetson called him Osman. He was a clerk in the foreign office and appeared to be "a friend of a

The five volumes of the "Rise and Fall" were spread before him, and Peter demanded to know why so

distinguished a scholar as Doctor Gilman had not received some recognition from the country he had so

sympathetically described. Osman fingered the volumes doubtfully, and promised the matter should be

After he had departed Stetson explained that Osman had just as little chance of getting within speaking

"It's like Tammany," said Stetson; "there are sachems, district leaders, and lieutenants. Each of them is

entitled to trade or give away a few of these decorations, just as each district leader gets his percentage of

jobs in the streetcleaning department. This fellow will go to his patron, his patron will go to some

undersecretary in the cabinet, he will put it up to a palace favorite, and they will divide your money.

"In time the minister of foreign affairs will sign your brevet and a hundred others, without knowing what he

is signing; then you cable me, and the Star of the Crescent will burst upon the United States in a way that will

The next day Stetson and the tutor sailed for home and Peter was left alone to pursue, as he supposed, the

Order of the Crescent. On the contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He had not

appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an itinerant showman like Stetson and the only

Within twentyfour hours a fat man with a blueblack beard and diamond rings called with Osman to

apologize for the latter. Osman, the fat man explainedhad been about to make a fatal error. For Doctor

Gilman he had asked the Order of the Crescent of the fifth class, the same class that had been given Stetson.

The fifth class, the fat man explained, was all very well for tradesmen, dragomans, and eunuchs, but as an

honor for a savant as distinguished as the friend of his. Hallowell, the fourth class would hardly be high

enough. The fees, the fat man added, would Also be higher; but, he pointed out, it was worth the difference,

"There are few sentries at Stillwater," said Peter; "but I want the best and I want it quick. Get me the fourth

The next morning he was surprised by an early visit from Stimson of the embassy. The secretary was

"My dear Hallowell," he protested, "why the devil didn't you tell me you wanted a decoration? Of course the

State department expressly forbids us to ask for one for ourselves, or for any one else. But what's the

Constitution between friends? I'll get it for you at oncebut, on two conditions: that you don't tell anybody I

got it, and that you tell me why you want it, and what you ever did to deserve it."

Instead, Peter explained fully and so sympathetically that the diplomat demanded that he, too, should be

"Doctor Gilman's history," he said, "must be presented to the Sultan. You must have the five volumes

rebound in red and green, the colors of Mohammed, and with as much gold tooling as they can carry. I hope,"

"I will take them myself," continued Stimson, "to Muley Pasha, the minister of foreign affairs, and ask him to

present them to his Imperial Majesty. He will promise to do so, but he won't; but he knows I know he won't

so that is all right. And in return he will present us with the Order of the Crescent of the third class."

"Going up!" exclaimed Peter. "The third class. That will cost me my entire letterofcredit."

"Not at all," said Stimson. "I've saved you from the grafters. It will cost you only what you pay to have the

books rebound. And the THIRD class is a real honor of which any one might be proud. You wear it round

your neck, and at your funeral it entitles you to an escort of a thousand soldiers."

"I'd rather put up with fewer soldiers," said Peter, " and wear it longer round my neck What's the matter with

"The first class," he explained patiently, "is the Great Grand Cross, and is given only to reigning sovereigns.

The second is called the Grand Cross, and is bestowed only on crowned princes, prime ministers, and men of

"What's the matter with Doctor Gilman's being of worldwide fame?" said Peter. "He will be some day, when

"Some day," retorted Stimson stiffly, " I may be an ambassador. When I am I hope to get the Grand Cross of

the Crescent, but not now. I'm sorry you're not satisfied," he added aggrievedly. "No one can get you

anything higher than the third class, and I may lose my official head asking for that."

"Nothing is too good for old man Gilman," said Peter, "nor for you. You get the third class for him, and I'll

That night at poker at the club Peter sat next to Prince Abdul, who had come from a reception at the Grand

vizier 's and still wore his decorations. Decorations now fascinated Peter, and those on the coat of the young

prince he regarded with wideeyed awe. He also regarded Abdul with wideeyed awe, because he was the

favorite nephew of the Sultan, and because he enjoyed the reputation of having the worst reputation in

Turkey. Peter wondered why. He always had found Abdul charming, distinguished, courteous to the verge of

humility, most cleverly cynical, most brilliantly amusing. At poker he almost invariably won, and while

doing so was so politely bored, so indifferent to his cards and the cards held by others, that Peter declared he

In a pause in the game, while some one tore the cover off a fresh pack, Peter pointed at the star of diamonds

The prince frowned at his diamond sunburst as though it annoyed him, and then smiled delightedly.

"It is an order," he said in a quick aside, "bestowed only upon men of worldwide fame. I dined tonight," he

The prince nodded. "Joe told," he repeated; "but it is all arranged. Your distinguished friend, the Sage of

As though about to take offense the prince raised his eyebrows, and then thought better of it and smiled.

"And is the Sultan the other one?" asked Peter. The prince gasped as though he had suddenly stepped beneath

Toward two in the morning there was seventyfive thousand francs in the pot, and all save Prince Abdul and

"Why should I?" said Peter. "I've got you beat now. Do you raise me or call?" The prince called and laid

Over the end of his cigar Peter squinted at the great heap of motherofpearl counters and goldpieces and

"You will pay me double what is on the table," he said, "or you quit owing me nothing."

The prince dealt them each a hand and discarded two cards. Peter held a seven, a pair of kings, and a pair of

fours. Hoping to draw another king, which might give him a three higher than the three held by Abdul, he

threw away the seven and the lower pair. He caught another king. The prince showed three queens and

"I'll make you a sporting proposition," he murmured. "You owe me a hundred and fifty thousand francs. "I'll

The prince allowed his eyes to travel slowly round the circle of the table. But the puzzled glances of the other

"We will cut for deal and one hand will decide," said the prince. His voice dropped to a whisper. "And no one

Abdul won the deal and gave himself a very good hand. But the hand he dealt Peter was the better one.

The prince was a good loser. The next afternoon the GAZETTE OFFICIALLY announced that upon Doctor

Henry Gilman, professor emeritus of the University of Stillwater, U. S. A., the Sultan had been graciously

Peter flashed the great news to Stetson. The cable caught him at Quarantine. It read: "Captured Crescent,

But before Stetson could get busy the campaign of publicity had been brilliantly opened from Constantinople.

Prince Abdul, although pitchforked into the Gilman Defense Committee, proved himself one of its most

"For me it becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE," he declared. "If it is worth doing at all it is worth doing

well. Today the Sultan will command that the "Rise and Fall" be translated into Arabic, and that it be placed

in the national library. Moreover, the University of Constantinople, the College of Salonica, and the National

Historical Society have each elected Doctor Gilman an honorary member. I proposed him, the Patriarch of

Mesopotamia seconded him. And the Turkish ambassador in America has been instructed to present the

Nor was Peter or Stimson idle. To assist Stetson in his presswork, and to further the idea that all Europe was

now clamoring for the "Rise and fall," Peter paid an impecunious but overeducated dragoman to translate it

into five languages, and Stimson officially wrote of this, and of the bestowal of the Crescent to the State

Department. He pointed out that not since General Grant had passed through Europe had the Sultan so highly

honored an American. He added he had been requested by the grand vizier who had been requested by

Prince Abdulto request the State Department to inform Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request

from such a source was a command and, as desired, the State Department wrote as requested by the grand

vizier to Doctor Gilman, and tendered congratulations. The fact was sent out briefly from Washington by

Associated Press. This official recognition by the Government and by the newspapers was all and more than

Stetson wanted. He took off his coat and with a megaphone, rather than a pen, told the people of the United

States who Doctor Gilman was, who the Sultan was, what a Grand Cross was, and why America's greatest

historian was not without honor save in his own country. Columns of this were paid for and appeared as

"patent insides," with a portrait of Doctor Gilman taken from the STILLWATER COLLEGE ANNUAL, and

a picture of the Grand Cross drawn from imagination, in eight hundred newspapers of the Middle, Western,

and Eastern States. special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and pictures of the Grand Cross followed, and,

using Stillwater as his base, Stetson continued to flood the country. Young Hines, the local correspondent,

acting under instructions by cable from Peter, introduced him to Doctor Gilman as a traveller who lectured on

Turkey, and one who was a humble admirer of the author of the "Rise and fall." Stetson, having studied it as

a student crams an examination, begged that he might sit at the feet of the master. And for several evenings,

actually at his feet, on the steps of the ivycovered cottage, the disguised pressagent drew from the

unworldly and unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life. To this, still in his character as disciple and

student, he added photographs he himself made of the master, of the master's ivycovered cottage, of his

favorite walk across the campus, of the great historian at work at his desk, at work in his rose garden, at play

with his wife on the croquet lawn. These he held until the insignia should be actually presented. This pleasing

duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much to his astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to

Stillwater, Massachusetts, a place of which he had never heard, and present to a Doctor Gilman, of whom he

had never heard, the Grand Cross of the Crescent. As soon as the insignia arrived in the official mailbag a

secretary brought it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador travelled down from Bar Harbor to

The reception extended to him there is still remembered by the ambassador as one of the happiest incidents of

his distinguished career. Never since he came to represent his imperial Majesty in the Western republic had

its barbarians greeted him in a manner in any way so nearly approaching his own idea of what was his due.

"This ambassador," Hines had explained to the mayor of Stillwater, who was also the proprietor of its largest

department store, "is the personal representative of the Sultan. So we've got to treat him right."

"And so few crowned heads visit Stillwater," continued Hines, "that we ought to show we appreciate this one,

especially as he comes to pay the highest honor known to Europe to one of our townsmen."

"Mr. Stetson here," Hines pointed out, "has lived in Turkey, and he knows what they expect. Maybe he will

Then they visited the college authorities. Chancellor Black and most of the faculty were on their vacations.

But there were half a dozen professors still in their homes around the campus, and it was pointed out to them

that the coming honor to one lately of their number reflected glory upon the college and upon them, and that

It was also suggested that for photographic purposes they should wear their academic robes, caps, and hoods.

To these suggestions, with alacritypartly because they all loved Doctor Gilman and partly because they

had never been photographed by a movingpicture machinethey all agreed. So it came about that when the

ambassador, hot and cross and dusty stepped off the waytrain at Stillwater station he found to his delighted

amazement a red carpet stretching to a perfectly new automobile, a company of the local militia presenting

arms, a committee, consisting of the mayor in a high hat and white gloves and three professors in gowns and

colored hoods, and the Stillwater silver Cornet Band playing what, after several repetitions, the ambassador

The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross. He forgot that he was dusty. His face radiated satisfaction

and perspiration. Here at last were people who appreciated him and his high office. And as the mayor helped

him into the automobile, and those students who lived in Stillwater welcomed him with strange yells, and the

movingpicture machine aimed at him point blank, he beamed with condescension. But inwardly he was ill at

inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of America, failed to appreciate the

importance of the man he had come to honor. When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor

Gilman he blushed with confusion. And when he recollected that he had been almost on the point of refusing

to come to Stillwater, that he had considered leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What

Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki, by the sight of the stout gentleman in

the red fez, by a tremendous liking and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater gathered

outside his cottage. And inside, the old professor, trembling and bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed

his shoulders while the ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only frock coat

pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful embarrassment Doctor Gilman smiled and bowed and smiled, and

then, as the delighted mayor of Stillwater shouted, "Speech," in sudden panic he reached out his hand quickly

"Now, then, three Long ones!" yelled the cheer leader. "Now, then, 'See the Conquering Hero!'" yelled the

bandmaster. "Attention! Present arms!" yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors

applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and his wife, he frightened and

confused, she happy and proud, and taking it all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of

honeysuckles and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the ambassador so far unbent as to drink champagne,

which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the rear of the ivycovered cottage, with the mayor, with the

wives of the professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed, so often did he unbend that when the

perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to the Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his

Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but Hines and Stetson would not let him

show himself in Stillwater. They were afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might inadvertently

So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to supply his father and Chancellor

Black with All the newspaper accounts of the great celebration at Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he

choked. Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently before the public, and never before

had her president been so utterly and completely ignored. And what made it worse was that he recognized

that even had he been present he could not have shown his face. How could he, who had, as every one

connected with the college now knew, out of spite and without cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant,

join in chanting his praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior, might not hear of Gilman's triumph.

But Hallowell senior heard little of anything else. At his office, at his clubs, on the golflinks, every one he

met congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had come to his pet college.

"You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right horse," exclaimed a rival porkpacker enviously.

"Now if I pay a hundred thousand for a Velasquez it turns out to be a bad copy worth thirty dollars, but you

pay a professor three thousand and he brings you in half a million dollars' worth of free advertising. Why, this

Doctor Gilman's doing as much for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns Hopkins or as Walter Camp

Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as he was able, and in secret raged at Chancellor

Black. Each day his rage increased. It seemed as though there would never be an end to Doctor Gilman. The

stone he had rejected had become the cornerstone of Stillwater. Whenever he opened a newspaper he felt

like exclaiming: "Will no one rid me of this pestilent fellow?" For the "Rise and Fall," in an edition deluxe

limited to two hundred copies, was being bought up by all his bookcollecting millionaire friends; a popular

edition was on view in the windows of every bookshop; It was offered as a prize to subscribers to all the more

sedate magazines, and the name and features of the distinguished author had become famous and familiar.

Not a day passed but that some new honor, at least so the newspapers stated, was thrust upon him. Paragraphs

announced that he was to be the next exchange professor to Berlin; that in May he was to lecture at the

A freshwater college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the front by offering him the chair of history at

that seat of learning at a salary of five thousand dollars a year. Some of the honors that had been thrust upon

Doctor Gilman existed only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson, but this offer happened to be genuine.

"Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the letter from the trustees to his wife and shook

"We could not be happy away from Stillwater," he said. " We have only a month more in the cottage, but

after that we still can walk past it; we can look into the garden and see the flowers she planted. We can visit

the place where she lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and miserable for her, and she would be

Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to leave Stillwater; but when he read that the

small Eastern college at which Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to make him its president, his

He telegraphed to Black: "Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him six thousandoffer him whatever he wants,

but make him promise for no consideration to leave Stillwater he is only member faculty ever brought any

The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the Chancellor called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so

much humble pie that for a week he suffered acute mental indigestion. But little did Hallowell senior care for

that. He had got what he wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished, was back in the faculty, and had made

Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the history examination, which, should he pass it,

would give him his degree, he found on every side evidences of the "worldwide fame" he himself had

created. The newsstand at the depot, the bookstores, the drugstores, the pictureshops, all spoke of Doctor

Gilman; and postcards showing the ivycovered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor Gilman,

advertisements of the different. editions of "the" history proclaimed his fame. Peter, fascinated by the success

of his own handiwork, approached the ivycovered cottage in a spirit almost of awe. But Mrs. Gilman

welcomed him with the same kindly, sympathetic smile with which she always gave courage to the unhappy

ones coming up for examinations, and Doctor Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle

The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in his papers Doctor Gilman asked him if he

"Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell," said the professor, "that you have not passed. I cannot possibly give

you a mark higher than five." In real sympathy the sage of Stillwater raised his eyes, but to his great

astonishment he found that Peter, so far from being cast down or taking offense, was smiling delightedly,

"I am afraid," said Doctor Gilman gently, "that this summer you did not work very hard for your degree!"

"To tell you the truth, Professor," he said, "you're right I got working for something worth whileand I

This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the Germans, and why it failed. I got my

data from Baron von Gottlieb, at the time military attach� of the German Government with the Russian army

in the second RussianJapanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of Manchuria, and reduced her to a

thirdrate power. He told me of his part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the

ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses below us glowing and smoking like

Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been Carl Schultz, the headwaiter at the East

The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London correspondent of the New York

Republic. They gave me permission to tell it in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first

In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I have yet to find any one who will believe

What led directly to the invasion was that some weekend guest of the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The

Riddle of the Sands" in the coffeeroom, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford attended the

Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place, the German flag might now be flying over

As every German knows, "The Riddle of the Sands" is a novel written by a very clever Englishman in which

is disclosed a plan for the invasion of his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to be

embarked in lighters, towed by shallowdraft, seagoing tugs, and despatched simultaneously from the seven

rivers that form the Frisian Isles. From there they were to be convoyed by battleships two hundred and forty

miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and

Mundesley. The fact that this coast is lowlying and bordered by sand flats which at low water are dry, that

England maintains no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest naval base is at Chatham, seem to point to it

What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he read the book he mailed it to the

German Ambassador in London, and under separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: "I suggest your

Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage, and of the Strategy Board. General

Bolivar said, 'When you want arms, take them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow when you want

What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of history. This was in 1910. A year later, during the

coronation week, Lester Ford went to Clarkson's to rent a monk's robe in which to appear at the Shakespeare

Ball, and while the assistant departed in search of the robe, Ford was left alone in a small room hung with

fulllength mirrors and shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent Garden balls

and amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a long, secretly cherished desire to behold himself as a

military man, by trying on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when the assistant returned,

instead of finding a young American in English clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German

officer in a spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The assistant retreated precipitately, and

Ford, conscious that he appeared ridiculous, tried to turn the tables by saying, " Does a German uniform

"It did give me quite a turn," he said. "It's this talk of invasion, I fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast

Guard, and you came along the beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance, anyway."

He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at his post in London and dutifully

forward the news to his paper, or play truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So

the words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young Major Bellew recalled

them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young

Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in

their third term at the university. After five years' service in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights" week at

Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found

him serious, given to study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy; instead of "wines"

he found pleasure in debating clubs where he discussed socialism. Ragging, practical jokes, ingenious

hoaxes, that once were wont to set England in a roar, were a lost art. His undergraduate guests combated

these charges fiercely. His criticisms they declared unjust and without intelligence.

"You're talking rot!" said his dutiful nephew. "Take Phil here, for example. I've roomed with him three years

and I can testify that he has never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of him. And

"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours; as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance,

when five hundred people sat through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a man

"And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!" cried Herbert. "What price that? When the DREADNOUGHT

manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by

Oxford men. The country hasn't stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!" challenged Herbert. " Make it as

hard as you like; something risky, something that will make the country sit up, something that will send us all

to jail, and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen. Go on," he persisted, "And I bet

"Give you the idea, yes!" mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. "That's just what I say. You boys today are so

dull. You lack initiative. It's the idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur theatricals!"

"Is it!" snorted Herbert. "If you want to know what stage fright is, just go on board a British battleship with

your face covered with burnt cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a little

Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and with welltimed nods, impartially

encouraging each disputant. But now he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly

about him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of the terrace, and, as it was now past nine

o'clock, the other diners had departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside the open

windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the Thames, blocked to the west by the great

shadows of the Houses of Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower House was

"I'LL give you an idea for a rag," whispered Ford. "One that is risky, that will make the country sit up, that

" Don't mind him," exclaimed Herbert impatiently. "HE never reads anything! Go on!"

"It's the book most talked about," explained Ford. "And what else is most talked about?" He answered his

own question. "The landing of the Germans in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that

book in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would happen if German soldiers

appeared tonight on the Norfolk coast just where the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but

"What would happen?" roared Major Bellew loyally. "The Boy Scouts would fall out of bed and kick them

"Shut up!" snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm. "How?" he demanded breathlessly.

"Two men," corrected Ford, "And a third man to drive the car. I thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I

came across a lot of German uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out how

prepared you people are to meet invasion. And when you said just now that you wanted a chance to go to jail

"Am I in it?" cried Ford indignantly. "It's my own private invasion! I'm letting you boys in on the ground

In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then slapped the table with his open palm.

"Of all the preposterous, outrageousAre you mad?" he demanded. "Do you suppose for one minute I will

"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on, Ford," he said. "We'll find some place where

Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twentyone miles between Wells and Cromer,

broke down eleven times. Each time this misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road

and on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two occupants of the car sauntered to

the beach. There they chucked pebbles at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route

by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set forth. Sometimes they followed the

beaten path down the cliff or, as it chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of

the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the lanes of the villages. But when they

again reached the car the procedure of each was alikeeach produced a pencil and on the face of his "Half

At lunchtime they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made numerous and trivial inquiries about

the Cromer golf links. They had come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of seabathing and golf; they

were returning after dinner. The headwaiter of the East Cliff Hotel gave them the information they desired.

He was an intelligent headwaiter, young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing. In a frock coat

he might easily have been mistaken for something even more important than a headwaiterfor a German

ridingmaster, a leader of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his station. He

even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffeeroom

where, with the intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found their way. As Carl

Schultz followed, carrying the dustcoats, a road map fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl

Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace it, when his eyes were held by notes scrawled roughly in

pencil. With an expression that no longer was that of a headwaiter, Carl cast one swift glance about him and

then slipped into the empty coatroom and locked the door. Five minutes later, with a smile that played

uneasily over a face grown gray with anxiety, Carl presented the map to the tallest of the three strangers. It

was open so that the pencil marks were most obvious. By his accent it was evident the tallest of the three

"What the devil!" he protested; "which of you boys has been playing hob with my map?"

For just an instant the two pinkcheeked ones regarded him with disfavor; until, for just an instant, his

"Oh, that!" exclaimed the younger one. "The Automobile Club asked us to mark down petrol stations. Those

The headwaiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy countenance, he departed and, for the

twohundredth time that day, looked from the windows of the diningroom out over the tumbling breakers to

the gray stretch of sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret, he glanced carefully about

him and then, assured he was alone, leaned eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.

In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tugboats straining against long lines of scows, against the dead weight of

fieldguns, against the pull of thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a black leather

"Patience," he muttered; "patience! By ten tonight all will be dark. There will be no stars. There will be no

moon. The very heavens fight for us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!"

At lunchtime Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the three strangers. He gave them their

choice of soup, thick or clear, of gooseberry pie or HalfPay pudding. He accepted their shillings gratefully,

and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for

one instant, he again allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brownsailed fishingboats were beating

in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save

By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon off, and, changing his coat, he

mounted his bicycle and set forth toward Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the

postman on his rounds, to the driver of the char � banc. He had been a year in Cromer and was well known

Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand, the chimneys of a house showed above

a thick tangle of firtrees. Between the trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding. Carl opened

the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet

on the gravel the bushes new apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him. But, at sight of the

headwaiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to his visor.

Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn. In the centre of the lawn, where once

had been a tennis court, there now stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen

table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside

it, with his hand on the key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl drew his legs

"I have been in constant communication," said the man with the beard. "They will be here just before the

dawn. Return to Cromer vand openly from the postoffice telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you

tomorrow at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last edition of all of this afternoon's papers, he will

insert the final advertisement. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will know the moment

As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens where, upon the lawns, men in flannels

were busy at tennis or, with pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High above

him on the skyline of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had served at luncheon. They were driving

"A nation of wasters," muttered the German, "sleeping at their posts. They are fiddling while England falls!"

Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was about to close the cowbarn door,

when three soldiers appeared suddenly around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It

was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr.

Shutliffe had seen many uniforms, and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.

"Du bist gefangen!" he announced. "Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere Leute?" he demanded.

"You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir," said Mr. Shutliffe, "but I am a trifle 'ard of 'earing."

Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years, recalled its name with difficulty.

"Go indoors!" commanded the soldier, "And put out all lights, and remain indoors. We have taken this

"Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly," stammered Mr. Shutliffe. "May I lock in the pigs first, sir?"

One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two others trotted after him. When they

looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he

"That was a fine start!" mocked Herbert. "Of course, you had to pick out the Village Idiot. If they are all

They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters

choked over his ale and two fishermen removed their clay pipes and stared. The barmaid alone arose to the

"Now, then," she exclaimed briskly, "What way is that to come tumbling into a respectable place? None of

The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents, interrupted her sharply.

"We are Germans!" he declared. "This village is captured. You are prisoners of war. Those lights you will out

He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that the soldiers with him failed to entirely

grasp his meaning, and one shouldered his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.

As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine shriek, then a crash of pottery and

But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive figure. His helmet and his measured

"The constable!" whispered Herbert. "He must see us, but he mustn't speak to us."

For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the street, and then, as though at sight of the

policeman they had taken alarm, disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes later a

motorcar, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode slowly into Stiffkey's main street and halted

before the constable. The driver of the car wore a leather skullcap and goggles. From his neck to his heels

"Mr. Policeman," he began; " when I turned in here three soldiers stepped in front of my car and pointed

rifles at me. Then they ran off toward the beach. What's the idea manoeuvres? Because, they've no right

"Yes, sir," the policeman assured him promptly; "I saw them. It's manoeuvres, sir. Territorials."

"They didn't look like Territorials," objected the chauffeur. "They looked like Germans."

Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal a grin.

"Just Territorials, sir," he protested soothingly; "skylarking maybe, but meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a

"I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or it's serious, and you ought to report it. It's your duty

"I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard," he protested; "not at this time of the night. But if any

Germans' been annoying you, gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me your

"What's the use!" he protested. "You couldn't wake these people with dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go

"They little know of England who only Stiffkey know," chanted the chauffeur reprovingly. "Why, we haven't

Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the jobmaster's son at Blakeney, was leading

his bicycle up the hill. Ahead of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the roadand in the light

of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across the road and scrambled through the hedge

on the bank opposite. He was followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.

"Put out that light," he commanded. " Go to your home and tell no one what you have seen. If you attempt to

give an alarm you will be shot. Our sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road."

The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed his comrades, and an instant later

young Bradshaw heard them sliding over the cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below.

Young Bradshaw stood quite still. In his heart was much fearfear of laughter, of ridicule, of failure. But of

no other kind of fear. Softly, silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he had just

climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably informed that in ambush at every fifty yards

along the road to Blakeney, sentries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the gauntlet. He saw

that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall,

practiced on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud. As he threw his leg across

his bicycle, Herbert, from the motorcar farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained

to Ford, were intended to give " verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." And the

sighing of the bullets gave young Bradshaw exactly what he wantedthe assurance that he was not the

victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight forward and, lifting his feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an

hour into the main street of Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car followed, a mob of men so completely

blocked the waterfront that Ford was forced to stop. His headlights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious,

sceptical, eager. A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a retired army officer pushed his way

"German soldiers!" Ford answered. "They tried to catch us, but when I saw who they were, I ran through

"A halfcompany at Stiffkey and a halfmile farther on a regiment. We didn't know then they were Germans,

"Thank you!" snapped the elderly gentleman. "I happen to be in command of this district. What are your

"I've no time for that!" he called. "We've got to warn every coast town in Norfolk. You take my tip and get

"We've got them guessing," he said. "Now, what we want is a live wire, some one with imagination, some

Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with lights. In the main street were

fishermen, shopkeepers, "trippers" in flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to

witness a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their escorts, shivering in delighted terror.

"You can see their lights from the beach," said Ford. "They've landed two regiments between here and Wells.

"All right," returned Ford. "Let 'em come, but don't take it lying down! Get those women off the streets, and

go down to the beach, and drive the Germans back! Gangway," he shouted, and the car shot forward. "We

His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose with a roar like a rocket and was met

"This thing is going to fail!" he cried petulantly. "They don't believe us. We've got to show ourselvesmany

"The British mind moves slowly," said Birrell, the Irishman. "Now, if this had happened in my native

He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that spurned the road, that splattered them with

pebbles, tore past and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their headlights, they saw that

men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Before

they could find their voices a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death were at the wheel, shaved their

"Things are looking up!" said Ford. "Where is our next stop? As I said before, what we want is a live one."

"We are next billed to appear," he said, "about a quarter of a mile from here, at the signaltower of the Great

Eastern Railroad, where we visit the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his life."

The three men had mounted the steps of the signaltower so quietly that, when the operator heard them, they

already surrounded him. He saw three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat

helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an an�mic, palefaced youth without a coat or collar, for the night

was warm, who sank back limply in his chair and gazed speechless with widebulging eyes.

In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. "You are a prisoner," he said. "We take over this office in the

As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of the boy operator moved across the

With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy pulled open the drawer of the table before

The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake, and Ford found himself looking into a

revolver of the largest calibre issued by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy's shoulders, Herbert

twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the window, and almost as quickly hurled himself

down the steps of the tower. Birrell leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to shout: "Don't touch

that instrument! If you attempt to send a message through, we will shoot. We go to cut the wires!"

For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his heart beating in sharp, suffocating stabs.

Then, with his left arm raised to guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward across the table,

inviting as he believed his death, he opened the circuit and through the night flashed out a warning to his

When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the shoulder.

"Don't mention it!" said Ford. "He jammed that gun half down my throat. I can taste it still. Where do we go

"According to the route we mapped out this afternoon," said Herbert, "We are now scheduled to give

"Not with me!" exclaimed Birrell fiercely. "Those towns have been tipped off by now by Blakeney and Cley,

and the Boy Scouts would club us to death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely

Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to believe him, and they'll call out the navy."

"There is a Coast Guard," he said, "stationed just the other side of Morston. And," he added fervently, "let us

They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the coast an hour had passed. It was now

quite dark. There were no stars, nor moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped out

upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon fires burning fiercely.

"Since seeing those fires," he explained, "I feel a strange reluctance about showing myself in this uniform to a

"Coast Guards don't shoot!" mocked Birrell. "They only look at the clouds through a telescope. Three

Germans with rifles ought to be able to frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope."

The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the cliff. Behind it the downs ran back

to meet the road. The door of the cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and

"We must pass in single file in front of that light," whispered Ford, "And then, after we are sure he has seen

Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars, many flashes, many bullets.

After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier fully armed, the Coast Guard had seen

nothing further. But judging from the shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed his first

shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he proceeded to sell his life dearly. Clip after clip

of cartridges he emptied into the night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to sea, now at his own

shadow in the lamplight. To the people a quarter of a mile away at Morston it sounded like a battle.

After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full length on the grass beside the car. Near it,

tearing from his person the last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing

"I don't know," gasped Birrell, "When I saw him last he was diving over the cliff into the sea. How many

"About twenty!" groaned the American, "And, besides being dead, I am severely wounded. Every time he

A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the headlights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding,

dripping with water, and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and fell into his golf

"Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform," he cried, "can have mine. I left it in the first row of

The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles and helmets, to lend color to the

invasion, were dropped in the open road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris

tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car, turned into the shore road to Cromer.

What they saw brought swift terror to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a

regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the " double." An officer sprang to the front of the car

"I'll have to commandeer this," he said. "Run back to Cromer. Don't crush my men, but go like the devil!"

"We heard firing here," explained the officer " at the Coast Guard station. The Guard drove them back to the

sea. He counted over a dozen. They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel walk looks

as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder," exclaimed the officer suddenly, "if you are the

three gentlemen who first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the other coast towns.

Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were discovered, they would be suspected and

investigated, and the worst might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably were the men to

whom the officer referred. He explained they had been returning from Cromer, where they had gone to play

"You were lucky to escape," said the officer "And in keeping on to give warning you were taking chances. If

Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence. With his siren shrieking and his horn

tooting, he was forcing the car through lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were

"MY regiment!" snorted the officer. "You've passed through five regiments already, and there are as many

"That's what the Germans think," said the officer. "It's working like a clock," he cried happily. "There hasn't

been a hitch. As soon as they got your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a wave,

on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government took over all the railroads. The county

regiments, regulars, yeomanry, territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down in

London the Guards started to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The Automobile Club in the first hour

collected two hundred cars and turned them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and

GrahameWhite and eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south coast. Admiral

Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off the German convoy in the North Sea, and the

torpedo destroyers have been sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And on land

every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred

thousand men, and from Colchester the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H. A.'s with

siegeguns, fieldguns, quickfiring guns, all kinds of guns spread out over every foot of ground from here

to Hunstanton. They thought they'd give us a surprise party. They will never give us another surprise party!"

On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the East Cliff Hotel and the bearded German stood in

the garden back of the house with the forbidding walls. From the road in front came unceasingly the tramp

and shuffle of thousands of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon, the clanking of their chains, the

voices of men trained to command raised in sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless

fires. Every window of every cottage and hotel blazed with lights. The night had been turned into day. The

eyes of the two Germans were like the eyes of those who had passed through an earthquake, of those who

"The last message I received over the wireless," he said, "before I destroyed it, read, 'Your message

understood. We are returning. Our movements will be explained as manoeuvres. And," added the general,

"The English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept that explanation. As manoeuvres, this

night will go down into history. Return to the hotel," he commanded, "And in two months you can rejoin

On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic published a map of Great Britain that covered

three columns and a woodcut of Ford that was spread over five. Beneath it was printed: "Lester Ford, our

London correspondent, captured by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to warn the English people."

On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London, appeared this paragraph:

"The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the eldest son of Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick

Headford Birrell both of Balliol College, Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the correspondent of the New York

Republic. These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them prisoners, and at great risk

proceeded in their motorcar over roads infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of Norfolk, warning

the authorities. Should the war office fail to recognize their services, the people of Great Britain will prove

"Shall we, or shall we not," asked Herbert, "tell my uncle that we three, and we three alone, were the

"That's hardly correct," said Ford, "as we now know there were two hundred thousand invaders. We were the

"I vote we don't tell him," said Birrell. "Let him think with everybody else that the Germans blundered; that

an advance party landed too soon and gave the show away. If we talk," he argued, "We'll get credit for a

successful hoax. If we keep quiet, everybody will continue to think we saved England. I'm content to let it go

David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company. The manufacturing plant of the

company was at Bridgeport, but in the New York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from

the little nickelplated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in railroad tickets, to the big punch

that could bite into an iron plate as easily as into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these different

punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the sons turned a customer over to David he spoke

of him as a salesman. But David called himself a "demonstrator." For a short time he even succeeded in

persuading the other salesmen to speak of themselves as demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and

bookkeepers laughed them out of it. They could not laugh David out of it. This was so, partly because he had

no sense of humor, and partly because he had a greatgreatgrandfather. Among the salesmen on lower

Broadway, to possess a greatgreatgrandfather is unusual, even a greatgrandfather is a rarity, and either is

considered superfluous. But to David the possession of a greatgreatgrandfather was a precious and open

delight. He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had existed, but it was not until

David's sister Anne married a doctor in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that David

It was sister Anne, anxious to "get in" as a "Daughter" and wear a distaff pin in her shirtwaist, who

discovered the revolutionary ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the graveyard of the

Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought

with Washington at Trenton and at Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on moving to New

York, his descendants became peaceloving salesmen did not affect his record. To enter a society founded on

heredity, the important thing is first to catch your ancestor, and having made sure of him, David entered the

Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors. He was not unlike the man who had been speaking

prose for forty years without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to find himself famous.

He had gone to bed a timid, nearsighted, underpaid salesman without a relative in the world, except a

married sister in Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a direct descendant of "Neck or Nothing" Greene,

a revolutionary hero, a friend of Washington, a man whose portrait hung in the State House at Trenton.

David's life had lacked color. The day he carried his certificate of membership to the big jewelry store

uptown and purchased two rosettes, one for each of his two coats, was the proudest of his life.

The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff, one of Burdett's flying squadron of

travelling salesmen, said, "All grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or greatgreatgreat.

Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink.

"Well, for one thing," said David stiffly, "he fought in the War of the Revolution. He saved us from the

shackles of monarchical England; he made it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free republic."

"Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that," protested Wyckoff, "because I know better. There were a

"I am not grudging glory to others," returned David; "I am only saying I am proud that I am a descendant of a

Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph frame that folded like a concertina.

"I don't want to be a descendant," he said; "I'd rather be an ancestor. Look at those." Proudly he exhibited

photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with the baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at the

"When I'm married," he stammered, and at the words he blushed, "I hope to be an ancestor."

"If you're thinking of getting married," said Wyckoff, "you'd better hope for a raise in salary."

The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David showed them his parchment

certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a

Continental soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not the grandfather, but the fact

that owing to that distinguished relative David was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to

attend the monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to erect monuments on battlefields to

mark neglected graves; to join in joyous excursions to the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones; to

inspect West Point, Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those present at the annual "banquet" at

Delmonico's. In order that when he opened these letters he might have an audience, he had given the society

In these communications he was always addressed as "Dear Compatriot," and never did the words fail to give

him a thrill. They seemed to lift him out of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to things

uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know what an aristocrat was, but be believed

being a compatriot made him an aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was

overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their illtemper, and he would smile and say to himself: "If

they knew the meaning of the blue rosette in my buttonhole, how differently they would treat me! How

But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button. They thought it meant that David

belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was

When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because, although no one in the office

suspected it, he wished to marry the person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss Emily

Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and prettiest stenographers, and although David

did not cut as dashing a figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found something

in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours, accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an

engagement ring. Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided when in a few

months they would go upon their vacations they also would go upon their honeymoon. And then a cloud had

come between them, and from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.

The trouble befell when David discovered he had a greatgreat grandfather. With that fact itself Miss

Anthony was almost as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in another's glory,

Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive to achieve glory for himself.

From a hardworking salesman she had asked but little, but from a descendant of a national hero she

expected other things. She was a determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young

person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed. The greatgreatgrandfather had

opened up a new horizonhad, in a way, raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his

tales of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he sat shoulder to shoulder with men

"You shouldn't be content to just wear a button," she urged. "If you're a Son of Washington, you ought to act

"I don't mean that, and you know I don't," Emily replied indignantly. "It has nothing to do with me! I want

It was a year before the SpanishAmerican War, while the patriots of Cuba were fighting the mother country

"If I were a Son of the Revolution," said Emily, "I'd go to Cuba and help free it."

"Don't talk nonsense," cried David. "If I did that I'd lose my job, and we'd never be able to marry. Besides,

what's Cuba done for me? All I know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill."

"Did Lafayette talk like that?" demanded Emily. "Did he ask what have the American rebels ever done for

"If I were in Lafayette's class," sighed David, "I wouldn't be selling automatic punches."

"There's your trouble," declared Emily "You lack selfconfidence. You're too humble, you've got fighting

blood and you ought to keep saying to yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it WILL tell!

You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join the militia. That takes only one night

a week, and then, if we DID go to war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!"

Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook

Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But when she opened them they were bright,

"No, I'm not," she protested; "only I want a husband with a career, and one who'll tell me to keep quiet when

A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and David was promoted into the flying

squadron. He now was a travelling salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a step

forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David was not elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily.

It was not money she wanted. Her ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She did not

say this, but David knew that in him she still found something lacking, and when they said goodby they

both were ill at ease and completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in the office

said goodmorning, she used to add the number of the days that still separated them from the vacation which

also was to be their honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the daysat least she did

David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than learn the truth that she had decided

not to marry him, or that she was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in ignorance

of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it

would. He missed her, needed her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to the

frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him. It was almost a relief. He did not care

The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close to the Atlantic seaboard. In

obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful, and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram

of congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please Emily. But he knew that in her eyes

the greatgreatgrandson of Hiram Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons. A

year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for celebration. Now, he could see her press

her pretty lips together and shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish more. He

began to hate his greatgreatgrandfather. He began to wish Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.

And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked him, and pelted and petted him,

until finally she made him her favorite son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary

On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to leave the Union Station at Jacksonville

at exactly the same minute, and they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any Southern

railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She

placed David on the train to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later, when the

conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bellcord and dumped David over the side into the heart of a

pine forest. If he walked back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would find a flag

station where at midnight he could flag a train going north. In an hour it would deliver him safely in

There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David

stumbled forward, at one moment he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be

encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from tie to tie only by feeling with

his foot. After an hour he came to a shed. Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in

mind, he did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot, and too disgusted to proceed, and

dropping his suit case he sat down under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train or

daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From

its black water rose dead trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was not a

sound or sign of human habitation. The silence was the silence of the ocean at night David remembered the

berth reserved for him on the train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing

himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome it! For, in the sleepingcar, illsmelling,

close, and stuffy, he at least would have been surrounded by fellowsufferers of his own species. Here his

I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely surrounded by alligators."

In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him there flashed suddenly the face of a

man. Then the match went out and the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above the

level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the embankment. It was as though the man had

been sitting on the limb of a tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the embankment

opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously,

and as he did so the clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening into a

river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf an oceangoing tug. It was from her deck that the man,

in lighting his pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engineroom and the company of his

fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then something in the

appearance of the tug, something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed

from her engineroom, cabin, or pilothouse. Her decks were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black

smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood uncertainly,

questioning whether to make his presence known or return to the loneliness of the shed. The question was

decided for him. He had not considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure. The

planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him. As one who means to attack, or who fears attack, he

approached warily. He wore high boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his

movements were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily excited. He thrust himself close against

"I took the wrong train," explained David pleasantly. "They put me off about a mile below here. I walked

"Oh, no you're not," he said. "If you walked here, you can just walk away again!" With a sweep of his arm, he

"I'll find some one who'll make you walk!" he called. "You WAIT, that's all, you WAIT!"

David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private property and he had been trespassing. In any

case, at the flag station the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he judged it best to

choose his own battleground. He recrossed the tracks and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the

shed. Himself hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any other person.

"They're river pirates," said David to himself, "or smugglers. They're certainly up to some mischief, or why

"I wish that train would come," he sighed. And instantly? as though in answer to his wish, from only a short

distance down the track he heard the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his

The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and smugglers had become intolerable.

He must escape, and he must escape by the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His

plan was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though he had no lantern to wave, in order to

bring it to a halt he need only stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his arms.

David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the

train, now only a hundred yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no headlight, and

though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger

coaches in the rear of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a train, a Flying

Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead

He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to a sharp halt. And instantly from every

side men fell from it to the ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls and eager

So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her mysterious passengers that, until they

confronted him, he did not note the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little man

from the tug. With him was a fat, redfaced IrishAmerican He wore no coat and his shirtsleeves were

drawn away from his hands by garters of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his

right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that moment he had stopped sliding

glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the

tallest man he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his beard and hair, which were of

"Yes," he shouted; "this is the sort of place any one would pick out to wait for a train!"

In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove. "Don't you lie to ME!" he bullied. "Do

"You won't travel any tonight," mocked the redhaired one. "You've seen what you came to see, and all you

want now is to get to a Western Union wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here tonight!"

As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in ridingboots pushed forward importantly.

"Better take him on board," said the barkeeper, "and send him back by the pilot. When we're once at sea, he

"What makes you think I want to hurt you?" demanded David. "Who do you think I am?"

"We know who you are," shouted the fieryheaded one. "You're a blankettyblank spy! You're a government

David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his selfrespect was being illtreated, and

"You have made a very serious mistake," he said, "and whether you like it or not, I AM leaving here

Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a short walk. Something hit him

below the ear and he found himself curling up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but

was conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting to pass, was unsafe. This doubt did

not long disturb him. His head rolled against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance, and in a

When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In his ears was the steady throb of an

engine, and in his eyes the glare of a lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasantfaced youth in a golf cap

who was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed wildly about him. He was in the bow of

the oceangoing tug, and he saw that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed with

men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side the gray light that comes before the dawn

showed low banks studded with stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.

"Sorry to disturb you," said the youth in the golf cap, "but we drop the pilot in a few minutes and you're going

David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as large as a tennis ball behind his right

"You were sort of kidnapped, I guess," laughed the young man. "It was a raw deal, but they couldn't take any

chances. The pilot will land you at Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad."

"But why?" demanded David indignantly. "Why was I kidnapped? What had I done? Who were those men

From the pilothouse there was a sharp jangle of bells to the engineroom, and the speed of the tug

"Come on," commanded the young man briskly. "The pilot's going ashore. Here's your grip, here's your hat.

The ladder's on the port side. Look where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as"

But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws an electric switch, as blindingly as a

train leaps from the tunnel into the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the fierce,

It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths, prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by

the blind rush of many men scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one man. Above

the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a firegong, and looking up to the pilothouse from

whence the voice came, David saw the barkeeper still in his shirtsleeves and with his derby hat pushed back

behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph to the engineroom, with the other holding the spoke

David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap. Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water

from her in black, oily waves, the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and

quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is

held in the circle of a policeman's bull'seye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and held her in its

grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by the arm. With his free hand he pointed down the shaft

of light. So great was the tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's ear.

"That's the revenue cutter!" he shouted. "She's been laying for us for three weeks, and now," he shrieked

From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting beyond his control.

"How can he drop the pilot?" yelled the youth. "The pilot's got to stick by the boat. So have you."

"Stick by what boat?" yelled David. "Who are these men? Who are you? What boat is this?"

In the glare of the searchlight David saw the eyes of the youth staring at him as though he feared he were in

the clutch of a madman. Wrenching himself free, the youth pointed at the pilothouse. Above it on a blue

board in letters of goldleaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As David read it his breath left him, a finger

"THE THREE FRIENDS!" shrieked David. "She's a filibuster! She's a pirate! Where're we going?

"I won't go to Cuba," shouted David. "I've got to work! I'm paid to sell machinery. I demand to be put ashore.

David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that the ship had struck a rock, and then

that she was bumping herself over a succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged. Like a

hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to stern. No longer was David of a mind to sue

the filibusters if they did not put him ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he would have

crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to David, nor to many of the filibusters, nor to any of

the Cuban patriots. Their groans of selfpity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish, rose high above

the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the waves. Even when the searchlight gave way to a

brilliant sunlight the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the tidings brought

forward by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the slippery decks and vaulted the prostrate forms as

surefootedly as a hurdler on a cinder track. To David, in whom he seemed to think he had found a congenial

spirit, he shouted Joyfully, "She's fired two blanks at us!" he cried; "now she's firing cannonballs!"

But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and so far as David knew hours passed into

days and days into weeks. It was like those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through centuries

of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his aching head, of the hard deck, of the waves that

splashed and smothered him, David fell into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull consciousness of

his position. At such moments he added to his misery by speculating upon the other misfortunes that might

have befallen him on shore. Emily, he decided, had given him up for lost and marriedprobably a navy

officer in command of a battleship. Burdett and Sons had cast him off forever. Possibly his disappearance

had caused them to suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as a defaulter, as a fugitive from

justice. His accounts, no doubt, were being carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had

On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw

it in the lee scupper and fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought him food and

drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a bowl of smoking soup.

But he said, "You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up with these pirates?"

"They're not pirates, they're patriots," he said, "and I'm not mixed up with them. My name is Henry Carr and

"He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler," Carr corrected, "and he's the greatest filibuster alive. He knows these

waters as you know Broadway, and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of

mousehelpingthelion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about this expedition. The government

agents in New York found out I'd found out and sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story

either. Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest, and he's promised that after he's landed

"I'm what we call a cub reporter," laughed Carr. "You see, I've always dreamed of being a war correspondent.

The men in the office say I dream too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed, it's

the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't real war, but it's a near war, and when

the real thing breaks loose, I can tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the

"I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are," said Carr, "but I've a stomach like a Harlem goat." He stooped and

lowered his voice. "Now, here are two fake filibusters," he whispered. "The men you read about in the

Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the little one who had wanted to tie

"All they ask," whispered Carr, "is money and advertisement. If they knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of

my hand. The tall man calls himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a lighthouse on the Florida coast, and

that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is a daredevil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He

says he's an English officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen battles. Jimmy says he's

never been near enough to a battle to see the redcross flags on the base hospital. But they've fooled these

Cubans. The Junta thinks they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here to work the machine guns. But

I'm afraid the only fighting they will do will be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring."

A half dozen seasick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They dropped it not two yards from where

Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching that part of the coast of Cuba on which she

had arranged to land her expedition, and that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish patrol boats she

"They've got an automatic gun in that crate," said Carr, "and they're going to assemble it. You'd better move;

For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a

heavy tripod to the deck and balance above it a quickfiring onepounder. They worked very slowly, and to

David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely unintelligent.

"I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together in his life," he whispered to Carr. "I never

did, either, but I've put hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work."

Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of all on board was diverted, and by a

Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smokingroom steward to those deep in bridge, or

shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the

The seasick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices rose in a fierce chorus.

The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coastline broken with bays and inlets. Above it

towered green hills, the peak of each topped by a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and water courses like

The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like a sickle. On the inside of the sickle was

Nipe Bay. On the opposite shore of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of Cubans

waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful voyage was done. Joy and excitement

thrilled the ship's company. Cuban patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of

their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of smallarm ammunition of Mausers, rifles, machetes, and

saddles. To protect the landing a box of shells was placed in readiness beside the onepounder.

"In two hours, if we have smooth water," shouted Lighthouse Harry, "we ought to get all of this on shore.

And then, all I ask," he cried mightily, "is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!"

His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They

were on the deck of one of the fastest gunboats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The Three Friends she

sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not signal questions or extend courtesies. For her the name

of the oceangoing tug was sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she raced in pursuit,

and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there came from the gunboat the sharp dry crackle of

With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell into the breech of the quickfiring gun.

Without waiting to aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed

impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with

Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred feet splashed into a wave.

From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far removed from any of the greater

"WHAT'S not connected?" yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He halflifted, halfdragged him to his feet.

"If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it," he shouted, "or I'll"

David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on the instant a miracle had taken place.

With the swift insidiousness of morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his jangled

nerves. The Three Friends had made the harbor, and was gliding through water flat as a pond. But David did

not know why the change had come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that the sun was

shining, that he had passed through the valley of the shadow, and once more was a sane, sound young man.

With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling from the gun. With swift, practised

fingers he fell upon its mechanism. He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.

Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that his work was good.

They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them to cover, bullets that ripped the deck,

splintered the superstructure, smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a continuous

whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it, and

He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one of the lifeboats protruded the

ridingboots of Colonel Beamish, the tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell

splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David stood staring wideeyed at the greyhound

of a boat that ate up the distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that sprang from her

To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived it all before, and something like raw

poison stirred in David, something leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and made

him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the box of ammunition, and holding a shell

toward him. He heard the click as the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against the weight of

his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing gunboat, saw her again and many times disappear

behind a flash of flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his forearm, but he did

not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice

"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that the voice was his own.

For a Spanish gunboat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself aground by a tugboat manned by

Cuban patriots, and by a single gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first seafight

of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new

They were seated in the pilothouse, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and David, the patriots and their arms had been

safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba, and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the

Florida straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished reading aloud his account of the

You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the proud author. "Your being South as a

travelling salesman was only a blind. You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain

your wish you were mistaken for a secretservice man, and hustled on board. That was just where you

wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you took command of the ship and singlehanded won the naval

Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. "You certainty did, Dave," protested the great man, "I seen you

At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept David there over one steamer, to dress

Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their office. At the Merchants DownTown

"Of course, it's a great surprise to us," Burdett and Sons would protest and wink heavily. "Of course, when

the boy asked to be sent South we'd no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him

go, would we?" Then again they would wink heavily. "I suppose you know," they would say, "that he's a

direct descendant of General Hiram Greene, who won the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'"

And then in a body every one in the club would move against the bar and exclaim: "Here's to Cuba libre!"

When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the Tampa cigar factories was at the

dock. There were thousands of them and all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.

And, when they saw him at the top of the gangplank with his head in a bandage and his arm in a sling, like a

mob of maniacs they howled and surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous

Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was travelworn and pale, her

shirtwaist was disgracefully wrinkled, her best hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have

She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him. "David!" she sobbed, "promise me you'll

Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not a care in the world. If the wind blew from

the north, he spun to the left; if it came from the south, he spun to the right. But it was entirely the wind that

was responsible. So, whichever way he turned, he smiled broadly, happily. His outlook upon the world was

that of one who loved his fellowman. He had many brothers as like him as twins all over Nantucket and Cape

Cod and the North Shore, smiling from the railings of verandas, from the roofs of bungalows, from the eaves

of summer palaces. Empaled on their little iron uprights, each sailorman whirledsometimes languidly, like

a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz, sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy,

and had he not been a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he would have been

quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer bought for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried

on his shoulders most grave and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried treasure, the keeper

of the happiness of two young people. It was really asking a great deal of a carefree, happygolucky

Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to Fair Harbor. They knew it when what

now is the polo field was their cow pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen

Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the "season" opened; when she departed the local tradespeople

sighed and began to take account of stock. She was so popular because she possessed charm, and because she

played no favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines her manner was just as simple and

interested as it was to the gilded youths who came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win

Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with the "kids" as to take tea on the veranda

of the clubhouse with the matrons. To each her manner was always as though she were of their age. When

she met the latter on the beach road, she greeted them riotously and joyfully by their maiden names. And the

matrons liked it. In comparison the deference shown them by the other young women did not so strongly

"When I'm jogging along in my station wagon," said one of them, "and Helen shrieks and waves at me from

her car, I feel as though I were twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside her, instead

of that goodlooking Latimer man, who never wears a hat. Why does he never wear a hat? Because he knows

"Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?" asked the new arrival. "That might help some."

This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met them so many times a day driving together,

motoring together, playing golf together, that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way to

look. But they gloried in their shame. If you tactfully pretended not to see them, Helen shouted at you. She

The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young Latimer. So many of their sons had seen

Helen shake her head in that inarticulate, worried way, and look so sorry for them, that any strange young

man who apparently succeeded where those who had been her friends for years had learned they must remain

friends, could not hope to escape criticism. Besides, they did not know him: he did not come from Boston and

Harvard, but from a Western city. They were told that at home, at both the law and the game of politics, he

worked hard and successfully; but it was rather held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that he played at

there games, not so much for the sake of the game as for exercise. He put aside many things, such as whiskey

and soda at two in the morning, and bridge all afternoon, with the remark: "I find it does not tend toward

efficiency." It was a remark that irritated and, to the minds of the men at the country clubs, seemed to place

him. They liked to play polo because they liked to play polo, not because it kept their muscles limber and

"Some Western people were telling me," said one of the matrons, "that he wants to be the next

"Any man is selfish," protested one who for years had attempted to marry Helen, "who wants to keep Helen

to himself. But that he should wish to be a lieutenantgovernor, too, is rather an anticlimax. It makes one lose

Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The companionship of Helen Page was quite

sufficient. He had been working overtime and was treating himself to his first vacation in yearshe was

younghe was in love and he was very happy. Nor was there any question, either, that Helen Page was

happy. Those who had known her since she was a child could not remember when she had not been happy,

but these days she wore her joyousness with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings to old friends: it

showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses. She was very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive

him. She told him she liked better to be with him than with any one else,it would have been difficult to

deny to him what was apparent to an entire summer colony,but she explained that that did not mean she

would marry him. She announced this when the signs she knew made it seem necessary. She announced it in

what was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly that she did not intend to marry for several years.

This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him remarks so eloquent that Helen found it very

difficult to keep her own. She as though she had been caught in an undertow and was being whirled out to

sea. When, at last, she had regained her breath, only because Latimer had paused to catch his, she shook her

"I can quite believe that," he agreed, "but there's this important difference: no matter how much a man wants

"PLEASE don't!" pleaded Helen. "I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm not unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If

I don't seem to take it to heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see how miserable a girl must be if

she is loved by one man and can't make up her mind whether or not she wants to marry him. But when there's

"ALL!" exclaimed Latimer. "It is incredible that I have undervalued you, but may I ask how many there are?"

"I don't know," sighed Helen miserably. "There seems to be something about me that"

"There is!" interrupted Latimer. "I've noticed it. You don't have to tell me about it. I know that the Helen

It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At least, not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor

One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the point on which stood the lighthouse, and on

one of these excursions they explored a forgotten wood road and came out upon a cliff. The cliff overlooked

the sea, and below it was a jumble of rocks with which the waves played hide and seek. On many afternoons

and mornings they returned to this place, and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back to a

tree and toss pinecones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose works he read made love so charmingly

that Latimer was most grateful to them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into his

voice he would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and mass meetings had dragged tears and

But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible for any woman to resist it, Helen

would exclaim excitedly: "Please excuse me for interrupting, but there is a large spider" and the spell was

One day she exclaimed: "Oh!" and Latimer patiently lowered the "Oxford Book of Verse," and asked: "What

"I'm so sorry," Helen said, "but I can't help watching that Chapman boy; he's only got one reef in, and the

next time he jibs he'll capsize, and he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his mother only yesterday"

"I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy," said Latimer, "or in what you told his mother, or whether he

Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. "Men get over THAT kind of drowning," she said.

"Not THIS kind of man doesn't!" said Latimer. "And don't tell me," he cried indignantly, "that that's

"If one could only be sure!" sighed Helen. "If one could only be sure that youthat the right man would

keep on caring after you marry him the way he says he cares before you marry him. If you could know that, it

"There is only one way to find that out," said Latimer; "that is to marry him. I mean, of course," he corrected

One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the man who makes the Nantucket sailor

and peddles him passed through the village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their

hidingplace. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the ancient pinetrees that helped to screen

their hidingplace from the world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind caught the

sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it tired of him, and went off to try to drown the

Chapman boy, leaving the sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand a tiny oar

"He is on guard," Latimer explained. "I put him there to warn us if any one approaches, and when we are not

here, he is to frighten away trespassers. Do you understand?" he demanded of the sailorman. "Your duty is to

protect this beautiful lady. So long as I love her you must guard this place. It is a life sentence. You are

always on watch. You never sleep. You are her slave. She says you have a friendly smile. She wrongs you. It

is a beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure when I look at her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are

in many ways alike. I also am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I never sleep, at least not

From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman and frowned.

"It is not a happy simile," she objected. "For one thing, a sailorman has a sweetheart in every port."

"And," continued the girl with some asperity, "if there is anything on earth that changes its mind as often as a

"Constant?" Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. "You come back here," he challenged, "months from now,

years from now, when the winds have beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and

you will find him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently, proudly, joyously, devotedly. Because

those who are your slaves, those who love YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if

The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about in a delirium of joy. His arms spun

in their sockets like Indian clubs, his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one blissful,

When the goldenrod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow, and it was time for Latimer to return to his

work in the West, he came to say goodby. But the best Helen could do to keep hope alive in him was to say

that she was glad he cared. She added it was very helpful to think that a man such as he believed you were so

fine a person, and during the coming winter she would try to be like the fine person he believed her to be, but

Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the world, to which she said: "Oh, indeed no!"

and then, as though he were giving her a cue, he said: "Goodby!" But she did not take up his cue, and they

"Surely, now that the parting has come," he assured himself, "she will make some sign, she will give me a

word, a look that will write 'total' under the hours we have spent together, that will help to carry me through

But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that he really forced her to say: "Don't miss your

train," which kind consideration for his comfort did not delight him as it should. Nor, indeed, later did she

With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and fortynine suitor attacked with renewed hope.

Among other advantages they had over Latimer was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen daily, at

dinners, dances, at the country clubs, in her own drawingroom. Like any sailor from the Charlestown Navy

Yard and his sweetheart, they could walk beside her in the park and throw peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch

dates and initials on the green benches; they could walk with her up one side of Commonwealth Avenue and

down the south bank of the Charles, when the sun was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges

were beginning to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They had known her since they wore

knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and friends in common; they talked the same language.

Latimer could talk to her only in letters, for with her he shared no friends or interests, and he was forced to

choose between telling her of his lawsuits and his efforts in politics or of his love. To write to her of his

affairs seemed wasteful and impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had received what he told of it in

silence, he was too proud to speak. So he wrote but seldom, and then only to say: "You know what I send

you." Had he known it, his best letters were those he did not send. When in the morning mail Helen found his

familiar handwriting, that seemed to stand out like the face of a friend in a crowd, she would pounce upon the

letter, read it, and, assured of his love, would go on her way rejoicing. But when in the morning there was no

letter, she wondered why, and all day she wondered why. And the next morning when again she was

disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and her doubts and speculations concerning him shut out every other

interest. He became a perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her mind. And then he would spoil

it all by writing her that he loved her and that of all the women in the world she was the only one. And,

reassured upon that point, Helen happily and promptly would forget all about him.

But when she remembered him, although months had passed since she had seen him, she remembered him

much more distinctly, much more gratefully, than that one of the two hundred and fifty with whom she had

walked that same afternoon. Latimer could not know it, but of that anxious multitude he was first, and there

was no second. At least Helen hoped, when she was ready to marry, she would love Latimer enough to want

to marry him. But as yet she assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she was, life was very

satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody invited her to be of his party, or invited himself to join hers,

and the object of each seemed to be to see that she enjoyed every hour of every day. Her nature was such that

to make her happy was not difficult. Some of her devotees could do it by giving her a dance and letting her

invite half of Boston, and her kid brother could do it by taking her to Cambridge to watch the team at

She thought she was happy because she was free. As a matter of fact, she was happy because she loved some

one and that particular some one loved her. Her being "free" was only her mistaken way of putting it. Had she

thought she had lost Latimer and his love, she would have discovered that, so far from being free, she was

Meanwhile, from the branch of the tree in the sheltered, secret hidingplace that overlooked the ocean, the

sailorman kept watch. The sun had blistered him, the storms had buffeted him, the snow had frozen upon his

shoulders. But his loyalty never relaxed. He spun to the north, he spun to the south, and so rapidly did he scan

the surrounding landscape that no one could hope to creep upon him unawares. Nor, indeed, did any one

attempt to do so. Once a fox stole into the secret hidingplace, but the sailorman flapped his oars and

frightened him away. He was always triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing rabbits he was a thing

of terror. Once, when the air was still, an impertinent crow perched on the very limb on which he stood, and

with scornful, disapproving eyes surveyed his white trousers, his blue reefer, his red cheeks. But when the

wind suddenly drove past them the sailorman sprang into action and the crow screamed in alarm and darted

away. So, alone and with no one to come to his relief, the sailorman stood his watch. About him the branches

bent with the snow, the icicles froze him into immobility, and in the treetops strange groanings filled him

with alarms. But undaunted, month after month, alert and smiling, he waited the return of the beautiful lady

and of the tall young man who had devoured her with such beseeching, unhappy eyes.

Latimer found that to love a woman like Helen Page as he loved her was the best thing that could come into

his life. But to sit down and lament over the fact that she did not love him did not, to use his favorite

expression, "tend toward efficiency." He removed from his sight the three pictures of her he had cut from

In his last letter he said: "I have told you how it is, and that is how it is always going to be. There never has

been, there never can be any one but you. But my love is too precious, too sacred to be brought out every

week in a letter and dangled before your eyes like an advertisement of a motorcar. It is too wonderful a

thing to be cheapened, to be subjected to slights and silence. If ever you should want it, it is yours. It is here

waiting. But you must tell me so. I have done everything a man can do to make you understand. But you do

not want me or my love. And my love says to me: 'Don't send me there again to have the door shut in my

face. Keep me with you to be your inspiration, to help you to live worthily.' And so it shall be."

When Helen read that letter she did not know what to do. She did not know how to answer it. Her first

impression was that suddenly she had grown very old, and that some one had turned off the sun, and that in

consequence the world had naturally grown cold and dark. She could not see why the two hundred and

fortynine expected her to keep on doing exactly the same things she had been doing with delight for six

months, and indeed for the last six years. Why could they not see that no longer was there any pleasure in

them? She would have written and told Latimer that she found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there

had not arisen a fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest? He said that he would always love her,

but how could she now know that? Why might not this letter be only his way of withdrawing from a position

which he wished to abandon, from which, perhaps, he was even glad to escape? Were this true, and she wrote

and said all those things that were in her heart, that now she knew were true, might she not hold him to her

against his will? The love that once he had for her might no longer exist, and if, in her turn, she told him she

loved him and had always loved him, might he not in some mistaken spirit of chivalry feel it was his duty to

pretend to care? Her cheeks burned at the thought. It was intolerable. She could not write that letter. And as

day succeeded day, to do so became more difficult. And so she never wrote and was very unhappy. And

Latimer was very unhappy. But he had his work, and Helen had none, and for her life became a game of

putting little things together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an hour there, to make up each day. It

From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For, in his own State, he was an "Insurgent"

making a fight, the outcome of which was expected to show what might follow throughout the entire West.

When he won his fight much more was written about him, and he became a national figure. In his own State

the people hailed him as the next governor, promised him a seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to take

him further out of her life. She wondered if now she held a place even in his thoughts.

At Fair Harbor the two hundred and fortynine used to joke with her about her politician. Then they

considered Latimer of importance only because Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and

over her head, as though she were not present, as a power, an influence, as the leader and exponent of a new

idea. They seemed to think she no longer could pretend to any peculiar claim upon him, that now he belonged

Older men would say to her: "I hear you know Latimer? What sort of a man is he?"

Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was a man who sat with his back to a

pinetree, reading from a book of verse, or halting to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.

She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run down and needed the change. And with an

unhappy laugh at her own expense she agreed in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent

her, for she knew wherever she went she must still force herself to go on putting one hour on top of another,

When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and returning unexpectedly to cover the world with

snow, to eclipse the thin spring sunshine with cheerless clouds. Helen took herself seriously to task. She

assured herself it was weakminded to rebel. The summer was coming and Fair Harbor with all its old

delights was before her. She compelled herself to take heart, to accept the fact that, after all, the world is a

pretty good place, and that to think only of the past, to live only on memories and regrets, was not only

cowardly and selfish, but, as Latimer had already decided, did not tend toward efficiency.

Among the other rules of conduct that she imposed upon herself was not to think of Latimer. At least, not

during the waking hours. Should she, as it sometimes happened, dream of himshould she imagine they

were again seated among the pines, riding across the downs, or racing at fifty miles an hour through country

roads, with the stone fences flying past, with the wind and the sun in their eyes, and in their hearts happiness

and contentthat would not be breaking her rule. If she dreamed of him, she could not be held responsible.

And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he came East. Not as once he had planned to

come, only to see her, but with a blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as the guest of three

cities. He was to speak at public meetings, to confer with party leaders, to carry the war into the enemy's

country. He was due to speak in Boston at Faneuil Hall on the first of May, and that same night to leave for

the West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the city. He had spoken his message to

Philadelphia, he had spoken to New York, and for a week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that

week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting cheering mobs, from snapshots of

him on rear platforms leaning forward to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the

time he was actually in Boston she might spare herself further and more direct attacks upon her feelings she

escaped to Fair Harbor, there to remain until, on the first of May at midnight, he again would pass out of her

life, maybe forever. No one saw in her going any significance. Spring had come, and in preparation for the

summer season the house at Fair Harbor must be opened and set in order, and the presence there of some one

She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving it herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell

into place, she doubted if it would not have been wiser had she stayed away. For she found that the memories

of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out by those of one summer, by those of one

man. The natives greeted her joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the

village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though they were her vassals and she their

queen. But it was the one man she had exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused

her throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and hundreds of years seemed to have gone

since she used to wait for him in the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively to his

open windows. Wherever she turned Fair Harbor spoke of him. The golflinks; the bathing beach; the ugly

corner in the main street where he always reminded her that it was better to go slow for ten seconds than to

remain a long time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where the schooners made fast, which he intended

to borrow for his honeymoon; the wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies; the pond

On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these places purposely, that to do so she was going

out of her way. They no longer distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort. They were old friends, who

But the secret hidingplacetheir very own hidingplace, the opening among the pines that overhung the

jumble of rocks and the seashe could not bring herself to visit. And then, on the afternoon of the third day

when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own accord, from force of habit, turned

smartly into the wood road. And again from force of habit, before he reached the spot that overlooked the sea,

he came to a full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For hours, stretching over many summer days, he

On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as one enters the aisle of some dim cathedral,

Helen advanced into the sacred circle. And then she stood quite still. What she had expected to find there she

could not have told, but it was gone. The place was unknown to her. She saw an opening among gloomy

pines, empty, silent, unreal. No haunted house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more

poignantly, more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no sign of his or of her former

presence. Across the open space something had passed its hand, and it had changed. What had been a

trystingplace, a bower, a nest, had become a tomb. A tomb, she felt, for something that once had been brave,

fine, and beautiful, but which now was dead. She had but one desire, to escape from the place, to put it away

from her forever, to remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had remembered it, and as now she

must always remember It. She turned softly on tiptoe as one who has intruded on a shrine.

But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust of wind that caught her by the skirts and

drew her back, that set the branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And at the

same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a violent, joyous tattooa sound that was

neither of the sea nor of the woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of caged wings.

Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of joy, calling her back to him with wild

beckonings, she saw him smiling down at her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In

Helen's ears Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though Latimer stood before her and had

just spoken. Only now they were no longer a jest; they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that

"So long as I love this beautiful lady," had been his foolish words, "you will guard this place. It is a life

With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the sailorman stood, with the other she

snatched him from his post of duty. With a joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the sailorman in both

An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair Harbor at a rate of speed that caused her

chauffeur to pray between his chattering teeth that the first policeman would save their lives by landing them

At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching the dark places beyond the reach of the

leaping headlights Helen Page raced against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to

beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of the one thing that could make his life

And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her greatcoat, the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his

When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of undergraduate life suggested by things that had

happened to himself and to men he knew. Under the title of "Tales of the Yard" they were collected in book

form, and sold surprisingly well. After he was graduated and became a reporter on the New York Republic,

he wrote more stories, in each of which a reporter was the hero, and in which his failure or success in

gathering news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines, and later in a book under the title of

Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said: "There are two kinds of men who succeed in

writing fictionmen of genius and reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way that

he can make the reader see it, too. A man of genius can describe something he has never seen, or any one else

for that matter, in such a way that the reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but if I had,

that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling tells us how a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a

trireme, suffers; how a mother rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling has never been a

mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how each of them feels. He can do that because he is a

genius; you cannot do it because you are not. At college you wrote only of what you saw at college; and now

that you are in the newspaper business all your tales are only of newspaper work. You merely report what

you see. So, if you are doomed to write only of what you see, then the best thing for you to do is to see as

many things as possible. You must see all kinds of life. You must progress. You must leave New York, and

"But on the Republic," Endicott pointed out, "I get a salary. And in London I should have to sweep a

"Then," said the literary editor, "you could write a story about a man who swept a crossing."

It was not alone the literary editor's words of wisdom that had driven Philip to London. Helen Carey was in

London, visiting the daughter of the American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known her only one

winter, he loved her dearly. The great trouble was that he had no money, and that she possessed so much of it

that, unless he could show some unusual quality of mind or character, his asking her to marry him, from his

own point of view at least, was quite impossible. Of course, he knew that no one could love her as he did, that

no one so truly wished for her happiness, or would try so devotedly to make her happy. But to him it did not

seem possible that a girl could be happy with a man who was not able to pay for her home, or her clothes, or

her food, who would have to borrow her purse if he wanted a new pair of gloves or a haircut. For Philip

Endicott, while rich in birth and education and charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in May, he

came from New York to lay siege to London and to the heart of Helen Carey he had with him, all told, fifteen

hundred dollars. That was all he possessed in the world; and unless the magazines bought his stories there

Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well, it was easy to live comfortably there and

to go about and even to entertain modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate, Philip calculated he

could stay three months. But he found that to know London well enough to be able to live there on three

sovereigns a day you had first to spend so many fivepound notes in getting acquainted with London that

there were no sovereigns left. At the end of one month he had just enough money to buy him a secondclass

Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor to marry. And he had laughed at the idea.

He had always said that when two people truly love each other it does not matter whether they have money or

not. But when in London, with only a fivepound note, and face to face with the actual proposition of asking

Helen Carey not only to marry him but to support him, he felt that money counted for more than he had

supposed. He found money was many different thingsit was selfrespect, and proper pride, and private

honors and independence. And, lacking these things, he felt he could ask no girl to marry him, certainly not

one for whom he cared as he cared for Helen Carey. Besides, while he knew how he loved her, he had no

knowledge whatsoever that she loved him. She always seemed extremely glad to see him; but that might be

explained in different ways. It might be that what was in her heart for him was really a sort of "old home

week" feeling; that to her it was a relief to see any one who spoke her own language, who did not need to

have it explained when she was jesting, and who did not think when she was speaking in perfectly

The Ambassador and his wife had been very kind to Endicott, and, as a friend of Helen's, had asked him often

to dinner and had sent him cards for dances at which Helen was to be one of the belles and beauties. And

Helen herself had been most kind, and had taken early morning walks with him in Hyde Park and through the

National Galleries; and they had fed buns to the bears in the Zoo, and in doing so had laughed heartily. They

thought it was because the bears were so ridiculous that they laughed. Later they appreciated that the reason

they were happy was because they were together. Had the bear pit been empty, they still would have laughed.

On the evening of the thirtyfirst of May, Endicott had gone to bed with his ticket purchased for America and

his last fivepound note to last him until the boat sailed. He was a miserable young man. He knew now that

he loved Helen Carey in such a way that to put the ocean between them was liable to unseat his courage and

his selfcontrol. In London he could, each night, walk through Carlton House Terrace and, leaning against

the iron rails of the Carlton Club, gaze up at her window. But, once on the other side of the ocean, that tender

exercise must be abandoned. He must even consider her pursued by most attractive guardsmen, diplomats,

and belted earls. He knew they could not love her as he did; he knew they could not love her for the reasons

he loved her, because the fine and beautiful things in her that he saw and worshipped they did not seek, and

so did not find. And yet, for lack of a few thousand dollars, he must remain silent, must put from him the best

that ever came into his life, must waste the wonderful devotion he longed to give, must starve the love that he

On the thirtyfirst of May he went to sleep utterly and completely miserable. On the first of June he woke

Prichard, the exbutler who valeted all the young gentlemen in the house where Philip had taken chambers,

brought him his breakfast. As he placed the eggs and muffins on the tables to Philip it seemed as though

Prichard had said: "I am sorry he is leaving us. The next gentleman who takes these rooms may not be so

openhanded. He never locked up his cigars or his whiskey. I wish he'd give me his old dresscoat. It fits me,

Philip stared hard at Prichard; but the lips of the valet had not moved. In surprise and bewilderment, Philip

"I wouldn't take such a liberty," protested Prichard. "Not with any of our gentlemen's clothes."

"How did you know I was talking about clothes," demanded Philip. "You didn't say anything about clothes,

"Well, sir, you might say, in a way, that I was, answered the valet. "Seeing as you're leaving, sir, and they're

The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the morning papers he had forgotten about it, and it

was not until he had emerged into the street that it was forcibly recalled. The street was crowded with people;

and as Philip stepped in among them, It was as though every one at whom he looked began to talk aloud.

Their lips did not move, nor did any sound issue from between them; but, without ceasing, broken phrases of

thoughts came to him as clearly as when, in passing in a crowd, snatches of talk are carried to the ears. One

man thought of his debts; another of the weather, and of what disaster it might bring to his silk hat; another

planned his luncheon; another was rejoicing over a telegram he had but that moment received. To himself he

kept repeating the words of the telegram"No need to come, out of danger." To Philip the message came as

clearly as though he were reading it from the folded slip of paper that the stranger clutched in his hand.

Confused and somewhat frightened, and in order that undisturbed he might consider what had befallen him,

Philip sought refuge from the crowded street in the hallway of a building. His first thought was that for some

unaccountable cause his brain for the moment was playing tricks with him, and he was inventing the phrases

he seemed to hear, that he was attributing thoughts to others of which they were entirely innocent. But,

whatever it was that had befallen him, he knew it was imperative that he should at once get at the meaning of

The hallway in which he stood opened from Bond Street up a flight of stairs to the studio of a fashionable

photographer, and directly in front of the hallway a young woman of charming appearance had halted. Her

glance was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept repeating: "Did I tell Hudson to be here at a

quarter to eleven, or a quarter past? Will she get the telephone message to bring the ruff? Without the ruff it

would be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff Mary Queen of Scots would look ridiculous!"

Although the young woman had spoken not a single word, although indeed she was biting impatiently at her

lower lip, Philip had distinguished the words clearly. Or, if he had not distinguished them, he surely was

going mad. It was a matter to be at once determined, and the young woman should determine it. He advanced

"I only wish to make sure," continued Philip, "that you are she for whom I have a message. You have an

appointment, I believe, to be photographed in fancy dress as Mary Queen of Scots?"

"Oh!" she protested; "I knew they'd get it wrong! Not muff, ruff! I want my ruff."

"That I'm a mind reader," declared Philip. "I've read your mind! I can read everybody's mind. I know just

The actions of the young lady showed that again he was correct. With a gasp of terror she fled past him and

raced up the stairs to the studio. Philip made no effort to follow and to explain. What was there to explain?

How could he explain that which, to himself, was unbelievable? Besides, the girl had served her purpose. If

he could read the mind of one, he could read the minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to his ordinary

equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as, before that morning, he could look into the face of

a fellowmortal, he now could look into the workings of that fellowmortal's mind. The thought was

appalling. It was like living with one's ear to a keyhole. In his dismay his first idea was to seek medical

advicethe best in London. He turned instantly in the direction of Harley Street. There, he determined, to

the most skilled alienist in town he would explain his strange plight. For only as a misfortune did the miracle

Was he wise, he asked himself, in allowing others to know he possessed this strange power? Would they not

at once treat him as a madman? Might they not place him under observation, or even deprive him of his

liberty? At the thought he came to an abrupt halt His own definition of the miracle as a "power" had opened a

new line of speculation. If this strange gift (already he was beginning to consider it more leniently) were

concealed from others, could he not honorably put it to some useful purpose? For, among the blind, the man

with one eye is a god. Was not heamong all other men the only one able to read the minds of all other

mena god? Turning into Bruton Street, he paced its quiet length considering the possibilities that lay

It was apparent that the gift would lead to countless embarrassments. If it were once known that he possessed

it, would not even his friends avoid him? For how could any one, knowing his most secret thought was at the

mercy of another, be happy in that other's presence? His power would lead to his social ostracism. Indeed, he

could see that his gift might easily become a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the present he had

As the idea of possessing this power became more familiar, he regarded it with less aversion. He began to

consider to what advantage he could place it. He could see that, given the right time and the right man, he

might learn secrets leading to farreaching results. To a statesman, to a financier, such a gift as he possessed

would make him a ruler of men. Philip had no desire to be a ruler of men; but he asked himself how could he

bend this gift to serve his own? What he most wished was to marry Helen Carey; and, to that end, to possess

money. So he must meet men who possessed money, who were making money. He would put questions to

them. And with words they would give evasive answers; but their minds would tell him the truth.

The ethics of this procedure greatly disturbed him. Certainly it was no better than reading other people's

letters. But, he argued, the dishonor in knowledge so obtained would lie only in the use he made of it. If he

used it without harm to him from whom it was obtained and with benefit to others, was he not justified in

trading on his superior equipment? He decided that each case must be considered separately in accordance

with the principle involved. But, principle or no principle, he was determined to become rich. Did not the end

justify the means? Certainly an allwise Providence had not brought Helen Carey into his life only to take her

away from him. It could not be so cruel. But, in selecting them for one another, the allwise Providence had

overlooked the fact that she was rich and he was poor. For that oversight Providence apparently was now

endeavoring to make amends. In what certainly was a fantastic and roundabout manner Providence had

tardily equipped him with a gift that could lead to great wealth. And who was he to fly in the face of

Providence? He decided to set about building up a fortune, and building it in a hurry.

From Bruton Street he had emerged upon Berkeley Square; and, as Lady Woodcote had invited him to meet

Helen at luncheon at the Ritz, he turned in that direction. He was too early for luncheon; but in the corridor of

the Ritz he knew he would find persons of position and fortune, and in reading their minds he might pass the

time before luncheon with entertainment, possibly with profit. For, while pacing Bruton Street trying to

discover the principles of conduct that threatened to hamper his new power, he had found that in actual

operation it was quite simple. He learned that his mind, in relation to other minds, was like the receiver of a

wireless station with an unlimited field. For, while the wireless could receive messages only from those

instruments with which it was attuned, his mind was in key with all other minds. To read the thoughts of

another, he had only to concentrate his own upon that person; and to shut off the thoughts of that person, he

had only to turn his own thoughts elsewhere. But also he discovered that over the thoughts of those outside

the range of his physical sight he had no control. When he asked of what Helen Carey was at that moment

thinking, there was no result. But when he asked, "Of what is that policeman on the corner thinking?" he was

surprised to find that that officer of the law was formulating regulations to abolish the hobble skirt as an

As Philip turned into Berkeley Square, the accents of a mind in great distress smote upon his new and sixth

sense. And, in the person of a young gentleman leaning against the park railing, he discovered the source

from which the mental sufferings emanated. The young man was a pinkcheeked, yellowhaired youth of

extremely boyish appearance, and dressed as if for the racetrack. But at the moment his pink and babyish

face wore an expression of complete misery. With tearfilled eyes he was gazing at a house of yellow stucco

on the opposite side of the street. And his thoughts were these: "She is the best that ever lived, and I am the

most ungrateful of fools. How happy were we in the house of yellow stucco! Only now, when she has closed

its doors to me, do I know how happy! If she would give me another chance, never again would I distress or

So far had the young man progressed in his thoughts when an automobile of surprising smartness swept

around the corner and drew up in front of the house of yellow stucco, and from it descended a charming

young person. She was of the Dresdenshepherdess type, with large blue eyes of haunting beauty and

"My wife!" exclaimed the blond youth at the railings. And instantly he dodged behind a horse that, while still

With a key the Dresden shepherdess opened the door to the yellow house and disappeared.

The calling of the reporter trains him in audacity, and to act quickly. He shares the troubles of so many

people that to the troubles of other people he becomes callous, and often will rush in where friends of the

family fear to tread. Although Philip was not now acting as a reporter, he acted quickly. Hardly had the door

closed upon the young lady than he had mounted the steps and rung the visitor's bell. As he did so, he could

not resist casting a triumphant glance in the direction of the outlawed husband. And, in turn, what the outcast

husband, peering from across the back of the cab horse, thought of Philip, of his clothes, of his general

appearance, and of the manner in which he would delight to alter all of them, was quickly communicated to

the American. They were thoughts of a nature so violent and uncomplimentary that Philip hastily cut off all

As Philip did not know the name of the Dresdenchina doll, it was fortunate that on opening the door, the

"Her ladyship will, I think, receive me," said Philip pleasantly, "when you tell her I come as the special

From a tiny receptionroom on the right of the entrancehall there issued a feminine exclamation of surprise,

When she saw herself confronted by a stranger, she halted in embarrassment. But as, even while she halted,

her only thought had been, "Oh! if he will only ask me to forgive him!" Philip felt no embarrassment

whatsoever. Outside, concealed behind a cab horse, was the erring but bitterly repentant husband; inside, her

tenderest thoughts racing tumultuously toward him, was an unhappy childwife begging to be begged to

For a New York reporter, and a Harvard graduate of charm and good manners, it was too easy.

"I do not know you," said her ladyship. But even as she spoke she motioned to the butler to go away. "You

"Indeed, I am his newest friend," Philip assured her; "but I can safely say no one knows his thoughts as well

"Never mind what they tell you," commanded Philip. "Listen to ME. He loves you. Better than ever before,

he loves you. All he asks is the chance to tell you so. You cannot help but believe him. Who can look at you,

and not believe that he loves you! Let me," he begged, "bring him to you." He started from her when,

remembering the somewhat violent thoughts of the youthful husband, he added hastily: "Or perhaps it would

"If they tell you that sort of thing," protested Philip indignantly, "you must listen to me. He is not in Paris. He

He drew aside the lace curtains and pointed. "He is there behind that ancient cab horse, praying that you

will let him tell you that not only did he never do it; but, what is much more important, he will never do it

The lady herself now timidly drew the curtains apart, and then more boldly showed herself upon the iron

balcony. Leaning over the scarlet geraniums, she beckoned with both hands. The result was instantaneous.

Philip bolted for the front door, leaving it open; and, as he darted down the steps, the youthful husband, in

strides resembling those of an ostrich, shot past him. Philip did not cease running until he was well out of

Berkeley Square. Then, not illpleased with the adventure, he turned and smiled back at the house of yellow

He continued to the Ritz; and, on crossing Piccadilly to the quieter entrance to the hotel in Arlington Street,

found gathered around it a considerable crowd drawn up on either side of a red carpet that stretched down the

steps of the hotel to a court carriage. A red carpet in June, when all is dry under foot and the sun is shining

gently, can mean only royalty; and in the rear of the men in the street Philip halted. He remembered that for a

few days the young King of Asturia and the Queen Mother were at the Ritz incognito; and, as he never had

seen the young man who so recently and so tragically had been exiled from his own kingdom, Philip raised

As easily as he could read their faces could he read the thoughts of those about him. They were thoughts of

friendly curiosity, of pity for the exiles; on the part of the policemen who had hastened from a cross street, of

pride at their temporary responsibility; on the part of the coachman of the court carriage, of speculation as to

the possible amount of his Majesty's tip. The thoughts were as harmless and protecting as the warm sunshine.

And then, suddenly and harshly, like the stroke of a fire bell at midnight, the harmonious chorus of gentle,

hospitable thoughts was shattered by one that was discordant, evil, menacing. It was the thought of a man

"When they appear at the doorway," spoke the brain of the maniac, "I shall lift the bomb from my pocket. I

shall raise it above my head. I shall crash it against the stone steps. It will hurl them and all of these people

into eternity and me with them. But I shall LIVEa martyr to the Cause. And the Cause will flourish!"

Through the unsuspecting crowd, like a football player diving for a tackle, Philip hurled himself upon a little

dark man standing close to the open door of the court carriage. From the rear Philip seized him around the

waist and locked his arms behind him, elbow to elbow. Philip's face, appearing over the man's shoulder,

"He has a bomb in his righthand pocket!" yelled Philip. "I can hold him while you take it! But, for Heaven's

sake, don't drop it!" Philip turned upon the crowd. "Run! all of you!" he shouted. "Run like the devil!"

At that instant the boy King and his Queen Mother, herself still young and beautiful, and cloaked with a

dignity and sorrow that her robes of mourning could not intensify, appeared in the doorway.

At the words and at sight of the struggling men, the great lady swayed helplessly, her eyes filled with terror.

Her son sprang protectingly in front of her. But the danger was past. A second policeman was now holding

the maniac by the wrists, forcing his arms above his head; Philip's arms, like a lariat, were wound around his

chest; and from his pocket the first policeman gingerly drew forth a round, black object of the size of a glass

firegrenade. He held it high in the air, and waved his free hand warningly. But the warning was unobserved.

There was no one remaining to observe it. Leaving the wouldbe assassin struggling and biting in the grasp

of the stalwart policeman, and the other policeman unhappily holding the bomb at arm's length, Philip sought

to escape into the Ritz. But the young King broke through the circle of attendants and stopped him.

"I must thank you," said the boy eagerly; "and I wish you to tell me how you came to suspect the man's

Unable to speak the truth, Philip, the wouldbe writer of fiction, began to improvise fluently.

"To learn their purpose, sir," he said, "is my business. I am of the International Police, and in the secret

"Then I must know your name," said the King, and added with a dignity that was most becoming, "You will

"I said in your secret service," he repeated. "Did even your Majesty know me, my usefulness would be at an

end." He pointed toward the two policemen. "If you desire to be just, as well as gracious, those are the men to

He slipped past the King and through the crowd of hotel officials into the hall and on into the corridor.

The arrest had taken place so quietly and so quickly that through the heavy glass doors no sound had

penetrated, and of the fact that they had been so close to a possible tragedy those in the corridor were still

ignorant. The members of the Hungarian orchestra were arranging their music; a waiter was serving two men

of middle age with sherry; and two distinguishedlooking elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were

One of the two middleaged men was well known to Philip, who as a reporter had often, in New York,

endeavored to interview him on matters concerning the steel trust. His name was Faust. He was a

Pennsylvania Dutchman from Pittsburgh, and at one time had been a foreman of the night shift in the same

mills he now controlled. But with a roar and a spectacular flash, not unlike one of his own blast furnaces, he

had soared to fame and fortune. He recognized Philip as one of the bright young men of the Republic; but in

Philip sank into an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a fountain in imitation of one in the apartment of

the Pompadour, and ordered what he knew would be an execrable imitation of an American cocktail. While

waiting for the cocktail and Lady Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip, from where he sat, could not help but

overhear the conversation of Faust and of the man with him. The latter was a German with Hebraic features

and a pointed beard. In loud tones he was congratulating the American manytime millionaire on having that

morning come into possession of a rare and valuable masterpiece, a hitherto unknown and but recently

"Fancy," he thought, "owning a Velasquez! Fancy having it all to yourself! It must be fun to be rich. It

The German, who was evidently a picturedealer, was exclaiming in tones of rapture, and nodding his head

"I am telling you the truth, Mr. Faust," he said. "In no gallery in Europe, no, not even in the Prado, is there

such another Velasquez. This is what you are doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing Spain. You are robbing her

of something worth more to her than Cuba. And I tell you, so soon as it is known that this Velasquez is going

to your home in Pittsburgh, every Spaniard will hate you and every artcollector will hate you, too. For it is

the most wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain, Mr. Faust! What a bargain!"

To make sure that the reporter was within hearing, Mr. Faust glanced in the direction of Philip and, seeing

that he had heard, frowned importantly. That the reporter might hear still more, he also raised his voice.

"Nothing can be called a bargain, Baron," he said, "that costs three hundred thousand dollars!"

Again he could not resist glancing toward Philip, and so eagerly that Philip deemed it would be only polite to

look interested. So he obligingly assumed a startled look, with which he endeavored to mingle simulations of

Mr. Faust continued. "If you will come upstairs," he said to the picturedealer, "I will give you your check;

and then I should like to drive to your apartments and take a farewell look at the picture."

"I am sorry," the Baron said, "but I have had it moved to my art gallery to be packed."

"Then let's go to the gallery," urged the patron of art. "We've just time before lunch." He rose to his feet, and

In actual words he said: "The picture is already boxed and in its lead coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way

to Liverpool. I am sorry." But his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were: "Fancy my letting this vulgar

fool into the Tate Street workshop! Even HE would know that old masters are not found in a halffinished

state on Chelseamade frames and canvases. Fancy my letting him see those two halfcompleted Van Dycks,

the new Hals, the halfdozen Corots. He would even see his own copy of Velasquez next to the one exactly

like itthe one MacMillan finished yesterday and that I am sending to Oporto, where next year, in a

Philip's surprise gave way to intense amusement. In his delight at the situation upon which he had stumbled,

he laughed aloud. The two men, who had risen, surprised at the spectacle of a young man laughing at nothing,

"Pardon me," he said to Faust, "but you spoke so loud I couldn't help overhearing. I think we've met before,

"Really!" he protested irritably, "you reporters butt in everywhere. No public man is safe. Is there no place we

He saw the waiter bearing down upon him with the imitation cocktail, and moved to meet it. The millionaire,

fearing the reporter would escape him, hastily changed his tone. He spoke with effective resignation.

"However, since you've learned so much," he said, "I'll tell you the whole of it. I don't want the fact garbled,

"I think I do," he said. "And to prove it, I shall tell you something that will be news to you. I have just bought

a Velasquez that I am going to place in my art museum. It is worth three hundred thousand dollars."

Philip accepted the cocktail the waiter presented. It was quite as bad as he had expected.

"Now, I shall tell you something," he said, "that will be news to you. You are not buying a Velasquez. It is no

more a Velasquez than this hair oil is a real cocktail. It is a bad copy, worth a few dollars."

"I will make you a sporting proposition," said Philip. "You can take it, or leave it. You two will get into a

taxi. You will drive to this man's studio in Tate Street. You will find your Velasquez is there and not on its

way to Liverpool. And you will find one exactly like it, and a dozen other 'old masters' halffinished. I'll bet

you a hundred pounds I'm right! And I'll bet this man a hundred pounds that he DOESN'T DARE TAKE

"I don't think, I know!" said Philip. "For the price of a taxicab fare to Tate Street, you win a hundred

"We will all three go at once," cried the German. "My car is outside. Wait here. I will have it brought to the

But already the German had reached the hall. Nor did he stop there. They saw him, without his hat, rush into

Piccadilly, spring into a taxi, and shout excitedly to the driver. The next moment he had disappeared.

"His actions are certainly peculiar," gasped the millionaire. "He did not wait for us. He didn't even wait for

"Do so," said Philip, "and save yourself three hundred thousand dollars, and from the laughter of two

continents. You'll find me here at lunch. If I'm wrong, I'll pay you a hundred pounds."

"I'll take your word for what you find in the studio," said Philip. "I cannot go. This is my busy day."

Without further words, the millionaire collected his hat and stick, and, in his turn, entered a taxicab and

Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette. Save for the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa,

the lounge was still empty, and his reflections were undisturbed. He shook his head sadly.

"Surely," Philip thought, "the French chap was right who said words were given us to conceal our thoughts.

What a strange world it would be if every one possessed my power. Deception would be quite futile and lying

would become a lost art. I wonder," he mused cynically, "is any one quite honest? Does any one speak as he

At once came a direct answer to his question. The two elderly gentlemen had risen and, before separating,

"I sincerely hope, Sir John," said one of the two, "that you have no regrets. I hope you believe that I have

"I do, indeed," the other replied heartily "We shall be thought entirely selfish; but you know and I know that

Philip was pleased to find that the thoughts of each of the old gentlemen ran hand in hand with his spoken

"And I hope," continued the one addressed as Sir John, "that you approve of my holding back the public

announcement of the combine until the afternoon. It will give the shareholders a better chance. Had we given

The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other still standing at the steps of the lounge. With

his hands behind his back, his chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at nothing, his thoughts far away.

Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were concerned with three flags. Now, the gentleman

considered them separately; and Philip saw the emblems painted clearly in colors, fluttering and flattened by

the breeze. Again, the gentleman considered them in various combinations; but always, in whatever order his

mind arranged them, of the three his heart spoke always to the same flag, as the heart of a mother reaches

Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old gentleman was watching the launching of a

little schooner from a shipyard on the Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flagsa flag with a red cross

on a white ground. With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed her to strange, hot ports, through

hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous

coffee, mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her wake to every port in the

South Sea; saw steam packets take the place of the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great

ocean liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is equipped, with a giant power house,

thousands of electric lamps, suite after suite of silklined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate to a

love message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help from a sinking ship. But at the main of

each great vessel there still flew the same houseflagthe red cross on the field of whiteonly now in the

Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the corridor to the telephone.

Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a stockbroker. In that latter capacity

Philip had never before addressed him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.

"I want you to act for me," he whispered, "and act quick! I want you to buy for me one thousand shares of the

"There's nothing in that yarn of a combine," he called. "It has fallen through. Besides, shares are at fifteen

Philip, having in his possession a secondclass ticket and a fivepound note, was indifferent to that, and said

"I don't care what they are," he shouted. "The combine is already signed and sealed, and no one knows it but

"I've seen the houseflags!" cried Philip. "I havedo as I tell you," he commanded.

"It's not a gamble," cried Philip. "It's an accomplished fact. I'm at the Ritz. Call me up there. Start buying

Philip was much too agitated to go far from the telephone booth; so for half an hour he sat in the

readingroom, forcing himself to read the illustrated papers. When he found he had read the same

advertisement five times, he returned to the telephone. The telephone boy met him halfway with a message.

"Have secured for you a thousand shares of each," he read, "at fifteen. Maddox."

Like a man awakening from a nightmare, Philip tried to separate the horror of the situation from the cold fact.

The cold fact was sufficiently horrible. It was that, without a penny to pay for them, he had bought shares in

three steamship lines, which shares, added together, were worth two hundred and twenty five thousand

dollars. He returned down the corridor toward the lounge. Trembling at his own audacity, he was in a state of

almost complete panic, when that happened which made his outrageous speculation of little consequence. It

was drawing near to halfpast one; and, in the persons of several smart men and beautiful ladies, the

Of the luncheon to which Lady Woodcote had invited him, only one guest had arrived; but, so far as Philip

was concerned, that one was sufficient. It was Helen herself, seated alone, with her eyes fixed on the doors

opening from Piccadilly. Philip, his heart singing with appeals, blessings, and adoration, ran toward her. Her

profile was toward him, and she could not see him; but he could see her. And he noted that, as though seeking

some one, her eyes were turned searchingly upon each young man as he entered and moved from one to

"If only," Philip exclaimed, "she were looking for me! She certainly is looking for some man. I wonder who

As suddenly as if he had slapped his face into a wall, he halted in his steps. Why should he wonder? Why did

he not read her mind? Why did he not KNOW? A waiter was hastening toward him. Philip fixed his mind

upon the waiter, and his eyes as well. Mentally Philip demanded of him: "Of what are you thinking?"

There was no response. And then, seeing an unlit cigarette hanging from Philip's lips, the waiter hastily struck

a match and proffered it. Obviously, his mind had worked, first, in observing the halfburned cigarette; next,

in furnishing the necessary match. And of no step in that mental process had Philip been conscious! The

conclusion was only too apparent. His power was gone. No longer was he a mind reader!

Hastily Philip reviewed the adventures of the morning. As he considered them, the moral was obvious. The

moment he had used his power to his own advantage, he had lost it. So long as he had exerted it for the

happiness of the two lovers, to save the life of the King, to thwart the dishonesty of a swindler, he had been

allpowerful; but when he endeavored to bend it to his own uses, it had fled from him. As he stood abashed

and repentant, Helen turned her eyes toward him; and, at the sight of him, there leaped to them happiness and

welcome and complete content. It was "the look that never was on land or sea," and it was not necessary to be

a mind reader to understand it. Philip sprang toward her as quickly as a man dodges a taxicab.

"I came early," said Helen, "because I wanted to talk to you before the others arrived." She seemed to be

repeating words already rehearsed, to be following a course of conduct already predetermined. "I want to tell

you," she said, "that I am sorry you are going away. I want to tell you that I shall miss you very much." She

paused and drew a long breath. And she looked at Philip as if she was begging him to make it easier for her to

"Will you miss me," he asked, "in the Row, where I used to wait among the trees to see you ride past? Will

you miss me at dances, where I used to hide behind the dowagers to watch you waltzing by? Will you miss

me at night, when you come home by sunrise, and I am not hiding against the railings of the Carlton Club,

just to see you run across the pavement from your carriage, just to see the light on your window blind, just to

"Every night I do that," said Philip. "Ask the policemen! They arrested me three times."

"It was the policeman kept guard," said Philip. "I was there only as a burglar. I came to rob. But I was a

coward, or else I had a conscience, or else I knew my own unworthiness." There was a long pause. As both of

them, whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the Hungarian band, with rare

inconsequence, was playing the "Grizzly Bear," and people were trying to speak to Helen. By her they were

received with a look of so complete a lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare of such savage hate, that

At last Helen said: "Do you know the story of the two roses? They grew in a garden under a lady's window.

They both loved her. One looked up at her from the ground and sighed for her; but the other climbed to the

lady's window, and she lifted him in and kissed himbecause he had dared to climb."

Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not mind his doing that, because she saw that his

eyes were filled with tears. She was delighted to find that she was making it very hard for him, too.

"At any moment," Philip said, "I may know whether I owe two hundred and twentyfive thousand dollars

which I can never pay, or whether I am worth about that sum. I should like to continue this conversation at

the exact place where you last spokeAFTER I know whether I am going to jail, or whether I am worth a

"I knew that was it!" she cried. "You don't like my money. I was afraid you did not like ME. If you dislike

my money, I will give it away, or I will give it to you to keep for me. The money does not matter, so long as

What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a page in many buttons rushed at him with a

message from the telephone, and with a hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It read: "Combine is

That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen deeply. She regarded him with unhappy

eyes. Philip read the message three times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own sanity, he

grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter of a million dollars! At the page he shoved his

He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned or denied. He seemed incapable of

"That depends entirely upon you," replied Philip soberly. "Indeed, all my future life depends upon what you

But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they both chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and

In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning dynasty, socially and in every way. Old man

Keep was president of the trolley line, the telephone company, and the Keep National Bank. But Fred, his

son, and the heir apparent, did not inherit the business ability of his father; or, if he did, he took pains to

conceal that fact. Fred had gone through Harvard, but as to that also, unless he told people, they would not

When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of the innermost inner set of Keepsburg,

everybody said Keepsburg would soon lose them. And everybody was right. When single, each had sighed

for other social worlds to conquer, and when they combined their fortunes and ambitions they found

Keepsburg impossible, and they left it to lay siege to New York. They were too crafty to at once attack New

York itself. A widow lady they met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had told them not to attempt

that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent of a society paper they naturally accepted her advice. She

warned them that in New York the waitinglist is already interminable, and that, if you hoped to break into

New York society, the clever thing to do was to lay siege to it by way of the suburbs and the country clubs. If

you went direct to New York knowing no one, you would at once expose that fact, and the result would be

She told them of a couple like themselves, young and rich and from the West, who, at the first dance to which

they were invited, asked, "Who is the old lady in the wig?" and that question argued them so unknown that it

set them back two years. It was a terrible story, and it filled the Keeps with misgivings. They agreed with the

lady correspondent that it was far better to advance leisurely; first firmly to intrench themselves in the

suburbs, and then to enter New York, not as the Keeps from Keepsburg, which meant nothing, but as the Fred

"In all of those places," explained the widow lady, "our smartest people have country homes, and at the

country club you may get to know them. Then, when winter comes, you follow them on to the city."

The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was ScarboroontheHudson. They selected

Scarboro because both of them could play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish should be fought

and won upon the golflinks of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. But the attack did not succeed. Something

went wrong. They began to fear that the lady correspondent had given them the wrong dope. For, although

three months had passed, and they had played golf together until they were as loath to clasp a golf club as a

redhot poker, they knew no one, and no one knew them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and if

you lived at Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you were not to be found on any map.

Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the countryseat of the Van Wardens had looked down upon the river that

bears his name, and ever since those days the Van Wardens had looked down upon everybody else. They

were so proud that at all their gates they had placed signs reading, "No horses allowed. Take the other road."

The other road was an earth road used by tradespeople from Ossining; the road reserved for the Van

Wardens, and automobiles, was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden estate the appearance

of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who occupied the countryplace were as cold and

unsociable as the sort of people who occupy cemeteriesexcept "Harry" Van Warden, and she lived in New

Harry, according to all local traditionfor he frequently motored out to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden

countryseatand, according to the newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or unsociable.

So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested for overspeeding, or breaking his collarbone

out hunting, or losing his front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden Koopf; not

because Harry was arrested or had broken his collarbone, but because it dragged the family name into the

"If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf," sighed Winnie Keep to her husband,

"you would meet Harry Van Warden, and he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in

"If I was to ride to hounds," returned her husband, "the only thing I'd break would be my neck."

The countryplace of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the purposes of their social comedy the

stagesetting was perfect. The house was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated

fortune; and with it they had taken over his welldisciplined butler, his pictures, furniture, family silver, and

linen. It stood upon an eminence, was heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its chief

attraction was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay directly below the terrace of the house and

This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the neighborhood were many Italian laborers, and on

several nights the fish had tempted these born poachers to trespass; and more than once, on hot summer

evenings, small boys from Tarrytown and Ossining had broken through the hedge, and used the lake as a

"It makes me nervous," complained Winnie. "I don't like the idea of people prowling around so near the

house. And think of those twelve hundred convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of them are

burglars, and if they ever get out, our house is the very first one they'll break into."

"I haven't caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our house yet," said Fred, "and I'd be glad to

They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake. It was just before the dinner hour, and the

dusk of a wonderful October night had fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens, the rows of

closeclipped box. A full moon was just showing itself above the treetops, turning the lake into moving

silver. Fred rose from his wicker chair and, crossing to his young bride, touched her hair fearfully with the

"What if we don't know anybody, Win," he said, "and nobody knows us? It's been a perfectly good

honeymoon, hasn't it? If you just look at it that way, it works out all right. We came here really for our

"But where else could we have been any happier?" demanded the young husband loyally. "Where will you

find any prettier place than this, just as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and silent? There's nothing the

matter with that moon, is there? Nothing the matter with the lake? Where's there a better place for a

As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside the shriek of a giant siren. It was

raucous, virulent, insulting. It came as sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage. Then, as

suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after a pause of an instant, as though giving a signal, to

shriek again in two sharp blasts. And then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream of rage,

insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who heard it, even of the innocent, with alarm.

Down the terrace the butler was hastening toward them. When he stopped, he spoke as though he were

announcing dinner. "A convict, sir," he said, "has escaped from Sing Sing. I thought you might not

understand the whistle. I thought perhaps you would wish Mrs. Keep to come indoors."

"The house is near the road, madam," said the butler. "And there are so many trees and bushes. Last summer

two of them hid here, and the keepersthere was a fight." The man glanced at Keep. Fred touched his wife

I'm going to finish this cigar first. It doesn't take me long to change." He turned to the butler. "And I'll have a

The servant left them, but in the French window that opened from the terrace to the library Mrs. Keep

lingered irresolutely. "Fred," she begged, "youyou're not going to poke around in the bushes, are

Her husband laughed at her. "I certainly am NOT!" he said. "And you're not frightened, either. Go in. I'll be

But the girl hesitated. Still shattering the silence of the night the siren shrieked relentlessly; it seemed to be at

their very door, to beat and buffet the windowpanes. The bride shivered and held her fingers to her ears.

When she had gone, Fred pulled one of the wicker chairs to the edge of the terrace, and, leaning forward with

his chin in his hands, sat staring down at the lake. The moon had cleared the tops of the trees, had blotted the

lawns with black, rigid squares, had disguised the hedges with wavering shadows. Somewhere near at hand a

criminala murderer, burglar, thugwas at large, and the voice of the prison he had tricked still bellowed

in rage, in amazement, still clamored not only for his person but perhaps for his life. The whole countryside

heard it: the farmers bedding down their cattle for the night; the guests of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red

candle shades; the joy riders from the city, racing their cars along the Albany road. It woke the echoes of

Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson. The granite walls of the Palisades flung it back against the granite

walls of the prison. Whichever way the convict turned, it hunted him, reaching for him, pointing him

outstirring in the heart of each who heard it the lust of the hunter, which never is so cruel as when the

"Find him!" shrieked the siren. "Find him! He's there, behind your hedge! He's kneeling by the stone wall.

THAT'S he running in the moonlight. THAT'S he crawling through the dead leaves! Stop him! Drag him

But from within the prison, from within the gray walls that made the home of the siren, each of twelve

hundred men cursed it with his soul. Each, clinging to the bars of his cell, each, trembling with a fearful joy,

each, his thumbs up, urging on with all the strength of his will the hunted, ratlike figure that stumbled

panting through the crisp October night, bewildered by strange lights, beset by shadows, staggering and

falling, running like a mad dog in circles, knowing that wherever his feet led him the siren still held him by

As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the room adjoining, could hear her

unconsciously and lightheartedly singing to herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on this night,

although her room was directly above where he sat upon the terrace, he heard no singing. He had been on the

terrace for a quarter of an hour. Gridley, the aged butler who was rented with the house, and who for twenty

years had been an inmate of it, had brought the cocktail and taken away the empty glass. And Keep had been

alone with his thoughts. They were entirely of the convict. If the man suddenly confronted him and begged

his aid, what would he do? He knew quite well what he would do. He considered even the means by which he

The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh his duty to the State of New York, or to

society. One day, when he had visited "the institution," as a somewhat sensitive neighborhood prefers to

speak of it, he was told that the chance of a prisoner's escaping from Sing Sing and not being at once retaken

was one out of six thousand. So with Fred it was largely a sporting proposition. Any man who could beat a

And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine himself in the place of the man who at that

very moment was endeavoring to escape. Were he that man, he would first, he decided, rid himself of his

telltale clothing. But that would leave him naked, and in Westchester County a naked man would be quite as

conspicuous as one in the purplegray cloth of the prison. How could he obtain clothes? He might hold up a

passerby, and, if the passerby did not flee from him or punch him into insensibility, he might effect an

exchange of garments; he might by threats obtain them from some farmer; he might despoil a scarecrow.

But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The question deeply perplexed him. How best could

a naked man clothe himself? And as he sat pondering that point, from the bushes a naked man emerged. He

was not entirely undraped. For around his nakedness he had drawn a canvas awning. Fred recognized it as

having been torn from one of the rowboats in the lake. But, except for that, the man was naked to his heels.

He was a young man of Fred's own age. His hair was cut close, his face smoothshaven, and above his eye

was a halfhealed bruise. He had the sharp, clever, ratlike face of one who lived by evil knowledge. Water

dripped from him, and either for that reason or from fright the young man trembled, and, like one who had

Fred was surprised to find that he was not in the least surprised. It was as though he had been waiting for the

Two thoughts alone concerned him: that before he could rid himself of his visitor his wife might return and

take alarm, and that the man, not knowing his friendly intentions, and in a state to commit murder, might rush

him. But the stranger made no hostile move, and for a moment in the moonlight the two young men eyed

Then, taking breath and with a violent effort to stop the chattering of his teeth, the stranger launched into his

"I took a bath in your pond," he blurted forth, "andand they stole my clothes! That's why I'm like this!"

Fred was consumed with envy. In comparison with this ingenious narrative how prosaic and commonplace

became his own plans to rid himself of accusing garments and explain his nakedness. He regarded the

stranger with admiration. But even though he applauded the other's invention, he could not let him suppose

As though in hearty agreement, the naked man burst into a violent fit of shivering.

"A what!" exclaimed Fred. His admiration was increasing. "A bet? Then you are not alone?"

"I am NOWdamn them!" exclaimed the naked one. He began again reluctantly. "We saw you from the

road, you and a woman, sitting here in the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim

across your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed up on me from the start. For when I

was swimming back I saw them run to where I'd left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I

Keep smiled encouragingly. "The car!" he assented. "So you've been riding around in the moonlight?"

The other nodded, and was about to speak when there burst in upon them the roaring scream of the siren. The

note now was of deeper rage, and came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed

fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking,

he drew the canvas cloak closer to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes of Keep.

"Youyou couldn't lend me a suit of clothes could you?" he stuttered. "Just for tonight? I'll send them

With a start Keep raised his eyes, and distressed by his look, the young man continued less confidently.

"I don't blame you if you don't believe it," he stammered, "seeing me like this; but I DO live right near here.

Everybody around here knows me, and I guess you've read about me in the papers, too. I'mthat is, my

name" like one about to take a plunge he drew a short breath, and the ratlike eyes regarded Keep

watchfully"my name is Van Warden. I'm the one you read aboutHarryI'm Harry Van Warden!"

After a pause, slowly and reprovingly Fred shook his head; but his smile was kindly even regretful, as though

"My boy!" he exclaimed, "you're MORE than Van Warden! You're a genius!" He rose and made a

peremptory gesture. "Sorry," he said, "but this isn't safe for either of us. Follow me, and I'll dress you up and

send you where you want to go." He turned and whispered over his shoulder: "Some day let me hear from

The library led to the front hall. In this was the coatroom. First making sure the library and hall were free of

servants, Fred tiptoed to the coatroom and, opening the door, switched: on the electric light. The naked man,

Fred pointed at golfcapes, sweaters, greatcoats hanging from hooks, and on the floor at boots and overshoes.

"Put on that motorcoat and the galoshes," he commanded. "They'll cover you in case you have to run for it.

I'm going to leave you here while I get you some clothes. If any of the servants butt in, don't lose your head.

As Fred closed the door upon him, the naked one was rubbing himself violently with Mrs. Keep's yellow

In his own room Fred collected a suit of blue serge, a tennis shirt, boots, even a tie. Underclothes he found

ready laid out for him, and he snatched them from the bed. From a roll of money in his bureau drawer he

counted out a hundred dollars. Tactfully he slipped the money in the trousers pocket of the serge suit and with

the bundle of clothes in his arms raced downstairs and shoved them into the coatroom.

"Don't come out until I knock," he commanded. "And," he added in a vehement whisper, "don't come out at

Fred rang for Gridley and told him to have his car brought around to the door. He wanted it to start at once

within two minutes. When the butler had departed, Fred, by an inch, again opened the coatroom door. The

stranger had draped himself in the underclothes and the shirt, and at the moment was carefully arranging the

"Hurry!" commanded Keep. "The car'll be here in a minute. Where shall I tell him to take you?"

The stranger chuckled excitedly; his confidence seemed to be returning. "New York," he whispered, "fast as

he can get there! Look here," he added doubtfully, "there's a roll of bills in these clothes."

The stranger exclaimed vigorously. "You're all right!" he whispered. "I won't forget this, or you either. I'll

The wheels of the touringcar crunched on the gravel drive, and Fred slammed to the door, and like a sentry

on guard paced before it. After a period which seemed to stretch over many minutes there came from the

inside a cautious knocking. With equal caution Fred opened the door of the width of a finger, and put his ear

Indignantly Fred shut the door and, walking to the veranda, hailed the chauffeur. James, the chauffeur, was a

Keepsburg boy, and when Keep had gone to Cambridge James had accompanied him. Keep knew the boy

"You're to take a man to New York," he said, "or wherever he wants to go. Don't talk to him. Don't ask any

questions. So, if YOU'RE questioned, you can say you know nothing. That's for your own good!"

The chauffeur mechanically touched his cap and started down the steps. As he did so, the prison whistle, still

unsatisfied, still demanding its prey, shattered the silence. As though it had hit him a physical blow, the youth

jumped. He turned and lifted startled, inquiring eyes to where Keep stood above him.

As Fred reentered the hall, Winnie Keep was coming down the stairs toward him. She had changed to one

of the prettiest evening gowns of her trousseau, and so outrageously lovely was the combination of herself

and the gown that her husband's excitement and anxiety fell from him, and he was lost in admiration. But he

was not for long lost. To his horror; the door of the coatcloset opened toward his wife and out of the closet

the stranger emerged. Winnie, not accustomed to seeing young men suddenly appear from among the

The visitor did not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration, his eyes were fastened upon the beautiful

and radiant vision presented by Winnie Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient presence of mind to nod

Still the stranger did not move. As though he had never before seen a woman, as though her dazzling

loveliness held him in a trance, he stood still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn,

Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery, so overcome by her mere presence as

to be struck motionless and inarticulate. For protection she moved in some alarm toward her husband.

The stranger gave a sudden jerk of his body that might have been intended for a bow. Before Keep could

He seemed as little convinced of the truth of his statement as though he had announced that he was the Czar

But upon Winnie, as her husband saw to his dismay, the words produced an instant and appalling effect. She

fairly radiated excitement and delight. How her husband had succeeded in capturing the social prize of

Scarboro she could not imagine, but, for doing so, she flashed toward him a glance of deep and grateful

Then she beamed upon the stranger. "Won't Mr. Van Warden stay to dinner?" she asked.

Her husband emitted a howl. "He will NOT!" he cried. "He's not that kind of a Van Warden. He's a plumber.

He seized the visitor by the sleeve of the long motorcoat and dragged him down the steps. Reluctantly,

almost resistingly, the visitor stumbled after him, casting backward amazed glances at the beautiful lady. Fred

thrust him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Pointing at the golfcap and automobile goggles which the

With eager eyes and parted lips James the chauffeur was waiting for the signal. Fred nodded sharply, and the

chauffeur stooped to throw in the clutch. But the car did not start. From the hedge beside the driveway,

directly in front of the wheels, something on all fours threw itself upon the gravel; something in a suit of

purplegray; something torn and bleeding, smeared with sweat and dirt; something that cringed and crawled,

that tried to rise and sank back upon its knees, lifting to the glare of the headlights the white face and white

hair of a very old, old man. The kneeling figure sobbed; the sobs rising from far down in the pit of the

stomach, wrenching the body like waves of nausea. The man stretched his arms toward them. From long

Above the awful silence that held the four young people, the prison siren shrieked in one long, mocking howl

It was the stranger who was the first to act. Pushing past Fred, and slipping from his own shoulders the long

motorcoat, he flung it over the suit of purplegray. The goggles he clapped upon the old man's frightened

eyes, the golfcap he pulled down over the white hair. With one arm he lifted the convict, and with the other

dragged and pushed him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Into the hands of the chauffeur he thrust the roll of

"Get him away!" he ordered. "It's only twelve miles to the Connecticut line. As soon as you're across, buy

him clothes and a ticket to Boston. Go through White Plains to Greenwichand then you're safe!"

As though suddenly remembering the presence of the owner of the car, he swung upon Fred. "Am I right?" he

"Of course!" roared Fred. He flung his arm at the chauffeur as though throwing him into space.

The chauffeur, by profession a criminal, but by birth a human being, chuckled savagely and this time threw in

the clutch. With a grinding of gravel the racingcar leaped into the night, its ruby rear lamp winking in

farewell, its tiny siren answering the great siren of the prison in jeering notes of joy and victory.

Fred had supposed that at the last moment the younger convict proposed to leap to the runningboard, but

Fred shouted impotently after the flying car. In dismay he seized the stranger by the arm.

"I don't want to get away," he said. "I was hoping, maybe, you'd let me stay to dinner."

A terrible and icy chill crept down the spine of Fred Keep. He moved so that the light from the hall fell full

The stranger exclaimed peevishly. "I've BEEN telling you all evening," he protested. "I'm Harry Van

The stranger gave an exclamation of pleasure. "Hello, Gridley!" he cried. "Will you please tell Mr. Keep who

Upon the face of Gridley appeared a smile it never had been the privilege of Fred Keep to behold. The butler

beamed upon the stranger fondly, proudly, by the right of long acquaintanceship, with the affection of an old

"If Mr. HarryMr. Van Warden," he said, "is to stay to dinner, might I suggest, sir, he is very partial to the

Fred Keep gazed stupidly from his butler to the stranger and then at his wife. She was again radiantly

At ten o'clock, when they were still at table and reaching a state of such mutual appreciation that soon they

would be calling each other by their first names, Gridley brought in a written message he had taken from the

telephone. It was a longdistance call from Yonkers, sent by James, the faithful chauffeur.

"I got that party the articles he needed," it read, "and saw him safe on a train to Boston. On the way back I got

arrested for speeding the car on the way down. Please send money. I am in a cell in Yonkers."

Before he finally arrested him, "Jimmie" Sniffen had seen the man with the golfcap, and the blue eyes that

laughed at you, three times. Twice, unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round

Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie knew people do not climb hills merely to

look at sunsets, so he was not deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and

secretly vowed to "stalk" him. From that moment, had the stranger known it, he was as good as dead. For a

boy scout with badges on his sleeve for "stalking" and "pathfinding," not to boast of others for "gardening"

and "cooking," can outwit any spy. Even had, General BadenPowell remained in Mafeking and not invented

the boy scout, Jimmie Sniffen would have been one. Because, by birth he was a boy, and by inheritance, a

scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen; and

with Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of the first Charles Ferris ran from

the Boston post road to the coach road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of his

hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and rejoiced that all the land between

If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's greatgreatgrandfather was a scout for General

Washington and hunted deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted weasles will

count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the

woods, and the cowpaths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as familiar as his own

Nor explain why, when you could not see a Pease and Elliman "For Sale" sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could

Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's axe into a fallen log and then

scalped the log, he felt that once before in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his

own tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a secret spring in the forest, the

autumn leaves would crackle and he would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.

But there ain't no panthers in Westchester," Jimmie would reassure himself. And in the distance the roar of an

automobile climbing a hill with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still Jimmie

remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that when he raised his eyes he had faced a

crouching panther. "Mebbe dad told me it happened to grandpop," Jimmie would explain, "or I dreamed it,

The "German spy" mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy scouts of Clavering Gould, the war

correspondent. He was spending the week end with "Squire" Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst,

besides being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President of the Country Club, was also a

local "councilman" for the Round Hill Scouts, he brought his guest to a campfire meeting to talk to them. In

deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen in Belgium and of the part they

"And any day," he assured his audience, "this country may be at war with Germany; and every one of you

boys will be expected to do his bit. You can begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven,

or New Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield, Hartford, and Watervliet so as to

make sure of their ammunition, and then they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven

and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village. I haven't the least doubt," exclaimed

the enthusiastic war prophet, "that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as blackberries.

They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to

learn to what extent their armies can live on the country. They are counting the cows, the horses, the barns

where fodder is stored; and they are marking down on their maps the wells and streams."

As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper.

"Keep your eyes open!" he commanded. "Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to

your sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be prepared!'"

That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they saw spiked helmets.

"Next time you talk to my scouts," he declared, you'll talk on 'Votes for Women.' After what you said

tonight every real estate agent who dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away

"YOU are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now, and you're trying to buy the other half."

"I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst. "I don't know WHY I am, except that they wished it on me.

All I get out of it is trouble. The Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and I have to

fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians,

they send me Black Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for a German spy who is

selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a millionaire who is tired of living at the RitzCarlton and

wants to 'own his own home' and his own golflinks. And he'll be so hot at being arrested that he'll take his

millions to Long Island and try to break into the Piping Rock Club. And, it will be your fault!"

The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie Sniffen was concerned, the words of the

war prophet had filled one mind with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it

scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want companions who talked, and trampled

upon the dead leaves so that they frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie liked to

pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If

he crept to the top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he pretended the woodchuck

was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if, himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a

rabbit, squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that night at supper Jimmie made

believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to

General Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in the fields, or cutting trees in

the woods, or even approaching along the same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken

prisoner, and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why on his sleeve was the badge

for "stalking." But always to have to make believe became monotonous. Even "dry shopping" along the Rue

de la Paix when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one just as rich, but

unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the

circus, like a week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his flag and home, but a

chance to play in earnest the game in which he most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he

waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field. The game now was his

In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked the part perfectly; he wore an auburn

beard, disguising spectacles, and he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor from

the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian arrowheads. And when Jimmie threatened to

arrest him, the indignant gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor to a secret

cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where one not only could dig for arrowheads, but find

them. The professor was delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week following Jimmie

On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting in a mysterious and suspicious

manner. He was making notes in a book, and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was

stuffed with blueprints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was planning to blow up the

Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of New York City. Seven millions of people without water! With

out firing a shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at the risk of his life by

clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he followed the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the

mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam, was the State Engineer who had built it,

and, also, a large part of the Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From the

heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man working alone upon a basin of concrete.

The man was a GermanAmerican, and already on Jimmie's list of "suspects." That for the use of the German

artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was only too evident. But closer investigation proved

that the concrete was only two inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin was built over a

spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect a fountain and raise gold fish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie

became discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him his troubles. The young judge

proved unsympathetic. "My advice to you, Jimmie," he said, "is to go slow. Accusing everybody of

espionage is a very serious matter. If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for him to disprove it; and the

name sticks. So, go slowvery slow. Before you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant."

Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man with tools. He had no union card,

but, in laying shingles along a blue chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and

Jimmie was carrying a dinnerpail to where his father was at work on a new barn. He made a crosscut

through the woods, and came upon the young man in the golfcap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which

seemed to be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and, from the waist up, held

himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It

had not been raining, but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed that while the dew was

still on the leaves the young man had been forcing his way through underbrush. The stranger must have

"Ah, my friend with the dinnerpail! It's luck you haven't got it now, or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!"

Jimmie smiled in sympathy. "It's early to be hungry," said Jimmie; "when did you have your breakfast?"

"I didn't," laughed the young man. "I went out to walk up an appetite, and I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my

Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut him from sight. So, he gave the

stranger time to walk that distance, and, then, diving into the wood that lined the road, "stalked" him. From

behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one in the road behind him, also leave it

He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped

from tree to tree. Ahead of him he heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who

knew his way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad shoulders of the stranger, and again

could follow his progress only by the noise of the crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed

the stranger had reached the wood road, grassgrown and mosscovered, that led to Middle Patent. So, he

ran at right angles until he also reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road, he

approached warily. But, he was too late. There was a sound like the whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of

him from where it had been hidden, a gray touringcar leaped into the highway. The stranger was at the

wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that

it bore a Connecticut State license; that in the wheelruts the tires printed little V's, like arrowheads.

For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty miles he stalked arrowheads. They

lured him north, they lured him south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and freshspread

tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrowheads ran before. In his sleep as in his copybook, he saw endless

chains of V's. But not once could he catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset

as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the skyline, in silhouette against the

sinking sun, he was as conspicuous as a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill

offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie

must wait. And the stranger was in no haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face

east toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to splash and as the sky grew black the

figure on the hilltop faded into the darkness. And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen it, there

suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy

was signalling. The time for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the top of the hill,

and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings,

and held his breath to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was tripping and

tumbling. Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy

mocked him. Jimmie shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the coming storm and

Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over the chicken yard, and Jimmie used

that fact to explain his borrowing the family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his

shirt buttoned his license to "hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps or other devices."

He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested more spies, to come to him for a

warrant. But with an impatient shake of the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had

seen he could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What he had seen was his

As a "pathfinder" should, he planned to take up the trail where he had lost it, but, before he reached Round

Hill, he found a warmer trail. Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the night

before, two lines of little arrowheads pointed the way. They were so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest

the car should be just beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent grew hot. The

tracks were deeper, the arrowheads more clearly cut, and Jimmie broke into a run. Then, the arrowheads

swung suddenly to the right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires had pressed deep

into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should

he seek the spy on the nearest hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car. Between lying in ambush

and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did not climb the hill nearest the car; he climbed the hill that

Flat on the ground, hidden in the goldenrod he lay motionless. Before him, for fifteen miles stretched hills

and tiny valleys. Six miles away to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich. Directly

before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests, green fields, gray stone walls, and, where a road

ran uphill, a splash of white, that quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had washed the air.

Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the glare of the August sun every detail of the landscape was

Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which he had found the car. The slope toward him

was bare, but the top was crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing an ancient

boundary, ran a stone wall, mosscovered and wrapped in poisonivy. In places, the branches of the trees,

reaching out to the sun, overhung the wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the hill into sectors.

He began at the right, and slowly followed the wall. With his eyes he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a

chipmunk raised his head, Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like the reflection of

the sun upon a windowpane, something flashed, Jimmie knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars

had betrayed him. Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill opposite, in the

deep shadow of an oak, his back against the stone wall. With the binoculars to his eyes he had leaned too far

Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward, like a crab he wriggled free of the

goldenrod, and hidden by the contour of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill opposite.

When he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which he had seen the stranger, he stood erect, and as

though avoiding a live wire, stepped on tiptoe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it. The binoculars

hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was spread a map. He was marking it with a pencil, and

The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes stared

across the little sunfilled valley. They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed by some

deep and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the sunfilled valley some place of greater moment,

Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but still smiling, the stranger turned his head.

When he saw the boy, his smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief. These were

followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm. "Don't point that thing at me!" shouted the

stranger. "Is it loaded?" With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length of the

brown barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open palms. They accented his expression of amazed

"Walk over there," ordered the scout. "Walk backward. Stop! Take off those fieldglasses and throw them to

me." Without removing his eyes from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed them

to the stone wall. "See here!" he pleaded, "if you'll only point that damned blunderbuss the other way, you

Jimmie flushed crimson. "You can't bribe me," he growled. At least, he tried to growl, but because his voice

was changing, or because he was excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie

flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's words he seemed rather the more

"I'm not trying to bribe you," he protested. "If you don't want anything, why are you holding me up?"

The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. "Oh," he cried, "I see! Have I been trespassing?"

With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg

after the other over the wall. "If you try to rush me," he warned, "I'll shoot you full of buckshot."

The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. "Don't worry about that," he exclaimed. "I'll not rush you. Why

Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the binoculars. He gave them a swift

glance, slung them over his shoulder, and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and

"The name on them" he accused, "is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?" The stranger smiled, but corrected

"I don't understand," he said. "Where WOULD a Weiss glass be made?" With polite insistence he repeated,

Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he did so, for the first time the face

of the stranger showed that he was annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But

the penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he saw, "Correct range, 1,800 yards";

"this stream not fordable"; "slope of hill 15 degrees inaccessible for artillery." "Wire entanglements here";

Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the gun motioned toward the base of the

hill. "Keep forty feet ahead of me," he commanded, "and walk to your car." The stranger did not seem to hear

"Not to me, you won't," declared his captor. "You're going to drive straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain

With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a willing captive. And if in covering the

five miles to Judge Van Vorst's he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie held the

They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a bag of golf clubs were just drawing

away from the house. Seeing the car climbing the steep driveway that for a halfmile led from his lodge to

his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a gun, the Judge hastily descended.

The sight of the spy hunter filled him with misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief.

Arresting German spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was great. And now that he

knew he had successfully delivered him into the hands of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The

added presence of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur increased his sense of

security. Their presence seemed to afford a feeling of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a

Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was not entirety successful.

Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression the stranger was tenderly fingering

the back of his head. He seemed to wish to assure himself that it was still there.

The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was indignation, anger, reproach.

Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his "Exhibit A." "Look what he's wrote," commanded the scout.

"It's all military words. And these are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in GERMANY! I been

When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it. Then he regarded it more closely.

"I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed," he said. "I'm only glad it's no worse. He might have shot you.

"Please!" he begged, "Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well. Might I speak with youALONE?"

Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smokingroom, that served also as his office, and

closed the door. The stranger walked directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.

"I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park," he said. "She must have been a great loss to you?"

"She was," said Van Vorst. "The week before she broke her back, I refused three thousand for her. Will you

"I brought you inside," he said, "because I didn't want your servants to hear; and because I don't want to hurt

that boy's feelings. He's a fine boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I threw

him off twice, but today he caught me fair. If I really had been a German spy, I couldn't have got away from

him. And I want him to think he has captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit as

Van Vorst pointed to the map. "My bet is," he said, "that you're an officer of the State militia, taking notes for

"You're warm," he said, "but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the Real Thing." From his pocketbook he

took a visiting card and laid it on the table. "I'm 'Sherry' McCoy," he said, "Captain of Artillery in the United

"You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide, Captain Dorey, on the phone. They

sent me here. Ask THEM. I'm not picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of defense

"And you, sir," he retorted, "are as bad as ninety million other Americans. You WON'T believe! When the

Germans are shelling this hill, when they're taking your hunters to pull their cookwagons, maybe, you'll

"That's why I am serious," returned McCoy. "WE know. But when we try to prepare for what is coming, we

must do it secretlyin underhand ways, for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and

accuse us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to prepare under cover. That's why I've

had to skulk around these hills like a chicken thief. And," he added sharply, "that's why that boy must not

know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down at Washington, and I'll have my ears

"He will never learn the truth from me," he said. "For I will tell him you are to be shot at sunrise."

"Good!" laughed the Captain. "And tell me his name. If ever we fight over Westchester County, I want that

lad for my chief of scouts. And give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes from

But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his captive. He received the news with a

howl of anguish. "You mustn't," he begged; "I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't have caught him, if

I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be shot at sunrise." At the prospect of unending

nightmares Jimmie's voice shook with terror. "Make it for twenty years," he begged. "Make it for ten," he

When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler who followed, bearing a tray and

"I gave Jimmie your ten dollars," said Van Vorst, "and made it twenty, and he has gone home. You will be

glad to hear that he begged me to spare your life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty years

When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs had again been brought to the

Up the driveway a touringcar approached, and though it limped on a flat tire, it approached at reckless

speed. The two men in the front seat were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were

indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car swung in a circle until its nose pointed

down the driveway up which it had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted at

Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot with anger.

"A gray touringcar," he shouted. "It stopped here. We saw it from that hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we

The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his elbow, silenced him.

"Then, he's doubled back," he cried. "He's gone to New Haven." He stooped and threw in the clutch. The car

Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the car the words of the driver were

flung back. "We're Secret Service from Washington," he shouted. "He's from their embassy. He's a German

Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a curtain of white, whirling dust.

I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk, and every one in London assured

me that at their house there would be the kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the

illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and Sir Roger de Coverley. On

Christmas morning we would walk to church, after luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum

pudding floating in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the waits singing "God rest you,

To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in my gratitude I had already shipped

to my hostess, for her children, of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls, skees,

and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them, sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most

inconsiderately my wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation, and in all New

York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him save myself. By cable I advised postponement.

Having lived in lawful harmony with his appendix for fifty years, I thought, for one week longer he might

safely maintain the status quo. But his cable in reply was an ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve, instead of

Hallam Hall and a Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and pitching off the coast of Ireland, and the only log on

I sat in the smokingroom, depressed and cross, and it must have been on the principle that misery loves

company that I foregathered with Talbot, or rather that Talbot foregathered with me. Certainty, under happier

conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the openfaced manner in which he forced himself upon me

would have put me on my guard. But, either out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the

fictitious gayety of our few fellowpassengers, or because the young man in a knowing, impertinent way was

most amusing, I listened to him from dinner time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and

Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not

some of the passengers testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smokingroom crowd would

have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I met him I was not certain whether he was English

or giving an imitation. All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that, though he had

been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of his years in India, playing polo, he was an

American. He seemed to have spent much time, and according to himself much money, at the French

wateringplaces and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it was in France I had already seen him, but where I could

not recall. He was hard to place. Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked glibly, but

in speaking of them he made several slips. It was his taking the trouble to cover up the slips that first made

me wonder if his talking about himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object. I felt he was

presenting letters of introduction in order that later he might ask a favor. Whether he was leading up to an

immediate loan, or in New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a banker, I could not

tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in selfinterest, I could think of no other motive. The next

He was in the smokingroom playing solitaire, and at once I recalled that it was at AixlesBains I had first

seen him, and that he held a bank at baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I said: "I saw you last summer at

His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for some particular card.

"Oh, yes," he assented; "jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of money there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win,

and can't leave 'em alone." As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me to excuse him,

he smiled appealingly. "Poker, bridge, chemin de fer, I like 'em all," he rattled on, "but they don't like me. So

I stick to solitaire. It's dull, but cheap." He shuffled the cards clumsily. As though making conversation, he

I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a spade and had no curiosity to learn.

At this, when he found he had been wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance,

even of irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had hurt him physically, he shut his

eyes, and when again he opened them I saw in them distress. For the moment I believe of my presence he was

utterly unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man facing a crisis, he stared before him. Quite

improperly, I felt sorry for him. In me he thought he had found a victim; and that the loss of the few dollars

he might have won should so deeply disturb him showed his need was great. Almost at once he abandoned

me and I went on deck. When I returned an hour later to the smokingroom he was deep in a game of poker.

From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were friends of long and happy companionship. I

stopped behind his chair, but he thought I had passed, and in reply to one of the players answered: "Known

him for years; he's set me right many a time. When I broke my right femur 'chasin,' he got me back in the

One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his eyes met mine with perfect serenity. He even

His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare at him and walk on.

When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as though we were partners in crime, he

"Sorry," he said. "Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my taking a hand, so I had to use your name. But

I'm all right now," he assured me. "They think you vouched for me, and tonight they're going to raise the

He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then the smile died, and again in his eyes I saw

"I'm 'in bad,' doctor," he said. His voice was frightened, bewildered, like that of a child. "I can't sleep; nerves

all on the loose. I don't think straight. I hear voices, and no one around. I hear knockings at the door, and

when I open it, no one there. If I don't keep fit I can't work, and this trip I got to make expenses. You couldn't

The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob our fellowpassengers raised a pretty

question of ethics. I meanly dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him to the

"I know who you ARE," he returned. "You and I"With a deprecatory gesture, as though good taste forbade

him saying who we were, he stopped. "But the ship's surgeon!" he protested, "he's an awful bounder!

"Play cards," the young man answered. "I'm afraid he was ship's surgeon on the P. & O. I came home on.

"But you mustn't tell me that," I protested. "I can't have you making trouble on this ship, too. How do you

"I claim the seal of your profession," he said. "Nonsense," I retorted. "It's a professional secret that your

nerves are out of hand, but that you are a cardsharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with a priest."

For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far, looked at me sharply; he bit his lower lip and

"I got to make expenses," he muttered. "And, besides, all card games are games of chance, and a cardsharp

is one of the chances. Anyway," he repeated, as though disposing of all argument, "I got to make expenses."

After dinner, when I came to the smokingroom, the poker party sat waiting, and one of them asked if I knew

where they could find "my friend." I should have said then that Talbot was a steamer acquaintance only; but I

That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I switched on the lights and saw him standing at the

foot of my berth. I saw also that with difficulty he was holding himself in hand.

I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleepingpotion and sent it to him by the steward, giving the

man to understand I wanted it for myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the sofa. His eyes were

closed, and as though he were cold he was shivering and hugging himself in his arms.

He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his sides; the fingers lay open.

In spite of his tanand certainly he had led the outofdoor lifehis face showed white. For the moment

"They're crowdin' me," the boy whispered. "They're always crowdin' me." His voice was querulous,

uncomprehending, like that of a child complaining of something beyond his experience. "I can't remember

when they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always movin' me on. Moved me out

of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris, and now they've shut me out of London. I opened a club there,

very quiet, very exclusive, smart neighborhood, tooa flat in Berkeley Streetroulette and chemin de fer. I

think it was my valet sold me out; anyway, they came in and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on

"No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They paid me to live abroad. I'm gambling on

THEM; gambling on their takin' me back. I'm coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of filling my belly with

the husks that the swine do eat; reformed character, repentant and all that; want to follow the straight and

narrow; and they'll kill the fatted calf." He laughed sardonically. "Like hell they will! They'd rather see ME

It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were returning repentant, his course in the

"If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it," I said, "and they send a wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your

"I know," he interrupted; "but I got to chance that. I GOT to make enough to go on withuntil I see my

He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief, as though for him the prospect held no

"Then it's 'Goodnight, nurse,'" he said. "And I won't be a bother to anybody any more."

I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave him the sleepingdraft and sent him to bed.

It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his first appearance on deck that I again saw my

patient. He was once more a healthy picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen, smart, and fit; ready for

any exercise or sport. The particular sport at which he was so expert I asked him to avoid.

"Can't be done!" he assured me. "I'm the loser, and we dock tomorrow morning. So tonight I've got to make

I came into the smokingroom about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was seated. The others were on their feet, and

behind them in a wider semicircle were passengers, the smokingroom stewards and the ship's purser.

Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the pockets of his dinner coat; from the corner of

his mouth his long cigaretteholder was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a tumult of angry voices,

and the eyes of all were turned upon him. Outwardly at least he met them with complete indifference. The

voice of one of my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was raised in excited accusation.

"When the ship's surgeon first met you," he cried, "you called yourself Lord Ridley."

"I'll call myself anything I jolly well like," returned Talbot. "If I choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I

"You'll give it to the police, all right," chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the confident, bullying tones of the man

who knows the crowd is with him, he shouted: "And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smokingroom!"

The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded. Talbot rose and with fastidious concern

brushed the cigarette ashes from his sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called back: "Only too delighted

"And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer," he shouted, "make sure first he hasn't a friend on

"I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the pack," he said. "I understand they suspected him

from the firstseems our surgeon recognized himand tonight they had outsiders watching him. The

outsiders claim they saw him slip himself an ace from the bottom of the pack. It's a pity! He's a nicelooking

I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to call himself Meyer.

"They accused him of travelling under a false name," explained the purser, "and he told 'em he did it to dodge

the ship's news reporters. Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it seems

Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was a silly ass thing to do," protested the purser.

"Everybody knows Meyer hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got away with

the other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless ahead to Mr. Meyer and to the police."

"He's a confounded nuisance!" growled the purser. "He wants to show us he knows Adolph Meyer; wants to

put Meyer under an obligation. It means a scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and," he added with

I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the verge of a collapse, partly, as I frankly

admitted to myself, because I was sorry the young man had come to grief. I searched the snowswept decks,

and then, after threading my way through faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at his cabin. The sound of his voice

gave me a distinct feeling of relief. But he would not admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was

"all right," wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the sleep he claimed I had broken. I left him,

not without uneasiness, and the next morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine thrill. I found

him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly and trying to appear unconscious of the

glancesamused, contemptuous, hostilethat were turned toward him. He would have passed me without

speaking, but I took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed quarantine and a convoy of tugs were

"Doesn't depend on me," he said. "Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy little body!"

The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I saw the nerves jerking. Then quite

simply he began to tell me. He spoke in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the

"They were watching me," he said. "But I knew they were, and besides, no matter how close they watched I

could have done what they said I did and they'd never have seen it. But I didn't."

"I didn't!" he repeated stubbornly. "I didn't have to! I was playing in luckwonderful lucksheer, dumb

luck. I couldn't HELP winning. But because I was winning and because they were watching, I was careful not

to win on my own deal. I laid down, or played to lose. It was the cards they GAVE me I won with. And when

they jumped me I told 'em that. I could have proved it if they'd listened. But they were all up in the air,

shouting and spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to believe; they didn't want the facts."

It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling the truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not

"They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer, either. Why did you think you could

"How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?" he protested. "It was a good name, and he's a Jew, and

two of the six who were in the game are Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick

"I am not," said Talbot, "but I've often SAID I was. It's helpedlots of times. If I'd told you my name was

Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer, instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew." He smiled and

turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the police, he began to enumerate:

"Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic, according to taste. Do you see?"

His face grew serious. "Do you suppose that Smedburg person has wirelessed that banker?"

"And what will Meyer do?" he asked. "Will he drop it or make a fuss? What sort is he?"

Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest Hebrew in New York; given to charity, to

"Then maybe," cried Talbot hopefully, "he won't make a row, and my family won't hear of it!"

He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been lifted, his shoulders straightened.

I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock, protected by two obvious members of the

strongarm squad, the great banker, philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting.

We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face of a man intent upon his duty,

unrelenting. Without question, of a bad business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to

His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a growing fear. How many minutes I searched

for him I do not know. It seemed many hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and dismantled,

and by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose Talbot were seeking to conceal himself there

now were hundreds of other empty, dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one gave

heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no one was in a humor to seek him out; the

passengers were pressing to the gangway, the stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck to

deck, down lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced blindly, peering into halfopened doors,

pushing through groups of men, pursuing some one in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought, only

to find he was unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the last of the passengers was leaving it.

I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a whitefaced steward touched my sleeve.

"The ship's surgeon, sir," he stammered, "asks you please to hurry to the sickbay. A passenger has shot

On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been

cut away; his chest lay bare. Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly

"It was HE sent for you," he said, "but he doesn't need you. Fortunately, he's a damned bad shot!"

Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar them out, the two detectives pushed

into the doorway. They shoved me to one side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the

For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owllike eyes, staring at the face on the pillow.

Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand of the cardsharp.

"Heine!" he begged. "Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your little brother Adolph!"