THOSE WHO SMILED

PERCEVAL GIBBON

 * * * * *

By the Same Author

 VERSE: African Items

 SHORT STORIES:

 Vrouw Grobelaar's Leading Cases, The Adventures of Miss Gregory, The Second-class Passenger

 NOVELS: Souls in Bondage, Salvator, Margaret Harding

 * * * * *

THOSE WHO SMILED

And Eleven Other Stories

by

PERCEVAL GIBBON

Gassell and Company, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

First Published 1920

To

MY SISTER, MURIEL GIBBON

CONTENTS

 1. THOSE WHO SMILED

 2. THE DAGO

 3. WOOD-LADIES

 4. A MAN BEFORE THE MAST

 5. THE GIRL

 6. THE BREADWINNER

 7. "PLAIN GERMAN"

 8. ALMS AND THE MAN

 9. THE DARKENED PATH

 10. MISS PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

 11. THE CONNOISSEUR

 12. THE DAY OF OMENS

I

THOSE WHO SMILED

From the great villa, marble-white amid its yews and cedars, in whichthe invaders had set up their headquarters, the two officers thestout, formidable German captain and the young Austrian lieutenantwent together through the mulberry orchards, where the parched grassunderfoot was tiger-striped with alternate sun and shadow. The hushof the afternoon and the benign tyranny of the North Italian sunsubdued them; they scarcely spoke as they came through the ranks offruit-laden trees to the low embankment where the last houses of thevillage tailed out beside the road. 

"So ist's gut!" said Captain Hahn then. "We are on time nicely ontime!" He climbed the grassy bank to the road and paused, his tallyoung companion beside him. "Halt here, " he directed; "we shall seeeverything from here. "

He suspired exhaustively in the still, strong heat, and tookpossession of the scene with commanding, intolerant eyes. He was aman in the earliest years of middle life, short, naturallyfull-bodied, and already plethoric with undisciplined passions andappetites. His large sanguine face had anger and impatience for anhabitual expression; he carried a thick bamboo cane, with which helashed the air about him in vehement gesticulation as he spoke; allhis appearance and manner were an incarnate ejaculation. Beside him, and by contrast with the violence of his effect, his companion waseclipsed and insignificant, no more than a shape of a silent youngman, slender in his close-fitting grey uniform, with a swart, immobile face intent upon what passed. 

It was the hour that should crown recent police activities of CaptainHahn with the arrest of an absconding forced-laborer, who, havingescaped from his slave-gang behind the firing-line on the Piave, hadbeen traced to his father's house in the village. An Italianrenegade, a discovery of Captain Hahn's, had served in the affair; awhole machinery of espionage and secret treachery had been put inmotion; and now Lieutenant Jovannic, of the Austrian Army, was to beshown how the German method ensured the German success. Even as theyarrived upon the road they saw the carefully careless group oflounging soldiers, like characters on a stage "discovered" at therise of the curtain, break into movement and slouch with elaboratepurposelessness to surround the cottage. Their corporal remainedwhere he was, leaning against a wall in the shade, eating an onionand ready to give the signal with his whistle; he did not glancetowards the two watching officers. To Lieutenant Jovannic, thefalsity and unreality of it all were as strident as a brass band; yetin the long vista of the village street, brimful of sun and silence, the few people who moved upon their business went indifferently asshadows upon a wall. An old man trudged in the wake of a ladendonkey; a girl bore water-buckets slung from a yoke; a child wassweeping up dung. None turned a head. 

"Sieh' 'mal!" chuckled Captain Harm joyously. "Here comes my Judas!"

From the door of the cottage opposite them, whose opening showed deadblack against the golden glare without, came the renegade, pausingupon the threshold to speak a last cheery word to those within. PoorJovannic, it was at this moment that, to the fantastic and absurdcharacter of the whole event, as arranged by Captain Hahn, there wasnow added a quality of sheer horror. The man upon the threshold wasnot like a man; vastly pot-bellied, so that the dingy white of hisshirt was only narrowly framed by the black of his jacket, swollen inbody to the comic point, collarless, with a staircase of unshavenchins crushed under his great, jovial, black-mustached face, thecreature yet moved on little feet like a spinning-top on its point, buoyantly, with the gait of a tethered balloon. He had the gestures, the attitude upon the threshold, of a jolly companion; when heturned, his huge, fatuous face was amiable, and creased yet with thedregs of smiles. From the breast of his jacket he exhumed a whitehandkerchief. "Arrivederci!" he called for the last time to theinterior of the house; someone within answered pleasantly; thendeliberately, with a suggestion of ceremonial and significance in thegesture, he buried the obscenity of his countenance in thehandkerchief and blew his nose as one blows upon a trumpet. 

"Tadellos!" applauded Captain Hahn enthusiastically. "He inventedthat signal himself; he's the only man in the village who carries ahandkerchief. Und jetzt geht's los!"

And forthwith it went 'los'; the farce quickened to drama. A coupleof idle soldiers, rifle-less and armed only with the bayonets attheir belts, had edged near the door; others had disappeared behindthe house; Judas, mincing on his feet like a soubrette, moved brisklyaway; and the corporal, tossing the wreck of his onion from him, blewa single note on his whistle. The thin squeal of it was barelyaudible thirty yards away, yet it seemed to Jovannic as though thebrief jet of sound had screamed the afternoon stillness to rags. Thetwo slack-bodied soldiers were suddenly swift and violent; drawnbayonet in hand, they plunged together into the black of the door andvanished within. Down the long street the old man let the donkeywander on and turned, bludgeon in hand, to stare; the child and girlwith the buckets were running, and every door and window showedstartled heads. From within the cottage came uproar screams, stamping, and the crash of furniture overset. 

"You see?" There was for an instant a school-masterly touch inCaptain Hahn. "You see? They've got him; not a hitch anywhere. Organization, method, foresight; I tell you. "

From the dark door there spouted forth a tangle of folk to the hotdust of the road that rose like smoke under their shifting feet. Thesoldiers had the fighting, plunging prisoner; between their bodies, and past those of the men and women who had run out with them, hisyoung, black-avised face surged and raged in an agony of resistance, lifting itself in a maniac effort to be free, then dragged and beatendown. An old woman tottered on the fringes of the struggle, cryingfeebly; others, young and old, wept or screamed; a soldier, bitten inthe hand, cried an oath and gave way. The prisoner tore himself allbut loose. 

"Verfluchter Schweinhund!" roared Captain Halm suddenly. He had stoodtill then intent, steeped in the interest of the thing, but aloof asan engineer might watch the action of his machine till the moment atwhich it fails. Suddenly, a dangerous compact figure of energy, hedashed across the road, shouting. "You'd resist arrest, would you?"he was vociferating. His bamboo cane, thick as a stout thumb, roseand fell twice smashingly; Jovannic saw the second blow go home uponthe hair above the prisoner's forehead. The man was down in aninstant, and the soldiers were over him and upon him. Captain Hahn, cane in hand, stood like a victorious duelist. 

The old woman the prisoner's mother, possibly, had staggered back atthe thrash of the stick, and now, one hand against the wall of thehouse and one to her bosom, she uttered a thin, moaning wail. At thatvoice of pain Jovannic started; it was then that he realized that theother voices, those that had screamed and those that had cursed, hadceased; even the prisoner, dragged to his feet and held, made nosound. For an instant the disorder of his mind made it appear thatthe sun-drowned silence had never really been broken, that all thathad happened had been no more than a flash of nightmare. Then heperceived. 

Captain Hahn, legs astraddle, a-bulge with the sense of achievement, was giving orders. 

"Tie the dog's hands, " he commanded. "Tie them behind his back! Cord?Get a cord somewhere, you fool! Teach the hound to resist, I will!Hurry now!"

The prisoner's face was clear to see, no longer writhen and crazy. For all the great bruise that darkened his brow, it was composed to acalm as strange as the calm of death. He looked directly at CaptainHahn, seeming to listen and understand; and when that man of wrathceased to speak, his rather sullen young face, heavy-browed, thick-mouthed, relaxed from its quiet. He smiled!

Beyond him, against the yellow front of the cottage, an old man, bareheaded, with a fleshless skull's face, had passed his arm underthat of the old woman and was supporting her. The lieutenant saw thatbony mask, too, break into a smile. He looked at the others, thebarefoot girls and the women; whatever the understanding was, theyshared it; each oval, sun-tinged face, under its crown of jet hair, had the same faint light of laughter of tragic, inscrutable mirth, atonce contemptuous and pitiful. Along the street, folk had come forthfrom their doors and stood watching in silence. 

"That's right, Corporal; tie him up, " came Captain Harm's thickishvoice, rich and fruity with the assurance of power. "He won't desertagain when I've done with him and he won't resist either. "

It was not for him to see, in those smiles, that the helpless man, bound for the flogging-posts of the "Dolina of Weeping, " where somany martyrs to that goddess which is Italy had expiated in tormenttheir crimes of loyalty and courage, had already found a refugebeyond the reach of his spies and torturers that he opposed even nowto bonds and blows a resistance that no armed force could overcome. If he saw the smiles at all, he took them for a tribute to his brisk, decisive action with the cane. 

"And now, take him along, " he commanded, when the prisoner's wristswere tied behind him to his satisfaction. "And stand no nonsense! Ifhe won't walk make him!"

The corporal saluted. "Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann, " he deferred, andthe prisoner was thrust down the bank. The old mother, her headaverted, moaned softly. The old man, upholding her, smiled yet hisdeath's-head smile. 

The tiger-yellow of the grass between the trees was paler, the blackwas blacker, as the two officers returned across the fields; to thehush of afternoon had succeeded the briskness of evening. Birds wereawake and a breeze rustled in the branches; and Captain Hahn wasstrongly moved to speech. 

"System, " he said explosively. "All war all life comes down tosystem. You get your civil labor by system; you keep it by system. Now, that little arrest. "

It was as maddening as the noise of a mouse in a wainscot. Jovannicwanted not so much to think as to dwell in the presence of hisimpressions. Those strange, quiet smiles!

"Did you see them laughing?" he interrupted. "Smiling, I should say. After you had cut the fellow down they stopped crying out and theysmiled. "

"Ha! Enough to make 'em, " said Captain Hahn. "I laughed myself. Allthat play-acting before his people, and then, with two smacks kaput!Fellow looked like a fool! It's part of the system, you see. "

"That was it, you think?" The explanation explained nothing toJovannic, least of all his own sensations when the sudden surrenderand the sad, pitying mirth had succeeded to the struggle and theviolence. He let Captain Hahn preach his German gospel of system onearth and organization to man, and walked beside him in silence, withpensive eyes fixed ahead, where the prisoner and his escort moved ina plodding black group. 

He had not that gift of seeing life and its agents in the barrenwhite light of his own purposes which so simplified things forCaptain Hahn. He was a son of that mesalliance of nations which wasAustria-Hungary Slavs, their slipping grasp clutching at eternity, Transylvanians, with pervert Latin ardors troubling their blood, hadblended themselves in him; and he was young. Life for him was a depthnot a surface, as for Captain Hahn; facts were but the skeleton oftruth; glamour clad them and made them vital. He had been transferredto the Italian front from Russia, where his unripe battalion had lainin reserve throughout his service; his experiences of the rush overthe Isonzo, of the Italian debacle and the occupation of the provinceof Friuli, lay undigested on his mental stomach. It was as though bya single violent gesture he had translated himself from the quietlife in his regiment, which had become normal and familiar, to thehush and mystery of the vast Italian plain, where the crops grewlavishly as weeds and the trees shut out the distances. 

The great villa, whither they were bound, had a juncture of antiquewall, pierced with grilles of beaten iron; its gate, a delicacy offiligree, let them through to the ordered beauty of the lawns, overwhich the mansion presided, a pale, fine presence of a house. Hedgesof yew, like walls of ebony, bounded the principal walks. Theprisoner and the retinue of soldiers that dignified him went ahead;the two officers, acknowledging the crash of arms of the sentry'ssalute at the gate, followed. The improvised prison was in the longwing of the building that housed the stables. They took the cracklingpebble path that led to it. 

"Nu!" Captain Hahn slacked his military gait at one of the formalopenings in the wall of yews that shut them from the lawns before thegreat housed serene white front. "The women see?"

But Jovannic had already seen the pair, arms joined, who paced uponthe side-lawn near at hand and had now stopped to look towards them. It was the old Contessa, who owned the house and still occupied apart of it, and the Contessina, her daughter. He knew the former as adisconcerting and never disconcerted specter of an aged lady, withlips that trembled and eyes that never faltered, and the latter as aserious, silent, tall girl with the black hair and oval Madonna faceof her country and he knew her, too, as a vague and achingdisturbance in his mind, a presence that troubled his leisure. 

"You make your war here as sadly as a funeral, " said Captain Hahn. "Afresh and joyous war--that's what it ought to be! Now, in Flanders, we'd have had that girl in with us at the mess. " He laughed his rich, throaty laugh that seemed to lay a smear of himself over the subjectof his mirth. "That at the very least!" he added. 

Jovannic could only babble protestingly. "She she" he began in aflustered indignation. Captain Hahn laughed again. He had theadvantage of the single mind over the mind divided against itself. 

At the stables the sergeant of the guard received the prisoner. Theredness of the sunset that dyed the world was over and about thescene. The sergeant, turning out upon the summons of the sentry, showed himself as an old Hungarian of the regular army, hairy as aSkye terrier, with the jovial blackguard air of his kind. He turnedslow, estimating eyes on the bound prisoner. 

"What is it?" he inquired. 

"Deserter that's what it is, " replied Captain Hahn sharply; he foundthe Austrian soldiers insufficiently respectful. "Lock him up safely, you understand. He'll go before the military tribunal to-morrow. Jovannic, just see to signing the papers and all that, will you?"

"At your orders, Herr Hauptmann, " deferred Jovannic formally. 

"Right, " said Captain Hahn. "See you later, then. " He swung offtowards the front of the great mansion. Jovannic turned to hisbusiness of consigning the prisoner to safe keeping. 

"You can untie his hands now, " he said to the men of the escort asthe sergeant moved away to fetch the committal book. The sergeantturned at his words. 

"Plenty of time for that, " he said in his hoarse and too familiartones. "It's me that's responsible for him, isn't it? Well, then, letthem stay tied up till I've had a look at him. I know these fellows Ido. "

"He can't get away from here, " began Jovannic impatiently; but theold sergeant lifted a vast gnarled hand and wagged it at him with akind of elderly rebuke. 

"They're getting away in dozens every day, " he rumbled. He put hishands on the silent man and turned him where he stood to face thelight. "Yes, " he said; "you've been knocking him about, too!"

The man had spoken no word; he showed now to the flush of the eveninga face young and strongly molded, from which all passion, all force, seemed to have been drawn in and absorbed. It was calm as the face ofa sleeper is calm; only the mark of Captain Hahn's blow, the greatswollen bruise on the brow, touched it with a memory of violence. Hiseyes traveled beyond Jovannic and paused, looking. Upon the pebblepath beside the screen of yews a foot sounded; Jovannic turned. 

It was the Contessina; she came hurrying towards them. Jovannicsaluted. Only two or three times had he stood as close to her asthen; and never before had he seen her swift in movement, or anythingbut grave and measured in gait, gesture and speech. He stared insurprise at her tall slenderness as it stood in relief against therose and bronze of the west. 

"It is" she was a little breathless. "It is yes! young Luigi!" Theprisoner, silent till then, stirred and made some little noise ofacquiescence. Behind him, still holding to the cord that bound hiswrists, his two stolid guards stared uncomprehendingly; the oldsergeant, his face one wrinkled mass of bland knowingness, stood withhis thumbs in his belt and his short, fat legs astraddle. She leanedforward she seemed to sway like a wind-blown stalk and stared at theprisoner's quiet face. Jovannic saw her lips part in a movement ofpain. Then her face came round to him. 

"You, oh!" she gasped at him. "You haven't, you didn't strike him?"

Jovannic stared at her. He understood nothing. Granted that she knewthe man, as no doubt she knew every peasant of the village, he stilldidn't understand the touch of agony in her manner and her voice. 

"No, signorina, " he answered stiffly. "I have not touched him. Infact, I was ordering him to be unbound. "

But Her eyes traveled again to the prisoner's bruised and defacedbrow; she was breathing quickly, like a runner. "Who, then? Who has?"

The old sergeant wagged his disreputable head. "German handwriting, that is, my young lady, " he croaked. "That's how our German lords andmasters curse them! write their Gott mit uns! The noble Captain HahnI knew as soon as I saw it!"

"Shut up, you!" ordered Jovannic, with the parade-snarl in his voice. "And now, untie that man!"

He flung out a peremptory hand; in the girl's presence he meant tohave an end of the sergeant's easy manners. But now it was she whoastonished him by intervening. 

"No!" she cried. "No!"

She moved a swift step nearer to the bound man, her arms halfoutspread as though she would guard him from them; her face, with itsluminous, soft pallor, was suddenly desperate and strange. 

"No!" she cried again. "You mustn't, you mustn't untie him now! You, you don't know. Oh, wait while I speak to him! Luigi!" She turned tothe prisoner and began to speak with a quick, low urgency; her face, importunate and fearful, was close to the still mask of his. "Luigi, promise me! If I let them, if they untie your hands, will you promisenot to, not to do it? Luigi will you?"

Jovannic could only stare at them, bewildered. He heard her pleading"Will you? Will you promise me, Luigi?" passionately, as though shewould woo him to compliance. The peasant answered nothing; his sloweyes rested with a sort of heavy meditation on the eagerness of herface. They seemed to be alone in the midst of the soldiers, like menamong statues. Then, beyond them, he caught sight of the oldsergeant, watching with a kind of critical sympathy; he, at any rate, understood it all. 

But Jovannic began in uncertain protest. None heeded him. Theprisoner sighed and moved a shoulder in a half-shrug as ofdeprecation. "No, signorina, " he said at last. 

"Oh!" The sound was like a wail. The girl swayed back from him. 

The sergeant clapped the man on the shoulder. "Be a good lad now!" hesaid. "Promise the young lady you'll behave and we'll have the cordsoff as quick as we can cut them. Promise her, such a nice young ladyand all!"

The prisoner shook his head wearily. The girl, watching him, shivered. 

"All this" Jovannic roused himself. "I don't understand. What's goingon here? Sergeant, what's it all about?"

The old man made a grimace. "She knows, " he said, with a nod towardsthe girl. "That proves it's spreading. It's got so now that if youonly clout one of 'em on the side of the head he'll go out and killhimself. Won't let you so much as touch 'em!"

"What!" Jovannic gaped at him. "Kill themselves? You mean if hishands are untied, that man will?"

"Him?" The sergeant snorted. "Tonight if he can; tomorrow if hecan't. He's dead, he is. I know 'em, Herr Leutnant. Dozens of 'emalready, for a flogging or even for a kick; they call it 'escaping bythe back door. ' And now she knows. It's spreading, I tell you. "

"Good Lord!" said Jovannic slowly. But suddenly, in a blaze ofrevelation, he understood what had lurked in his mind since the scenein the village; the smiles that mirth of men who triumph by astratagem, who see their adversary vainglorious, strong and doomed. He remembered Captain Hahn's choleric pomp, his own dignity andaloofness; and it was with a heat of embarrassment that he nowperceived how he must appear to the prisoner. 

It did not occur to him to doubt the sergeant; for the truth sprangat him. 

"You, you knew this, signorina?"

The girl had moved half a dozen paces to where the shadow of thegreat yews was deepening on the path. There she lingered, a slenderpresence, the oval of her face shining pale in the shade. 

He heard her sigh. "Yes, " she answered; "I knew. "

Jovannic hesitated; then, gathering himself, he turned to thesergeant. "Now, I'm going to have that man's hands untied, " he said. The brisk speech relieved him like an oath in anger. "No!" as thesergeant began to rumble "If you answer me when I give you an orderI'll put you in irons. He's to be untied and fed; and if anythinghappens to him, if you don't deliver him alive in the morning, I'llsend you before the tribunal and I'll ask to have you shot. Youunderstand that?"

The old sergeant dropped his hands; he saw that he had to deal withan officer who, for the moment, meant what he said, and he was old inwisdom. He dragged himself to a parody of "attention. "

"I understand, Herr Leutnant, " he growled. But the habit of years wastoo strong for him, and he slacked his posture. "It means watchinghim all night; the men'll get no sleep. "

"You can watch yourself, for all I care, " snapped Jovannic. "Nowbring me the book. "

The signing and so forth were completed; the prisoner, unbound, stoodbetween two watchful guards, who attitudinised as though ready topounce and grapple him upon the least movement. "Now, " commandedJovannic, "take him in and feed him. And for the rest you have yourorders. "

"March him in, " directed the sergeant to the men. The prisoner turnedobediently between them and passed towards the open door of theguardhouse. He did not look round, and his passivity, his quiescence, suggested to Jovannic, in a thrill of strange vision, that the world, action, life had ceased for him at the moment when Captain Harm'sblow fell on his brow. 

He was passing in at the door, a guard at either elbow, when the girlspoke in the shadow. 

"Arrivederci, Luigi, " she called. "Till we meet again, Luigi. "

From the doorway came the prisoner's reply: "Addio, adieu, signorina!" Then the guardhouse received him. 

Jovannic turned. The girl was walking away already, going slowly inthe direction of the wing of the great house that was left to her andher mother. He joined her, and they came together from the night ofthe yew-walk to where, upon the open lawn, the air was still afloodwith the last light of the dying sun. 

For a while he did not speak; her mood of tragedy enveloped them bothand hushed him. But never before had he had her thus alone; even toshare her silence was a sort of intimacy, and he groped for more. 

"It it is really true, signorina what the sergeant said?" he asked atlength. 

She raised her face but did not look towards him. Her profile was acameo upon the dusk. "It is true, " she answered in a low voice. 

"I don't know what to do, " said Jovannic. "But you know, signorina, it was not I that struck him. I had nothing to do with it. I, I hopeyou believe that. "

Still she gazed straight ahead of her. "I know who struck him, " shesaid in the same low, level voice. 

"Well, then isn't there anything one could do?" pressed Jovannic. "Tostop him from killing himself, I mean. You see, he can't be tied orwatched continually. You know these people. If you could suggestsomething, signorina, I'd do what I could. "

She seemed to consider. Then "No, " she answered; "nothing can bedone. " She paused, and he was about to speak when she added: "I waswrong to try to persuade him. "

"Wrong!" exclaimed Jovannic. "Why?"

"It is your punishment, " she said. "They have doomed you. You madethem slaves but they make you murderers!" She turned to him at last, with dark eyes wide and a light as of exaltation in her face. Hervoice, the strong, restrained contralto of the south, broke once asshe went on, but steadied again. "You must not strike an Italian; itis dangerous. It is more than death, it is damnation! A blow and theywill strike back at your soul and your salvation, and you cannotescape! Oh, this people and I would have persuaded him to live!"

She shrugged and turned to go on. They had reached the end of thewing in which she lived. The path went round it, and beyond was thelittle irrigation canal one of those small artificial water courses, deep and full-volumed, which carry the snow water of the Cadore tothe farms of the plain. The dregs of the sunset yet faintly stainedits surface like the lees of wine in water. 

"Signorina, " began Jovannic. He was not sure f what he wished to sayto her. She paused in her slow walk to hear him. "Signorina, " hebegan again, "after all, in war, a blow, you know, and I have neverstruck one of them never! I don't want you to think of me as, as justa brute. "

"No, " she said. "And it is because you ordered Luigi to be untiedthat I have warned you of your danger. "

"Oh!" Jovannic sighed. "I don't think I really understand yet; butyou have managed to make it all. " He made a vague gesture towards thevillage and the tree-thronged land. "Well, gruesome! Every man in theplace, apparently. "

"And every woman, " she put in quickly. "Never forget, Signor Tenente, it was the women who began it. "

"The women began it?"

"Yes, " she answered. "The women! You hadn't heard no, it was beforeyou came of the girl here, in this house of my mother's, who wasamong the first? No? Listen, Signor Tenente. "

"Yes, " he said. It was in his mind that he was about to hear thestalest story of all, but it was strange that he should hear it fromher. 

"I am proud to tell it, " she said, as though she answered histhought. "Proud! A little Friulana of these parts, a housemaid, wehad masses for her till you took our priest away. One of yourofficers used to, to persecute her. Oh!" she cried, "why am I afraideven to name what she had to endure? He was always trying to get intoher bedroom; you understand? And one day he caught hold of her sothat she had to tear herself loose from him. She got free and stoodthere and smiled at him. She knew what she had to do then. "

"I know, I know, " half whispered Jovannic. "In the village today Isaw them smile. "

"He did not catch hold of her again; he misread that smile, and saidthat he would come that night. 'What hour?' she asked, and heanswered that he would come at midnight. She put her hand to herbosom and drew out the little crucifix they wear on a string. 'Swearon this that you will come to me at midnight, ' she said, and he tookit in his hand and swore. Then it was evening she came out here, towhere the canal runs under the road. And there she drowned herself. "

She paused. "Duilia, her name was, " she added quietly. 

"Eh?" said Jovannic. 

"Duilia, the same as mine. "

"But--the officer?" asked Jovannic. "Was he--did he?"

"No, " she said. "He did not keep the oath which he swore upon thecrucifix. "

From the terrace before the house came the blare of the buglesounding the officers' mess call. She turned to go to her door. 

"But, signorina!" Jovannic moved towards her. The sense of her, ofthe promise and power of her beauty and womanhood, burned in him. Andto the allurement of her youth and her slender grace were added aglamour of strangeness and the quality of the moment. She paused andfaced him once more. 

"It is good night, Signor Tenente, " she said. 

He watched her pass round the end of the building, unhurried, sad andunafraid. He stood for some seconds yet after she had disappeared;then, drawing a deep breath, like one relaxing from a strain, heturned and walked back to the front of the house. 

The burden of the evening lay upon him through the night at mess, where the grey-clad German and Austrian officers ate and drank belowthe mild faces of Pordenone's frescoed saints, and afterwards in hisroom, where he dozed and woke and dozed again through the hot, airless hours. The memory of the girl, the impression of herattitude, of her pale, unsmiling face, of her low, strong voice, tormented him; he felt himself alone with her in a hag-ridden landwhere all men were murderers or murdered; and she would have none ofhim. He arose sour and unrefreshed. 

In the great dining-room the splendor of the morning was tainted withthe staleness of last night's cigars, and, for a further flavor, sitting alone at the table, with his cap on his head and his cane onthe tablecloth beside him, was Captain Hahn. The mess waiter, lurkingnear the door, looked scared and worried. He had slept but little. 

"Good morning, Herr Hauptmann, " said Jovannic, clicking his heels. 

Captain Hahn gave him a furious glance and grunted inarticulately. Hemade the effect as he sat of emitting fumes, vapors of an overchargedpersonality; his naturally violent face was clenched like a fist. 

"Here, you dog!" he exploded. The mess waiter all but leaped into theair. "Get me another glass of brandy. " The man dived through thedoor. "And now you, Jovannic!"

"At your orders, Herr Hauptmann?" Jovannic looked up in astonishment. The other's face was blazing at him across the table. 

"Who, " Captain Hahn seemed to have a difficulty in compressing hisfeelings into words, "who ordered you to untie that prisoner?"

"No one, " replied Jovannic. His gaze at the convulsed face oppositehim narrowed. He put a hand on the table as though to spring up fromhis seat. "Is he dead, then?" he demanded. 

"Damn it; so you knew he'd do it!" roared the captain. "Don't denyit; you've admitted it. You knew he'd hang himself, and yet. "

"But he couldn't, " cried Jovannic, as Captain Hahn chokedand sputtered. "I ordered him to be watched. I told thesergeant"--Captain Hahn broke in with something like a howl. "Iwasn't going to have soldiers kept out of their beds for stuff likethat rotten, sentimental Austrian nonsense! I sent 'em off to gettheir sleep; but you, you knew, you. "

"Ah!" said Jovannic. "Then the Herr Hauptmann cancelled myarrangements for the prisoner's safety and substituted his own! I amglad I am not responsible. So he hanged himself?"

Captain Hahn opened his mouth and bit at the air. His hand was on hisheavy cane. The creeping mess waiter, tray in hand, came quivering tohis elbow; never in his service time or his life was he more welcometo a German officer. The captain grabbed the glass and drank. Thenwith a sweep of his right arm he slashed the man with his cane. 

"You slow-footed hound!" he bellowed. 

Jovannic looked at him curiously. He had not doubted that what thegirl had told him was true; but many things can be true in thestillness and tangled shadows of the evening that are false in thelight of the morning. This, then, was a murderer, whom a wholepopulation, a whole country, believed no, knew to be damned to alleternity this incontinent, stagnant-souled, kept creature of thearmy! Not even eternal damnation could dignify him or make him seemaught but the absurd and noxious thing that he was; a soul like hiswould make itself at home in hell like the old sergeant in theconquered province. 

Later in the forenoon he saw the body; and that, too, he felt, failedto rise to the quality of its fate. Beyond the orchard of oldderelict fruit trees behind the stable two men dug a grave in thesun, while from the shade the old sergeant smoked and watched them;and a little apart lay a stretcher, a tattered and stained blanketoutlining the shape upon it. Jovannic was aware of the old man'sshrewd eye measuring him and his temper as he stopped by thestretcher. 

China-bowled pipe in hand, the sergeant lumbered towards him. "Yousee, he did it, " he said. "Did it at once and got it over. Justhitched his belt to the window-bars and swung himself off. You can'tstop 'em nowadays. "

"Take the blanket off, " ordered Jovannic. 

The manner of the man's death had distorted the face that lay in thetrough of the stretcher, but it was pitiful and ugly rather thanterrible or horrifying. The body, its inertness, the still sprawl ofthe limbs, were puppet-like, with none of death's pomp and menace. Jovannic stood gazing; the sergeant, with the blanket over his arm, stood by smoking. 

"Hey!" cried the sergeant suddenly, and flapped loose the blanket, letting it fall to cover the body again. "See, Herr Leutnant theyoung lady!"

"Eh?" Jovannic started and turned to look. She was yet a hundredyards off, coming through the wind-wrenched old trees of the orchardtowards them. In her hand and lying along the curve of her arm shebore what seemed to be the green bough of a tree. The grass was toher knees, so that she appeared to float towards them rather than towalk, and, for the lieutenant, her approach seemed suddenly to liftall that in the affair was mean or little to the very altitude oftragedy. 

He stood away from the body and raised his hand to his cap peak insilence. Very slowly she lowered her head in acknowledgment. At thefoot of the stretcher she paused, with bowed head, and stood awhileso; if she prayed, it was with lips that did not move. In the gravethe diggers ceased to work, and stood, sunk to their waists, towatch. The great open space was of a sudden reverend and solemn. Thenshe knelt, and, taking in both hands the bough of laurel which shecarried, she bent above the covered shape and laid it upon theblanket. 

She rose. It seemed to Jovannic that for an instant she looked him inthe face with eyes that questioned; but she did not speak. Turning, she went from them by the way she had come, receding through thefantastic trees between whose leaves the sunlight fell on her indrops like rain. 

There was much for Jovannic to do in the days that followed, forCaptain Harm's dragnet was out over the villages and every day hadits tale of arrests. Jovannic, as one of his assistants, was outearly and late, on horseback or motoring, till the daily scenes ofviolence and pain palled on him like a routine. Once, in the villagenear headquarters, he saw the Contessina; she was entering the housewhence the prisoner had been dragged forth, but though he loitered inthe neighborhood for an hour she did not come forth. And twice he sawher walking by the canal with the old Contessa; always he marked inher that same supple poise of body, that steady, level carriage ofthe head. But it was not for a couple of weeks that chance served togive him any speech with her. 

And then, as before, it was evening. He had been out on the affairsof Captain Hahn, and was returning on foot along a path through themaize fields. The ripe crops made a wall to either hand, bronze redand man-high, gleaming like burnished metal in the shine of thesunset; and here, at a turning in the way, he met her face to face. 

"Good evening, signorina, " he said, stopping. 

"Good evening, Signor Tenente, " she answered, and would have passedon but that he barred the way as he stood. 

There was no fear, no doubt, in the quiet of her face as she stoodbefore him. Her eyes were great and dark, but untroubled, and uponthe lips, where he had never seen a smile, was no tremor. 

"Signorina!" he burst forth. "I, I have wanted to speak to you eversince that evening. I cannot bear that you should think of me as youdo. "

"I do not think of you, " she answered, with the resonance ofbell-music thrilling through the low tones of her voice. 

He took a step nearer to her; she did not shrink nor fall back. 

"But, " he said, "I think of you always!" Her face did not change; itseven quiet was a challenge and an exasperation. "Signorina, what canI do? This accursed war if it were not for that you would let mespeak and at least you would listen. But now. "

He broke off with a gesture of helpless anger. She did not alter thegrave character of her regard. 

"What is it that you wish to say to me?" she asked. "You see that Iam listening. "

Her very calm, the slender erectness of her body, her fearless andserious gaze, were a goad to him. 

"Listening!" he cried. He choked down an impulse to be noisy. "Wellthen, listen! Signorina signorina, I, I am not one of those. That manwho hanged himself, I would have prevented him and saved him. Youheard me give the orders that he was to be watched and fed; fed, signorina! It was another who took the guards away and left him tohimself. "

"That, " she said, "I knew. "

"Ah!" He came yet closer. "You knew. Then. "

He tried to take her hand. The impulse to touch her was irresistible;it was a famine in his being. Without stepping back, without, amovement of retreat or a change of countenance, she put her handsbehind her back. 

"Signorina!" He was close to her now; the heat of his face beat uponthe ice of hers. "Oh! This I can't! Give me at least your hand. Signorina. "

Her voice was as level, as calm, as quiet, and yet as loud withallurement as ever. 

"Signor Tenente, no!"

His was the pervert blood, the virtues and the sins born of thepromiscuity of races. Hers rigid, empty of invitation were the ripeItalian lips, pure, with the fastidious purity of her high birth andthe childlike sweetness of her youth. 

"Signorina!" He had meant to plead, but the force of her presenceoverwhelmed him. He felt himself sucked down in a whirlpool ofimpulse; doom was ahead; but the current of desire was too strong. Amovement and his arms were about her!

"Love!" he gasped. His lips were upon hers, Kissing, kissing! Heslaked himself on that dead and unresponsive mouth violently; he felther frail and slender in the crush of his arms. All her virginal andgirlish loveliness was his for a mad moment; then--. He released her. They stood apart. He passed a hand over his brow to clear the fogfrom his eyes. 

"I, I" he stammered. He could see her now. She stood opposite himstill, her back to the tall wall of maize that bounded the path. HerHand was to her bosom; she breathed hard, and presently, while hestared, words misshaping themselves upon his abashed lips she smiled!Her sad, ripe mouth relaxed; all her grave face softened; pity theprofound pity of a martyr who prays for "those who know not what theydo" was alight in her face; the terrible mild mirth of those who areassured of victory these showed themselves like an ensign. Shesmiled!

He saw that smile, and at first vision he did not know it. "Signorina, " he began again hopefully; then he stopped short. He sawagain what he had seen in the village when Captain Hahn had struckhis memorable, self-revealing blow. The smile the smile of those whochoose death for the better part. 

"Signorina!" His hands before his eyes hid her and her smile fromhim. "Please I beg--. " There was no answer. He lowered his hands, andlifted timidly, repentantly, his face to seek pardon. But upon thepath was no one. She had parted the stout stalks of maize anddisappeared. 

"God!" said Jovannic. 

An energy possessed him. He charged along the narrow path between thehigh palisades of the metal-hued maize. Upon the next corner heencountered Captain Hahn, swollen and pompous and perfect. 

"Well?" said Captain Hahn, exhaling his words as a pricked bladderexhales air. "Well, you searched those villages, did you?"

Jovannic saluted mechanically. Life his own life clogged his feet; toact was like wading in treacle. He had an impulse of utter wildrebellion, of ferocious self-assertion. Then:

"Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann!" he said, and saluted. 

II

THE DAGO

Eight bells had sounded, and in the little triangular fo'c'sle of theAnna Maria the men of the port watch were waiting for their dinner. The daylight which entered by the open hatch overhead spread a carpetof light at the foot of the ladder, which slid upon the deck to theheave and fall of the old barque's blunt bows, and left in shadow thedouble row of bunks and the chests on which the men sat. From hisseat nearest the ladder, Bill, the ship's inevitable Cockney, raisedhis flat voice in complaint. 

"That bloomin' Dago takes 'is time over fetchin' the hash, " he said. "'E wants wakin' up a bit that's wot 'e wants. "

Sprawling on the edge of his bunk forward, Dan, the oldest man in theship, took his pipe from his lips in the deliberate way in which hedid everything. Short in stature and huge in frame, the mass of him, even in that half-darkness of the fo'c'sle, showed somehow majesticand powerful. 

"The mate came after 'im about somethin' or other, " he said in hisdeep, slow tones. 

"That's right, " said another seaman. "It was about spillin' some taron the deck, an' now the Dago's got to stop up this arternoon an'holystone it clean in his watch below. "

"Bloomin' fool, " growled the Cockney. But it was the wrong word, andthe others were silent. 

A man in trouble with an officer, though he be no seaman and a Dago, may always count on the sympathy of the fo'c'sle. 

"'E ain't fit to paddle a bumboat, " the Cockney went on. "Can't goaloft, can't stand 'is wheel, can't even fetch the hash to time. "

"Yes!" Dan shifted slowly, and the younger man stopped short. "Youbetter slip along to the galley, Bill, an' see about that grub. "

The Cockney swore, but rose from his seat. Dan was not to bedisobeyed in the fo'c'sle. But at that moment the hatch above wasdarkened. 

"'Ere's the Dago, " cried Bill. "Where you bin, you bloomin' fool?"

A bare foot came over the combing, feeling vaguely for the steps ofthe ladder. Dan sat up and laid by his pipe; two seamen went toassist in the safe delivery of their dinner. 

"Carn't yer never learn to bring the grub down the ladder backwards?"Bill was demanding of the new-comer. "Want to capsize it all again, like yer done before?"

"Ah, no!"

The Dago stood in the light of the hatch and answered the Cockneywith a shrug and a timid, conciliatory smile. He was a little swarthyman, lean and anxious, with quick, apprehensive eyes which flittednow nervously from one to the other of the big sailors whose comradeand servant he was. There was upon him none of that character of thesea which shaped their every gesture and attitude. As the Cockneysnarled at him he moved his hands in deprecating gesticulation; atouch of the florid appeared in him, of that easy vivacity which isnative to races ripened in the sun. 

"Keepin' men waitin' like this, " mouthed Bill. "Bloomin' flat-footed, greasy 'anded. "

Dan's deliberate voice struck in strongly. "Ain't you goin' to haveno dinner, Dago?" he demanded. "Come on an' sit down to it, man!"

The Dago made one final shrug at Bill. 

"De mate, " he said, smiling with raised eyebrows, as though inpitying reference to that officer's infirmities of temper, "'e callme. So I cannot go to de galley for fetch de dinner more quick. Please escuse. "

Bill snarled. "Come on with ye, " called Dan again. 

"Ah, yais!" And now his smile and his start to obey apologized to Danfor not having come at the first summons. 

Dan pushed the "kid" of food towards him. "Dig in, " he bade him. "You've had better grub than this in yer time, but it's all there is. So go at it. "

"Better dan dis!" The Dago paused to answer in the act of helpinghimself. "Ah, mooch, mooch better, yais. I tell you. " He began togesticulate as he talked, trying to make these callous, careless mensee with him the images that his words called up. 

"Joost before de hot of de day I sit-a down in a balcao, where it isshade, yais, an' look at-a de water an' de trees, an' hear de bells, all slow an' gentle, in de church. An' when it is time dey bring mede leetle fish like-a de gold, all fresh, an' de leetle bread-cakes, yais, an' de wine. "

"That's the style, " approved a seaman. Though they did not cease toeat, they were all listening. 

Tales of food and drink are always sure of a hearing in the fo'c'sle. 

"On a table of de black wood, shining, an' a leetle cloth like snow, "the Dago went on; "an' de black woman dat brings it smiles wiz bigwhite teeth. "

He paused, seeing it all the tropic languor and sweetness of the lifehe had conjured up, so remote, so utterly different from therough-hewn realities that surrounded him. 

"Shove that beef-kid down this way, will yer?" called Bill. 

"You wait, " answered Dan. He jogged the Dago with his elbow. "Now, lad, " he said, "that's talk enough. Get yer grub. "

The Dago, recalled from his visions, smiled and sighed and leanedforward to take his food. From his seat by the ladder, Bill theCockney watched with mean, angry eyes to measure the size of hishelping. 

It was at Sourabaya, in Java, that he had been shipped to fill, asfar as he could, the place of a man lost overboard. The port had beenbare of seamen; the choice was between the Dago and nobody; and soone evening he had come alongside in a sampan and joined the crew ofthe Anna Maria. He brought with him as his kit a bundle of brokenclothes and a flat paper parcel containing a single suit of cleanwhite duck, which he cherished under the straw mattress of his bunkand never wore. He made no pretence of being a seaman. He couldneither steer nor go aloft, and there fell to him, naturally, all thework of the ship that was ignominious or unpleasant or merely menial. It was the Dago, with his shrug and his feeble, complaisant smile, who scraped the boards of the pigsty and hoisted coal for the cook, and swept out the fo'c'sle while the other men lay and smoked. 

"What made ye ship, anyway?" men would ask him angrily, when someinstance of his incompetence had added to the work of the others. Tothis, if they would hear him, he had always an answer. He was aPortuguese, it seemed, of some little town on the coast of EastAfrica, where a land-locked bay drowsed below the windows of thehouses under the day-long sun. When he spoke of it, if no one cut himshort, his voice would sink to a hushed tone and he would seem to bedescribing a scene he saw. His jerking, graphic hands would fallstill as he talked of the little streets where no one made a noise, and the sailors stared curiously at his face with the glamour ofdreams on it. 

From a life tuned to that murmur of basking waters a mishap haddragged him forth. It took the shape of a cruise in a fishing boat, in which he and three companions "t'ree senhores, t'ree gentilmen"had run into weather and been blown out to sea, there to be rescued, after four days of hunger and terror, by a steamship which hadcarried them to Aden and put them ashore there penniless. It was herethat his tale grew vague. For something like three years he hadwandered, working on ships and ashore, always hoping that sooner orlater a chance would serve him to return to his home. Twice alreadyhe had got to Mozambique, but that was still nearly a thousand milesfrom his goal, and on each occasion his ship had carried himinexorably back. The Anna Maria was bound for Mozambique, and he hadoffered himself, with new hopes for his third attempt. 

"D'ye reckon you'll do it this passage?" the seamen used to ask himover their pipes. 

He would shrug and spread his hands. "Ah, who can tell? But sometime, yais. "

"An' what did ye say the name o' that place o' yours was?"

He would tell them, speaking, its syllables with soft pleasure intheir mere sound. 

"Never heard of it, " they always said. "Ships don't go there, Dago. "

"Ah, but yais. " The Dago had known ships call. "Not often, butsometimes. There is leetle trade, an' ships come. On de tide, floating up to anchor, so close you hear de men talkin' on defo'c'sle head, and dey hear de people ashore girl singin', perhapsand smell de trees. "

"Do they, though?"

"Yais. Dat night I go out to fish in de boat ah, dat night! a girlwas singin', and her voice it float on de bay all round me. An' Istand in de boat an' take off my hat" he rose to show them thegesture "and sing back to her, an' she is quiet to listen in dedarkness. "

When dinner was over it fell to the Dago to take the "kids" back tothe galley and sweep down the deck. So he had barely time to smokethe cigarette he made of shredded ship's tobacco rolled in a strip ofnewspaper before he had to go on deck again to holystone the spilledtar from the planks. Dan gave him advice about using a hard stone andplenty of sand, to which he listened, smiling, and then he went upthe ladder again, with his rags shivering upon him, to the toil ofthe afternoon. 

The seamen were already in their bunks, each smoking ruminatively thepipe that prefaces slumber. 

"Queer yarn that feller tells, " remarked one of them idly. "How muchof it d'you reckon's true, Dan?"

In the for'ard lower bunk Dan opened drowsy eyes. He was lying on hisback with his hands under his head, and the sleeves of his shirtrolled back left bare his mighty forearms with their fadedtattooings. His big, beardless face was red, like rusty iron, withover thirty years of seafaring; it was simple and strong, atransparent mask of the man's upright and steadfast spirit. 

"Eh?" he said, and the other repeated his question. Dan sucked at hispipe and breathed the smoke forth in a thin blue mist. 

"It might be true enough, " he answered at length, in his deliberatebass. "Things like that does happen; you c'n read 'em in newspapers. Anyhow, true or not, the Dago believes it all. "

"Meanin' he's mad?" inquired the other. "Blowed if I didn't think itonce or twice myself. "

"He's mad right enough, " agreed another seaman comfortably, whilefrom Bill's bunk came the usual snarl of "bloomin' fool. "

Dan turned over on his side and put his pipe away. 

"He don't do any harm, anyhow, " he said, pulling up his blanket. "There's worse than him. "

"Plenty, poor devil, " agreed the first speaker, as he too preparedfor the afternoon's sleep. 

On his knees upon the deck aft, shoving his holystone to and frolaboriously and unhandily along the planks where the accident withthe tar-pot had left its stain, the Dago still broke into littlemeaningless smiles. For him, at any rate, the narrow scope betweenthe stem and stern of the Anna Maria was not the world. He had but tolift up the eyes of his mind to behold, beyond it and dwarfing it totriviality, the glamours of a life in which it had no part. Those whosaw him at his dreary penance had their excuse for thinking him mad, for there were moments when his face glowed like a lover's, his lipsmoved in soundless speech, and he had the aspect of a man illuminatedby some sudden and tender joy. 

"Now, then, you Dago there, " the officer of the watch shouted at him. "Keep that stone movin', an' none of yer shenanikin'!"

"Yais, sir, " answered the Dago, and bowed himself obediently. 

It needed the ingenuity of Bill to trouble his tranquility of mind. The old Anna Maria was far on her passage, and already there werebirds about her, the far-flying scouts of the land, and the color ofthe water had changed to a softer and more radiant blue. It was asthough sad Africa made herself comely to invite them to her shores. Bill had a piece of gear to serve with spun-yarn, and was at workabreast of the foremast, with the Dago to help him. The rope on whichthey worked was stretched between the rail and the mast. Bill had theserving-mallet, and as he worked it round the rope the Dago passedthe ball of spun-yarn in time with him. The mate was aft, superintending some work upon the mizzen, and Bill took his jobeasily. The Dago, with his little smile to which his lips shapedthemselves unconsciously, passed the ball in silence. The Cockneyeyed him unpleasantly. 

"Say, Dago, " he said presently, "wot was the name o' that there placeyou said you come from?"

"Eh?" The Dago roused from his smiling reverie. "De name? Ah, yais. "He pronounced the name slowly, making its syllables render theirmusic. 

"Yus, " said Bill, "I thought that was it. "

He went on working, steadily, nonchalantly. The Dago stared at him, perplexed. 

"Why you want to know dat name?" he asked at length. 

"Well, " said Bill, "you bin talkin' abaht it a lot, and so, d'yersee, I reckoned I'd find out. An' yesterday I 'ad to go into thecabin to get at the lazareet 'atch, an' the chart was spread out onthe table. "

"De chart?" The Dago was slow to understand. "Ah, yais. Mapa chart. An' you look at-a 'im, yais?"

"Yus, " answered Bill, who, like most men before the mast, had neverseen a chart in his life. "I looked at ev'ry name on it, ev'rybloomin' one. A chart o' Africa it was, givin' the whole lot of 'em. But your place. "

"Yais?" cried the Dago. "You see 'im? An' de leetle bay under dehills? You find it?"

"No, " said Bill, "I didn't find it. It wasn't there. "

"Wasn't there?" The Dago's smile was gone now; his forehead waspuckered like a child's in bewilderment, and a darker doubt at theback of his thoughts loomed up in his troubled eyes. 

"No, " said the Cockney, watching him zestfully. "You got it wrong, Dago, an' there ain't no such place. You dreamt it. Savvy? All wotyou bin tell in' us about the town an' the bay an' the way you usedto take it easy there all that's just a bloomin' lie. See?"

The Dago's face was white and his lips trembled. He tried to smile. 

"Not there, " he repeated. "It is de joke, not? You fool me, Bill, yais?"

Bill shook his head. "I wouldn't fool yer abaht a thing like that, "he declared sturdily. "There ain't no such place, Dago. It's just oneo' yer fancies, yer know. "

In those three years of wandering there had been dark hours turbulentwith pain, hours when his vision, his hope, his memory had notavailed to uplift him, and he had known the terror of a doubt lestthe whole of it should, after all, be but a creation of hisyearnings, a mirage of his desires. Everywhere men had believed himmad. He had accepted that as he accepted toil, hunger and exile, asthings to be redeemed by their end. But if it should be true! If thisgrossness and harshness should, after all, be his real life! Bill sawthe agony that broke loose within his victim, and bent his head abovehis work to hide a smile. 

"Ah!" The quiet exclamation was all that issued from the Dago's lips;the surge of emotion within him sought no vent in words. But Bill wassatisfied; he had the instincts of a connoisseur in torment, and theDago's face was now a mask that looked as if it had never smiled. 

It was Dan that spoiled and undid the afternoon's work. During thesecond dog-watch, when the Dago kept the look out, he carried hispipe to the forecastle head and joined him there. Right ahead of theship the evening sky was still stained with the afterglow of thesunset; the jib-boom swung gently athwart a heaven in whosedarkening arch there was still a ghost of color. Between the anchors, where they lay lashed on their chocks, the Dago stood and gazed westto where, beyond the horizon, the shores of Africa had turned barrenand meaningless. 

"Well, lad, " rumbled Dan, "gettin' near it, eh? Gettin' on towardsthe little town by the bay, ain't we?"

The Dago swung round towards him. "Dere is no town, " he said calmly. "No town, no bay, no anyt'ing. I was mad, but now I know. "

He spoke evenly enough, and in the lessening light his face wasindistinct. But old Dan, for all his thirty and odd years of hardliving, had an ear tuned delicately to the trouble of his voice. 

"What's all' this?" he demanded shortly. "Who's been tellin' youthere ain't no town or anything? Out with it! Who was it?"

"It don't matter, " said the Dago. "It was Bill. " And briefly, in thesame even tones, like those of a man who talks in his sleep, he toldthe tale of Bill's afternoon's sport. 

"Ah, so it was Bill!" said Dan slowly, when the recital was at anend. "Bill, was it? Ye-es. Well, o' course you know that Bill's thebiggest liar ever shipped out o' London, where liars is as common asweevils in bread. So you don't want to take no notice of anythingBill says. "

The Dago shook his head. "It is not that, " he said. "It is not defirst time I 'ave been called mad; and sometimes I have think itmyself. "

"Oh, go on with ye, " urged Dan. "You ain't mad. "

"T'ree years, " went on the Dago in his mournful, subdued voice. "T'ree years I go about an' work, always poor, dirty work, an' got noname, only 'Dago. ' I t'ink all de time 'bout my leetle beautifultown; but sometimes I t'ink, too, when I am tired an' people is hardto me: 'It is a dream. De world has no place so good as dat. ' Whatyou t'ink, Dan?"

"Oh, I dunno, " grunted Dan awkwardly. "Anyhow, there ain't no harm init. It don't follow a man's mad because he's got fancies. "

"Fancies!" repeated the Dago. "Fancies!" He seemed to laugh a littleto himself, laughter with no mirth in it. 

Night was sinking on the great solitude of waters. Above them thesails of the foremast stood pale and lofty, and there was therhythmic jar of a block against a backstay. The Anna Maria lifted herweather bow easily to the even sea, and the two men on the fo'c'slehead swung on their feet unconsciously to the movement of the barque. 

"Eef it was only a fancy, " said the Dago suddenly, "eef it was only atown in my mind, I don' want it no more. " He made a motion with hishand as though he cast something from him. "I t'ink all dis time itis true, dat some day I find it again. It help me; it keep me glad;it save me from misery. But now it is all finish. "

"But don't you know, " cried Dan, "don't you know for sure whetherit's true or not?"

The Dago shook his head. "I am no more sure, " he said. "For t'reeyears I have had bad times, hard times. So now I am not sure. Dat iswhy I t'ink I am a little mad, like Bill said. "

"Never mind Bill, " said Dan. "I'll settle with Bill. "

He put his heavy hand on the other's arm. 

"Lad, " he said, "I'm sorry for your trouble. I ain't settin' up toknow much about fellers' minds, but it seems to me as if you wasbetter off without them fancies, if they ain't true. An' that town o'yours! It sounded fine, as good a place as ever I heard of; but itwas mighty like them ports worn-out sailormen is always figurin' tothemselves, where they'll go ashore and take it easy for the rest o'their lives. It was too good, mate, too good to be true. "

There was a pause. "Yes, " said the Dago at last. "It was too good, Dan. "

Dan gave his arm a grip, and left him to his look out over a seawhose shores were now as desolate as itself, a man henceforth to becounted sane, since he knew life as bare of beauty, sordid anddifficult. 

Dan put his pipe in his pocket and walked aft to the main hatch, where the men were gathered for the leisure of the dog-watch. He wentat his usual deliberate gait, a notable figure of seamanlikerespectability and efficiency. Upon his big, shaven face a ratherstolid tranquility reigned. Bill, leaning against a corner of thegalley, looked up at him carelessly. 

"'Ullo, Dan, " he greeted him. 

"Hullo, Bill, " responded Dan. "I bin talkin' to the Dago. "

"Oh, 'ave yer?" said Bill. 

"Yes, " said Dan, in the same conversational tone. "I have. An' nowI'm goin' to have a word with you. Stand clear of that deckhouse!"

"Eh?" cried Bill. "Say, Dan--"

That was all. Dan's fist, the right one, of the hue and hardness ofteak, with Dan's arm behind it, arrived just under his eye, and therest of the conversation was yelps. No one attempted to interrupt;even the captain and mate, who watched from the poop, made no motionto interfere; Dan's reputation for uprightness stood him in goodstead. 

"There, now, " he said, when it was over, and he allowed the gasping, bleeding Cockney to fall back on the hatch. "See what comes of nottakin' hints?"

They made Mozambique upon the morning of a day when the sun pouredfrom the heavens and the light wind came warm off the land. The oldAnna Maria, furling sail by sail, floated up to her anchorage and letgo her anchors just as a shore-boat, manned by big nearly nakednegroes, with a white man sitting in the stern, raced up alongside. In less than an hour the hands were lifting the anchors again andgetting ready to go to sea once more. The cook, who had served thecaptain and his visitor with breakfast, was able to explain themystery. He stood at his galley door, with his cloth cap cockedsportively over one eye, and gave the facts to the inquisitivesailors. 

"That feller in the boat was th' agent, " he said. "A Porchuguee, hewas. Wanted wine f'r 'is breakfus'. An' the orders is, we're to godown the coast to a place called le'me see, now. What was it called?Some Dago name that I can't call to mind. "

Dan was among his hearers, and by some freak of memory the name ofthe town of which the Dago had been used to speak, the town which wasnow a dream to be forgotten, came to his lips. He spoke it aloud. 

"It wasn't that, I s'pose?" he suggested. 

"You've got it, " cried the cook. "That was it, Dan; the very place. Fancy you knowin' it. Well, we got to go down there and get in acrossa sort of bar what's there an' discharge into lighters. Seems it's abit out o' the way o' shippin'. The skipper said that the charterersseemed to think the old boat ran on wheels. "

"Queer!" said Dan. To himself he said: "He must ha' heard the namesomewhere and hitched his dream to it. "

The name, as it chanced, was one of many syllables, and the sailorsmanaged them badly. Men who speak of the islands of Diego Ramirez asthe "Daggarammarines" are not likely to deal faithfully with a narriethat rings delicately like guitar strings, and Dan observed thattheir mention of the barque's destination had no effect upon theDago. For him all ports had become indifferent; one was not nearerthan another to any place of his desire. He spoke no more of histown; when the men, trying to draw him, spoke about food, or women, or other roads to luxury, he answered without smiling. 

"I t'ink no more 'bout dat, " he said. "T'ree year work an' have badtimes. Before, I don' remember o more. "

"He was better when he was crazy, " agreed the seamen. It was asthough the gaiety, the spring of gladness, within the little man hadbeen dried up; there was left only the incompetent and despised Dago. He faced the routine of his toil now with no smile of preoccupationfor a sweeter vision; he shuffled about decks, futile as ever, withthe dreariness of a man in prison. 

Only to Dan he spoke more freely. It was while the watch was washingdown decks in the morning. The two were side by side, plying theirbrooms along the wet planks, while about them the dawn broadenedtowards the tropic day. 

"I am no more mad, " said the Dago. "Now I know I am not mad. Dat nameof de place where we go de men don' know how to speak it, but it isde name of my town, de town I t'ink about once so much. Yais I know!At last, after all dis time, I come dere, but I am not glad. I amnever glad no more 'bout not'ing. "

Dan worked on. He could think of no answer to make. 

"Only 'bout one t'ing I am glad, " went on the Dago. "'Bout a friend Imake on dis ship; 'bout you, Dan. "

"Oh, hell!" grunted Dan awkwardly. 

"But 'bout de town, I am no more glad. I know now it is more betterto be sad an' poor an' weak dan to be mad an' glad about fancies. Yais I know now!"

"You'll be all right, " said Dan. "Cheer up, lad. There's fellersworse off than you!" An inspiration lit up his honest and downrightbrain for a moment. "Why, " he said, "it's better to be you than be afeller like Bill that never had a fancy in his life. You've lost alot, maybe; but you can't lose a thing you never had. "

The Dago half-smiled. "Yais, " he said. "You are mos' wise, Dan. But, Dan! Dan!"

"Yes. What?"

"If it had been true, Dan dat beautiful town an' all my dream! If ithad been true!"

"Shove along wi' that broom, " advised Dan. "The mate's lookin'. "

They came abreast of their port about midday, and Dan, at the wheel, heard the captain swear as they stood in through a maze of brokenwater, where coral reefs sprouted like weeds in a neglected garden, towards the hills that stood low above the horizon. He had beenfurnished, it seemed, with a chart concerning whose trustworthinesshe entertained the bitterest doubts. There was some discussion withthe mate about anchoring and sending in a boat to bring off a pilot, but presently they picked up a line of poles sticking up above thewater like a ruined fence, and these seemed to comfort the captain. Bits of trees swam alongside; a flight of small birds, with flashesof green and red in their plumage, swung about them; the water, asthey went, changed color. Little by little the hills lifted from thelevel of the water and took on color and variety, till from the deckone could make out the swell of their contours and distinguish thehues of the wild vegetation that clothed them. The yellow of a beachand a snowy gleam of surf showed at their feet, and then, dead aheadand still far away, they opened, and in the gap there was visible thestill shining blue of water that ran inland and lay quiet under theirshelter. 

"Stand by your to'gallant halyards!" came the order. "Lower awaythere!"

It was evening already when the old Anna Maria, floating slowly undera couple of jibs and a foretopsail, rounded the point and opened thetown. The bay, with its fringe of palms, lay clear before her; beyondits farthest edge, the sun had just set, leaving his glories to burnout behind him, and astern of them in the east the swift tropic nightwas racing up the sky. The little town a church-tower and a clusterof painted, flat-roofed houses, lay behind the point at the water'sedge. There was a music of bells in the still air; all the scenebreathed that joyous languor, that easy beauty which only the sun canripen, which the windy north never knows. With the night at herheels, the old Anna Maria moved almost imperceptibly towards thetown. 

"Stand by to anchor!" came the order from aft, and the mate, callingthree men with him, went up the ladder to the fo'c'sle head. 

Dan was one of the three. He was at the rail, looking at the littletown as it unfolded itself, house after house, with the narrowstreets between, when he first noticed the white figure at his side. He turned in surprise; it was the Dago, in the cherished suit of duckwhich he had guarded for so long under his mattress. Heretofore, Danhad known him only in his rags of working-clothes, a mildly patheticand ridiculous figure; now he was seemly, unfamiliar, a littlesurprising. 

"What's all this?" demanded Dan. 

The Dago was looking with all his eyes at the town, already growingdim. 

"Dis?" he repeated. "Dese clo'se, I keep dem for my town, Dan. Tocome back wis yais! For not be like a mendigo a beggar. Now, no needto keep dem no more; and dis place oh, Dan, it is so like, so like! Idream it all yais de church, de praca all of it!"

"Steady!" growled Dan. "Don't get dreamin' it again. "

"No, " said the Dago; "I never dream no more. Never no more!"

He did not take his eyes from it; he stood at the rail gazing, intent, absorbed. He did not hear the mate's brief order thatsummoned him and the others across the deck. 

"When I go out on de fishin' boat, " he said aloud, thinking Dan wasstill at his side, "a girl was singin' an'--"

"Here, you!" cried the mate. "What's the matter with you? Why don'tyou?"

He stopped in amazement, for the Dago turned and spat a brief word athim, making a gesture with his hand as though to command silence. 

In the moment that followed they all heard it a voice that sang, astrong and sweet contralto that strewed its tones forth like a scent, to add itself to the other scents of earth and leaves that traveledacross the waters and reached them on their deck. They heard it liftitself as on wings to a high exaltation of melody and fail thence, hushing and drooping deliciously, down diminishing slopes of song. 

"What the-" began the mate, and moved to cross the deck. 

His surprises were not yet at an end, for Dan Dan, the ideal seaman, the precise in his duty, the dependable, the prosaically perfect Dancaught him by the arm with a grip in which there was no deference forthe authority of a chief officer. 

"Leave him be, sir, " urged Dan. "I, I know what's the matter withhim. Leave him be!"

The voice ashore soared again, sure and buoyant; the mate dragged hisarm free from Dan's hold and turned to swear; on the main deck thehorse-laugh of Bill answered the singer. The Dago heard nothing. Bending forward over the rail, he stretched both arms forth, and in avoice that none recognized, broken and passionate, he took up thesong. It was but for a minute, while the mate recovered his outragedsenses, but it was enough. The voice ashore had ceased. 

"What the blank blank!" roared the mate, as he dragged the Dagoacross the deck. "What d'ye mean by it, eh? Get hold o' that rope, orI'll--. "

"Yais, sir. "

A moment later he turned to Dan, and in the already deepening gloomhis smile gleamed white in his face. 

"Ah, my frien'!" he said. "Dere was no dream. T'ree years, all bad, all hard, all sad dat was de dream. Now I wake up. Only one t'ingtrue in all de t'ree years de friend I make yais. "

"Hark!" said Dan. "Hear it? There's boats comin' off to us. "

"Yais!" The smile gleamed again. "For me. It is no dream. Dey hear myvoice when I sing. By'm by you hear dem callin', 'Felipe!' Dat's myname. "

"Listen, then, " said Dan in a whisper. 

The water trickled alongside; they were coming up to their berth. Thebells from the church ashore were still. Across the bay there camethe clack of oars in rowlocks, pulled briskly, and voices. 

"Felipe!" they called. "Felipe!"

The Dago's hand found Dan's. 

III

WOOD-LADIES

The pine trees of the wood joined their branches into a dome ofintricate groinings over the floor of ferns where the children satsunk to the neck in a foam of tender green. The sunbeams that slantedin made shivering patches of gold about them. Joyce, the elder of thepair, was trying to explain why she had wished to come here from theglooms of the lesser wood beyond. 

"I wasn't 'zactly frightened, " she said. "I knew there wasn't anylions or robbers, or anything like that. But--"

"Tramps?" suggested Joan. 

"No! You know I don't mind tramps, Joan. But as we was going alongunder all those dark bushes where it was so quiet, I kept feeling asif there was something behind me. I looked round and there wasn'tanything, but well, it felt as if there was. "

Joyce's small face was knit and intent with the effort to convey hermeaning. She was a slim, erect child, as near seven years of age asmade no matter, with eyes that were going to be grey but had not yetceased to be blue. Joan, who was a bare five, a mere huge baby, wastrying to root up a fern that grew between her feet. 

"I know, " she said, tugging mightily. The fern gave suddenly, andJoan fell over on her back, with her stout legs sticking up stiffly. In this posture she continued the conversation undisturbed. "I know, Joy. It was wood-ladies!"

"Wood-ladies!" Joyce frowned in faint perplexity as Joan rolled rightside up again. Wood-ladies were dim inhabitants of the woods, beingsof the order of fairies and angels and even vaguer, for there wasnothing about them in the story-books. Joyce, who felt that she wasgetting on in years, was willing to be skeptical about them, butcould not always manage it. In the nursery, with the hard, cleanlinoleum underfoot and the barred window looking out on the lawn andthe road, it was easy; she occasionally shocked Joan, and sometimesherself, by the license of her speech on such matters; but it was adifferent affair when one came to the gate at the end of the garden, and passed as through a dream portal from the sunshine and frank skyto the cathedral shadows and great whispering aisles of the wood. There, the dimness was like the shadow of a presence; as babies theyhad been aware of it, and answered their own questions by inventingwood-ladies to float among the trunks and people the still, greenchambers. Now, neither of them could remember how they had firstlearned of wood-ladies. 

"Wood-ladies, " repeated Joyce, and turned with a little shiver tolook across the ferns to where the pines ended and the lesser wood, dense with undergrowth, broke at their edge like a wave on a steepbeach. It was there, in a tunnel of a path that writhed beneathover-arching bushes, that she had been troubled with the sense ofunseen companions. Joan, her fat hands struggling with another fern, followed her glance. 

"That's where they are, " she said casually. "They like being in thedark. "

"Joan!" Joyce spoke earnestly. "Say truly truly, mind! do you thinkthere is wood-ladies at all?"

"'Course there is, " replied Joan, cheerfully. "Fairies in fields andangels in heaven and dragons in caves and wood-ladies in woods. "

"But, " objected Joyce, "nobody ever sees them. "

Joan lifted her round baby face, plump, serene, bright withinnocence, and gazed across at the tangled trees beyond the ferns. She wore the countenance with which she was wont to win games, andJoyce thrilled nervously at her certainty. Her eyes, which werebrown, seemed to seek expertly; then she nodded. 

"There's one now, " she said, and fell to work with her fern again. 

Joyce, crouching among the broad green leaves, looked tensely, dreadand curiosity the child's avid curiosity for the supernatural alightin her face. In the wood a breath of wind stirred the leaves; theshadows and the fretted lights shifted and swung; all was vaguemovement and change. Was it a bough that bent and sprang back or aflicker of draperies, dim and green, shrouding a tenuous form thatpassed like a smoke-wreath? She stared with wide eyes, and it seemedto her that for an instant she saw the figure turn and the pallor ofa face, with a mist of hair about it, sway towards her. There was animpression of eyes, large and tender, of an infinite grace andfragility, of a coloring that merged into the greens and browns ofthe wood; and as she drew her breath, it was all no more. The trees, the lights and shades, the stir of branches were as before, butsomething was gone from them. 

"Joan!" she cried, hesitating. 

"Yes, " said Joan, without looking up. "What?"

The sound of words had broken a spell. Joyce was no longer sure thatshe had seen anything. 

"I thought, just now, I could see something, " she said. "But I s'poseI didn't. "

"I did, " remarked Joan. 

Joyce crawled through the crisp ferns till she was close to Joan, sitting solid and untroubled and busy upon the ground, with brokenstems and leaves all round her. 

"Joan, " she begged. "Be nice. You're trying to frighten me, aren'tyou?"

"I'm not, " protested Joan. "I did see a wood-lady. Wood-ladiesdoesn't hurt you; wood-ladies are nice. You're a coward, Joyce. "

"I can't help it, " said Joyce, sighing. "But I won't go into the darkspots of the wood any more. "

"Coward, " repeated Joan absently, but with a certain relish. 

"You wouldn't like to go there by yourself!" cried Joyce. "If Iwasn't with you, you'd be a coward, too. You know you would. "

She stopped, for Joan had swept her lap free of debris and was risingto her feet. Joan, for all her plumpness and infantile softness, hada certain deliberate dignity when she was put upon her mettle. Sheeyed her sister with a calm and very galling superiority. 

"I'm going there now, " she answered; "all by mineself. "

"Go, then!" retorted Joyce, angrily. 

Without a further word Joan turned her back and began to plough herway across the ferns towards the dark wood. Joyce, watching her, sawher go at first with wrath, for she had been stung, and then withcompunction. The plump baby was so small in the brooding solemnity ofthe pines, thrusting indefatigably along, buried to the waist inferns. Her sleek, brown head had a devoted look; the whole of herseemed to go with so sturdy an innocence towards those peopled anduncanny glooms. Joyce rose to her knees to call her back. 

"Joan!" she cried. The baby turned. "Joan! Come back; come back an'be friends!"

Joan, maintaining her offing, replied with a gesture. It was agesture they had learned from the boot-and-knife boy, and they hadonce been spanked for practicing it on the piano-tuner. Theboot-and-knife boy called it "cocking a snook, " and it consisted inraising a thumb to one's nose and spreading the fingers out. It wasdefiance and insult in tabloid form. Then she turned and plodded on. The opaque wall of the wood was before her and over her, but she knewits breach. She ducked her head under a droop of branches, squirmedthrough, was visible still for some seconds as a gleam of blue frock, and then the ghostly shadows received her and she was gone. The woodclosed behind her like a lid. 

Joyce, squatting in her place, blinked a little breathlessly to shiftfrom her senses an oppression of alarm, and settled down to wait forher. At least it was true that nothing ever happened to Joan; evenwhen she fell into a water-butt she suffered no damage; and the woodwas a place to which they came every day. 

"Besides, " she considered, enumerating her resources of comfort;"besides, there can't be such things as wood-ladies, really. "

But Joan was a long time gone. The dome of pines took on an uncannystillness; the moving patches of sun seemed furtive and unnatural;the ferns swayed without noise. In the midst of it, patient andnervous, sat Joyce, watching always that spot in the bushes where ablue overall and a brown head had disappeared. The under-note ofalarm which stirred her senses died down; a child finds it hard tospin out a mood; she simply sat, half-dreaming in the peace of themorning, half-watching the wood. Time slipped by her, and presentlythere came Mother, smiling and seeking through the trees for herbabies. 

"Isn't there a clock inside you that tells you when it's lunch time?"asked Mother. "You're ever so late. Where's Joan?"

Joyce rose among the ferns, delicate and elfin, with a shy perplexityon her face. It was difficult to speak even to Mother aboutwood-ladies without a pretence of skepticism. 

"I forgot about lunch, " she said, taking the slim, cool hand whichMother held out to her. "Joan's in there. " She nodded at the bushes. 

"Is she?" said Mother, and called aloud in her singing voice that wasso clear to hear in the spaces of the wood. "Joan! Joan!"

A cheeky bird answered with a whistle, and Mother called again. 

"She said, " explained Joyce; "she said she saw a wood-lady, and thenshe went in there to show me she wasn't afraid. "

"What's a wood-lady, chick?" asked Mother. "The rascal!" she said, smiling, when Joyce had explained as best she could. "We'll have togo and look for her. "

They went hand in hand, and Mother showed herself clever in parting apath among the bushes. She managed so that no bough sprang back tostrike Joyce, and without tearing or soiling her own soft, whitedress; one could guess that when she had been a little girl she, too, had had a wood to play in. They cut down by the Secret Pond, wherethe old rhododendrons were, and out to the edge of the fields; andwhen they paused Mother would lift her head and call again, and hervoice rang in the wood like a bell. By the pond, which was a blackwater with steep banks, she paused and showed a serious face; butthere were no marks of shoes on its clay slopes, and she shook herhead and went on. But to all the calling there was no answer, nodistant cheery bellow to guide them to Joan. 

"I wish she wouldn't play these tricks, " said Mother. "I don't likethem a bit. "

"I expect she's hiding, " said Joyce. "There aren't wood-ladiesreally, are there, Mother?"

"There's nothing worse in these woods than a rather naughty baby, "Mother replied. "We'll go back by the path and call her again. "

Joyce knew that the hand which held hers tightened as they went, andthere was still no answer to Mother's calling. She could not havetold what it was that made her suddenly breathless; the wood abouther turned desolate; an oppression of distress and bewildermentburdened them both. "Joan! Joan!" called Mother in her strongbeautiful contralto, swelling the word forth in powerful music, andwhen she ceased the silence was like a taunt. It was not as if Joanwere there and failed to answer; it was as if there were no longerany Joan anywhere. They came at last to the space of sparse treeswhich bordered their garden. 

"We mustn't be silly about this, " said Mother, speaking as much toherself as to Joyce. "Nothing can have happened to her. And you musthave lunch, chick. "

"Without waiting for Joan?" asked Joyce. 

"Yes. The gardener and the boot-boy must look for Joan, " said Mother, opening the gate. 

The dining-room looked very secure and homelike, with its big windowand its cheerful table spread for lunch. Joyce's place faced thewindow, so that she could see the lawn and the hedge bounding thekitchen garden; and when Mother had served her with food, she wasleft alone to eat it. Presently the gardener and the boot-boy passedthe window, each carrying a hedge-stake and looking war-like. Therereached her a murmur of voices; the gardener was mumbling somethingabout tramps. 

"Oh, I don't think so, " replied Mother's voice. 

Mother came in presently and sat down, but did not eat anything. Joyce asked her why. 

"Oh, I shall have some lunch when Joan comes, " answered Mother. "Ishan't be hungry till then. Will you have some more, my pet?"

When Joyce had finished, they went out again to the wood to meet Joanwhen she was brought back in custody. Mother walked quite slowly, looking all the time as if she would like to run. Joyce held her handand sometimes glanced up at her face, so full of wonder and a sort ofresentful doubt, as though circumstances were playing an unmannerlytrick on her. At the gate they came across the boot-boy. 

"I bin all acrost that way, " said the boot-boy, pointing with hisstumpy black forefinger, "and then acrost that way, an' Mister Jenks"Jenks was the gardener "'e've gone about in rings, 'e 'ave. And thereain't no sign nor token, mum, not a sign there ain't. "

From behind him sounded the voice of the gardener, thrashing amongthe trees. "Miss Joan!" he roared. "Hi! Miss Jo-an! You'rea-frightin' your Ma proper. Where are ye, then?"

"She must be hiding, " said Mother. "You must go on looking, Walter. You must go on looking till you find her. "

"Yes'm, " said Walter. "If's she's in there us'll find her, soon orlate. "

He ran off, and presently his voice was joined to Jenks's, callingJoan calling, calling, and getting no answer. 

Mother took Joyce's hand again. 

"Come, " she said. "We'll walk round by the path, and you must tell meagain how it all happened. Did you really see something when Joantold you to look?"

"I expect I didn't, " replied Joyce, dolefully. "But Joan's alwayssaying there's a fairy or something in the shadows, and I alwaysthink I see them for a moment. "

"It couldn't have been a live woman or a man that you saw?"

"Oh, no!" Joyce was positive of that. Mother's hand tightened on hersunderstandingly, and they went on in silence till they met Jenks. 

Jenks was an oldish man with bushy grey whiskers, who never wore acoat, and now he was wet to the loins with mud and water. 

"That there ol' pond, " he explained. "I've been an' took a look ather. Tromped through her proper, I did, an' I'll go bail there ain'tso much as a dead cat in all the mud of her. Thish yer's a mistry, mum, an' no mistake. "

Mother stared at him. "I can't bear this, " she said suddenly. "Youmust go on searching, Jenks, and Walter must go on his bicycle to thepolice station at once. Call him, please!"

"Walter!" roared Jenks obediently. 

"Comin'!" answered the boot-boy, and burst forth from the bushes. Inswift, clear words, which no stupidity could mistake or forget, Mother gave him his orders, spoken in a tone that meant urgency. Walter went flying to execute them. 

"Oh, Mother, where do you think Joan can be?" begged Joyce when Jenkshad gone off to resume his search:

"I don't know, " said Mother. "It's all so absurd. "

"If there was wood-ladies, they wouldn't hurt a baby like Joan, "suggested Joyce. 

"Oh, who could hurt her!" cried Mother, and fell to calling again. Her voice, of which each accent was music, alternated with the harshroars of Jenks. 

Walter on his bicycle must have hurried, in spite of his permanentlypunctured front tire, for it was a very short time before bells rangin the steep lane from the road and Superintendent Farrow himselfwheeled his machine in at the gate, massive and self-possessed, ablue-clad minister of comfort. He heard Mother's tale, which embodiedthat of Joyce, with a half-smile lurking in his moustache and his bigchin creased back against his collar. Then he nodded, exactly as ifhe saw through the whole business and could find Joan in a minute ortwo, and propped his bicycle against the fence. 

"I understand, then, " he said, "that the little girl's been missingfor rather more than an hour. In that case, she can't have got far. Isent a couple o' constables round the roads be'ind the wood before Istarted, an' now I'll just 'ave a look through the wood myself. "

"Thank you, " said Mother. "I don't know why I'm so nervous, but--. "

"Very natural, ma'am, " said the big superintendent, comfortingly, andwent with them to the wood. 

It was rather thrilling to go with him and watch him. Joyce andMother had to show him the place from which Joan had started and thespot at which she had disappeared. He looked at them hard, frowning alittle and nodding to himself, and went stalking mightily among theferns. "It was 'ere she went?" he inquired, as he reached the darkpath, and being assured that it was, he thrust in and commenced hissearch. The pond seemed to give him ideas, which old Jenks disposedof, and he marched on till he came out to the edge of the fields, where the hay was yet uncut. Joan could not have crossed them withoutleaving a track in the tall grass as clear as a cart-rut. 

"We 'ave to consider the possibilities of the matter, " said thesuperintendent. "Assumin' that the wood 'as been thoroughly searched, where did she get out of it?"

"Searched!" growled old Jenks. "There ain't a inch as I 'aven'tsearched an' seen, not a inch. "

"The kidnappin' the'ry, " went on the superintendent, ignoring him andturning to Mother, "I don't incline to. 'Owever, we must go to workin order, an' I'll 'ave my men up 'ere and make sure of the wood. Allgypsies an' tramps will be stopped and interrogated. I don't thinkthere's no cause for you to feel anxious, ma'am. I 'ope to 'ave somenews for you in the course of the afternoon. "

They watched him free-wheel down the lane and shoot round the corner. 

"Oh, dear, " said Mother, then: "Why doesn't the baby come? I wishDaddy weren't away. "

Now that the police had entered the affair Joyce felt that thereremained nothing to be done. Uniformed authority was in charge ofevents; it could not fail to find Joan. She had a vision of thepolice at work, stopping straggling families of tramps on distantby-roads, looking into the contents of their dreadful bundles, flashing the official bull's eye lantern into the mysterious interiorof gypsy caravans, and making ragged men and slatternly women give anaccount of their wanderings. No limits to which they would not go;how could they fail? She wished their success seemed as inevitable toher mother as it did to her. 

"They're sure to bring her back, Mother, " she repeated. 

"Oh, chick, " said Mother, "I keep telling myself so. But I wish Iwish. "

"What, Mother?"

"I wish, " said Mother in a sudden burst of speech, as if she wereconfessing something that troubled her; "I wish you hadn't seen thatwood-lady. "

The tall young constables and the plump fatherly sergeant annoyed oldJenks by searching the wood as though he had done nothing. It was areal search this time. Each of them took a part of the ground andwent over it as though he were looking for a needle which had beenlost, and no fewer than three of them trod every inch of the bottomof the Secret Pond. They took shovels and opened up an old fox'searth; and a sad-looking man in shabby plain clothes arrived andwalked about smoking a pipe a detective! Up from the village, too, came the big young curate and the squire's two sons, civil andsympathetic and eager to be helpful; they all thought it natural thatMother should be anxious, but refused to credit for an instant thatanything could have happened to Joyce. 

"That baby!" urged the curate. "Why, my dear lady, Joan is betterknown hereabouts than King George himself. No one could take her amile without having to answer questions. I don't know what's keepingher, but you may be sure she's all right. "

"Course she is, " chorused the others, swinging their stickslightheartedly. "'Course she's all right. "

"Get her for me, then, " said Mother. "I don't want to be silly, andyou're awfully good. But I must have her; I must have her. I, I wanther. "

The squire's sons turned as if on an order and went towards the wood. The curate lingered a moment. He was a huge youth, an athlete and agentleman, and his hard clean-shaven face could be kind and serious. 

"We're sure to get her, " he said in lower tones. "And you must helpus with your faith and courage. Can you?"

Mother's hand tightened on that of Joyce. 

"We are doing our best, " she said, and smiled she smiled. The curatenodded and went his way to the wood. 

A little later in the afternoon came Colonel Warden, the lord andmaster of all the police in the county, a gay trim soldier whom thechildren knew and liked. With him, in his big automobile, were morepolicemen and a pair of queer liver-colored dogs, all baggy skin andbleary eyes bloodhounds! Joyce felt that this really must settle it. Actual living bloodhounds would be more than a match for Joan. Colonel Warden was sure of it too. 

"Saves time, " he was telling Mother in his high snappy voice. "Showsus which way she's gone, you know. Best hounds in the country, thesetwo; never known 'em fail yet. "

The dogs were limp and quiet as he led them through the wood, strangeungainly mechanisms which a whiff of a scent could set in motion. Apinafore, which Joan had worn at breakfast, was served to them for anindication of the work they had to do; they snuffed at it languidlyfor some seconds. Then the colonel unleashed them. 

They smelled round and about like any other dogs for a while, tillone of them lifted his great head and uttered a long moaning cry. Then, noses down, the men running behind them, they set off acrossthe ferns. Mother, still holding Joyce's hand, followed. The houndsmade a straight line for the wood at the point at which Joan hadentered it, slid in like frogs into water, while the men dodged andcrashed after them. Joyce and Mother came up with them at a placewhere the bushes stood back, enclosing a little quiet space of turfthat lay open to the sky. The hounds were here, one lying down andscratching himself, the other nosing casually and clearly withoutinterest about him. 

"Dash it all, " the colonel was saying; "she can't she simply can'thave been kidnapped in a balloon. "

They tried the hounds again and again, always with the same result. They ran their line to the same spot unhesitatingly, and then gave upas though the scent went no farther. Nothing could induce them tohunt beyond it. 

"I can't understand this, " said Colonel Warden, dragging at hismoustache. "This is queer. " He stood glancing, around him as thoughthe shrubs and trees had suddenly become enemies. 

The search was still going on when the time came for Joyce to go tobed. It had spread from the wood across the fields, reinforced byscores of sturdy volunteers, and automobiles had puffed away tothread the mesh of little lanes that covered the countryside. Joycefound it all terribly exciting. Fear for Joan she felt not at all. 

"I know inside myself, " she told Mother, "right down deep in themiddle of me, that Joan's all right. "

"Bless you, my chick, " said poor Mother. "I wish I could feel likethat. Go to bed now, like a good girl. "

There was discomfort in the sight of Joan's railed cot standing emptyin the night nursery, but Joyce was tired and had scarcely begun tobe touched by it before she was asleep. She had a notion that duringthe night Mother came in more than once, and she had a vague dream, too, all about Joan and wood-ladies, of which she could not remembermuch when she woke up. Joan was always dressed first in the morning, being the younger of the pair, but now there was no Joan, and Nursewas very gentle with Joyce and looked tired and as if she had beencrying. 

Mother was not to be seen that morning; she had been up all night, "till she broke down, poor thing, " said Nurse, and Joyce was biddento amuse herself quietly in the nursery. But Mother was about againat lunch time when Joyce went down to the dining room. She was verypale and her eyes looked black and deep, and somehow t she seemedsuddenly smaller and younger, more nearly Joyce's age, than everbefore. They kissed each other, and the child would have tried tocomfort. 

"No, " said Mother, shaking her head. "No dear. Don't let's be sorryfor each other yet. It would be like giving up hope. And we haven'tdone that, have we?"

"I haven't, " said Joyce. "I know it's all right. "

After lunch again Mother said she wouldn't be hungry till Joan camehome they went out together. There were no searchers now in the woodand the garden was empty; the police had left no inch unscanned andthey were away, combing the countryside and spreading terror amongthe tramps. The sun was strong upon the lawn, and the smell of theroses was heavy on the air; across the hedge, the land rolled away toclear perspectives of peace and beauty. 

"Let's walk up and down, " suggested Mother. "Anything's better thansitting still. And don't talk, chick not just now. "

They paced the length of the lawn, from the cedar to the gate whichled to the wood, perhaps a dozen times, hand in hand and in silence. It was while their backs were turned to the wood that they heard thegate click, and faced about to see who was coming. A blue-sleeved armthrust the gate open, and there advanced into the sunlight, comingforth from the shadow as from a doorway Joan! Her round baby face, with the sleek brown hair over it, the massive infantile body, thesturdy bare legs, confronted them serenely. Mother uttered a deepsigh it sounded like that and in a moment she was kneeling on theground with her arms round the baby. 

"Joan, Joan, " she said over and over again. "My little, little baby!"

Joan struggled in her embrace till she got an arm free, and thenrubbed her eyes drowsily. 

"Hallo!" she said. 

"But where have you been?" cried Mother. "Baby-girl, where have youbeen all this time?"

Joan made a motion of her head and her free arm towards the wood, thewood which had been searched a dozen times over like a pocket. "Inthere, " she answered carelessly. "Wiv the wood-ladies. I'm hungry!"

"My darling!" said Mother, and picked her up and carried her into thehouse. 

In the dining-room, with Mother at her side and Joyce opposite toher, Joan fell to her food in her customary workmanlike fashion, andbetween helpings answered questions in a fashion which only served todarken the mystery of her absence. 

"But there aren't any wood-ladies really, darling, " remonstratedMother. 

"There is, " said Joan. "There's lots. They wanted to keep me but Iwouldn't stay. So I comed home, 'cause I was hungry. "

"But, " began Mother. "Where did they take you to?" she asked. 

"I don't know, " said Joan. "The one what I went to speak to gave meher hand and tooked me to where there was more of them. It was aplace in the wood wiv grass to sit on and bushes all round, and theygave me dead flowers to play wiv. Howwid old dead flowers!"

"Yes, " said Mother. "What else?"

"There was anuvver little girl there, " went on Joan. "Not a wood-ladybut a girl like me, what they'd tooked from somewhere. She waswearing a greeny sort of dress like they was, and they wanted me toput one on too. But I wouldn't. "

"Why wouldn't you?" asked Joyce. 

"'Cause I didn't want to be a wood-lady, " replied Joan. 

"Listen to me, darling, " said Mother. "Didn't these people whom youcall wood-ladies take you away out of the wood? We searched the wholewood, you know, and you weren't there at all. "

"I was, " said Joan. "I was there all the time, an' I heard Walter an'Jenks calling. I cocked a snook at them an' the wood-ladies laughedlike leaves rustling. "

"But where did you sleep last night?"

"I didn't sleep, " said Joan, grasping her spoon anew. "I'se verysleepy now. "

She was asleep as soon as they laid her in bed, and Mother and Joycelooked at each other across her cot, above her rosy and unconsciousface. 

"God help us, " said Mother in a whisper. "What is the truth of this?"

There was never any answer, any hint of a solution, save Joan's. Andshe, as soon as she discovered that her experiences amounted to anadventure, began to embroider them, and now she does not even knowherself. She has reached the age of seven, and it is long since shehas believed in anything so childish as wood-ladies. 

IV

A MAN BEFORE THE MAST

In Tom Mowbray's boarding-house, the sailors who sat upon the narrowbenches round the big room ceased their talk as the door opened andTom Mowbray himself entered from the street. The men in the room, forall the dreary stiffness of their shore-clothes, carried upon theirfaces, in their hands shaped to the rasp of ropes, in every attitudeof their bodies, the ineradicable hall-mark of the sea which was thearena of their lives; they salted the barren place with its vigor andpungency. Pausing within the door, Tom Mowbray sent his paleinexpressive glance flickering along the faces they turned towardshim. 

"Well, boys, " he said; "takin' it easy fer a spell?"

There was a murmur of reply from the men; they watched him warily, knowing that he was not genial for nothing. He was a man of fifty ormore, bloated in body, with an immobile grey face and a gay whitemoustache that masked his gross and ruthless mouth. He was dressedlike any other successful merchant, bulging waistcoat, showy linenand all; the commodity in which he dealt was the flesh and blood ofseamen, and his house was eminent among those which helped thewater-front of San Francisco "the Barbary Coast, " as sailors call itto its unholy fame. He stood among the sunburnt, steady-eyed seamenlike a fungus in fresh grass. 

"An' now, who's for a good ship?" he inquired. There was a sort ofmirth in his voice as he spoke. "Good wages, good grub, an' a softjob. Don't all of ye speak at once. "

The sailors eyed him warily. From the end of the room a white-hairedAmerican looked up wryly. 

"What's her name?" he asked. 

"Name?" Tom Mowbray kept his countenance, though the name was thecream of the joke. He paused, watching the faces of those who hadbeen ashore a week and were due to ship again when he should give theword. "Oh, you don't want to be scared of her name; her name's allright. She's the Etna. "

Somebody laughed, and Tom Mowbray gave him an approving glance; theothers interchanged looks. The Etna had a reputation familiar toseamen and a nickname too; they called her the "Hell-packet. " Of allthe tall and beautiful ships which maintained their smartness andtheir beauty upon the agony of wronged and driven seamen, the Etnawas the most terrible, a blue-water penitentiary, a floating place oftorment. To enhance the strange terror of her, the bitter devil whowas her captain carried his wife on board; the daily brutalities thatmade her infamous went on under the eyes and within the hearing of awoman; it added a touch of the grotesque to what was otherwisefearful enough. 

Tom Mowbray stood enjoying the dumb consternation of his victims. 

"Well, who's for it?" he inquired. "Ain't there none of you thatwants a good ship like that Noo York an' back here, an' eighteendollars a month? Well, I s'pose I'll have to take my pick of yer. "

They knew he had proposed the matter to them only in mockery of theirhelplessness; they were at his mercy, and those he selected wouldhave to go. He would secure an advance of three months of their wagesas payment for their week or so of board; and they would desertpenniless in New York to escape the return voyage. There was noremedy; it was almost a commonplace risk of their weary lives socommonplace a risk that of all those men, accustomed to peril andviolence, there was none to rise and drive a fist into his sleekface. But, from the back of the room, one, nursing a crossed knee, with his pipe in his mouth, spoke with assurance. 

"I'm not goin' aboard of her, " he said. 

Tom Mowbray's heavy brows lowered a little; he surveyed the speaker. It was a young man, sitting remote from the windows, whose face, inthe shadows of the big, bare room, showed yet a briskness ofcoloring. His name Tom remembered it with an effort was Goodwin, Daniel Goodwin; he had been paid off from a "limejuicer" little morethan a week before. 

"Oh, you're not goin' aboard of her?" he queried slowly. 

"No, " answered the young man calmly. "I'm not. "

It was defiance, it was insult; but Tom Mowbray could stand that. Hesmoothed out his countenance, watching while the young man's neighboron the bench nudged him warningly. 

"Well, I gotta find a crowd for her, " he said in tones ofresignation. "I dunno how I'm goin' to do it, though. "

He sighed, the burlesque sigh of a fat man pitying himself, andpassed through the room to the door at the far end. Not till it hadclosed behind him did talk resume. A man who had been three weeksashore leant back against the wall and let his breath escape in asigh, which was not burlesque. For him there was no hope; he was asmuch doomed as if a judge had pronounced sentence on him. 

"Oh, hell!" he said. "Wonder if he'll let me have a dollar to get adrink 'fore I go aboard of her?"

The others turned their eyes on him curiously; whatever happened tothem, he was a man who would sail in the Etna; already he wasisolated and tragic. 

The neighbor who had nudged young Goodwin nudged him again. 

"Come out, " he breathed into the ear that the young man bent towardshim. "Come out; I want to speak t' ye. "

In the street, the mean cobbled street of the Barbary Coast, the manwho nudged took Goodwin by the arm and spoke urgently. 

"Say, ain't ye got no sense?" he demanded. "Talkin' like that to TomMowbray! Don't ye know that's the way to fix him to ship ye aboardthe 'Hell-packet?'"

"He can't ship me aboard any 'Hell-packet, '" answered Goodwinserenely. "When I ship, I ship myself, an' I pay my board in cash. There ain't any advance note to be got out o' me. "

The other halted and drew Goodwin to halt, facing him at the edge ofthe sidewalk, where a beetle-browed saloon projected its awning abovethem. Like Goodwin, he was young and brown; but unlike Goodwin therewas a touch of sophistication, of daunting experience, in theseriousness of his face. The two had met and chummed after thefashion of sailors, who make and lose their friends as the hazard ofthe hour directs. 

"You don't know Tom Mowbray, " he said in a kind of affectionatecontempt. "He's, he's a swine an' he's cute! Didn't you hear abouthim shippin' a corpse aboard o' the Susquehanna, an' drawin' threemonths' advance for it? Why, you ain't got a show with him if he'sgot a down on ye. "

Goodwin smiled. "Maybe I don't know Tom Mowbray, " he said; "but it'sa sure thing Tom Mowbray don't know me. Come on an' have a drink, Jim. This thing of the Etna it's settled. Come on!"

He led the way into the saloon beside them; Jim, growling warningly, followed him. 

At twenty-six, it was Goodwin's age, one should be very much a man. One's moustache is confirmed in its place; one has the stature andmuscle of a man, a man's tenacity and resistance, while the heart ofboyishness still pulses in one's body. It is the age at whichcapacity is the ally of impulse, when heart and hand go paired in aperfect fraternity. One is as sure of oneself as a woman of thirty, and with as much and as little reason. Goodwin, when he announcedthat he, at any rate, would not be one of the crew of the Etna, spokeout of a serene confidence in himself. He knew himself for a fineseaman and a reasonably fine human being; he had not squandered hiswages, and he did not mean to be robbed of his earnings when heshipped himself again. It was his first visit to San Francisco; theports he knew were not dangerous to a man who took care of himself, who was not a drunkard, and would fight at need. He showed assomething under six feet tall, long in the limb and moving handily, with eyes of an angry blue in a face tanned russet by wind and sun. 

In the saloon he laughed down Jim's instances of Tom Mowbray'streachery and cunning, lounging with an elbow on the bar, carelessand confident under the skeptical eyes of the white-jacketed barman. 

"I reckon Tom Mowbray knows when he's safe, " he said. "Why, if he wasto do any o' them things to me I'd get him if I had to dig for him. Yes, sir!"

From thence the course of events ran as anyone familiar with theBarbary Coast might have prophesied. They returned to theboarding-house for supper and joined their fellows at the long tablein the back room, and were waited on by Tom Mowbray's "runners. "Mowbray himself, with his scared, lean wife and his wife's crippledbrother, had a table apart from the men; as he ate he entertainedhimself by baiting the unhappy cripple, till the broken man stammeredtearfully across the table at him, shaking and grimacing in a nervousfrenzy, which Tom Mowbray always found comical. The woman betweenthem sat with her eyes downcast and her face bitter and still; theymade a picture of domesticity at which the sailors stared in afascination of perplexity, while the hard-faced "runners" in theirshirt-sleeves carried the plates to and from the kitchen, and theritual of the evening meal proceeded to its finish. 

If there was in Goodwin a quality more salient than his youthfulforce and his trust in his own capacity, it was the manner he had ofseeing absorbedly the men and things that presented themselves to hiseyes, so that even in dull and trivial matters he gathered strongimpressions and vivid memories. The three people at the little tablemade a group from which, while he ate, he could not withdraw hiseyes. The suffering passivity of the woman, the sly, sinister humorin Tom Mowbray's heavy, grey face, the livid and impotent hate thatfrothed in the crippled man, and his strange jerky gestures, theatmosphere of nightmare cruelty and suffering that enveloped themlike a miasma these bit themselves into his imagination and left itsore. He saw and tasted nothing of what he ate and drank; he was lostin watching the three at the other table; the man who refilled hiscup with coffee winked across his head to one of the others as thoughin mirth at his abstraction. 

In the ordinary way he would have gone for a walk up-town with hisfriend after supper; but he was not in a mood for company thatevening and found himself sleepy besides. He went upstairs to thebedroom he shared with two other men to get some tobacco he hadthere, and discovered in himself so strong an inclination to slumberthat he decided to go to bed forthwith. He lit his pipe and sat downon his bed to take his boots off. He had one boot unlaced but stillon his foot when his pipe dropped from his lips. Across his druggedand failing brain there flickered for an instant the blurred shape ofa suspicion. 

"What's the matter with me?" he half cried; and tried to rise to hisfeet. 

He knew he had failed to stand up and had fallen back on the bed. With his last faculties he resisted the tides of darkness that rushedin upon him; then his grasp upon consciousness loosened and his face, which had been knitted in effort, relaxed. When half an hour laterTom Mowbray and two of his "runners" came to find him, he lay, scarcely breathing, in the appearance of a profound and naturalsleep. 

It was thirty-six hours later when a vague consciousness of pain, growing upon his poisoned nerves, sharpened to a climax, and heopened his eyes, lying where he found himself without moving. It tookhim some minutes before he brought his mind into co-ordination withhis senses to realize what he saw. Then it was plain to him that hewas lying upon the bare slats of a bunk in the narrow forecastle of aship. Its door, hooked open, made visible a slice of sunlit deck anda wooden rail beyond it, from which the gear of the foremast slantedup. Within the forecastle only three of the bunks containedmattresses and blankets, and there was no heave and sway under him tobetoken a ship under sail in a seaway. 

Slowly the sailor within him asserted itself. "This hooker's atanchor!"

By degrees he began to account for himself. Recollection returned: hehad waked in a bare and bedless bunk, but it was at Tom Mowbray's hehad fallen asleep. He remembered going up to his room and thesleepiness that had pressed itself upon him there. And there was athought, a doubt, that had been with him at the last. It eluded himfor a moment; then he remembered and sat up, in an access of vigorand anger as he recalled it. 

"Knock-out drops, " he said. "Yes, by God! Tom Mowbray's shanghaiedme!"

His head ached, his skin and his mouth were parched as if by a fever. Stiffly he swung himself over the edge of his bunk and went on feetthat were numb and uncertain through the door to the deck. He wassore all over from lying on the bare slats of the bunk, and the dregsof the drug still clogged his mind and muscles; but like the flame ina foul lantern there burned in him the fires of anger. 

"Shanghaied!" he repeated as he reeled to the rail and caught at abackstay to steady himself. "Well, the man that did it wants to hidewhen I get ashore again. "

He cast his eyes aft over the ship on which he found himself, summingher up with an automatic expertness. An American ship, it was plain, and a three-skysail-yarder at that, with a magnificent stature andspread of spars. Abeam of her San Francisco basked along its shore;she was at an anchor well out in the bay. What ship was it that hehad viewed from a dock-head lying just there? The answer was on hislips even before his eyes discovered the boat she carried on top ofthe fo'c'sle, with her name lettered upon it. Tom Mowbray had provedhis power by shanghaiing him aboard the Etna!

He said nothing: the situation was beyond mere oaths, but wrathsurged in him like a flood. 

Around the for'ard house, walking with measured steps, came Mr. Fant, the mate of the Etna, and accosted him. 

"Sobered up, have ye?" said Mr. Fant. 

"Yes, sir, " said Goodwin. 

"That's right, " said Mr. Fant, smiling, surveying him with anappearance of gentle interest. "Knock-out drops?" he inquired. 

"Yes, sir, " answered Goodwin again, watching him. 

"Ah!" Mr. Fant shook his head. "Well, you're all right now, " he said. "Stick yer head in a bucket an' ye'll be ready to turn to. "

Mr. Fant had his share in the fame of the Etna; he was a part of hercharacter. Goodwin, though his mind still moved slowly, eyed himintently, gauging the man's strange and masked quality, probing themildness of his address for the thing it veiled. He saw the mate ofthe Etna as a spare man of middle-age, who would have been tall butfor the stoop of his shoulders. His shaven face was constrictedprimly; he had the mouth of an old maid, and stood slack-bodied withhis hands sunk in the pockets of his jacket. Only the tightness ofhis clothes across his chest and something sure and restrained in hisgait as he walked hinted of the iron thews that governed his leanbody; and, while he spoke in the accents of an easy civility, hisstony eyes looked on Goodwin with an unblinking and remorselessaloofness. It was not hard to imagine him, when the Etna, with hercrew seduced or drugged to man her, should be clear of soundings andthe business of the voyage put in shape, when every watch on deckwould be a quaking ordeal of fear and pain, and every watch below aninterval for mere despair. 

The vision of it made Goodwin desperate. 

"I haven't signed on, sir, " he protested. "I've been shanghaied here. This ain't. "

He paused under the daunting compulsion of Mr. Fant's eye. 

"You've signed on all right, " said Mr. Fant. "Your name's John Smithan' you signed on yesterday. You don't want to make any mistake aboutthat, Smith. "

He spoke as mildly as ever and yet was menacing and terrible. ButGoodwin was insistent. 

"My name's Goodwin, " he persisted. "Tom Mowbray drugged me and shovedme on board. I want to go ashore. "

Mr. Fant turned to go aft. "You get yer head into a bucket, " hecounselled. "Hurry up, now. There's work waitin' to be done. "

"I won't!" shouted Goodwin. 

"Eh!" Mr. Fant's voice was still mild as he uttered the exclamation, but before Goodwin could repeat himself he had moved. As if somespring in him had been released from tension, the mild and prim Mr. Fant whirled on his heel, and a fist took Goodwin on the edge of thejaw and sent him gasping and clucking on to his back; while, with theprecision of a movement rehearsed and practiced, Mr. Fant's bootedfoot swung forward and kicked him into the scuppers. He lay there onhis back, looking up in an extremity of terror and astonishment atthe unmoved face of the mate. 

"Get up, Smith, " commanded Mr. Fant. Goodwin obeyed, scarcelyconscious of the pain in his face and flank in the urgency of themoment. "Now you get the bucket, same as I told you, and when you'vefreshened yourself come aft an' I'll start you on a job. See?"

"Aye, aye, sir, " responded Goodwin mechanically, and started for-ard. The Etna had absorbed him into her system; he was initiated alreadyto his role of a driven beast; but tenacious as an altar fire thereglowed yet within him the warmth of his anger against Tom Mowbray. Itwas secret, beyond the reach of Mr. Fant's fist; the fist was onlyanother item in Tom Mowbray's debt. 

From his place on the crossjack-yard, to which Mr. Fant sent him, Goodwin had presently a view of the captain's wife. She came to thepoop from the cabin companion-way and leaned for a while on thetaffrail, seeming to gaze at the town undulating over the hills, dwarfed by the distance. It was when she turned to go down again thatGoodwin had a full view of her face, bleak and rigid, with greyinghair drawn tightly back from the temples, as formal and blank as theface of a clock. It was told of her that she would sit knitting inher chair by the mizzen fife-rail while at the break of the poop amiserable man was being trodden and beaten out of the likeness ofhumanity and never lift her head nor shift her attitude for all hiscries and struggles. It was her presence aboard that touched theman-slaughtering Etna with her quality of the macabre. 

"But she won't see me broken up, " swore Goodwin to himself as herhead vanished in the hood of the companion. "No not if I've got toset the damn ship alight!"

He made the acquaintance, when work was over for the day, of hisfellows in ill-fortune, the owners of the three occupied bunks in theforecastle. As if the Etna had laid herself out to starve him ofevery means of comfort, they proved to be "Dutchmen" that is to say, Teutons of one nationality or another and therefore, by sea-canons, his inferiors, incapable of sharing his feelings and not to betrusted with his purpose. One question, however, they were able toanswer satisfactorily. It had occurred to him that since even TomMowbray could only get men for the Etna by drugging them, herofficers would probably take special precautions to guard againstdesertion. 

"Do they lock us in here at night?" he asked of the three of themwhen they sat at supper in the port fo'c'sle. 

They stared at him uncomprehendingly. For them, helots of the sea, the Etna's terrors were nothing out of the way; all ships used themharshly; life itself was harsh enough. Their bland blond faces werestupid and amiable. 

"Log us in!" answered one of them. "No! For what shall they log usin?"

"That's all right, then, " said Goodwin and let them continue to stareat him, ruminating his reasons for the question. 

There was a fourth "Dutchman" who slumbered through the day in thestarboard fo'c'sle and sat all night in the galley, in the exerciseof his functions as night-watchman. His lamp shed a path of lightfrom the galley door to the rail when, his fellows in the fo'c'slebeing, audibly asleep, Goodwin rose from his bunk and came forth tothe deck. Far away, across the level waters of the great bay, thelights of the city made an illumination against the background of thenight; overhead there was a sky bold with stars; the Etna floatedmute in a rustle of moving waters. There were no ships near her; onlynow and again a towboat racing up from the Golden Gates went by withthe noise of a breaking wave on a steep shore. In the break of thepoop there showed the light of Mr. Fant's window, where he lay in hisbunk, relaxing his grisly official personality with a book and acigar. 

In deft haste Goodwin stepped to the fore side of the fo'c'sle, wherehe would be hidden should the watchman take a fancy to look out ofhis galley. In him a single emotion was constant: he had a need tofind Tom Mowbray. It was more than an idea or a passion: it was likethe craving of a drug maniac for his poison. The shore that blinkedat him across the black waters was not inaccessible under the impulseof that lust of anger; he was at all times a strong swimmer. Undershelter of the deckhouse he stripped his clothes and made of them itwas only his shirt and trousers a bundle which the belt that carriedhis sheath-knife fastened upon his head, descending under his chinlike a helmet-strap. With infinite precaution to be unheard he wentin this trim across the deck to the rail. 

The Etna's chain-plates were broad as a frigate's; he had but to lethimself down carefully and he was in the water without a splash. Adozen strokes took him clear of her, and presently he paused, up-ending and treading water, to look back at her. She stood up overher anchors like a piece of architecture, poising like a tower; thesailor in him paid tribute to the builders who had conceived herbeauty. They had devised a ship: it needed Mr. Fant and hiscolleagues to degrade her into a sea-going prophet and give aptnessto her by-name of "Hell-packet. " He was clear of her now; he mightfail to reach the shore and drown, but at least the grey woman aftwould never see his humiliation and defeat. He turned over, settinghis face to the waterside lights of the city, and struck out. 

It was a long swim, and it was fortunate for him that he took thewater on the turn of the tide, so that where the tail of the ebb sethim down the first of the flood bore him back. The stimulus of thechill and the labor of swimming cleared the poison from his body andbrain; he swam steadily, with eyes fixed on the lights beading thewaterside and mind clenched on the single purpose to find TomMowbray, to deal with him, to satisfy the anger which ached in himlike a starved appetite. How he would handle him, what he would dowith him, when he found him, did not occupy his thoughts; it was apurpose and not a plan which was taking him ashore. He had the man'spursy large face for ever in his consciousness; the vision of it wasa spur, an exasperation; he found himself swimming furiously, wastingstrength, in the thought of encountering it. 

Good luck and not calculation brought him ashore on the broadside ofthe Barbary Coast, in a small dock where a Norwegian barque layslumbering alongside the wharf. Her watchman, if she had one, was notin sight; it was upon her deck that he dressed himself, fumblinghurriedly into the shirt and trousers which he had failed, after all, to keep dry. He jerked his belt tight about him and felt thesheath-knife which it carried pressing against his back. He reachedback and slid it round to his right side, where his hand would dropon it easily; it might chance that before the night was over he wouldneed a weapon. 

He had no notion of the hour nor of the length of time he had been inthe water. As he passed bare-footed from the wharf he was surprisedto find the shabby street empty under its sparse lamps. It laybetween its mean houses vacant and unfamiliar in its quietude; itseemed to him as though the city waited in a conscious hush till heshould have done what he had come to do. His bare feet on thesidewalk slapped and shuffled, and he hurried along close to thewalls; the noise he made, for all his caution, appeared to himmonstrous, enough to wake the sleepers in the houses and draw them totheir windows to see the man who was going to find Tom Mowbray. 

An alley between gapped and decrepit board fences brought him to theback of the house he sought; he swung himself into the unsavory backyard of it without delaying to seek for the gate. The house was overhim, blank and lightless, its roof a black heap against the nightsky. He paused to look up at it. He was still without any plan; noteven now did he feel the need of one. To go in to break in, if thatwere the quickest way to stamp his stormy way up the room where TomMowbray was sleeping, to wrench him from his bed and then let loosethe maniac fury that burned within him all that was plain to do. Hecast a glance at the nearest window, and then it was that the door ofthe house opened. 

He was standing to one side, a dozen paces from it; a single, noiseless step took him to the wall, against which he backed, screened by the darkness, and waited to see who would come forth. Afigure appeared and lingered in the doorway, and he caught thesibilance of a whisper, and immediately upon it a dull noise oftapping, as though someone beat gently and slowly against the doorwith a clenched hand. It was a noise he had heard before; hisfaculties strained themselves to identify it. Then a second figureappeared, smaller than the first, moving with a strange gait, and heknew. It was the cripple, Mowbray's brother-in-law, and it was hisleather-shod crutch which had tapped on the floor of the passage. Thetwo figures moved down the yard together, and presently, as theypassed from the shadow of the house and came within the feeble lightof a lamp that burned at the mouth of the alley, he saw that thetaller of the two was Tom Mowbray's wife. They found the gate in thefence and opened it, manifestly hesitating at the strident creakingit made, and passed through. At no moment were they clear to see, butto Goodwin's eyes their very gait was in some way expressive of atragic solemnity that clad them. 

He remained silent in his place as they went along the alley towardsthe street, passing him at arm's length on the other side of thefence. Their footsteps were muffled on the unpaved ground of thealley, but there was another noise which he heard the noise of thewoman weeping weeping brokenly and openly. Then the cripple's harsh, hopeless voice spoke. 

"Anyway, we're alone together again for a bit, Sally, " he croaked. 

The woman checked her sobs to answer. "Yes, honey, " she replied. 

Goodwin waited till the tapping of the crutch had receded. "Sothey've quit him at last, " he reflected. "And" he stepped forth fromhis hiding place briskly "they've left the door open. Now for TomMowbray!"

Once within the door he was no longer careful to be silent. The housewas dark, and he had to grope his way to the stairs, or he would haverun at and up them at the top of his speed. The place seemed full ofdoors closed upon sleeping people; someone on an upper floor was. Snoring with the noise of a man strangling. He moved among themawkwardly, but he knew which was the room that harbored his man. Thedoor of it was before him at last. He fumbled and found the handle. 

"Now!" he said aloud, and thrust it open. 

His vision of vengeance had shown him the room that was to be itsarena, but this room was dark and he could not see it. He had notallowed for that. He swore as the door swung to behind him. 

"Mowbray!" he called. "Mowbray, you blasted robber! Wake up an' getwhat's comin' to you!"

There was no answering stir to tell him the direction in which tospring with hands splayed for the grapple. The room had a strangestillness; in spite of himself he held his breath to listen for TomMowbray's breathing. His right arm brushed the hilt of hissheath-knife as he stood, tense and listening. There was no sound ofbreathing, but there was something. 

It was like the slow tick of a very quiet clock, measured andpersistent. He could not make it out. 

"Mowbray!" he called once more, and the only answer was thatpat-a-pat that became audible again when he ceased to call. 

"I bet I'll wake you, " he said, and stepped forward feeling beforehim with his hands. They found the surface of a table, struck andknocked over a glass that stood upon it, and found a box of matches. "Ah!" grunted Goodwin triumphantly. 

The match-flame languished ere it stood steady and let the room beseen. Goodwin had passed the bed and was standing with his back toit. With the match in his fingers and his eyes dazzled by its light, he turned and approached it. The face of Mowbray showed wide-openeyes at him from the pillow. The bedclothes lay across his chest; onearm hung over the edge of the bed with the hand loose and limp. Andabove his neck his night-clothes and the linen of the bed were soddenand dreadful with blood that had flowed from a frightful wound in thethroat. What had sounded like the ticking of a clock was now thenoise of its dripping. "Drip!" it went; "drip-drip!"

The match-flame stung his fingers and went out. 

"Hell!" cried Goodwin, and out of the darkness panic swooped on him. 

There was a moment when he tried to find the door and could not, alone in the blackness of the room with the murdered man. He caughtat himself desperately to save himself from screaming, and found thematchbox was in his hand. He failed to light two matches, standingoff the lunatic terror that threatened him. 

Somewhere out of sight he knew that Tom Mowbray's eyes were open. Thethird match fired and he had the door by the handle. It restored himlike a grip of a friendly hand. 

He was able to pause in the door while the match burned and his mindraced. There leaped to the eye of his imagination the two strickenfigures he had seen slinking from the house, the weeping of thewoman, the muffled tap of the man's crutch. There followed, in aninevitable sequence, the memory of them in their torment as they satat meat with Tom Mowbray. 

"I wonder which o' them done it?" he thought, and shuddered. Where hestood he could see the still face of the dead man, with its shape ofpower and pride overcast now by the dreadful meekness of the dead. Hecould not pursue the thought, for another came up to drive it fromhis mind. 

"Supposin' somebody woke and come out and saw me here!"

To think of it was enough. Drawing the door to behind him he wentdown the stairs. He had been careless of noise in ascending; now eachcreak of the warped boards was an agony. The snorer had turned overin bed; the awful house had a graveyard stillness. He held his breathtill he was clear of it and again in the hushed and empty street. 

"The Etna for mine, if I can make it, " he breathed to himself as hewent at a run in the shadow of the silent houses. "God! If anyone wasto see me!"

And thus it was that the first pallor of dawn beheld the incredibleand unprecedented sight of an able seaman, with his clothes strappedupon his head, swimming at peril of his life in San Francisco bay, toget aboard of the "Hell-packet. "

V

THE GIRL

The little mission hall showed to the shabby waterside street ofJersey City its humble face of brick and the modest invitation of itsopen door, from which at intervals there overflowed the sudden musicof a harmonium within. Goodwin, ashore for the evening, with theempty hours of his leisure weighing on him like a burden, heard thatmusic rise about him, as he moved along the saloon-dotted sidewalk, with something of the mild surprise of a swimmer who passes out of acold into a warm current. For lack of anything better to do, he hadbeen upon the point of returning to his ship, where she lay in herdock. He had not spoken to a soul since he had come ashore atsundown, and the simple music was like a friendly prompting. Hehesitated a moment for he was not a frequenter of missions thenturned in at the entrance of the hall. 

The music of the harmonium and of the voices that sang with it seemedto swell at him as he pushed open the swing door and tiptoed intoward a back seat, careful to be noiseless. But there were headsthat turned, none the less heads of tame sailors from the ships, forwhose service the mission struggled to exist, and a few sleek facesof shore folk; and, on the low platform at the upper end of the hall, the black-coated, whiskered missioner who presided over the gatheringcraned his neck to look at the new-comer, without ceasing to singwith vigor. It was, in short, such a meeting as an idle sailor mightdrop in upon in any one of a hundred ports. Goodwin recognized thevery atmosphere of it its pervading spirit of a mild and very honestgeniality, the peculiar nasal tone of its harmonium, and the timidityof the singing. Standing in his place in the back row of seats, hewas going on to identify it at further points, when he felt a touchon his arm. 

"Eh?" he demanded under his breath, turning. 

A tall girl was offering him a little red, paper-covered hymn-book, open at the hymn that was then being sung, her ungloved fingerpointing him the very verse and line. He did not at once take it. Shehad come upon him surprisingly, and now, while he stared at her, hewas finding her surprising in herself. Under the brim of her hat herface showed gentle and soft, with something of a special kindliness;and, because others were watching her, she had a little involuntarysmile of embarrassment. 

She glanced up at him shyly, and let her eyes fall before his. Thefinger with which she pointed him the place on the page seemed toGoodwin, whose hands were like hoofs for callousness and size, exquisite and pathetic in its pink slenderness. It was not merelythat she was beautiful and feminine in that moment Goodwin could nothave been positive that she was beautiful but a dim allurement, acharm made up of the grace of her bowed head, her timid gesture ofproffering him the book, her nearness, and her fragile delicacy oftexture, enhanced and heightened the surprise of her. 

"Gosh!" breathed Goodwin, unthinking; then, "Thank you, miss, " as hetook the hymn-book from her. 

She smiled once more, and went back to her place at the farther endof the row of seats in front of Goodwin's, where he could still seeher. He found himself staring at her in a sort of perplexity; she hadrevealed herself to him with a suddenness that gave her a little thequality of an apparition. The bend of her head above her book broughtto view, between the collar of her coat and her soft brown hair, agleam of white nape that fascinated him; she was remote, ethereal, wondrously delicate and mysterious. He sprawled in his place, whenthe hymn was over, with an arm over the back of his seat, intentmerely to see her and slake the appetite of his eyes. 

"She's she's a looker, all right!" He had a need to make some commentupon this uplifting experience of his, and this was the best he coulddo. 

He had come in late sailors' missions are used to late-comers andearly-goers and it was not long before the simple service came to aclose and the meeting began to break up. Goodwin took his cap androse, watching the tall girl as she went forward to join a couple ofolder women. The black-coated man came down from the platform andmade his way toward Goodwin, amiable intentions visibly alight in hiswhiskered face. 

"Haven't seen you here before, " he said at Goodwin's elbow. "Whatship d'you belong to?"

Goodwin, recalled to himself, looked down into the kindly, narrowface of the missioner. He himself was tall, a long-limbed young man, with a serious, darkly tanned face in which the blue of the eyesshowed up strongly; and in his bearing and the fashion of his addressthere was a touch of that arrogance which men acquire who earn theirbread at the hourly hazard of their lives. 

"Oh, I just dropped in, " he said awkwardly. "I belong to th' Etna, lyin' in the dock down yonder. "

The missioner smiled and nodded. 

"Etna, eh? Ah, yes. Somebody was tellin' me about the Etna. A hardship that's what you call her, eh?"

Goodwin nodded, and considered the face upturned toward his owninnocent, benevolent, middle-aged, worn, too, with hopes anddisappointments, yet unscarred by such bitter knowledge as men gainedearly aboard the Etna. 

"We call her the 'Hell-packet, '" he answered seriously. 

The missioner nodded, and his smile, though it flickered, survived. 

"It's an ugly name, " he said; "but maybe she deserves it. An' so yousaw our door open and just stepped in? It's always open in theevenin's and on Sundays, an' we'll always be glad to see you. Now, I'd like to make you acquainted with one of our young ladies, so'syou won't feel you're a stranger, eh? An' then maybe you'll comeagain. "

"Oh, I dunno" began Goodwin, fidgeting. 

But the missioner was already beckoning with a black-sleeved arm. His pale elderly face seemed to shine. 

Goodwin turned, looked to see whom he summoned, and forthwith droppedhis cap, so that he was bent double to pick it up when the younglady, the tall girl who had offered him the hymn-book, arrived. Hecame upright again face to face with her, abandoned by his faculties, a mere sop of embarrassment before the softness of her eyes and thesmile of her lips. 

The missioner's official voice brayed between them benevolently. Goodwin had a momentary sense that there was a sort of indecency inthus trumpeting forth the introduction; it should have been donesolemnly, gracefully, like a ceremony. 

"Miss James, " said the missioner noisily, "here's a friend that'svisitin' us for the first time. Now, I want you to persuade him tocome again, an' tell him he'll be welcome just as often as he likesto come an' see us. His name's, er. "

"Goodwin, " replied the sailor awkwardly. 

The missioner shook his hand warmly, putting eloquence into theshake. He cut it short to intercept a brace of seamen who were makingfor the door. Goodwin saw him bustle up and detain them with hisgreeting: "Haven't seen you here before. What ship d'you belong to?"Then he turned back to the girl. 

"Do you belong to a ship?" she asked. 

"Yes, " he answered. "The Etna. "

He had been eager to hear her speak. She had a voice with shadows init, a violin voice. Goodwin, relishing it like an apt gift, couldonly tell himself that it fitted and completed that strange effectshe had of remoteness and unreality. 

"What was your last port?" she asked. 

He told her, and she went on with her conventional string ofquestions to make talk, to carry out the missioner's purpose insummoning her. The danger of seafaring, the strangeness of life inships, the charm of travel she went through the whole list, gettinganswers as conventional as her queries. He was watching her, takingpleasure in her quality and aspect; and at last he saw, with a smallthrill, that she was watching him likewise. 

If he had been a vainer man, he might have been aware that he, in hisway, was as well worth looking at as she in hers. He was big andlimber, in the full ripeness of his youth, sunburned and level-eyed. His life in ships had marked him as plainly as a branding-iron. Therewas present in him that air which men have, secret yet visible, whoknow familiarly the unchanging horizons, the strange dawns, thetempest-pregnant skies of the sea. For the girl he was asunaccountable as she for him. 

"Say, Miss James, " he asked suddenly, breaking in on her twentiethpolite question, "d'you come to this joint, I mean, to this meetin'house every night?"

Her face seemed to shape itself naturally to a smile; she smiled now. 

"I can't come every night, " she answered; "but I come pretty often. I, I hope you'll come sometimes, now. "

Goodwin discounted that; it was no more than the missioner had biddenher to say. 

"Are you goin' to be here tomorrow?" he demanded. 

Her mild, pretty face flushed faintly; the meaning of his questionwas palpable. 

"Ye-es, " she hesitated; "I expect I'll be coming to-morrow. "

"That's all right, then, " said Goodwin cheerfully. "An' I'll bealong, too. "

The elderly woman whom she had left at the missioner's summons washovering patiently. Goodwin held out his hand. 

"Good night, Miss James, " he said. 

She gave him her hand, and he took it within his own, enveloping itspale slenderness in his rope-roughened palm. He held it just longenough to make her raise her eyes and meet his; then he released her, and, avoiding the anti-climax of a further talk with the missioner, passed out of the hall to the dark and sparsely peopled street. 

At a small saloon whose lights spilled themselves across his path, hegot himself a glass of beer; he was feeling just such a thirst as aman knows after nervous and exacting labor. The blond, white-jacketedbarman glanced at him curiously, marking perhaps something distraughtand rapt in his demeanor. Goodwin, ignoring him, took his beer andleaned an elbow on the bar, looking round the place. 

A couple of Germans were playing a game at a table near the door. Aman in the dumb-solemn stage of drunkenness stood regarding his emptyglass with owlish fixity. It was all consistent with a certain mannerand degree of life; it was commonplace, established in the order ofthings. In the same order were the dreary street without, and theEtna, loading at her wharf for the return voyage to San Francisco. Their boundaries were the limits of lives; one had but to cross them, to adventure beyond them, and all the world was different. A dozensteps had taken him from the sidewalk into the mission hall and thesoft-glowing wonder of the girl; another dozen steps had replaced himon the sidewalk. It almost seemed as if a man might choose what worldhe would live in. 

"Feelin' bad?" queried the barman softly; he could no longer containhis curiosity. 

"Me!" exclaimed Goodwin. "No!"

"Well, " said the barman apologetically Goodwin was a big anddangerous-looking young man "you're lookin' mighty queer, anyway. "And he proceeded to wipe the bar industriously. 

The Etna had left San Francisco with a crew of fourteen men beforethe mast, of whom twelve had been "Dutchmen. " On her arrival in NewYork, these twelve had deserted forthwith, forfeiting the pay due tothem rather than face the return voyage under the Etna's officers. There remained in her forecastle now only Goodwin and one other, anold seaman named Noble, a veteran who had followed the sea and sharedthe uncertain fate of ships since the days of single topsails. 

Noble was seated on his battered chest when Goodwin unhooked thefo'c'sle door and entered. A globe-lamp that hung above him shed itslight upon his silver head as he bent over his work of patching apair of dungaree overalls, and he looked up in mild welcome of theother's return. His placidity, his venerable and friendly aspect, gave somehow to the bare forecastle, with its vacant bunks like emptycoffin-shelves in a vault, an air of domesticity, the comfortablequality of a home. Save for brief intervals between voyages, insailors' boarding-houses, such places had been "home" to Noble forfifty years. 

Goodwin rehooked the door, and stood outside the globe-lamp's circleof dull light while he took off his coat. Old Noble, sail needlebetween his fingers, looked up from his work amiably. 

"Well?" he queried. "Been havin' a hell of a good time uptown, eh?"

"That's so, " retorted Goodwin shortly. "A hell of a time an' all. "

The old man nodded and began to sew again, sailor fashion, thrustingthe big needle with the leather "palm" which seamen use instead of athimble. Goodwin, standing by his bunk, began to cut himself a fillfor his pipe. 

"Ain't been robbed, have ye?" inquired old Noble. 

In his view, and according to his experience, a sailor with money onhim ran peculiar risks when he went ashore. When Goodwin had been"shanghaied" in San Francisco drugged and carried on boardunconscious while another man "signed on" for him and drew threemonths of his wages in advance those who shipped him had omitted tosearch him, and his money-belt was intact. 

"Robbed? No!" answered Goodwin impatiently. 

He lit his pipe, drawing strongly at the pungent ship's tobacco, andseated himself on the edge of the lower bunk, facing old Noble. Theold man continued to sew, his hand moving rhythmically to and frowith the needle, his work spread conveniently in his lap. But for therusty red of his tanned skin, he looked like a handsome and wise oldwoman. 

"Jim, " said Goodwin at last. 

"Yes?" The old man did not look up. 

"There wasn't nothin' doin' ashore there, " said Goodwin. "I just wentfor a walk along the street, and then I well, there wasn't nothin'doin', ye see, so I went into a sort o' mission that there was. "

"Eh?" Old Noble raised his head sharply and peered at him. "Ye ain'tbeen an' got religion, Dan?"

"No, I haven't, " answered Goodwin. "But say, Jim, I went into theplace, and there was a girl there. She come over to loan me ahymn-book first of all, an' afterwards what ye laughin' at, blastye?"

Old Noble had uttered no sound, but he had bent his head over hissewing and his broad shoulders were shaking. He lifted a face ofelderly, cynical mirth. 

"It ain't nothin', Dan, " he protested. "It's just me thinkin' firstye'd bin robbed and then ye'd got religion; an' all the time it'sjust a girl ye've seen. Go on, Dan; how much did she get out of ye?"

"Stow that!" warned Goodwin. "She wasn't that kind. This one was say, Jim, if you was to see her just once, you'd know things ashore ain'tall as bad as you fancy. Sort of soft, she was all tender and gentleand shining! Gosh, there ain't no words to put her in. I didn't knowthere was any girls like that. "

"Nor me, " put in old Noble dryly. He inspected Goodwin with a shrewdand suspicious eye. For him, a citizen of the womanless seas, beauty, grace, femininity were no more than a merchandise. "Then, to put itstraight, she didn't get yer money from ye?" he demanded. 

"No, she didn't, " retorted Goodwin. "Not a cent, is that plainenough? Ain't you ever known no women but the rotten ones, man?"

Noble shook his head. 

"Then you don't know what you're talkin' about, " said Goodwin. "Thisone it ain't no use tellin' you, Jim. I seen her, that's all; an' I'mgoin' to quit. This sailorizin' game ain't the only game there is, an' I'm done with it. "

"Ah!" The old man sat with both gnarled and labor-stained hands lyingupon the unfinished work in his lap. The cynical, half-humorousexpression faded from his thin, strong face. He frowned at theyounger man consideringly, seriously. 

"Then she did get something out o' ye, " he said harshly. "You'retalkin' like a fool, Dan. This old ship ain't no soft berth, I know;but then, you ain't no quitter, either. This girl's got ye goin'; yewant to watch out. "

"Quitter!" Goodwin took him up hotly. They faced each other acrossthe narrow fo'c'sle vehemently; their shadows sprawled on deck andbulkhead as they bent forward and drew back in the stress of talk. "When a man's shanghaied aboard a blasted hooker like this, withthree months of his wages stolen before he gets the knockout dropsout o' his head, is he a quitter when he takes his chance to leaveher an' look for a white man's job?"

"Yes, he is, " answered Noble. "You're a sailor, ain't you? Then stickby your ship. "

"Oh, it ain't no use talkin' to you!" Goodwin rose to his feet. "You'dmake out that a man 'u'd go to heaven for stickin' to his ship, evenif he done forty murders. I'm goin' to quit, an' that's all there isto it. "

Old Noble looked up at him where he stood. The old face, that hadbeen mild and indulgent, was hardened to an angry contempt. He wasold and strong, dexterous in all seamanlike arts, a being shaped forgood and evil both by half a century of seafaring, of wrong andhardship, or danger and toil, of scant food and poor pay. Never inhis life had he held back from a task because it was dangerous ordifficult, nor sided with an officer against a man before the mast, nor deserted a ship. His code was simple and brief, but it was ofiron. 

"Well, quit, then, " he said. "Quit like the Dutchmen! There's no onewill stop ye. "

"They better not, " menaced Goodwin angrily. 

He had been shanghaied, of course, without chest or bag, without evenbedding, so that he had worked his way around the Horn in shoddyclothes and flimsy oilskins obtained from the ship's slop-chest. There was little that he had a mind to take ashore with him; it wentquickly into a small enough bundle. While he turned out his bunk, oldNoble sat watching him without moving, with judgment in his face, andsorrow. He was looking on at the death of a good seaman. 

"Say, Jim!" Goodwin was ready; he stood with his bundle in his hand, his cap on his head. "You don't want to be a fool, now. I reckon wecan shake hands, anyhow. "

He felt himself loath to leave the old man in anger; he had for himboth liking and respect. But Noble did not answer only continued forsome moments to look him in the face, unsoftened, stern and grieved, then bent again above his sewing. 

Goodwin withdrew the hand he had held out. 

"Have it your own way, " he said, and went forth from the forecastle, leaving the old man, with the lamplight silvering his sparse hair, atwork upon the patched overalls. And, in that moment, not even thevision of the girl and his hope of the future could save him from apang of sadness. It was as if he had, by his going, darkened a home. 

Outside upon the deck he stayed to cast a glance about him. The bigship, beautiful as a work of art in her lines and proportions, showedvacant of life. A light glimmered from the galley door, where thedecrepit watchman slumbered at his ease. There was nothing to detainhim. The great yards, upon which he had fought down the sodden andfrozen canvas in gales off the Horn, spread over him. She was fine, she was potent, with a claim upon a man's heart; and she wasnotorious for a floating, hell upon the seas. It was her character;she was famous for brutality to seamen, so that they deserted at thefirst opportunity and forfeited their wages. And Noble would have himloyal to her!

He swore at her shortly, and forced himself to cross the deck andclimb over the rail to the wharf. The conduct of Noble was sore inhis mind. But, as the earth of the shore gritted under his boots, that trouble departed from him. The world, after all, was wider thanthe decks of the Etna; and in it, an item in its wonder andcomplexity, there lived and smiled the girl. 

Miss James, who smiled so indescribably and asked so many questionsabout seafaring in the way of civil conversation, would probably haveshown small interest in the adventures of a seaman in search of alodging ashore. She would have smiled, of course, with her own littlelift and fall of shy eyes, and been as intangible and desirable asever; but one could never tell her of carrying a small bundle ofunderclothes from one obdurate door to another, unable to show moneyin any convincing amount because one's capital was in a belt underone's shirt. Othello told Desdemona of "antres vast and desertsidle, " not of skeptical landladies. Goodwin felt all this intenselywhen, in the evening of the following day, having finally establishedhimself in a room, he beheld her again in the mission. He beheld herfirst, indeed, as she entered the hall, he watching from the oppositeside of the street. He had no intention of going in if she were notpresent. As it was, a swoop across the street and a little briskmaneuvering secured him a place next to her. 

He had been a little at a loss all day; it was years since he hadlived altogether apart from sailors and he had found himself lonelyand depressed; but the sight of her sufficed to restore him. She gavehim the welcome of a look, and a slow flush mounted on her face. Themissioner was already preparing to open the service, and conversationwas impossible. Nevertheless, as she turned over the pages of herhymn-book, Goodwin bent toward her. 

"Didn't I say I'd be along?" he whispered, and saw her cheek movewith her smile. 

To be close to her, knowing her to be conscious of him, was in itselfa gladness; but Goodwin was impatient for the end of the service. Itwas not his way to stand off and on before a thing he meant to do, and he wanted more talk with her, to get within her guard, to touchthe girl who was screened behind the smile and dim sweetness and thepolite questions of Miss James. He sat frowning through the latterpart of the service, till the missioner, standing upright withtight-shut eyes, gave the closing benediction. Then, compellingly, heturned upon the girl. 

"Say, " he said, "let's get out o' this. I'd like to walk along withyou and talk. Come on!"

Miss James looked at him with startled eyes. He was insistent. 

"Aw, come on, " he pressed. "That preacher'll be here in a minute ifyou don't, and we've had enough of him for one time. I tell you, Iwant to talk to you. "

He rose, and by sheer force of urgency made her rise likewise. He gother as far as the door. "But" she began, hesitating there. 

"Steady as ye go, " bade Goodwin, and took her down the shallow stepsto the sidewalk. "Now, which way is it to be?" he demanded suddenly. 

She did not reply for a couple of moments. The light that issued fromthe hall showed her face as she stood and considered him doubtfully, a little uncertain of what was happening. Even in that half-obscurityof the long street, where she was seen as an attitude, a shape, shemade her effect of a quiet, tender beauty. Then, at last, she smiledand turned and began to walk. Goodwin fell into step beside her, andthe confusion of voices within the hall died down behind them. 

"I had to make you come, " said Goodwin presently. "I just had to. An'you don't want to be scared. "

She glanced sideways at him, but said nothing. 

"You ain't scared, are ye?" he asked. 

"No, " she replied. 

The answer even the brevity of it fulfilled his understanding of her. He nodded to himself. 

"I said I wanted to talk to ye, " he went on; "an' I do. I want totalk to you a whole lot. But there ain't much I got to say. 'Ceptin', maybe, one thing. I'd like to know what your first name is. Oh, Iain't goin' to get fresh an' call you by it I reckon you know that. But thinkin' of you all day an' half the night, like I do, 'MissJames' don't come handy, ye see. "

"Oh!" murmured the girl. It was plain that he had startled her alittle. 

"My first name is Mary, " she answered. 

"Ah!" said Goodwin, and repeated it again and again under his breath. "I might 'most ha' guessed it, " he said. "It's well, it's a name thatfits ye like a coat o' paint, Miss James, A clean, straight name, that is. Mary b'gosh, it was my mother's name. "

"I'm glad you like it, " said the girl, in her deep-toned, pleasantvoice. "You know, Mr. Goodwin, it was a bit queer the way you made mecome away from the hall. "

"Ah, but that's not troublin' you, " replied Goodwin quickly. "Ireckon you know what's wrong wi' me, Miss James. I'm not askin' youfor much yet; only to let me see you, when you go to thatmission-joint, and talk to ye sometimes. "

They were at an intersection of streets, where a few shops yet shoneand surface-cars went by like blazing ships. There was a movement offolk about them; yet, by reason of what had passed between them, itseemed that they stood in a solitude of queer, strained feeling. Thegirl halted in the light of a shop-window. 

"I get my car here, " she said. 

Goodwin stopped, facing her. She looked up at the tense seriousnessof his young, set face, hard and strong, with the wind-tan coloringit. She was kindly, eager to handle him tactfully, and possibly alittle warmed by his sincerity and admiration. To him she seemed thesum of all that was desirable, pathetic, and stirring in womanhood. 

"No, " she said; "that's not much to ask. I'll be glad to meet you atthe mission, Mr. Goodwin, and maybe we can talk, too, sometimes. Andwhen you go away again, when your ship sails. "

"Eh?" Goodwin's exclamation interrupted her. "Goin' away? Why, MissJames, I ain't goin' away. That was all fixed up last night. I'vequit goin' to sea. "

She stared at him, with parted lips. 

"You don't understand, " said Goodwin gently. "I knew, just as soon asI seen you, that I wasn't going away no more. I went down an' fetchedmy dunnage ashore right off. "

She continued to stare. "Not going away?" she repeated. 

Goodwin shook his head, smiling. He did not in the least understandthe embarrassment of a young woman who finds herself unexpectedly theobject of a romantic and undesired sacrifice. 

A street-car jarred to a halt beside them. The girl made a queerlittle gesture, as if in fear. 

"My car!" she flustered indistinctly, and, turning suddenly, ran fromhim towards it, taking refuge in its ordinariness against Goodwin andall the strangeness with which he seemed to assail her. 

He, smiling fatuously on the curb, saw it carry her off, swaying andgrinding. "Mary, " he repeated. "Mary!"

Following his purpose, within the next few days he found himselfemployment as one of a gang of riggers at work on a great Germanfour-masted barque which had been dismasted in a squall off FireIsland. In the daytime he dealt with spars and gear, such stuff as heknew familiarly, in the company of men like himself. Each eveningfound him, washed and appareled, at the mission, furnishing adecorous bass undertone to the hymns, looked on with approval by themissioner and his helpers. Commonly he got himself a seat next toMiss James; but he could not again contrive a walk with her along thestill street to the lighted corner where she ran to catch her car. There seemed always to be a pair of voluminous elderly matrons inattendance upon her, to daunt and chill him. She herself wasunchanged; her soft, beneficent radiance, her elusive, coy charm, allher maddening quality of delicacy and shrinking beauty, uplifted himstill. 

"Say, " he always whispered, as he let himself down beside her, "arewe goin' to have a talk tonight?"

And she would shake her averted head hurriedly, and afterwards theiron-clad matrons would close in on her and make her inaccessible. And, in the end, he would go off to get a drink in a saloon beforegoing back to his room, baffled and discontented. 

There were three evenings running on which she did not come to themission at all. On the fourth Goodwin was there before her. He lookedat her steadily as she came to her place. 

"I want to talk to you to-night, " he said, varying his formula, asshe sat down. 

She gave him a swift, uncertain glance. 

"Got to, " he added gravely. "It's a case, an' I just got to. "

"What about?" she asked, with a touch of resentment that was new inher. 

"I guess you know, " he answered quietly, and hitched nearer to heralong the bench to make room for a new-comer who was thrusting inbeside him. He turned perfunctorily to see who it might be. It wasold Noble. 

"Friends!" grated the voice of the missioner. "Let us begin bysinging hymn number seventy-nine: 'Pull for the shore, sailor; pullfor the shore!'"

The noise of the harmonium drowned the rustling of hymn-book pages. Noble's elbow drove against Goodwin's. 

"Found ye!" rumbled the old man. "Say, come on out where I can talkto ye. We're sailin' in the mornin'. "

"Hush!" whispered Goodwin. "I can't come out. What d'you want?"

The little congregation rose to its feet for the singing of the hymn. Old Noble, rising with them, leaned forward and peered past Goodwinat the girl. His keen old face inspected her inscrutably for a while. 

"That's her, I reckon, " he said to Goodwin in a windy whisper. "Well, I'm not sayin' nothin'. Come on out. "

"I can't, I tell ye, " breathed Goodwin. "Don't you go startin'anything here, now! Say what ye got to say, an' be done with it. "

Old Noble scowled. About him the simple hymn rose and fell in itsmeasured cadences. Among the honest folk who sang it there was nonemore venerable and seemly than he. His head was white with the sobersnow of years; by contrast with his elderly gravity, the youngvividness and force of Goodwin seemed violent and crude. 

"I won't start nothin', " whispered Noble harshly. "Don't be afeared. I bin lookin' for ye, Dan; I want ye to have a chanst. We're sailin'in the mornin', an', Dan, we're short-handed three hands short, weare!"

His words came and went under cover of the hymn. 

"Men won't ship aboard of her; she's got a bad name, " the whispercontinued. "She's full o' Dutchmen an' Dagoes again. It's goin' to bethe hell of a passage an' the Horn in August, too. Come on an' standyer share of it, Dan. "

Goodwin glared down indignantly at the old rusty-red face beside him. 

"You're crazy, " he said shortly. 

"Ye ain't comin'?"

For answer Goodwin only shrugged. It sufficed. With no further wordNoble turned away and walked forth on heavy feet from the hall. Therefollowed him to the street, as if in derision, the refrain of thatlandsman's hymn: "Leave the poor old stranded wreck, and pull for theshore!"

"Now!" said Goodwin, when at last the missioner had closed theservice with his blessing. 

The girl was nervous; plainly, she would have been glad to refuse. But Goodwin was in earnest, and, unwillingly enough, she surrenderedto the compulsion of his will and went out with him. Outside upon thesidewalk she spoke angrily. 

"I don't like the way you act, " she said, and her voice had tears init. "You think a person's got. "

Goodwin interrupted. "I don't think nothin', " he said. "I got to findout. An' I can't find out while we're hustlin' to the corner. Comedown towards the docks. You're all right with me; an' I got to findout. "

He did not even touch her arm, but she went with him. 

"Find out what?" she asked uncertainly, as they crossed the street. 

"Come on, " he answered. "We'll talk by an' by. "

He took her down a dark side way which led them to the water-front. Wharves where work was going on roared and shone. The masts and sparsof ships rose stark against the sky. Beyond, the river was dottedwith lights against the luminous horizon of Manhattan. He slackenedhis pace. At his side the silent girl trembled and sulked. 

"Kid, " said Goodwin, "there's one of us two that hasn't made good. Which is it?"

A jib-boom slanted across a wall over their heads. They were aloneamong sleeping ships. 

"I don't know what you mean, " answered the girl. "You say you've gotto talk to me, and you act--. " She stopped. 

"You don't know what I mean?" repeated Goodwin. "I'll have to tellyou, then. "

They had come to a pause under the jib-boom of the silent ship. Shewaited for him to go on, servile to the still mastery of his mien. 

"That night the night I come to the mission for the first time, " wenton Goodwin, "when you loaned me the book, I quit my ship to keepclose to you. That ain't nothin'; the ship was a terror, anyway. ButI seen you, and, girl, I couldn't get you out o' my head. You was allright the next night, when I went along with you to your car; itwasn't just because the missionary feller set you at me, neither. What's gone wrong with me since?"

He asked the question mildly, with a tone of gentle and reasonableinquiry. 

"I haven't said anything was wrong with you, " Answered the girlsullenly. "I don't have to answer your questions, anyway. "

"I reckon you do these questions, " said Goodwin. "What is it, now? AmI different to what you reckoned I was, or what? I never set up to beanythin' but just plain man. Tell me what I'm shy of. Are you scaredyou'll have to to marry me?"

"Oh!" The girl shrank away from him. 

"That's it, is it? Well, you don't need to be. " His voice was bitter. "I'd never ha' dared to ask you before, an' now I wouldn't, anyway. See? But I know, all the same, if I wasn't just a blasted sailor if Iwas a storekeeper or a rich man I c'd have ye. Why, damme, I c'd haveye anyway!"

She had backed before him; and now she was against the wall, utteringa small moan of protest. 

"I could, " he repeated. "You know it. I'd only to go chasin' you, an'in the end you'd give in. You're pretty; you got a shine on you thatfools a man. But you're a quitter a quitter! See? An' now you cancome away from that wall an' I'll see you back on the street. "

He was very lofty and erect in the meager light, rather a superbfigure, if the girl had had eyes for it. But she, to all seeming, wasdazed. He went in silence at her side till they reached the streetand saw that the open door of the mission still showed lights. 

"There ye are, " said Goodwin, halting. 

The girl hesitated, looking back and forth. It was wonderful how hersuggestion of soft beauty persisted. She was abashed, stricken, humiliated upon the dark street; and still she was lovely. She movedaway and paused. 

"Good night!" said her faintly ringing voice, and she passed towardsthe mission. 

"Yes, it's me!" said Goodwin, answering the dumb surprise of oldNoble as he entered the fo'c'sle of the Etna. "An' you want to shutyour head. See?"

VI

THE BREADWINNER

The noonday bivouac was in a shady place nigh-hand the road, where agroup of solemn trees made a shadow on the dusty grass. It was a dayof robust heat; the sky arched cloudless over Sussex, and the roadwas soft with white dust that rose like smoke under the feet. Trotterno sooner saw the place than he called a halt and dropped his bundle. The Signor smiled lividly and followed suit; Bill, the dog, lay downforthwith and panted. 

"Look at 'im!" said Trotter. "Just look at 'im, will yer! 'E ain'tcarried no bundle; 'e ain't got to unpack no grub. And there 'e lies, for us to wait on 'im. "

"Where ees da beer?" demanded the Signor, who had the immediate mind. 

The word drew Trotter from his wrongs, and together the men untiedthe shabby bundles and set forth their food. 

They made a queer picture in that quiet place of English green. Trotter still wore tights, with hobnailed boots to walk in and arusty billycock hat for shelter to his head. He somewhat clung tothis garb, though his tumbling days were over. One had only to lookat his bloated, pouchy face to see how drink and sloth had fouled hisjoints and slacked his muscles. Never again could he spread thedrugget in a rustic village street and strut about it on his handsfor the edification of a rustic audience. But the uniform he stillwore; he seemed to think it gave him some claim to indulgent notice. The Signor, in his own way, was not less in contrast with hisbackground. His lean, predatory face and capacious smile went fitlywith the shabby frock coat and slouched hat he affected. He carried afiddle under his arm, but the most he could do was strum on it withhis thumb. Together, they made a couple that anyone would look twiceat, and no one care to meet in a lonely place. 

Bill, the dog, shared none of their picturesque quality. An uglierdog never went footsore. A dozen breeds cropped out here and there onhis hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; histail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyesand bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardyancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his househad once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to dotricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered alittle crowd, Trotter would introduce Bill. 

"Lydies and gents all, " he would say, "with yore kind permission, Iwill now introduce to yer the world-famous wolf 'ound Boris, late ofthe Barnum menagerie in New York. 'E will commence 'is exhibition ofanimal intelligence by waltzin' to the strines of Yankee Doodle onthe vi'lin. "

Then the Signor would strum on two strings of the fiddle, smiling thewhile a smile that no woman should see, and Bill would waltzlaboriously on his hind legs. After that he would walk on his frontlegs, throw somersaults, find a hidden handkerchief, and so on. Andbetween each piece of clowning, he would go round with Trotter's hatto collect coppers. Bill was an honest dog, and a fairly big one aswell, and when a man tried to ignore the hat, he had a way of drawingback his lips from his splendid teeth which by itself was frequentlyworth as much to the treasury as all his other tricks put together. But the truth of it was, it was a feeble show, a scanty, pitifulshow; and only the gross truculence of Trotter and the venomouslitheness of the Signor withheld the average yokel from saying soflatly. 

But it gave them enough to live on and drink on. At any rate, Trottergrew fat and the Signor grew thinner. Bill depended on what they hadleft when they were satisfied; it was little enough. He begged atcottages on his own account, sometimes; sitting up in the attitude ofmendicancy till something was thrown to him. Occasionally, too, hestole fowls or raided a butcher's shop. Then Trotter and the Signorwould disown him vociferously to the bereaved one, and hasten on tocome up with him before he had eaten it all. He preferred beingbeaten to going hungry, so they never caught him till he had fedfull. But what troubled him most was the tramping, the long dustystages afoot in country where the unsociable villages lay remote fromeach other, and the roads were hot and long. A man can outwalk anyother animal. After thirty miles, a horse is nowhere and the man isstill going, but even fifteen miles leaves the ordinary dog limp andsorry. And then, when every bone in him was aching, a wretchedvillage might poke up at an elbow of the way, and there would bedancing to do and his whole fatuous repertoire to accomplish, whilehis legs were soft under him with weariness. 

Trotter took his heavy boots off; he threw one at Bill. 

It was a pleasant spot. Where they sat, in a bay of shade, they couldsee a far reach of rich land, bright in the sunshine and dotted withwood, stretching back to where the high shoulder of the downs shutout the sea. 

The two men ate in much contentment, passing the bottle to and fro. 

Bill waited for them to have done and fling him his share. In commonwith all Bohemians, he liked regular meals. 

"That dog's goin' silly, " said Trotter, looking at him where he lay. 

"Oh, him!" said the Signor. 

"He's bin loafin' a furlong be'ind all the mornin', " said Trotter. "Yer know if he was to get lazy, it 'ud be a poor lookout for us. He's bin spoilt, that dog 'as spoilt with indulgence. Soon as we stopfor a spell oh, he plops down on 'is belly and 'angs on for us tochuck 'im a bit of grub. Might be a man by the ways of 'im, 'stead ofa dog. Now I don't 'old with spoilin' dogs. "

"Pass da beer, " requested the Signor. 

Bill looked up with concern, for Trotter was filling his pipe; themeal was at an end. 

"Yus, yer can look, " snarled Trotter. "You'll wait, you will. "

He began to pack up the bread and meat again in the towel where itbelonged. 

"Think you've got yer rights, don't yer?" he growled, as he swept thefragments together. "No dog comes them games on me. Hey, get out, yebrute!"

Bill had walked over and was now helping himself to the food that laybetween Trotter's very hands. 

Trotter clenched a bulging red fist and hauled off to knock him away. But Bill had some remainder of the skill, as well as the ferocity, ofthe fighting dog in him. He snapped sideways in a purposeful silence, met the swinging fist adroitly, and sank his fine teeth cruelly inthe fat wrist. 

"Hey! Signor, Signor!" howled Trotter. "Kick 'im orf, can't yer! Ow, o-o-ow!"

Bill let him go as the Signor approached, but the kick that was meantfor him spent itself in the air. Again he snapped, with that sidewaysstriking action of the big bony head, and the Signor shrieked like awoman and sprang away. 

Bill watched the pair of them for half a minute, as they took refugeamong the trees, and both saw the glint of his strong teeth as hestared after them. Then he finished the food at his ease, while theycursed and whimpered from a distance. 

"'E's mad, " moaned Trotter. "'Es 'ad a stroke. An' we'll gethydrophobia from 'im as like as not. "

He nursed his bitten wrist tenderly. 

"Look at my laig!" babbled the Signor. "It is a sacred bite, an'all-a da trouser tore. What da hell you fool wid da dog for, you bigfool?"

"'E was pinchin' the grub, " growled Trotter. "E's mad. Look at 'im, lyin' down on my coat. 'Ere, Bill! Goo' dog, then. Good ole feller!"

Bill took no notice of the blandishments of Trotter, but presently herose and strolled off to where a little pond stood in the corner of afield. 

"'E's drinkin', " reported Trotter, who had stolen from cover to makeobservations. "So 'e can't be mad. Mad dogs won't look at water. Gointo fits if they sees it. 'Ere, Signor, let's make a grab for thosebundles before 'e gets back. "

Bill rejoined them while they were yet stuffing their shabbypossessions together. 

The Signor moved behind Trotter and Trotter picked up a boot. ButBill was calm and peaceful again. He lay down in the grass and waggedhis tail cheerfully. 

"Bill, ole feller, " said Trotter, in tones of conciliation, and Billwagged again. 

"'Ell, I can't make nothing of it, " confessed Trotter blankly. "Musthave gone sort o' temp'ry insane, like the sooicides. But well, we'llbe even with 'im before all's over. "

And the lean Signor's sidelong look at the dog was full of menace. 

They reached another village before dark, a village with a goodprosperous alehouse, and here Bill showed quite his old form. Hewaltzed, he threw somersaults, he found handkerchiefs, he carried thehat; his docility was all that Trotter and the Signor could haveasked. They cleared one and sevenpence out of his tricks, and wouldhave stayed to drink it; but Bill walked calmly on up the road andbarely gave them time enough to buy food. 

They cursed him lavishly; the Signor raved in a hot frenzy; but theydared not lose him. The dog led them at an easy pace and they laboredafter him furiously, while a great pale moon mounted in the sky andthe soft night deepened over the fields. 

He let them down at last at an end of grass where a few of lastyear's straw ricks afforded lodging for the night. Both the men weretired enough to be glad of the respite and they sank down in theshadow of a rick with little talk. 

"It gets me, " Trotter said. "The dog's a danger. 'E ought to bedrownded. "

The Signor snarled. "An' us?" he demanded. "We go to work, eh? Youpick da grass-a to make-a da hay and me I drive-a da cart, eh? Oh, Trottair, you fool!"

"'Ere, let's 'ave some grub and stow the jaw for a bit, " saidTrotter. 

He had bread and meat, bought in a hurry at the tail of the villagewhile Bill receded down the road. 

As soon as he laid it bare, Bill growled. 

"T'row heem some, queeck, " cried the Signor. 

Bill caught the loaf and settled down to it with an appetite. Trotterstared at him with a gape. 

"Well, blow me!" he said. "'Ave we come to feedin' the bloomin' dogbefore we feeds ourselves? 'As the beggar struck for that? I s'pose'e'll be wantin' wages next. "

"Oh, shutta da gab!" snapped the Signor. 

"That's all very well, " retorted Trotter. "But I'm an Englishman, Iam. You're only a furriner; you're used to bein' put upon. ButI'm--. "

Bill growled again and rose to his feet. Trotter tossed him a pieceof meat. 

All that was long ago. Now if you stray through the South of Englandduring the months between May and October, you may yet meet Bill andhis companions. Trotter still wears tights, but he is thinner andmuch more wholesome to see; but the Signor has added a kind of shinyservility to his courtly Italian manner. 

Bill is sleek and fat. 

And now, when they come to rest at noonday, you will see, if youwatch them, that before Trotter takes his boots off he feeds the dog. And the Signor fetches him water. 

VII

"PLAIN GERMAN"

Beyond the arcaded side-walks, whose square-pillared arches standbefore the house-fronts like cloisters, the streets of Thun werechannels 'of standing sunlight, radiating heat from everycobblestone. Herr Haase, black-coated and white-waistcoated as for afestival, his large blond face damp and distressful, came pantinginto the hotel with the manner of an exhausted swimmer climbingashore. In one tightly-gloved hand he bore a large and bulging linenenvelope. 

"Pfui!" He puffed, and tucked the envelope under one arm in order totake off his green felt hat and mop himself. "Aber what a heat, whata heat!"

The brass-buttoned hotel porter, a-sprawl in a wicker chair in thehall, lowered his newspaper and looked up over his silver spectacles. He was comfortably unbuttoned here and there, and had omitted toshave that morning, for this was July, 1916, and since the war hadturned Switzerland's tourists into Europe's cannon-fodder, he had runsomewhat to seed. 

"Yes, it is warm, " he agreed, without interest, and yawned. "You havecome to see" he jerked his head towards the white staircase and itsstrip of red carpet "to see him not? He is up there. But what do youthink of the news this morning?"

Herr Haase was running, his handkerchief round the inside of hiscollar. "To see him! I have come to see the Herr Baron vonSteinlach, " he retorted, crossly. "And what news are you talkingabout now?" He continued to pant and wipe while the porter read fromhis copy of the Bund, the German official communique of the previousday's fighting on the Somme. 

"I don't like it, " said the porter, when he had finished. "It looksas if we were losing ground. Those English. "

Herr Haase pocketed his handkerchief and took the large envelope inhis hand again. He was a bulky, middle-aged man, one of whoseprofessional qualifications it was that he looked and soundedcommonplace, the type of citizen who is the patron of beer-gardens, wars of aggression, and the easily remembered catchwords which arethe whole political creed of his kind. His appearance was the bushelunder which his secret light burned profitably; it had indicated himfor his employment as a naturalized citizen of Switzerland and thetenant of the pretty villa on the hill above Thun, whence he drovehis discreet and complicated traffic in those intangible wares whosemarket is the Foreign Office in Berlin. 

He interrupted curtly. "Don't talk to me about the English!" hepuffed. "Gott strafe England!" He stopped. The porter was paid by thesame hand as himself. The hall was empty save for themselves, andthere was no need to waste good acting on a mere stage-hand in thepiece. 

"The English, " he said, "are going to have a surprise. "

"Eh?" The slovenly man in the chair gaped up at him stupidly. HerrHaase added to his words the emphasis of a nod and walked on to thestairs. 

In the corridor above, a row of white-painted bedroom doors had eachits number. Beside one of them a tall young man was sunk spinelesslyin a chair, relaxed to the still warmth of the day. He made to riseas Herr Haase approached, swelling for an instant to a drilled andsoldierly stature, but, recognizing him, sank back again. 

"He's in there, " he said languidly. "Knock for yourself. "

"Schlapschwanz!" remarked Herr Haase indignantly, and rapped upon thedoor. A voice within answered indistinctly. Herr Haase, removing hishat, opened the door and entered. 

The room was a large one, an hotel bedroom converted into asitting-room, with tall French windows opening to a little veranda, and a view across the lime-trees of the garden to the blinding silverof the lake of Thun and the eternal snow-fields of the BerneseOberland. Beside the window and before a little spindle-leggedwriting-table a man sat. He turned his head as Herr Haase entered. 

"Ach, der gute Haase, " he exclaimed. 

Herr Haase brought his patent leather heels together with a click andbowed like a T-square. 

"Excellenz!" he said, in a strange, loud voice, rather like a man ina trance. "Your Excellency's papers, received by the train arrivingfrom Bern at eleven-thirty-five. "

The other smiled, raising to him a pink and elderly face, with aclipped white moustache and heavy tufted brows under which the faintblue eyes were steady and ironic. He was a large man, great in theframe and massive; his movements had a sure, unhurried deliberation;and authority, the custom and habit of power, clad him like agarment. Years and the moving forces of life had polished him asrunning water polishes a stone. The Baron von Steinlach showed toHerr Haase a countenance supple as a hand and formidable as a fist. 

"Thank you, my good Haase, " he said, in his strong deliberate German. "You look hot. This sun, eh? Poor fellow!"

But he did not bid him sit down. Instead, he turned to the linenenvelope, opened it, and shook out upon the table its freight oflesser envelopes, typed papers, and newspaper-clippings. Deliberately, but yet with a certain discrimination and efficiency, he began to read them. Herr Haase, whose new patent leather bootsfelt red-hot to his feet, whose shirt was sticking to his back, whose collar was melting, watched him expressionlessly. 

"There is a cloud of dust coming along the lake road, " said the Baronpresently, glancing through the window. "That should be Captain vonWetten in his automobile. We will see what he has to tell us, Haase. "

"At your orders, Excellency, " deferred Herr Haase. 

"Because" he touched one of the papers before him "this news, Haase, is not good. It is not good. And this discovery here, if it be allthat is claimed for it, should work miracles. "

He glanced up at Herr Haase and smiled again. "Not that I thinkmiracles can ever be worked by machinery, " he added. 

It was ten minutes after this that the column of dust on the lakeroad delivered its core and cause in the shape of a tall man, whoknocked once at the door and strode in without waiting for an answer. 

"Ah, my dear Von Wetten, " said the Baron pleasantly. "It is hot, eh?"

"An oven, " replied Von Wetten curtly. "This place is an oven. And thedust, ach!"

The elder man made a gesture of sympathy. "Poor fellow!" he said. "Sit down; sit down. Haase, that chair!"

And Herr Haase, who controlled a hundred and twelve subordinates, whowas a Swiss citizen and a trusted secret agent, brought the chair andplaced it civilly, neither expecting nor receiving thanks. 

The new-comer was perhaps twenty-eight years of age, tall, large inthe chest and little in the loins, with a narrow, neatly-chiseledface which fell naturally to a chill and glassy composure. "Officer"was written on him as clear as a brand; his very quiet clothes sat onhis drilled and ingrained formality of posture and bearing asnoticeably as a mask and domino; he needed a uniform to make himinconspicuous. He picked up his dangling monocle, screwed it into hiseye, and sat back. 

"And now?" inquired the Baron agreeably, "and now, my dear VonWetten, what have you to tell us?"

"Well, Excellenz" Captain von Wetten hesitated. "As a matter of fact, I've arranged for you to see the thing yourself this afternoon. "

The Baron said nothing merely waited, large and still against thelight of the window which shone on the faces of the other two. 

Captain von Wetten shifted in his chair awkwardly. "At five, Excellenz, " he added; "it'll be cooler then. You see, Herr Baron, it's not the matter of the machine I've seen that all right; it's theman. "

"So!" The explanation, which explained nothing to Herr Haase, seemedto satisfy the Baron. "The man, eh? But you say you have seen themachine. It works?"

"It worked all right this morning, " replied Von Wetten. "I took myown explosives with me, as you know some French and Englishrifle-cartridges and an assortment of samples from gun charges andmarine mines. I planted some in the garden; the place was all pittedalready with little craters from his experiments; and some, especially the mine stuff, I threw into the lake. The garden's on theedge of the lake, you know. Well, he got out his machine thing like aphotographic camera, rather, on a tripod turned it this way and thatuntil it pointed to my explosives, and pop! off they went like a lotof fireworks. Pretty neat, I thought. "

"Ah!" The Baron's elbow was on his desk and his head rested in hishand. "Then it is what that Italian fellow said he had discovered in1914. 'Ultra-red rays, ' he called them. What was his name, now?"

"Never heard of him, " said Von Wetten. 

From the background where Herr Haase stood among the other furniturecame a cough. "Oliver, " suggested Herr Haase mildly. 

The Baron jerked a look at him. "No, not Oliver, " he said. "Ulivithat was it; Ulivi! I remember at the time we were interested, because, if the fellow could do what he claimed. " He broke off. "Tellme, " he demanded of Von Wetten. "You are a soldier; I am only adiplomat. What would this machine mean in war in this war, forinstance? Supposing you were in command upon a sector of the front;that in the trenches opposite you were the English; and you had thismachine? What would be the result?"

"Well!" Von Wetten deliberated. "Pretty bad for the English, I shouldthink, " he decided. 

"But how, man how?" persisted the Baron. "In what way would it be badfor them?"

Von Wetten made an effort; he was not employed for his imagination. "Why, " he hesitated, "because I suppose the cartridges would blow upin the men's pouches and in the machine-gun belts; and then thetrench-mortar ammunition and the hand grenades; well, everythingexplosive would simply explode! And then we'd go over to what wasleft of them, and it would be finished. "

He stopped abruptly as the vision grew clearer. "Aber, " he beganexcitedly. 

The old Baron lifted a hand and quelled him. 

"The machine you saw this morning, which you tested, will do allthis?" he insisted. 

Von Wetten was staring at the Baron. Upon the question he let hismonocle fall and seemed to consider. "I, I don't see why not, " hereplied. 

The Baron nodded thrice, very slowly. Then he glanced up at HerrHaase. "Then miracles are worked by machinery, after all, " he said. Then he turned again to Von Wetten. 

"Well?" he said. "And the man? We are forgetting the man; I think wegenerally do, we Germans. What is the difficulty about the man?"

Von Wetten shrugged. "The difficulty is that he won't name hisprice, " he answered. "Don't understand him! Queer, shambling sort offellow, all hair and eyes, with the scar of an old cut, or something, across one side of his face. Keeps looking at you as if he hated you!Showed me the machine readily enough; consented to every test evenoffered to let me take my stuff to the other side of the lake, threemiles away, and explode it at that distance. But when it came toterms, all he'd do was to look the other way and mumble. "

"What did you offer him?" demanded the Baron. 

"My orders, Your Excellency, " answered Captain von Wetten formally, "were to agree to his price, but not to attempt negotiations in theevent of difficulty over the terms. That was reserved for YourExcellency. "

"H'm!" The Baron nodded. "Quite right, " he approved. "Quite right;there is something in this. Men have their price, but sometimes theyhave to be paid in a curious currency. By the way, how much moneyhave we?"

Herr Haase, a mere living ache inhabiting the background, replied. 

"I am instructed, Excellency, that my cheque will be honored at sighthere for a million marks, " he answered, in the loud hypnotized voiceof the drill-ground. "But there is, of course, no limit. "

The Baron gave him an approving nod. "No limit, " he said. "That isthe only way to do things no limit, in money or anything else! Well, Haase can bring the car round at what time, Von Wetten?"

"Twenty minutes to five!" Von Wetten threw the words over hisshoulder. 

"And I shall lunch up here; it's cooler. You'd better lunch with me, and we can talk. Send up a waiter as you go, my good Haase. "

Herr Haase bowed, but clicked only faintly. "Zu Befehl, Excellenz, "he replied, and withdrew. 

In the hall below he sank into a chair, groaned and fumbled at thebuttons of his boots. He was wearing them for the first time, andthey fitted him as though they had been shrunk on to him. The porter, his waistcoat gaping, came shambling over to him. 

"You were saying, " began the porter, "that the English. "

Herr Haase boiled over. "Zum Teufel mit den Englandern und mit Dir, Schafskopf!" he roared, tearing at the buttons. "Send up a waiter tothe Herr Baron and call me a cab to go home in!"

It was in a sunlight tempered as by a foreboding of sunset, when thesurface of the lake was ribbed like sea sand with the firstbreathings of the evening breeze, that Herr Haase, riding proudly inthe back seat of honor, brought the motor-car to the hotel. He hadchanged his garb of ceremony and servitude; he wore grey now, one ofthose stomach-exposing, large-tailed coats which lend even to thestraightest man the appearance of being bandy-legged; and upon hisfeet were a pair of tried and proven cloth boots. 

The porter, his waistcoat buttoned for the occasion, carried out aleather suit-case and placed it in the car, then stood aside, holdingopen the door, as the Baron and Von Wetten appeared from the hall. Von Wetten, true to his manner, saw neither Herr Haase's bow nor theporter's lifted cap; to him, salutations and civilities came like theair he breathed, and were as little acknowledged. The Baron gave toHerr Haase the compliment of a glance that took in the grey coat andthe cloth boots, and the ghost of an ironic, not unkindly smile. 

"Der gute Haase, " he murmured, and then, as though in absence ofmind, "Poor fellow, poor fellow!"

His foot was upon the step of the car when he saw the leathersuit-case within. He paused in the act of entering. 

"What is this baggage?" he inquired. 

Von Wetten craned forward to look. "Oh, that! I wanted you to see themachine at work, Excellenz, so I'm bringing a few cartridges andthings. "

His Excellency withdrew his foot and stepped back. "Explosives, eh?"He made a half-humorous grimace of distaste. "Haase, lift that bagout carefully, man! and carry it in front with you. And tell thechauffeur to drive cautiously!"

Their destination was to the eastward of the little town, where thegardens of the villas trail their willow-fringes in the water. Amongthem, a varnished yellow chalet lifted its tiers of glassed-ingalleries among the heavy green of fir-trees; its door, close besidethe road, was guarded by a gate of iron bars. The big car slid to astandstill beside it with a scrape of tires in the dust. 

"A moment, " said the old baron, as Herr Haase lifted his hand to theiron bell-pull that hung beside the gate. "Who are we? What nameshave you given, Von Wetten? Schmidt and Meyer or something morefanciful?"

"Much more fanciful, Excellenz. " Von Wetten allowed himself a smile. "I am Herr Wetten; Your Excellency is Herr Steinlach. It could not besimpler. "

The Baron laughed quietly. "Very good, indeed, " he agreed. "AndHaase? You did not think of him? Well, the good Haase, for the timebeing, shall be the Herr von Haase. Eh, Haase?"

"Zu Befehl, Excellenz, " deferred Herr Haase. 

The iron bell-pull squealed in its dry guides; somewhere within therecesses of the house a sleeping bell woke and jangled. Silencefollowed. The three of them waited upon the road in the slant of thesunshine, aware of the odor of hot dust, trees, and water. Herr Haasestood, in the contented torpor of service and obedience, holding theheavy suit-case to one side of the gate; to the other, the Baron andVon Wetten stood together. Von Wetten, with something of rigidityeven in his ease and insouciance, stared idly at the windows throughwhich, as through stagnant eyes, the silent house seemed to beinspecting them; the Baron, with his hands joined behind him, wasgazing through the gate at the unresponsive yellow door. His pink, strong face had fallen vague and mild; he seemed to dream in thesunlight upon the threshold of his enterprise. All of him that wasformidable and potent was withdrawn from the surface, sucked in, andconcentrated in the inner centers of his mind and spirit. 

There sounded within the door the noise of footsteps; a bolt clashed, and there came out to the gate a young woman with a key in her hand. The Baron lifted his head and looked at her, and she stopped, asthough brought up short by the impact of his gaze. She was a smallcreature, not more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, asfresh and pretty as apple-blossom. But it was more than shyness thatnarrowed her German-blue eyes as she stood behind the bars, lookingat the three men. 

Von Wetten, tall, comely, stepped forward. 

"Good afternoon, gnadige Frau. We have an appointment with yourhusband for this hour. Let me present Herr Steinlach Herr von Haase. "

The two bowed at her; she inspected each in turn, still with thatnarrow-eyed reserve. 

"Yes, " she said then, in a small tinkle of a voice. "My husband isexpecting you. "

She unlocked the gate; the key resisted her, and she had to take bothhands to it, flushing with the effort of wrenching it over. Theyfollowed her into the house, along an echoing corridor, to a frontroom whose windows framed a dazzling great panorama of wide water, steep blue mountain, and shining snow-slopes. Herr Haase, coming lastwith the suitcase, saw around the Baron's large shoulders how sheflitted across and called into the balcony: "Egon, the Herren arehere!" Then, without glancing at them again, she passed them anddisappeared. 

Herr Haase's wrist was aching with his burden. Gently, and withprecaution against noise, he stooped, and let the suit-case down uponthe floor. So that he did not see the entry at that moment of the manwho came from the balcony, walking noiselessly upon rubber-soledtennis-shoes. He heard Von Wetten's "Good afternoon, HerrBettermann, " and straightened up quickly to be introduced. 

He found himself taking the hand it lay in his an instant aslifelessly as a glove of a young man whose eyes, over-large in atragically thin face and under a chrysanthemum shock of hair, were atonce timid and angry. He was coatless, as though he had come freshfrom some work, and under his blue shirt his shoulders showedangular. But what was most noticeable about him, when he lifted hisface to the light, was the scar of which Von Wetten had spoken a redand jagged trace of some ugly wound, running from the inner corner ofthe right eye to the edge of the jaw. He murmured some inaudibleacknowledgment of Herr Haase's scrupulously correct greeting. 

Then, as actually as though an arm of flesh and blood had thrust himback. Herr Haase was brushed aside. It was as if the Baron vonSteinlach, choosing his moment, released his power of personalityupon the scene as a man lets go his held breath. "A wonderful viewyou have here, Herr Bettermann, " was all he said. The young manturned to him to reply; it was as though their opposite purposes andwills crossed and clashed like engaged swords. Herr Haase, and eventhe salient and insistent presence of Von Wetten, thinned and becamevague ghostly, ineffectual natives of the background in the starklight of the reality of that encounter. 

There were some sentences, mere feigning, upon that radiantperspective which the wide windows framed. 

Then: "My friend and associate, Herr Wetten here, has asked me tolook into this matter, " said the Baron. His voice was silk, the silk"that holds fast where a steel chain snaps. "

"First, to confirm his impressions of the the apparatus; second" thesubtle faint-blue eyes of the old man and the dark suspicious eyes ofthe young man met and held each other "and second, the question, theminor question, of the price. However" his lips, under the clipped, white moustache, widened in a smile without mirth "that need not takeus long, since the price, you see, is not really a question at all. "

The haggard young man heard him with no change in that painfulintensity of his. 

"Isn't it?" he said shortly. "We'll see! But first, I suppose, youwant to see the thing at work. I have here cordite, gelignite, trinitrotoluol, " but his hare's eyes fell on the suit-case, "perhapsyou have brought your own stuff?"

"Yes, " said the Baron; "I have brought my own stuff. "

The garden of the villa was a plot of land reaching down to a parapetlapped by the still stone-blue waters of the lake. Wooden steps leddown to it from the balcony; Herr Haase, descending them last withthe suit-case, paused an instant to shift his burden from one hand tothe other, and had time to survey the place the ruins of a lawn, pitted like the face of a small-pox patient with small holes, wherethe raw clay showed through the unkempt grass the "craters" of whichCaptain von Wetten had spoken. Tall fir-trees, the weed ofSwitzerland, bounded the garden on either hand, shutting it in aseffectually as a wall. Out upon the blue-and-silver floor of the lakea male human being rowed a female of his species in a skiff; and nearthe parapet something was hooded under a black cloth, such asphotographers use, beneath whose skirts there showed the feet of atripod. 

Herr Bettermann, the young man with the scar, walked across to it. Atfirst glimpse, it had drawn all their eyes; each felt that here, properly and decently screened, was the core of the affair. It wasright that it should be covered up and revealed only at the duemoment; yet Bettermann went to it and jerked the black cloth off, raping the mystery of the thing as crudely as a Prussian in Belgium. 

"Here it is, " he said curtly. "Put your stuff where you like. "

The cloth removed disclosed a contrivance like two roughly cubicalboxes, fitted one above the other, the upper projecting a littlebeyond the lower, and mounted on the apex of the tripod. A third box, evidently, by the terminals which projected from its cover, thecontainer of a storage battery, lay between the feet of the tripod, and wires linked it with the apparatus above. Beside the tripod lay asmall black bag such as doctors are wont to carry. 

Von Wetten took a key from his pocket and threw it on the ground. "Unlock that bag, " he said to Herr Haase, and turned towards theBaron and his host. 

Herr Haase picked up the key, unlocked the suitcase, and stood readyfor further orders. The Baron was standing with Bettermann by thetripod; the latter was talking and detaching some piece of mechanismwithin the apparatus. His voice came clearly across to Herr Haase. 

"Two blades, " he was saying, "and one varies their angle with this. The sharper the angle, the greater the range of the ray and theshorter the effective arc. But, of course, this machine is only amodel. "

"Quite so, " acquiesced the Baron. 

"These" his hand emerged from the upper box "are the blades. "

He withdrew from the apparatus a contrivance like a pair of brieftongs, of which the shanks were stout wires and the spatulates wereoblongs of thin, whitish metal like aluminum, some three inches longby two wide. 

"The essence of the whole thing, " he said. "You see, they are hinged;one sets them wider or closer according to the range and the arc onerequires. These plates they are removable. I paint the compound onthem, and switch the current on through this battery. "

"Ah, yes, " agreed the Baron dreamily. "The compound that has to bepainted on. "

The thin face of the inventor turned upon him; the great eyessmoldered. "Yes, " was the answer; "yes. I, I paint it on enough forthree or four demonstrations, and then I throw the rest into thelake. So my secret is safe, you see. "

The Baron met his eyes with the profound ironic calm of his own. "Safe, I am sure, " he replied. "The safer the better. And now, wherewould you prefer us to arrange our explosives?"

The other shrugged his shoulders. "Where you like, " he said, bendingto the little black hand-bag. "Lay them on the ground or bury them, or throw them into the lake, if they're waterproof. Only don't putthem too near the house. I don't want any more of my windows broken. "

There was a tone of aggression in his voice, and his eyes seemed toaffront them, then strayed in a moment's glance towards the house. Herr Haase, following his look, had a glimpse of the little wife uponthe upper balcony looking down upon the scene. The young man with thescar it glowed at whiles, red and angry seemed to make her some sign, for she drew back out of sight at once. 

Herr Haase would have liked to watch the further intercourse of theBaron and the lean young man; but Von Wetten, indicating to him asmall iron spade, such as children dig with on the sea-beach, and apointed iron rod, set him to work at making graves for the littlepaper-wrapped packages which he took from the suit-case. The captainstood over him while he did it, directing him with orders curt asoaths and wounding as blows, looking down upon his sweating, unremonstrant obedience as from a very mountain-top of superiority. The clay was dry as flour, and puffed into dust under the spade;the slanting sun had yet a vigor of heat; and Herr Haase, in histail-coat and his cloth boots, floundered among the little cratersand earth-heaps, and dug and perspired submissively. 

As he completed each hole to Von Wetten's satisfaction, that demigoddropped one or more of his small packages into it, and arranged themsnugly with the iron rod. While he did so, Herr Haase eased himselfupright, wiped the sweat from his brow, and gazed across at the othertwo. He saw the young man dipping a brush in a bottle, which he hadtaken from the black bag, and painting with it upon the metal plates, intent and careful; while beside him the old baron, with his handsclasped behind his back, watched him with just that air of blendedpatronage and admiration with which a connoisseur, visiting a studio, watches an artist at work. 

Von Wetten spoke at his elbow. "Fill this in!" he said, in thosetones of his that would have roused rebellion in a beast of burden. "And tread the earth down on it firmly!"

"Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann, " answered Herr Haase hastily. But he wasslow enough in obeying to see the young man, his painting finished, take the bottle in his hand, and toss it over the parapet into thelake and turn, the great jagged scar suddenly red and vivid on thepallor of his thin face, to challenge the Baron with his angry eyes. 

The Baron met them with his small indomitable smile. "The machine isready now?" he inquired smoothly. 

"Ready when you are, " snapped the other. 

Herr Haase had to return to his labors then and lose the rest of thatbattle of purposes, of offence offered and refused, which went onover the head of the waiting machine. Von Wetten left him for a whileand was busy throwing things that looked like glass jars into thelake. When at last the fifth and final hole was filled and troddendown under the sore heels in the cloth boots, the others werestanding around the apparatus. They looked up at him as he cast downthe spade and clapped a hand to the main stiffness in the small ofhis back. 

"All finished?" called the Baron. "Then come over here, my goodfriend, or you will be blown up. Eh, Herr Bettermann?"

Herr Bettermann shrugged those sharp shoulders of his; he wasshifting the tripod legs of his machine. "Blow him up if you like, "he said. "He's your man. "

Von Wetten and the Baron laughed at that, the Baron civilly andperfunctorily, as one laughs at the minor jests of one's host, andVon Wetten as though the joke were a good one. Herr Haase smileddeferentially, and eased himself into the background by the parapet. 

"And now, " said the Baron, "to our fireworks!"

Herr Bettermann answered with the scowl-like contraction of the browswhich he used in place of a nod. 

"All right, " he said. "Stand away from the front of the thing, willyou? You know yourselves the kind of stuff you've buried yes? Also, los!"

The old baron had stepped back to Herr Haase's side; as the young manput his hands to the apparatus, he crisped himself with a sharpintake of breath for the explosion. A switch clicked under the youngman's thumb, and he began to move the machine upon its pivotmounting, traversing it like a telescope on a stand. It came roundtowards the fresh yellow mounds of earth which marked Herr Haase'sexcavations; they had an instant in which to note, faint as thewhirring of a fly upon a pane, the buzz of some small mechanismwithin the thing. Then, not louder than a heavy stroke upon a drum, came the detonation of the buried cartridges in the first hole, andthe earth above them suddenly ballooned and burst like anover-inflated paper-bag and let through a spit of brief fire and ajet of smoke. 

"Ach, du lieber" began the Baron, and had the words chopped off shortby the second explosion. A stone the size of a tennis-ball soaredslowly over them and plopped into the water a score of yards away. The Baron raised an arm as if to guard his face, and kept it raised;Von Wetten let his eyeglass fall, lifted it in his hand and held itthere; only Herr Haase, preserving his formal attitude of obedientwaiting, his large bland face inert, stood unmoved, passivelywatching this incident of his trade. 

The rest of the holes blew up nobly; the last was applauded by acrash of glass as one of the upper windows of the house broke andcame raining down in splinters. The lean young man swore tersely. "Another window!" he snarled. The Baron lowered his arm and let hisbreath go in a sigh of relief. "That is all, is it not?" he demanded. "Gott sei Dank I hate things that explode. But I am glad that I sawit, now that it is over, very glad indeed!"

There was a touch of added color in the even pink of his face, andsomething of restlessness, a shine of excitement, in his eyes. Evenhis voice had a new tone of unfamiliar urgency. He glanced to and frofrom Herr Wetten to Herr Haase as though seeking someone to share hisemotion. 

Bettermann's thin voice broke in curtly. "It isn't over, " he said. "There's the stuff he" with a glance like a stab at Von Wetten "threwinto the lake. Ready?"

"Ach!" The Baron stepped hastily aside. "Yes; I had forgotten that. Quite ready, my dear sir quite ready. Haase, my good friend, I thinkI'll stand behind you this time. "

"Zu Befehl, Excellenz, " acquiesced Herr Haase, and made of hissolidity and stolidity a screen and a shield for the master-mind inits master-body. Herr Bettermann, bending behind his machine, took inthe grouping with an eye that sneered and exulted, jerked his angularblue-clad shoulders contemptuously, and turned again to his business. 

The eye of the machine roamed over the face of the water, seeming topeer searchingly into the depths of shining blue; the small interiorwhir started again upon the click of the switch, and forthwith threeexplosions, following upon each other rapidly, tore that tranquilwater-mirror, spouting three geyser-jets into the sun-soaked eveningair. The waves they raised slapped loudly at the wall below theparapet, and there were suddenly dead fish floating pale-bellied onthe surface. 

"Mines!" It was a whisper behind Herr Haase's large shoulder. "English mines!"

Herr Bettermann straightened himself upright behind the tripod. "There's a fine for killing fish like that, " he remarked bitterly. "And the window besides, curse it!"

The Baron looked round at him absently. "Too bad!" he agreed. "Toobad!" He moved Herr Haase out of his way with a touch of his hand andwalked to the parapet. He stood there, seeming for some moments to beabsorbed in watching the dead fish as they rocked in the diminishingeddies. Herr Bettermann picked up the black cloth and draped it againover his apparatus. There was a space of silence. 

Presently, with a shrug as though he withdrew himself unwillinglyfrom some train of thought, the Baron turned. "Yes, " he said, slowly, half to himself. "Y-es!" He lifted his eyes to the inventor. 

"Well, we have only three things to do, " he said. "They should nottake us long. But it is pleasant here in your garden, HerrBettermann, and we might sit down while we do them. "

He sat as he spoke, letting himself down upon the low parapet with anelderly deliberation; at his gesture Von Wetten sat likewise, a fewyards away; Herr Haase moved a pace, hesitated, and remainedstanding. 

"I'll stand, " said Bettermann shortly. "And what are the three thingsthat you have got to do?"

"Why, " replied the Baron, evenly, "the obvious three, surely to payfor your broken window nicht wahr? to pay the fine for killing thefish, and to pay your price for the machine. There is nothing else topay for, is there?"

"Oh!" The young man stared at him. 

"So, if you will tell us the figure that will content you, we candispatch the matter, " continued the Baron. "That is your part to namea figure. Supposing always" his voice slowed; the words dropped oneby one "supposing always that there is a figure!"

The other continued to stare, gaunt as a naked tree in the eveningflush, his face white under his tumbled hair, the jagged scarshowing, upon it like a new wound. 

"You don't suppose you'll get the thing for nothing, do you?" hebroke out suddenly. 

The Baron shook his head. "No, " he said, "I don't think that. But ithas struck me I may not need my cheque-book. You see, for all I cantell, Herr Bettermann, the window may be insured; and the police maynot hear of the fish; and as for the machine well, the machine may befor sale; but you have less the manner of a salesman, HerrBettermann, than any man I have ever seen. "

The gaunt youth glowered uncertainly. "I'm not a salesman, " heretorted resentfully. 

The Baron nodded. "I was sure of it, " he said. "Well, if you will letme, I'll be your salesman for you; I have sold things in my time, andfor great prices too. Now, I can see that you are in a difficulty. You are a patriotic Swiss citizen and you have scruples about lettingyour invention go out of your own country; is that it? Because, ifso, it can be arranged. "

He stopped; the lean youth had uttered a spurt of laughter, bitterand contemptuous. 

"Swiss!" he cried. "No more Swiss than yourself, Herr Baron!"

"Eh?" To Herr Haase, watching through his mask of respectfulaloofness, it was as though the Baron's mind and countenance togethersnapped almost audibly into a narrowed and intensified alertness. Thedeep, white-fringed brows gathered over the shrewd pale eyes. "Not aSwiss?" he queried. "What are you, then?"

"Huh!" the other jeered, openly. "I knew you the moment I saw you. Old Herr Steinlach, eh? Why, man, I've been expecting you and gettingready for you ever since your blundering, swaggering spy there" witha jerk of a rigid thumb towards Von Wetten "and this fat slave" HerrHaase was indicated here "first came sniffing round my premises. Iknew they'd be sending you along, with your blank cheques and yourtongue; and here you are!"

He mouthed his words in an extravagance of offence and ridicule; hisgaunt body and his thin arms jerked in a violence of gesticulation, and the jagged scar that striped his face pulsed from red to white. The old baron, solid and unmoving on his seat, watched him with stillattention. 

"Not a Swiss?" he persisted, when the young man had ceased to shoutand shrug. 

For answer, suddenly as an attacker, the young man strode across tohim and bent, thrusting his feverish and passion-eaten face close tothe other man's. His forefinger, long, large-knuckled, jerked up; hetraced with it upon his face the course of the great disfiguring scarthat flamed diagonally from the inner corner of the right eye to therim of the sharp jaw. 

"Did you ever see a Swiss that carried a mark like that?" he cried, his voice breaking to a screech. "Or an Englishman, or a Frenchman?Or anybody but but" he choked breathlessly on his words "or anybodybut a German? Man, it's my passport!"

He remained yet an instant, bent forward, rigid finger to face, thenrose and stepped back, breathing hard. The three of them stuck, staring at him. 

Von Wetten broke the silence. "German?" he said, in that infuriatingtone of peremptory incredulity which his kind in all countriescommands. "You, a German?"

The lean youth turned on him with a movement like a swoop. "Yes me!"he spat. "And a deserter from my military service, too! Make the bestof that, you Prussian Schweinhund!"

"Was!" Von Wetten started as though under a blow; his monocle fell;he made a curious gesture, bringing his right hand across to his lefthip as though in search of something; and gathered himself as thoughabout to spring to his feet. The Baron lifted a quiet hand andsubdued him. 

"Yes, " he said, in his even, compelling tones. "Make the best ofthat, Von Wetten. "

Von Wetten stared, arrested in the very act of rising. "Zu Befehl, Herr Baron, " he said, in a strained voice, and continued staring. TheBaron watched him frowningly an instant, to make sure of hissubmission, and turned again to Herr Bettermann where he stood, leanand glowering, before them. 

"Now, " he said, "I am beginning to see my way dimly, dimly. Adeserter a German and that scar is your passport! Ye-es! Well, willyou tell me, Herr Bettermann, in plain German, how you came by thatscar?"

"Yes, " said Bettermann, fiercely, "I will!"

Behind him, where the house windows shone rosy in the sunset, HerrHaase could see upon the lower balcony the shimmer of a white frockand a face that peeped and drew back. The little wife was listening. 

"It was the captain of my company, " said Bettermann, with a glare atVon Wetten. "Another Prussian swine-dog like this brute here. " Hewaited. Von Wetten regarded him with stony calm and did not move. Bettermann flushed. "He sent me for his whip, and when I brought it, he called me to attention and cut me over the face with it. "

"Eh?" The old baron sat up. "Aber-"

"Just one cut across the face, me with my heels glued together and myhands nailed to my sides, " went on Bettermann. "Then 'Dismiss!' heordered, and I saluted and turned about and marched away with mysmashed face. And then you ask me if I am a Swiss!" He laughed again. 

"But, " demanded the Baron, "what had you done? Why did he do that toyou?"

"Didn't I tell you he was a Prussian swine?" cried Bettermann. "Isn'tthat reason enough? But, if you will know, he'd seen me speak to alady in the street. Afterwards me standing to attention, of course!he made a foul comment on her, and asked me for her name andaddress. "

"And you wouldn't tell him?"

"Tell him!" cried Bettermann. "No!"

Herr Haase saw the girl on the balcony lean forward as though to hearthe word, its pride and its bitterness, and draw back again as thoughto hear it had been all that she desired. 

"Von Wetten!" The Baron spoke briskly. "You hear what Herr Bettermanntells me? Such things happen in the army do they?"

Von Wetten shrugged. "They are strictly illegal, sir, " he replied, formally. "There are severe penalties prescribed for such actions. But, in the army, in the daily give-and-take of the life of aregiment, of course, they do happen. Herr Bettermann, " very stiffly, "was unfortunate. "

Betterman was staring at him, but said nothing. The Baron glancedfrom Von Wetten to the lean young man and shook his head. 

"I am beginning I think I am beginning to see, " he said. "And itseems to me that I shall not need that cheque-book. Herr Bettermann, I am very sure you have not forgotten the name of that officer. "

"Forgotten!" said the other. "No, I've not forgotten. And, so thatyou shan't forget, I've got it written down for you!"

He fished a card from the breast-pocket of his blue shirt. The Baronreceived it, and held it up to the light. 

"Captain Graf von Specht, the Kaiserjaeger, " he read aloud. "Everhear of him, Von Wetten?"

Von Wetten nodded. "Neighbor of mine in the country, Excellenz, " hereplied. "We were at the cadet-school together. Colonel now; promotedduring the war. He would regret, I am sure. "

"He will regret, I am sure, " interrupted the Baron, pocketing thecard. "And he will have good cause. Well, Herr Bettermann, I think Iknow your terms now. You want to see the Graf von Specht again here?I am right, am I not?"

Bettermann's eyes narrowed at him. "Yes, " he said. "You're right. Only this time it is he that must bring the whip!"

Herr Haase's intelligence, following like a shorthand-writer'spencil, ten words behind the speaker, gave a leap at this. Till now, the matter had been for him a play without a plot; suddenlyunderstanding, he cast a startled glance at Von Wetten. 

The captain sat up alert. 

"Certainly!" The old baron was replying to young Bettermann. "Andstand to attention! And salute! I told you that I would agree to yourterms, and I agree accordingly. Captain that is, Colonel von Spechtshall be here, with the whip, as soon as the telegraph and the traincan bring him. And then, I assume, the machine. "

"Pardon!" Captain von Wetten had risen. "I have not understood. " Hecame forward between the two, very erect and military, and rathersplendid with his high-held head and drilled comeliness of body. "There has been much elegance of talk and I am stupid, no doubt; but, in plain German, what is it that Colonel von Specht is to do?"

Bettermann swooped at him again, choking with words; the captainstood like a monument callous to his white and stammering rage, thepersonification and symbol of his caste and its privilege. 

It was the Baron who answered from his seat on the parapet, notvarying his tone and measured delivery. 

"Colonel von Specht, " he said, "is to bring a whip here and stand toattention while Herr Bettermann cuts him over the face with it. Thatis all. Now sit down and be silent. "

Captain von Wetten did not move. "This is impossible, " he said. "There are limits. As a German officer, I resent the mere suggestionof this insult to the corps of officers. Your Excellency. "

The Baron lifted that quiet hand of his. "I order you to sit down andbe silent, " he said. 

Captain von Wetten hesitated. It seemed to Herr Haase, for aflattering instant, that the captain's eyes sought his own, as thoughin recognition of a familiar and favorable spirit. He tried to lookrespectfully sympathetic. 

"Very good, your Excellency, " said Von Wetten, at length. "TheEmperor, of course, will be informed. "

He turned and stalked away to his former place. The Baron, watchinghim, smiled briefly. 

"Well, Herr Bettermann, " said the Baron, rising stiffly, "it will nothelp us to have this arrangement of ours in writing. I think we'llhave to trust one another. Our chemists, then, can come to you forthe formula as soon as you have finished with Colonel von Specht?That is agreed yes? Good! And you see, I was right from thebeginning; I did not need my cheque-book after all. "

He began to move towards the house, beckoning Captain von Wetten andHerr Haase to follow him. Herr Haase picked up the empty suit-case, stood aside to let Von Wetten pass, and brought up the rear of theprocession. 

At the foot of the wooden steps that led up to the veranda, the Baronhalted and turned to Bettermann. 

"One thing makes me curious, " he said. "Suppose we had not acceptedyour terms, what would you have done? Sold your machine to ourenemies?"

Bettermann was upon the second step, gauntly silhouetted against theyellow wood of the house. He looked down into the elder man's strongand subtle face. 

"No, " he answered. "I meant to at first, but I haven't purged theGerman out of me yet and I couldn't. But I'd let your army of slavesand slave-drivers be beaten by its own slavery as it would be and youknow it. I wouldn't take a hand in it; only, if anything happened tome; if, for instance, I disappeared some night, well, you'd find themachine and the formula in the hands of the English, that's all!"

He turned and led the way up the wooden steps. It seemed to tiredHerr Haase, lugging the suit-case, that Captain von Wetten wasswearing under his breath. 

He was not imaginative, our Herr Haase; facts were his livelihood andthe nurture of his mind. But in the starved wastes of his fancysomething had struck a root, and as he rode Thun-wards in the frontseat of the car, with the suit-case in his lap and the setting sun inhis eyes, he brooded upon it. It was the glimpse of the little wifein the balcony the girl who had lived with the scar upon herhusband's face and in his soul, and had leaned forward to eavesdropupon his cruel triumph. Behind him, the two demi-gods talkedtogether; snatches of their conversation tempted him to listen; butHerr Haase was engrossed with another matter. When the Prussiancolonel, one living agony of crucified pride, stood for the blow, andthe whip whistled through the air to thud on the flesh of hisupturned face would she be watching then?

He was still thinking of it when the car drew up at the hotel door. 

"Upstairs at once, " directed the Baron, as he stepped hastily to thesidewalk. "You too, my good Haase; we shall want you. "

In the Baron's upper room, where that morning he had suffered thetorture of the boot, Herr Haase was given a seat at the littlewriting-table. The Baron himself cleared it for him, wiping its pilesof papers to the floor with a single sweep of his hand. 

"Get ready to write the telegrams which we shall dictate, " hecommanded. "But first will you be able to get them through in code?"

"Code is forbidden, your Excellency, " replied Herr Haase, in hisparade voice. "But we have also a phrase-code, a short phrase forevery word of the message which passes. It makes the telegram verylong. "

"Also gut!" approved the Baron. "Now, Von Wetten, first we will wirethe Staff. You know how to talk to them; so dictate a clear messageto Haase here. "

Von Wetten was standing by the door, hat and cane in hand. His face, with its vacant comeliness, wore a formality that was almost austere. 

"Zu Befehl, Excellenz, " he replied. "But has your Excellencyconsidered that, after all, there may be other means? I beg yourExcellency's pardon, but it occurs to me that we have not triedalternative offers. For instance, we are not limited as to money. "

The Baron made a little gesture of impatience, indulgent andpaternal. He leaned a hand on the table and looked over Herr Haase'shead to the tall young officer. 

"We are not limited as to colonels, either, " he answered. "We mustthink ourselves lucky, I suppose, that he went no higher than acolonel. There was a moment when I thought he was going very muchhigher to the very top, Von Wetten. For, make no mistake, that youngman knows his value. "

Von Wetten frowned undecidedly. "The top, " he repeated. "There isonly one top. You can't mean?"

The Baron took the word from his mouth. "Yes, " he said, "the Emperor. I thought for a while he was going to demand that. And do you knowwhat I should have answered?"

Von Wetten threw up his head and his face cleared. "Of course Iknow, " he said. "You'd have cut the dirty traitor down where hestood!"

The Baron did not move. "No, " he said. "I should have accepted thoseterms also, Von Wetten. "

The Baron's hand rested on the edge of the table in front of HerrHaase; he sat, staring at it, a piece of human furniture on the stageof a tragedy. The other two confronted each other above his patientand useful head. He would have liked to look from one to the other, to watch their faces, but he was too deeply drilled for that. Heheard Von Wetten's voice with a quaver in it. 

"Then things are going as badly as all that?"

"Yes, " answered the Baron. "Badly! It is not just this battle that isgoing on now in France; it strikes deeper than that. The plan thatwas to give us victory has failed us; we find ourselves, with astrength which must diminish, fighting an enemy whose strengthincreases. We must not stop at anything now; what is at stake is tootremendous. "

"But--. "

The Baron hushed him. "Listen, Von Wetten, " he said. "I will bepatient with you. I do not speak to you of of the Idea of whichGermany and Prussia are the body and the weapon. No; but have youever realized that you, yes, you! belong to the most ridiculed, mostdespised nation on earth? That your countrywomen furnish about eightyper cent. Of the world's prostitutes; that a German almost anywhereis a waiter, or a sausage-manufacturer, or a beer-seller, the butt ofcomic papers in a score of languages? All that has not occurred toyou, eh?

"Well, think of it, and think, too, of what this machine may do forus. Think of a Germany armed in a weaponless world, and, if empireand mastery convey nothing to you, think of oh! American womenwalking the streets in Berlin, comic English waiters in Germancafe's, slavish French laborers in German sweat-shops. And all thisboxed into a machine on a tripod by a monomaniac whose price we canpay!"

He paused and walked towards the window. "Dictate the telegram to theStaff, Von Wetten, " he said, over his shoulder. 

Von Wetten laid his hat and cane on a chair and crossed the room. "Ifeel as if I were stabbing a fellow-officer in the back, " he said, drearily. Then, to Herr Haase: "Take this, you!"

"Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann, " said Herr Haase, and picked up his pen. 

There were twelve long telegrams in all, of which many had to beamended, pruned, sub-edited, and rewritten; each was directed to aplain private address in Berlin, and each was to be answered to theaddress of Herr Haase. One, which gave more trouble than any of theothers, was to Siegfried Meyer, Number One, Unter den Linden; it waslong before the Baron and Von Wetten could smooth its phrases to asuavity and deference which satisfied them. Coffee was brought themto lubricate their labors, but none to Herr Haase; his part was towrite down, scratch out, rewrite, while beyond the windows the nightmarched up from the east and the lake grew bleak and vague. 

"Now, my good Haase, " said the Baron, when the last word-fabric wasdecided upon and confirmed, "you will take those home with you, putthem into code, and dispatch them. You should have the last of themoff by midnight. And to-morrow, when the answers begin to come, youwill report here as quickly as possible. "

"Zu befehl, Excellenz, " said Herr Haase, his hands full of papers. 

"Then good night, my good Haase, " said the Baron. 

"Good night to your Excellency, " returned Herr Haase, from thedoorway. "Good night, Herr Hauptmann!" to Von Wetten's back. 

"Shut the door, " replied Von Wetten. 

There was a moon at midnight, a great dull disc of soft lighttouching the antique gables and cloistered streets of the little cityto glamour, blackening the shadows under the arches, and streakingthe many channels of the swift river with long reflections. HerrHaase, returning from the telegraph office, walked noiseless as aghost through those ancient streets, for he had soft bedroom slipperson his feet. His work was done for the day; he had put off businessas one lays aside a garment. From his lips ascended the mild incenseof one of those moist yellow cigars they make at Vevey. He pausedupon the first bridge to gaze down upon the smooth, hurrying water, and his soul that soul which served the general purpose of amonkey-wrench in adjusting the machine of history spoke aloud. 

"A rum-punch, " it confided to the night and the moon. "Yes, twoglasses; and a belegtes Brodchen; and a warm foot-bath. And then, bed!"

Not for him, at any rate, were the doubts and hopes that tangled inthe Baron von Steinlach's massive head. A man with sore feet is proneto feel that the ground he stands on is at least solid. In hispleasant veranda next morning, with his coffee fragrant before him onthe chequered tablecloth, he read in the Bund: the British communiqueof the battle of the Somme, new villages taken, fortified woodsstormed, prisoners multiplying, the whole monstrous structure of theGerman war-machine cracking and failing. While he read he ate anddrank tranquilly; no thoughts of yesterday's business intruded uponhis breakfast peace. He finished the communique. 

Then: "Liars!" he commented, comfortably, reaching for his cup. "Those English are always liars!"

It was a good and easy day that thus opened. The answers to histelegrams did not begin to arrive till noon, and then they were onlyformulae acknowledging receipt, which he did not need his code-bookto decipher. With his black umbrella opened against the drive of thesun, he carried them at his leisure to the Baron, where he sat alonein his cool upper chamber working deliberately among his papers, received the customary ghost of a smile and the murmur, "Der guteHaase, " and got away. The slovenly porter, always with his look ofhaving slept in his clothes, tried to engage him in talk upon theday's news. "You, " said Herr Haase, stepping round him, "are one ofthose who believe anything; schamen Sie sich!" And so back to thecomfortable villa on the hillside with its flaming geraniums and itsatmosphere of that comfort and enduring respectability which stood toHerr Haase for the very inwardness of Germany. Yes, a good day!

It lasted as long as the daylight; the end of it found Herr Haase, his lamp alight, his back turned to the Alpine-glow on the mountains, largely at ease in his chair, awaiting the arrival of hisDienstmadchen with the culminating coffee of the day. His yellowcigar was alight; he was fed and torpid; digestion and civilizationwere doing their best for him. As from an ambush there arrived thefat, yellow telegraph envelope. 

"Ach, was!" protested Herr Haase. "And I thought it was the coffeeyou were bringing. "

"'S Kaffee kommt gleich, " the stout, tow-haired girl assured him; butalready he had torn open the envelope and was surveying itshalf-dozen sheets of code. Two hours of work with the key, at least;he groaned, and hoisted himself from his chair. 

"Bring the coffee to the office, " he bade, and went to telephone awarning to the Baron. 

The code was a cumbersome one; its single good quality was that itpassed unsuspected at a time when nervous telegraph departments wererefusing all ciphers. It consisted of brief phrases and single wordsalternately; the single words the codebook offered a selection of acouple of hundred of them were meaningless, and employed solely toseparate the phrases; and for half an hour Herr Haase's task was toseparate this ballast from the cargo of the message and jettison it. There lay before him then a string of honest-looking mercantilephrases "market unsettled, " "collections difficult, " and the likewhich each signified a particular word. He sat back in his chair andtook a preliminary glance at the thing. 

It was a code he used frequently himself, and there were phrases inthe message, two or three, which he knew by heart. As he scanned itit struck him that all of these were of the same character; they werewords of deprecation or demur. "Existing rate of exchange" meant"regret"; "active selling" meant "impossible"; and "usual discount"was the code-form of "unfortunate. " Herr Haase frowned and reachedfor his key. 

Midnight was close at hand when he reached the Baron's room, with thetelegram and his neatly-written interpretation in an envelope. He hadchanged his coat and shoes for the visit; it was the usual HerrHaase, softish of substance, solemn of attire, official of demeanor, who clicked and bowed to the Baron and Von Wetten in turn. 

"Our good Haase, " said the Baron. "At last!"

He wore a brown cloth dressing-gown with a cord about the middle; andsomehow the garment, with its long skirts and its tied-in waist, looked like a woman's frock? With the white hair and the containedbenevolence and power of his face it gave him the aspect of adistorted femininity, a womanhood unnatural and dire. Even Herr Haaseperceived it, for he stared a moment open-mouthed before he recoveredhimself. Von Wetten, smoking, in an easy chair, was in evening dress. 

Herr Haase, with customary clockwork-like military motions, producedhis envelope and held it forth. 

"The code-telegram of which I telephoned your Excellency and atranscription of it, " he announced. 

Von Wetten took his cigar from his lips and held it between hisfingers. The Baron waved the proffered envelope from him. 

"Read it to us, my good Haase, " he said. 

"Zu befehl, Excellenz!" Herr Haase produced from the envelope thecrackling sheet of thin paper, held it up to the light, standing thewhile with heels together and chest outthrust, and read in the highbarrack-square voice:

"Herr Sigismund Haase, Friedrichsruhe, Thunam-See, Switzerland. FromSecret Service Administration, Berlin. July 21st, 1916. In reply toyour code-message previously acknowledged, regret to report thatofficer you require was recently severely wounded. Hospitalauthorities report that it is impossible to move him. Trust thisunfortunate event does not stultify your arrangements. Your furtherinstructions awaited. "

Herr Haase refolded the paper and returned it to the envelope andstood waiting. 

It was Von Wetten who spoke first. "Thank God!" he said loudly. 

The old baron, standing near him, hands joined behind his back, hadlistened to the reading with eyes on the floor. He shook his headnow, gently, dissenting rather than contradicting. 

"Oh, no, " he said slowly. "Don't be in a hurry to do that, VonWetten. "

"But, Excellency, " Von Wetten protested, "I meant, of course. "

"I know, " said the Baron. "I know what you thanked God for; and Itell you don't be in too great a hurry. "

He began to walk to and fro in the room. He let his hands fall to hissides; he was more than ever distortedly womanlike, almost visiblypossessed and driven by his single purpose. Von Wetten, the extinctcigar still poised in his hand, watched him frowningly. 

"Sometimes" the Baron seemed to speak as often a man deep in thoughtwill hum a tune "sometimes I have felt before what I feel now acurrent in the universe that sets against me, against us. Somethingpulls the other way. It has all but daunted me once or twice. "

He continued to pace to and fro, staring at the varnished floor. 

"But, Excellency, " urged Von Wetten, "there are still ways and means. If we can decoy this inventor-fellow across the frontier and then, there is his wife! Pressure could be brought to bear through thewoman. If we got hold of her, now!"

The Baron paused in his walk to hear him. 

"And find an English army blasting its way through Belgium with thatmachine to come to her rescue? No, " he said; and then, starting fromhis moody quiet to a sudden loudness: "No! We know his price to lashthis Von Specht across the face with a whip and we have agreed to it. Let him lash him as he lies on a stretcher, if he likes! I know thattype of scorched brain, simmering on the brink of madness. He'll doit, and he'll keep faith; and it'll be cheap at the price. Haase!"

He wheeled on Herr Haase suddenly. 

"Zu befehl, Excellenz, " replied Herr Haase. 

The Baron stared at him for some moments, at the solid, capable, biddable creature he was, stable and passive in the jar of theoverturned world. He pointed to the table. 

"Sit there, my good Haase, " he ordered. "I will dictate you atelegram. Not code this time, plain German!"

He resumed his to-and-fro walk while Herr Haase established himself. 

"Direct it to our private address in the Wilhelmstrasse, " he ordered. "Then write: 'You are to carry out orders previously communicated. Send Von Specht forthwith, avoiding all delay. Telegraph hour of hisdeparture and keep me informed of his progress. No objections to thisorder are to be entertained. '"

"'Entertained, '" murmured Herr Haase, as he wrote the last word. 

"Sign it as before, " directed the Baron. "You see, Von Wetten, it wastoo soon!"

Von Wetten had not moved; he sat staring at the Baron. His handtwitched and the dead cigar fell to the floor. 

"I don't care, " he burst out, "it's wrong; it's not worth it nothingcould be. I'd be willing to go a long way, but a Prussian officer!It's, it's sacrilege. And a wounded man at that!"

The Baron did not smile but mirth was in his face. "That was anafterthought, Von Wetten, " he said "the wounded man part of it. " Heturned to Herr Haase impatiently. 

"Off with you!" he commanded. "Away, man, and get that message sent!Let me have the replies as they arrive. No, don't wait to bow and saygood night; run, will you!"

His long arm, in the wide sleeve of the gown, leaped up, pointing tothe door. Herr Haase ran. 

Obediently as a machine, trotting flat-footed over the cobbles of themidnight streets, he ran, pulling up at moments to take his breath, then running on again. Panting, sweating, he lumbered up the steps ofthe telegraph office and thrust the message through the grille to thesleepy clerk. 

"What is Von Specht?" grumbled the clerk. "Is this a cipher-message?"

"No, " gasped Herr Haase. "Can't you read? This is plain German!"

Herr Haase, one has gathered, was not afflicted with that weakness ofthe sense which is called imagination. Not his to dream dreams andsee visions; nor, while he tenderly undressed himself and put himselfinto his bed, to dwell in profitless fancy over the message he hadsent, bursting like a shell among the departments and administrationswhich are the body of Germany's official soul. Nor later either, whenthe spate of replies kept him busy decoding and carrying them down tothe Baron, did he read into them more than the bare import of theirwording. "Von Specht transferred to hospital coach attached specialtrain, accompanied military doctor and orderlies in civil clothes. Left Base Hospital No. 64 at 3:22 P. M. Condition weak, feverish, "said the first of them. It did not suggest to him the hush of thewhite ward broken by the tread of the stalwart stretcher-bearers, thefeeble groaning as they shifted the swathed and bandaged form fromthe bed to the stretcher, the face thin and haggard with yet remainsof sunburn on its bloodlessness, the progress to the railway, thegrunt and heave of the men as they hoisted their burden to thewaiting hospital-carriage. None of all that for Herr Haase. 

Later came another message: "Patient very feverish. Continuallyinquires whither going and why. Please telegraph some answer to meettrain at Bengen with which may quiet him. " To that Herr Haase wasordered to reply: "Tell Colonel von Specht that he is serving hisFatherland, " and that elicited another message from the train atColmar: "Gave patient your message, to which he replied, 'That isgood enough for me. ' Is now less feverish, but very weak. "

And finally, from Basle, came the news that the train and itspassengers had crossed the frontier; Colonel von Specht was inSwitzerland. 

"You, my good Haase, will meet the train, " said the Baron vonSteinlach. "The Embassy has arranged to have it shunted to a sidingoutside the station. You will, of course, tell them nothing of whatis in contemplation. Just inform whoever is in charge that I willcome later. And, Von Wetten, I think we will send the car with a noteto bring Herr Bettermann here at the same time. "

"Here, Excellency?"

"Yes, " said the Baron. "After all, we want to keep the thing as quietas possible, and that fellow is capable of asking a party of friendsto witness the ceremony. " There was malicious amusement in the eye heturned on Von Wetten. "And we don't want that, do we?" he suggested. 

Von Wetten shuddered. 

The siding at which the special train finally came to rest was"outside the station" in the sense that it was a couple of milesshort of it, to be reached by a track-side path complicated by pilesof sleepers and cinder-heaps. Herr Haase, for the purpose of hismission, had attired himself sympathetically rather thanconveniently; he was going to visit a colonel and, in addition toother splendors, he had even risked again the patent leather boots. He was nearly an hour behind time when he reached at length the twowagons-lits carriages standing by themselves in a wilderness oftracks. 

Limping, perspiring, purple in the face, he came alongside of them, peering up at their windows. A face showed at one of them, spectacledand bearded, gazing motionlessly through the panes with the effect ofa sea-creature in an aquarium. It vanished and reappeared at the enddoor of the car. 

"Hi! You, what do you want here?" called the owner of the face toHerr Haase. 

Herr Haase came shuffling towards the steps. 

"Ich stelle Mich vor; I introduce myself, " he said ceremoniously. "Haase sent by his Excellency, the Herr Baron von Steinlach. "

The other gazed down on him, a youngish man, golden-blond as to beardand hair, with wide, friendly eyes magnified by his glasses. He wascoatless in the heat, and smoked a china-bowled German pipe like aman whose work is done and whose ease is earned; yet in his face andmanner there was a trace of perturbation, an irritation ofnervousness. 

"Oh!" he said, and spoke his own name. "Civil-doctor Fallwitz. I'vebeen expecting somebody. You'd better come inside, hadn't you?"

Outside was light and heat; inside was shadow and heat. Dr. Fallwitzled the way along the corridor of the car, with its gold-outlinedscrollwork and many brass-gadgeted doors, to his own tinycompartment, smelling of hot upholstery and tobacco. Herr Haaseremoved his hat and sank puffing upon the green velvet cushions. 

"You are hot, nicht wahr?" inquired Dr. Fallwitz politely. 

"Yes, " said Herr Haase. "But, Herr Doktor, since you are so good itis not only that. If it is gross of me to ask it but if I might takeoff my boots for some moments. You see, they are new. "

"Aber ich bitte, " cried the doctor. 

The doctor stood watching him while he struggled with the buttons, and while he watched he frowned and gnawed at the amber mouthpiece ofhis pipe. 

He waited till Herr Haase, with a loud, luxurious grunt, had drawnoff the second boot. 

"There will be a row, of course, " he remarked then. "TheseExcellencies and people are only good for making rows. But I toldthem he couldn't be moved. "

Herr Haase shifted his toes inside his socks. "You mean Colonel vonSpecht? But isn't he here, then?"

The young doctor shook his head. "We obeyed orders, " he said. "We hadto. Those people think that life and death are subject to orders. Ikept him going till we got here, but about an hour ago he had ahemorrhage. "

He put his pipe back into his mouth, inhaled and exhaled a cloud ofsmoke, and spoke again. 

"Died before we could do anything, " he said. "You see, after all hehad been through, he hadn't much blood to spare. What did they wanthim here for, do you know?"

"No, " said Herr Haase. "But I know the Herr Baron was needing himparticularly. Was fur eine Geschichte!"

"Want to see him?" asked the young doctor. 

It had happened to Herr Haase never to see a dead man before. Therefore, among the incidents of his career, he will not fail toremember that the progress in his socks from the one car to theother, the atmosphere of the second car where the presence of deathwas heavy on the stagnant air, and the manner in which the thin whitesheet outlined the shape beneath. A big young orderly in shabbycivilian clothes was on guard; at the doctor's order he drew down thesheet and the dead man's face was bare. He who had slashed a helplessconscript across the face with a whip, for whom yet any service ofhis Fatherland was "good enough, " showed to the shrinking Herr Haaseonly a thin, still countenance from whose features the eager passionand purpose had been wiped, leaving it resolute in peace alone. 

"I I didn't know they looked like that, " whispered Herr Haase. 

The two homeward miles of cindery path were difficult; the sun wastyrannical; his boots were a torment; yet Herr Haase went as in adream. He had seen reality; the veil of his daily preoccupations hadbeen rent for him; and it needed the impertinence of theticket-collector at the door of the station, who was unwilling to lethim out without a ticket, to restore him. That battle won, he foundhimself a cab, and rattled over the stones of Thun to the hotel door. He prepared no phrases in which to clothe his news; facts are factsand are to be stated as facts. What he murmured to himself as hejolted over the cobbles was quite another matter. 

"Ticket, indeed!" he breathed rancorously. "And I tipped him twomarks only last Christmas!"

The Baron's car was waiting at the hotel door; the cab drew up behindit. The cabman, of course, wanted more than his due, and didn't getit; but the debate helped to take Herr Haase's mind still further offhis feet. He entered the cool hall of the hotel triumphantly and madefor the staircase. 

"O, mein Herr!"

He turned; he had not seen the lady in the deep basket-chair justwithin the door, but now, as she rose and came towards him, herecognized her. It was the wife of Bettermann, the inventor, theshape upon the balcony of the chalet who had overlooked theirexperiments and overheard the bargain they had made. 

Herr Haase bowed. "Gnadige Frau?"

He remembered her as little and pleasantly pretty; her presence abovethem on the balcony had touched his German sentimentalism. She waspretty now, with her softness and blossom-like fragility, but with itwas a tensity, a sort of frightened desperation. 

She hesitated for words, facing him with lips that trembled, andlarge, painful eyes of nervousness. "He he is here, " she said, atlast. "My husband they sent a car to fetch him to them. He is upthere now, with them!"

Herr Haase did not understand. "But yes, gracious lady, " he answered. "Why not? The Herr Baron wished to speak to him. "

She put out a small gloved hand uncertainly and touched his sleeve. 

"No, " she said. "Tell me! I, I am so afraid. That other, the officerwho cut Egon's face my husband's I mean, he has arrived? Tell me, mein Herr! Oh, I thought you would tell me; I saw you the other day, and those others never spoke to you, and you were the only one wholooked kind and honest. " She gulped and recovered. "He has arrived?"

"Well, now, " began Herr Haase paternally. In all his official life hehad never "told" anything. Her small face, German to its verycoloring, pretty and pleading, tore at him. 

"Yes, he has arrived, " he said shortly. "I have I have just seenhim. "

"Oh!" It was almost a cry. "Then then they will do it? Mein Herr, mein Herr, help me! Egon, he has been thinking only of this foryears; and now, if he does it, he will think of nothing else all hislife. And he mustn't he mustn't! It's it will be madness. I know him. Mein Herr, there is nobody else I can ask; help me!"

The small gloved hand was holding him now, holding by the sleeve ofhis superlative black coat of ceremony, plucking at it, striving tostir him to sympathy and understanding; the face, hopeful and afraid, strained up at him. 

Gently he detached the gloved hand on his sleeve, holding it a secondin his own before letting it go. 

"Listen, " he said. "That bargain is cancelled. Colonel von Spechtdied to-day. "

He turned forthwith and walked to the stairs. He did not look back ather. 

"Herein!" called somebody from within the white-painted door of theBaron's room, when he knocked. 

Herr Haase, removing his hat, composing his face to a nullity ofofficial expression, entered. 

After the shadow of the hall and the staircase, the window blazed athim. The Baron was at his little table, seated sideways in his chair, toying with an ivory paper-knife, large against the light. Von Wettenstood beside him, tall and very stiff, withdrawn into himself behindhis mask of Prussian officer and aristocrat; and in a low chair, backto the door and facing the other two, Bettermann sat. 

He screwed round awkwardly to see who entered, showing his thin faceand its scar, then turned again to the Baron, large and calm andsufficient before him. 

"I tell you, " he said, resuming some talk that had been going onbefore Herr Haase's arrival: "I tell you, the letter of the bargainor nothing!"

The Baron had given to Herr Haase his usual welcome of a half smile, satiric and not unkindly. He turned now to Bettermann. 

"But certainly, " he answered. He slapped the ivory paper-knifeagainst his palm. "I was not withdrawing from the bargain. I wasmerely endeavoring to point out to you at the instance of my friendhere" a jerk of the elbow towards Von Wetten "the advantages of amillion marks, or several million marks, plus the cashiering ofColonel von Specht from the army, over the personal satisfactionwhich you have demanded for yourself. But since you insist. "

Bettermann, doubled up in his low chair, broke in abruptly: "Yes, Iinsist!"

The Baron smiled his elderly, temperate smile. "So be it, " he said. "Well, my good Haase, what have you to tell us?"

Herr Haase brought his heels together, dropped his thumbs to theseams of his best trousers, threw up his chin, and barked:

"Your Excellency, I have seen the Herr Colonel Graf von Specht. Hedied at ten minutes past eleven this morning. "

His parade voice rang in the room; when it ceased the silence, for aspace of moments, was absolute. What broke it was the voice of VonWetten. 

"Thank God!" it said, loudly and triumphantly. 

The Baron swung round to him, but before he could speak Bettermanngathered up the slack of his long limbs and rose from his chair. Hestood a moment, gaunt in his loose and worn clothes, impending overthe seated baron. 

"So that was it! Well" He paused, surveying the pair of them, the oldman, the initiate and communicant of the inmost heart of the machinethrough which his soul had gone like grain through a mill, and thetall Prussian officer, at once the motor and millstone of thatmachine. And he smiled. "Well, " he repeated, "there's the end ofthat!"

The door closed behind him; his retreating footsteps echoed in thecorridor. The Baron spoke at last. He stared up at Von Wetten, hisstrong old face seamed with new lines. 

"You thank God for that, do you?" he said. 

Von Wetten returned his gaze. "Yes, Excellency, " he replied. 

He had screwed his monocle into his eye; it gave to his unconsciousarrogance the barb of impertinence. 

"You!" The Baron cried out at him. "You thank God, do you? andneither your thanks nor your God is worth the bones of a singlePomeranian grenadier! Do you know what has happened, fool?"

Captain von Wetten bent towards him, smiling slightly. 

"You are speaking to Haase, of course, Excellency?"

The Baron caught himself. His face went a trifle pinker, but hismouth was hard under the clipped white moustache and the heavy browswere level. 

"I will tell you what has happened, " he said deliberately. "I willtry to make it intelligible to you. "

He held up the ivory paper-knife, its slender yellow blade strainedin his two hands. 

"That is Germany to-day, " he said, "bending. " His strong handstightened; the paper-knife broke with a snap. "And that is Germanyto-morrow broken. We have failed. "

He threw the two pieces from him to the floor and stared under thepent of his brows at Von Wetten. 

Their eyes engaged. But one of the pieces slid across the floor toHerr Haase's feet. Orderly and serviceable always, Herr Haase bentand picked up the broken pieces and put them back upon the table. 

VIII

ALMS AND THE MAN

While she was yet dressing, she had heard the soft pad of slippers onthe narrow landing outside her room and the shuffle of papers; then, heralded by a single knock, the scrape and crackle of a paper beingpushed under her door. It was in this fashion that the Maison Mardelpresented its weekly bills to its guests. 

"Merci!" she called aloud, leaving her dressing to go and pick up thepaper. A pant from without answered her and the slippers thuddedaway. 

Standing by the door, with arms and shoulders bare, she unfolded thedocument, a long sheet with a printed column of items and large inkyfigures in francs and centimes written against them, and down in theright hand corner the dramatic climax of the total. It was the totalthat interested Annette Kelly. 

"H'm!" It was something between a gasp and a sigh. "They 're makingthe most of me while I last, " said Annette aloud. 

Her purse was under her pillow, an old and baggy affair of shagreen, whose torn lining had to be explored with a forefinger for the coinsit swallowed. She emptied it now upon the bed. The light of a Parissummer morning, golden and serene, flowed in at the window, visitingthe poverty of the little room with its barren benediction andshining upon the figure of Annette as she bent above her money andcounted it She was a slender girl of some three-and-twenty years, with hair and eyes of a somber brown; six weeks of searching foremployment in Paris and economizing in food, of spurring herself eachmorning to the tone of hope and resolution, of returning each eveningfootsore and dispirited, had a little blanched and touched withtenseness a face in which there yet lingered some of the softcontours of childhood. 

She sat down beside the money on the bed, her ankles crossed belowher petticoat; her accounts were made up. After paying the bill andbestowing one franc in the unavoidable tip, there would remain to herexactly eight francs for her whole resources. It was the edge of theprecipice at last. It was that precipice, overhanging depths unseenand terrible, which she was contemplating as she sat, feet swinginggently in the rhythm of meditation, her face serious and quiet. Forsix weeks she had seen it afar off; now it was at hand and immediate. 

"Well, " said Annette slowly; she had already the habit of talkingaloud to herself which comes to lonely people. She paused. "It justmeans that today I've got to get some work. I've got to. "

She rose, forcing herself to be brisk and energetic. The Journal, with its advertisements of work to be had for the asking, had come toher door with the glass of milk and the roll which formed herbreakfast, and she had already made a selection of its more humblepossibilities. She ran them over in her mind as she finisheddressing. Two offices required typists; she would go to both. Acashier in a shop and an English governess were wanted. "Whyshouldn't I be a governess?" said Annette. And finally, somebody inthe Rue St. Honore required a young lady of good figure and pleasantmanner for "reception. " There were others, too, but it was upon thesefive that Annette decided to concentrate. 

She put on her hat, took her money and her Journal, and turned to thedoor. A curious impulse checked her there and she came back to themirror that hung above her dressing-table. 

"Let's have a look at you!" said Annette to the reflection thatconfronted her. 

She stood, examining it seriously. It was, she thought, quitepresentable, a trim, quiet figure of a girl who might reasonably askwork and a wage; she could not find anything in it to account forthose six weeks of refusals. She perked her chin and forced her faceto look assured and spirited, watching the result in the mirror. 

"Ye-es, " she said at last, and nodded to the reflection. "You'll haveto do; but I wish I wish you hadn't got that sort of doomed look. Good-bye, old girl!"

At the foot of the stairs, in the open door of that room which waslabeled "Bureau, " where a bed and a birdcage and a smell of food keptcompany with the roll-top desk, stood the patronne, Madame Mardel. She moved a little forth into the passage as Annette approached. 

"Good morning, mademoiselle. Again a charming day!"

She was a large woman, grossly fleshy, with clothes that strained tocreaking point about her body and gaped at the fastenings. Her vastface, under her irreproachably neat hair the hair of a Parisienne wasswarthy and plethoric, with the jowl of a bulldog and eyes tiny andbright. Annette knew her for an artist in "extras, " a vampire thathad sucked her purse lean with deft overcharges, a creature withoutmercy or morals. But the daily irony of her greeting had the grace, the cordial inflexion, of a piece of distinguished politeness. 

"Charming, " agreed Annette. She produced the bill. "I may as well paythis now, " she suggested. 

Madame's chill and lively eyes were watching her face, estimating hersolvency in the light of Madame's long experience of misfortune anddespair. She shrugged a huge shoulder deprecatingly. 

"There is no hurry, " she said. She always said that. "Still, sincemademoiselle is here. "

Annette followed her into the bureau, that dimlighted sanctuary ofMadame's real life. Below the half-raised blind in the window thecanaries in their cage rustled and bickered; unwashed plates werecrowded on the table; the big unmade bed added a flavor of its own tothe atmosphere. Madame eased herself, panting, into the chair beforethe desk, revealing the great rounded expanse of her back with itsrow of straining buttons and lozenge-shaped revelations ofunderwear. With the businesslike deliberation of a person whotransacts a serious affair with due seriousness, she spread the billbefore her, smoothing it out with a practiced wipe of the hand, tookher rubber stamp from the saucer in which' it lay, inked it on thepad and waited. Annette had been watching her, fascinated by thatgreat methodical rhythm of movement, but at the pause she started, fished the required coins from the old purse, and laid them atMadame's elbow. "Merci, mademoiselle, " said Madame, and then, and nottill then, the stamp descended upon the paper. A flick with ascratchy pen completed the receipt, and Madame turned awkwardly inthe embrace of her chair to hand it to Annette with her weekly smile. The ritual was accomplished. 

"Good morning, mademoiselle. Thank you; good luck. "

The mirthless smile discounted the words; the cold, avid eyes werebusy and suspicious. Annette let them stare their fill while shefolded the paper and tucked it into the purse; she had had six weeksof training in the art of preserving a cheerful countenance. 

Then: "Good morning, madame, " she smiled, with her gay little nod andreached the door in good order. 

There was still Aristide, the lame man-of-all-work, who absorbed aweekly franc and never concealed his contempt of the amount. He waswaiting on the steps, leaning on a broom, and turned his rat's faceon her, sourly and impatiently, without a word. She paused as shecame to him and dipped two fingers into the poor old purse;Aristide's pale, red-edged eyes followed them, while his thin mouthtwisted into contempt. 

"This is for you, Aristide, " she said, and held out the coin. 

He took it in his open palm and surveyed it with lifted eyebrows. "This?" he inquired. 

"Yes. " The insult never failed to hurt her; this morning, inparticular, she would have been glad to set forth upon the day'sforlorn hope without that preface of hate and cruel greed. ButAristide still stood, with the coin in his open hand, staring from itto her and she flinched from him. "Good morning, " she said timidly, and slipped past. 

It needed the gladness of the day, its calm and colorful warmth, totake the taste of Aristide out of her mouth and uplift her again toher mood of resolution. Her way lay downhill; the first of heradvertisements gave an address at the foot of the Rue Lafayette; andsoon the stimulus of the thronged streets, the mere neighborhood offolk who moved briskly and with purpose, re-strung her slackenednerves and she was again ready for the battle. And as she went herlips moved. 

"Mind, now!" she was telling herself. "Today's the end the very end. You've got to get work today!"

The address in the Rue Lafayette turned out to be that of a firm ofhouse and estate agents; it was upon the first floor and showed tothe landing four ground-glass doors, of which three were lettered"Private, " while the fourth displayed an invitation to enter withoutknocking. Upon the landing, in the presence of those inexpressivedoors, behind which salaries were earned and paid and life was allthat was orderly and desirable, Annette paused for a space of momentsto make sure of herself. 

"Now!" she said, with a deep breath, and pushed open the fourth door. 

Within was an office divided by a counter, and behind the counterdesks and the various apparatus of business. The desks wereunoccupied; the only person present was a thin pretty girl seatedbefore a typewriter. She looked up at Annette across the counter; herface showed patches of too bright a red on the cheekbones. 

"Good morning, " began Annette, with determined briskness. "I'vecome. "

The girl smiled. "Typist?" she interrupted. 

"Yes, " said Annette. "The advertisement"--she stopped; the girl wasstill smiling, but in a manner of deprecating and infinitely gentleregret. 

Annette stared at her, feeling within again that rising chill ofdisappointment with which she was already so familiar. "You mean" shestammered awkwardly "you mean you've got the place?"

The thin girl spread her hands apart in a little French gesture ofconciliation. 

"Ten minutes ago, " she answered. "There is no one here yet but themanager, and I was waiting at the door when he arrived. "

"Thank you, " said Annette faintly. The thin girl, still regarding herwith big shadowy eyes, suddenly put a hand to her bosom and coughed. The neat big office beyond the bar of the polished counter wasunbearably pleasant to look at; one could have been so happily busyat one's place between those tidy desks. A sharp bell rang from aninner office; the thin girl rose. The hectic on her cheeks burnedbrighter. 

"I must go, " she said hurriedly. "He wants me. I hope you will havegood luck. "

The sunlight without had lost some of its quality when Annette cameforth to the street again; it no longer warmed her to optimism. Shestood for some moments in the doorway of the building, letting herdepression and discouragement have their way with her. 

"If only I might cry a bit, " she reflected. "That would help alittle. But I mustn't even do that!"

She had to prod herself into fresh briskness with the sense of herneed, that to-day was the end. She sighed, jerked her chin up, sether small face into the shape of resolute cheerfulness and startedforth again in the direction of the second vacancy for a typist. 

Here, for a while, hope burned high. The office was that of a firm ofthriving wine exporters and the post had not yet been filled. Thepartner into whose office she penetrated by virtue of her sheerdetermination to see someone in authority, was a stout ruddyMarseillais, speaking French in the full-throated Southern fashion;he was kindly and cheery, with broad vermilion lips a-smile throughhis beard. 

"Yes, we want a typist, " he admitted; "but I'm afraid" his amiablebrown eyes scrutinized her with manifest doubt. "You havereferences?" he inquired. 

Yes, Annette had references. She had only lost her last situationwhen her employer went bankrupt; the testimonial she produced spokewell of her in every sense. She gave it him to read. But what whatwas it in her that had inspired that look of doubt, that look she hadseen so often before in the eyes of possible employers?

"Yes, it is very good. " He handed the paper back to her, stillsurveying her and hesitating. "And you are accustomed to the machine?H'm!"

It was then that hope flared up strongly. He could not get out of it;he must employ her now. Salary? She would take what the firm offered!And still he continued to look at her with a hint of embarrassment inhis regard. She felt she was trembling. 

"I'm afraid" he began again, but stopped at her involuntary littlegasp and shifted uneasily in his chair. He was acutely uncomfortable. An idea came to him and he brightened. "Well, you can leave youraddress and we will write to you. Yes, we will write to you. "

And to-day was the end! Annette stared at him. "When?" she askedshortly. 

The burly man reddened dully; she had seen through his pretext forgetting rid of her. "Oh, in a day or two, " he answered uneasily. 

Annette rose. She had turned pale but she was quite calm andself-possessed. 

"I I hoped to get work today, " she said. "In fact, I must find ittoday. But will you at least tell me why you won't give me theplace?"

The big man's cheery face began to frown. He was being forced to fallback on his right to employ or not to employ whom he pleased withoutgiving reasons. Annette watched him, and before he could speak shewent on again. 

"I'm not complaining, " she said. Her voice was even and very low. "But there's something wrong with me, isn't there? I saw how youlooked at me at first. Well, it wouldn't cost you anything, and itwould help me a lot, if you'd just tell me what it is that's wrong. You see, nobody will have me, and it's getting rather ratherdesperate. So if you'd just tell me, perhaps I could alter something, and have a chance at last. "

Her serious eyes, the pallor of her face, and the level tones of hervoice held him like a hand on his throat. He was a man with thecordial nature of his race, prone to an easy kindliness, who wouldhave suffered almost any ill rather than feel himself guilty of acruelty. But how could he speak to her of the true reason forrefusing her the son in the business, the avid young debauchee whosevictims were girls in the firm's employ?

"If you'd just tell me what it is, I wouldn't bother you any more, and it might make all the difference to me, " Annette was saying. 

She saw him redden and shift sharply in his chair; an impulse of hisardent blood was spurring him to give her the work she needed, andthen so to deal with his son that he would never dare lift his eyesto her. But the instinct of caution developed in business came todamp that dangerous warmth. 

"Mademoiselle!" He returned her look gravely and honestly. "Upon myword, I can see nothing whatever wrong with you nothing whatever. "

"Then, " began Annette, "why won't you?"

He stopped her with an upraised hand. "I am going to tell you, " hesaid. "There is a rule in this office, and behind the rule are goodand sufficient reasons, that we do not take into our employ women whoare still young and pretty. "

She heard him with no change of her rigid countenance. Sheunderstood, of course; she had known in her time what it was to bepersecuted. She would have liked to tell him that she was well ableto take care of herself, but she recalled her promise not to botherhim further. 

She sighed, buttoning her glove. "It's a pity, " she said unhappily, "because I really am a good typist. "

"I am sure of it, " he agreed. "I infinitely regret, but sa y est!"

She raised her head. "Well, thank you for telling me, at any rate, "she said. "Good morning, monsieur. "

"Good morning, mademoiselle, " he replied, and held open the door forher to pass out. 

Once more the street and the sunshine and the hurry of passingstrangers, each pressing by about his or her concerns. Again shestood a little while in the doorway, regarding the thronged urgencythat surged in spate between the high, handsome buildings, every unitof it wearing the air of being bound towards some place where it wasneeded, while she alone was unwanted. 

"I think, " considered Annette, "that I ought to have some coffee orsomething, since it's the last day. "

She looked down along the street; not far away the awning of a cafeshowed red and white above the sidewalk, sheltering its row of littletables, and she walked slowly towards it. How often in the last sixweeks, footsore and leaden-hearted, had she passed such places, feeling the invitation of their ease and refreshment in every jarredand crying nerve of her body, yet resisting it for the sake of thecentimes it would cost. 

She took a chair in the back row of seats, behind a small iron table, slackening her muscles and leaning back, making the mere act ofsitting down yield her her money's worth. The shadow of the awningturned the day to a benign coolness; there was a sense of privilegein being thus at rest in the very street, at the elbow of itspassers-by. A crop-headed German waiter brought the cafe au laitwhich she ordered, and set it on the table before her two metal jugs, a cup and saucer, a little glass dish of sugar, and a folded napkin. The cost was half a franc; she gave him a franc, bade him keep thechange, and was rewarded with half a smile, half a bow, and a "Mercibeaucoup, madame!" which in themselves were a balm to her spirit, bruised by insult and failure. The coffee was hot; its fragrancegushed up from her cup; since her last situation had failed her shewas tasting for the first time food that was appetizing and dainty. 

She lifted the cup. "A short life and a merry one, " she murmured, toasting herself before she drank. 

Six francs remained to her, and there were yet three employers tovisit. The lady in need of a governess and the shop which required acashier were at opposite ends of Paris; the establishment whichdesired a young lady for "reception" was between the two. Annette, surveying the field', decided to reserve the "reception" to the last. She finished her coffee, flavoring to the last drop the warmstimulation of it; then, having built up again her hopeful mood, sheset out anew. 

It was three hours later, towards two o'clock in the afternoon, thatshe came on foot, slowly, along the Rue St. Honore, seeking theestablishment which had proclaimed in the Journal its desire toemploy, for purposes of "reception, " a young lady of good figure andpleasant manners. She had discovered, at the cost of one of herremaining francs for omnibus fares, that a 50-franc a month governessmust possess certificates, that governessing is a skilled tradeovercrowded by women of the most various and remarkable talents. Atthe shop that advertised for a cashier a floor-walker had glanced ather over his shoulder for an instant, snapped out that the place wasfilled, and walked away. 

The name she sought appeared across the way, lettered upon a row offirst-floor windows; it was a photographer's. 

"Now!" said Annette. "The end this is the end!"

A thrill touched her as she went up the broad stairway of thebuilding; the crucial thing was at hand. The morning had been bad, but at each failure there had still been a possibility ahead. Now, there was only this and nothing beyond. 

A spacious landing, carpeted, and lit by the tall church-windows onthe staircase, great double doors with a brass plate, and a dimindoor sense pervading all the place! Here, evidently, the sharpcorners of commerce were rounded off; its acolytes must be engagingfemale figures with affable manners. 

Annette's ringer on the bronze bell-push evoked a manservant inlivery, with a waistcoat of horizontal yellow and black stripes likea wasp and a smooth, subtle, still face. He pulled open one wing ofthe door and stood aside to let her pass in, gazing at her withdemure eyes, in whose veiled suggestion there was something satiric. Annette stepped past him at once. 

"There is an advertisement in the Journal for a young lady, " shesaid. "I have come to apply for the post. "

The smooth manservant lowered his head in a nod that was just not abow, and closed the tall door. 

"Yes, " he said. "If mademoiselle will give herself the trouble to beseated I will inform the master. "

The post was not filled, then. Annette sat down, let the wasp-huedflunkey pass out of sight, and looked round at the room in which shefound herself. It was here, evidently, that the function of"reception" was accomplished. The manservant admitted the client; onerose from one's place at the little inlaid desk in the alcove andrustled forward across the gleaming parquet, with pleased anddeferential alacrity to bid Monsieur or Madame welcome, to offer achair and the incense of one's interest and delight in service. Oneadded oneself to the quality of the big, still apartment, with itsantique furniture, its celebrities and notorieties pictured upon itswalls, its great chandelier, a-shiver with glass lusters hangingoverhead like an aerial iceberg. No noises entered from the street;here, the business of being photographed was magnified to asolemnity; one drugged one's victim with pomp before leading him tothe camera. 

"I could do it, " thought Annette. "I'm sure I could do it. I couldfit into all this like a like a snail into a shell. I'd want shoesthat didn't slide on the parquet; and then oh, if only this comesoff!"

A small noise behind her made her turn quickly. The door by which thefootman had departed was concealed by a portiere of heavy velvet; ahand had moved it aside and a face was looking round the edge of itat her. As she turned, the owner of it came forward into the room, and she rose. 

"Be seated, be seated!" protested the newcomer in a high emasculatevoice, and she sat down again obediently upon the littlespindle-legged Empire settee from which she had risen. 

"And you have come in consequence of the advertisement?" said the manwith a little giggle. "Yes; yes! We will see, then!"

He stood in front of her, half-way across the room, staring at her. He was a man somewhere in the later thirties, wearing the velvetjacket, the cascading necktie, the throat-revealing collar, and theoverlong hair which the conventions of the theatre have establishedas the livery of the artist. The details of this grotesque fopperypresented themselves to Annette only vaguely; it was at the manhimself as he straddled in the middle of the polished floor, staringat her, that she gazed with a startled attention a face like thefeeble and idiot countenance of an old sheep, with the same flattenedlength of nose and the same weakly demoniac touch in the curve andslack hang of the wide mouth. It was not that he was merely ugly orqueer to the view; it seemed to Annette that she was suddenly in thepresence of something monstrous and out of the course of Nature. Hiseyes, narrow and seemingly colorless, regarded her with a fatuouscomplacency. 

She flushed and moved in her seat under his long scrutiny. Thecreature sighed. 

"Yes, " he said, always in the same high, dead voice. "You satisfy theeye, mademoiselle. For me, that is already much, since it is as anartist that I consider you first. And your age?"

She told him. He asked further questions, of her previous employment, her nationality, and so forth, putting them perfunctorily as thoughthey were matters of no moment, and never removing his narrow eyesfrom her face. Then, with short sliding steps, he came across theparquet and sat down beside her on the Empire settee. 

Annette backed to the end of it and sat defensively on the edge, facing the strange being. He, crossing his thin legs, leaned with anarm extended along the back of the settee and his long, large-knuckled hand hanging limp. His sheep's face lay over on hisshoulder towards her; in that proximity its quality of feeblegrotesqueness was enhanced. It was like sitting in talk with a sickape. 

"Curiouser and curiouser!" quoted Annette to herself. "I ought towake up next and find he really doesn't exist. "

"Mademoiselle!" The creature began to speak again. "You are the ninthwho has come hither today seeking the post I have advertised. Some Irejected because they failed to conciliate my eye; I cannot, you willunderstand, be tormented by a presence which jars my sense. "

He paused to hear her agree. 

"And the others?" inquired Annette. 

"A-ah!" The strange being sighed. "The others in each case, what adisappointment! Girls beautiful, of a personality subdued andharmonious, capable of taking their places in my environment withoutdoing violence to its completeness; but lacking the plastic andresponsive quality which the hand of the artist should find in hismaterial. Resistant they were resistant, mademoiselle, every one ofthem. "

"Silly of them, " said Annette briefly. She was meeting the secretstare of his half-closed eyes quite calmly now; she was beginning tounderstand the furtive satire in the regard of the smooth footman whohad admitted each of those eight others in turn and seen their laterdeparture. "What was it they wouldn't do?" she inquired. 

"Do!" The limp hand flapped despairingly; the thin voice ran shrill. "I required nothing of them. One enters; I view her; I seat myself ather side as I sit now with you; I seek in talk to explore herresources of sentiment, of temperament, of sympathy. Perhaps I takeher hand" As though to illustrate the recital, his long hand droppedsuddenly and seized hers. He ceased to talk, surveying her with ascared shrewdness. 

Annette smiled, letting her hand lie where it was. She was not in theleast afraid; she had forgotten for the moment the barrenness of thestreets that awaited her outside, and the fact that she had come tothe end of her hopes. 

"And they objected to that?" she inquired sweetly. 

"Ah, but you. " He was making ready to hitch closer along the seat, and she was prepared for him. 

"Oh, I'd let you hold them both if that were all, " she replied. "Butit isn't all, is it?"

She smiled again at the perplexity in his face; his hands slackenedand withdrew slowly. "You haven't told me what salary you areoffering, " she reminded him. 

"Mademoiselle you, too?"

She nodded. "I, too, " she said, and rose. The man on the setteegroaned and heaved his shoulders theatrically; she stood, viewing inquiet curiosity that countenance of impotent vileness. Other failureshad left her with a sense of defenselessness in a world so largelypopulated by men who glanced up from their desks to refuse her pleafor work. But now she had resources of power over fate andcircumstance; the streets, the night, the river, whatever of fear anddestruction the future held, could neither daunt nor compel her. Shecould go out to meet them, free and victorious. 

"Mademoiselle!" The man on the settee bleated at her. 

She shook her head at him. It was not worth while to speak. She wentto the door and opened it for herself; the smooth manservant wasdeprived of the spectacle of her departure. 

She went slowly down the wide stairs. "Nine of us, " she was thinking. "Nine girls, and not one of us was what did he call it? plastic. I'mnot really alone in the world, after all. "

But it was very like being alone in the world to go slowly, withtired feet, along the perspectives of the streets, to turn cornersaimlessly, to wander on with no destination or purpose. There was yetmoney in the old purse a single broad five-franc piece; it wouldlinger out her troubles for her till to-morrow. 

She would need to eat, and her room at Madame Mardel's would come tothree francs; she did not mean to occupy it any longer than she couldpay for it. And then the morning would find her penniless inactuality. 

Her last turning brought her out to the arches of the Rue de Rivoli;across the way the trees of the Tuileries Gardens lifted their greento the afternoon sunlight. She hesitated; then crossed the wide roadtowards the gardens, her thoughts still hovering about the five-francpiece. 

"It's a case for riotous living, " she told herself, as she passed into the smooth paths beneath the trees. "Five francs' worth of realdinner or something like that. Only I'm not feeling very riotous justnow. "

What she felt was that the situation had to be looked at, but thatlooking at it could not improve it. Things had come to an end; foodto eat, a bed to sleep in, the mere bare essentials of life hadceased, and she had not an idea of what came next; how one enteredupon the process of starving to death in the streets. Passers-by, strolling under the trees, glanced at her as she passed them, preoccupied and unseeing, a neat, comely little figure of a girl inher quiet clothes with her still composed face. She went slowly;there was a seat which she knew of farther on, overshadowed by a limetree, where she meant to rest and put her thoughts in order; butalready at the back of her mind there had risen, vague as night, oppressive as pain, tainting her disquiet with its presence, the hintof a consciousness that, after all, one does not starve to death passi bete! One takes a shorter way. 

A lean youth, with a black cotton cap pulled forward over one eye, who had been lurking near, saw the jerk with which she lifted herhead as that black inspiration was clear to her, and the suddencoldness and courage of her face, and moved away uneasily. 

"Ye-es, " said Annette slowly. "Ye-es! And now Ghh!"

A bend in the path had brought her suddenly to the seat under thelime tree; she was within a couple of paces of it before sheperceived that it had already its occupant the long figure of a youngman who sprawled back with his face upturned to the day and slumberedwith all that disordered and unbeautiful abandon which goes withdaylight sleep. His head had fallen over on one shoulder; his mouthwas open; his hands, grimy and large, showed half shut in his lap. There was a staring patch of black sticking plaster at the side ofhis chin; his clothes, that were yet decent, showed stains here andthere; his face, young and slackened in sleep, was burned brick-redby exposure. The whole figure of him, surrendered to weariness inthat unconscious and uncaring sprawl, seemed suddenly to answer herquestion this was what happened next; this was the end unless onefound and took that shorter way. 

"They walk till they can't walk any longer; then they sleep onbenches. I could never do that!"

She stood for some seconds longer, staring at the sleeping man. Resolution, bitter as grief, mounted in her like a tide. "No, itshan't come to that with me!" she cried inwardly. "Lounging with mymouth open for anyone to stare at! No!"

She turned, head up, body erect, face set strongly, and walked away. Neither sheep-faced human grotesques in palatial offices nor allParis and its civilization should make her other than she wished tobe. She stepped out defiantly and stopped short. 

The old purse was in her hand; through its flabby sides she couldfeel with her fingers the single five-franc piece which it yetcontained. Somehow, that had to be disposed of or provided for; fivefrancs was a serious matter to Annette. She looked round; the man inthe seat was still sleeping. 

Treading quietly, she went back to him, taking the coin from herpurse as she went. Upon his right side his coat pocket bulged open;she could see that in it was a little wad of folded papers. "Histestimonials poor fellow!" she breathed. Carefully she leaned forwardand let the broad coin slip into the pocket among the papers. Then, with an end of a smile twisted into the set of her lips, she turnedagain and departed. Among the trees the lean youth in the blackcotton cap watched her go. 

A day that culminates in sleep upon a bench in a public place iscommonly a day that has begun badly and maintained its character. Inthis case it may be said to have begun soon after nine A. M. When ayoung man in worn tweed clothes and carrying a handkerchief pressedto his jaw, stepped out from a taxi and into that drug-store which isnearest to the Gare de Lyon. The bald, bland chemist who presidesthere has a regular practice in the treatment of razor-cuts acquiredthrough shaving in the train; he looked up serenely across hisglass-topped counter. 

"Good morning, monsieur, " he said. "A little cut yes?"

Young Raleigh gazed at him across the handkerchief. 

"No! A thundering great gash, " he answered with emphasis. "I wantsomething to patch it up with. "

"Certainly certainly!" The bald apothecary had the airs of a familyphysician; he smiled soothingly. "We shall find something. Let me nowsee the cut!"

Raleigh protruded his face across the soaps and the bottles ofperfume, and the apothecary rose on tiptoe to scrutinize the wound. The razor had got home on the edge of the jaw with a scraping cutthat bled handsomely. 

"Ah!" The bald man nodded, and sought a bottle. "A little of this" hewas damping a rag of lint with the contents of the bottle "as acleansing agent first. If monsieur will bend down a little so. "

Daintily, with precision and delicacy, he proceeded to apply thecleansing agent to the cut; at the first dab the patient leapt backwith an exclamation. 

"Confound you!" he cried. "This stuff burns like fire. "

"It will pass in a moment, " soothed the chemist. "And now, a littlepatch, and all will be well. "

His idea of a suitable dressing was two inches of stiff and shinyblack plaster that gripped at the skin like a barnacle and lookedlike a tragedy. Raleigh surveyed the effect of it in a show-casemirror gloomily. 

"I wonder you didn't put it in a sling while you were about it, " heremarked ungratefully. "People'll think I've been trying to cut mythroat. "

"Monsieur should grow a beard, " counseled the chemist as he handedhim his change. 

Raleigh grunted, disdaining, retort, and passed forth to his waitingcab. The day had commenced inauspiciously. The night before, smokinghis final cigarette in his upper berth in the wagon-lit, he hadtempted Providence by laying out for himself a programme and a timeschedule; and it looked as if Providence had been unable to resistthe temptation. The business of the firm in which he was juniorpartner had taken him to Zurich; he had given himself a week'sholiday in the mountains, and was now on his way back to London. Thetrain was due to land him in Paris at half-past eight in the morning, and his plans were clear. First, a taxi to the Cafe de la Paix andbreakfast there under the awning while the day ripened towards thehours of business; then a small cigar and a stroll along theliveliness of the boulevard to the offices of the foundry company, where a heart-to-heart talk with the manager would clear up severallittle matters which were giving trouble. Afterwards, a taxi acrossthe river and a call upon the machine-tool people, get their reportupon the new gear-steels and return to the Gare du Nord in time tocatch the two o'clock train for Calais. 

He had settled the order of it to his satisfaction before he pulledthe shade over the lamp and turned over to sleep; and then, nextmorning, he had gashed himself while shaving, and the train was fortyminutes late. 

"These clothes" there was a narrow slip of mirror between the frontwindows of the taxi which reflected him, a section at a time "theseclothes 'ud pass, " he considered gloomily, considering their worn andunbusinesslike quality. "But with this" his fingers explored his chin"folks'll think we only do business between sprees. "

The manager of the foundry company was a French engineer who had beentrained in Pittsburg, a Frenchman of the new style, whose silkysweetness of manner was the mask of a steely tenacity of purpose. Hehad a little devilish black moustache, waxed at the points, like anearl of melodrama, and with it a narrow cheerless smile that jeeredinto futility Raleigh's effort to handle the subject on a basis ofeasy good fellowship. The heart-to-heart talk degenerated into a keenbusiness controversy, involving the consultation of letter-files; ittook more time than Raleigh had to spare; and in the end nothing wassettled. 

"You catch the airly train to London?" inquired the manager amiably, when Raleigh was leaving. 

"Yes, " replied Raleigh warmly. "I'm going to get out of this whileI've got my fare left. "

"Bon voyage, " said the Frenchman smilingly. "You will present mycompliments to your father?"

"Not me, " retorted Raleigh. "I'm not going to let him know I sawyou. "

The machine-tool people, to whom his next visit was due, wereestablished south of the river, a long drive from the boulevards. They were glad to receive him; there was a difficulty with some ofthe new steels, and they took him into the shops that he might seeand appreciate the matter for himself. In the end it was necessaryfor Raleigh to reset the big turret lathe and demonstrate the mannerof working, standing to the machine in his ancient tweed clothesnobody offered him overalls while the swift belting slatted at hiselbow and fragments of shaved steel and a fine spray of oil welcomedhim back to his trade. The good odor of metal, the engine-room smell, filled his nostrils; he was doing the thing which he could do best;it was not till it was finished that he looked at his watch andrealized that the last item of his time-table had gone the way of thefirst, and he had missed the two o'clock train. 

He paid off his return cab in the Place de la Concorde and stooddoubtfully on the curb, watching it skate away with the traffic. Hisbaggage had gone on by the two o'clock train; he was committed now toan afternoon in those ancient clothes with the oily stigma of theworkshop upon them. His hands, too, were black from his work; he hadslept badly in the train and done without a bath. In the softsunlight that rained upon those brilliant streets he felt foul andunsightly. 

He yawned, between a certain afternoon drowsiness and a languiddepression. 

"I'll wander up to the Meurice an' get a wash, anyhow, " he decided, and turned to stroll through the Tuileries Gardens towards the hotel. He went slowly; it was pleasant among the trees, and when a seat inthe shadows offered itself he sank down into it. 

"I'll sleep all right in the train to-night, " he thought, shovingback his cap. 

There were children playing somewhere out of sight; their voices cameto him in an agreeable tinkle. He crossed one leg over the other andsettled himself more comfortably; he had plenty of time to spare now. His eyes closed restfully. 

The touch that roused him was a very gentle one, scarcely more than aghost of a sensation, the mere brush of a dexterous hand that slid asquietly as a shadow along the edge of his jacket pocket and gropedinto it with long clever fingers, while its owner, sitting beside himon the bench, gazed meditatively before him with an air of completedetachment from that skilled felonious hand. Raleigh, waking withoutmoving, was able for a couple of seconds to survey his neighbor, aslim white-faced youth with a black cotton cap slouched forward overone eye. Then, swiftly, he caught the exploring hand by the wrist andsat up. 

"Your mistake, " he said crisply. "There's nothing but old letters inthat pocket. "

The youth at the first alarm tried to wrench loose, writhing instartled effort like a pronged snake, with all his smooth, viciousface clenched in violent fear. Raleigh gave a twisting jerk to theskinny wrist and the struggle was over; the lad uttered a yelp andcollapsed back on the seat. 

"Be good, " warned Raleigh in easy French; "be good, or I'll beat you, d'you hear?"

The youth sniffed, staring at him with eyes in which a mere foolishfear was giving place to cunning. He was a creature flimsy as paper, a mere lithe skinful of bones, in whom the wit of the thief suppliedthe place of strength. He was making now his hasty estimate of theman he had to deal with. 

"Well, " demanded Raleigh, "what have you got to say for yourself?"

"Monsieur!" the youth struck into an injured whine. "I meant no harm, but I was desperate; I have not eaten today" his eyes noted theamused contempt on Raleigh's face, and he poised an instant like aman taking aim "and when I saw the lady slip the money intomonsieur's pocket while he slept, and reflected that he would nevereven know that he had lost it. "

"Eh?" Raleigh sat up. The thief suppressed a smile. "What lady, espece de fourneau? What are you talking about?"

"It's not a minute ago, " replied the youth, discarding the whine. "See, she is perhaps not out of sight yet, if monsieur will lookalong the path. No, there she goes that one!"

His hand was free now; he was using it to point with; but he made noattempt to escape. 

"She approached monsieur while he slept, walking cautiously, andslipped the money it was a five-franc piece, I think into his pocket. Yes, monsieur, that was the pocket. "

He smiled patronizingly as Raleigh plunged a hand into the pocket inquestion, fumbled among the papers there, and drew out the coin andstared at it. He had the situation in hand now; he could get rid ofthis strong young man as soon as he pleased. 

"She is going out of the gate now, monsieur, " he said. 

Raleigh turned. At the farther end of the path the woman who had beenpointed out to him was close to the exit; in a few seconds more shewould be gone. He could see of her nothing save her back that and acertain quality of carriage, a gait measured and deliberate. 

He threw a word to the thief, who stood by with his hands in hispockets and an air of relishing the situation. "All right; you cango, " he said, and started upon the chase of the secret bestower ofalms. 

"And me?" the outraged thief cried after him in tones of bitterness. "And me? I get nothing, then?"

The serge-clad back was disappearing through the gates into thewelter of sunlight without; Raleigh gathered up his feet and sprintedalong the tree shaded path. He was going to understand this business. He picked up the view of the serge-clad back again, walking towardsthe bridge, hastened after it and slowed down to its own pace when hewas still some ten yards behind. 

"Why, it's a girl!"

Somehow, he had counted upon finding an elderly woman, somecharitable eccentric who acquired merit by secret gifts. He saw, instead, a slim girl, neatly and quietly clad, whose profile, as sheglanced across the parapet of the bridge, showed pearl-pale in theshadow of her hat, with a simple and almost childlike prettiness offeature. There was something else, too, a quality of the whole whichRaleigh, who did not deal in fine shades, had no words to describe tohimself. But he saw it, nevertheless a gravity, a character of sadand tragic composure, that look of defeat which is prouder than anyvictory; it waked his imagination. 

"Something wrong!" he said to himself vaguely, and continued tofollow. 

At the southern end of the bridge she turned her back to the sun andwent east along the quay where the second-hand booksellers loungedbeside their wares. She neither hurried nor slackened that deliberatepace of hers; Raleigh, keeping well behind, his wits at work acutely, wondered what it reminded him of, that slow trudge over thepavements. It was when the booksellers were left behind that anincident enlightened him. 

She stopped for a minute and leaned upon the parapet; he crossed theroad to be out of sight in case she should look back. She had beencarrying in her hand a purse, and now he saw her open it andapparently search its interior, but idly and without interest asthough she knew already what to expect of it. Then she closed it andtossed it over the parapet into the river. 

"Ah!" Sudden comprehension rushed upon him; he knew now what thatslow, aimless gait suggested to him. He recalled evenings in London, when he walked or drove through the lit streets and saw, here andthere, the figures of those homeless ones who walked walked always, straying forward in a footsore progress till the night should be ripefor them to sit down in some corner. And then, that shadow in herface, that mouth, tight-held but still drooping; her way of lookingat the river! His hand, in his pocket, closed over the five-francpiece which she had dropped there; he started across the road toaccost her forthwith, but at that moment she moved on again, and oncemore he fell into step behind her. 

There is a point, near the Ile de la Cite, where the Seine projectsan elbow; the quay goes round in a curve under high houses; a tree ortwo overhangs the water, and there is a momentary space of quiet, almost a privacy at the skirts of bristling Paris. Here, commonly, men of leisure sit through the warm hours, torpidly fishing thesmooth green depth of water below; but now there was none. The girlfollowed the elbow round and stopped at the angle of it. She leanedher arms on the coping and gazed down at the quiet still water below. 

She was looking at it with such a preoccupation that Raleigh was ableto come close to her before he spoke. He, too, put an arm on theparapet at her side. 

"Looks peaceful, doesn't it?" he said quietly. 

The girl's head rose with a jerk, and she stared at him, startled. The words had been deftly chosen to match her own thoughts; and forthe while she failed to recognize in this tall young man thesprawling figure of the slumberer in the Tuileries Gardens. 

"I, I who are you?" she stammered. "What do you want?"

He was able to see now that her pale composure was maintained only byan effort, that the strain of it was making her tremble. He answeredin tones of careful conventionality. 

"I'm afraid I startled you, " he said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't haveventured to speak to you at all if you hadn't--" He paused. "You don'thappen to remember me at all?" he asked. 

"No, " said Annette. "If I hadn't, what?"

He slipped a hand into his pocket and drew forth the five-francpiece. The broad palm it lay on was still grimy from the workshop. 

"I happened to fall asleep in the Tuileries this afternoon, " he said. "Idiotic thing to do, but--. "

"Oh!" The color leapt to her face. "Was that you?"

Raleigh nodded. "You had hardly moved away when a man who had beenwatching you tried to pick my pocket and woke me in doing so. He toldme what he'd seen and pointed you out. "

Annette gazed at him in tired perplexity. When he was on his feet, the condition of his clothes and hands and the absurd black patch onhis chin were noticeable only as incongruities; there was nothing nowto suggest the pauper or the outcast in this big youth with thepleasant voice and the strongly tanned face. 

"I, I made a mistake, " she said. "I saw you sleeping on the bench andI thought a little help, coming from nowhere like that you'd be sosurprised and glad when you found it. " She sighed. "However, I waswrong. I'm sorry. "

"I'm not!" Raleigh put the money back in his pocket swiftly. "I thinkit was a wonderful idea of yours; it's the most splendid thing thatever happened to me. There was I, grumbling and making mistakes allday, playing the fool and pitying myself, and all the time you weremoving somewhere within a mile or two, out of sight, but watching andsaying: 'Yes, you're no good to anybody; but if the worst comes tothe worst you shan't starve. I'll save you from that!' I'll neverpart with that money. "

Annette shook her head; weariness inhabited her like a dull pain. "Ididn't say that" she answered; "you weren't starving, and you don'tunderstand. It doesn't matter, anyhow. "

"Please, " said Raleigh. He saw that she wanted to get rid of him, andhe had no intention of letting her do so. "It matters to me, at anyrate. But there is one thing I didn't understand. "

She did not answer, gazing over her clasped hands at the water, across whose level the spires and chimneys of the city bristled likethe skyline of a forest. 

"It was while I was following you here, wondering whether I mightspeak to you, " he continued. "I was watching you as you went, and itseemed to me that you were well, unhappy; in trouble or something. And then, back there on the quay, I saw you open your purse and throwit into the river. "

He paused. "There was a hole in it, " said Annette shortly, withoutturning her head. 

"But" he spoke very quietly "you are in trouble? Yes, I know I'mintruding upon you" she had moved her shoulders impatiently "buthaven't you given me just the shadow of a right? Your gift it mighthave saved my life if I'd been what you thought; I might have fetchedup in the Morgue before morning. Men do, you know, every day women, too!" Her fingers upon the parapet loosened and clasped again atthat. "You can't tie me hand and foot with such an obligation as thatand leave me plante la. "

"Oh!" Annette sighed. "It's nothing at all, " she said. "But, as youwant so much to know I'm a typist; I'm out of work; I've been lookingfor it all day, and I'm disappointed and very tired. "

"And that's really all?" demanded Raleigh. 

"All!" She turned to look at him at last, meeting his steady andpenetrating eyes quietly. She had an impulse to tell him what wascomprehended in that "all"; to speak deliberately plain words thatshould crumple him into an understanding of her tragedy. But evenwhile she hesitated there came to her a sense that he knew more thanhe told; that the grey eyes in the red-brown face had read more ofher than she was willing to show. She subsided. 

"Yes, that's all, " she said. 

He nodded, a quick and business-like little jerk of the head. "I see. I've been worrying you, I'm afraid; but I'm glad I made you tell, because I can put that all right for you at once, as it happens. "

The girl, leaning on the wall, drew in a harsh breath and turned tohim. Young Raleigh, who had written a monograph on engineeringstresses, had still much to learn about the stresses that contort andwarp the souls of men and women. He learned some of it then, when hesaw the girl's face deaden to a blanker white and the flame of ahungry hope leap into her eyes. He looked away quickly. 

"You mean you can?"

He hushed her with his brisk and matter-of-fact little nod. 

"I mean I can find you a situation in a business office as a typist, "he said explicitly. "Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"Yes, yes. " She was trembling; he put one large, grimy hand upon hersleeve to steady her. "Oh, please, where is the office? I'll go thereat once, before. "

"Hush!" he said. "It's all right. We'll get a taxi and I'll take youthere. It's the Machine-Tool and Gear-Cutting Company; I don't knowwhat they pay, but--. "

"Anything, " moaned Annette. "I'll take anything. "

"Well, it's more than that, " he smiled. "A typist with Raleigh andSon at her back isn't to be had every day of the week. "

A taxicab drifted out of a turning on to the quay a hundred yardsaway; Raleigh waved a long arm and it came towards them. 

"And after we've fixed this little matter, " suggested Raleigh, "don'tyou think we might go somewhere and feed? I can get a sketchy kind ofwash at the office while you're talking to the manager; and I'mbeginning to notice that I didn't have my lunch to-day. "

"I didn't either, " said Annette, as the taxi slid to a standstillbeside them. "But, oh! you don't know you don't know all you're doingfor me. I'll never be able to thank you properly. "

Raleigh opened the door of the cab for her. "You can try, " he said. "I'm in Paris for three days every fortnight. "

The taxicabs of Paris include in their number the best and the worstin the world. This was one of the latter; a moving musical-box ofgrinding and creaking noises. But Annette sank back upon its worn andknobly cushions luxuriously, gazing across the sun-gilt river to thewhite, window-dotted cliffs of Paris with the green of trees foamingabout their base. 

"Oh, don't you love Paris?" she cried softly. 

"I do, " agreed Raleigh, warmly, watching the soft glow that had cometo her face. "I can't keep away from it. "

IX

THE DARKENED PATH

The captain reached a hand forth and touched the mate's arm. 

"Sit down, James, " he said quietly. 

The mate made a curious quick grimace and sat forthwith. "Shove off, "ordered the captain. 

Johnny Cos, the yellow, woolly-haired boatman, plying his oars, satperforce in face of his passengers and close to them. He would havepreferred it otherwise; there had been something in the mate's facewhich daunted him. He glanced at it again furtively as he pulled awayfrom the square-sterned American schooner which had ridden over thebar in the twilight of dawn and anchored, spectral and strange, inBeira Harbor. The mate's face was strong and sunburnt, the face of aman of lively passions and crude emotions; but as he sat gazing forthat the little hectic town across the smooth harbor, it had a cast ofprofound and desperate unhappiness. Johnny Cos had not words to tellhimself what he saw; he only knew, with awe and a certain amount offear, that he moved in the presence of something tragic. 

"James, " began the captain again. 

The mate withdrew his miserable eyes from the scene. "What?"

"There ain't any reason why" began the captain, and paused and Hookeddoubtfully upon the faithful Johnny Cos. "D'you speak English?"

"Yes, sar, " replied Johnny, ingratiatingly. "You want good 'otel, Cap'n? Good, cheap 'otel? I geeve you da card; 'Otel Lisbon, sar. Allcap'n go there. "

"No, " said the captain shortly. "We can talk better when we getashore, James, " he added to the mate. 

"Ver' good 'otel, Cap'n; ver' cheap" coaxed Johnny Cos. "You wantfruit, Cap'n: mango, banan', coconut, orange, grenadeel, yes? I geeveyou da card, Cap'n ver' cheap!"

"That'll do, " said the captain. "I don't want anything. Get a move onthis boat o' yours, will you?"

Johnny Cos sighed and resigned himself to row in silence, onlymurmuring at intervals: "'Otel Lisbon; good, ver' good, an' cheap!"When that murmur, taking courage to grow audible, drew the mate's eyeupon him, he stopped short in the middle of it and murmured no more. 

"You c'n wait to take me aboard again, " said the captain, when thewharf was reached; and the two men went slowly together into thetown, along the streets of ankle-deep sand, towards the office of theconsul. 

It was an hour later that the loafers on the veranda of the SavoyHotel observed their slow approach. They had done whatever businessthey had with the consul. They were deep in talk; the captain'sgrizzled head was bent toward his shorter companion, and something ofthe mate's trouble reflected itself in his hard, strongly-gravenface. In the merciless deluge of sunlight, and upon the openness ofthe street, they made a singular grouping; they seemed to be, byvirtue of some matter that engrossed and governed them, aloof andremote, a target set up by Destiny. 

By the steps of the hotel the captain paused, wiping the shiningsweat from his face. The eavesdroppers in the long chairs cockedtheir ears. 

"James, " they heard him say; "it's bad, it's just as bad as it canbe. But it ain't no reason to go short of a drink with a saloon closehandy. "

He motioned with his head towards the shade of the long veranda, withthe bar opening from it and its bottles in view. The mate, frowningheavily, nodded, and the pair of them entered and passed between thewicker chairs with the manner of being unconscious of theiroccupants. 

From within the bar their voices droned indistinctly forth to thelisteners. 

"Leavin' you here, " they heard the captain say; "James, I'm sorryright through; but you said yourself. "

"Sure;" the mate's voice answered hoarsely. "Here or Hell oranywhere, what's the difference to me now?"

After that they moved to the window, and what they said further wasindistinguishable. The loafers on the veranda exchanged puzzledlooks; they lacked a key to the talk they had heard. When at last thetwo seamen departed they summoned forth the barman for furtherinformation. But that white-jacketed diplomat, who looked on from thesober side of the bar at so much that was salient to the life ofBeira was not able to help them. 

"I couldn't make out what was troublin' them, " he said, playing withthe diamond ring on his middle finger. "They was talking round andround it, but they never named it right out. But it seems the youngerone has been paid off. He looks bad, he does. "

"Well, " said a man of experience from his chair; "he'll be drunktonight, and then we'll hear. "

"H'm!" The barman paused on his way back to his post. "When I seethat feller drunk, I'm goin' to climb a tree. I got no use fortrouble. "

But the mate's conduct continued to be as unusual as his wordsoverheard on the hotel veranda. He did not accompany the captain backto the ship, and in the afternoon he was seen sitting on the parapetof the sea-wall, his face propped in his hands, staring out acrossthe shining water of the harbor. The vehement sun beat down upon hisblue-coated back and the hard felt hat that covered his head; heshould have been in an agony of discomfort and no little danger, cladas he was; but he sat without moving, facing the water and the craftthat lay at their anchors upon it. It was Father Bates, the tallScottish priest, who saw him and crossed the road to him. 

"My friend, " the priest accosted him, with a light tap on theshoulder. "You'll die the sooner if you take your hat off. But you'lldie anyhow if you go on sitting here. "

At his touch the mate looked round sharply. The tall white-cladFather, under his green-lined sun umbrella, rested a steady look onhis face. 

"You're in trouble, I'm afraid, " said the priest. "Is there anythinga man can do for you?"

"No!" The word came hoarsely but curt from the mate's throat. "Leaveme alone!"

The tall priest nodded. "Nothing a man can do, eh?" he said. "Well, then you know who can help you, don't you?"

The miserable rebellious eyes of the young man hardened. 

"Leave me alone, " he growled. "Say, you're a kind of a missionary, ain't you? Well, I don't want none of your blasted cant, see?"

The Father smiled. "I know how you feel. My name is Father Bates, andanyone will show you where I live. Bates don't forget! And I reallywouldn't sit much longer in that sun, if I were you. "

A sound like a snarl was his answer as he passed on. Looking backbefore he turned the corner, he saw that the mate had returned to hisold posture, brooding in his strange and secret sorrow over theirresponsive sea. 

He was still there at sunset when the schooner went out, holdinghimself apart from the little group of Beira people who halted towatch her departure. Upon her poop a couple of figures were plain tosight, and one of these waved a hand towards the shore as though tobid farewell to the man they left behind. The mate, however, made noresponse. He watched unmoving while she approached the heads andglided from view, her slender topmasts lingering in sight over thedull green of the mangroves, with the sunset flush lighting themdelicately. Then she was gone, like a silent visitor who withdraws apresence that has scarcely been felt. 

The mate crossed the road and addressed the man who stood nearest. 

"Where's the deepo?" he demanded, abruptly. "The railway station. "

The other gave directions which the mate heard, frowning. Then, without thanking his guide, he turned to walk heavily through thefoot-clogging sand in the direction indicated. 

It was a hundred and fifty miles up the line that he next emerged tonotice, at Mendigos, that outpost set in the edge of the jungle, where the weary telegraphists sweat through the sunny monotony of thedays and are shaken at night by the bitter agues that infest theland. 

The mate dropped from the train here, still clad as at Beira inthick, stifling sea-cloth and his hard hat, though his collar was nowbut a limp frill. He came lurching, on uncertain feet, into theestablishment of Hop Sing, the only seller of strong drink atMendigos. The few languid, half-clad men who lounged within looked upat him in astonishment. He pointed shakily towards a bottle on theprimitive bar. "Gimme some of that, " he croaked, from a parchedthroat. 

The smiling Chinaman, silk-clad and supple, poured a drink for him, watched him consume it, and forthwith poured another. With thereplenished tumbler in his hand, the mate returned his look. 

"What you starin' at, you Chow?" he demanded. 

The subtle-eyed Chinaman ceased neither to smile nor to stare. 

"My t'ink you velly sick man. Two shillin' to pay, please. "

"Sick!" repeated the mate. "Sick! You you know, do ye?"

The idle men who lounged behind were spectators to the drama, absorbed but uncomprehending. They saw the fierce, absurdly-cladsailor, swaying on his feet with the effects of long-endured heat andthirst, confronting the suave composure of the Chinaman as though thecharge of being unwell were outrageous and shameful. 

"Say, " he demanded hoarsely, "it, it don't show on me. "

The Chinaman made soothing gestures. "My see, " he answered. "But demfeller belong here, him not see nothing. All-a-light foh him. Twoshillin' to pay, please. "

The mate dragged a coin from his pocket and dropped it on the bar. Heturned at last to the others, as though he now first noticed them. 

"What's back of here?" he asked abruptly, motioning as he spoke tothe still palms which poised over the galvanized iron roofs. 

"How d'you mean?" A tall, willowy man in pajamas answered himsurprisedly. "There's nothing beyond here. It's just wild country. "

"No white men?" asked the mate. 

"Lord, no!" said the other. "White men die out there. It's just treesand niggers and wild beasts and fevers. " He looked at the mate with atouch of amusement breaking through his curiosity. "You weren'tthinking of goin' there in that kit were you?"

The mate finished his drink and set his glass down. 

"I am goin' there, " he answered. 

"But look here!" The telegraphists broke into a clamor. "You've beentoo long in the sun; that's what's the matter with you. You can't goup there, man; you'd be dead before morning. "

The tall man, to whom the mate had spoken first, had a shrewd word toadd. "If it's any little thing like murder, dontcher know, why theborder's just a few hours up the line. "

"Murder!" exclaimed the mate, and uttered a bark of laughter. 

They were possibly a little afraid of him. He had the physique of afighter and the presence of a man accustomed to exercise a crudeauthority. Their protests and warnings died down; and, after all, aman's life and death are very much his own concern in those regions. 

"D'you think he's mad?" one of them was whispering when the mateturned to Hop Sing again. 

"Set up the drinks for them, " he commanded. "I'll not wait meself, but here's the money. "

"You not dlink?" asked the Chinaman, as the mate laid the coins onthe counter. 

"No, " was the reply. "No need to spoil another glass. "

He gave a half nod to the other men, but no word, pulled his hard hatforward on his brow, and walked out to the aching sunlight, andtowards a path that led between two iron huts to the fringe of theriotous bush. The telegraphists crowded to look after him, but he didnot turn his head. He paused beneath the great palms, where theground was clear; then the thigh-deep grass, which is the lip of thebush, was about him, grey, dry as straw, rustling as he thrustthrough it with the noise of paper being crumpled in the hands. Agreen parrot, balancing clown-like on a twig, screamed raucously; heglanced up at its dazzle of feathers. Then the wall of the bushitself yielded to his thrusting, let him through, and closed behindhis blue-clad back. Africa had received him to her silence and hermystery. 

"Well, I'm blowed!" The tall telegraphist stared at the place wherehe had vanished. "I say, you chaps, we ought to go after him. "

No one moved. "I shouldn't care to come to my hands with him, " saidanother. "Did you did you see his face?"

They had all seen it; the speaker was voicing the common feeling. 

"It's like drinkin' at a wake, " observed the tall man, his glass inhis hand. "Well, here's to his memory!"

"His memory, " they chorused, and drank. 

But the end of the tale came later. It was told in the veranda ofFather Bates's house at Beira, by Dan Terry, as he lay on his cot anddrank in the air from the sea in life-restoring draughts. He had beenup in the region of lost and nameless rivers for three years of feverand ague and toil, and now he was back, a made man ready to be donewith Africa, with square gin bottles full of coarse gold to sell tothe bank, and a curious story to tell of a thing he had seen in theback country. 

It was evening when he told it, propped up on his pillows, with theblankets drawn up under his chin, and his lean, leathery face, alittle softened by his fever, fronting the long, benevolent visage ofFather Bates. The Father had a deckchair, and sprawled in it atlength, listening over his deep Boer pipe. A faint, bitter ghost ofan odor tainted the still air from the mangroves beyond the town, andthere was heard, like an undertone in the talk, the distantslumberous murmur of the tide on the beach. 

"But how did you first get to hear of him?" the Father was asking, carrying on the talk. 

"Oh, that was queer!" said Dan. "You see, I was making a cut cleanacross country to that river of mine, and, as far as I could tell, Iwas in a stretch of land where there hasn't been one other white manin twenty years. Bad traveling it was swamp, cane, and swamp againfor days; the mud stinking all day, the mist poisoning you all night, the cane cutting and scratching and slashing you. It was as bad asanything I've seen yet. And it was while we were splashing andstruggling through this that I saw, lying at the foot of an aloe ofall created things an old hat. I thought for a moment that the sunhad got to my brain. An old, hard, black bowler hat it was, caved ina bit, and soaked, and all that, but a hat all the same. I couldn'thave been more surprised if it had been an iceberg. You see, exceptmy own hat, I hadn't seen a hat for over two years. "

Father Bates nodded and stoked the big bowl of his pipe with apracticed thumb. 

"It might ha' meant anything, " Dan went on; "a chap making for myriver, for instance. So the next Kaffir village I came to I went intothe matter. I sat down in the doorway of the biggest hut and had thepopulation up before me to answer questions. "

"They were willing?" asked the Father. 

"I had a gun across my knees, " explained Dan; "but they were willingenough without that. And a queer yarn they had to tell, too; Icouldn't quite make it out at first. It began with an account of avillage hit by smallpox close by. Their way of dealing with smallpoxis simple: they quarantine the infected village by posting armed menround it until all the villagers are starved to death or killed bythe smallpox. Then they burn the village. It costs nothing, and itkeeps the disease under. This village, it seems, was particularlyeasy to deal with, since it stood three hundred yards from thenearest water, and the water was placed out of bounds. 

"It must have been about the third day after the quarantine wasdeclared that the, the incident occurred. A man and a girl, carryingempty waterpots, had come out of the village towards the stream. Thearmed outposts, with their big stabbing assegais ready in theirhands, ordered them back, but the poor creatures were crazed withthirst and desperate. They were pleading and crying and stillcreeping forward, the man first, the girl a few steps behind, mad forjust water. What happened first was in the regular order of things inthose parts. The fellows on guard simply waited, and when the man wasup to them one stepped forward and drove the thirty-inch blade of astabbing assegai clean through him. Then they stood ready to do thesame to the girl as soon as she arrived. 

"She had tumbled to her knees at the sight of the killing, and wasstill crying and begging piteously for water. They said she held outher arms to them, and bowed her head between. After a while, whenthey did not answer, she got to her feet and stood looking at thedead body stretched in the sun, the long blades of the spears, andthe shining of the water beyond. It was as though she was making upher mind about them, for at last she picked up her waterpot and cameforward towards her sure and swift death. The assegai-men were sointent on her that none of them seem to have heard a man who came outof the bush close behind them. One of them, as I was told, hadactually flung back his arm for the thrust and the girl, she hadn'teven flinched! The thing was within an inch of being done; thestabbing assegai goes like lightning, you know; she must have beentasting the very bitterness of death. The man from the bush was not asecond too soon. The first they knew of him was a roar, and he hadthe shaft of the assegai in his hand and had plucked it from itsowner. 

"He must have moved like a young earthquake, and bellowed like afull-grown thunderstorm. All my informants laid stress on his voice;he exploded in their midst with an uproar that overthrew theirsenses, and whacked right and left with fist and foot and assegai. Hewas a white man; it took them some seconds to see that through thedirt on him; he was clad in rags of cloth, and his head was bare, andhe raged like a sackful of tiger-cats. He really must have beensomething extraordinary in the way of a fighter, for he scattered aclear dozen of them, and sent them flying for their lives. One mansaid that when he was safe he looked back. The white man, with theassegai on his shoulder, was stumping ahead into the infectedvillage, and the girl she was lying down at the edge of the waterdrinking avidly. She hadn't even looked up at the fight. "

Father Bates nodded. "Poor creatures, " he said. "Yes?"

"Well, the cordon being broken, those of the villagers who weren'ttoo far gone to walk on their feet promptly scattered, naturally, andno one tried to stop them. When at last the people from theneighboring kraals plucked up courage to go and look at the place, they found there only the bodies of the dead. The white man had gone, too. They never saw him again, but from time to time there camerumors from the north and east tales of a wanderer who injectedhimself suddenly into men's affairs, withdrew again and went away, and they remembered the white man who roared. He was already passinginto a myth. 

"I couldn't make head nor tail of the thing; but one point was clear. Since this white man had neither Kaffirs nor gear he couldn't hurt myriver, and that was what chiefly mattered to me just then. I mighthave forgotten him altogether, but that I came on his tracks again, and then, to finish with, I saw the man himself. "

"Eh?" Father Bates looked up. 

"I'm telling you the whole thing, Padre. You keep quiet and you'llhear. "

The sad evening light was falling, and the faint breeze from the seahad a touch of chill in it. 

"Keep your blankets up, Dan, " said the Father. 

"You bet, " replied Dan. "Well, about this fellow I'm telling you of!He must have been getting a reputation for uncanniness from everyvillage he touched at. By the time I came up with the scene of hisnext really notable doings he was umtagati in full form supernatural, you know, a thing to be dreaded and conciliated. And I don't wonder, really. Here was a man without weapons, bareheaded in the sun, speaking no word of any native language, alone and nearly naked, plunging ahead through that wild unknown country and no harm comingto him. You can't play tricks of that sort with Africa; the old girlholds too many trumps; but this chap was doing it. It was againstNature. 

"He'd made his way up to a place where I always expect trouble. Thereis, or rather, there was then a brute of a chief there, a fellownamed N'Komo, who paid tribute to M'Kombi, and was sort of protectedand supported by him. He was always slopping over his borders with ahandful of fighting men and burning and slaughtering and raping amongthe peaceful kraals. A devil he was, a real black devil for crueltyand lust. He had just started on a campaign when this lonely whiteman arrived in the neighborhood, passing through a bit of districtwith N'Komo's mark on it in the form of burned huts and bodies ofpeople. A man N'Komo had killed was a sight to make Beelzebub sick. Torture, you know; mutilation beastliness! The white man must haveseen a good many such bodies. 

"N'Komo and his swashbucklers had slept the night in a capturedkraal, and were still there in the morning when the white manarrived. I know exactly the kind of scene it was. The carcasses ofthe cattle slaughtered for meat would be lying all over the placebetween the round huts, and bodies of men and women and children withthem. The place would be swarming with the tall, black spearmen, eachwith a skin over his shoulder and about his loins; there would be afearful jabber, a clatter of voices and laughter and probablyscreams, horrible screams, from some poor nigger whose death they'dbe dragging out, hour after hour, for their fun. Near the main gateN'Komo was holding an indaba with his chief bucks. I've seen him manytimes a great coal-black brute, six feet four in height, with theflat, foolish, good-natured-looking face that fooled people intothinking him a decent sort. I wish I'd shot him the first time I sawhim. 

"Well, the indaba, the council, you know was in full swing when upcomes this white man, running as if for his life, and wailing, wailing! The Kaffir who told me had seen it from where he was lying, tied hand and foot, waiting his turn for the firebrands and theknives. He said: 'He wailed like one who mourns for the dead!' Therewas a burnt kraal not a mile away, so one can guess what he had beenseeing and was wailing about. 'His face, ' the nigger told me, 'waslike the face of one who has lived through the torment of N'Komo andis thirsty for death; a face to hide one's eyes before. And it waswhite and shining like ivory!' He came thus, pelting blindly at arun, into the midst of N'Komo's war indaba. 

"He picked out N'Komo as the chief man there in a moment; that waseasy enough, and he broke into a torrent of words, gesticulating andpointing back in the direction from which he had come. Telling him ofwhat he had seen, of course poor beggar! Can't you imagine him, withthose tall surprised black soldiers all round him and the greatdangerous bulk of negro king before him, trying to make themunderstand, trembling with horror and fury, raging in homely uselessEnglish against the everyday iniquity of Africa? Can't you imagineit, Padre?"

"Ssh! You'll get a temperature, " warned Father Bates. "Yes; I canimagine it. It makes me humble. "

"You see, I know what had maddened him. The first work of N'Komo's Iever saw was a young mother and a baby dead and and finished with, and it nearly sent me off my head. If I'd been half the man this poorbeggar was I'd have had N'Komo's skin salted and sun-dried before Islept. He he didn't wait to mourn about things; he went straightahead to find the man who had done them and deal with him. 

"Probably they took him for a lunatic; at any rate, they soon beganto laugh at him, shaking and talking in their midst. He was a newthing to have sport with, and N'Komo presently leaned forward, grinning, touched him on the arm, and pointed. The white man's eyesfollowed the black finger to where a poor devil lay on the ground, impaled by a stake through his stomach. It was N'Komo's way oftelling him what to expect, and he understood. He stopped talking. 

"The nigger who saw it all and told me about it said that when he hadlooked round on all the horrors he turned again towards N'Komo, andat the sight of his eyes N'Komo ceased to grin. His big brute facewent all to bits, as a Kaffir's does when he is frightened. But thewhite man made a little backward jerk with his hand that's what itseemed like to the nigger who told me and suddenly, from nowhere inparticular, a big pistol materialized in his grip. He must have beenpretty clever at the draw. His hand came up, there was a smart littlecrack, a spit of smoke, and N'Komo, the great war chief, was rollingon the ground, making horrible noises like like bad plumbing, withhalf his throat shot away, and the man who had done it was backingtowards the main gate with the big revolver swinging to right andleft across the group of warriors. 

"And he got away, too. That, really, is the most wonderful part ofthe whole thing. I expect that as soon as N'Komo was settled, theusual row and the usual murders began by various would-be successors. By night they had all started north again, on a hot-foot race tooccupy and hold the head kraal, and the country was clear of them, and the white man's credit as a magic worker stood higher than ever. He could have had anything he liked in any of the kraals for theasking; he could have been law-giver, king, and god. But he was offin the bush again, alone and restless and mysterious, with hisivory-white face and his eyes full of pain and anger. "

"Aye, " said Father Bates. "Pain and anger that's what it was! And atlast you saw him yourself, didn't you?"

"Yes, " said Dan. "I saw him. I was at my river then, combing the goldout of it, when a Kaffir trekking down told me of him. He was at akraal fifty miles away two days' journey, lying, up with a hurt foot. The gold was coming out of that river by the bottleful; it wasn't athing to take one's eyes off for a moment; but a white man, the whiteman who had killed N'Komo well, I couldn't keep away. I spun a yarnto my men about lion spoor that I wanted to follow, and off I went bymyself and did that fifty miles of bush and six-foot grass and rocksin thirty hours, which was pretty good, considerin'. It was afternoonwhen I came through a patch of palms and saw the kraal lying justbeyond. 

"I hadn't much of an idea what kind of man I expected to see. Irather fancy I expected to be disappointed to find him nothing out ofthe way after all, and to learn that nine-tenths of the yarns abouthim were just nigger lies. I was thinking all that as I stopped inthe palms' shade to mop the sweat out of my hat, and then I saw him!

"He was passing between me and the huts, a strange lame figure, leaning on a stick, with a few rags of clothing bound about him. Hishead, with its matted thick hair, was bare to the thresh of the sun;he was thick-set, shortish, slow-moving, a sorrowful and laboriousfigure. I saw the shine of his bare skin, and even the droop andsorrow of his heavy face. I stood and watched him for perhaps aminute in the shadow under those great masts of palms; I saw him asclearly as I see you; and suddenly a light came to me and I knew Iunderstood it all. His loneliness, his pain and anger, his wanderingsin that savage wilderness, the wild misery of his eyes and theivory-white of his stricken face I understood completely. He had runaway from the sight of men of his own color he would have no use forme. So then and there I turned and went back through the palms andstarted on the trek for my own camp. It was all I could do for him. "

"But, " said Father Bates, "you've not said what it was that you saw. "

"Padre, " said Dan; "that poor, poor fellow, who loomed to the Kaffirslike a great and merciful god, he was a leper as white as snow!"

"Holy saints defend us!" The Father made a startled motion ofcrossing himself, staring at Dan's lean, somber face in a blanknessof consternation. "So that's what it was, then! A leper!"

"That's what it was, " said Dan. "I've seen it before in the East. "

"He said, " continued the Father "he said he had no use for my blastedcant. And he hadn't, he hadn't! He knew more than I. "

X

MISS PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

The double windows of the big office overlooked the quays ofNikolaieff and the desk was beside them; so that the vice-consul hadonly to turn his head to see from his chair the wide river and itstraffic, with the great grain-steamers, like foster-childrenthronging at the breast of Russia, waiting their turn for theelevators, and the gantries of the shipyards standing like an ironfiligree against the pallor of the sky. The room was a large one, low-ceilinged, and lighted only upon the side of the street; so thata visitor, entering from the staircase, looked as from the bottom ofa well of shadow across the tables where the month-old Americannewspapers were set forth to the silhouette of the vice-consul at hisroll-top desk against his background of white daylight. 

Mr. Tim Waters, American citizen in difficulties, leaned upon the topof the desk and pored absorbedly across the head of his country'srepresentative at the scene beyond the window. A tow-boat with aflotilla of lighters was at work in midstream; there was a flash ofwhite foam at her forefoot, and her red-and-black funnel trailed alevel scarf of smoke across the distance. It was a sketch donevigorously in strong color, and he broke off the halting narrative ofhis troubles to watch if with profound unconscious interest. 

Selby, the vice-consul, shifted impatiently in his chair. He was asmall, dyspeptic, short-sighted man, and he was endeavoring underdifficulties to give the impression that he had no time to spare. 

"Well, " he snapped; "go on. You were walking peaceably along thestreet, you said. What comes next?"

Tim Waters turned mild eyes upon him, withdrawing them from thetow-boat with patient reluctance. 

"There was one o' them dvorniks" (doorkeepers), he resumed in a voiceof silky softness. "He was settin' outside his gate on one o' themstools they have. And he was talkin' to one o' them istvostchiks. "(cabmen). 

His thin, sun-browned face, furrowed with whimsical lines, with itsfaint-blue eyes that wandered from his hearer to the allurement ofthe window and back again, overhung the desk as he spoke, drawling inthose curiously soft tones of his an unconvincing narrative of soreprovocation and the subsequent fight. He was a man in the latertwenties, lean and slack-limbed; the workman's blouse of coarselinen, belted about him, and the long Russian boots which he wore, gave him, by contrast with the humor and sophistication of his faceand the controlled ease of his attitude as he lounged, something ofthe effect of a man in fancy dress. Actually he belonged to the classfamiliar to missionaries and consuls of world-tramps, those songlesstroubadours for whom no continent is large enough and no ocean toowide. With his slightly parted lips of wonder and interest, a pair ofuseful fists and a passport granted by the American Minister inSpain, he had worked his way up the Mediterranean to the Levant, drifted thence by way of the Black Sea to Nikolaieff, and remainedthere ever since. Riveter in the shipyards, winch driver on thewharves, odd-man generally along the waterside, he and his troubleshad come to Selby's notice before. 

The vice-consul sniffed and stared unsympathetically as the recitalwandered unhurried to its end. For him, the picaroon who leaned uponhis desk was scarcely more than a tramp; Selby had respectability fora religion; and his beaky, irritable face, behind the glasses thatstraddled across his nose, answered Tim Waters's mild conciliatorygaze with stiff hostility. The dvornik and the istvostchik, itseemed, had laughed loudly and significantly as Waters went by, andhe had turned to inquire into the joke. 

"Because, y'see, Mr. Selby, them Russians just don't laugh in ageneral way, except they're wantin' to start something. An' I heard'em say 'Amerikanetz' just as plain as I can see you settin' there. So, a' course, I knowed it was me they was pickin' on. " The fight hadfollowed; Tim Waters, while he told of it, raised the hand in whichhe held his cap and looked thoughtfully at a row of swollen andabraded knuckles; and lastly, the police had intervened. 

"It was that big sergeant with the medals, " said the victim. "Come atme with his sword, he did. Seems like it ain't safe to be an Americancitizen in this town, Mr. Selby. "

"Does it?" Selby sat back sharply in his chair, his ragged moustachebristling, his glasses malevolently askew on his nose. "You're amighty fine example of an American citizen, aren't you? Say, Waters, you don't think you can put that over again, do you?"

"Eh?" Tim Waters opened his pale blue eyes in the mildest surprise. "Why, Mr. Selby?" he began, fumbling in his pocket. The vice-consulinterrupted him with a snarl. 

"Now you don't want to pull that everlasting passport of yours on meagain, " he cried. "Every crook and hobo that's chased off a steamerinto this town has got papers as good as yours, red seal an' all. Youseem to think that bein' an American citizen's a kind of license toplay hell and then come here to be squared. Well, I'm going to proveto you that it's not. "

Waters was watching him as he spoke with something of that stillinterest which he had given to the scene beyond the window. Now hesmiled faintly. 

"But say, Mr. Selby, " he protested gently. "It it ain't the sergeantI'm worried about. I'll get him all right. But there's what they calla protocol fer breakin' up that istvostchik, an' you bein' our consulhere. "

Selby rose, jerking his chair back on its castors. "Cut that out, " heshrilled. "Your consul, eh? Your kind hasn't got any consul, not ifyou had forty passports see? You get out o' this office right now;and if they hand you six months with that protocol. "

He was a ridiculous little man when he was angry; the shape of him ashe stood, pointing peremptorily across the room to the door, rosegrotesque and pitiable against the window. The wanderer, stillleaning on the desk, looked over at him with lips parted as though hefound a profit of interest even in his anger. 

"And you can tell your friends, if you got any, " fulminated thevice-consul, "that this place isn't. "

He broke off short in mid-word; the rigid and imperative arm withwhich he still pointed to the door lost its stiffening; he made asnatch at his sliding glasses, saved them, and stood scaring. Watersturned his head to look likewise. 

"This is the American Consulate?" inquired a voice from the doorway. 

For the moment neither answered, and the newcomer came down betweenthe tables towards the light of the window. 

Of the two men, it was assuredly Waters, who had followed the lust ofthe eye across the continents, who was best able to flavor and relishthat entry and approach. For him, stilly intent and watchful, it wasas though a voice, the voice which had spoken from the shadowydoorway, had incarnated itself and become visible, putting on a formto match its own quality, at once definite and delicate. The newcomermoved down the room with a subdued rustling of skirts, resolving atlast into a neat and appealing feminine presence that smiledconfidently and yet conciliatorily and offered a hand towards Selby. 

"It is the American Consulate, isn't it?" she asked again. 

Selby, ruffled like an agitated hen, woke to spasmodic movement, andtook the hand. 

"Why, yes, " he answered, pushing towards her the chair he had notoffered to Waters and erupting forthwith into uneasy volubility. "This is it. Sit down, madam; sit right down and tell me what I cando for you. "

The girl, still smiling, took the seat he gave her; across thedesk-top, Waters, unmoving, his battered hand grasping his peakedRussian cap, gazed upon her absorbedly. 

"Just got in, have you?" inquired Selby fussily. 

"Yes, " she answered. "I got in this morning by the boat from Odessa. You see, I've come up from Bucharest, and as I don't know very muchabout Russia, I thought. "

Selby, seated again in his chair of office, his fingers judiciallyjoined, nodded approvingly. "You just naturally came along to yourconsul, " he finished for her. "Quite right, Miss, er. "

"Pilgrim, " supplied the girl. 

"Miss Pilgrim?" he hesitated. She nodded. "Well, Miss Pilgrim, ifthere's any information I can give you, or assistance, or, or advice, I'll be very happy to do what I can. You're, er, traveling alone?"

"Yes, " she replied, with her little confirming nod. 

He had forgotten for the while the mere existence of Waters, broodingwordlessly over them, and Waters after his manner, had forgotteneverything in the world. The girl between them, sitting unconsciousand tranquil under their converging gaze, had snared their faculties. She was perhaps twenty-four, and both Selby and Waters, whenafterwards they used to speak of her, always insisted on this, notpretty. She was fair in a commonplace way, middle-sized andinconspicuous, the fashion of young woman who goes to compose thebackground of life. She raised to the light of the window a face ofcreamy pallor, with large serious grey eyes, and lips of a gentle andserene composure; but it was not these that redeemed her from beingmerely negligible and made her the focus of the two men's eyes. Itwas rather a quality implicit in the whole of her as she sat, feminine and fragile by contrast with even the meager masculinity ofSelby, with a suggestion about her, an emanation, of steadfastnessand courage as piteous and endearing as the bravery of a lost child. In Selby, staled and callous long since to all those infirmities ofthe wits or the purse which are carried to a consul as to aphysician, there awoke at sight of her all that was genial andprotective in his sore and shriveled soul; in Waters, who shall saywhat visions and interpretations?

She looked from one to the other of them with her trustful eyes. OnWaters they seemed to dwell for a moment as though in question. 

"Yes, " she repeated; "I came alone; there wasn't anybody to come withme. " Her voice, mild and pleasant, corresponded to the rest of her. "I've been working down in Rumania for nearly a year, in the BalkanBank, and before that I was in Constantinople. But I've always wantedto see Russia; I'd heard and read so much about it; so" with a littleexplanatory shrug of her shoulders "I came. "

Waters's still eyes widened momentarily; he, at any rate, understood. He knew, contentedly and well, that need to see, the unease of thespirit that moves one on, that makes of the road a home and of everydestination a bivouac. His chin settled upon his crossed arms as hecontinued to take stock of this compatriot of the highways. 

"Oh!" Selby was enlightened and a little disconcerted. This was notturning out as he had expected. He had diagnosed a tourist, and nowdiscovered that he had been entertaining a job-seeker unawares. Butthe girl's charm and appeal held good; she was looking at himtrustfully and expectantly, and he surrendered. He set his glassesstraight with a fumbling hand and resumed his countenance of friendlyand helpful interest. 

"Then, you propose to, er, seek employment here in Nikolaieff, " heinquired. 

"Yes, " she answered serenely. "Typist and stenographer, or secretaryor translator in French and German and Rumanian" she was numberingoff the occupations on her fingers as she listed them "or evengoverness, if there isn't anything else. But it seems to me, with theEnglish steamers coming here all the time and the shipbuilding works, there ought to be some office I could get into. "

Selby pursed his lips doubtfully. 

"You don't know of anything?", she asked. "That's what I came in tosee you about if you happened to know of anything? Because ourconsuls hear of pretty nearly everything that's going on, don'tthey?"

It wasn't flattery; her good faith was manifest in her face andvoice; and Selby suppled under it like a stroked cat. 

"I wouldn't say that, Miss Pilgrim, " he demurred coyly. He paused. Her mention of shipping offices disturbed him. He had much businesswith shipping offices; and he was picturing to himself, involuntarilyand with distaste, that gentle courage bruising itself upon the roughhusks of managers and their like, peddling itself from one noisyRussian office to another, wearing thin its panoply of innocence uponevil speech and vile intention. There were the dregs of manhood inhim, for all his narrowness and feebleness, and the prospect offendedhim like an indecency. 

"No, there's only one job I know of in Nikolaieff that you couldtake, " he said abruptly. "And that's right here in this office. "

He had said it upon a rare impulse of generosity; all men are subjectto such impulses; and he halted upon the word for his reward. Sherendered it handsomely. 

"Oh!" she cried, her grey eyes shining and all her pale and gentleface alive with sudden enthusiasm. "Here in the Consulate?" She spokethe word as a devotee might speak of a temple. "That, oh, that'sglorious!"

It was utterly satisfactory; Selby swelled and bridled. 

"Er, secretary and stenographer, " he said largely. "I had a young manhere a while since, but I let him go. He couldn't seem to berespectful. And, er, as to terms, Miss Pilgrim. "

"Yes?" murmured Miss Pilgrim, as respectfully as he could wish. 

But the vice-consul did not continue. In his moment of splendor, itmay be that he became aware that only a part of his audience wasapplauding, and his eyes had fallen on Waters. Till that moment hehad actually forgotten him; he seized now on an occasion to be stillmore impressive. 

"Hey, you Waters!" he cried commandingly. "What you waitin' therefor? Didn't you hear me tell you to clear out of this? Go on, now;an' don't let me see you in this office again!"

She failed to come up to his expectations this time; she lookedpuzzled and distressed and seemed to shrink. Waters, removing hiseyes from her face, stood deliberately upright. His vagueness anddreaminess gathered themselves into gravity. His lips moved as thoughon the brink of an answer, but he said nothing. 

"Go on!" yapped Selby again. 

"I'm goin', " replied Waters, turning from him. 

He sent the girl a look that was a claim upon her. "Pleased to meetye, " he said clearly. "Me name's Waters; I'm an American too. "

Selby bounced in his chair behind him, squeaking and spluttering; thegirl, surprised and uncertain, stammered something. But her face, forall her embarrassment, acknowledged his claim. He took his reply fromit, nodded slowly in satisfied comprehension and walked past hertowards the door. His worn blouse glimmered white in the shadows ofthe entry; and he was gone. 

Behind him, the office was suddenly uncomfortable and cheerless. Selby was no longer sure of himself and the figure he had cut; thegirl looked at him with eyes in which he read a doubt. 

"You don't want to take any notice of that fellow, " he blustered. "He'd no right to speak to you. He's just a tough in trouble with thepolice and wanting me to fix it for him. He won't come here again ina hurry. "

"But" she hesitated. "Isn't he an American?" she ventured. 

"Huh!" snorted Selby. "Americans like him are three for a nickelround here. "

"Oh!" she murmured, and sat looking at him while he plunged into thequestion of "terms. " His glasses wobbled on his nose; his hands movedjerkily as he talked, fidgeting with loose papers on his desk; buthis weak eyes did not return her gaze. 

Nikolaieff, which yet has a quality of its own, has this in commonwith other abiding places of men that life there shapes itself as aposture or a progress in the measure that one gives to it or receivesfrom it. Tim Waters, who fed upon life like a leech, returned to itafter a six weeks' enforced absence (the protocol had valued adamaged istvostchik at that price) with a show of pallor under thebronze on his skin and a Rip van Winkle feeling of having slumberedthrough far-reaching changes. During his absence the lingeringsouthern autumn had sloped towards winter; the trees along the sadboulevard were already leafless; the river had changed from luminousblue to the blank hue of steel. The men in the streets went fortifiedwith sheepskins or furs; Waters, still in his linen blouse, withhands sunk deep in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the acidof the air, passed among them as conspicuous as a naked man, markingas he moved the stares he drew across high, raised collars. 

He was making his way across the city to his old haunts by thewaterside; he crossed the Gogol Street through its brisk, disorderlytraffic of trams and droschkies and gained the farther sidewalk hardby where a rank of little cabs stood along the gutter. A large sedateofficer, moving like a traction-engine, jostled him back into thegutter; he swore silently, and heard a shout go up behind him, ablatant roar of jeers and laughter. Startled, he turned; theistvostchiks, the padded, long-skirted drivers of the little waitingcabs, were gathered together in the roadway; their bearded and brutalfaces, discolored with the cold, were agape and hideous with theirlaughter; and in the forefront of them, pointing with a great handgloved to the likeness of a paw, stood and roared hoarsely theparticular istvostchik on whose account he had suffered the protocoland the prison. The discord of their mirth rilled the street; the bigmen, padded out under their clothes to a grotesque obesity, theirlong coats hanging to their heels giving them the aspect of figuresout of a Noah's Ark, drew all eyes. The beginnings of a crowdgathered to watch and listen. 

"The Amerikanetz, " the foremost istvostchik was roaring. "Look athim! Look at his clothes! Just out of prison Look at him!"

Everybody looked; the word "Amerikanetz" fled from lip to lip like awitticism. Waters, stunned by the suddenness of it all, daunted andoverwhelmed, turned to move away, to get out of sound and hearing. Forthwith a fresh howl went up. He caught at his self-possession andturned back. 

The moment had epic possibilities; the istvostchiks were not fewerthan eight in number and the crowd was with them. Waters's face wasdark and calm and his movements had the deliberate quiet of purpose. Another instant and Nikolaieff would have been gladdened andscandalized by something much more spectacular than a pogrom. Theleading istvostchik, still pointing and bellowing, was invitingdisaster; when from behind him, ploughing through the onlookers', came the overdue policeman, traffic baton in hand. 

"Circulate, circulate!" he cried to the loiterers, waving at themwith his stick. "It is not permitted to congregate. Circulate, gentlemen!"

He advanced into the clear space of roadway behind the rearmost cab, between Waters and his tormentors. His darting official eye fell onthe former, standing in his conspicuous blouse, his thin face tenseand dire. 

"And this?" he demanded. "What is this?"

A chorus of explanations from the istvostchiks answered him. "Amerikanetz, " they told him, "just out of prison!" They throngedround him, bubbling over with the story, while he stood, trim andarmed, his hard, neat face arrogant under the sideways-tilted peak ofhis cap, hearing them augustly. Then he smiled. 

"Tak!" he said briefly. "So!" He turned on Waters, coming round onhim with a movement like a slow swoop. Never was anything so gallingas the air he had of contemptuous and amused comprehension. 

"You march!" he ordered. "Get off this street!" He pointed with hiswhite-painted baton to the nearest turning. "Don't say anything, now, " he warned. "March!"

Waters hesitated. The istvostchiks, still hopeful of sport, pressednearer. To disobey and resist meant being cut down and stamped todeath under their heavy boots. Across the policeman's pointing arm, Waters saw the face of his enemy, expectant, avid, bestial withhideous and cruel mirth. He regarded it for a moment thoughtfully. Then, with a shrug, he turned and moved in the direction he had beenordered to go. 

Again, behind him, there was that jeering outcry, as the policeman, smiling indulgently and watching his departure, seemed to presideover the chorus. 

He came at length, going slowly, to the water side. It was dark bythen; the sheds of the wharves shut out the river and made a barrieragainst the sweep of the wind. From over their roofs came the glareof the high arc-lamps at the wharf-edge and the masts and the riggingof ships lifted into view. The stridency of day was over in theshabby street; its high houses, standing like cliffs, showed tierupon tier of windows, dimly lighted or dark, while from under thefeet of the buildings, from cellar-saloons to traktirs below thestreet-level, there spouted up the ruddiness of lamplight and thejangle of voices. There was a smell in the sharp air of ships andstreets blended, the aromatic freshness of tar, the sourness ofcrowds and uncleanliness. 

Waters, halting upon the cobbles, sniffed with recognition andunstiffened his mind as he gazed along the dreary street. He washere, on his own ground; somewhere in the recesses of those gaunthouses he would sleep that night, and next day he would wedge himselfback into his place in that uneasy waterside community and all wouldbe as before. He shivered under the lee of the sheds as he stood, looking, scarcely thinking, merely realizing the scene in its eveningdisguise. 

Down the street towards him, walking with strong and measured stepsthat resounded upon the cobbles, vague under the shadow of the sheds, came a man. Waters glanced casually in his direction as he came near, aware of him merely as in shape that inhabited the darkness, a dimthing that fitted in with the hour and the furtive street. Then theman was close to him and visible. 

"By gosh!" exclaimed Waters aloud. 

It was, of all possible people, "the sergeant with the medals. " Hestared at him helplessly. 

"Nu!" cried the sergeant heartily. He possessed all that patronizinggeniality which policemen can show to evil-doers, as to colleaguesin another department of the same industry. "You are back again yes?And how did you find it up there?"

Waters swallowed and hesitated. The sergeant was a vast man, blond asa straw and bearded like an Assyrian bull, the right shape of man towear official buttons. His short sword hung snugly along his leg inits black, brass-tipped scabbard; his medals, for war-service in thearmy, for exemplary conduct, for being alive and in the police at thetime of the Tsar's coronation and so forth, made a bright bar on theswell of his chest. A worthy and responsible figure; yet the sum ofhim was to Waters an offence and a challenge. 

He found his tongue. "About the same as you left it, I guess, " heanswered unpleasantly. 

The big man laughed, standing largely a-straddle with the thumbs ofhis gloved hands hooked into his sword-belt. He was rosy as a pippinand cheery as a host. 

"It has done you good, " he declared. "For one thing, I can see thatyou speak Russian better now oh, much better! It is a fine school. Byand by, we will send you up for six months, and after that nobodywill know you for an Amerikanetz. Ah, you will thank me some day!"

Waters heard him stonily and nodded with meaning. 

"You bet I will, " he replied. "And when I'm through with you, you'llknow just how grateful I am. " The need for words with a taste to themmastered him. He broke into his own tongue. "You'll get yours, youbig slob!"

"Eh?" The sergeant cocked an ear alertly, "Beek slab? What is that inRussian?"

"It's your middle name, " retorted Waters cryptically and made to moveon. 

"Do svidania!" called the sergeant mockingly, raising his voice to ashout. "Till we meet again! Because I shall be watching you, Votters;I shall be. "

"Here!" Waters wheeled on him, hands withdrawn from his pockets andcleared for action. 

"You start bellerin' at me in the street that way an' I'll justabout. "

There was no cohort of hostile istvostchiks here, and anger ached inhim like a cancer. He stepped up to the sergeant with a couple oflong, cat-footed strides and the out-thrust jaw of war. But thesergeant, instead of bristling and giving battle, held up one large, leather-clad hand with the motion of hushing him. 

"St!" he clicked warningly. "Not now! Be orderly, Votters. See yourlady-consul!"

"What?" Waters halted, taken by surprise, and turned his head. Thesergeant, rigid and formal upon the instant, was saluting. Upon thehigh sidewalk, a dozen paces away, a girl was passing; sheacknowledged the sergeant's salute with a small bow. Her eyes seemedto fall on Waters and she stopped. 

"Why, it's" she began, and hesitated as though at a loss for hisname. She stood, inspecting the grouping of the pair in the road, themassive sergeant and his slighter, more vivid companion. "Is there isthere anything the matter?"

Waters turned his back upon the sergeant and moved slowly towardsher, peering at her where she waited in the growing darkness. 

"Not with me, " he answered. 

"Oh!" It was, of course, Miss Pilgrim, the girl whom he had watchedacross the top of the vice consul's desk. She stood above him now atthe edge of the high sidewalk, whence the deep cobbled revetment ofthe gutter sloped like a fortification. Gazing at her with all hiseyes, he identified again, like dear and long-remembered landmarks, the poise of her head, the fragile slope of her shoulders, the softlylustrous pallor of her face. Even her attitude, perched over himthere and leaning a little towards him, was a thing individual andcharacteristic. 

"I wondered, " she said. "I thought, perhaps. "

"We are just talking" Waters reassured her. "Him and me's oldfriends. "

He endeavored to be convincing; but it happened that she had seen asshe approached the motion with which he had turned on the sergeant amoment before, and she still waited. 

"Perhaps, " she suggested then in her pleasant voice, "if you couldspare the time, you'd walk along a little way with me?"

He smiled. It was protection she was offering him, the shield of hercompany, dropping it from above like a gentle gift, like a flower letfall from a balcony. She saw the white gleam of his smile in hisshadowed face and made a small, quick movement as though she shrank. Waters made haste to accept. 

"With you, Miss Pilgrim? Why, sure I will, " he replied warmly, andstrode across the gutter to her side. 

To the sergeant, watching dumbly this pairing and departure, he saidnothing; he did not even turn to enjoy his face. 

It was strange to pass along that familiar street with her, to glancedown at her and see her forward bent face in profile against the darkdoorways leading to interiors whose secrets he knew. The drinkingdens were noisy at their feet; the tall houses were dark and sinisterabove them. He heard her breath as she walked at his elbow in thevicious chill of the evening and out upon the water, visible betweenthe sheds as a low green and a high white light sliding, slowlyacross the night, an outgoing steamer wailed like a hoarse banshee. Once upon a time he had seen the Black Hundred come roaring andstaggering along that street under the eyes of the ships, and hadbacked into one of the doorways past which they now walked to fightfor his life. The memory of it came curiously to him now, as the girlat his side led him on, hurrying to bring him to safety. 

They turned a corner ere she spoke to him again, and advanced along astreet which showed a vista of receding darkness, beaded by the dullhouse-lamps set over the courtyard gates. Not till then did sheslacken the hurry of her gait. She lifted her face towards him. 

"But there was something, wasn't there?" she asked. "Between you andthat policeman, I mean. You weren't really just chatting?"

Waters shrugged the policeman into the void. 

"It's nothin' that you'd need to worry about, Miss Pilgrim, " heanswered. "He don't amount to anything. "

She was still looking at him. She had on a big muffling coat and herface lifted out of the high collar of it. 

"But" she paused. "I was watching, you for a minute; I saw you goback to talk to him, " she said. "That's why I stopped. You see, thatday in the office, I was ever so sorry. "

"Oh, that!" Waters was vaguely embarrassed; he was not used tosympathy so openly expressed. "You mean Selby an' all that? Thatdidn't hurt me. "

But she would not be denied. "It hurt me, " she answered. "To see yougo out like that, so quietly, after asking for help and nobody to saya word for you! I've been hoping ever since that I'd see you so thatI'd be able to tell you. Of course, " she added, in the tone of onewho makes reasonable allowances, "of course, Mr. Selby's in adifficult position; he has to consider the authorities. Naturally, being our consul, he'd like to do his best for all Americans; but hehas to be careful. You can understand that, can't you?"

"Why, sure!" agreed Waters warmly. "It's mighty good of you to feellike that about me, Miss Pilgrim; and I ain't blamin' Selby any. Hewas born like that, I guess sort o' poor white trash and his folksdidn't find it out in time to smother him. But I wish I was consulhere for a time and he'd come to me to have me fix somethin' for him. I'd cert'nly like to have him know how it feels. "

"Ah, but I know, " she said earnestly. "I can guess like having nohome or friends or even a country of your own to belong to. Likefinding out suddenly that Uncle Sam wasn't your uncle after all! Tellme, was it what they did to you, I mean was it very bad?"

He smiled a little wryly, looking down into her serious face. 

"Well, it wasn't very good, " he answered. "It wasn't meant to be. Itain't often these people get a white man to practice on, an' theysure made the most o' the chance. But it didn't kill me; and, anyway, there ain't any reason why it should trouble you, Miss Pilgrim. "

He had a feeling that he preferred her to be immune from theknowledge and understanding of such things, to be and remain a mereeyeful of delicate and stimulating feminine effect. But upon hiswords she half halted, turning to him; she drew a hand from her muffand her fingers touched his sleeve. 

"No reason?" she repeated. "Ah, but there is! There is a reason. Ihaven't got any official position or anything to lose at all. I don'thave to consider anybody. So next time if there is a next time I wantyou to come straight away to me. "

He stared at her, not understanding her sudden excitement. "To you, Miss Pilgrim? You mean come round to Selby's again?"

"No, no!" She shook her head impatiently. "You know it's no use to gothere. But I live close by here; I'm taking you there now; and I wantyou to come to me. Then I'll see the Chief of Police for you; I knowhim quite well. "

"So do I, " said Waters. "He's a crook. But say, Miss Pilgrim, I don'tjust see. "

She interrupted him. "I'll explain what I mean and then you'll seethat it's all right. But now I want you to come home and have a glassof tea and see where I live. It's Number Thirteen only two housesmore. You will come, won't you?"

"I'll be glad to, " answered he. 

The house to which she brought him had a cavernous courtyard archlike a tunnel, outside whose gates the swaddled dvornik huddled uponthe sheltered side of the arch. Of all his body, only his eyes movedas they approached, pivoting under his great hood to scan them andfollow them through the gate. Within, the small court was a pit ofgloom roofed by the windy sky; a glass-paneled door let them in to awinding stone stair with an iron handrail that was greasy to thetouch. It was upon the second floor that Miss Pilgrim halted and puta key into a door. 

There was a hall within, a narrow passage cumbered with bigfurniture, wardrobes and the like, which had obviously overflowedfrom the rooms. At the far end of it, a door was ajar, letting out aslit of bright light and a smell of cabbage. Miss Pilgrim opened anearer door, reached for the switch and turned to summon Waterswhere he waited in the entry, browsing with those eager eyes of hisupon this new pasture. 

"Here's where you'll come when you want me, " she said. 

He entered the room, walked as far as the middle of it and lookedabout him. To his sensitive apprehension, whetted to fineness in theyears of his wandering and gazing, it was as though a chill and deadair filled the place, a suggestion as of funerals. Opposite the door, two tall windows, like sepulchral portals, framed oblongs of theouter darkness; and the white-tiled stove in the corner was like amausoleum. The cheap parquet of the floor had a clammy gleam; a tinyicon, roosting high in a corner, showed a tawdry shine of gilding;the whole room, square and lofty, with its sparse furniture groupedstiffly about its emptiness, was gaunt and forbidding. Of apersonality that should be at home within it and leave the impress ofits life upon the place, there was not a sign; it was the corpse of aroom. Waters turned from his scrutiny of it towards Miss Pilgrim, standing yet by the door and clear to see at last in the light. Shesmiled at him with her pale, quiet face, and he marked how, when sheceased to smile, her mouth drooped and her face returned to shadow. "That's Selby, " he told himself hotly. "Selby done that to her!"

There was another door in the corner, near the white stove. It stooda few inches open, revealing nothing. But as he glanced towards it, it seemed to him that he detected in the lifeless air a nuance offragrance, something elusive as a shade that emanated from thefarther room, and had in its very slightness and delicacy asuggestion of femininity. He knew that it must be her bedroom thatlay beyond the door, and he found himself wondering what that waslike. 

Presently he was seated by the little sham mahogany table, upon whichthe big brass samovar steamed and whispered, listening to her andwatching her. She gave him his glass of the pale-yellow Russian teathat neither cheers nor inebriates, but merely distends andirrigates, and sat over against him, sipping at her glass andreturning his gaze with her steady eyes. 

"I've only had this room a little time, " she remarked. "I've had justa bedroom before. But I had to have somewhere for people to come thepeople who can't go to Mr. Selby, I mean. You know what they call meat the Police Bureau? Mr. Selby's the vice-consul and I'm thevice-vice. So this, " her gaze traveled round the barren room withgentle complacency "this is my Vice-vice Consulate. "

"Oh!" Waters looked up at her over the rim of his glass with achanged interest. "The vice-vice? That's a pretty good name. Thenyou've been doin' this for fellers already?"

He marked a faintness of pink that dawned for a moment in her face atthe question. She smiled involuntarily and a little ruefully. 

"Well, " she hesitated; "I've tried, but I'm afraid I haven't actuallydone anything for anybody. I haven't had a real chance yet. But, anyhow, there's this room all ready and there's me; and any Americanwho can't go to Mr. Selby for help can come here. "

He nodded. 

"It was really from you I got the idea, " she went on; "when you wentout of the Consulate like that and there was nowhere you could go. And later on, there was a sailor from one of the ships, andafterwards a man who said he was a Mormon missionary; and Mr. Selbywouldn't couldn't see his way to do anything for them. The sailor wasbrought in by two policemen, though he was only a boy! He couldn'tspeak a word of Russian, of course, and it made me so sorry to thinkof him all alone with those people, having things done to him and notunderstanding anything. So, after hours, I went round to see theChief of Police. "

Waters moved a little on his chair. Her face had a mild glow ofenthusiasm which touched it with sober beauty. He shook his head. 

"He's no good, " he said. "You hadn't oughter gone to him byyourself. "

"But, " Miss Pilgrim protested, "lots of people have said that, andit's all wrong. It was he that nicknamed me the 'vice-vice, ' and nowall the police in the streets salute me when they see me. Even thatfirst time, before I knew him or anything, he was just as nice as hecould be. He was in his office, writing at a table under a lamp, andhe just looked up at me, hard and well, taking stock of me, you know, while I told him who I was and what I'd come for. And then he gave mea chair and sat and listened to everything I'd got to say, leaning onhis elbow and watching me close. I suppose a Chief of Police getsused to watching people like that. "

"I, I wouldn't wonder, " answered Waters vaguely. He was seeing, in aswift vision, that interview, with the black-browed man in uniformunder the lamp, listening and staring. 

"I told him how I felt about it, " Miss Pilgrim continued, "and how, since there wasn't anybody else to speak for the boy, I'd come alongto see if I could do anything. And when I'd finished he let me go ontill I hadn't another word to say that I could think of! he justbowed and said he'd have been delighted to oblige me, but thesailor's captain had been in and paid his fine and taken him awaythree hours before. Then he sent for glasses of tea and we sat andhad a talk, and I got him to say I could always come again when Iwanted to. But, you see, if it hadn't been for the captain. "

"Sure, " agreed Waters. "They'd have turned the kid loose for you. Andthe Mormon? Seems to me I seen that Mormon, unless there's a coupleof them strayin' around. How did you fix it for him?"

Again, at the query, that ghost of pink showed on her cheeks. 

"Oh, he--he wasn't very nice, " she answered. "He was a big stout man, with a curly black beard like fur growing close to his face all roundand shiny round knobs of cheek bulging out of it. I never did get tohear just what the trouble was with him, because when he was tellingMr. Selby, he looked round at me first and then bent over the deskand whispered. Whatever it was, it made Mr. Selby very angry; hesimply bounced out of his chair and shouted the man right out of theroom. And the man, I couldn't help being sorry for him, just wentwalking backwards, fending Mr. Selby off with his hands, with hismouth open and his eyes staring, looking as helpless and aghast ascould be. And when he got to the door, he burst out crying like alittle child. "

Waters smacked his knee. "That's him, " he cried. "That's the feller!He was up the river same time as me, an' gettin' plenty to cry for, too. But what in what made you try to do anything for one o' them?"

"He said he was an American citizen, " answered Miss Pilgrim; "and Mr. Selby wouldn't help him; so he was qualified. What made it difficultin his case was that somehow I never found out what he'd done; andthe Chief of Police was queer about him too. I remember once that hetold me that if he were to let the man go, he'd be afraid to sleep atnights, for fear he'd hear children's voices weeping in the dark. Icouldn't get anything else out of him. And the next time I went, they'd found out that the Mormon wasn't an American at all; he'd justbeen in the States for a couple of years and then come back toRussia. So there wasn't any more I could do. "

Waters put his empty glass upon the square iron tray by the samovar. He reached under his chair for his cap. 

"That's so, " he agreed. "You couldn't do nothin' for that feller. Maybe you'll land with the next one. "

He smiled at her across the little table. He understood now why thegaunt room reflected nothing of her. It was a city of refuge she hadbuilt and the refugees had failed to come; it was a makeshift templeof her patriotism and her pity. He caught her small answering smile, noting with what a docility of response her lips shaped themselves toit. No doubt she had smiled just as obediently at the "Mormon. "

"It's a great idea, too, " he went on. "Maybe Selby's all right as faras he goes, but he certainly don't go very far. This here" hegathered the room into his gesture "starts off where he stops. It'sgreat!"

It was good to see her brighten under the brief praise. 

"Then you see now what I meant when I told you to come here to me?"she asked. "Because I'll do everything I can, and the Chief of Policewill always listen to me. And you will come, won't you, if you shouldhappen ever to need help or or anything?"

"Why, you bet I will, " he promised heartily. "I reckon I got a rightto. You're my vice-vice and we don't want to waste a room like this. "

Watching her while he spoke, he had to hold down a smile whichthreatened to show. She needed somebody in trouble and she wasrelying on him. 

She left open the door for him while he went down the windingstaircase, that he might have light to see his way. When he was atthe bottom, he looked up, to see her head across the handrail, silhouetted above him and still oddly recognizable and suggestive ofher. Her voice came down to him, echoing in the well of the stairway. 

"Good night, " it said. "You won't, you won't forget?"

He was smiling as he went forth through the long hollow of the archto the dim street; the huddled dvornik with his swiveling eyes sawhim, his face lifted to the light of the numbered house-lamp, stillwith the shape of a smile inhabiting his lips. The night wind, bitterfrom the water, met him as he went, driving through the meagerness ofhis clothes, and still he smiled, cherished his mood like a treasure. And below his mirth, cordial as a testimony of friendship, thereendured the memory of the barren and lifeless room, waiting for itsfulfillment. 

In the lodging which he discovered for himself, he lay that nightupon his crackling mattress, hands under his head, smoking a finalcigarette and staring up at the map of stains upon the ceiling. Ithad been a day tapestried with sensations; there was much for thethoughtful mind of a connoisseur of life to dwell upon; but, as helay, in that hour of his leisure, the memory that persisted in himwas of the inner door in the dull room where he had drunk tea andtalked with the girl, and all the suggestion and enticement of it. Hewished that for a moment he could have looked beyond it and viewedjust once the delicate and fragrant privacy which it screened. Theouter room had a purpose as plain as a kitchen; the girl in it hadshown him of herself only that purpose; the rest of her was shut fromhim. 

He pitched the end of his cigarette from him, turning his head towatch it roll to safety in the middle of the bare floor. 

"I'll go after a job in the morning, " he said half aloud to theemptiness of the mean chamber, and turned to sleep upon theresolution. 

It was nearing noon of the next day when, following the trail of thatredeeming job, he went towards the Mathieson yards. While he was yetafar off he could see between the roofs the cathedral-likescaffolding clustering around the shape of a ship in the building;the rapid-fire of the hammers and riveting guns at work upon her, plates was loud above the noises of the street. But he went slowly;he had already been some hours upon his quest, and there was a touchof worry and uncertainty in his face. It seemed that the world he hadknown so well had changed its heart. The gatekeeper at the wharveswhere he formerly had driven a winch had refused to admit him, and atthe Russian foundry he had been curtly ordered away. Policemen hadhailed him familiarly and publicly, and twice passing istvostchikshad swerved their little clattering vehicles to the curb to jeer downinto his face as they rumbled by. The smudged impress of arubber-stamp upon his passport and three lines of sprawling Russianhandwriting recording his conviction and punishment had marked himwith the local equivalent of the brand of Cain; henceforward he wasset apart from other men. He pondered it as he went in an indignantbewilderment; it was strange that others should find him so differentwhen he knew himself to be the same as ever. 

The Scottish foreman-shipwright in the yard office looked up from hisstanding-desk, lifting, to the light of the open door a redmonkey-face comically fringed with coppery whiskers, and stared athim ferociously with little stone-blue eyes. He listened in fiercestillness while Waters put forward his request to be taken on. 

"It's you, is it?" he said then. "I know ye. When did they let yeout?"

"Yesterday, " answered Waters wearily. "Say, boss, it was only forbeatin' up an istvostchik, and I got to have a job. "

The fiery monkey-face, pursed in sourest disapproval, did not relax aline. "Yesterday an' now ye come here! Well, we're no' wantin' handsjust now, d'ye see? An' if we was, we'd no' want you. So now yeknow!"

The angry mask of a face continued to lower at him unwaveringly; itwas almost bitter and righteous enough to be funny. Waters surveyedit for a space of moments with a faint interest in its meregrotesqueness; it did not change nor shift under his scrutiny, butcontinued to glare inhumanly like a baleful lamp. He humped a thinshoulder in resignation and turned away. When he was halfway to thegate, he heard behind him the foreman ordering the gatekeeper not toadmit him in future. 

Passing again along the cobbled street, he halted suddenly and gazedabout him like a man seeking. Everything was as it had been before, from the folk moving in it to the pale sky over it. The little shops, showing idealized pictures of their wares on painted boards besidetheir doors for the benefit of a public that could not read; thecluster of small gold domes on a church at the corner; the greatbearded laboring men in their filthy sheepskins; the Jews, sleek andfurtive; the cabman who doffed his hat and crossed himself as hedrove by a shrine there was not a house nor a man that he could notidentify and classify. He had come back to them from the pain andlabor of his imprisonment confident of what he should find; and itwas as if a home had become hostile and unwelcoming. 

"Guess I'll have to be movin' outta this town, " he told himself. "Seems as if I'd stopped here long enough!"

He had time to confirm this judgment in the days that followed. Theapproach of winter was bringing its inevitable slackness to all workcarried on in the open air, and the big works could afford to bescrupulous about the characters of the men they engaged; and thelittle tradesmen feared the ban of the police. His slender store ofmoney came to an end, and but for occasional jobs of wood-splittingas the supplies of winter fuel came in, it would have been difficultmerely to live. As it was, he dragged his belt tighter about thewaist of the old linen blouse and showed to the daylight a face whosewhimsicality and vagueness were darkened with a touch of thesaturnine. He showed it likewise to Miss Pilgrim when one day shepassed him at the noon hour, hurrying past the corner on which hestood, wrapped to the eyes in her greatcoat. 

She recognized him suddenly and stopped. 

"Good morning, " she said. "It's, it's a cold day, isn't it?"

Waters had his back to the wall for shelter, and though he stood thusout of the wind, the air drenched him with its chill like water. Hesmiled slowly with stiff lips at the brisk outdoor pink in hercheeks. 

"This ain't cold, " he answered. "You won't call this cold when you'vebeen through a winter here. "

"No, " she agreed. "I suppose I won't. " She shifted diffidently, looking at him with her frank eyes. "Are you getting along allright, " she asked. 

He smiled again; in her meaning there was only one kind of "allright" and "all wrong. " "Why, yes, " he replied. "I'm all right, MissPilgrim; an' if I wasn't, I'd know where to come. "

She nodded eagerly. "Yes; I don't want you to forget. I I'll alwaysbe glad to do everything I can. "

"Sure; I know that, " he replied. "An' you? You makin' out all righttoo, Miss Pilgrim? That Vice-vice-Consulate o' yours keepin' youpretty busy?"

The brisk pink flooded across her face in a quick flush, and hermouth drooped. But her eyes, as always, were steady against his. 

"There hasn't been anybody yet, " she answered, with a look thatdeprecated his smile. 

He hastened to be sympathetic. "Too bad!" he said. "With a room likethat all ready an' waitin' too. But maybe it's only that things iskind o' slack just now; somebody'll be cuttin' loose pretty soon andyou'll get your turn all right. "

She made to move on, but paused again to answer. 

"The room will always be there if you if anybody wants it, " she said. "Even if nobody ever comes, it shall always be ready, at least. That's all I can do. "

She bade him farewell, with the little nod she had, and passed on, muffling her chin down into her great cloth collar. Waters lookedafter her with a frown of consideration. He was forgetting for themoment that he was cold, that he had fed inadequately upon gruel ofbarley, that he was all but penniless in an expensive and hostileworld. There was astir in his being, as he watched the slightovercoated figure of the girl, that same protective instinct whichhad galvanized even Selby into generosity; it never fails to make onefeel man enough to cope with any array of ills. There crossed andtangled in his mind a moving web of schemes for aiding and consolingher. 

Each of them had for a character vagueness of method and uttercompleteness of result, but none amounted to a programme. Waters, forall his brisk record, was not a man of action; he was rather amechanism jolted abruptly into action by the impulses of a detachedand ardent mind. It was chance, the ironic chance whose marionettesare men and women, and not any design of his, which turned his feetthat evening towards the room that was always to be waiting andready. 

He was returning towards his lodging after an afternoon of lookingfor work, tired, wearing a humor in tune with the early dark and theempty monotony of the streets by which he went. The few folk who wereabroad in them went by like shy ghosts; the high fronts of the houseswere like barricades between him and all the comfort and security inthe world. There was mud in the roads and his boots were no longerweather-proof. Life tasted stale and sour. 

An empty droschky, going the same way as himself, came bumping alongthe gutter behind him, the driver singing hoarse and broken snatchesof song. He moved from the edge of the pavement to be clear ofmud-splashes as it passed him, and heard, without further concern, the vehicle draw up level with him and the whistle and slap of thewhip as the istvostchik light-heartedly tortured his feeble horse. 

"Her eyes are cornflowers, " proclaimed the istvostchik melodiously;"her lips are-" He was abreast of Waters as he broke off. Five feetof uneven and slimy sidewalk separated them. Waters looked up; ahouse-lamp was above, dull and steady as a foggy star; and it showedhim, upon the box of the droschky, his enemy, the mainspring of allhis troubles. He halted short. 

The istvostchik had recognized him likewise. He was something shortof drunk, but his liquor was lively in him, and he wrenched his poorspecter of a horse to a standstill. Upon his seat, padded hugely inhis gown, he had a sort of throned look, a travesty of majesty; hiswhip was held like a scepter. 

They stared at one another for a space of three or four breaths. Waters was frankly aghast; this, upon the top of his other troubles, was overwhelming. The istvostchik ruptured the moment with a brassyyell. 

"Wow!" he howled. "My Amerikanetz, the Foreigner, the jail-bird! Lookat him, brothers!" He waved his whip as though the darkness werethronged with auditors. "Look at the jail-bird!"

From the gate below the dull lamp a dvornik poked his head forth. Waters had a sense that every door and window in the street wassimilarly fertile in heads. 

"Stop that!" he called to the istvostchik. "That's enough, now. "

The man upon the little cab rolled on his seat in a strident ecstasyof eloquence, brandishing arm and whip abroad above the back of thedrooping horse. 

"He tried to fight me, and first I beat him terribly oh, terribly!and then I made a protocol and sent him to prison. See him?" hebellowed. "See the jail-bird? See the dog?"

Waters swore helplessly. A month before, upon a quarter of suchprovocation, he would have flashed into fight; but cold, hunger andfriendlessness had damped the tinder in him. He made to go on and getaway from it all; he started quickly. 

"Come back, jail-bird!" howled the istvostchik. 

"I haven't done with you, my golubchik, my little prison-rat. Comeback here to me when I bid you. What, you won't? Get on, you!"

The last was to the horse, accompanied by a rending slash with thewhip. The wretched animal jerked forward, and Waters backed to thewall as his enemy clattered down upon him again. 

"That'll do you, " he warned as the cabman dragged his horse to astandstill once more. "I'm not lookin' for trouble. You be on yourway!"

The immense ragged-edged voice of the istvostchik descended upon him, drowning his protest. 

"He runs away from me, this Amerikanetz! He runs away, because when Ifind him I beat him I beat him whenever I find him. See now, brothers, I am beating him!"

And out of the tangle of his gesticulations, the whip-lash swoopedacross the sidewalk and cut Waters heavily across the neck. 

In the mere surprise of it and the instance of the pain, Waters madea noise like a yelp, a little spurt of involuntary sound. And thenthe tinder lighted. 

"Beating him!" intoned the istvostchik, mighty in his moment. "Beat. "

It was the last coherent syllable which he uttered in the affair. With a rush Waters cleared the sidewalk and was upon him, had him bythe pulp of clothes which enveloped him and tore him across the wheelto the ground. They went down together across the curb, legs in thegutter among the wheels, a convulsive bundle of battle that toreapart and whirled together again as the American, with all thelong-compressed springs of his being suddenly released and vibrant, poured his resentment and soul-soreness into his fists and found balmfor them in the mere spite of hitting somebody. 

It was a short fight. The istvostchik, even under his padding, was abiggish man and vicious with liquor; he grappled at his antagonistearnestly enough, to drag him down and bite and worry and kick in themanner of his kind. But the breast of the worn linen blouse ripped inhis clutch and a pair of man-stopping punches on the mouth and theeye drove him backwards towards the wall. It was then he began tosqueal. 

There were spectators by now, dvorniks who came running andpassers-by upon the other side who appeared from nowhere as thoughsuddenly materialized. There was a sparse circle of them about thefight when it ceased, with the istvostchik down and flattened in theangle of the wall and the pavement, making small timid noises like acomplaining kitten. Waters, with the mist of battle clearing, fromhis eyes, saw them all about him, dark, well-wrapped figures, watching him silently or whispering together. He sensed theirprofound disapproval of him and his proceedings. 

"That'll keep you quiet for a while, " he spoke down to the wreck ofthe istvostchik. 

Only moans answered him; he grunted and turned to go. From thenearest group of spectators a single figure detached itself and movedtowards him, blocking his path. It revealed itself at close quartersas a stout, middle-aged man, prosperously fur-coated, with a spike ofdark beard the inevitable public-spirited citizen of the provinces. 

"You must explain this disturbance, " he said to Waters importantly. "You must wait here and explain yes, and show your papers. You cannotwalk away like this!"

His companions pressed nearer interestedly. Waters could not know thefigure he cut, with his torn blouse which even in the gloom showedstains of the mud and blood of the combat. 

"Get out of my way!" was all his answer. 

"Your papers, " persisted the stout man. "I, " he puffed his chest, "Iam in the Administration; I require to see your papers. Producethem!"

The pale oblong of his fat face wagged at Waters peremptorily; hequite obviously felt himself a spokesman for order and decency andthe divinely ordained institution of "papers. "

"I said get out o' my way, " said Waters clearly. He put the flat ofhis hand against the stout man's fur-coated chest, shoved, and senthim staggering back on his heels among his supporters. Withoutlooking towards him again, he passed through them and continued hisway. He heard the chorus of their indignation break out behind him. 

It followed him, a cackle of outraged respectability, with here andthere an epithet distinguishable like a plum in a pudding. "Ruffian, "they called him, "assassin, " "robber, " and so forth, the innocuousamateur abuse of men who have learned their bad language from theirnewspapers. It was not till he had gone a hundred yards, and thenoise of their lamentation had a little died down, that there emergedout of the blur of it a voice that was quite clear. 

"Hi, you there!" It rang with the note of practiced authority. "Halt, d'you hear? Halt!"

The tones were enough, without the fashion of the words, to tell himthat a policeman had arrived on the scene. He looked back and sawthat the group of citizens was flowing along the sidewalk towardshim, a black moving blot. He could not distinguish the policeman, buthe knew that the others must be escorting him, coming with him to seethe finish. 

There was a corner some thirty or forty yards farther on. Watersjammed his cap tighter on his head, picked up his heels and sprintedfor it. 

"Halt, there!" shouted the policeman. "Halt-I'll shoot!"

Waters was at the corner when the shot sounded, detonating, like acannon in the channel of the street. Where the bullet went he did notguess; he was round the corner, running in the middle of the streetfor the next turning, with eyes alert for any entrance in which hemight find a refuge. But the firing had had its intended effect ofbringing every dvornik to his gate, and there was nothing for it butto run on. He heard the chase round the corner behind him and thepoliceman's 'repeated shout; the skin of his back crawled inmomentary expectation of another shot that might not go wild; andthen, with the next corner yet twenty yards away, came the idea. 

The mere felicity of it tickled him like a jest in the midst of allhis stress; he spent hoarded breath in a gasp of laughter. 

Around the corner that lay just ahead of him, for which he wasracing, was the street in which Miss Pilgrim lived, with her outerroom that was always ready and waiting. Without design or purpose hehad run towards it; an inscrutable fate, whimsical as his own humor, had herded him thither. Well, he would go there! The matter wasslight, after all; she would explain the whole matter to her Chief ofPolice, how the istvostchik had been the assailant and so forth; hewould be released, and her self-appointed function of "vice-vice"would shine forth justified and vindicated. It all fell out asdexterously as a conjuring trick. 

"Halt!" yelled the policeman. "I know you, halt!"

But he did not shoot again; those southern policemen lack the fiberthat will loose bullet after bullet along a dark street; and Watershad yet a good lead as he rounded the next corner and came intocover. The house he sought was near by; as he cleared the angle, hedropped into a swift walk that the new row of dvorniks might not markhim at once for a fugitive, and strode along sharply under the wallwhere it was darkest. He passed Number Seventeen without a sign fromits dvornik, and in the gate of Number Fifteen two dvorniks weregossiping and did not turn their heads as he passed. The arch ofNumber Thirteen, the house he sought, was close at hand when thepursuit came stamping round the corner behind him; he heard theircries as he slipped in through the half-open gate of the arch. Thechance that had brought him hither was true to him yet, for there wasno dvornik on watch; the man had chosen that moment of all others tostep over to gossip with his neighbor of Number Fifteen. 

He paused in the blackness of the courtyard to listen whether thepursuit would pass by, and heard it arrive outside the gate, janglingwith voices. It had gathered up the dvornik on its way. Waters, witha hand upon the door that opened to the staircase, heard the briskvoice of the policeman questioning him in curt spurts of speech, andthe dvornik's answers. "Of course, he might have gone in. There is anAmerikanka here, from the Consulate, and he might have gone to her. "Then the policeman, cutting the knot: "We'll soon see about that!" Hewaited no longer, but entered and darted up the stair; he must at allcosts not be caught before he got to Miss Pilgrim. 

It was the thought of her and the expectation of her welcome to thebarren room that made him smile as he climbed. Muddy, penniless andhunted, he knew himself for one that brought gifts; he was going tomake her rich with the sense of power and benevolence. He washalf-way up the second flight, at the head of which she lived, whenhe heard the policeman and his following of citizens enter below himand the stamp of their firm ascending feet on the lower steps. Hetook the remaining stairs three at a time. Upon the landing, the doorof the flat stood ajar. 

Gently, with precautions not to be heard below, he pushed it open, uncovering the remembered view of the furniture-cluttered passage, with the doors of rooms opening from it and the kitchen door at theend. The kitchen door was closed now; there was no sound anywherewithin the place. Nearest to him, on the left of the passage, thedoor of the room in which he had drunk tea was open and dark. 

He tapped nervously with his nails upon the door, hearing from belowthe approaching footsteps of the hunters. 

"Miss Pilgrim, " he called in a loud whisper along the passage. "MissPilgrim!"

The bell-push was a button somewhere in the woodwork and he could notfind it. He tapped and whispered again. The others were at the footof the second flight now; in a couple of seconds the turn of thestaircase would let them see him, and he would be captured anddragged away from her very threshold. He had a last agony ofhesitation, an impulse swiftly tasted and rejected, to try a rushdown the stairs and a fight to get through and away; and then hestepped into the flat and eased the door to behind him. Its patentlock latched itself with a small click unheard by the party whosefeet clattered on the stone steps. 

There was a clock somewhere in the dwelling that ticked pompously andmonotonously, and no other sound. Standing inside the door, in thathush of the house, he was oppressed by a sense of shameful trespass;he glanced with trepidation towards the kitchen, dreading to seesomeone come forth and shriek at the sight of him. Supposing MissPilgrim were out! Then from the landing came a smart insistent knockupon the door, and within the flat a bell woke and shrilledvociferously. He turned; the room that was always to be ready was athis side, and he fled on tiptoe into its darkness. 

He got himself clear of the door, moving with extended hands acrossits creaking parquet till he touched the cold smoothness of the tiledstove, and freezing to immobility as he heard the kitchen door open. Quick footsteps advanced along the passage; to him, checking, hisbreath in the dark, listening with every nerve taut, it was as thoughhe saw her, the serene poise of her body as she walked, the patheticconfidence of her high-held head, so distinctive and personal waseven the noise of her tread on the boards. Presently, when she hadsent the policeman away, he would see her and make her the gift ofhis request and watch her face as she received it from him. 

The latch clicked back under her hand, and she was standing in theentry, confronting the policeman and his backing of citizens. 

"Yes?" he heard her say, with a note of surprise at the sight ofthem. "Yes? What is it?"

The policeman's voice, with the official rasp in it, answered, spitting facts as brief as curses. "Man evading arrest aggravatedassault believed to be a certain American apparently escaped thisdirection. " It was like a telegram talking. Then, from his escort, acorroborating gabble. 

He could imagine her look of rather puzzled eagerness. "An American?"she exclaimed. Then, as she realized it and its possibilitiespossibly also the fact that already when an American was sought forit was to her door that they came "oh!"

"Require you to produce him, " injected the policeman, "if here! He ishere yes?"

"No, " she answered; "nobody has come here yet. "

There seemed to be a check at that; the effect of her, standing inthe doorway, made insistence difficult. The loud clock ticked on, and, at the background of the whole affair, the citizens on thelanding maintained a subdued and unremarked murmur among themselves. 

"He came this way, " observed the policeman tenaciously. "He was seento pass the next house. " And a voice chimed in, melancholy, plaintive, evidently the voice of the dvornik who had been discoveredabsent from his post: "Yes, I saw him. "

"Well, " Miss Pilgrim seemed a little at a loss. "He's not here. " Shepaused. "I have two rooms here, " she added; "this" she must bepointing to the dark open door beside her "and my bedroom. You canlook in this room, if that is what you want. "

Waters heard the answering yap of the policeman and the shuffle offeet. He turned in panic; there was no time to reason with events. Astep, and his groping hands were against that inner door, whichyielded to their touch. Even in the chaos of his wits, he was awareof that subtle odor he had perceived before, that elusive fragrancewhich seemed a very emanation of chaste girlhood and virgin delicacy. He was inside, leaving the door an inch ajar, as the switch clickedin the outer room and a narrow jet of light stabbed through theopening. 

"You see, there is nobody, " Miss Pilgrim was saying. 

The citizens, faithful to the trial, had crowded in. The policemangrunted doubtfully. 

Waters, easing his breath noiselessly, let his eyes wander. Thestreak of light lay across the floor and up over the counterpane of anarrow wooden bed, then climbed the wall across the face of a pictureto the ceiling. Beyond its illumination, there were dim shapes of adressing-table and a wash-hand-stand, and there were dresses hangingon the wall beside him behind a sheet draped from a shelf. A window, high and double-paned, gave on the courtyard. Through it he could seethe lights shining in curtained windows opposite. 

"That?" It was Miss Pilgrim answering some question. "That is mybedroom. No; you must not go in there!"

There was a hush and a citizen said "Ah!" loudly and knowingly. Waters, listening intently, frowned. 

"I must look, " said the policeman curtly. 

"But" her voice came from near the door, as though she were standingbefore it, barring the way to them, "you certainly shall not look. Itis my bedroom, and even if your man had come here" she broke offabruptly. "You see he is not here, " she added. 

"I must look, " repeated the policeman in exactly the same tone asbefore. "It is necessary. "

"No, " she said. "You must take my word. If you do not, I shallcomplain tomorrow morning to the consul and to the Chief of Policeand you shall be punished. "

"H'm!" The policeman was in doubt; she had spoken with a plain effectof meaning what she said, and a policeman's head upon a charger is asmall sacrifice for a courteous Chief to offer to a lady friend. Hetried to be reasonable with her. 

"It was because he was seen to come this way, " he argued. "He passedthe next house and the dvornik this man here! saw him. He hadcommitted an assault, an aggravated assault, on an istvostchik andevaded arrest. And he came this way. "

"He is not here, though, " replied Miss Pilgrim steadily. "Nobody atall has been here this evening. I give you my word. "

The Russian phrase she used was "chestnoe slovo, " "upon my honorableword. " Waters caught his breath and listened anxiously. 

"I give you my honorable word that he is not here, " she affirmeddeliberately. 

"Now what do you know about that?" exclaimed Waters helplessly. 

From the rear of the room somebody piped up acutely: "Then why maythe policeman not look, since nobody is there?" Murmurs of agreementsupported the questioner. 

Miss Pilgrim did not answer. It was to Waters as though she and thepoliceman stood, estimating each other, measuring strength andcapacity. The policeman grunted. 

"Well, " he said, "since you say, upon your honorable word but I mustreport the matter, you understand. " He paused and there followed therustle of paper as he produced and opened his notebook. 

"Your names?" he demanded. 

"Certainly, " agreed Miss Pilgrim, in a voice of extreme formality. But she moved to the bedroom door and drew it conclusively shutbefore she replied. 

Waters drew deep breaths and shifted his weight from one foot to theother. From the farther room he could hear now no more than confusedand inarticulate murmurings; but he was not curious about the rest. He knew just what was going on the fatuous interrogatory as to name, surname, age, birthplace, nationality, father, mother, trade, marriedor single, civil status, and all the rest of the rigmarole involvedin every contact with the Russian police. He had seen it many timesand endured it himself often enough. Just now he had another matterto think of. 

"Honorable word!" he repeated. "It's a wonder she couldn't findsomething different to say. Now I got to fool her. I got to, I. "

The window showed him the pit of the courtyard; its frame was not yetcaulked with cotton-wool and sealed with brown paper for the winter. He got it open and leaned out, feeling to either side for a spout, apipe, anything that would give him handhold to climb down by. Therewas nothing of the kind; but directly below him he could make out themass of the great square stack of furnace-wood built against thewall. From the sill to the top of the stack was a drop of full twentyfeet. 

He measured it with his eyes as best he could in the darkness. It wasa chance, a not impossible one, but ugly enough. At any rate, it wasthe only one, if he were to get out and leave that "honorable word"untarnished. It never occurred to him that she might take it lessseriously than he. 

Waters, who dreamed, who stood by and gazed when life becameturbulent and vivid, did not hesitate now. There was time for nothingbut action, if he was to substitute a worthy sacrifice for hisspoiled gift. 

Seated upon the sill, he managed to draw the inner window shut and tolatch it through the ventilating pane; the outer one he had to leaveswinging and trust that she might find or not demand an explanationfor it. This done, he was left, with his back to the house, seatedupon the sill, a ledge perhaps a foot wide, with his legs swingingabove the twenty-foot drop. In order to make it with a chance forsafety, he had so to change his posture that he could hang by hishands from the sill, thus reducing the sheer fall by some six feet. 

The dull windows of the courtyard watched him like stagnant eyes as, leaning aside, he labored to turn and lower himself. His experienceat sea and upon the gantries in the yards should have helped him; butthe past days, with their chill and insufficient food, had done theirwork on nerve and muscle, and he was still straining to turn and gethis weight on to his hands when he slipped. 

In the outer room, the catechism was running, or crawling, its ritualcourse. 

"Father's nationality?" the policeman was inquiring, with hisnotebook upheld to the light and! a stub of flat pencil poised forthe answer. A noise from the courtyard reached him. "What's that?" heinquired. 

"Sounds like wood slipping off the stack, " volunteered a citizen, andthe dvornik, whose business it had been to pile it, and who hadtrouble enough on his hands already, sighed and drooped. 

"American, of course, " replied Miss Pilgrim patiently. 

Below in the courtyard, Waters sat up and raised a hand to wheresomething wet and warm was running down his cheek from under hishair, and found that it hurt his wrist when he did so. He rosestiffly, cursing to himself at the pain it caused him. Above him, thewindows of the room that was always to be ready and waiting werebroad and bright and heads were visible against them. He felt himselfcarefully and discovered that he could walk. 

"Huh! Me for the roads goin' south outta this, " he soliloquized, ashe hobbled towards the gate; "an' startin' right now!"

He paused at the entry to the arch and looked back at the windowsagain. 

"Honorable word!" he repeated bitterly, nursing his injured wrist. "Wouldn't that jar you?"

He moved out through the gale slowly and painfully. 

XI

THE CONNOISSEUR

The office of the machine-tool agency, where Mr. Baruch sat bowed andintent over his desk, was still as a chapel upon that afternoon ofearly autumn; the pale South Russian sun, shining full upon itswindows, did no more than touch with color the sober shadows of theplace. From the single room of the American Vice-Consulate, acrossthe narrow staircase-landing without, there came to Mr. Baruch thehum of indistinguishable voices that touched his consciousnesswithout troubling it. Then, suddenly, with a swell-organ effect, asthough a door had been flung open between him and the speakers, heheard a single voice that babbled and faltered in noisy shrill anger. 

"Out o' this! Out o' this!" It was the unmistakable voice of Selby, the vice-consul, whose routine day was incomplete without a quarrel. "Call yourself an American you? Coming in here. "

The voice ceased abruptly. Mr. Baruch, at his desk, moved slightlylike one who disposes of a trivial interruption, and bent again tothe matter before him. Between his large, white hands, each decoratedwith a single ring, he held a small oblong box, the size of acigar-case, of that blue lacquer of which Russian craftsmen oncealone possessed the secret. Battered now by base uses, tarnished andabraded here and there, it preserved yet, for such eyes as those ofMr. Baruch, clues to its ancient delicacy of surface and the glory ofits sky-rivaling blue. He had found it an hour before upon atobacconist's counter, containing matches, and had bought it for afew kopeks; and now, alone in his office, amid his catalogues oflathes and punches, he was poring over it, reading it as another manmight read poetry, inhaling from it all that the artist, its maker, had breathed into it. 

There was a telephone at work in the Vice-Consulate now a voicespeaking in staccato bursts, pausing between each for the answer. Mr. Baruch sighed gently, lifting the box for the light to slide upon itssurface. He was a large man, nearing his fiftieth year, and a quietself-security a quality of being at home in the world was the chiefof his effects. Upon the wide spaces of his face, the little and neatfeatures were grouped concisely, a nose boldly curved but small andwell modeled, a mouth at once sensuous and fastidious, and eyessteadfast and benign. A dozen races between the Caspian and theVistula had fused to produce this machine-tool agent, and over theunion of them there was spread, like a preservative varnish, thesmoothness of an imperturbable placidity. 

Footsteps crossed the landing, and there was a loud knock on hisdoor. Before Mr. Baruch, deliberate always, could reply, it waspushed open and Selby, the vice-consul, his hair awry, his glassesaskew on the high, thin bridge of his nose, and with all his generalair of a maddened bird, stood upon the threshold. 

"Ah, Selby, it is you, my friend!" remarked Mr. Baruch pleasantly. "And you wish to see me yes?"

Selby advanced into the room, saving his eyeglasses by a suddenclutch. 

"Say, Baruch, " he shrilled, "here's the devil of a thing! This placegets worse every day. Feller comes into my office, kind of a peddler, selling rugs and carpets and shows a sort of passport; Armenian, Iguess, or a Persian, or something; and when I tell him to clear out, if he doesn't go and throw a kind of a fit right on my floor!"

"Ah!" said Mr. Baruch sympathetically. "A fit yes? You havetelephoned for the gorodski pomosh the town ambulance?"

"Yes, " said Selby; "at least, I had Miss Pilgrim do that, my clerk, you know. "

"Yes, " said Mr. Baruch; "I know Miss Pilgrim. Well, I will come andsee your peddler man. " He rose. "But first see what I have beenbuying for myself, Selby. " He held out the little battered box uponhis large, firm palm. "You like it? I gave forty kopeks for it to aman who would have taken twenty. It is nice yes?"

Selby gazed vaguely. "Very nice, " he said perfunctorily. "I used tobuy 'em, too, when I came here first. "

Mr. Baruch smiled that quiet, friendly smile of his, and put the boxcarefully into a drawer of his desk. 

The American Vice-Consulate at Nikolaief was housed in a single greatroom lighted by a large window at one end overlooking the port andthe wharves, so that, entering from the gloom of the little landing, one looked along the length of it as towards the mouth of a cave. Desks, tables, a copying-press and a typewriter were all its gear; itwas a place as avidly specialized for its purpose as an iron foundry, but now, for the moment, it was redeemed from its everyday barrennessby the two figures upon the floor near the entrance. 

The peddler lay at full length, a bundle of strange travel-wreckedclothes, suggesting a lay figure in his limp inertness and the loosesprawl of his limbs. Beside him on the boards, trim in white blouseand tweed skirt, kneeled the vice-consul's clerk, Miss Pilgrim. Shehad one arm under the man's head, and with the other was drawingtowards her his fallen bundle of rugs to serve as a pillow. As shebent, her gentle face, luminously fair, was over the swart, clenchedcountenance of the unconscious man, whose stagnant eyes seemed set onher in an unwinking stare. 

Mr. Baruch bent to help her place the bundle in position. She liftedher face to him in recognition. Selby, fretting to and fro, snorted. 

"Blamed if I'd have touched him, " he said. "Most likely he never sawsoap in his life. A hobo that's what he is just a hobo. "

Miss Pilgrim gave a little deprecating smile and stood up. She was aslight girl, serious and gentle, and half her waking life was spentin counteracting the effects of Selby 's indigestion and ill-temper. Mr. Baruch was still stooping to the bundle of rugs. 

"Oh, that'll be all right, Mr. Baruch, " she assured him. "He's quitecomfortable now. "

Mr. Baruch, still stooping, looked up at her. 

"I am seeing the kind of rugs he has, " he answered. "I am interestedin rugs. You do not know rugs no?"

"No, " replied Miss Pilgrim. 

"Ah! This, now, is out of Persia, I think, " said Mr. Baruch, edgingone loose from the disordered bundle. "Think!" he said. "This poorfellow, lying here he is Armenian. How many years has he walked, carrying his carpets and rugs, all the way down into Persia, sellingand changing his goods in bazaars and caravanserais, and then backover the Caucasus and through the middle of the Don Cossacks allacross the Black Lands carrying the rugs till he comes to throw hisfit on Mr. Selby's floor! It is a strange way to live, Miss Pilgrim, yes?"

"Ye-es, " breathed Miss Pilgrim. "Ye-es. "

He smiled at her. He had a corner of the rug unfolded now and drapedover his bent knee. His hand stroked it delicately; the blank lightfrom the window let its coloring show in its just values. Mr. Baruch, with the dregs of his smile yet curving his lips, scanned it withouttoo much appearance of interest. He was known for a "collector, " aman who gathered things that others disregarded, and both MissPilgrim and Selby watched him with the respect of the laity for theinitiate. But they could not discern or share the mounting ecstasy ofthe connoisseur, of the spirit which is to the artist what the wifeis to the husband, as he realized the truth and power of thecoloring, its stained-glass glow, the justice and strength of thepatterning and the authentic silk-and-steel of the texture. 

"Is it any good?" asked Selby suddenly. "I've heard of 'em beingworth a lot sometimes thousands of dollars!"

"Sometimes, " agreed Mr. Baruch. "Those you can see in museums. Thisone, now I would offer him twenty rubles for it, and I would giveperhaps thirty if he bargained too hard. That is because I have aplace for it in my house. "

"And he'd probably make a hundred per cent, on it at that, " saidSelby. "These fellows. "

The loud feet of the ambulance men on the stairs interrupted him. Mr. Baruch, dragging the partly unfolded rugs with him, moved away as thewhite clad doctor and his retinue of stretcher-bearers came in at thedoor, with exactly the manner of the mere spectator who makes roomfor people more directly concerned. He saw the doctor kneel besidethe prostrate man and Miss Pilgrim hand him one of the officetea-glasses; then, while all crowded round to watch the process ofluring back the strayed soul of the peddler, he had leisure to assurehimself again of the quality of his find. The tea-glass clinkedagainst clenched teeth. "A spoon, somebody!" snapped the doctor. Thecramped throat gurgled painfully; but Mr. Baruch, slave to thedelight of the eye, was unheeding. A joy akin to love, pervading andrejoicing his every faculty, had possession of him. The carpet wasall he had deemed it and more, the perfect expression in its mediumof a fine and pure will to beauty. 

The peddler on the floor behind him groaned painfully and tatters ofspeech formed on his lips. 

"That's better, " said the doctor encouragingly. 

Mr. Baruch dropped the rug and moved quietly towards the group. 

The man was conscious again; a stretcher-bearer, kneeling behind him, was holding him in a half sitting posture, and Mr. Baruch watchedwith interest how the tide of returning intelligence mounted in thethin mask of his face. He was an Armenian by every evidence, aneffect of weather-beaten pallor appearing through dense masses ofcoal-black beard and hair one of those timid and servileoff-scourings of civilization whose wandering lives are daily epicsof horrid peril and adventure. His pale eyes roved here and there ashe lay against the stretcher-bearer's knee. 

"Well, " said the doctor, rising and dusting his hands one against theother, "we won't need the stretcher. Two of you take him under hisarms and help him up. "

The burly Russian ambulance men hoisted him easily enough and stoodsupporting him while he hung between them weakly. Still his eyeswandered, seeking dumbly in the big room. The doctor turned to speakto the vice-consul, and Miss Pilgrim moved forward to the sick man. 

"Yes?" she questioned, in her uncertain Russian. "Yes? What is it?"

He made feeble sounds, but Mr. Baruch heard no shaped word. MissPilgrim, however, seemed to understand. 

"Oh, your rugs!" she answered. "They're all here, quite safe. " Shepointed to the bundle, lying where it had been thrust aside. "Quitesafe, you see. "

Mr. Baruch said no word. The silken carpet that he had removed wasout of sight upon the farther side of the big central table of theoffice. The peddler groaned again and murmured; Miss Pilgrim bentforward to give ear. Mr. Baruch, quietly and deliberately as always, moved to join the conference of the doctor and Selby. He was making athird to their conversation when Miss Pilgrim turned. 

"One more?" she was saying. "Is there one more? Mr. Baruch, did you--Oh, there it is!"

She moved across to fetch it. The peddler's eyes followed herslavishly. Mr. Baruch smiled. 

"Yes?" he said. "Oh, that carpet! He wants to sell it yes?"

"He isn't fit to do any bargaining yet, " replied Miss Pilgrim, andMr. Baruch nodded agreeably. 

The doctor and Selby finished their talk, and the former came backinto the group. 

"Well, take him down to the ambulance, " he bade the men. 

They moved to obey, but the sick man, mouthing strange sounds, seemedto try to hang back, making gestures with his head towards thedisregarded bundle that was the whole of his earthly wealth. 

"What's the matter with him?" cried the doctor impatiently. "Thoserugs? Oh, we can't take a hotbed of microbes like that to thehospital! Move him along there!"

"And I'm not going to have 'em here, " barked Selby. The peddler, limpbetween the big stretcher bearers, moaned and seemed to shiver in avain effort to free himself. 

"Wait, please!" Miss Pilgrim came forward. She had been folding thesilken rug of Mr. Baruch's choice, and was now carrying it beforeher. It was as though she wore an apron of dawn gold and sunset red. 

The pitiful man rolled meek imploring eyes upon her. She cast downthe rug she carried upon the others in their bundle and stood overthem. 

"I'll take care of them, " she said. "They will be safe with me. Doyou understand? Me!" She touched herself upon her white-clad bosomwith one hand, pointing with the other to the rugs. 

The man gazed at her mournfully, resignedly. Martyrdom was the dailybread of his race; oppression had been his apprenticeship to life. Itwas in the order of things as he knew it that those who had powerover him should plunder him; but, facing the earnest girl, with herfrank and kindly eyes, some glimmer of hope lighted in hisabjectness. He sighed and let his head fall forward in a feeblemotion of acquiescence, and the big men who held him took him out anddown the stairs to the waiting ambulance. 

"Well!" said Selby, as the door closed behind the doctor. "Whowouldn't sell a farm and be a consul. We'd ought to have the placedisinfected. What do you reckon to do with that junk, Miss Pilgrim?"

Miss Pilgrim was readjusting the thong that had bound the rugstogether. 

"Oh, I'll take them home in a droschky, Mr. Selby, " she said. "I'vegot a cupboard in my rooms where they can stay till the poor man getsout of hospital. "

"All right, " snarled Selby. "It's your troubles. " He turned away, butstopped upon a sudden thought. "What about letting Baruch take thatrug now?" he asked. "He's offered a price and he can pay it to you. "

"Certainly, " agreed Mr. Baruch. "I can pay the cash to Miss Pilgrimand she can pay it to the poor man. He will perhaps be glad to havesome cash at once when he comes out. "

Miss Pilgrim, kneeling beside the pack of rugs, looked doubtfullyfrom one to the other. Mr. Baruch returned her gaze benignly. Selby, as always, had the affronted air of one who is prepared to be refusedthe most just and moderate demand. 

"Why, " she began hesitatingly, "I suppose-" Then Selby had to strikein. 

"Aren't worrying because you said you'd look after the stuffyourself, are you?" he jeered. 

Mr. Baruch's expression did not alter by so much as a twitch; therewas no outward index of his impulse to smite the blundering manacross the mouth. 

The hesitancy upon Miss Pilgrim's face dissolved in an instant andshe positively brightened. 

"Of course, " she said happily. "What can I have been thinking of?When the poor man comes out Mr. Baruch can make his own bargain withhim; but till then I promised!"

Selby, with slipping glasses awry on his' nose, gaped at her. 

"Promised!" he repeated. "That that hobo. "

Mr. Baruch intervened. 

"But, Selby, my friend, Miss Pilgrim is quite right. She promised;and it is only two or three days to wait, and also it is not the onlyrug in the world. Though, " he added generously, "it is a nice rugyes?"

Miss Pilgrim smiled at him gratefully; Selby shrugged, and justcaught his glasses as the shrug shook them loose. 

"Fix it to suit yourselves, " he snarled, and moved away toward hisuntidy desk by the window. 

The pale autumn sun had dissolved in watery splendors as Mr. Baruch, with the wide astrakhan collar of his overcoat turned up about hisears, walked easily homeward in the brisk evening chill. There werelights along the wharves, and the broad waters of the port, alongwhich his road lay, were freckled with the spark-like lanterns on theships, each with its little shimmer of radiance reflected from thestream. Commonly, as he strolled, he saw it all with gladness; theworld and the fullness thereof were ministers of his pleasure; butupon this night he saw it absently, with eyes that dwelt beyond itall. Outwardly, he was the usual Mr. Baruch; his slightly sluggishbenevolence of demeanor was unchanged as he returned the salute of apoliceman upon a corner, but inwardly he was like a man uplifted bygood news. The sense of pure beauty, buried in his being, stirredlike a rebellious slave. Those arabesques, that coloring, thattexture thrilled him like a gospel. 

It was in the same mood of abstraction that he let himself into hisflat in the great German-built apartment-house that overlooked the"boulevard" and the thronged river. He laid aside his overcoat in thelittle hall, conventional with its waxed wood and its mirror, clickedan electric-light switch and passed through a portiere into thesalon, which was the chief room of his abode. A large room, oblongand high-ceilinged, designed by a man with palace architecture thatobsession of the Russian architect on the brain. He advanced to it, still with that vagueness of sense, and stopped, looking round him. 

It was part of the effect which Mr. Baruch made upon those who cameinto contact with him that few suspected him of a home, a domesticityof his own; he was so complete, so compactly self-contained, withoutappanages of that kind. Here, however, was the frame of his realexistence, which contained it as a frame contains a picture and threwit into relief. The great room, under the strong lights, showed theconventional desert of polished parquet floor, with sparse furnituregrouped about it. There was an ivory-inlaid stand with a Benaresbrass tray; a Circassian bridal linen-chest stood against a wall; thetiles of the stove in the corner illustrated the life and martyrdomof Saint Tikhon. Upon another wall was a trophy of old Cossackswords. Before the linen-chest there stood a trunk of the kind thatevery Russian housemaid takes with her to her employment a thing ofbent birchwood, fantastically painted in strong reds and blues. Onebuys such things for the price of a cocktail. 

Mr. Baruch stood, looking round him at the room. Everything in it wasof his choosing, the trophy of some moment or some hour of delight. He had selected his own background. 

"Ah Samuel!"

He turned, deliberate always. Between the portieres that screened theopposite doorway there stood the supreme "find" of his collection. Somewhere or other, between the processes of becoming an emperor inthe machine-tool trade of southern Russia and an American citizen, Mr. Baruch so complete in himself, so perfect an entity had added tohimself a wife. The taste that manifested itself alike on batteredblue lacquer and worn prayer-rugs from Persia had not failed himthen; he had found a thing perfect of its kind. From the uneasyCaucasus, where the harem-furnishers of Circassia jostle thewoman-merchants of Georgia, he had brought back a prize. The womanwho stood in the doorway, one strong bare arm uplifted to hold backthe stamped leather curtain, was large a great white creature like amoving statue, with a still, blank face framed in banks of shiningjet hair. The strong, lights of the chamber shone on her; she stood, still as an image, with large, incurious eyes, looking at him. Allthe Orient was immanent in her; she had the quiet, the resignation, the un-hope of the odalisque. 

"Samuel, " she said again. 

"Ah, Adina!" And then, in the Circassian idiom, "Grace go beforeyou!"

Her white arm sank and the curtains swelled together behind her. Mr. Baruch took the chief of his treasures into his arms and kissed her. 

The room in which presently they dined was tiny, like a cabinetparticulier; they sat at food like lovers, with shutters closed uponthe windows to defend their privacy. Mr. Baruch ate largely, and hisgreat wife watched him across the table with still satisfaction. Thelinen of the table had been woven by the nuns of the Lavra at Kiev;the soup-bowls were from Cracow; there was nothing in the place thathad not its quality and distinction. And Mr. Baruch fitted it as asnail fits its shell. It was his shell, for, like a snail, he hadexuded it from his being and it was part of him. 

"I saw a carpet to-day, " he said abruptly. There was Black Sea salmonon his plate, and he spoke above a laden fork. 

"Yes?" The big, quiet woman did not so much inquire as invite him tocontinue. Mr. Baruch ate some salmon. "A carpet yes, " he saidpresently. "Real like Diamonds, like you, Adina, I no mistake. "

At the compliment, she lowered her head and raised it again in amotion like a very slow nod. Mr. Baruch finished his salmon withoutfurther words. 

"And?" Upon her unfinished question he looked up. 

"Yes, " he said; "surely! In a few days I shall bring it home. "

Her large eyes, the docile eyes of the slave-wife, acclaimed him. Forher there were no doubts, no judgments; the husband was the master, the god of the house. Mr. Baruch continued his meal to its end. 

"And now, " he said presently, when he had finished, "you will go tobed. "

She stood up forthwith, revealing again her majestic stature andpose. Mr. Baruch sat at his end of the table with his tiny cup ofcoffee and his thimble-like glass before him. He lifted his eyes andgazed at her appreciatively, and, for a moment, there lighted in hisface a reflection of what Selby and Miss Pilgrim might have seen init, had they known how to look, when first he realized the silkenglories of the carpet. The woman, returning his gaze, maintained herpale, submissive calm. 

"Blessings upon you!" he said, dismissing her. 

She lowered her splendid head in instant obedience. 

"Blessings, " she replied, "and again blessings! Have sweet sleep, lord and husband!"

He sat above his coffee and his liqueur and watched her superb bodypass forth from the little room. She did not turn to look back; theyare not trained to coquetry, those chattel-women of the Caucasus. Mr. Baruch smiled while he let the sweetish and violently strong liqueurroll over his tongue and the assertively fragrant coffee possess hissenses. His wife was a "find, " a thing perfect of its sort, thatsatisfied his exigent taste; and now again he was to thrill with thejoy of acquisition. There were rugs in the room where he sat onedraped over a settee, another hanging upon the wall opposite him, oneunderfoot each fine and singular in its manner He passed an eye overthem and then ceased to sec them. His benevolent face, with all itssuggestive reserve and its quiet shrewdness, fell vague with reverie. It was in absence of mind rather than in presence of appetite that hehelped himself for the fourth time to the high-explosive liqueur fromthe old Vilna decanter; and there flashed into sight before him, theclearer for the spur with which the potent drink rowelled hisconsciousness, the vision of the silk carpet, its glow, as thoughfire were mixed with the dyes of it, the faultless Tightness and artof its pattern, the soul-ensnaring perfection of the whole. 

It was some hours later that he looked into his wife's room on hisway to his own. She was asleep, her quiet head cushioned upon thewaves of her hair. Mr. Baruch, half-burned cigar between his teeth, stood and gazed at her. Her face, wiped clean of its powder, waswhite as paper, with that deathlike whiteness which counts as beautyin Circassia; only the shadows of her eyelids and the broad red ofher lips stained her pallor. Across her breast the red and blue hemof the quilt lay like a scarf. 

Mr. Baruch looked at the arrangement critically. He was a connoisseurin perfection, and something was lacking. It eluded him for a momentor two and then, suddenly, like an inspiration, he perceived it. Therug the thing delicate as silk, with its sheen, its flush of hues, with the white slumbering face above it! The picture, the perfectthing he saw it!

The woman in the bed stirred and murmured. 

"Blessings upon you, " said Mr. Baruch, and smiled as he turned away. 

"Bl-essings, " she murmured sleepily, without opening her eyes, andsighed and lay still once more. 

The heart of man is a battle-ground where might is always right andvictory is always to the strongest of the warring passions. And evena saint's passion to holiness is hardly stronger, more selfless, moredisregardful of conditions and obstacles than the passion of thelover of the beautiful, the connoisseur, toward acquisition. In thedays that followed, Mr. Baruch, walking his quiet ways about thecity, working in the stillness of his office, acquired the sense thatthe carpet, by the mere force of his desire, was somehow due to him athing only momentarily out of his hands, like one's brief loan to afriend. Presently it would come his way and be his; and it belongs tohis sense of security in his right that not once, not even when heremembered it most avidly, did he think of the expedient of buying itfrom the sick peddler by paying him the value of it. 

Another man would probably have gone forthwith to Selby, told him thesecret, and enlisted his aid; but Mr. Baruch did not work like that. He allowed chance a week in which to show its reasonableness; and nottill then, nothing having happened, did he furnish himself, oneafternoon, with an excuse, in the form of a disputed customs charge, and cross the narrow landing to the American Vice-Consulate. 

Selby was there alone at his disorderly desk by the window, fussingfeebly among the chaos of his tumbled papers, and making a noise ofdesperation with his lips like a singing kettle. 

"Ah, Selby, my friend!" Mr. Baruch went smilingly forward. "You workalways too much. And now come I with a little other thing for you. Itis too bad yes?"

"Hallo, Baruch!" returned Selby. "You're right about the working. Here I keep a girl to keep my papers in some kind of a sort of orderand I been hunting and digging for an hour to find one of 'em. Itgets me what she thinks I pay her for! Hoboes an' that kind o' trash, that's her style. "

Mr. Baruch had still his agreeable, mild smile, which was as much apart of his daily wear as his trousers. He could not have steered thetalk to better purpose. 

"Hoboes?" he said vaguely. "Trash?"

Selby exploded in weak, sputtering fury, and, as always, his glassescanted on the high, thin bridge of his nose and waggled in time toeach jerk of words. 

"It's that hobo, you saw him, Baruch, that pranced in here and threwa fit and a lot of old carpets all over my floor. Armenian or somesuch thing! Well, they took him to the hospital and this afternoon hehadn't got more sense than to send a message over here. "

Mr. Baruch nodded. 

"Ah, to Miss Pilgrim, yes? because of her very kind treatment. "

Selby caught his glasses as they fell. 

"Huh!" he sneered malevolently. "You'd have to be a hobo before you'dget kindness from her. Hard-luck stories is the only kind shebelieves. 'I'll have to go, Mr. Selby, ' she says. And she goes--andhere's me hunting and pawing around--"

"Yes, " agreed Mr. Baruch; "it is inconvenient. So I will come backtomorrow with my matter, when you shall have more time. Then the poorman, he is worse or better?"

"You don't suppose I been inquiring after him, do you?" squealedSelby. 

"No, " replied Mr. Baruch equably, "I do not suppose that, Selby, myfriend. "

The street in which Miss Pilgrim had her rooms was one of the longgullies of high-fronted architecture running at right angles to theriver, and thither portly, handsomely overcoated, with thedeliberateness of a balanced and ordered mind in every tread of hismeasured gait went Mr. Baruch. He had no plan; his resource andpersonality would not fail him in an emergency, and it was time hebrought them to bear. One thing he was sure of he would take thecarpet home that night. 

At the head of two flights of iron-railed stone stairs, he reachedthe door of the flat which he sought. Two or three attempts upon thebell-push brought no response, and he could hear no sound of lifethrough the door. He waited composedly. It did not enter his headthat all the occupants might be out; and he was right, for presently, after he had thumped on the door with his gloved fist, there was aslip-slap of feet within and a sloven of a woman opened to him. 

Mr. Baruch gave her his smile. 

"The American lady is in? I wish to speak to her. " The woman stoodaside hastily to let him enter. "Say Gaspodin Baruch is here, " hedirected blandly. 

It was a narrow corridor, flanked with doors, in which he stood. Thewoman knocked at the nearest of these, opened it, and spoke his name. Immediately from within he heard the glad, gentle voice of theconsul's clerk. 

"Surely!" it answered the servant in Russian; then called in English, "Come in, Mr. Baruch, please!"

He removed his hat and entered. An unshaded electric-light bulbfilled the room with crude light, stripping its poverty andtawdriness naked to the eye its bamboo furniture, its imitationparquet, and the cheap distemper of its walls. But of these Mr. Baruch was only faintly aware, for in the middle of the floor, withbrown paper and string beside her, Miss Pilgrim knelt amid akaleidoscope of tumbled rugs, and in her hand, half folded already, was the rug. 

She was smiling up at him with her mild, serene face, while under herthin, pale hands lay the treasure. 

"Now this is nice of you, Mr. Baruch, " she was saying. "I suppose Mr. Selby told you I'd had to go out. "

Mr. Baruch nodded. He had let his eyes rest on the rug for a space ofseconds, and then averted them. 

"Yes, " he said. "He said it was some message about the poor man whowas ill, and I think he was angry. "

"Angry?" Miss Pilgrim's smile faded. "I'm, I'm sorry for that. "

"So, " continued Mr. Baruch, "as I have to go by this way, I think Iwill call to see if I can help. It was some paper Mr. Selby cannotfind, I think. "

"Some paper?" Miss Pilgrim pondered. "You don't know which it was?"

Mr. Baruch shook his head regretfully. Between them the rug lay andglowed up at him. 

"You see, " continued Miss Pilgrim, "it's this way, Mr. Baruch. Thatpoor man in the hospital doesn't seem to be getting any better yet, and he's evidently fretting about his rugs. They're probably all he'sgot in the world. So this afternoon they telephoned up from thehospital to say he wanted me to send down one in particular, thethinnest one of them all. That's this one!"

She showed it to him, her fingers feeling its edge. There was wonderin his mind that the mere contact of it did not tell her of itsworth. 

"I'm afraid it's the one you wanted to buy, " she said. "The one yousaid was worth thirty rubles. Well, of course, it's his, and since hewanted it I had to get it for him. I couldn't do anything else, couldI, Mr. Baruch?"

Mr. Baruch agreed. 

"It is very kind treatment, " he approved. "So now you pack it in aparcel and take it to the hospital before you go back to find Mr. Selby's paper yes? Mr. Selby will be glad. "

A pucker of worry appeared between the girl's frank brows and shefell swiftly to folding and packing the rug. 

"If if only he hasn't left the office before I got there!" shedoubted. 

Mr. Baruch picked up the string and prepared to assist with thepacking. 

"Perhaps he will not be gone, " he said consolingly. "He was so angryI think the paper would be important, and he would stay to find ityes?" Miss Pilgrim did not seem cheered by this supposition. "Well, "said Mr. Baruch then, "if it should be a help to you and the poorman, I can take this parcel for you and leave it in the gate of thehospital when I go past this evening. "

He had a momentary tremor as he made the proposal, but it was notdoubt that it would be accepted or fear lest his purpose should showthrough it. He felt neither of these; it was the thrill of victorythat he had to keep out of his tone and his smile. 

For it was victory. Miss Pilgrim beamed at him thankfully. 

"Oh, Mr. Baruch, you are kind!" she cried. "I didn't like to ask you, but you must be a thought reader. If you'd just hand it in for DoctorSemianoff, he'll know all about it, and I can get back to Mr. Selbyat once. And thank you ever so much, Mr. Baruch!"

"But, " protested Mr. Baruch, "it is a little thing--it is nothing. And it is much pleasure to me to do this for you and the poor man. Tonight he will have it, and tomorrow perhaps he will be better. "

They went down the stairs together and bade each other a friendlygood night in the gateway. 

"And I'm ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Baruch, " said Miss Pilgrimagain, her pale face shining in the dusk. 

Mr. Baruch put a fatherly hand on her sleeve. 

"Hush! You must not say it, " he said. "It is I that am happy. "

Half an hour later, he found what he sought in a large furniturestore on the Pushkinskaia, an imitation Persian rug, manufactured atFrankfurt, and priced seventeen rubles. With a little bargaining thesalesman was no match for Mr. Baruch, at that he got it for fifteenand a half. He himself directed the packing of it, to see that nostore-label was included in the parcel; and a quarter of an hourlater he delivered it by cab to the dvornik at the hospital gate forDoctor Semianoff. Then he drove homeward; he could not spare the timeto walk while the bundle he held in his arms was yet unopened nor itstreasure housed in his home. 

His stratagem was perfect. Even if the Armenian were to make anoutcry, who would lend him an ear?

It would appear it could easily be made to appear that he wasendeavoring to extort money from Miss Pilgrim upon a flimsy pretextthat a worthless rug had been substituted for a valuable one, and thepolice would know how to deal with him. Mr. Baruch put the matterbehind him contentedly. 

The majestic woman in his home watched him impassively as he unpackedhis parcel and spread the rug loosely across a couple of chairs inthe salon. In actual words he said only: "This is the carpet, Adina, for your bed. Look at it well!" She looked obediently, glancing fromit to his face, her own still with its unchanging calm, and wondereddully in her sex-specialized brain at the light of rapture in hiscountenance. He pored upon it, devouring its rareness of beauty, thesum and the detail of its perfection, with a joy as pure, anappreciation as generous, as if he had not stolen it from under thehands of a sick pauper and a Good Samaritan. 

That night he stood at the door of his wife's room. "Blessings uponyou!" he said, and smiled at her in acknowledgment of the blessingsshe returned. A brass-and-glass lantern contained the electric lightin the chamber; it shone softly on all the apparatus of toilet andslumber, and upon the picture that was Mr. Baruch's chief work of artthe marble-white face thrown into high relief by the unbound blackhair and the colors, like a tangle of softened and subdued rainbows, that flowed from her bosom to the foot of the bed. He crossed thefloor and bent and kissed her where she lay. 

"Wonderful!" he said to her. "You are a question, an eternalquestion. And here" his hand moved on the surface of the rug like acaress "is the answer to you. Two perfect things two perfect things!"

"Blessings!" she murmured. 

"I have them, " he said; "two of them, " and he laughed and left her. 

He did not see Miss Pilgrim the following day or the next; that waseasy for him to contrive, for much of his business was done outsidehis office. It was not that he had any fear of meeting her; but itwas more agreeable to his feelings not to be reminded of her part inthe acquisition of the carpet. Upon the third day, he was late inarriving, for his wife had complained at breakfast of headache andsickness, and he had stayed to comfort her and see her back to bedfor a twenty-four hours' holiday from life. On his way he had stoppedat a florist's to send her back some flowers. '

He was barely seated at his desk when there was a knock upon his doorand Miss Pilgrim entered. 

He smiled his usual pleasant welcome at her. 

"Ah, Miss Pilgrim, good morning, I am glad to see you. You will sitdown yes?"

He was rising to give her a chair he was not in the least afraid ofher when something about her arrested him, a trouble, a note ofsorrow. 

"Mr. Baruch" she began. 

He knew the value of the deft interruption that breaks the thread ofthought. 

"There is something not right?" he suggested. "I hope not. " With amanner of sudden concern, he added: "The poor man, he is worse no?"

Miss Pilgrim showed him a stricken face and eyes brimming with tears. 

"He's, he's dead!" she quavered. 

"See, now!" said Mr. Baruch, shocked. "What a sad thing and after allyour kind treatment! I am sorry, Miss Pilgrim; but it is to rememberthat the poor man has come here through much hardship yes? And at theleast, you have given him back his rug to comfort him. "

"But" Miss Pilgrim stayed his drift of easy, grave speech with a sortof cry "that's the cause of all the trouble and danger and you onlydid it to help me. You must come with me to the town clinic at once. Mr. Selby's gone already. There'll be no danger if you come at once. "

"Danger?" repeated Mr. Baruch. "I have not understood. " But though inall truth he did not understand, a foreboding of knowledge was chillupon him. He cleared his throat. "What did he die of?"

Miss Pilgrim's tears had overflowed. She had a difficulty inspeaking. But her stammered words came as clearly to his ears asthough they were being shouted. 

"Smallpox!"

He sat down heavily in the chair whence he had risen to receive her, and Miss Pilgrim through her tears saw him shrivel in a gust of utterterror. All his mask of complacency, of kindly power, of reticence ofspirit fell from him; he gulped, and his mouth sagged slack. Shemoved a pace nearer to him. 

"But it'll be all right, Mr. Baruch, if you'll just come to theclinic at once and be vaccinated. It's only because we touched himand the rugs. There isn't any need to be so frightened. "

She could not divine the vision that stood before his strained eyesthe white face of a woman, weary with her ailment, and the beautifulthing that blanketed her, beautiful and venomous like a snake. Hissenses swam. But from his shaking lips two words formed themselves:

"My wife!"

"Oh, come along, Mr. Baruch!" cried Miss Pilgrim. "Your wife hasn'ttouched the rugs. She'll be perfectly all right!"

He gave her a look that began abjectly but strengthened as itcontinued to something like a strange sneer. For he was aconnoisseur; he knew. And he was certain that Fate would never leavea drama unfinished like that. 

XII

THE DAY OF OMENS

The velvet-footed, rat-faced valet moved noiselessly in the bedroom, placing matters in order for his master's toilet. He had drawn thecurtains to admit the day and closed the window to bar out itsmorning freshness, and it was while he was clearing the pockets ofthe dress clothes that he became aware that from the alcove at hisback, in which the bed stood, eyes were watching him. Without hurry, he deposited a little pile of coins on the edge of the dressing-tableand laid the trousers aside; then, with his long thief's handshanging open in obvious innocence, he turned and saw that hismaster had waked in his usual uncanny fashion, returning fromslumber to full consciousness with no interval of drowsiness andhalf-wakefulness. It was as if he would take the fortunes of the dayby surprise. His wonderful white hair, which made him noticeablewithout ever making him venerable, was tumbled on his head; he lookedfrom his pillow with the immobility and inexpressiveness of a waxfigure. 

To his valet's murmured "good morning, " he frowned slightly, as if insome preoccupation of his thoughts. 

"What sort of day is it?" he asked, without replying to the greeting. 

"It is fine, M'sieur le Prince, " answered the valet; "a beautifulday. "

"H'm!" The Prince de Monpavon lifted himself on one silk-sleevedelbow to see for himself. The window was on the west side of thebuilding, so that from the bed one looked as through a tunnel ofshadow to a sunlight that hung aloof and distant. He surveyed it fora space of minutes with a face of discontent, then fell back on hispillows. 

"Thought it was raining, " he remarked. "Something feels wrong aboutit. What time is it?"

"It is twenty minutes past eleven, M'sieur le Prince, " replied theservant. "I will fetch M'sieur le Prince's letters. And M. Dupontelhas telephoned. "

"Eh?" The Prince's hard eyes came round to him swiftly, but not soonenough to see that movement of his right hand that gave him theappearance of deftly pocketing some small object concealed in thepalm of it. "What does he say?"

"He will be here at noon, and hopes that M'sieur le Prince will go totake lunch with him. "

The Prince nodded slowly, and the valet, treading always as if noisewere a sacrilege, passed out of the room to fetch the letters. ThePrince lifted his head to pack the pillow under it more conveniently, and waited in an appearance of deep thought. Under the bedclothes thecontour of his body showed long, and slender, and his face, upturnedto the canopy of the bed, was one upon which the years of his age hadfound slight foothold. It had the smooth pallor of a man whose chiefactivities are indoors: it was wary, nervous, and faintly sinister, with strong, dark eyebrows standing in picturesque contrast to thewhite hair. The figure he was accustomed to present was that of a manestablished in life as in a stronghold. 

He was neither youthful nor elderly, but mature. Without fortune orrich connections, he had contrived during nearly thirty years to liveas a man of wealth; he had seen the game ecarte go out and bridgecome in; and had so devised the effect he made that he was still moreeminent as a personality than as a gambler. Though he played in manyplaces, he was careful not to win too much in any of them, and ratherthan press for a debt he would forgive it. 

The rat-faced valet reappeared, carrying a salver on which were somehalf dozen envelopes. The Prince took them, and proceeded to examinethem before opening them, while the valet, still with his uncannynoiselessness, continued his interrupted preparations. Two of theletters the Prince tossed to the floor forthwith; he knew them fortrifling bills. Of the others, there was one with the name of a Parishotel printed on the flap which appeared to interest him. He had thatcommon weakness for guessing at a letter before opening it whichprinces share with scullions; and in the case of this one there wassomething vaguely familiar in the handwriting to which he could notput a name. He stared at it thoughtfully, and felt again a momentarystirring within him of that ill ease with which he had waked fromsleep, which had made him doubt that the day was bright. Like allgamblers, he found significance in things themselves insignificant. Impatiently he abandoned his speculations and tore the envelope open;then turned upon his elbow to look at the signature. 

"Parbleu!" he exclaimed. 

The valet turned at the sound, but his master had forgotten hisexistence. The man, his hands still busy inserting studs in a shirt, watched with sidelong glances how the Prince had thrown off hislanguor and leaned above his letter, startled and absorbed. 

"MY DEAR MONPAVON [read the Prince]: For the first time since ourparting, nearly a generation ago, I am once more in Paris, of whichthe very speech has become strange in my mouth. I return as a citizenof the United States, a foreigner; you will perhaps recognize me withdifficulty; and I would hardly give you that trouble were it not forthe engagement which is outstanding between us an engagement whichyou will not fail to recall. It was concluded upon that evening onwhich we saw each other last, when, having lost to you all thatremained to me to lose, you offered me my revenge whenever I shouldchoose to come for it. Well, I have come for it. I will call upon youas soon as possible. I hope such visits are still as welcome to youas once they were. "

And at the tail of the letter there sprawled the signature, bold andblack: "JULES CARIGNY. "

"Tiens!" exclaimed the Prince. 

The valet moved. "M'sieur le Prince spoke?" he queried. 

"No!" said the Prince impatiently. He glanced up from his letter atthe man's sly, secret face. "But by the way have you ever heard of aMonsieur Carigny?"

It was with something like the empty shell of a smile that the mananswered. "Everybody who knows M'sieur le Prince has heard of him, "he said suavely. 

"H'm!" the Prince grunted doubtfully, but he knew it was true. Everybody had heard of Carigny and the revenge that was due to him;impossible to refuse it to him now. 

There are incidents in every man's life concerning which one cannever be sure that they are closed; in such a life as that of thePrince de Monpavon there are many. The affair of Carigny, nearlythirty years before, was one of them. While he stared again at theletter, there rose before the Prince's eyes a vision of the eveningupon which they had parted in a great; over-ornate room withcard-tables in it, and a hanging chandelier of glass lusters thatshivered and made a tinkling bell-music whenever the door opened. Ithad been a short game. It was a season of high stakes, and Carigny, as a loser, had doubled and doubled till the last quick hand thatfinished him. He was a slim youth, with a face smooth and pale. Hesat back in his chair, with his head hanging, staring with a look ofstupefaction at the cards that spelled his ruin, his finish, and hisexile. About him, some of the onlookers began to talk loudly to coverhis confusion, and their voices seemed to restore him. He blinked andclosed his mouth, and sat up. "Well, " he said, then, "there's an endof that!"

The Prince had answered with some conventional remark, the insincereregrets of a winner for the loser's ill fortune, and had addedsomething about giving Carigny his revenge. 

The other smiled a little and shook his head. "You are very good, " hehad answered; "but at present that is impossible. Some day, perhaps. "

He paused. He had risen from his chair, and, though the evening wasyet young, he had the look of a man wearied utterly. All the room waswatching him; it was known that he had lost all. 

"Whenever you like, " the Prince had replied. 

Carigny nodded slowly. "It may be a long time, " he said. "I can seethat it may be years. But, since you are so good, some day we willplay once more. It is agreed?"

"Certainly; it is agreed, " said the Prince. 

Carigny smiled once more. He had a queer, ironic little smile thatseemed to mock its own mirth. Then, nodding a good night here andthere, he had gone toward the door, tall and a little drooping, between the men who stood aside to give him passage, strangelysignificant and notable at that final moment. At the door he hadturned and looked toward the Prince. 

"Au revoir!" he had said. 

And the Prince, concerned not to fail in his attitude, not to makethe wrong impression upon those who watched, had matched his tonecarefully to Carigny's as he replied: "Au revoir!"

The thing had touched men's imaginations. The drama of that promisedreturn, years ahead, had made a story; it had threatened the Princewith notoriety. He had had to live dexterously to escape it to playlittle and with restraint for many months afterward. It had had to besuffered to exhaust itself, to die lingeringly. It had lain in itsgrave for nearly thirty years; and now, like a hand reaching out froma tomb, came this letter. The incident was not closed. 

"No wonder, " said the Prince to himself, as he knotted his necktiebefore the mirror "no wonder the day felt wrong! There is bad luck inthe very air. I must be very careful today. "

M. Dupontel, waiting for him in the salon, saw him enter between thefolding doors with a face upon which his distaste of the day had casta shadow. Dupontel was no more than twenty-five, and the Prince wasone of his admirations and his most expensive hobby. He rose from hisseat, smiling, surveying, the other's effect of immaculate clothing, fine bearing, and striking looks, and marking the set of hiscountenance. 

"You look very correct today, " he remarked pleasantly. 

The Prince nodded without humor. "It is one of my days for beingcorrect, " he answered. "I feel it in the air it is a day to be on myguard. I have these sensations sometimes not often, mercifully! and Ihave learned to pay attention to them. "

Dupontel smiled again. "To me it seems a cheerful day, " he said. "Andyou begin it well, at any rate. "

"How, then?" The Prince, coaxing on his grey gloves, turned narrowedeyes upon him. "In what way do I begin it well?"

Dupontel produced a pocket-book from the breast of his coat. "I haveto settle with you over last evening, " he said. "Two thousand, wasn'tit? I call that beginning any day well. "

He dropped the notes upon the little table where the Prince's hat andcane lay. 

The Prince picked up the notes. 

"Thanks!" he said. He looked at the young man almost with curiosity. "Sure it's convenient?"

For answer, Dupontel showed him his pocketbook, with still half adozen thousand-franc notes in it. 

"I see, " said the Prince. 

He still hesitated for a moment or two, as if touched by somecompunction, before he put the notes into his pocket. It had occurredto him vaguely that he might propitiate his fortune by sacrificingthis money make himself, as it were, by a timely generosity, thecreditor of good luck. But it was not the kind of thing he was usedto do. 

"Eh bien!" he said, and put the notes out of sight. 

"And now, " said Dupontel, "let us eat. "

"Yes, " said the Prince slowly. "That is the next thing, I suppose. And presently I will tell you a reason why this is a day to becareful of. "

In the elevator that bore them toward the street, he began of asudden to search his pockets. Dupontel, watching, him in surprise, saw a real worry replace the customary lofty impassivity of his face. 

"You have lost something?" he asked. 

"Yes, " answered the Prince shortly. "Take us up again at once, " heordered the attendant. 

"I will not keep you a moment, " he said to Dupontel, when theelevator had reached his own floor again, and he entered hisapartment quickly. 

He found his valet still in the bedroom, putting it deftly in order, always with that secret and furtive quality of look and movement. ThePrince, tall, notably splendid in person, halted in the doorway; theman, mean, little, shaped by servile and menial uses, stopped in themiddle of the room and returned his gaze warily. There was an instantof silence. 

"I had a coin, " began the Prince. "A gold coin, not a French one! Ihad it in my pocket last night. Where is it?"

Never was anything so shallow as the other's pretence of distressedignorance. It was as if he scarcely troubled to dissemble hisamusement and malice. 

"But I have not seen it, M'sieur le Prince, " he said. "If M'sieur lePrince wishes, I will search. Doubtless. "

"I am in a hurry, " interrupted the Prince. "It is a Mexican coinworth ten francs only. " He held out a coin. "Here is a ten-francpiece. Be quick. "

They were equals for the moment; the relationship was plain to bothof them. With no failing of his countenance, the valet drew themissing, piece from his pocket. 

"Mexican?" he said. "I thought it was Spanish. "

The coins changed hands. Neither of them failed in his attitude; theywere well matched. 

The Prince rejoined Dupontel with his Mexican gold piece still in hishand. 

"It was this I had left behind, " he said, showing the thin-worn golddisc. "It is well, a talisman of mine, a sort of mascot. I was nearlygoing without it. Rather than do that I would stay at home. "

Dupontel laughed. "You are superstitious, then?" he said lightly. "Itis not much to look at, your talisman. "

The Prince shook his head; it seemed impossible to make him smilethat morning. 

"That is true, " he agreed, "but a man must put faith in something. When you have heard what I have to tell you, you will understandthat. "

The streets, those lively streets of Paris that mask the keenness oftheir commerce with so festive a face, were sunlit as they passed ontheir way, and along the boulevards the trees were gracious withyoung green. They went at the even and leisurely pace which isnatural in that city of many halting-places two men worth turning tolook at, so perfectly did each, in his particular way, typify hisworld. Both were tall, easy-moving, sure and restrained in everygesture. Dupontel at twenty-five, for all the boyishness thatsometimes showed in him, had already his finished personal effect;and the Prince, white-haired, dark-browed, with a certain austerityof expression, was as complete a thing as a work of art. 

"Then what is it, exactly, that you fear from this Carigny?" askedDupontel, when the Prince had told him of the letter. "I have heardthe story, of course; but I never heard he was dangerous. "

"It is not he that is dangerous, " said the Prince. 

"What, then?"

The Prince shook his head doubtfully. Such men as he seldom have aconfidant, but he was used to speak to Dupontel with more freedomthan to any other. 

"Things are dangerous, " he answered. "There is bad luck about; I tellyou, I feel it. And now, this business of Carigny cropping up, risinglike a ghost of the past to demand a reckoning!" He shuddered; it waslike the shudder of a man who feels a sudden chill. "A reckoning!" herepeated. "At this rate, one is never quit of anything. "

They were nearing the restaurant at which they were to lunch. Dupontel touched his companion lightly on the arm. 

"You are depressed, " he said. "You must gather your forces, Monpavon. You mustn't let Carigny find you in a state like this; it would makethings easy for him. "

The Prince made a weary little gesture of assent. "I shall be readyfor him, " he said. "If only-"

"If only what?"

They were at the door of the restaurant. A page like a scarlet dollheld open the door for them; a Swiss, ornately uniformed, stoodfrozen at the salute. The Prince's somber eyes passed unseeing overthese articles of human furniture. 

"If only I don't get a sign, " he said; "like going out without myMexican coin, you know that would be a sign. If only I can avoid thatand a couple of other things I'll be ready enough for MonsieurCarigny when he comes. "

"Tiens!" said Dupontel. "You and your signs, c'est epatant!"

He was amused, and even a little contemptuous. He had not yet beenlong enough at play to reach that stage when the gambler is theservant of small private fetishes when an incident at the beginningof the day can fill him with fears or hopes, and all life has ameaning which expresses itself in the run of the cards. 

They took their places at the table reserved for them. Waiters stoodaloof, effacing themselves, prepared to pounce upon their smallestneed and annihilate it. Dupontel breathed a number as he sat down, and the rotund and reverend wine-waiter, wearing a chain of office, tried to express in his face respectful esteem for a man who couldgive such an order. 

"You need a stimulant, an encouragement, " said Dupontel, leaningacross to the Prince. "Therefore I have ordered for us. "

He had his hands joined under his chin and his elbows on the table. The Prince, with something like a crisp oath, snatched at thesalt-cellar which his movement would have overset, and saved it savedit with grains of salt sliding on the very rim, but none fallen tothe table. He made sure of this fact anxiously. 

"That was a near thing, " he said, looking up at Dupontel. There wasactually color in his face. 

"Another fraction of a second and" His gesture completed thesentence. 

"My dear fellow!" remonstrated Dupontel. 

"That was the second, " said the Prince. "First I nearly left my coinat home that was my servant's doing. Then the salt is all but spilledmy friend does that. If I had a wife, I should expect to owe thethird danger to her. Who will bring it to me, I wonder?"

"You are extraordinary, with your signs and dangers, " said Dupontel. "I never heard you speak like this before. And, in any case, you haveaverted two perils. "

"I have averted two, " agreed the Prince. "You are right; that initself is almost a sign. It it gives me hope for the third the blindman. "

"Eh? The blind man? What blind man?"

The Prince took a spoonful of soup. 

"Sometimes I forget how young you are, " he said. "A blind man, ofcourse, is nothing to you. You give him an alms, touching his handwhen you put the money into it, and go on to the club to play bridge. But if I, by any chance of the street, were to touch a blind man, Ishould go home and go to bed. I have my share of prudence me! andthat is a risk I do not take. No!"

He interrupted himself to drink from his glass, while Dupontel satback and prepared, with a gesture of utter impatience, to becontemptuous and argumentative. 

"Carigny, " said the Prince, setting his glass down, "Carigny, in theold days, believed that too. But he was not prudent. That night weplayed, that last night of which he writes in his letter, there was ablind man who begged of him. And when he would have dropped a francin his hand, the creature groped suddenly for the coin. We werewalking to the club together, and I saw it, standing aside meanwhile. It was an old debris of a man, who begged in a voice that whisperedand croaked, and his hand was shriveled and purple, and it waveredand trembled as he held it out. Because he was blind, with eyelidsswollen and discolored, Carigny said, as he drew the money from hispocket: 'Here is a franc, my friend!' Then the old creature groped, as I have said, with a jerk of his inhuman claw, and grabbed themoney from Carigny before he could let it fall, and I saw their handstouch. Carigny would not have played that night but that we hadappointed to play. "

"You could have let him off till next day, " said Dupontel. 

The Prince shook his head. "In those times, " he said, "it was not thecustom to break one's engagements neither to break them nor to allowthem to be broken. "

"I should like to see this Carigny of yours, " said Dupontelthoughtfully. "When do you expect him to call on you?"

"His letter says 'as soon as possible, '" answered the Prince. "Thatconstitutes in itself an engagement which Carigny will not fail tokeep. He will come this afternoon. "

Their meal achieved itself perfectly, like a ritual There arrived thetime when the Prince set down his tiny coffee-cup and leaned backdetachedly, while the waiter with the bill went through hiscelebrated impersonation of a man receiving a favor. Together theypassed out between the great glass doors to the street. 

"You will walk?" inquired Dupontel. 

"As usual, " said the Prince. It was his custom to pass the timebetween lunch and the hour when he was likely to find a game ofbridge in strolling; it served for exercise. 

"But, " suggested the young man, "you might meet a blind man! Wouldn'tit be better to go straight to the club?"

"And meet one on the way there?" The Prince shook his head. "No, myfriend. That is a chance one must take. One can, however, keep one'seyes open. "

In the Place de la Concorde they actually did meet a blind man alean, bowed man feeling his way along the curb with a stick deftlyenough, so that, as he was on the wrong side of the sidewalk, itwould have been easy enough to brush against him in passing. It wasthe Prince who first perceived him approaching. He touched Duponteland pointed. 

"Parbleu!" exclaimed Dupontel. He looked strangely at the blindbearer of fate and then at his companion. The Prince was smiling now, but not in mirth. 

"Let us make room for him, " he said; and they stepped into theroadway to let him pass. 

What was strange was that when he came abreast of them he paused, with his face nosing and peering in his blindness, and felt beforehim with an extended hand, as if he had expected to find something inhis way. The hand and the skinny wrist, protruding from the frayedsleeve and searching the empty air, affected Dupontel unpleasantly;they touched the fund of credulity in him which is at the root of allmen who believe in nothing. He watched the blind man like an actor ina scene till he moved on again, with his stick tracing the edge ofthe curb and his strained face unresponsive to the sunlight. 

"What was he doing?" he asked, then. 

The Prince's wry smile showed again. "Doing?" he repeated, "why, hewas feeling for me. "

Dupontel shrugged, but not in disapproval this time. His imaginationwas burdened with a new sense of his companion's life, complex withdifficulties, haunted by portents like specters of good and evilfortune. 

"But, at all events, he did not touch you!" he said at last. 

"No!" The Prince swung his cane, drawing up his tall, trim figure, and stepping out briskly. "No, he did not touch me. They dog me, these, these tokens of the devil; but I am not caught. It is I thatsave myself. After all, mon cher, it seems possible that this may beCarigny's bad day not mine!"

Dupontel had not meant to accompany the Prince to his club that day;his purpose had been to leave him at the door and go elsewhere. Butit was possible that his meeting with Carigny might be somethingwhich it would be well to have seen; and, besides, his affairs weregaining a strange hue; glamour was in them. He felt a little thrillwhen the massive club porter, approaching them in the hall, spokeCarigny's name. 

"Monsieur Carigny telephoned, " said the porter. "He particularlydesired that Monsieur le Prince should be told, as soon as hearrived, that Monsieur Carigny would call at half-past four. "

The Prince nodded. "I shall be upstairs, in the card-room, " heanswered, and passed on. 

In the card-room were several men of the Prince's who had knownCarigny in his Paris days, while there was scarcely a man present whohad not heard some version of the Carigny story. To certain of themthe Prince spoke of the visit he was expecting. He had decided that, since the meeting was not by any means to be avoided or hidden, itwould best serve him to announce it to take his part in the drama andsqueeze it of what credit he could. It spread through the room andthrough the club like a scandal. There was a throng in the room, expectant, hungry for the possibility of a scene. In the recess of atall window, the Prince, superb in his self-possession, a figure in aworld of players that was past, with his pale, severe face impassiveunder his white hair, made the crowd of them seem vulgar and raucousby contrast with him. Dupontel, watching him, had a moment ofconsternation; the Prince seemed a thing too supremely complete, tooperfect as a product of his world, to risk upon the turn of thecards. 

A club servant entered, bearing a card on a salver, and the talkstilled as he presented it to the Prince. He, in converse with aveteran who had known Carigny, took the card and held it in hisfingers without looking at it while he finished what he was saying. All eyes were on him; it was a neat piece of social bravado. Heglanced at the card at last. 

"Announce Monsieur Carigny, " he said to the servant, and went ontalking. Dupontel felt like cheering him. The talk resumed, in achanged key. 

The door opened, and the servant was once more visible, standing backagainst it, not without a sense of his importance as, say, ascene-shifter in the play. His voice, rolling the r, was a flatbellow of ceremony. 

"Monsieur Car-rigny, " he announced, "and Monsieur Georges Car-rigny!"

Every one turned. Through the door which the servant held open thereadvanced two men. The first was bearded, a large man, definitelyelderly, who walked with a curious deliberation of tread and lookedneither to the right nor to the left. The younger, following at hiselbow, was possibly Dupontel's age. In him, not the clothes alone, but the face, keen lipped, quiet-eyed, not quite concealing itsreserves of vitality under its composure, proclaimed the American. 

The men in the room, moving aside, made an avenue from the door tothe window in which, the Prince stood. The Prince came along it togreet his guest. As they halted, face to face, Dupontel saw that theyoung stranger touched the elder on the arm. 

The Prince seemed to have doubts. He remembered Carigny as a slimyouth; the stranger was burly, with a bush of beard and a red face. 

"It is Carigny?" inquired the Prince, hesitating. 

The stranger smiled. "Yes, " he answered. "Monpavon, is it not?"

Even his French had changed, become the French of a foreigner. 

"You have been a long time coming for your revenge, " said the Prince. "But you are welcome always, Carigny. "

He held out his hand, and again the young man touched the elder. Asif he hesitated to join hands with the Prince, Carigny gave his hand, slowly, awkwardly; but his grip, when he had done it, was firm. Theystood, clasping hands, under the inquisitive eyes of the others. 

"Since we are to play, " said Carigny, "you must allow me to presentyou to my son. He does not play; I have discouraged him. But he willread my cards for me. You do not object?"

Their clasped hands fell apart. The Prince looked hisincomprehension. The young man was making him a bow of sorts. 

"I am charmed, " he answered. "But read your cards? I don'tunderstand. "

Dupontel arrested an impulse to step forward, to interrupt, tointerfere in some manner. He saw that Carigny smiled. 

"Yes, " he answered. "Tell me which card is which, you know. You see, Monpavon, for the last five years I have been blind!"

His voice, with its foreign accent rendering strange his precise andold-fashioned French, continued to explain. But Dupontel did not hearwhat it said. He was looking at the Prince. Save for an astonishedknitting of the brows, he had not moved; he preserved, under thosewatching eyes, his attitude. The worst had come to pass the thing hefeared had ambushed him? and he was facing it. But presently heraised his right hand, the hand that had touched Carigny's, looked atit thoughtfully, and brushed it with his left. If he had any virtue, he was exhibiting it now. One could defeat him but not discountenancehim. 

"Certainly, " he was saying presently. "The right of choice is yours, Carigny. Ecarte, since you wish it, by all means. "

Dupontel, to whom he had explained himself, knew what that handshakehad meant. In the move toward the card-table, he caught his eye. ThePrince smiled at him. "You see how useless it is to strive, " heseemed to say. 

The pretence that the onlookers were present by chance was gone whenthe Prince and his adversary sat down opposite to each other at thelittle green table. The onlookers thronged about them, franklycurious. The young man, Carigny's son, stood leaning over hisfather's shoulder. Dupontel was at the back of his friend. He saw thegreen table across the Prince's white head. The deal fell to thePrince. 

He had the pack in his hand when he spoke across to Carigny. 

"Carigny, " he said. The blind man lifted his face to listen. "Thelast game was a short one. "

The other nodded. "Make it as short as you like, " he said. "Make itone hand, if it pleases you, Monpavon. I shall be satisfied. "

"One hand!"

"Certainly; if that is short enough for you, " said Carigny. "But thestakes you remember them?"

He asked the question as if he would warn his adversary, and as if hehimself were certain of the issue. He had the demeanor of a man whoundertakes a problem of which he knows the answer. 

"Be careful, " breathed Dupontel at the Prince's back. 

"You lost, let me see!" replied the Prince, unheeding Dupontel'swhisper. "It was four hundred thousand francs, I think. "

The bearded face opposite him smiled. "You have not forgotten, Isee!"

The Prince nodded. "One hand, then!"

He proceeded to deal. He was certain of losing, or he would not haveconsented to such an outrage upon the game's refinements. And yet, hehad hopes; the spirit that presides over cards is capricious. 

The young man had sorted the cards and placed them in his father'shands, and was whispering in his ear. Then he stood upright. ThePrince waited. 

"You propose?" he inquired. 

"No, " said the other; "I play. "

There was a movement among the spectators as some shifted in anendeavor to see the cards. Dupontel was edged from his post for amoment. When he had shouldered his way back to it, the play hadalready begun. It seemed to him almost indecent that such an affairshould rest on a single hand of cards; it was making free withmatters of importance. As he gained a sight of the table again, Carigny scored his second trick and the third card fell. The Princetrumped it. The young man smiled and whispered. Another card wasplayed, and the Prince won again, He laid his last card face down onthe table. 

"Carigny, " he said. 

"Have you played?" asked the other. 

"No, " said the Prince. "Listen! I will make you a proposal. I do notknow what your last card is; you do not know mine. It rests on thatcard, our four hundred thousand francs. I may win, in spite ofeverything. But I offer you half the stakes now, if you like; twohundred thousand instead of four and we will not play that lastcard. "

"Eh?" The blind man hid his card with his hand. His son bent overhim, whispering. A man next to Dupontel nudged him. "What isMonpavon's card?" he murmured. Dupontel did not know. The cards hadbeen the least part of the affair to him. The Prince sat still, waiting. 

"Very well, " said Carigny, at last. "I am willing, Monpavon. Twohundred thousand, eh?"

"Two hundred thousand, " corroborated the Prince. 

He reached for the pack. Before anyone could protest, he hadslipped his card into it and mingled it with the others beyondidentification. 

"We are quits, then, " he was saying to Carigny, and once more theancient adversaries shook hands. 

"But what was the card?" asked a dozen men at once. 

The Prince let his hard, serene eye wander over them. He was walkingtoward the door, guiding Carigny with a hand on his arm. There was aflicker of a smile on his face. Without answering, he passed out. Tothis day, no man knows what card he held. 

PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON.