TALES FROM BOHEMIA

By ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS

ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS

A MEMORY

One crisp evening early in March, 1887, I climbed the three flights ofrickety stairs to the fourth floor of the old "Press" building to beginwork on the "news desk. " Important as the telegraph department wasin making the newspaper, the desk was a crude piece of carpentry. Mycompanions of the blue pencil irreverently termed it "the shelf. " This wasmy second night in the novel dignity of editorship. Though my rank was thehumblest, I appreciated the importance of a first step from "the street. "An older man, the senior on the news desk, had preceded me. He was engagedin a bantering conversation with a youth who lolled at such ease as awell-worn, cane-bottomed screw-chair afforded. The older man made aninformal introduction, and I learned that the youth with pale face andserene smile was "Mr. Stephens, private secretary to the managing editor. "That information scarcely impressed me any more than it would now aftermore than twenty years' experience of managing editors and their privatesecretaries. 

The bantering continued, and I learned that the youth cherished literaryaspirations, and that he performed certain work in connection with thedramatic department for the managing editor, who kept theatrical news andcriticisms within his personal control. 

Suddenly a chance remark broke the ice for a friendship between the youngman and me which was to last unbroken until his untimely death. Stephenswrote the Isaac Pitman phonography! Here had I been for more than threeyears wondering to find the shorthand writers of wide-awake and progressiveAmerica floundering in what I conceived to be the Serbonian bog of anarchaic system of stenography. Unexpectedly a most superior young man camewithin my ken who was a disciple of Isaac Pitman. Furthermore, like myself, he was entirely self taught. No old shorthand writer who can look back aquarter of a century on his own youthful enthusiasm for the art can fail toappreciate what a bond of sympathy this discovery constituted. From thatnight forward we were chosen friends, confiding our ambitions to eachother, discussing the grave issues of life and death, settling the problemsof literature. Notwithstanding his more youthful appearance, my seniorityin age was but slight. Gradually "Bob, " as all his friends called him withaffectionate informality, was given opportunities to advance himself, underthe kindly yet firm guidance of the managing editor, Mr. Bradford Merrill. That gentleman appreciated the distinct gifts of his young protégé, journalistic and literary, and he fostered them wisely and well. I rememberperfectly the first criticism of an important play which "Bob" waspermitted to write unaided. It was Richard Mansfield's initial appearancein Philadelphia as "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, " at the Chestnut Street Theatreon Monday, October 3, 1887. 

After the paper had gone to press, and while Mr. Merrill and a few of thetelegraph editors were partaking of a light lunch, the night editor, thelate R. E. A. Dorr, asked Mr. Merrill "how Stephens had made out. "

"He has written a very clever and very interesting criticism, " Mr. Merrillreplied. "I had to edit it somewhat, because he was inclined to beHugoesque and melodramatic in describing the action with very shortsentences. But I am very much pleased, indeed. "

That was the beginning of Bob's career as a dramatic critic, a career inwhich he gained authority and in which his literary faculties, his felicityof expression and soundness of judgment found adequate scope. 

In the following two or three years the cultivation of the field ofdramatic criticism occupied his time to the temporary exclusion of hisambition for creative work. He and I read independently; but our tasteshad much in common, though his preference was for imaginative literature. Meanwhile I was writing short stories with plenty of plot, some of whichfound their way into various magazines; but his taste lay more in the lineof the French short story writers who made an incident the medium forportraying a character. Historical romance had fascinations for me, butAlphonse Daudet attracted both of us to the artistic possibilities that layin selecting the romance of real life for treatment in fiction as againstthe crude and repellent naturalism of Zola and his school. This fact is nota little significant in view of the turn toward historical romancewhich exercised all the activities of Robert Neilson Stephens after theproduction of his play, "An Enemy to the King, " by E. H. Sothern. 

Still our intimacy had prepared me for the change. Through many a longnight after working hours we had wandered through the moonlit streets untildaybreak exchanging views freely and sturdily on historical characters onthe philosophy of history, on the character of Henry of Navarre and hisfollowers, and on the worthies of Elizabethan England, in the literature ofwhich we had immersed ourselves. Kipling had recently burst meteor-likeon the world, and Barrie raised his head with a whimsical smile closelychasing a tear. Thomas Hardy was in the saddle writing "Tess, " and inFrance Daudet was yet active though his prime was past. Guy de Maupassantcontinued the production of his marvellous short stories. These were thecontemporary prose writers who engaged our attention. A little later wehailed the appearance of Stanley J. Weyman with "A Gentleman of France, "and the Conan Doyle of "The White Company" and "Micah Clarke" rather thanthe creator of "Sherlock Holmes" commended our admiration. We were by nomeans in accord on the younger authors. Diversity of opinion stimulatescritical discussion, however. I had not yet become reconciled to Kipling, who provoked my resentment by certain coarse flings at the Irish, but "Bob"hailed him with whole-hearted enthusiasm. 

We were not the only members of the staff with literary aspirations. Others, like the late Andrew E. Watrous, had achievements of no mean orderin prose and verse. Still others were sustaining the traditions of "ThePress" as a newspaper office which throughout its history had been astepping stone to magazine work and other forms of literary employment. Richard Harding Davis was on the paper and "Bob" Stephens was one of thetwo men most intimately in his confidence regarding his ambitions. 

Finally Bob told me that "Dick" had taken him to his house and read to him"A bully short story, " adding, "It's a corker. "

I inquired the nature of the story. 

"Just about the 'Press' office, " Bob replied, Among other particulars I asked the title. 

"'Gallegher, '" said Bob. 

Three years elapsed after our first acquaintance before Bob Stephens beganwriting stories and sketches. The "Tales from Bohemia" collected in thisvolume represent his early creative work. We were in the better sense asmall band of Bohemians, the few friends and companions who will be foundfiguring in the tales under one guise or another. Many a merry prank andmany a jest is recalled by these pages. Of criticism I have no word to say. Let the reader understand how they came into being and they will explainthemselves. "Bob" Stephens took his own environment, the anecdotes heheard, the persons whom he met and the friends whom he knew, and he treatedthem as the writers of short stories in France twenty years ago treatedtheir own Parisian environment. He made an incident the means ofillustrating a portrayal of character. Later he was to construct elaborateplots for dramas and historical novels. 

"Bohemianism" was but a brief episode in the life of "R. N. S. " It ceasedafter his marriage. But his natural gaiety remained. Seldom was his joyousdisposition overcast, or his winning smile eclipsed. For six months I wasprivileged to live in the house with his mother. If he had inherited hisliterary predilections from his father, --a highly respected educator ofHuntington, Pa. From whose academy many eminent professional men weregraduated, --his gentleness, his cheerfulness, his winning smile and theingratiating qualities to which it was the key, as surely came from hismother. 

I remember a time when he was inordinately grave for several daysand pursued a tireless course of special reading through the officeencyclopaedias and some books he had borrowed. At last he drew aside theveil of reserve which concealed his family affairs from even his closestfriends and inquired if I could direct him to any recent authority oncancer. I divined the sad truth that his tenderly beloved mother wassuffering from the dread disease. That was the day before serums, andnothing that he found to read in books or periodicals gave him a faint hopethat his dear one could be cured. Thenceforward, mother and son awaitedthe inevitable end with uncomplaining patience which was characteristic ofboth. His cheerful smile returned, and while the blow of bereavement wasimpending practically all these "Tales from Bohemia" were written. 

To follow the career of "R. N. S. " and trace his development after he gave upnewspaper work in the fall of 1893 is not required in this place. "Talesfrom Bohemia" will be found interesting in themselves, apart from the factthat they illustrate another phase of the literary gift of a young writerwho contributed so materially to the entertainment of playgoers and novelreaders for a period of ten years after the work in this book was all done. 

J. O. G. D. 

CONTENTS

I. THE ONLY GIRL HE EVER LOVED

II. A BIT OF MELODY

III. ON THE BRIDGE

IV. THE TRIUMPH OF MOGLEY

V. OUT OF HIS PAST

VI. THE NEW SIDE PARTNER

VII. THE NEEDY OUTSIDER

VIII. TIME AND THE TOMBSTONE

IX. HE BELIEVED THEM

X. A VAGRANT

XI. UNDER AN AWNING

XII. SHANDY'S REVENGE

XIII. THE WHISTLE

XIV. WHISKERS

XV. THE BAD BREAK OF TOBIT MCSTENGER

XVI. THE SCARS

XVII. "LA GITANA"

XVIII. TRANSITION

XIX. A MAN WHO WAS NO GOOD

XX. MR. THORNBERRY'S ELDORADO

XXI. AT THE STAGE DOOR

XXII. "POOR YORICK"

XXIII. COINCIDENCE

XXIV. NEWGAG THE COMEDIAN

XXV. AN OPERATIC EVENING

TALES FROM BOHEMIA

 * * * * *

I

THE ONLY GIRL HE EVER LOVED

When Jack Morrow returned from the World's Fair, he found Philadelphiathermometers registering 95. The next afternoon he boarded a ChestnutStreet car, got out at Front Street, hurried to the ferry station, andcaught a just departing boat for Camden, and on arriving at the other sideof the Delaware, made haste to find a seat in the well-filled express trainbound for Atlantic City. 

While he was being whirled across the level surface of New Jersey, past thecornfields and short stretches of green trees and restful cottage towns, hethought of the pleasure in store for him--the meeting with the young personwhom he had gradually come to consider the loveliest girl in the world. Having neglected to read the list of "arrivals" in the newspapers, he knewnot at what hotel she and her aunt were staying. But he would soon makethe rounds of the large beach hotels, at one of which she was likely to befound. 

She did not expect to see him. Therefore her first expression on beholdinghim would betray her feelings toward him, whatever they were. Should theindication be favourable, he would propose to her at the first opportunity, on beach, boardwalk, hotel piazza, pavilion, yacht or in the surf. Suchwere the meditations of Jack Morrow while the train roared across NewJersey to the sea. 

The first sign of the flat green meadows, the smooth waters of thethoroughfare, the sails afar at the inlet and the long side of the sea-citystretching out against the sky at the very end of the earth is refreshingand exhilarating to any one. It gave a doubly keen enjoyment to JackMorrow. 

"Within an hour, perhaps, " he mused, as the reviving odour of the saltwater touched his nostrils, "I shall see Edith. "

When with the crowd he had made his way out of the train, and traversedthe long platform at the Atlantic City station, ignoring the stentoriansolicitations of the 'bus drivers, he started walking toward the oceanpromenade, invited by the glimpse of sea at the far end of the avenue. Thushe crossed that wide thoroughfare--Atlantic Avenue--with its shops andtrolley-cars; passed picturesque hotels and cottages; crossed PacificAvenue where carriages and dog-carts were being driven rapidly between therows of pretty summer edifices, and traversed the famously long block thatends at the boardwalk and the strand. 

He succeeded in getting a third-floor room on the ocean side of the firsthotel where he applied. He learned from the clerk that Edith was not atthis house. Sea air having revived his appetite, he decided to dine beforesetting out in search of her. 

When, after his meal, he reached the boardwalk, the electric lights hadalready been turned on and the regular evening crowd of promenaders wasbeginning to form. He strolled along now looking at the beach and the sea, now at the boardwalk crowd where he might perhaps at any moment beholdthe face of "the loveliest girl in the world. " He beheld instead, as heapproached the Tennessee pier, the face of his friend George Haddon. 

"Hello, old boy!" exclaimed Morrow, grasping his friend's hand. "What areyou doing here? I thought your affairs would keep you in New York allsummer. "

"So they would, " replied Haddon, in a tone and with a look whose distresshe made little effort to conceal. "But something happened. "

"Why, what on earth's the matter? You seem horribly downcast. "

Haddon was silent for a moment; then he said suddenly:

"I'll tell you all about it. I have to tell somebody or it will split myhead. But come out on the pier, away from the noise of that merry-go-roundorgan. "

Neither spoke as the two young men passed through the concert pavilion anddancing hall out to a quieter part of the long pier. They sat near therailing and looked out over the sea, on which, as evening fell, therippling band of moonlight grew more and more luminous. They could see, at the right, the long line of brilliant lights on the boardwalk, and theincreasing army of promenaders. Detached from the furthest end of the lineof boardwalk lights, shone those of distant Longport. Above these, the skyhad turned from heliotrope to hues dark and indefinable, but indescribablybeautiful. Down on the beach were only a few people, strolling near thetide line, a carriage, a man on horseback, and three frolicking dogs. 

"It's simply this, " abruptly began Haddon. "Six weeks ago I was marriedto--"

"Why, I never heard of it. Let me congrat--"

"No, don't, I was married to a comic opera singer, named Lulu Ray. I don'tsuppose you've ever heard of her, for she was only recently promoted fromthe chorus to fill small parts. We took a flat, and lived happily on thewhole, for a month, although with such small quarrels as might be expected. Two weeks ago she went out and didn't come back. Since then I haven't beenable to find her in New York or at any of the resorts along the Jerseycoast. I suppose she was offended at something I said during a quarrel thatgrew out of my insisting on our staying in New York all summer. Knowing herliking for Atlantic City--she was a Philadelphia girl before she went onthe stage--I came here at once to hunt her up and apologize and agree toher terms. "

"Well?"

"Well, I haven't found her. She's not at any hotel in Atlantic City. I'mgoing back to New York to-morrow to get some clue as to where she is. "

"I suppose you're very fond of her still?"

"Yes; that's the trouble. And then, of course, a man doesn't like to havea woman who bears his name going around the country alone, her whereaboutsunknown. "

Morrow was on the point of saying: "Or perhaps with some other man, " but hechecked himself. He was sufficiently mundane to refrain from attempting toreason Haddon out of his affection for the fugitive, or to advise him as towhat to do. He knew that in merely letting Haddon unburden on him the causeof anxiety, he had done all that Haddon would expect from any friend. 

He limited himself, therefore, to reminding Haddon that all men have theirannoyances in this life; to treating the woman's offence as light andcommonplace, and to cheering him up by making him join in seeing the sightsof the boardwalk. 

They looked on at the pier hop, while Professor Willard's musicians playedpopular tunes; returned to the boardwalk and watched the pretty girlsleaning against the wooden beasts on the merry-go-round while the organscreamed forth, "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow;" experienced that notvery illusive illusion known as "The Trip to Chicago;" were borne aloft onan observation wheel; made the rapid transit of the toboggan slide, visitedthe phonographs and heard a shrill reproduction of "Molly and I and theBaby;" tried the slow and monotonous ride on the "Figure Eight, " and theswift and varied one on the switchback. They bought saltwater taffy and ateit as they passed down the boardwalk and looked at the moonlight. Down onthe Bowery-like part of the boardwalk they devoured hot sausages, and in along pavilion drank passable beer and saw a fair variety show. Thence theyleft the boardwalk, walked to Atlantic Avenue and mounted a car that borethem to Shauffler's, where among light-hearted beer drinkers they heard theband play "Sousa's Cadet March" and "After the Ball, " and so they arrivedat midnight. 

All this was beneficial to Haddon and pleasant enough in itself, but itprevented Morrow that night from prosecuting his search for the loveliestgirl in the world. He postponed the search to the next day. And when thattime came, after Haddon had started for New York, occurred an event thatcaused Morrow to postpone the search still further. 

He had decided to go up the boardwalk on the chance of seeing Edith in apavilion or on the beach. If he should reach the vicinity of the lighthousewithout finding her, he would turn back and inquire at every hotel near thebeach until he should obtain news of her. 

He had reached Pennsylvania Avenue when he was attracted by the white tentsthat here dotted the wide beach. He went down the high flight of steps fromthe boardwalk to rest awhile in the shade of one of the tents. 

Although it was not yet 11 o'clock, several people in bathing suits weremaking for the sea. A little goat wagon with children aboard was passingthe tents, and after it came the cart of the "hokey-pokey" peddler, drawnby a donkey that wore without complaint a decorated straw bathing hat. Morrow, looking at the feet of the donkey, saw in the sand somethingthat shone in the sunlight. He picked it up and found that it was a goldbracelet studded with diamonds. 

He questioned every near-by person without finding the owner. He thereforeput the bracelet in his pocket, intending to advertise it. Then he resumedhis stroll up the boardwalk. He went past the lighthouse and turned back. 

He had reached the Tennessee Avenue pier without having found the loveliestgirl in the world. His eye caught a small card that had just been tacked upat the pier entrance. Approaching it he read:

"Lost--On the beach between Virginia and South Carolina Avenues, a goldbracelet with seven diamonds. A liberal reward will be paid for itsrecovery at the ---- Hotel. "

The hotel named was the one at which Morrow was staying. He hurriedthither. 

"Who lost the diamond bracelet?" he asked the clerk. 

"That young lady standing near the elevator. Miss Hunt, I think her nameis, " said the clerk consulting the register. "Yes, that's it, she onlyarrived last night. "

Morrow saw standing near the elevator door, a lithe, well-rounded girlwith brown hair and great gray eyes that were fixed on him. She was in theregulation summer-girl attire--blue Eton suit, pink shirtwaist, sailor hat, and russet shoes. He hastened to her. 

"Miss Hunt, I have the honour to return your bracelet. "

She opened her lips and eyes with pleasurable surprise and reached somewhateagerly for the piece of jewelry. 

"Thank you ever so much. I took a walk on the beach just after breakfastand dropped it somewhere. It's too large. "

"I picked it up near Pennsylvania Avenue. It's a curious coincidence thatit should be found by some one stopping at the same hotel. But, pardon me, you're going away without mentioning the reward. "

She looked at him with some surprise, until she discovered that he wasjesting. Then she smiled a smile that gave Morrow quite a pleasant thrill, and said, with some tenderness of tone:

"Let the reward be what you please. "

"And that will be to do what you shall please to have me do. "

"Ah, that's nice. Then I accept your services at once. I am quite alonehere; haven't any acquaintances in the hotel. I want to go bathing and I'mrather timid about going alone, although I'd made up my mind to do so andwas just going up after my bathing suit. "

"Then I am to have the happiness of escorting you into the surf. "

They went bathing together not far from where he had found the bracelet. Hediscovered that she could swim as well as he; also that in her dark bluebathing costume, with sailor collar and narrow white braid, she was a mostshapely person. 

She laughed frequently while they were breasting the breakers; andafterwards, as in their street attire they were returning on the boardwalk, she chatted brightly with him, revealing a certain cleverness in off-handpersiflage. 

He took her into the tent behind the observation wheel to see the Egyptianexhibition, and she was good enough to laugh at his jokes about themummies, although the mummies did not seem to interest her. Further downthe boardwalk they stopped at the Japanese exhibition, and on the way outhe caught himself saying that if it were possible, he would take greatpleasure in hauling her in a jinrikisha. 

"I'll remember that promise and make you push me in a wheel-chair, " sheanswered. 

When they were back at the hotel, she turned suddenly and said:

"By the way, what's your name? Mine's Clara Hunt. "

He told her, and while she went up the elevator with her bathing suit, hearranged with the head waiter to have himself seated at her table. 

He learned from the clerk that she had arrived alone with a letter ofintroduction from a former guest of the house, and intended to stay atleast a fortnight. 

At luncheon he proposed that they should take a sail in the afternoon. Shesaid, with a smile:

"As it is you who invites me, I'll give up my nap and go. "

They rode in a 'bus to the Inlet, and after spending half an hour drinkingbeer and listening to the band on the pavilion, they hired a skipper totake them out in his catboat. Six miles out the boat pitched considerablyand Miss Hunt increased her hold on Morrow's admiration by not becomingseasick. At his suggestion they cast out lines for bluefish. She borrowedmittens from the captain and pulled in four fish in quick succession. 

"What an athletic woman you are, " said Morrow. 

"Yes, indeed. "

"In fact, everything that's charming, " he continued. 

She replied softly: "Don't say that unless you mean it. It pleases me toomuch, coming from you. "

Morrow mused: "Here's a girl who is frank enough to say so when she likes afellow. It makes her all the more fascinating, too. Some women would makeme very tired throwing themselves at me this way. But it is different withher. "

They gave the fish to the captain and returned from the Inlet by theAtlantic Avenue trolley, just in time for dinner. She did not lament herlack of opportunity to change her clothes for dinner, nor did she complainabout the coat of sunburn she had acquired. 

In the evening, they sat together for a time on the pier, took a turntogether at one of the waltzes, although neither cared much for dancing atthis time of year, walked up the boardwalk and compared the moon with thehigh beacon light of the lighthouse. 

He bought her marshmallows at a confectioner's booth, a fan at a Japanesestore, and a queer oriental paper cutter at a Turkish bazaar. They took twoswitchback rides, during which he was compelled to put his arm around her. Finally, reluctant to end the evening, they stood for some minutes leaningagainst the boardwalk railing, listening to the moan of the sea andwatching the shaft of moonlight stretching from beach to horizon. 

It was not until he was alone in his room that Morrow bethought of hisneglect of the loveliest girl in the world. And remorseful as he was, hedid not form any distinct intention of resuming his search for her the nextday. He rather congratulated himself on not having met her while he waswith this enchanting Clara Hunt. 

And he passed next day also with the enchanting Clara Hunt. They sat on thepiazza together reading different parts of the same newspaper for an hourafter breakfast; went to the boardwalk and turned in at a shuffle-boardhall, where they spent another hour making the weights slide along thesanded board and then took another ocean bath. 

After luncheon they walked up the boardwalk to the iron pier. 

Seeing the lifeboat there, rising and falling in the waves, Clara asked:

"Would the lifeguard take us in his boat for a while, I wonder?"

Morrow went down to the beach and shouted to the lifeguard, who was noneother than the robust and stentorian Captain Clark. The captain brought theboat ashore and as there were no bathers in the water at this point, heagreed to row the young people out to the end of the pier. 

"This is a great place for brides and grooms this summer, " remarked thecaptain in his frank and jocular way. 

Clara looked at Morrow with a blush and a laugh. Morrow was pleased atseeing that she seemed not displeased. 

"We're not married, " said Morrow to the captain. 

"Not yet, mebbe, " said the captain with one of his significant winks, andthen he gave vent to loud and long laughter. 

That evening Morrow and Clara took the steamer trip from the Inlet toBrigantine and the ride on the electric car along flat and sandy Brigantinebeach. On the return, they became very sentimental. They decided to walkall the way from the Inlet down the boardwalk. He found himself quiteoblivious to the crowd of promenaders. The loveliest girl in the worldmight have passed him a dozen times without attracting his attention. Hehad eyes and ears for none but Clara Hunt. 

And that night, far from reproaching himself for his conduct toward theloveliest girl, etc. , he hardly thought of her at all, more than to wonderby what good fortune he had avoided meeting her. Some of the people attheir hotel made the same mistake regarding Morrow and Clara as CaptainClark had made; the two were seen constantly together. Others thought theywere engaged. 

Morrow spoke of this to her next morning as they were being whirled down toLongport on a trolley car along miles of smooth beach and stunted distortedpine trees. "I heard a woman on the piazza whisper that I was your fiancé, "he said. 

"Well, what if you were--I mean what if she did?"

At Longport they took the steamer for Ocean City. They rode through thatquiet place of trees and cottages on the electric car, returning to thelanding just in time to miss the 11. 50 boat for Longport. They had to waitan hour and a half and they were the only people there who were not boredby the delay. They returned by way of Somers' Point. 

While the boat was gliding through the sunlit waters of Great Egg HarbourInlet, Clara's hand happened to fall on Morrow's, which was resting on thegunwale. She let her hand remain there. Morrow looked at it, and then ather face. She smiled. When the Italian violin player on the boat came thatway, Morrow gave him a dollar. Alas for the loveliest girl in the world!

They passed most of that evening in a boardwalk pavilion, ostensiblywatching the sea and the crowd. They went up the thoroughfare in a catboatthe next morning, and, strange as it seemed to them, were the only peopleout who caught no fish. The captain winked at his mate, who grinned. 

In the afternoon, while Morrow and Clara stood on the boardwalk lookingdown at the Salvation Army tent, along came that innocent eccentric"Professor" Walters in bathing costume and with his swimming machine. Thetall, lean whiskered, loquacious "Professor" had made Morrow's acquaintancein a former summer and now greeted him politely. 

"How d'ye do?" said the "Professor. " "Glad to see you here. You turn upevery year. "

"You're still given to rhyming, " commented Morrow. 

"Yes, I have a rhyme for every time, in pleasure or sorrow. Is this Mrs. Morrow?"

"No. "

"You ought to be sorry she isn't, " remarked the "Professor, " taking hisdeparture. 

Morrow and Clara walked on in silence. At last he said somewhat nervously:

"Everybody thinks we're married. Why shouldn't we be?"

She answered softly, with downcast eyes:

"I would be willing if I were sure of one thing. "

"What's that?"

"That you have never loved any other woman. Have you?"

"How can you ask? Believe me, you are the only girl I have ever loved. "

That evening, after dinner, Morrow and Clara, the newly affianced, aboutstarting from the hotel to the boardwalk, were at the top of the hotelsteps when a man appeared at the bottom. 

Morrow uttered a cry of recognition. 

"Why, Haddon, old boy, I'm glad to see you. Let me introduce you to my wifethat is to be. "

Haddon stood still and stared. Clara, too, remained motionless. After amoment, Haddon said very quietly:

"You're mistaken. Let me introduce you to my wife that is. "

Morrow looked at Clara. She turned her gray eyes fearlessly on Haddon. 

"You, too, are mistaken, " she said. "I had a husband before you married me. He's my husband still. He's doing a song and dance act in a variety theatrein Chicago. I'm sorry about all this, Mr. Morrow. I really like you. Good-bye. "

She ran back into the hotel and arranged to make her departure on an earlytrain next morning. 

Haddon turned toward the boardwalk, and Morrow, quite dazed, involuntarilyfollowed him. After a period of silence, Morrow said:

"This is astonishing. A bigamist, and a would-be trigamist. She came herethe night before you left. How did you find out she was here?"

"I read it in the Atlantic City letter of _The Philadelphia Press_ that oneof the Comic Opera singers daily seen on the boardwalk is Miss Clara Hunt, who is known to theatre-goers by her stage name, Lulu Ray. These newspapercorrespondents know some of the obscurest people. If I had told you herreal name, you would have known who she was in time to have avoided beingtaken in by her. "

"Her having another husband lets you out. "

"Yes. I'm glad and sorry, for damn it, I was fond of the girl. Excuse meawhile, old fellow. I want to go on the pier and think awhile. "

Haddon went out on the pier and looked down on the incoming waves andthought awhile. He found it a disconsolate occupation, even with a cigar tosweeten it. So he came back and mingled with the gay crowd on the boardwalkand tried to forget her. 

Morrow had no sooner left Haddon than he felt his arm touched. Lookingaround, he saw the smiling face of the loveliest girl in the world. 

"Well, by Jove, Edith, " he said. "At last I've found you!"

"Yes. I heard you were down here. You see, I've been up in town for thelast week. Gracious, but Philadelphia is hot! Here's Aunt Laura. "

Morrow spent the evening with Edith. One night a week later, he proposed toher on the pier. 

"I will say yes, " she replied, "if you can give me your assurance thatyou've never been in love with any one else. "

"That's easily given. You know very well you're the only girl I've everloved. "

II

A BIT OF MELODY [Footnote: Copyrighted by J. Brisbane Walker, and used bythe courtesy of the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_. ]

It was twelve o'clock that Sunday night when, leaving the lodging-house fora breath of winter air before going to bed, I met the two musicians comingin, carrying under their arms their violins in cases. They belonged to theorchestra at the ---- Theatre, and were returning from a dress rehearsal ofthe new comic opera that was to be produced there on the following night. 

Schaaf, who entered the hallway in advance of the professor, responded tomy greeting in his customary gruff, almost suspicious manner, and passedon, turning down the collar of his overcoat. His heavily bearded face wasas gloomy-looking as ever in the light of the single flickering gaslight. 

The professor, although by birth a compatriot of the other, was indisposition his opposite. In his courteous, almost affectionate way, hestopped to have a word with me about the coldness of the weather and thedanger of the icy pavements. "I'm t'ankful to be at last home, " he said, showing his teeth with a cordial smile, as he removed the muffler from hisneck, which I thought nature had sufficiently protected with an ample redbeard. "Take my advice, my frient, tempt not de wedder. Stay warm in dehouse and I play for you de music of de new opera. "

"Thanks for your solicitude, " I said, "but I must have my walk. Play toyour sombre friend, Schaaf, and see if you can soften him into geniality. Good night. "

The professor, with his usual kindliness, deprecated my thrust at thetaciturnity of his countryman and confrère, with a gesture and a look ofreproach in his soft gray eyes, and we parted. I watched him until hedisappeared at the first turn of the dingy stairs. 

As I passed up the street, where I was in constant peril of losing myfooting, I saw his windows grow feebly alight. He had ignited the gas inhis room, which was that of the professor's sinister friend Schaaf. 

My regard for the professor was born of his invariable goodness of heart. Never did I know him to speak an uncharitable word of any one, while hispractical generosity was far greater than expected of a second violinist. When I commended his magnanimity he would say, with a smile:

"My frient, you mistake altogedder. I am de most selfish man. Charitycofers a multitude of sins. I haf so many sins to cofer. "

We called him the professor because besides fulfilling his nightly andmatinée duties at the theatre, he gave piano lessons to a few pupils, andbecause those of us who could remember his long German surname could notpronounce it. 

One proof of the professor's beneficence had been his rescue of his friendSchaaf on a bench in Madison Square one day, a recent arrival from Germany, muttering despondently to himself. The professor learned that he had beenunable to secure employment, and that his last cent had departed the daybefore. The professor took him home, clothed him and cared for him untileventually another second violin was needed in the ---- Theatre orchestra. 

Schaaf was now on his feet, for he was apt at the making of tunes, and hepicked up a few dollars now and then as a composer of songs and waltzes. 

All of which has little to do, apparently, with my post-midnight walkin that freezing weather. As I turned into Broadway, I was surprised tocollide with my friend the doctor. 

"I came out for a stroll and a bit to eat, " I said. "Won't you join me? Iknow a snug little place that keeps open till two o'clock, where devilledcrabs are as good as the broiled oyster. "

"With pleasure, " he replied, cordially, still holding my hand; "not foryour food, but for your society. But do you know what you did when you ranagainst me at the corner? For a long time I've been trying to recall acertain tune that I heard once. Three minutes ago, as I was walking along, it came back to me, and I was whistling it when you came up. You knocked itquite out of mind. I'm sorry, for interesting circumstances connected withmy first hearing of it make it desirable that I should remember it. "

"I can never express my regret, " I said. "But you may be able to catch itagain. Where were you when it came back to you three minutes ago?"

"Two blocks away, passing a church. I think it was the shining of theelectric light upon the stained glass window that brought it back to me, for on the night of the day when I first heard it in Paris a strong lightwas falling upon the stained glass windows of the church opposite the housein which I had apartments. "

"Perhaps, then, " I suggested, "the law of association may operate again ifyou take the trouble to walk back and repass the church in the same mannerand the same state of mind, as nearly as you can resume them. "

"By Jove, " said the doctor, who likes experiments of this kind, "I'll tryit. Wait for me here. "

I stood at the corner while the doctor briskly retraced his steps. Hisfirmly built, comfortable-looking form passed rapidly away. Within fiveminutes he was back, a triumphant smile lighting his face. 

"Success!" he said. "I have it, although whether from chance or as a resultof repeating my impression of light falling on a church window I can't say. Certainly, after all these years, the tune is again mine. Listen. "

As we proceeded up the street the doctor whistled a few measures composinga rather peculiar melody, expressive, it seemed to me, of unrest. I neverforget a tune I have once heard, and this one was soon fixed in my memory. 

"And the interesting circumstances under which you heard it?" Iinterrogated. "Surely after the concern I've shown in the matter, you'renot going to deprive me of the story that goes with the tune?"

"There is no reason why I should. But I hope you will not circulate themelody. It is the music that accompanies a tragedy. "

"Indeed? You have written one, then? It must be brief, as there isn't muchof the music. "

"I refer to a tragedy which actually occurred. Tragedies in real life arenot, as a rule, accompanied by music, and, to be accurate, in this casemusic preceded the tragedy. Ten years ago, when I was living in Paris, apartments adjoining mine were taken by a musician and his wife. His name, as I learned afterward, was Heinrich Spellerberg, and he came from Breslau. The wife, a very young and pretty creature, showed herself, by her attireand manners, to be frivolous and vain, and without having more than theslightest acquaintance with the pair, I soon learned that she had noknowledge of or taste for music. He had married her, I suppose, forher beauty, and had too late discovered the incompatibility of theirtemperaments. But he loved her passionately and jealously. One day Iheard loud words between them, from which I gathered unintentionally thatsomething had aroused his jealousy. She replied with laughter and taunts tohis threats. The quarrel ended with her abrupt departure from the room andfrom the house. 

"He did not follow her, but sat down at the piano and began to play in themanner of one who improvises. Correcting the melody that first responded tohis touch, modifying it at several repetitions, he eventually gave out theform that I have just whistled. 

"Evening came and the wife did not return. He continued to play that strainover and over, into the night. I dropped my book, turned down my lamplight, and stood at the window, looking at the church across the way. Suddenly the music ceased. The wife had returned. 'Where did you dine?' Iheard him ask. I could not hear her reply, but the next speech was plainlydistinguished. 'You lie!' he said, in vehement tone of rage; 'you were with----. ' I did not catch the name he mentioned, nor did I know what she saidin answer, or actually what happened. I heard only a confused sound, whichdid not impress me at the time as indicating a struggle, and which wasfollowed by silence. I imagined that harmony or a sullen truce had beenrestored in the household, and thought no more about the affair. The nextmorning the wife was found dead, strangled. The husband had disappeared, and has never, I believe, been heard of to this day. "

We reached the restaurant as the doctor finished his story. How the accounthad impressed me I need not tell. Seated in the warm café, with appetizingviands and a bottle before us, I asked the doctor to tell me again thehusband's name. 

"Heinrich Spellerberg. "

"And who had the woman been?"

"I never ascertained. She was a vain, insignificant, shallow little blonde. The Paris newspapers could learn nothing as to her antecedents. She, too, was German, but slight and delicate in physique. "

"You didn't save any of the newspapers giving accounts of the affair?"

"No. My evidence was printed, but they spelled my name wrong. "

"Do you remember the exact date of the murder?"

"Yes, because it was the birthday of a friend of mine. It was February 17, 187-. Twelve years ago! And that tune has been with me, off and on, eversince--forgotten, most of the time; a few times recalled--as to-night. "

"And the man, what did he look like?"

"Slim and of medium height. Very light complexion and eyes. His face wasentirely smooth. His hair, a bit flaxen in colour, was curly and plentiful, especially about the back of his neck. "

"In your evidence did you say anything about the strain of music, which wasmanifestly of the murderer's own composition?"

"No, it did not recur to me until later. "

"And nothing was said about it by anybody?"

"No one but myself knew anything about it--except the murderer; and unlesshe afterward circulated it, he and you and I are the only men in the worldwho have heard it. "

"But if he continued, wherever he went, to exercise his profession, hedoubtless made some use of that bit of melody. The tune is so odd--quitetoo good for him to have wasted. "

"Still, neither of us has ever heard it, or anything like it. And if youever should come upon it, it would be interesting to trace the thing, wouldn't it?"

"Rather. "

I began to whistle the air softly. Presently two handsome girls, with jimpraiment and fearless demeanour, came in and took possession of an adjacenttable. 

"What'll it be, Nell?"

"I'll take a dozen panned. I'm hungry enough to eat all the oysters thatever came out of the sea. A rehearsal like that gives one an appetite. "

"A dozen panned, and lobster salad for me, and two bottles of beer, " wasthe order of the first speaker to the waiter. 

I recognized the faces as pertaining to the chorus of the opera company atthe ---- Theatre. I stopped whistling while I watched them. 

Suddenly, like a delayed and multiplied echo of my own whistling, came ina soft hum from one of the girls the notes of the doctor's tragicallyassociated strain of music. 

The doctor and I exchanged glances. The girl stopped humming. 

"I think that's the prettiest thing in the piece, Maude, " said she. 

Undoubtedly it was the comic opera to be produced at the ---- Theatre towhich she alluded as "the piece. "

"Amazing, " I said to the doctor. "Millocker composed the piece she'stalking about. Millocker never killed a wife in Paris. Nor would he stealbodily from another. Perhaps the thing has been interpolated by the localproducer. It doesn't sound quite like Millocker, anyhow. I must see aboutthis. "

"Where are you going?"

"To the Actors' Club, or a dozen other places, until I find HarryGriffiths. He's one of the comedians in the company at the ---- Theatre, and he has a leading part in that piece to-morrow night. He'll know wherethat tune came from. "

"As you please, " said the amiable doctor. "But I must go home. You can tellme the result of your investigation to-morrow. It may lead to nothing, butit will be interesting pastime. "

"And again, " I said, putting on my overcoat, "it may lead to something. I'll see you to-morrow. Good night. "

I found Griffiths at the Actors' Club, telling stories over a mutton-chopand a bottle of champagne. When the opportunity came I drew him aside. 

"I have bet with a man about a certain air in the new piece. He says it'sin the original score, and I say it's introduced, because I don't thinkMillocker did it. This is it, " and I whistled it. 

"Quite right, my boy. It's not in the original. Miss Elton's part was sosmall that she refused to play until the manager agreed to let her fattenit up. So Weinmann composed that and put--"

"This Weinmann, " I interrupted, abruptly, "what do you know about him? Whois he?"

"He's Gustav Weinmann, the new musical director. I don't know anythingabout him. He's not been long in the country. The manager found him in somesmall place in Germany last summer. "

"How old is he? Where does he live?"

"Somewhat in forty, I should say. I don't know where he stays. If you wantto see him, why don't you come to the theatre when he's there?"

"Good idea, this. Good night. "

I would look up this German musician who had come from an obscure Germantown. I would go to him and bluntly say:

"Mr. Weinmann, I beg your pardon, but is it true, as some people say it is, that your real name is Heinrich Spellerberg?"

Meanwhile there was nothing to do but go to bed. 

All the way home the tune rang in my head. I whistled it softly as Ibegan to undress, until I heard the sound of the piano in the parlourdown-stairs. Few of us ever touched that superannuated instrument. Theonly ones who ever did so intelligently were Schaaf and the professor. Thelatter was wont to visit the piano at any hour of the night. We all wereused to his way, and we liked the subdued melodies, the dreamy caprices, the vague, trembling harmonies that stole through the silent house. 

I never see moonlight stretching its soft glory athwart a darkened room butI hear in fancy the infinitely gentle yet often thrilling strains that usedto float through the still night from the piano as its keys took touch fromthe delicate white fingers of the professor. 

Suddenly the musical summonings of the player assumed a familiaraspect, --that of the tune which I had been singing in my own brain for thepast hour. 

Then it occurred to me that the professor, being a second violin inthe orchestra at the ---- Theatre, would doubtless know more about theantecedents of the new musical director than Griffiths had been able totell me. This was the more probable as the professor himself had come fromGermany. 

I descended the stairs softly, traversed the hallway, and, looking throughthe open door, beheld the professor at the piano. 

The curtains of a window were drawn aside, and the moonlight swept grandlyin. It passed over a part of the piano, bathed the professor's head in softradiance, fell upon the carpet, and touched the base of the opposite wall. Upon a sofa, half in light, half in shadow, reclined Schaaf, who had fallenasleep listening while the professor played. 

The professor's face was uplifted and calm. Rapture and pain--so oftenmutual companions--were depicted upon it. I hesitated to break the spellwhich he had woven for himself. After watching for some seconds, however, Ibegan quietly:

"Professor. "

The tune broke off with a jangling discord, and the player turned to faceme, smiling pleasantly. 

"Pardon me, " I went on, advancing into the room and standing in themoonshine that he might recognize me, "but I was attracted by the air youwere playing. They tell me that it isn't Millocker's, but was composed byyour new conductor at the ----"

The professor answered with a laugh:

"Ja! He got de honour of it. Honour is sheap. He buy dat. It doesn'tmatter. "

"Ah, then it isn't his own. And he bought the tune? From whom?"

"Me. "

"You?"

"Ja. And I have many oder to gif sheap, too. "

"But where did you get it?"

"I make it. "

"When?"

"Long 'go. I forget. I have make so many. Dey go away from my mindt an'come again back long time after. "

"Professor, what would you give me to tell you where and when you composedthat tune?"

He looked at me with a slightly bewildered expression. It was with aneffort that I continued, as I looked straight into his eyes:

"I will hazard a guess. Could it have been in Paris--one day twelve yearsago--"

"I neffer be in Paris, " he interrupted, with a start which shocked andconvinced me, slight evidence though it may seem. So I spoke on:

"What, never? Not even just that night--that 17th of February? Try torecall it, Heinrich Spellerberg. You remember she came in late, and--who would think that those soft white fingers had been strongenough?"

"Hush, my friendt! I not touch her! She kill herself--she try to hang andshe shoke her neck. No, no, to you I vill not lie! You speak all true! MeinGott! Vat vill you do?"

The man was on his knees. I thought of the circumstances, the personsconcerned, the high-strung, sensitive lover of music, the coarse, derisive, perhaps faithless woman, and I replied quickly:

"What will I do? Nothing to-night. It's none of my business, anyhow. I'llsleep over it and tell you in the morning. "

I left him alone. 

In the morning the professor's door stood ajar. I looked in. Man, clothes, violin case, and valise had gone. Whither I have not tried to ascertain. 

When the new opera was produced that evening the ---- Theatre orchestra wasunexpectedly minus two of its second violins, for Schaaf, half-distracted, was wandering the cold streets in search of his friend. 

III

ON THE BRIDGE

When I tell you, my only friend, to whom I so rarely write and whom I morerarely see, that my lonely life has not been without love for woman, youwill perhaps laugh or doubt. 

"What, " you will say, "that gaunt old spectre in his attic with his books, his tobacco, and his three flower-pots! He would not know that there issuch a word as love, did he not encounter it now and then in his reading. "

True, I have divided my days between the books in a rich man'scounting-room and those in my attic. True, again, I have never been morethan merely passable to look at, even in my best days. 

Yet I have loved a woman. 

During the five years when my elder brother lay in a hospital across theriver, where he died, it was my custom to visit him every Sunday. I enjoyedthe afternoon walk to the suburbs, when the air has more of nature in it, especially that portion of the walk which lay upon the bridge. More lifethan was usual upon the bridge moved there on Sunday. Then the cars werecrowded with people seeking the parks. Many crossed on foot, stopping tolook idly down at the dark and sluggish water. 

One afternoon, as I stood thus leaning over the parapet, the sound ofwoman's gentle laugh caused me to turn and ocularly inquire its source. Thewoman and a man were approaching. At the side of the woman walked soberly ahandsome dog, a collie. There was that in their appearance and manner whichplainly told me that here were husband and wife, of the middle class, intelligent but poor, out for a stroll. That they were quite devoted toeach other was easily discoverable. 

The man looked about thirty years of age, was tall, slender, and wasneither strong nor handsome, but had an amiable face. He was doubtless aclerk fit to be something better. The woman was perhaps twenty-four. Shewas not quite beautiful, yet she was more than pretty. She was of good sizeand figure, and the short plush coat that she wore, and the manner in whichshe kept her hands thrust in the pockets thereof, gave to her a dauntlessair which the quiet and affectionate expression of her face softened. 

She was a brunette, her eyes being large and distinctly dark brown, herface having a peculiar complexion which is most quickly affected by anychange in health. 

The colour of her cheek, the dark rim under her eyes, and the otherindefinable signs, indicated some radical ailment. In the quick glance thatI had of that pair, while the woman was smiling, a feeling of pity cameover me. I have never detected the exact cause of that emotion. Perhapsin the woman's face I read the trace of past bodily and mental suffering;perhaps a subtle mark that death had already set there. 

Neither the woman nor her husband noticed me as they passed. The dogregarded me cautiously with the corner of his eye. I probably would neverhave thought of the three again had I not seen them upon the bridge, underexactly the same circumstances, on the next Sunday. 

So these young and then happy people walked here every Sunday, I thought. This, perhaps, was an event looked forward to throughout the week. Thehusband, doubtless, was kept a prisoner and slave at his desk from Mondaymorning until Saturday night, with respite only for eating and sleeping. Such cases are common, even with people who can think and have some tastefor luxury, and who are not devoid of love for the beautiful. 

The sight of happiness which exists despite the cruelty of fate and man, and which is temporarily unconscious of its own liabilities to interruptionand extinction, invariably fills me with sadness, and the sadness whicharose at the contemplation of these two beings begat in me a strangesympathy for an interest in them. 

On Sundays thereafter I would go early to the bridge and wait until theypassed, for it proved that this was their habitual Sunday walk. Sometimesthey would pause and join those who gazed down at the black river. I would, now and again, resume my journey toward the hospital while they thus stood, and I would look back from a distance. The bridge would then appear to mean abrupt ascent, rising to the dense city, and their figures would standout clearly against the background. 

It became a matter of care to me to observe each Sunday whether the healthof either had varied during the previous week. The husband, always pale andslight, showed little change and that infrequently. But the fluctuations ofthe woman as indicated by complexion, gait, expression and otherwise, werenumerous and pronounced. Often she looked brighter and more robust thanon the preceding Sunday. Her face would be then rounded out, and the darkcrescents beneath her eyes would be less marked. Then I found myselfelated. 

But on the next Sunday the cheeks had receded slightly, the healthy lustreof the eyes had given way to an ominous glow, the warning of death hadreturned. Then my heart would sink, and, sighing, I would murmur inaudibly:

"This is one of the bad Sundays. "

There came a time when every Sunday was a bad one. 

What made me love this woman? Simply the unmistakable completeness andconstancy of her devotion to her husband, --the absorption of the womanin the wife. Had the strange ways of chance ever made known to her myfeelings, and had she swerved from that devotion even to render me backlove for love, then my own adoration for her would surely have departed. 

Yes, I loved her, --if to fill one's life with thoughts of a woman, if infancy to see her face by day and night, if to have the will to die for heror to bear pain for her, if those and many more things mean love. 

My richest joy was to see her content with her husband, and the darkest woeof my life was to anticipate the termination of their happiness. 

So the Sundays passed. One afternoon I waited until almost dusk, yet thecouple did not appear. 

For seven Sundays in succession I did not meet them upon their wonted walk. 

On the eighth Sunday I saw the dog first, then the man. The latter waslooking over the railing. The woman was not with him. Apprehensively Isought with my eyes his face. Much grief and loneliness were depictedthere. 

Was he or I the greater mourner? I wondered. 

I suppose two years passed after that day ere I again beheld thewidower--whose name I did not and probably never shall know--upon thebridge. The dog was not with him this time. It was a fine, sunny afternoonin May. Grief was no longer in his face. By his side was a very pretty, animated, rosy little woman whom I had never seen before. They walked closeto each other, and she looked with the utmost tenderness into his face. She evidently was not yet entirely accustomed to the wedding-ring which Iobserved on her finger. 

I think that tears came to my eyes at this sight. Those great brown eyes, the plush sack, the lovely face that had borne the impress of sorrow sospeedily, had felt death--those might never have existed, so soon had theybeen forgotten by the one being in the world for whom that face had wornthe aspect of a perfect love. 

Yet one upon whom those eyes never rested has remembered. And surely thememory of her is mine to wed, since he, whose right was to cherish it, hasallowed himself to be divorced from it in so brief a time. 

The memory of her is with me always, fills my soul, beautifies my life, makes green and radiant this existence which all who know me think cold, bleak, empty, repellent. 

You will not laugh, then, my friend, when I tell you that love is not to mea thing unknown. 

 * * * * *

So runs a part of the last letter to my father that the old bookkeeper everwrote. 

IV

THE TRIUMPH OF MOGLEY [Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_. Copyright, 1892, by J. B. Lippincott Company. ]

Mr. Mogley was an actor of what he termed the "old school. " He railedagainst the prevalence of travelling theatrical troupes, and when heattitudinized in the barroom, his left elbow upon the brass rail, his righthand encircling a glass of foaming beer, he often clamoured for a returnof the system of permanently located dramatic companies, and sighed at thedeparture of the "palmy days. "

A picturesque figure, typical of an almost bygone race of such figures, wasMogley at these moments, his form being long and attenuated, his visagesmooth and of angular contour, his facial mildness really enhanced by theseverity which he attempted to impart to his countenance when he conversedwith such of his fellow men as were not of "the profession. "

Like Mogley's style of acting, his coat was old. But, although neither henor any of his acquaintances suspected it, his heart was young. He stillwaited and hoped. 

For Mogley's long professional career had not once been brightened bya distinct success. He had never made what the men and women of hisoccupation designate a hit, or even what the dramatic critics wearilydescribe as a "favourable impression. " This he ascribed to lack ofopportunity, as he was merely human. Mr. And Mrs. Mogley eagerly sent forthe newspapers on the morning after each opening night and sought thenotices of the performance. These records never contained a word of eitherpraise or censure for Mogley. 

Mrs. Mogley had first met Mogley when she was a soubrette and he a "walkinggentleman. " It was his Guildenstern (or it may have been his Rosencrantz)that had won her. Shortly after their marriage there came to her thatlife-ailment which made it impossible for her to continue acting. She hadswallowed her aspirations, shedding a few tears. She lived in the hope ofhis triumph, and, as she had more time to think than he had, she sufferedmore keenly the agony of yearning unsatisfied. 

She was a little, fragile being, with large pale blue eyes, and a face fromwhich the roses had fled when she was twenty. But she was very much toMogley: she did his planning, his thinking, the greater part of hisaspiring. She always accompanied him upon tours, undergoing cheerfully thehard life that a player at "one-night stands" must endure in the interestof art. 

This continued through the years until last season. Then when Mogley wasabout to start "on the road" with the "Two Lives for One" Company, the doctor said that Mrs. Mogley would have to stay in New York ordie, --perhaps die in any event. So Mogley went alone, playing themelodramatic father in the first act, and later the secondary villain, whoin the end drowns the principal villain in the tank of real water, whilehis heart was with the pain-racked little woman pining away in the smallroom at the top of the dingy theatrical boarding-house on Eleventh Street. 

The "Two Lives for One" Company "collapsed, " as the newspapers say, inOhio, three months after its departure from New York; this notwithstandingthe tank of real water. Mogley and the leading actress overtook the managerat the railway station, as he was about to flee, and extorted enough moneyfrom him to take them back to New York. 

Mogley had not returned too soon to the small room at the top of the houseon Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her lying onthe bed. She smiled through her tears, --a really heartrending smile. 

"Yes, Tom, I've changed much since you left, and not for the better. Idon't know whether I can live out the season. "

"Don't say that, Alice, for God's sake!"

"I would be resigned, Tom, if only--if only you would make a success beforeI go. "

"If only I could get the chance, Alice!"

As the days went by, Mrs. Mogley rapidly grew worse. She seemed to failperceptibly. But Mogley had to seek an engagement. They could not live onnothing. Mrs. Jones would wait with the daily increasing board-bill, butmedicine required cash. Each evening, when Mogley returned from his tour ofthe theatrical agencies of Fourteenth Street and of Broadway, the ill womanput the question, almost before he opened the door:

"Anything yet?"

"Not yet. You see this is the bad part of the season. Ah, the profession isovercrowded!"

But one Monday afternoon he rushed up the stairs, his face aglow. In thedark, narrow hallway on the top floor he met the doctor. 

"Mrs. Mogley has had a sudden turn for the worse, " said the physician, abruptly. "I'm afraid she won't live until midnight. "

Doctors need not give themselves the trouble to "break news gently" incases where they stand small chances of remuneration. 

Mogley staggered. It was cruel that this should occur just when he hadsuch good news. But an idea occurred to him. Perhaps the good news wouldreanimate her. 

"Alice, " he cried, as he threw open the door, "you must get well! My chancehas come. The tide, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, is here. "

She sat up in bed, trembling. "What is it, Tom?"

"This. Young Hopkins asked me to have a drink at the Hoffman thisafternoon, and, while I was in there, Hexter, who managed the 'SilverKing' Company the season I played Coombe, came in all rattled. 'Why thisextravagant wrath?' Hopkins asked, in his picturesque way. Then Hexterexplained that his revival of Wilkins' old burlesque on 'Faust' couldn't beput on to-night, because Renshaw, who was to be the Mephisto, was too sickto walk. 'No one else knows the part, ' Hexter said. Then I told him I knewthe part; how I'd played Valentine to Wilkins' Mephisto when the piece wasfirst produced before these Gaiety people brought their 'Faust up-to-date'from London. You remember how, as Wilkins was given to late dinners andtoo much ale, he made me understudy his Mephisto, and if the piece had runmore'n two weeks, I'd probably had a chance to play it. Well, Hexter said, as everything was ready to put on the piece, if I thought I was up in thepart, he'd let me try it. So we went to Renshaw's room and got the part andhere it is. "

"But, Tom, burlesque isn't in your line. "

"Isn't it? Anything's in my line. 'Versatility is the touchstone of power. 'That's where we of the old stock days come in! Besides, burlesque is thething now. Look at Leslie, and Wilson, and Hopper, and Powers. They'rethe men who draw the salaries nowadays. If I make a hit in this part, myfortune is sure. "

"But Hexter's Theatre is on the Bowery. "

"That doesn't matter. Hexter pays salaries. "

Objections like this last one had often been made, and as often overcome inthe same words. 

"And then besides--why, Alice, what's the matter?"

She had fallen back on the bed with a feeble moan. He leaned over her. Slowly she opened her eyes. 

"Tom, I'm afraid I'm dying. "

Then Mogley remembered the doctor's words. Alice dying! Life was hardenough even when he had her to sustain his courage. What would it bewithout her?

The typewritten part had fallen on the bed. He pushed it aside. 

"Hexter and his Mephisto be d----d!" said Mogley. "I shall stay at homewith you to-night. "

"No, no, Tom: your one chance, remember! If you should make a hit before Idie, I could go easier. It would brighten the next world for me until youcome to join me. "

Mogley's weaker will succumbed to hers. So, with his right hand around Mrs. Mogley's wrist, turning his eyes now and then to the clock in the steeplewhich was visible through the narrow window, that he might know when toadminister her medicine, he held his "part" in his left hand and refreshedhis recollection of the lines. 

At seven o'clock, with a last pressure of her thin fingers, a kiss upon hercheek where a tear lay, he left her. He had thought she was asleep, but shemurmured:

"May God help you to-night, Tom! My thoughts will be at the theatre withyou. Good-bye. "

Mrs. Jones's daughter had promised to look in at Mrs. Mogley now and thenduring the evening, and to give her the medicine at the proper intervals. 

Mogley reported to the stage manager, who showed him Renshaw'sdressing-room and gave him Renshaw's costume for the part. His mind everturning back to the little room at the top of the house and then to thewords and "business" of his part, he got into Renshaw's red tights andcrimson cape. Then he donned the scarlet cap and plume and pasted theexaggerated eyebrows upon his forehead, while the stage manager stood by, giving him hints as to new "business" invented by Renshaw. 

"You have the stage to yourself, you know, at that time, for a specialty. "

"Yes, I'll sing the song Wilkins did there. I see it's marked in the partand the orchestra must be 'up' in it. In the second act I'll do someimitations of actors. "

At eight he was ready to go on the stage. 

"May God be with you!" reëchoed in his ear, --the echo of a weak voice putforth with an effort. 

He heard the stage manager in front of the curtain announcing that, "owingto Mr. Renshaw's sudden illness, the talented comedian, Mr. ThomasMogley, had kindly consented to play Mephisto, at short notice, without arehearsal. "

He had never heard himself called a talented comedian before, and heinvoluntarily held his head a trifle higher as the startling and deliciouswords reached his ears. 

The opening chorus, the witless dialogue of secondary personages, thenan almost empty stage, old Faust alone remaining, and the entrance ofMephisto. 

Some applause that came from people that had not heard the preliminaryannouncement, and whose demonstration was intended for Renshaw, ratherdisconcerted Mogley. Then, ere he had spoken a word, or his eyes had rangedover the hazy lighted theatre on the other side of the footlights, theresounded in the depths of his brain:

"My thoughts will be at the theatre with you!"

There were many vacant seats in the house. He singled out one of them onthe front row and imagined she was in it. He would play to that vacant seatthroughout the evening. 

In all burlesques of "Faust" the rôle of Mephisto is the leading comicfigure. The actor who assumes it undertakes to make people laugh. 

Mogley made people laugh that night, but it was not his intentionalhumourous efforts that excited their hilarity. It was the man himself. Theybegan by jeering him quietly. Then the gallery grew bold. 

"Ah there, Edwin Booth!" sarcastically yelled an urchin aloft. 

"Oh, what a funny little man he is!" ironically quoted another from a songin one of Mr. Hoyt's farces, alluding to Mogley's spare if elongated frame. 

"He t'inks dis is a tragedy, " suggested a Bowery youth. 

But Mogley tried not to heed. 

In the second act some one threw an apple at him. Mogley labouredzealously. The ribald gallery had often been his foe. Wait until such andsuch a scene! He would show them how a pupil of the old stock companiescould play burlesque! Song and dance men from the varieties had too longenjoyed undisputed possession of that form of drama. 

But, one by one, he passed his opportunities without capturing the house. Nearer came the end of the piece. Slimmer grew his chance of making thelonged-for impression. The derision of the audience increased. Now thegallery made comments upon his personal appearance. 

"He could get between raindrops, " yelled one, applying a recent speech ofEdwin Stevens, the comic opera comedian. 

And at home Mogley's wife was dying--holding to life by sheer power ofwill, that she might rejoice with him over his triumph. Tears blindedhis eyes. Even the other members of the company were laughing at hisdiscomfiture. 

Only a little brunette in pink tights who played Siebel, and whom he hadnever met before, had a look of sympathy for him. 

"It's a tough audience. Don't mind them, " she whispered. 

Mogley has never seen or heard of the little brunette since. But heanticipates eventually to behold her ranking first after Alice among theangels of heaven. 

The curtain fell and Mogley, somewhat dazed in mind, mechanically removedhis apparel, washed off his "make-up, " donned his worn street attire andhis haughty demeanour, and started for home. 

Home! Behind him failure and derision. Before him, Alice, dying, waitingimpatiently his return, the news of his triumph. 

"We won't need you to-morrow night, Mr. Mogley, " said the stage manager ashe reached the stage door. "Mr. Hexter told me to pay you for to-night. Here's your money now. "

Mogley took the envelope as in a dream, answered not a word, and hastenedhomeward. He thought only:

"To tell her the truth will kill her at once. "

Mrs. Mogley was awake and in a fever of anticipation when Mogley enteredthe little room. She was sitting up in bed, staring at him with shiningeyes. 

"Well, how was it?" she asked, quickly. 

Mogley's face wore a look of jubilant joy. 

"Success!" he cried. "Tremendous hit! The house roared! Called before thecurtain four times and had to make a speech!"

Mogley's ecstasy was admirably simulated. It was a fine bit of acting. Never before or since did Mogley rise to such a height of dramaticillusion. 

"Ah, Tom, at last, at last! And, now, I must live till morning, to readabout it in the papers!"

Mogley's heart fell. If the papers would mention the performance at all, they would dismiss it in three or four lines, bestowing perhaps a wordof ridicule upon him. She was sure to see one paper, the one that thelandlady's daughter lent her every day. 

Mogley looked at the illuminated clock on the steeple across the way. Aquarter to twelve. 

"My love, " he said, "I promised Hexter I would meet him to-night at theFive A's Club, to arrange about salary and so forth. I'll be gone only anhour. Can you do without me that long?"

"Yes, go; and don't let him have you for less than fifty dollars a week. "

Shortly after midnight the dramatic editor of that newspaper Miss Jonesdaily lent to Mrs. Mogley, having sent up the last page of his notice ofthe new play at Palmer's, was confronted by the office-boy ushering to theside of his desk a tall, spare, smooth-faced man with a sober countenance, an ill-concealed manner of being somewhat over-awed by his surroundings, and a coat frayed at the edges. 

"I'm Mr. Thomas Mogley, " said this apparition. 

"Ah! Have a cigarette, Mr. Mogley?" replied the dramatic editor, absently, lighting one himself. 

"Thank you, sir. I was this evening, but am not now, the leading comedianof the company that played Wilkins's 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre. I playedMephisto. " (He had begun his speech in a dignified manner, but now he spokequickly and in a quivering voice. ) "I was a failure--a very great failure. My wife is extremely ill. If she knew I was a failure, it would kill her, so I told her I made a success. I have really never made a success in mylife. She is sure to read your paper to-morrow. Will you kindly not speakof my failure in your criticism of the performance? She cannot live laterthan to-morrow morning, and I should not like--you see--I have neverdeigned to solicit favours from the press before, sir, and--"

"I understand, Mr. Mogley. It's very late, but I'll see what I can do. "

Mogley passed out, walking down the five flights of stairs to the street, forgetful of the elevator. 

The dramatic editor looked at his watch. "Half-past twelve, " he said; then, to a man at another desk:

"Jack, I can't come just yet. I'll meet you at the club. Order devilledcrabs and a bottle of Bass for me. "

He ran up-stairs to the night editor. "Mr. Dorney, have you the theatreproofs? I'd like to make a change in one of the theatre notices. "

"Too late for the first edition, my boy. Is it important?"

"Yes, an exceptional case. I'll deem it a personal favour. "

"All right. I'll get it in the city edition. Here are the proofs. "

"Let's see, " mused the dramatic editor, looking over the wet proofs. "Whocovered the ---- Theatre to-night? Some one in the city department. Isuppose he 'roasted' Gugley, or whatever his name is. Ah, here it is. "

And he read on the proof:

"The revival of an ancient burlesque on 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre lastnight was without any noteworthy feature save the pitiful performance ofthe part of Mephisto by a doleful gentleman named Thomas Mogley, who showednot the faintest of humour and who was tremendously guyed by a turbulentaudience. Mr. Mogley was temporarily taking the place of William Renshaw, a funmaker of more advanced methods, who will appear in the rôle to-night. There are some pretty girls and agile dancers in the company. "

Which the dramatic editor changed to read as follows:

"The revival of a familiar burlesque on 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre lastnight was distinguished by a decidedly novel and original embodimentof Mephisto by Thomas Mogley, a trained and painstaking comedian. Hisperformance created an abundance of merriment, and it was the manifestthought of the audience that a new type of burlesque comedian had beendiscovered. "

All of which was literally true. And the dramatic editor laughed over itlater over his bottle of white label at the club. 

By what power Mrs. Mogley managed to keep alive until morning I do notknow. The dull gray light was stealing into the little room through thewindow as Mogley, leaning over the bed, held a fresh newspaper close to herface. Her head was propped up by means of pillows. She laughed through hertears. Her face was all gladness. 

"A new--comedian--discovered, " she repeated. "Ah, Tom, at last! That iswhat I lived for! I can die happy now. We've made a--great--hit--Tom--"

The voice ceased. There was a convulsion at her throat. Nothing stirred inthe room. From the street below came the sound of a passing car and a boy'svoice, "Morning papers. " Mogley was weeping. 

The dead woman's hand clutched the paper. Her face wore a smile. 

V

OUT OF HIS PAST

This is no fable; it is the hardest kind of fact. I met Craddock not morethan a week ago. His inebriety prevented his recognizing me. 

What a joyous, hopeful man he was upon the day of his marriage! He lookedtoward the future as upon a cloudless spring dawn one looks forward to theday. 

He had sown his wild oats and had already reaped a crop of knowledge. "Ihave put the past behind me, " he said. And he thought it would stay there. 

He married one of the sweetest and best of women. The match was an idealone--exceptionally so. His wife's mother objected to it and moved away onaccount of it. "That's a detail, " said Craddock. 

There are details and details. The importance of any one of them depends oncircumstances. 

Craddock had all the qualities and attributes requisite to make him ason-in-law to the liking of his mother-in-law--lack of money. 

So she went to live in Boston, maintained a chilly correspondence with herdaughter, and bided her time. 

Craddock had had his old loves, a fact that he did not attempt to concealfrom his wife. She insisted upon his telling her about them, although thenarration put her into manifest vexation of mind. Such is the way of youngwives. 

There was one love about which Craddock said less than about any of theothers, because it had encroached more upon his life than any of them. Ithad nearly approached being a serious affair. He had a delicacy concerningthe mention of it, too, for he flattered himself that the flame, althoughentirely extinguished upon his own side, yet smouldered deep in the heartof the woman. Therefore, he spoke of that episode in vague and generalterms. 

Strange as it seemed to Craddock, clear as it is to any student of men andwomen, it was this amour that excited the most curiosity in the mind of hiswife. 

"What was her name?" asked the latter. 

"Agnes Darrell. "

"I don't think she has a pretty name, at all events. "

"Oh, that was only her stage name. I really don't remember what her realname was. "

This was a judicious falsehood. 

"Well, I'm sorry that you ever made love to actresses. I'm afraid I can'tthink as much of you after knowing--"

"After knowing that the first sight of you drove the memory of allactresses and other women in the world out of my head, " cried Craddock, with a merry fervour that made his speech irresistible. 

So they persisted in being extremely happy together for three years, to thegrinding chagrin of Craddock's mother-in-law in Boston. 

One July Friday, Craddock's wife was at the seashore, while Craddock, whoran down each Saturday to remain with her until Monday, was battling withhis work and the heat and the summer insects, in his office in the city. Mrs. Craddock received her mail, two letters addressed to her at theseaside, two forwarded from the city whither they had first come. 

Of the latter one was a milliner's announcement of removal. The other wasin a large envelope, and the address was in a chirography unknown to her. The large envelope contained a smaller one. 

This second envelope was addressed to Miss Agnes Darrell, ---- Hotel, Chicago, in the handwriting of Craddock. 

The feelings of Craddock's wife are imaginable. She took from this alreadyopened second envelope the letter that it contained. It also was inCraddock's penmanship. She succeeded in a semistupefied condition inreading it to the end. 

"May 13. 

"My Dearest Agnes:--I have just a moment in which to tell you the old storythat one heart, thousands of miles east of you, beats for you alone. Withwhat joy do I anticipate the early ending of the season, when, like youngLochinvar, you will come out of the West. I shall contrive to be with youas often as possible this summer. With renewed vows of my unalterabledevotion, I must hastily say good night. 

"Yours always, "Jack. "

Any who seek a new emotion would ask for nothing more than Craddock's wifethen experienced. It was not until the first shock had given away to acalm, stupendous indignation that she began to comment upon the epistle indetail. 

"May 13th--at that very time Jack was sighing at the thought of my beingaway from him during the hot weather and telling me how he would miss me. All deception! His heart at that very time was beating for her alone. Andhe would contrive to see her as often as possible this summer--during myabsence!"

It was then that Craddock's wife learned the great value of pride and angeras a compound antidote to overwhelming grief in certain circumstances. 

When Craddock, quite unarmed, rushed to meet her at the seashore upon thenext evening, she was en route for Boston. 

In several ensuing years, Craddock's wife's mother took care that everycommunication from him, every demand for an explanation, every piteous pleafor enlightenment, for one interview, should be ignored. The mother sentthe girl to relatives in Europe; and after Craddock had spent three yearsand all the money that he had saved toward the buying of a house for hiswife and himself, in trying to cross her path that he might have a moment'shearing, he came back home and went to the dogs. 

He would have killed himself had not hope remained--the hope that somechance turn of events would bring him face to face with her, that he mightknow wherefore his punishment. He would have proudly resolved to forgether, and he would have striven day and night to make a name that some daywould reach her ears whereever she might go, had he not felt that someterrible mistake had taken her from him; time would eventually rectifymatters. As hope bade him live and as his inability to forget her made itimpossible for him to put his thoughts upon work, he became a drunkard. 

He might not have done so had he been you or I; but he was only Craddock, and whether or not you find his offence beyond the extent of palliation, the fact is that he drank himself penniless and entirely beyond the powerof his own will to resume respectability. 

Naturally his friends abandoned him. 

"Craddock is making a beast of himself, " said one who had formerly sat athis table. "To give him money merely accelerates the process. "

"When a man loses all self-respect, how can he expect to retain thesympathy of other people?" queried a second. 

"I never thought much of a man who would go to the gutter on account of awoman. It shows a lack of stamina, " observed a third. 

All of which was true. But particular cases have exceptionally aggravatingcircumstances. Special combinations may produce results which, althoughseemingly under human control, are almost, if not quite, inevitable. 

One day Craddock's wife came back to him. In Paris she had made adiscovery. She had kept the letter from Jack to the actress in a box thatalways accompanied her. Opening this box suddenly, her eye fell upon thepostmark, stamped upon the envelope. She had never noticed this before. Sheknew that the date written above the letter itself was incomplete, the yearnot being indicated. According to the postmark, the year was 1875. 

That was four years before Jack married her; two years before he first sawher. 

She had always supposed the sending of the letter to her to be the act ofsome jealous rival of Jack's for the actress's affection. Now she knew notto what it might have been attributable. 

When she arrived at the hospital where Craddock was recovering from theeffects of an unconscious attempt at suicide, she was ten years older, infact, than when she had left him; twenty years older in appearance. Shetook him home and has been trying to make a man of him. She manifeststoward him limitless patience and tenderness, and she toleratesuncomplainingly his bi-weekly carousals. But she can afford to, having comeinto possession of a small fortune at her mother's recent death. 

Craddock is amiably content with her. He cannot bring himself to regard heras the beautiful young bride of his youth. So little remains of her formercharm, her former vivacity and girlishness, that it seems as if Craddock'swife of other times had died. 

A few days ago, I met at the Sheepshead Races a _passée_ actress who wastelling about the conquests of her early career. 

"There was one young fellow awfully infatuated with me, " she said, "whoused to write me the sweetest letters. I kept them long after he stoppedcaring for me, until he was married; then I destroyed them. I found oneshort one, though, in an old handbag some years after, and, just for a jokeI mailed it to his wife at his old address. I don't suppose it ever reachedher, though, or he would have acknowledged it, for the sake of old times. Iwonder whatever became of Jack Craddock. People used to say he had a brightfuture--I say, tell that messenger-boy to come here! I'm going to put fiveon Tenny for this next race. And you'll lend me the five, won't you?"

VI

THE NEW SIDE PARTNER

A chance in life is like worldly greatness--to which, indeed, it iscommonly a requisite preliminary. Some are born with it, some achieve it, and some have it thrust upon them. 

There is a youth who has had it thrust upon him. What he will do with itremains to be seen. Know the story, which is true in every detail save intwo proper names:

The midnight train from New York, which crawls out of the Jersey City ferrystation at 12:25, is usually doleful, especially in the ordinary cars. Onewho cannot sleep easily therein has a weary two or three hours' time toPhiladelphia. Almost any equally wakeful companion is then a source of joy. 

A girl of medium size, wearing a veil, and being rather carelessly attiredin dark clothes which fitted a charming figure, walked jauntily up theaisle, saw that no seat was entirely vacant, and therefore, after a hastyglance at me, sat down beside me. 

Had not the two very young men in the seat behind us drunk too much winethat night in New York, the girl and I might never have exchanged a word. But the conversation of the youths was such as to cause between us theintercommunication of smiles, and eventually of speeches. 

Then casual observations about the fulness of the car, the time of thetrain, and our respective destinations, --mine being Philadelphia, hersbeing Baltimore, led to the revelation that she was a constant traveller, because she was an actress. She had been a soubrette in musical farce, butlately she had belonged to a variety and burlesque company. She had goneupon the stage when she was thirteen, and she was now twenty. 

"What kind of an act do you do?" I asked, in the language of the variety"profession. "

"Oh, I can do almost anything, " she said, in a tone of a self-possessed, careless, and vivacious woman. "I sing well enough, and I can danceanything, a skirt dance, a clog, a Mexican fandango, a Carmencita kind ofstep, anything at all. I don't know when I ever learned to dance. I didn'tlearn, it just came to me; but the best thing I do is whistling. I'm notafraid of any man in the business when it's a case of whistling. There's nofake about my whistle; it's the real thing. I can whistle any sort of musicthat goes. "

"Your company appears in Baltimore this week?"

"Oh, no! I've left the company. You see, I've been off for six weeks onaccount of illness, and now I'm going over to Baltimore to my father'sfuneral. He is to be buried to-morrow. See, here's the telegram. I've beenhaving hard lines lately. I've not had any sleep for three days, and Iwon't get to Baltimore till daylight. I want to start back to New Yorkto-morrow night, if I can raise the stuff. I had just enough money to get aticket to Baltimore, and now I'm dead broke. "

Then she laughed and got me to untie her veil. When it was removed, I saw afrank young face with an abundance of soft brown hair. About the lightblue eyes were the marks of fatigue, and the colour of the cheeks furtherconfirmed her account of loss of sleep. 

Her feet pattered softly upon the floor of the car. 

"I'm doing a single shuffle, " she said, in explanation of the movement ofher feet. "If you could do one too, we might do a double. "

"Do you do your act alone on the stage?" I asked, "or are you one of ateam?"

"We're a team. My side partner's a man. It pays better that way. We get$40 a week and transportation. I used to get only $12 except when I stoodaround and posed, then I got $35 and had to pay my own railroad fare. Youcan bet I have a good figure, when I get $35 for that alone! I handle themoney of the team and I divide it even between us. I don't believe in theman getting nine-tenths of the stuff, do you? Besides, I'm older than mypartner is. I put him in the business. "

"How was that?"

"Oh, I picked him up on the street in New York. I saw that he had a goodvoice and was a bright kid, so I took him for my partner. "

"But tell me how it came about. "

She was quite willing to do so. And the rumbling of the wheels, the rushof the train over the night-swathed plains of New Jersey, accompanied hervoice. All the other passengers were sleeping. To the following effect washer narrative:

At evening a crowd of boys had gathered at the corner of Broadway and adown-town street. One of them--ragged, unkempt, but handsome--was singingand dancing for the diversion of the others. That way came the varietyactress, then out of an engagement. She stopped, heard the boy sing, andsaw him dance. She pushed through the crowd to him. 

"How did you learn to dance?" she asked. 

"Didn't ever learn, " he said, with impudent sullenness. 

"Who taught you to sing?"

"None o' yer business. "

"But who did teach you?"

"Nobody. "

"What's your name?"

"None of your business. "

"Will you come along with me into the restaurant over there?"

"No. "

But presently he was induced to go, although he continued to answer herquestions in the savage, distrustful manner of his class. They went into acheap eating-house and saloon, through the "Ladies' Entrance, " and whilethey sat at a table there, she learned by means of resolute and patientquestions that the boy earned his living by blacking shoes now and then, and that he did not know who his parents were, as he had been "put" with afamily whose ill-usage he had fled from to live in the street. He beganto melt under her manifestations of interest in him, and with pretendedreluctance he gave his promise to wash his face and hands and to call uponher that evening at the theatrical boarding-house on Twenty-seventh Streetwhere she was living. Then she left him. 

When he called, she took him to her room and induced him to allow her tocomb his hair. A deal of persuasion was necessary to this. Then she tookhim out and bought him a cheap suit of clothes on the Bowery. A half-hourlater he was standing with her in the wings at Miner's Variety Theatre. Aman and woman were doing a song and dance upon the stage. 

"Watch that man, " the actress said to the boy of the streets. "I want youto do that sort of an act with me one of these days. "

When he had thus received his first lesson, she led him back to thetheatrical boarding-house, and in her room he showed her what ability hehad picked up as a singer and dancer. She secured a room for him in thehouse, and she had the precaution to lock him in lest he should takefright at his novel change of surroundings and flee in the night. When shereleased him on the next morning she found him docile and cheerful. 

She escorted him into the big dining-room to breakfast. 

"Who's your friend, Lil?" asked a certain actor whose name is known fromPortland to Portland. 

"He's my new side partner, " she said, looking at the boy, who was not inthe least abashed at the bold gaze of the negligently dressed soubrettesand the chaffing comedians who sat at the tables. 

Everybody laughed. "What can he do?" was the general question. 

"Get out there and show them, young one, " she said, pointing to the centreof the dining-room. 

The boy obeyed without timidity. When he had sung and danced, there washilarious applause. 

"Good for the kid, " said the well-known actor. "What are you going to dowith him, Lil?"

"I'm going to try to get an engagement for us together in Rose St. Clair'sBurlesque Company. "

"I'll help you, " said the actor. "I know Rose. I'll go and see her rightaway, and you come there with the kid about 11 o'clock. "

When the girl and her protégé arrived at the boarding-house of the fatmanageress they found that the actor had so far kept his promise as to haveinveigled her into a condition of alcoholic amiability. She asked them whatthey could do. Each one sang and danced, and the girl, who also whistled, outlined to the manageress her idea of an "act" in which the two shouldappear. There was a hitch when the question of salary arose. The girl fixedupon $40. Rose thought that amount was too large. Lil adhered to herterms, and was about to leave without having made an agreement, when themanageress called her back, and a contract for a three weeks' engagementwas signed at once. 

The period between that day and the beginning of the engagement, whichsubsequently opened at Miner's Theatre, was spent by the girl in coachingher protégé. He was a year younger than she, a fact which tended toincrease the influence that she promptly obtained over him. His sullennesshaving been overcome, he became a devoted and apt pupil. Having beheldhimself in neat clothes and acquired habits of cleanliness, he speedilydeveloped into a handsome youth of soft disposition and good behaviour. 

The new song and dance "team" was successful. The boy quickly gainedapplause, and especially did he easily win the liking of such women as hemet or appeared before. A new world was open to him. Naturally he enjoyedthe easy conquests that he made in the curious, careless circle into whichhe had been brought. 

He is still having his "fling. " But he has been from the first mostobedient and unquestioning to his benefactress. He goes nowhere, doesnothing, without previously obtaining permission from her. 

She is proud of the advancement that he has accomplished already, and sheis determined to make him a conspicuous figure upon the stage. 

What is it that actuates this girl in her endeavour to elevate this boy inthe world? What the mystery that brought to the gamin this guardian angelin the form of a variety actress who mingles bright sayings with lack ofgrammar, who tells Rabelaisian anecdotes in one minute and philosophizes inslang about the issues of life the next?

"You're in love with him, aren't you?" I said, as the train plunged onthrough the darkness. 

"I don't know whether I am or not. He's just a kid, you know. I suppose theproper end of such a romance is that we should marry. But then I wouldn'tbe married to a man that I couldn't look up to. "

"But women don't invariably love that way. I'm sure you're in love with theboy. Have you never thought as to whether you were or not?"

"Have I? I should smile! I thought of it even on the first night, after Ipicked him up, when I locked him in his room. But I have always regardedhim in a sort of motherly way, although only a year older. It seems kind ofunnatural for me to love him as a woman loves a man. If he was only older!"

"Ah, that wish is sure evidence that you love him!"

"One thing I do know is that, though he always obeys me, he doesn't care asmuch for me as I do for him. "

"How do you know that?"

"He wouldn't think so much of other girls if he did. He doesn't look uponme as a woman for him to fall in love with. He regards me as an oldersister. Why, he never even takes a girl to supper after the performancewithout asking my permission. "

"And you give it?"

"Yes; but he never knows how I feel when I do. "

"And how do you feel then?"

"The first time he asked me, it was like a knife going through me. Ihaven't got used to it yet. "

She paused for a time before adding:

"But, anyhow, he's going to make a name for himself some day. He has it inhim. I'm not the only one that thinks so. I'm trying now to get him to goto a school of acting, but he thinks variety is good enough for him. He'llget over that, though. "

She spoke so tenderly and yet so proudly of him, that I could not without apang of pity meditate upon the probable outcome of this attachment, which, according to the logic of realists, will be the boy's eventual success inlife, long after he will have forgotten the hand that lifted him out of thedepth in which he first opened his eyes. 

He knows nothing of his parentage. His benefactress once sought, by meansof Inspector Byrnes's penetrating eye, to pierce the clouds surrounding hisorigin, but the inspector smiled at the hopelessness of the attempt. 

"Where is he now?" I asked. 

"I left him in New York, " she said. "I suppose he'll blow in all his moneyas soon as he can possibly manage to do so. "

And she laughed and did another "shuffle" with her feet upon the floor ofthe car. 

VII

THE NEEDY OUTSIDER

There was animation at the Nocturnal Club at three o'clock in the morning. The city reporters who had been dropping in since midnight were nowreinforced by telegraph editors, for the country editions of the bigdailies were already being rushed in light wagons over the sounding stonesto the railroad stations. 

The cheery and urbane African--naturally called Delmonico by the habituésof the Nocturnal Club--found his time crowded in serving bottled beer, sandwiches, or boiled eggs to the groups around the tables. 

To a large group in the back room Fetterson related how he had once missedthe last car at the distant extremity of West Philadelphia, and, failing tofind a cab west of Broad Street, had walked fifty blocks after midnight andhad still succeeded in getting his report in the second edition and thusmaking a "beat on the town. "

Then spoke up a needy outsider whom Fetterson had brought in at oneo'clock. 

I neglected to mention Fetterson's penchant for queer company. It is quiteright that reporters know policemen, are on chaffing terms with nightcabmen, and have large acquaintance with pugilists and even with "crooks. "But Fetterson picks up the most remarkable and out-of-the-way--not to speakof out-at-elbows--specimens of mankind, craft in distress on the sea ofhumanity. The needy outsider was his latest acquisition. 

It is enough to say of this destitute acquaintance of Fetterson's that hewas a ragged man needing a shave. In daylight, in the country, you wouldhave termed him a tramp. Hitherto he had sat in our group in silence. Whenhe opened his mouth to discourse, it was natural that he should have aprompt and somewhat curious hearing. 

"Speaking of walking, " he said, "I have walked a bit in my time. Mostly, though, I've rode--on freight-cars. The longest straight tramp I ever madewas from Harrisburg to Philadelphia once when the trains weren't running. The cold weather made walking unpleasant. But what do you think ofa woman--no tramp woman, either--starting from Pittsburg to walk toPhiladelphia?"

"Oh, there is a so-called actress who recently walked from San Francisco toNew York, " put in some one. 

"Yes, but she took her time, and had all the necessaries of life on theway. She walked for an advertisement. The woman I speak of walked in orderto get there. She walked because she hadn't the money to pay her fare. Herhusband was with her, to be sure. He was a pal o' mine. You see, it wasa hard winter, years ago, and work was so scarce in Pittsburg that thehusband had to remain idle until the two had begun to starve. He had someeducation, and had been an office clerk. At that time of his life hecouldn't have stood manual labour. Still he tried to get it, for he waswilling to do anything to keep a lining to his skin. If you've never beenin his predicament, you can't realize how it is and you won't believe itpossible. But I've known more than one man to starve because he couldn'tget work and wouldn't take public charity. Starvation was the prospect ofthis young fellow and his wife. So they decided to leave Pittsburg and cometo Philadelphia, where they thought it would be easier for the husband toget work. 

"'But how can we get there?' the husband asked. 

"She was a plucky girl and had known hardship, although she was frail tolook at. 

"'Walk, ' she replied. 

"And two days later they started. "

The outsider paused and lighted a forbidding-looking pipe. 

When he resumed his narrative he spoke in a lower tone. The recollectionsthat he called up seemed to stir him within, although he was calm enough ofexterior. 

"I won't describe the experience of my pal on that trip. It was his firsttramp. He knew nothing of the art of vagabondage. Of course they had tobeg. That was tough, although he got used to it and to many tricks in thetrade. They slept in barns and they ate when and where they could. Itcut him to the heart to see his wife in such hunger and fatigue. But herspirits kept up better than his--or at least they seemed to. Often herepented of having started upon such a trip. But he kept that to himself. 

"When the wife did at last give in to the cold, the hunger, and theweariness, it was to collapse all at once. It happened in the mountaincountry. In the evening of a cold, dull day they were trudging along onthe railroad ties, keeping on the west-bound track so they could faceapproaching trains and get off the track in time to avoid being run down. 

"'We'll stop in the town ahead, ' the husband said. 'We can get warm in thestation, and you shall have supper if we have to knock at every door in thetown. '

"And the wife said:

"'Yes, we'll stop, for I feel, Harry, as if--as if I couldn't--go anyfur--Harry, where are you?'

"She fell forward on the track. When the man picked her up she wasunconscious. Clasping her in his arms, he set his teeth and fixed his eyeson the lights of the town ahead and hurried forward. 

"But before he reached the town, he found it was a dead body he wascarrying. 

"You see she had kept up until the very last moment, in the hope ofreaching the town before dark. 

"What the man did, how he felt when he discovered that her heart had ceasedto beat, there in the solitude upon the mountains, with the town in sightat the foot of the slope in the gathering night, I can leave to the vividimaginations of you newspaper men. For four hours he mourned over her bodyby the side of the track, and those in the train that passed could not seehim for the darkness. 

"Then my pal took the body in his arms and started up the mountain, for thetrack at that point passed through what they call a cut, and the hills risesteep on each side of it. He had his prejudices against pauper burial, mypal had, and he shrunk from going to the town and begging a grave for her. He didn't need a doctor's certificate to tell him that life had gonefor ever from her fragile body. He knew that she had died of cold andexhaustion. 

"As he turned the base of the hill to begin to descend it, he saw in theclouded moonlight a deserted railroad tool-house by the track. In frontof it lay a broken, rusty spade. He shouldered this and proceeded up themountain. It was a long walk, and he had to stop more than once to rest, but he got to the top at last. There was a little clearing in the woodshere, where some one had camped. The ruins of a shanty still remained. 

"My pal laid down the body of her who had been his wife, with the dead faceturned toward the sky, which was beginning to be cleared of its clouds. Then he started to dig. 

"It was a longer job than he had expected it to be, for my pal was tiredand numb. But the grave was made at last, upon the very summit of themountain. 

"He lifted up the body of that brave girl, he kissed the cold lips, and hetook off his coat and wrapped it carefully about the head, so that the facewould be protected from the earth. He stooped and laid the body in theshallow grave, and he knelt down there and prayed. 

"He filled the grave up with earth with the broken spade that he had usedin digging it. All these things required a long time. He didn't observe howthe night was passing, nor that the sky became clear and the stars shoneand the moon crossed the zenith and began to descend in the west. Hedidn't notice that the stars began to pale. But he worked on until he hadfinished, and then he stopped and prayed again. 

"When he arose, his face was toward the east, and over the distant hilltopshe saw the purple of the dawn. "

The outsider ceased to speak. 

"What then?"

"That's all. My pal walked down the mountain, jumped upon the firstfreight-train that passed, and has been a wanderer on the face of the earthever since. "

There were various opinions expressed of this narrative. I quietly askedthe needy outsider as we left the club at sunrise:

"Will you tell me who your pal was--the man who buried his wife on themountain-top?"

There was contemptuous pity in the outsider's look as it dwelt a momentupon me before he replied: "The man was myself. "

And then he condescended to borrow a quarter from me. 

VIII

TIME AND THE TOMBSTONE

Tommy McGuffy was growing old. The skin of his attenuated face was soshrunk and so stretched from wrinkle to wrinkle that it seemed narrowlyto escape breaking. About the pointed chin and the cheekbones it had thecolour of faded brick. 

Old Tommy had become so thin that he dared not venture to the top of thehill above his native village of Rearward on a windy day. 

His knees bent comically when he walked. 

For some years the villagers had been counting the nephews and nieces towhom the savings of the old retired dealer in dry-goods would eventuallydescend. 

Ten thousand dollars and a house and lot constituted a heritage worthanticipating in Rearward. 

The innocent old man was not upon terms of intimacy with his prospectiveheirs. Having remained unmarried, his only close associates were two whohad been his companions in that remote period which had been his boyhood. One of these, Jerry Hurley, was a childless widower, a very estimableand highly respected man who owned two farms. The other, like himself abachelor, was Billy Skidmore, the sexton of the church, and, therefore, theregulator of the town clock upon the steeple. 

There came a great shock to Tommy one day. As old Mrs. Sparks said, JerryHurley, "all sudden-like, just took a notion and died. "

The wealth and standing of Jerry Hurley insured him an imposing funeral. They laid his body beside that which had once been his wife in Rearwardcemetery. His heirs possessed his farm, and time went on--slowly as italways does at Rearward. Tommy went frequently to Hurley's grave andwondered when his heirs would erect a monument to his memory. It isnecessary that your grave be marked with a monument if you would stand highin that still society that holds eternal assembly beneath the pines andwillows, where only the breezes speak, and they in subdued voices. 

Years passed, and the grave of Tommy's old friend, Jerry, remainedunmarked. Jerry's relatives had postponed the duty so long that they hadgrown callous to public opinion. Besides, they had other purposes to whichto apply Jerry's money. It was easy enough to avoid reproach; they had onlyto refrain from visiting the graveyard. 

"Jerry never deserved such treatment, " Tommy would say to Billy the sexton, as the two met to talk it over every sunny afternoon. 

"It's an outrage, that's what it is!" Billy would reply, for the hundredthtime. 

It was, in their eyes, an omission almost equal to that of baptism or thatof the funeral service. 

One day, as Tommy was aiding himself along the main street of Rearward bymeans of a hickory stick, a frightful thought came to him. He turned cold. 

What if his own heirs should neglect to mark his own grave?

"I'll hurry home at once, and put the money for it in a stocking foot, "thought Tommy, and his knees bent more than usually as he accelerated hispace. 

But as he tied a knot in the stocking, came the fear that even this moneymight be misapplied; even his will might be ignored, through repeatedpostponement and the law's indifference. 

Who, save old Billy Skidmore, would care whether old Tommy McGuffy's lastresting-place were designated or not? Once let the worms begin operationsupon this antique morsel, what would it matter to Rearward folks where thebanquet was taking place?

Tommy now underwent a second attack of horror, from which he camevictorious, a gleeful smile momentarily lifting the dimness from hisexcessively lachrymal eyes. 

"I'll fix 'em, " he said to himself. "I'll go to-day to Ricketts, themarble-cutter, and order my own tombstone. "

Three months thereafter, Ricketts, the marble-cutter, untied the knot inthe stocking that had been Billy's and deposited the contents in the localsavings-bank. 

In the cemetery stood a monument very lofty and elaborate. Around it was aniron fence. Within the enclosure there was no grave as yet. 

"Here, " said the monument, in deep-cut-letters, but bad English, "lies allthat remains of Thomas McGuffy, born in Rearward, November 11, 1820; died----. Gone whither the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are atrest. "

This supplementary information was framed in the words of Tommy's favouritepassage in his favourite hymn. His liking for this was mainly on account ofits tune. 

He had left the date of his death to be inserted by the marble cutter afterits occurrence. 

Rearward folks were amused at sight of the monument, and they ascribed theplacing of it there to the eccentricity of a taciturn old man. 

Tommy seemed to derive much pleasure from visiting his tombstone on milddays. He spent many hours contemplating it. He would enter the ironenclosure, lock the gate after him, and sit upon the ground that wasintended some day to cover his body. 

He was a familiar sight to people riding or walking past thegraveyard, --this thin old man leaning upon his cane, contentedly ponderingover the inscription on his own tombstone. 

He undoubtedly found much innocent pleasure in it. 

One afternoon, as he was so engaged, he was assailed by a new apprehension. 

Suppose that Ricketts, the marble-cutter, should fail to inscribe the dateof his death in the space left vacant for it!

There was almost no likelihood of such an omission, but there was at leasta possibility of it. 

He glanced across the cemetery to Jerry Hurley's unmarked mound, andshuddered. 

Then he thought laboriously. 

When he left the cemetery in such time as to avoid a delay of his eveningmeal and a consequent outburst of anger on the part of his old housekeeper, he had taken a resolution. 

"Threescore years and ten, says the Bible, " he muttered to himself as hewalked homeward. "The scriptural lifetime'll do for me. "

A week thereafter old Tommy gazed proudly upon the finished inscription. 

"Died November 11, 1890, " was the newest bit of biography there engraved. 

"But it's two years and more till November 11, 1890, " said a voice at hisside. 

Tommy merely cast an indifferent look upon the speaker and walked offwithout a word. 

The whole village now thought that Tommy had become a monomaniac upon thesubject of his tombstone. Perhaps he had. No one has been able to learnfrom his friend, Billy Skidmore, what thoughts he may have communicated tothe latter upon the matter. 

Tommy now lived for no other apparent purpose than to visit his tombstonedaily. He no longer confined his walks thither to the pleasant days. Hewent in weather most perilous to so old and frail a man. 

One of his prospective heirs took sufficient interest in him to advise morecare of his health. 

"I can easily keep alive till the time comes, " returned the antique;"there's only a year left. "

Rapidly his hold upon life relaxed. A week before November 11, 1890, hewent to bed and stayed there. People began to speculate as to whether hisunique prediction--or I should say, his decree--would be fulfilled to thevery day. 

Upon the fifth day of his illness Death threatened to come before the timethat had been set for receiving him. 

"Isn't this the tenth?" the old man mumbled. 

"No, " said his housekeeper, who with one of his nieces, the doctor, andBilly Skidmore, attended the ill man, "it's only the 9th. "

"Then I must fight for two days more; the tombstone must not lie. "

And he rallied so well that it seemed as if the tombstone would lie, nevertheless, for Tommy was still alive at eleven-thirty on the night ofNovember 11. Moreover he had been in his senses when last awake, and therewas every likelihood that he would look at the clock whenever his eyesshould next open. 

"He can't live till morning, that's sure, " said the doctor. 

"But, good Lord! you don't mean to say that he'll hold out till aftertwelve o'clock, " said Billy Skidmore, whose anxiety only had sustained himin his grief at the approaching dissolution of his friend. 

"Quite probably, " replied the doctor. 

"Good heavens! Tommy won't rest easy in his grave if he don't die on the11th. The monument will be wrong. "

"Oh, that won't matter, " said the niece. 

Billy looked at her in amazement. Was his old friend's sacred wish tomiscarry thus?

"Yes, 'twill matter, " he said, in a loud whisper. "And if time won't waitfor Tommy of its own accord, we'll make it. When did he last see theclock?"

"Half-past nine, " said the housekeeper. 

"Then we'll turn it back to ten, " said Skidmore, acting as he spoke. 

"But he may hear the town clock strike. "

Billy said never a word, but plunged into his overcoat, threw on his hat, and hurried on into the cold night. 

"Ten minutes to midnight, " he said, as he looked up at the town clock uponthe church steeple. "Can I skin up them ladders in time?"

Tommy awoke once before the last slumber. Billy was by his bedside, as werethe doctor, the housekeeper, and the niece. The old man's eyes sought theclock. 

"Eleven, " he murmured. Then he was silent, for the town clock had begun tostrike. He counted the strokes--eleven. Then he smiled and tried to speakagain. 

"Almost--live out--birthday--seventy--tombstone--all right. "

He closed his eyes, and, inasmuch as the town clock furnishes the officialtime for Rearward, the published report of Tommy McGuffy's going recordsthat he passed at twenty-five minutes after eleven P. M. , November 11, 1890. 

Very few people know that time turned back one hour and a half in orderthat the reputation of Tommy McGuffy's tombstone for veracity might bespotless in the eyes of future generations. 

Billy Skidmore, the sexton, arranged to have Rearward time ready for thesun when it rose upon the following morning. 

IX

HE BELIEVED THEM

He was a bachelor, and he owned a little tobacco store in the suburbs. All the labour, manual and mental, requisite to the continuance of theestablishment, however, was done by the ex-newsboy, to whom the old soldierpaid $4 per week and allowed free tobacco. 

He had come into the neighbourhood from the interior of the state shortlyafter the war, and for a time there were not ten houses within a block ofhis shop. The shop is now the one architectural blemish in a long row ofhandsome stores. Miles of streets have been built up around it. 

The old soldier used to sit in an antique armchair in the rear of his shop, smoking, from meal to meal. 

"I l'arnt the habit in the army, " he would say. "I never teched tobackertill I went to the war. "

People would look inquiringly at his empty sleeve. 

"I got that at Gettysburg in the second day's fight, " he would explain, complacently. 

He was often asked whether he was a member of the Grand Army of theRepublic. 

"No; 'tain't worth while. I done my fightin' in '63 and '64--them times. Idon't care about doin' it over again in talk. Talk's cheap. "

This made folks smile, for he was continually fighting his battles overagain in conversation. Every regular customer had been made acquainted withthe part that he had taken in each contest, where he had stood when hereceived his wound, what regiment had the honour of possessing him, and howpromptly he had enlisted against the wishes of parents and sweetheart. 

"Of course you get a pension, " many would observe. 

He would shake his head and answer, in a mild tone of a man consciouslyrepressing a pardonable pride. 

"I never 'plied, and as long as the retail tobacker trade keeps up likethis, I reckon I won't make no pull on the gover'ment treash'ry. "

And he would puff at his cigar vigorously, beam upon the group thatsurrounded his chair, and start on one of his long trains of reminiscences. 

He was an amiable old fellow, with gray hair carefully combed back from hiscurved forehead, a florid countenance, boyish blue eyes, puffed cheeks, asmooth chin, and very military-looking gray moustache. He was manifestlya man who ate ample dinners and amply digested them. He would glancecontentedly downward at his broad, round body, and smilingly remark:

"I didn't have that girth in my fightin' days. I got it after the war wasover. "

All who knew him admired him. He would tell with simple frankness how, after distinguishing himself at Antietam, he chose to remain a privaterather than take the lieutenancy that was placed within his reach. He wouldfrequently say:

"I ain't none o' them that thinks the country belongs to the soldiersbecause they saved it. No, sir! If they want the country as a reward, where's the credit in savin' it?"

How could one help exclaiming: "What a really noble old man!"

Finally some of the young men who received daily inspiration from hisautobiographical narratives arranged a surprise for the old soldier. Theypresented him with a finely framed picture of the battle of Gettysburg, under which was the inscription:

"To a True Patriot. Who Fought and Suffered Not for Self-Interest or Glory, but for Love of His Country. "

This hung in his shop until the day of his death. Then his brother camefrom his native village to attend to his burial. The brother stared at thepicture, inquired as to the meaning of the inscription, and then laughedvociferously. 

In the old soldier's trunk was found a faded newspaper that had beenpublished in his village in 1865. It contained an account of an accidentby which a grocer's clerk had lost his arm in a thrashing-machine. Thegrocer's clerk and the old soldier were one person. 

He had never seen a battle, but so often had he told his war stories thatin his last days he believed them. 

X

A VAGRANT

On a July evening at dusk, two boys sat near the crest of a grass-grownembankment by the railroad at the western side of a Pennsylvania town. Theytalked in low tones of the sky's glow above where the sun had set beyondthe low hills across the river, and also of the stars, and of the moon, which was over the housetop behind them. Then there was noise of insectschirping in the grass and of steam escaping from the locomotive boilers inthe engine shed. 

A rumble sounded as from the north, and in that direction a locomotiveheadlight came into view. It neared as the rumble grew louder, and soon afreight-train appeared. This rolled past at the foot of the embankment. 

From between two grain cars leaped a man, and after him another. So rapidlywas the train moving that they seemed to be hurled from it. Both alightedupon their feet. One tall and lithe, led the way up the embankment, followed by the other, who was short and stocky. 

"Bums, " whispered one of the boys at the top of the embankment. 

The tramps stood still when they reached the top. Even in the half-light itcould be seen that their clothes were ill-fitting, frayed, and torn. Theywore cast-off hats. The tall man, whose face was clean-cut and made apretence of being smooth-shaven, had a pliable one; the other was capped bya dented derby. 

"Here's yer town at last! And it looks like a very jay place at that, " saidthe short tramp to the tall one, casting his eyes toward the house roofseastward. 

The boys sitting twenty feet away became silent and cautiously watched thenewcomers. 

"Yep, " replied the tall tramp, in a deep but serious and quiet voice, "andright about here is the spot where I jumped on a freight-train fifteenyears ago, the night I ran away from home. That seems like yesterday, though I've not been here since. "

"Skipped a good home because the old lady brought you a new dad! Youwouldn't catch me being run out by no stepfather. Billy, you was rash. "

"Mebby I was. But, on the dead, Pete, it was mostly jealousy. I thought mymother couldn't care for me any more if she could take a second husband. Mysister thought so too, but she wasn't able to get away like me. Of course Iwas strong. It was boyish pique that drove me away. I didn't fancy havinganother man in my dead father's place, either. And I wanted to get aroundand see the world a bit. After I'd gone I often wished I hadn't. I'd neverimagined how much I loved mother and sis. But I was tougher and prouder insome ways than most kids. You can't understand that sort of thing, Pete. And you can't guess how I feel, bein' back here for the first time infifteen years. Think of it, I was just fifteen when I came away. Why, Ispent half my life here, Petie!"

"Oh, I've read somewhere about that, --the way great men feel when theyvisit their native town. "

The short tramp took a clay pipe from his coat pocket and stuffed into it acigar-end fished from another pocket. Then he inquired:

"And now you're here, Billy, what are you go'n to do?"

"Only ask around what's become o' my folks, then go away. It won't take melong. "

"There'll be a through coal-train along in about an hour, 'cordin' to whatthe flagmen told us at that last town. Will you be back in time to bouncethat?"

"Yes. We needn't stay here. There's little to be picked up in a place likethis. "

"Then skin along and make your investigations. I'll sit here and smoke tillyou come back. If you could pinch a bit of bread and meat, by the way, itwouldn't hurt. "

"I'll try, " answered the tall tramp. "I'm goin' to ask the kids yonder, first, if any o' my people still live here. "

The tall tramp strode over to the two boys. His companion shambled down theembankment to obtain, at the turntable near the locomotive shed across therailroad, a red-hot cinder with which to light his pipe. 

"Do you youngsters know people here by the name of Kershaw?" began the talltramp, standing beside the two boys. 

Both remained sitting on the grass. One shook his head. The other said, "No. "

The tramp was silent for a moment. Then it occurred to him that his motherhad taken his stepfather's name and his sister might be married. Thereforehe asked:

"How about a family named Coates?"

"None here, " replied one of the boys. 

But the other said, "Coates? That's the name of Tommy Hackett'sgrandmother. "

The tramp drew and expelled a quick, audible breath. 

"Then, " he said, "this Mrs. Coates must be the mother of Tommy's mother. Doyou know what Tommy's mother's first name is?"

"I heard Tom call her Alice once. "

The tramp's eyes glistened. 

"And Mr. Coates?" he inquired. 

"Oh, I never heard of him. I guess he died long ago. "

"And Tommy Hackett's father, who's he?"

"He's the boss down at the freight station. Agent, I think they call him. "

"Where does this Mrs. Coates live?"

"She lives with the Hacketts. Would you like to see the house? Me and Dickhas to go past it on the way home. We'll show you. "

"Yes, I would like to see the house. "

The boys arose, one of them rather sleepily. They led the way across therailway company's lot, then along a sparsely built up street, and aroundthe corner into a more populous but quiet highway. At the corner was agrocery and dry-goods store; beyond that were neat and airy two-storyhouses, fronted by a yard closed in by iron fences. One of these houses hada little piazza, on which sat two children. From the open half-door andfrom two windows came light. 

"That's Hackett's house, " said one of the boys. 

"Thanks, very much, " replied the tramp, continuing to walk with them. 

The boys looked surprised at his not stopping at the house, but they saidnothing. 

At the next corner the tramp spoke up:

"I think I'll go back now. Good night, youngsters. "

The boys trudged on, and the tramp retraced his steps. When he reached theHacketts' house, he paused at the gate. The children, a boy of eight and agirl of six, looked at him curiously from the piazza. 

"Are you Mr. Hackett's little boy and girl?" he asked. 

The girl stepped back to the hall door and stood there. The boy looked upat the tramp and answered, "Yes, sir. "

"Is your mother in?"

"No, she's across the street at Mrs. Johnson's. "

"Grandmother's in, though, " continued the boy. "Would you like to see her?"

"No, no! Don't call her. I just wanted to see your mother. "

"Do you know mamma?" inquired the girl. 

"Well--no. I knew her brother, your uncle. "

"We haven't any uncle--except Uncle George, and he's papa's brother, " saidthe boy. 

"What! Not an uncle Will--Uncle Will Kershaw?"

"O--h, yes, " assented the boy. "Did you know him before he died? That was along time ago. "

The tramp made no other outward manifestation of his surprise than to besilent and motionless for a time. Presently he said, in a trembling voice:

"Yes, before he died. Do you remember when he died?"

"Oh, no. That was when mamma was a girl. She and grandmother often talkabout it, though. Uncle Will started West, you know, when he was fifteenyears old. He was standing on a bridge out near Pittsburg one day, and hesaw a little girl fall into the river. He jumped in to save her, but he wasdrowned, 'cause his head hit a stone and that stunned him. They didn't knowit was Uncle Will or who it was, at first, but mamma read about it in thepapers and Grandpa Coates went out to see if it wasn't Uncle Will. Grandpa'dentified him and they brought him back here, but, what do you think, thedoctor wouldn't allow them to open his coffin, and so grandma and mammacouldn't see him. He's buried up in the graveyard next Grandpa Kershaw, andthere's a little monument there that tells all about how he died trying tosave a little girl from drownin'. I can read it, but Mamie can't. She's mylittle sister there. "

The tramp had seated himself on the piazza step. He was looking vacantlybefore him. He remained so until the boy, frightened at his silence, movedfurther from him, toward the door. Then the tramp arose suddenly. 

"Well, " he said, huskily, "I won't wait to see your mamma. You needn't tellher about me bein' here. But, say--could I just get a look at--at yourgrandma, without her knowing anythin about it?"

The boy took his sister's hand and withdrew into the doorway. Then he said, "Why, of course. You can see her through the window. "

The tramp stood against the edge of the piazza upon his toes, and cranedhis neck to see through one of the lighted windows. So he remained forseveral seconds. Once during that time he closed his eyes, and the musclesof his face contracted. Then he opened his eyes again. They were moist. 

He could see a gentle old lady, with smooth gray hair, and an expression ofcalm and not unhappy melancholy. She was sitting in a rocking-chair, herhands resting on the arms, her look fixed unconsciously on the paper on thewall. She was thinking, and evidently her thoughts, though sad, perhaps, were not keenly painful. 

The tramp read that much upon her face. Presently, without a word, heturned quickly about and hurried away, closing the gate after him. 

When the two children told about their visitor later, their mother said:

"You mustn't talk to strange men, Tommy. You and Mamie should have comeright in to grandma. "

Their father said: "He was probably looking for a chance to stealsomething. I'll let the dog out in the yard to-night. "

And their grandmother: "I suppose he was only a man who likes to hearchildren talk, and perhaps, poor fellow, he has no little ones of his own. "

The tramp knew the way to the cemetery. But first he found the house wherehe had lived as a boy. It looked painfully rickety and surprisingly small. So he hastened from before it and went up by a back street across the towncreek and up a hill, where at last he stood before the cemetery gate. Itwas locked; so he climbed over the wall. He went still further up the hill, past tombstones that looked very white, and trees that looked very green inthe moonlight. At the top of the hill he found his father's grave. Besideit was another mound, and at the head of this, a plain little pillar. Themoon was high now and the tramp was used to seeing in the night. Word byword he could slowly read upon the marble this inscription:

"William Albert, beloved son of the late Thomas Kershaw and his wifeRachel; born in Brickville, August 2, 1862; drowned in the Allegheny Rivernear Pittsburg, July 27, 1877, while heroically endeavouring to save thelife of a child. "

The tramp laughed, and then uttered a sigh. 

"I wonder, " he said, aloud, "what poor bloke it is that's doin' duty for meunder the ground here. "

And at the thought that he owed an excellent posthumous reputation to theunknown who had happened to resemble him fifteen years before, he laughedlouder. Having no one near to share his mirth, he looked up at the amiablemoon, and nodded knowingly thereat, as if to say:

"This is a fine joke we're enjoying between ourselves, isn't it?"

And by and by he remembered that he was being waited for, and he strodefrom the grave and from the cemetery. 

By the railroad the short tramp, having smoked all the refuse tobacco inhis possession, was growing impatient. Already the expected coal-train hadheralded its advent by whistle and puff and roar when his associate hadjoined him. 

"Found out all you wanted to know?" queried the stout little vagabond, starting down the embankment to mount the train. 

"Yep, " answered the tall vagrant, contentedly. 

The small man grasped the iron rod attached to the side of one of themoving coal-cars and swung his foot into the iron stirrup beneath. Hiscompanion mounted the next car in the same way. 

"Are you all right, Kersh?" shouted back the small tramp, standing safeabove the "bumpers. "

"All right, " replied the tall tramp, climbing upon the end of a car. "Butdon't ever call me Kersh any more. After this I'm always Bill the Bum. BillKershaw's dead--" and he added to himself, "and decently buried on the hillover there under the moon. "

XI

UNDER AN AWNING

For ten minutes we had been standing under the awning, driven there at twoo'clock at night by a shower that had arisen suddenly. 

"A pocket umbrella is one of the unsupplied necessities of the age, " saidmy companion. 

"Yes, and the peculiarity of the age is that while such luxuries as thephonograph and the kinetograph multiply day by day, important necessitiesremain unsupplied. "

My friend mused for a time, while he watched the reflection of the electriclight in the little street pools that were agitated by the falling finedrops of rain. 

He looked from the reflection to the light itself, and thus his eyes turnedupward. 

An expression of surprise changed to mirth, and then dropping his glanceuntil it met mine, he said:

"Have you noticed anything peculiar about this awning?"

"No, what is it?"

"Simply that there is no awning. Look up and see. Here are the posts andthere is the framework, but only the sky is above, and we've been gettingrained upon for the past ten minutes in blissful ignorance. "

It was as he said, so we ran to the next awning, which was a fact, not afigment of fancy. 

"That reminds me, " resumed my friend, "of Simpkins. He was a young man whoused to catch cold at the slightest dampness. His being out in the rainwithout an umbrella never failed to result in his remaining in the housefor two or three subsequent days. 

"One night, Simpkins, surprised by an unexpected shower, took refugebeneath the framework of an awning, which framework lacked the awningitself. He waited for an hour, until the shower had passed, and thenjoyously took up again his homeward way, without having observed hismistake. He told me on the next day of his narrow escape from the rain. Ihappened to know that the awning to which he alluded had been removed a fewweeks before. But I did not tell him so until there no longer seemed toexist any likelihood of his catching cold from that wetting. You see, hisimagination had saved him. "

"That tale is singularly reminiscent of those dear old stories about theman who took cold through sitting at a window that was composed of onesolid sheet of glass, so clean that he thought it was no glass at all; andthe men who, awaking in the night, stifling for want of fresh air, brokeopen the door of a bookcase which they took to be a window, and immediatelynoticed a pleasant draught of pure outside air. "

"There is a likeness, which simply goes toward proving the truth of allthree accounts. But the remarkable thing about Simpkins' case is that whenhe once learned that there had been nothing over his head during that rain, he immediately caught cold, although two weeks had passed since the nightof the shower. Wonderful, wasn't it?"

"Astonishing, indeed. "

Silence ensued and we meditated for awhile. Evidently the same thoughtcame simultaneously into the minds of both of us, for while I was mentallycommenting upon the deserted and lonely condition of the city streets attwo o'clock on a rainy night, my friend spoke:

"A man is alone with his conscience, the electric lights, the shadows ofthe houses, and the sound of the rain at a time and place like this, isn't he? Standing as we stand now, under an awning, during a persistentrainfall, at this hour, with no other human being in sight, a man is forthe time upon a desert island. Which reminds me:

"One night, at a later hour than this, when the rain was heavier than this, I was alone under an awning that was smaller than this. Being withoutumbrella and overcoat, I saw at least a quarter of an hour waiting for me. The thought was dismal. 

"Happy idea! I would smoke. I had a cigar in my mouth in an instant. 

"Horrors! I had no matches. 

"The desire to smoke instantly increased tenfold. I puffed despairingly atmy unlit cigar. No miracle occurred to ignite it. I looked longingly at theelectric lights and the gas-lamps in the distance. 

"Like a sailor cast upon an island and straining his eyes on the lookoutfor a ship, I stood there scanning the prospect in search of a man with alight. I was Enoch Arden; the awning was my palm-tree. 

"Ten minutes passed. No craft hove in sight. 

"Suddenly uncertain footsteps were heard. I looked. Some one came that way. It was a squalid-looking personage--a professional beggar, half-drunk. Helanded upon my island, beneath my awning. 

"'For charity's sake, give me a match!' I cried. 

"He looked at me--'sized me up, ' in the technical terminology of his trade. Intelligence began to illumine his countenance. He saw that the opportunityof his life had come. He held out a match. 

"'I'll sell it to you for fifty cents, ' he said, with a grin. 

"I had erred in revealing the depth of my want, the extent of my distress. 

"I compromised by promising to give him a half-dollar if I should succeedin lighting my cigar with his solitary match. We did succeed. He took thefifty and started back for the saloon from whence he had come. 

"Oh, my boy, the irony of fate--that same old oft-quoted irony!

"I hadn't blown three mouthfuls of smoke from that cigar when a friend camealong with a lighted cigar, an umbrella, and a box full of matches. 

"The whole effect of this story lies in the value that fifty centspossessed for me at that time. It was my last fifty cents, and two daysstood between that night and salary day. 

"I had another experience--"

But a night car came in view from around a corner, my friend ran for it, and his third tale remains untold. 

XII

SHANDY'S REVENGE

He was old enough to know better, and a superficial observer might havethought that he did. But a severe and haughty manner in repose is not anyindication of knowledge, nor is a well-kept beard, even when it is turninggray. Melrose Welty, the possessor of these and other ways and featuressymbolical of wisdom, had no higher occupation in life than to sit inclub-houses and cafés, telling of conquests won by him over women, chieflyover soubrettes and chorus girls. 

Of his means of livelihood, no one had certain knowledge. He always dressedwell, but he abode in a lodging-house, to which he never invited any ofhis associates. He affected the society of newspaper men, some of whompronounced him a good fellow until they discovered that he was an ass; andhe never refused an invitation to have a drink. 

When he had you at a table in a quiet corner of a café, or in front ofa bar, or in the lobby of a theatre between the acts, no matter how theconversation began, he would invariably turn it into that realm to whichhis thoughts were confined. 

"I've got a supper on hand to-night after the performance, " he wouldprobably say, "with a blonde in the ---- Company. A lovely girl, too! It'scurious, old man, how I happened to meet her. I've talked to her onlytwice, but I made a hit with her in the first five minutes. I'll tell youhow it was--"

Whereupon, if you were polite, and did not know Welty sufficiently toflee on a pretext, he would tell you how it was, inflicting upon you thewearisome minute details of the most commonplace thing in the world, thebirth and growth of an acquaintance between a man about town and a sillyyoung woman, not fastidious as to who pays for her food and drink as longas the food and drink are adequate. 

If you were a newspaper man, Welty was apt to supplement his story withsomething like this:

"By the way, old fellow, if you have any pull with your dramatic editor, can't you give her a line or two? She hasn't much to do in the piece, butshe does it well, and she's clever. She may get a good part one of thesedays. Have something nice said about her, won't you?"

And if you ever gave another thought to this plea, you determined to usewhatever influence you had with the dramatic editor to this effect, thatthe young woman would have to exhibit very decided cleverness indeed ereshe should have "something nice" said about her in the paper. 

Welty was not wont to retain one divinity on the altar of his conversationlonger than a week. But he did so once. He talked about the same girl everyday for a month. And thereby came his undoing. 

She was a slender little girl who was singing badly a small rôle in acertain comic opera at the time of these occurrences. She had a babyishmanner across the footlights, and she was thought to be a blonde, for shewas wearing a yellow wig over her own short black hair that season. Herfirst name was Emily. 

Welty managed to be introduced to her by thrusting himself upon a littleparty of which she was a member, and in which was one acquaintance of his, at a restaurant one night. He called upon her at her boarding house thenext day, where she received him with some surprise, and left most of theconversation to him. When he visited there again, she caused him to betold that she was out, and this took place a half dozen times. Their realacquaintance never went any further, but an imaginary acquaintance betweenthem, growing from Welty's wish, made great progress in his fancy and inthe stories told by him at his club to groups of men, some of whom doubtedand looked bored, while others believed and grinned and envied. 

It was at the point where Emily had quite forgotten Welty, and Welty'sstories portrayed her as recklessly adoring him and seeking him in cabsat all hours, that Barry McGettigan, a despised young reporter, "doingpolice, " heard one of Welty's accounts of an alleged interview with Emily;and Barry, who had a way of knowing human nature and observing people, suspected. 

Now Barry cherished a deep-rooted grudge against Welty, all the moredangerous because Welty was unaware of it. Its exact cause has never beentorn from Barry's breast. Some have ascribed it to Welty's having mimickedBarry's brogue before a crowd in a saloon one night. Others have laid it tothe following passage of words, which is now a part of the ancient historyof the Nocturnal Club. 

"Spakin' of ancestors, " Barry began, "I'd loike to bet--"

"I'd like to bet, " broke in Welty, "that your own ancestry leads directlyto the Shandy family. "

There was a general laugh, which Barry, whose nose was as flat as anyShandy's could have been but who had never read Sterne, did not understand. 

"What did he mane?" Barry asked a friend. The friend told him to read"Tristram Shandy. " He spent two hours in a public library next day andlearned how his facial peculiarity had been used by Welty to create a laughand incidentally to insult him. 

This he never forgave. And he bided his time. 

Now, having heard Welty boast of being the object of this Emily'sinfatuation, Barry McGettigan deflected his mind from the contemplation ofmurders, infanticides, fires, and other matters of general interest, andgave his best thoughts and skill to investigating this talked-of loveaffair of Welty's. 

He discovered the true situation within three days. He found that Emily wasengaged to be married to a college football player who came to the cityonce a week to see her. 

He borrowed money, made himself very agreeable to Welty, and also gothimself introduced to the football player. The latter was a tall, lithe, heavy-shouldered, brown-faced, thick-knuckled youth, who practiced allkinds of athletic diversions. 

Barry McGettigan sounded the football man in one brief interview one night, between the acts of the comic opera, at the saloon next door. He found ameans of fastening himself upon the football player's esteem. The collegianexpressed a mild desire to see something of police-station life. Barryinvited him to spend an evening with him on duty at Central Station. Thecollegian accepted. Barry appointed a time and named a certain café as ameeting place. 

Then Barry invited Welty to dine with him at the same café on the sameevening at the same hour. By means of his borrowed money, he had lavishedcostly drinks upon Welty of late, and Welty had reason to anticipate adinner worth the accepting. Barry told Welty nothing of the collegian andhe told the collegian nothing more of Welty. 

When the evening came, Barry found Welty awaiting him at the café. The twosat down at a table. The preliminary cocktail had only arrived when inwalked the collegian. Barry saluted him as if the meeting had only occurredby chance. He made the collegian and Welty known to each other by nameonly. And then he ordered dinner. 

When a bottle had been drunk, Barry innocently turned the current of theconversation to women. He spoke modestly of a mythical conquest he hadrecently made. The football player listened without showing much interest. Presently Barry paused. 

Welty took a drink and began:

"No, my boy, " said he to Barry, "you're wrong there. It's like youyoungsters to think you know all about the sex, but the older you grow theless you think you know about them, until you get to my age. "

Barry made no answer, but looked at Welty with becoming deference. 

The football man's eyes were wandering about the café, showing him to beindifferent to the theme of discussion. 

"I know, " continued Welty, "that many more or less writers have said, asyou say, that women must be sought and pursued to be won. They deduce thattheory from the habits of lower animals and of barbarous nations, in whichthe man obtains the woman by chase and force. But it's all a theory, andsimply shows that the learned writers study their books instead of theirfellow men and women. "

The collegian looked restless, as if the conversation had gotten beyond hisdepth. 

Barry remained silent, and with a flattering aspect of great interest inWelty's observations. 

"Now, " went on Welty, striking the table with the bottom of his glass, "I've had a little experience of this sort of thing in my time, and I cansay that in nine cases out of ten, once you've attracted the attention ofyour game, let it alone and it will chase you. That's how to win women. "

The collegian looked bored. 

"Just to illustrate, " said Welty, "I'll tell of a little conquest of myown. I use it because it is the first that comes to my mind, not that I'mgiven to bragging about my success in these matters. I suppose you've seenthe opera at the ---- Theatre?"

The collegian ceased looking bored. Barry McGettigan sat perfectly, unnaturally still. 

"And, " pursued Welty, "you've doubtless noticed the three girls who appearas the queen's maids of honour?"

The collegian looked somewhat concerned. Barry stopped breathing. 

"Well, " continued Welty, "you mayn't believe it, for we've kept it reallyquiet, one of them girls is really dead gone on me. "

The collegian opened his mouth wide, and Barry began to nervously tap hishand upon the table. 

"It's the one, " said Welty, "who wears the big blond wig. Her name's Emi--"

There was the noise of upsetting plates, bottles, and glasses, of a man'sfeet rapping up against the bottom of a table and his head thumping downagainst the floor. There was the sight of an agile youth leaping across anoverturned table and alighting with one foot at each side of the prostrateform of an astonished man, whose gray whiskers were spattered with blood. There was the quick gathering of a crowd, an excited explanation on thepart of the collegian, a slow recovery on the part of the man on the floor, and Barry McGettigan's vengeance was complete. 

For, by one of those incredible coincidences that have the semblance offatality, the football player's fist had reduced Melrose Welty's nose to aflatness which the nose of no imaginable Shandy ever has surpassed. 

XIII

THE WHISTLE

She was the wife of a railway locomotive engineer, and the two lived in thenewly built house to which he had taken her as a bride a year before. 

Many other people in the country railroad town used to laugh at a thingwhich she had once said to a gossiping neighbour:

"I can tell the sound of the whistle on Tom's engine from all otherwhistles. Every afternoon when his train gets to the crossing at theplaning-mill, I hear that whistle, and then I know it's time to get Tom'ssupper. "

The gossips found something humourous in the fact that the engineer's wiferecognized the whistle of her husband's engine and knew by it when to beginto prepare his supper. So are the small manifestations of love and devotionregarded by coarse minds. You frequently observe this in the conduct ofcertain people at the theatre when tender sentiments are uttered upon thestage. 

Perhaps the men were envious of the engineer. He had a prettier wife, they said, when he was not present, than was deserved by a mere freightengineer, very recently elevated from the post of fireman. Perhaps, also, the petty malevolence of the women was due to the wife's superiorcomeliness. Be that as it may, each afternoon at half-past four orthereabouts, when Tom's whistle was blown at the crossing by theplaning-mill, loungers in the grocery store and wives in their kitchenssmiled knowingly and said:

"Time to begin to get Tom's supper, now. "

But the engineer was careless and his wife was disdainful of theirneighbours. She loved the sound of that whistle. In the earliest days oftheir married life it even sent the crimson to her cheeks. The engineercould make it as expressive as music. It began like a sudden glad cry; itdied away lingeringly, tenderly. Virtually it said to one pair of ears:

"My darling, I have come back to you. "

Whenever the engineer pulled the rope for that particular signal, hepictured his wife arising from her work-basket in their little parlour witha thrill of pleasure and affection, and passing out to the kitchen. 

She, likewise, at the signal, made a mental image of Tom, seated in theengine cab, his one hand fixed upon the shining lever, his eyes fixed uponthe glistening tracks ahead. 

At six o'clock, usually, supper was hot, and Tom arrived through the frontgateway, glancing at the flower-bed in the centre of the diminutive grassplot, carrying his dinner-pail, having divested himself of his grimy, greasy blouse and overalls at the great repair shops, where his engine hadalready begun, with much panting, to spend the night. 

In a small railroad town on the main line, one is continually hearinglocomotive whistles. All the inhabitants know that one long moan of thesteam is the signal of the train's swift approach; that two short shrieksof the whistle direct the trainmen to tighten the brakes; that four, givenwhen the train is still, are intended for the flagman, who has gone away tothe rear to warn back the next train, and that they tell him to return tohis own train as it is about to start; that five whistles in successionannounce a wreck and command the immediate attendance of the wreck crew. 

In the town many cheeks blanch when those five long, ominous wails of theescaping steam cleave the air. A husband, a son, a father who has goneforth blithely in the morning, with his dinner-pail full, may be broughtout of the wreck, mangled or dead. And until complete details are knownthere is a tremor in the whole community. Some hearts beat faster, othersseem to stand still. People speak in hushed tones. 

One afternoon, the engineer's wife, observing the altitude of the sun, looked at the clock and saw that the time was a few minutes before five. 

Tom's whistle had not yet blown. 

At five-fifteen came the sound of another whistle. It was prolonged andthen repeated. The engineer's wife stood still and counted. 

Five!

The most docile and apparently cheerful patient in the ---- Asylum for theInsane is a widow, still young, who spends the greater time of each daysewing and humming tunes softly to herself. Every afternoon at abouthalf-past four she assumes a listening attitude, suddenly hears aninaudible whistle, smiles tenderly, starts up and places invisible dishesand impalpable viands upon an imaginary table, and then loses herself in areverie which ends in slumber. 

No striking clock is allowed within her hearing. It was long ago noticedthat the stroke of five or any series of five similar sounds would causeher to moan piteously. 

The people afar in the country town do not laugh now when they talk of Tomand the whistle which was shrieking madly as he and his engine plungeddown the bank together on that day when the huge boulder rolled from thehillside stone quarry and lay upon the tracks, just on this side of thecurve above the town. 

XIV

WHISKERS

The facts about the man we called "Whiskers" linger in my mind, asking tobe recorded, and though they do not make much of a story, I am tempted tounburden myself by putting them on paper. It was mentally noted as a surething by everybody who saw him go into the managing editor's room, to askfor a position on the staff of the paper, that if he should obtain a placeand become a fixture in the office, he would be generally known as Whiskerswithin twenty-four hours after his instalment. 

What tale he told the managing editor no one knew, but every one in theeditorial rooms deduced later that it must have been something a trifle outof the common, for the managing editor, who had gone through the form oftaking the names of three previous applicants that afternoon and tellingthem that he would let them know when a vacancy should occur on the staff, told the man whom we eventually christened Whiskers that he might comearound the next day and write whatever he might choose to in the way ofSunday "specials, " comic verses, or editorial paragraphs, on the chance oftheir being accepted. 

The next day the hairy-faced man took possession of a desk in the roomoccupied by the exchange editor and one of the editorial writers, and beganto grind out "copy. "

He was a slim, figure, with what is commonly denominated a "slight stoop. "His trousers were none too long for his thin legs, his tightly fittingfrock coat, threadbare, shiny, and unduly creased, was hardly of a fit forhis slender body and his long arms. It was his face, however, that mostlyindividualized his appearance. 

The face was pale, the outlines symmetrical, but rather feeble, and thecountenance would have seemed rather lamblike but for the fact that it wasframed with thick, long hair and a luxuriant beard, which caressed hiswaistcoat. 

These made him impressive at first sight. 

On the first day of his presence, he said little to the men with whom heshared his room in the office. On the second day he grew communicativeand talked rather pompously to the exchange editor. He prated of his pastachievements as a newspaper man in other cities. He had a cheerful way oftalking in a voice that was high but not loud. His undaunted manner ofuttering self-praise caused the exchange editor to wink at the editorialwriter. It engendered, too, a small degree of dislike on the part of theseworthies; and the exchange editor made it a point to watch for some of thenew man's work in the paper, that he might be certain whether the new man'sability was equal to the new man's opinion of it. 

The exchange editor found that it was not. The new man had been in theoffice four days before any of his contributions had gone through theprocess of creation, acceptance, and publication. Some verses and somealleged jokes were his first matter printed. They were below mediocrity. The exchange editor ceased to dislike the whiskered man and thereafterregarded him as quite harmless and mildly amusing. 

This view of him was eventually accepted by every one who came to know him, and he was made the object of a good deal of gentle chaffing. 

He earned probably $15 or $20 at space rates, a lamentably small amountfor so intellectual looking a man, but a very large amount considering thequality of work turned out by him. 

Doubtless he would not have made nearly so much had not the managing editorwhispered something in the ears of the assistant editor-in-chief, whoseduty it was to judge of the acceptability of editorial matter offered, theeditor of the Sunday's supplement, and other members of the staff who mighthave occasion to "turn down" the new man's contributions, or to wink at thedeficiencies in his work. 

One day Whiskers, with many apologies and much embarrassment, asked theexchange editor to lend him a quarter, which request having been compliedwith, he put on his much rubbed high hat and hurried from the room. 

"It's funny the old man's hard up so soon, " the exchange editor said to theeditorial writer at the next desk, "It's only two days since pay-day. "

"Where does he sink his money?" asked the editorial writer. "Hissleeping-room costs him only $3 a week, and, eating the way he does, at thecheapest hash-houses, his whole expenses can't be more than $8. No one eversees him spend a cent. He must sink it away in a bank. "

"Hasn't he any relatives?"

"He never spoke of any, and he lives alone. Wotherspoon, who lodges wherehe does, says no one ever comes to see him. "

"He certainly doesn't spend money on clothes. "

"No; and he never drinks at his own expense. "

"He's probably leading a double life, " said the exchange editor, jestingly, as he plunged his scissors into a Western paper, to cut out a poem by JamesWhitcomb Riley. 

Without making many acquaintances, Whiskers, by reason of his hirsutepeculiarity, became known throughout the building, from the business officeon the ground floor to the composing-room on the top. When he went into thelatter one day and passed down the long aisle between the long row of casesand type-setting machines, with a corrected proof in his hand, a certainprinter, who was "setting" up a clothing-house advertisement, could notresist the temptation to give labial imitation of the blowing of wind. Thebygone joke concerning whiskers and the wind was then current, and a scoreof compositors took up the whistle, so that all varieties of breeze weresoon being simulated simultaneously. Whiskers coloured sightly, but, save adignified straightening of his shoulders, he showed no other sign that hewas conscious of the rude allusion to his copious beard. 

Whiskers chose Tuesday for his day off. 

It was on a certain Tuesday evening that one of the reporters came into theexchange editor's room and casually remarked:

"I saw your anti-shaving friend, who sits at that desk, riding out to thesuburbs on a car to-day. He was all crushed up and carried a bouquet ofroses. "

"That settles it, " cried the editorial writer to the exchange editor, withmock jubilation. "There can be no doubt the old man was leading a doublelife. The bouquet means a woman in the case. "

"And his money goes for flowers and presents, " added the exchange editor. 

"Some of it, of course, " went on the editorial writer, "and the rest he'ssaving to get married on. Who'd have thought it at his age?"

"Why, he's not over forty. It's only his whiskers that make him look old. One can easily detect a sentimental vein in his composition. "

"That accounts for his fits of abstraction, too. So he's found favour insome fair one's eyes. I wonder what she's like. "

"Young and pretty, I'll bet, " said the exchange editor. "He's impressedher by his dignified aspect. No doubt she thinks he's nothing less than aneditor-in-chief. "

The next day Whiskers was taciturn, as his office associates now recalledthat he was wont to be after "his day off. " Doubtless his thoughts dweltupon his visits to his divinity. He did not respond to their efforts toinvolve him in conversation. 

He was observed upon his next day off to take a car for the suburbs andto have a bouquet in his hand and a package under his arm. The theoryoriginated by the editorial writer had general acceptance. It was passedfrom man to man in the office. 

"Have you heard about the queer old duck with the whiskers, who writes inthe exchange room? He's engaged to a young and pretty girl up-town, andeats at fifteen-cent soup-shops so that he can buy her flowers and wine andthings. "

"What! Old Whiskers in love! That's a good one!"

One day while Whiskers' pen was busily gliding across the paper, theexchange editor broke the silence by asking him, in a careless tone:

"How was she, yesterday, Mr. Croydon?"

Whiskers looked up almost quickly, an expression of almost pained surpriseon his face. 

"Who?" he inquired. 

"Ah, you thought because you didn't tell us, it wouldn't out. But you'vebeen caught. I mean the lady to whom you take roses every week, of course. "

Whiskers simply stared at the exchange editor, as if quite bewildered. 

"Oh, pardon me, " said the exchange editor, somewhat abashed. "I didn't meanto offend you. One's affairs of the heart are sacred, I know. But we allguy each other about each other's amours here. We're hardened to that sortof pleasantry. "

A look of enlightenment, a blush, a deep sigh, and an "Oh, I'm notoffended, " were the only manifestations made by Whiskers after the exchangeeditor's apology. 

It was inferred from his manner that he did not wish to make confidences orreceive jests about his love-affairs. 

A time came when Whiskers seemed to have something constantly on his mind. Not content with one day's vacation each week, he would go off for periodsof three or four hours on other days. 

"Do you notice how queerly the old man behaves?" said the editorial writerto the exchange editor thereupon. "Things are coming to a crisis. "

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, the wedding, of course. "

This inference received a show of confirmation afterward when Whiskers hada private interview with the managing editor, received an order on thecashier for all the money due him, and for a part of the managing editor'ssalary as a loan, and quietly said to the exchange editor that he would beaway for a week or so. The editorial writer happened to be at the cashier'swindow when Whiskers had his order cashed. So when the editorial writerand the exchange editor compared notes a few minutes later, the lattercomplimented the former upon the correctness of his prediction thatWhiskers' marriage was imminent. 

"He didn't invite us, " said the exchange editor, "but then I suppose theaffair is to be a very quiet one, and we can't take offence at that. Theold man's not a bad lot, by any means. Let's do something to please himand to flatter his bride. What do you say to raising a fund to buy them apresent, in the name of the staff?"

"I'm in for it, " said the editorial writer, producing a half-dollar. 

They canvassed the office and found everybody willing to contribute. Themanaging editor and the assistant editor-in-chief had gone home, but asthey had shown kindness to Whiskers, and were, in fact, the only two men onthe staff who knew anything about his private affairs, the exchange editortook his chances and put in a dollar for each of them. 

"And now, what shall we get--and where shall we send it?" said the exchangeeditor. 

"Not to his lodging-house, certainly. He'll probably be married at theresidence of his bride's parents, as the notices say. We'd better get itquick, and rush it up there--wherever that is--somewhere up-town. "

"But say, " interposed the city editor, who was present at thisconsultation, "maybe the ceremony has already come off. I saw the old mangiving in a notice for advertisement across the counter at the businessoffice an hour ago. "

"Well, we may be able to learn from that where the bride lives, anyhow, and some one can go there and find out something definite about the happypair's present and future whereabouts, " suggested the editorial writer. 

"That's so, " said the city editor. "The notice is in the composing-room bythis time. I'll run up and find it. "

The city editor left the editorial writer and the exchange editor alonetogether in the room, each sitting at their own desk. 

"What shall we get with this money?" queried the former, touching the billsand silver dumped upon his desk. 

"Something to please the woman. That'll give Whiskers the most pleasure. He evidently loves her deeply. These constant visits and gifts speak thegreatest devotion. "

"Of course, but what shall it be?"

The two were battling with this question when the city editor returned. Hecame in and said quietly:

"I found the notice. At least, I suppose this is it. What is the old man'sfull name?"

"Horace W. Croydon. "

"This is it, then, " said the city editor, standing with his back to thedoor. "The notice reads: 'On March 3d, at the Arlington Hospital forIncurables, Rachel, widow of the late Horace W. Croydon, Sr. , in her 59thyear. Funeral services at the residence of Charles--'"

"Why, " interrupted the editorial writer, in a hushed voice, "that is adeath notice. "

"His mother, " said the exchange editor. "The Hospital for Incurables--thatis where the flowers went. "

The editorial writer's glance dropped to the desk, where the money lay forthe intended gift. The exchange editor sat perfectly still, gazing straightin front of him. The city editor walked softly to the window and lookedout. 

XV

THE BAD BREAK OF TOBIT MCSTENGER

"I'm a bad man, " said Tobit McStenger, after three glasses of whiskey. And he was. In making the declaration, he echoed the expression of thecommunity. 

He looked it. Not only in the sneering mouth above the half-formed chin, and in the lowering eyes of undecided colour beneath the receding brow, butalso in every shiftless attitude and movement of his great gaunt body, andeven in the torn coat and shapeless felt hat--both once black, but both nowa dirty gray--his aspect proclaimed him the preeminent rowdy of his town. 

When out of jail he was engaged in oyster opening at Couch's saloon, orselling fresh fish, caught in the river, or vagrancy in the streets ofBrickville. He lived in a log house containing two rooms, by Muddy Creek, an intermittent stream that flowed--sometimes--through a corner of thetown. He was a widower and had a son nine years old, little Tobe, whowent to school occasionally, but gave most of his day to carrying a paperflour-sack around the town and begging cold victuals, in obedience topaternal commands, and throwing stones at other boys, who called him"Patches, " a nickname descended from his father. 

Little Tobe's face was always black, from the dust of the bituminous coalthat he was compelled to steal at night from the railroad companies' yard. His attire was in miniature what his father's was in the large, as hischaracter was in embryo what the elder Tobit's was in complete development. With long, entangled hair, a thin, crafty face, and stealthy eyes, he was atrue type of malevolent gamin, all the more uncanny for the crudity due tohis semirustic environments. 

Such were Tobit and little Tobe, the most conspicuous of the village"characters" of Brickville, a Pennsylvania town deriving sustenance fromits brick-kiln, its railroads, and its contiguous farming interests. 

It was town talk that Tobit McStenger was a hard father; drunk or sober, hechastised little Tobe upon the slightest occasion. 

"But, " said Tobit McStenger, after admitting his severity as a parentbefore the bar in Couch's saloon, "let any one else lay a finger on thatkid! Just let 'em! They'll find out, jail or no jail, I'm ugly!" And hewent on to repeat for the thousandth time that when he was ugly he was abad man. 

Whereupon the other loungers in Couch's saloon, "Honesty Tom Yerkes, " thehauler, Sam Hatch, the bill-poster, and the rest, agreed that a man'smanner of governing his household was his own business. 

Tobit McStenger had his word to say upon all village topics. When inCouch's saloon one night he learned that the school directors had decidedto take the primary school from the tutorship of a woman and to put a manover it as teacher, Tobit pricked up his ears and had many words to say. Hewas working at the time, and he spoke in loud, coarse tones, as he wieldedhis oyster-knife, having for an audience the usual dozen barroom tarriers. 

"I know what that means, " cried Tobit McStenger. "It means they ain'tsatisfied with having our children ruled with kindness. It means MissWiggins, who's kep' a good school, which I know all about, fer my son's oneof her scholars--it means she don't use the rod enough. They've made uptheir minds to control the kids by force, and they went and hired a man tolick book learnin' into 'em. Who is the feller, anyway?"

"Pap" Buckwalder read the answer to Tobit's question from the currentnumber of the Brickville _Weekly Gazette_. 

"The new teacher is Aubrey Pilling, the adopted son of farmer JosiahPilling, of Blair Township. He has taught the school of that township forthree winters, and is a graduate of the Brickville Academy. "

Sam Hatch, standing by the stove, remembered him. 

"Why, that's the backward fellow, " said he, "that the girls used to guy. His hair and eyebrows is as white as tow, and when he'd blush his faceused to turn pink. He always walked in from the country, four miles, everymorning to school and back again at night. There ain't much use getting himtake a woman's place. He's about the same as a woman hisself. He hardlytalks above a whisper, and he's afraid to look a girl in the face. "

"Ain't he the boy Josiah Pilling took out o' the Orphans' Home, here abouttwenty years ago?" queried Pap Buckwalder. 

"Yep, " replied Hatch. "I heerd somethin' about that when he went to the'cademy here. He was took out of a home by a farmer, who gave him his name'cause the boy didn't know his own, nor no one else did, and so he wasbrought up on the farm. "

"So that's the sort o' people they've put the education of our childreninto the hands uv!" exclaimed Tobit McStenger. "Well, all I got to say is, let him keep his hands off my boy Tobe, or he'll find out the kind of atough customer I am. "

Tobit McStenger, in the few weeks immediately following this change in theprimary school, remained continuously industrious, to the surprise of allwho knew him. As Tobit was an expeditious oyster-opener, Tony Couch, the saloon-keeper who employed him, was much rejoiced. Tobit toiled atoyster-opening and little Tobe became regular in his attendance at school. 

The new school-teacher, a broad, awkward, bashful youth, painfully blond, came to town and accomplished that for which he had been called. He broughtdiscipline to the primary school, an achievement none easier for the factthat many of his pupils were in their teens, and incidentally he suspendedTobit McStenger the younger. 

When little Tobe, glad of the enforced return to the liberties of hisbegging days, brought home his soiled first reader and told his father thatthe teacher had sent him from school with orders not to return until hecould learn to keep his face clean, the father became swollen with anoverflowing wrath. He swore frightfully, and started off, vowing thathe would "show the white-faced foundling how to treat decent people'schildren. "

And he had two tall drinks of whiskey put on the slate against him atCouch's and proceeded to carry out his threat. 

It was a cold day in December. Pilling, the teacher, sat near the stove inthe little square school-room, listening to the irrepressible hum of hisrestless pupils and the predominating monotonous sound of a small girl'svoice reciting multiplication tables. 

"Three times three are nine, " she whined, drawlingly; "three times four aretwelve, three times--"

The little girl with the braided hair stopped short. A loud knock fell uponthe door. 

A boy looked through the window, evidently saw the one who had knocked, then cast a curious look at Pilling, the teacher. Pilling observed this, and asked the boy:

"Who is it?"

After a moment of hesitation, the boy replied:

"It's old Patchy--I mean, Tobe McStenger's father. "

Pilling, whose bashfulness was manifest only in the presence of women, hadthe utmost calmness before his pupils. He walked quietly to the door andlocked it. 

McStenger, furious without, heard the sound of the bolt being thrust intoplace, whereupon he began to kick at the door. Pilling turned the chairfacing his class and told the girl with the braided hair to continue. 

"Three times five are fifteen, three times six--"

A crashing sound was heard. McStenger had broken a window. Pilling lookedaround, as if seeking some impromptu weapon. While he was doing so, McStenger broke another window-pane with a club. Then McStenger went away. 

That evening, Pilling had Tobit McStenger arrested for malicious mischief. The oyster-opener was held pending trial until January court. He was thensentenced to thirty days more in the county jail. Meanwhile little Tobemounted a freight-train one day to steal a ride, and Brickville has notseen or heard of him since. He enlisted in the great army of vagabonds, doubtless. Perhaps some city swallowed him. 

Tobit McStenger felt at home in jail. It was not a bad place of residenceduring the coldest months. But for one defect, jail life would have beenquite enviable; it forced upon him abstinence from alcoholic liquor. 

Every period of thirty days has its termination, and Tobit McStenger becamea free man. He returned to his old life, opening oysters during part ofthe time, idling and drinking during the other part. He made no attempt tospoil the peace of Aubrey Pilling, and he only laughed when he heard of thedisappearance of Little Tobe. 

Pilling, by his success in conducting the primary school, had won theesteem of Brickville's citizens. His timidity had diminished, or, rather, it had been discovered to be merely quietness, self-communion, insteadof timidity. He had shown himself less prudish than he had been thought. Occasionally he drank whiskey or beer, which was looked upon as a good signin a man of his kind. 

Tobit McStenger did not know this. He invariably evaded mention of Pilling. People wondered what would happen when the two should meet. For Tobit wasknown to be revengeful, and he was now, more than ever, in speech and look, a bad man. 

The expected and yet the unexpected happened one night in Couch'ssaloon, --the scene of most of the eventful incidents in Tobit McStenger'slife since he had dawned upon Brickville. Tobit and Honesty Yerkes, PapBuckwalder, old Tony Couch himself, and half a score others were making aconversational hubbub before the bar. 

In walked Aubrey Pilling. He came quietly to an unoccupied spot at theend of the bar and ordered a glass of beer, without looking at theother drinkers. Some one nudged Tobit McStenger and pointed toward thewhite-haired young pedagogue. The noise of talk broke off abruptly. 

McStenger placed his back against the bar, resting his elbows upon it, andturned a scornful gaze toward Pilling, who had taken one draught from hisglass of beer. 

"Say, Tony, " began McStenger, in his big, growling voice, "who's yourladylike customer? Oh, it's him, is it? Well, he needn't be skeered of me. I don't mix up with folks o' his sort. You see, people could only expect tobe insulted through their children by fellows of his birth--"

"Hush, Mack!" whispered Tony Couch, whose sense of deportment advised himthat McStenger was treading forbidden ground. Pilling had not looked up. Hestood quietly at some distance from the others, intent upon his glass ofbeer on the bar before him, perfectly still. 

But McStenger went on, more loudly than before:

"By fellows, as I said, who came from orphans' homes, and never knew whotheir parents was, and whose mothers may have been God knows what--"

Pilling, without turning, had lifted his glass. With an easy motion he hadtossed its remaining contents of beer into the face of Tobit McStenger. Thelatter drew back from the splash of the liquid as if stung. Then, with aloud cry of rage, he leaped toward Pilling. The teacher turned and facedhim. 

McStenger clapped one huge hand against Pilling's neck, and in an instantthereafter his long, bony fingers were pressing upon the teacher's throat, in what had the looks of a fatal clutch. But Pilling, with both his arms, violently forced McStenger from him. The teacher took breath and McStengerreached for a whiskey decanter. The others in the saloon looked on witheager interest, fearing to come between such formidable combatants. TonyCouch ran out in search of the town's only policeman. McStenger advancedtoward the teacher. 

Pilling was farm bred. He had chopped down trees with his right arm alonein his time. Pilling thrust forth his arm with unexpected suddenness. Uponthe floor, six feet behind his antagonist, was a cuspidor with jaggededges. 

And Tobit McStenger slept with his fathers. 

The jury acquitted the teacher on the plea of self-defense. The loungersin Couch's saloon judiciously said that it was a very bad break for TobitMcStenger to have made. 

XVI

THE SCARS

My friend the tune-maker has often unintentionally amused his acquaintancesby the gravity with which he attributes significance to the most trivialoccurrences. 

He turns the most thoughtless speeches, uttered in jest, into prophecies. 

"Very well, " he used to say to us at a café table, "you may laugh. But it'sastonishing how things turn out sometimes. "

"As for instance?" some one would inquire. 

"Never mind. But I could give an instance if I wished to do so. "

One evening, over a third bottle, he grew unusually communicative. 

"Just to illustrate how things happen, " he began, speaking so as to beaudible above the din of the café to the rest of us around the table, "I'lltell you about a man I know. One February morning, about eight years ago, he was hurrying to catch a train. There was ice on the sidewalks and peoplehad to walk cautiously or ride. As he was turning a corner he saw by aclock that he had only five minutes in which to reach the station, threeblocks away. An instant later he saw a shapely figure in soft furs suddenlydescribe a forward movement and drop in a heap to the sidewalk, ten feetin front of him. A melodious light soprano scream arose from the heap. A divinely turned ankle in a quite human black stocking was momentarilyvisible. He was by the side of the mass of furs and skirts in three steps. 

"He caught the pretty girl under the arms and elevated her to a standingposture. She recovered her breath and her self-possession promptly andglowed upon him with the brightest of smiles. He had never before seen her. 

"'Oh, thank you, ' she said; adding, with the unconscious exaggeration of aschoolgirl, 'You've saved my life. '

"Realizing the absurdity of this speech, she blushed. Whereupon herrescuer, feeling that the situation warranted him in turning the matter tojest, replied:

"'That being the case, according to the rules of romance, I ought to marryyou, like all the men who rescue the heroines in stories. '

"'Oh, ' she answered, quickly, 'this isn't in a novel; it's real life. '

"'Yes; besides which, I see by the clock over there I have only fourminutes in which to catch a train. Good morning. '

"And he ran off without taking a second glance at her. He arrived at thestation in due time. 

"Three years after that he married the most charming woman in the world, after an acquaintance of only six months. 

"This woman is as beautiful as she is amiable. Nature has not been guiltyof a single defect in her construction. A tiny scar upon her knee is allthe more noticeable because of its solitude. 

"It is a peculiarity of scars that each has a history. The history of thisone has thus far, for no adequate reason, remained a family secret. 

"Another noteworthy fact about scars is that they may be, and in many casesthey are, useful for purposes of identification. 

"Of course you anticipate the dramatic climax of my story, gentlemen. Nevertheless, let me give it, for the sake of completeness, in the form ofa dialogue between the husband and the wife. 

"'How came the wound there?'

"'Oh, I fell against the corner of a paving-stone one icy morning threeyears ago. '

"'And to think that I was not there to help you up!'

"'True; but another young man served the purpose, and I'm afraid he missed atrain on my account. '

"'What! It wasn't on the corner of ---- and ---- Streets?'

"'It was just there. How did you know?'

"So you see, as they completely proved by comparing recollections, thelittle speech uttered in merriment had been prophetic, a fact that theyprobably would never have learned had it not been for the identifyingservice of the scar. "

"But if this has been kept a family secret, how do you happen to know it, and by what right do you divulge it?" one of us asked. 

The ballad composer blushed and clouded his face with tobacco smoke; andthen it recurred to us all that "the most charming woman in the world" ishis wife. 

XVII

"LA GITANA"

This is not an attempt to palliate the foolishness of Billy Folsom. It isnot an essay in the emotional or the pathetic. You may pity him or reproachhim, if you like, but my purpose is not to evoke any feeling toward oropinion of him. I do not seek to play upon your sympathies or to put youinto a mood, or to delineate a character. I simply tell the story of howcertain critical points in a man's life were accompanied by music; how adestiny was affected by a tune. Anything aside from mere narrative in thisaccount will be incidental and accidental. The manifestations of love, of wounded vanity, of recklessness; of even the death itself, are heresubsidiary in interest to the train of circumstance. He who underwent themis not the hero of the recital; she who caused them is not the heroine. Theheroine is a melody, the waltz tune of "La Gitana. "

Everybody remembers when the tune was regnant. Its notes leaped gaily fromthe strings of every theatre orchestra; soubrettes in fluffy raiment andsilk stockings yelled it singly and in chorus; hand-organs blared it forth;dancers kicked up their toes to it; it monopolized the atmosphere for itsdwelling-place; it was everywhere. 

Until one night, however, it did not touch the ear of Billy Folsom. He hadstayed late in the country, under the delusion that he was hunting. It seems there are a few shootable things yet in certain parts ofPennsylvania, and Folsom had the time and money to linger in search ofthem. He came back to town in fine, exhilarating November weather, and onone of these evenings when the joy of living is keenest, he and I strolledwith the crowd. Why I strolled with Folsom I do not know, for he was not aman of ideas. He was even so bad as to be vain of his personal appearance, especially upon having resumed the dress of the city after months ofouting. 

We passed one of these theatres whose stages are near the street. A musicalfarce was current there. From an open window came the tune, waylaying us aswe walked. The orchestra was playing it fortissimo. You could hear it abovethe footfalls, the laughter, and the conversation of the promenaders. 

Folsom stopped. "Listen to that. "

"Yes, 'La Gitana. ' It's all around. It's a catchy thing, and suits thisintoxicating weather. "

"It goes to the spot. Let's go inside. What's the play?"

He turned at once toward the main entrance of the theatre. 

"A farce called 'Three Cheers and a Tiger, '--a Hoyt sort of a piece. Thelittle Tyrrell is doing her tambourine dance to the music. "

"Never heard of the lady, " he said to me. And then to the youth on theother side of the box-office window, "Have you any seats left in the frontrow?"

Folsom always asked for seats in the front row. This time it was fatal. Aswe walked up the aisle, Folsom ahead, the little Tyrrell shot one casualglance of her gray eyes at him, as almost any dancer would have done at afront row newcomer entering while she was on the stage. In the next instanther eyes were following her toe in its swift flight upward to the centreof the tambourine that her hand brought downward to meet it. But the oneglance across the footlights had been productive. Folsom sat staring overthe heads of the musicians, his gaze fastened upon the little Tyrrell, whowas leaping about on the stage to the tune of "La Gitana. " His lips openedslightly and remained so. His eyes feasted upon the flying dancer in therippling blond wig, his ears drank in the buoyant notes. 

It is well known that power lies in a saltatorial ensemble of white laceskirts, pale blue hose, lustrous naked arms, undulating bodice, magneticeyes, flying hair, and an unchanging smile, to focus the perceptions of aman, to absorb his consciousness, aided by a tune which seems to close outfrom him all the rest of the world. 

And there, while this plump little girl danced and the frivolous, stupidcrowd looked eagerly on, from all parts of the overheated theatre, beganthe tragedy of Billy Folsom. 

He gazed in rapture, and when she had finished and stood panting andkissing her hands in response to applause, he heaved an eloquent sigh. 

"I'd like to meet that girl, " he whispered to me, assuming a tone ofcarelessness. 

Thereafter he kept his eye fixed upon the wings until she reappeared. Andthe rest of the performance interested him only when she was in view. 

I knew the symptoms, but I did not think the malady would become chronic. 

He managed to have himself introduced to her a week later in New York byTed Clarke, the artist, who made newspaper sketches of her in some of herdances. Folsom saw her going up the steps to an elevated railway station. He ran after her, in order to be near her. He followed her into a car, where Ted Clarke, recognizing her, rose to give her his seat. She rewardedthe artist by opening a conversation with him, and Folsom availed himselfof his acquaintance with Clarke to salute the latter with surprisingcordiality. She looked a few years older and less girlish without her blondwig but she was still quite pretty in brown hair. She treated Folsom withher wonted offhand amiability. He left the train when she left it, andhe walked a block with her. With pardonable shrewdness she inspected hisvisage, attire, and manner, for indications of his pecuniary and socialstanding, while he was indulging in silly commonplaces. When they parted atthe quiet hotel where she lived she said lightly:

"Come and see me sometime. "

To her surprise, perhaps, he came the next day, preceded by several dozenroses and a few pounds of bonbons. 

Every night thereafter he was at the theatre where she was appearing, watching her dance from the front row or from the lobby, agitated withmingled pleasure and jealousy when she received loud applause, angry at theaudience when the plaudits were not enthusiastic. When their acquaintancewas two weeks old, she allowed him to wait for her at the stage door, andat last he was permitted to take her to supper. 

There was a second supper, at which four composed the party. We had a roomto ourselves, with a piano in the corner. The event lasted long, and nearthe end, while the other soubrette played the tune on the piano, and Folsomkept time by clinking the champagne glass against the bottle, the littleTyrrell, continually laughing, did her skirt dance, "La Gitana. "

Thus with that waltz tune ever sounding in his ears, he fell in love withher; strangely enough, really in love. She, having her own affairs to mind, gave him no thought when he was not with her, and when they were togethershe deemed him quite a good-natured, bearable fellow, as long as he did notbore her. 

He made several declarations of love to her. She smiled at them, and said, "You're like the rest; you'll get over it. Meanwhile, don't look like that;be cheerful. " At certain times, when circumstances were auspicious, whenthere was night and electric light and a starry sky with a moon in it, shewas half-sentimental, but such moods were only superficial and short-lived, and she invariably brought an end to them with flippant laughter or somematter-of-fact speech that came with a shock to Billy, although it did notcool his adoration. 

Billy became quite gloomy. He was the veritable sighing lover. Although fora month he was admittedly the chief of her admirers and saw her every day, he seemed to make no progress toward securing a hospitable reception forand a response to his love. 

One day, as they were walking together on Broadway, she said:

"You're always in the dumps nowadays. Really you must not be that way. Doleful people make me tired. "

And thereafter Billy, possessed by a horrible fear that his mournfuldemeanour might cause his banishment from her, kept making desperateefforts to be lively, which were a dismal failure. It was ludicrous. Thegayer he affected to be, the more emphatic was his manifest depression. Soshe wearied of his company. One day he called at her hotel, and, as was hiscustom, went immediately to her sitting-room without sending in his card. Before he knocked at the door, he heard the notes of her piano; some onewas playing the air of "La Gitana" with one finger. After two or threebars, the instrument was silent. Then a man's voice was heard. Billyknocked angrily. Miss Tyrrell opened the door, looked annoyed when she sawhim, and introduced him to the tenor of a comic opera company of which sherecently had been engaged as leading soubrette. Billy's call was a shortone. 

At eight o'clock that evening he sent this note to her from the café wherehe was dining:

"Will be at stage door with carriage at eleven, as before. "

He was there at eleven. So was the tenor. The little Tyrrell came out andlooked from one to the other. Billy pointed to his waiting carriage. Thedancer took the tenor's arm and said:

"I'm sorry I can't accept your invitation, Mr. Folsom. Really I'm very muchobliged to you, but I have an engagement. "

She went off with the tenor, and Billy went off with the cab and madehimself drunker than he had ever been in his life. At dawn his feet wereseen protruding from the window of a coupé that was being driven upBroadway, and he was bawling forth, as best he could, the tune which hadserved indirectly to bring the little Tyrrell into his life. 

After that night, it was the old story, a woman ridding herself of a manfor whom she had never cared, and who indeed was not worth caring for. Butthe operation was just as hard upon Folsom as if he had been. You know thestages of the process. She began by being not at home or just about to goout. He wrote pleading notes to her, in boyish phraseology, and she laughedover these with the tenor. He made the breaking off the more painful bygoing nightly to see her dance that fatal melody. He watched her from afarupon the street, and almost invariably saw the tenor by her side. He drankcontinually, and he begged Ted Clarke to tell her, in a casual way, thathe was going to the dogs on account of her treatment of him. Whereupon shelaughed and then looked scornful, saying: "If he's fool enough to drinkhimself to death because a woman didn't happen to fall in love with him, the sooner he finishes the work the better. I have no use for such a man. "

No one has, and I told Billy so. But he kept up his pace toward the goal ofconfirmed drunkenness. He ceased his attendance at the theatre where shedanced, only after he learned that the tenor had married her. But thatdance of hers had become a part of his life. Its accompanying tune wasnow as necessary to his aural sensibilities as food to his stomach. Hetherefore spent his evenings going to theatres and concert-halls where "LaGitana" was likely to be sung or played. He rarely sought in vain. Themelody was to be found serving some purpose or other at almost everytheatre that winter. It was the "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" of its time. 

Some men who drink themselves to death require years and wit to completethe task. Others save time by catching pneumonia through exposure due todrink. Billy Folsom was one of the pneumonia class. He "slept off" theeffects of a long lark in an area-way belonging to a total stranger. Apoliceman took him to his lodgings by way of the station house, and a daylater his landlord sent for a doctor. Five days after that I went over tosee him. He was in bed, and one of his friends, a man of his own kind, butof stronger fibre, was keeping him company. Billy told us how it had comeabout:

"I wouldn't have gone on that racket if it hadn't been for one thing. I'dmade up my mind to turn over a new leaf, and I was walking along full ofplans for reformation. Suddenly I heard the sound of a banjo, coming froman up-stairs window, playing a certain tune I've got somewhat attached to. I saw the place was a kind of a dive and I went in. I got the banjo-playerto strum the piece over again, and I bought drinks for the crowd. Then Imade him play once more, and there were other rounds of drinks, and thelast I remember is that I was waltzing around the place to that air. Twodays after that the officer found me trespassing on some one's propertyby sleeping on it. I dropped my overcoat and hat somewhere, and it seemedthere must have been a draft around, for I caught this cold. "

I told Folsom to stop talking, as he was manifestly much weaker than he orhis friend supposed him to be. There ensued a few seconds of silence. Aloud noise broke upon the stillness with a shocking suddenness. It was theclamour of a band-piano in the street beneath Folsom's window, and of allthe tunes in the world the tune that it shrieked out was "La Gitana. " Ilooked at Folsom. 

He rose in his bed and, clenching his teeth, he propelled through theirinterstices the word:

"Damn!"

He remained sitting for a time, his hair tumbled about, his eyes wide openbut expressive of meditation as the notes continued to be thumped upward bythe turbulent instrument. Presently he said, in a husky voice:

"How that thing pursues me! It's like a fiend. It has no let-up. It followsme even into the next world. "

He sat for a moment more, intently listening. Then, with a quick, peevishsigh, he fell back from weakness. We by his side did not know it at theinstant, but we discovered in a short time what had taken place when hishead had touched the pillow, for he remained so still. 

And that was the last of Billy Folsom, and up from the murmuring streetbelow came the notes of the band-piano playing "La Gitana. "

XVIII

TRANSITION

Three of us sat upon an upper deck, sailing to an island. The day wassunlit, the wind was gentle, and the faintest ripple passed over the sea. 

"Do you see the tremulous old man sitting over there by the pilot-houseabsorbing the sunshine? He reminds me of another old man, one whom Iwatched for six years, while he faded and died. He never knew me, but hewalked by my house daily and I walked by his. It was an interesting study. The conclusion of the process was so inevitable. The time came when he didnot pass my house. Then he took the sunlight in a bow-window on the secondfloor of his residence. So closely had I watched his decadence during thesix years that I was able to say to myself one morning, 'There will becrape on his door before the day is out. ' And so there was. "

The bon-vivant laughed rather mechanically, but the other, he who makesverses so dainty that the world does not heed them, smiled softly andsympathetically to me and said:

"You are right. Nothing is so fascinating as the study of a progress--adevelopment or a decline. The inevitability of the end makes it moreengrossing, for it relieves it of the undue eagerness of curiosity, thefeverishness of uncertainty. "

"Well, I am content rather to live than to contemplate life, " said thebon-vivant. "It's true I have given myself up to observing anxiously suchan advancement as you describe--a vulgar one you will say. When I wasa very young man I was a very thin man. I determined to amplify mydimensions. I followed with careful interest my daily increase toward mypresent--let us not say obesity, but call it portliness. "

"You are inclined to be easy upon yourself, " I commented. 

"Indeed I am--in all matters. "

After a pause the verse-maker, throwing away his cigarette, took up againthe theme that I had introduced. 

"Yes, it is an engaging occupation to note any progression, even when it istoward a fatal or a horrible culmination. But when it is to some beautifuland happy outcome, this advancement is an ineffably charming spectacle. Such it is when it is the unfolding of a flower or the filling out of apoetic thought. 

"But no growth nor transformation in the material world is more entrancingto observe than that by which a young girl becomes a lovely woman. 

"This transition seems to be sudden. It is not so. It is rapid, perhaps, aslife goes, but each stage is distinctly marked. All men have not time towatch the change, however, and so most men awaken to its occurrence onlywhen it is completed. Such was the case of the young and lowborn lover ofConsuelo in George Sand's romance. Do you remember that incomparable scenein which he suddenly begins to notice that some feature of Consuelo ishandsome, and, with surprise, calls her attention to its comeliness? She, equally astonished and delighted, joins him in the visual examination ofher charms, and the two pass from one attraction to the other, finallycompleting the discovery that she is a beautiful woman. 

"The Italian gamin was not the sort of man to have anticipated thistransfiguration and to have watched its stages. 

"You may argue that his delight at suddenly opening his eyes tothe finished work was greater than would have been his pleasure atcontemplating the alteration in process. Doubtless his was. As to whetheryours would be in such a case, depends upon your temperament. 

"I have experienced both of these pleasures. Perhaps it may be due tocertain special circumstances that I cherish the memory of the more lastingdelight, even though it was tempered by occasional doubts as to the end, more tenderly than I do the more sudden and keen awakening. 

"There is a woman who first came under my observations when she wasthirteen years old. She was then agreeable enough to the eye, more byreason of the gentleness of her expression than for any noteworthyattractions of face and figure. Her face, indeed, was plain anduninteresting; her figure unformed and too slim. Her hair, however, wascharming, being soft and extremely light in colour. She seemed awkward, too, and timid, through fear of offending or making a bad impression. 

"For a reason I was particularly interested in her. I knew, young as I thenwas, that plain girls, in many cases, develop into handsome women. 

"At fourteen her hair showed indications of changing its tint. Its tendencywas unmistakably toward brown. This was temporarily unfavourable, but abrightening of the blue eyes and a newly acquired poise of the head, with astep toward self-confidence in manner, were compensating alterations. 

"At fifteen there came an emancipation of mind and speech from schoolgirlhabits. A defensive assumption of impertinent reserve, varied by fitsof superficial garrulity, gave way to real thoughtfulness, to naturalamiability. Then came, too, an emboldenment of the facial outline, aconstancy to the colour of the cheeks, a certainty of gait, and the firstperceptible roundness of contour beneath the neck. 

"At sixteen she had adorable hands, and she could wear short sleeves withimpunity. A rational, unforced, and coherent vivacity had now revealeditself as a characteristic of her mode and conversation. Her ankles hadlong before that grown too sightly to be exhibited. Such is so-calledcivilization! Her hair seemed to darken before one's eyes. The oval of herface attracted the attention of more than one of my artist friends. 

"At seventeen she had learned what styles of attire, what arrangements ofher hair, were best suited to display effectively her comeliness. 

"This was one of the greatest steps of all. 

"The simplest draperies, she found, the least complicated headgear, weremost advantageous to her appearance. 

"A taste for reading the most ideal and artistic of books, as well as herliking for poetry, the theatre, music, and pictures had implanted thatexalted something in her face which cannot be otherwise acquired. 

"When she was eighteen people on the street turned to look at her as shepassed. 

"At nineteen her figure was unsurpassable. Indeed, I think there cannot bea more beautiful and charming woman in America. She is now twenty. 

"It was my privilege to view closely the bursting of this bud into bloom. "

The fin de siècle versewright became silent and lighted a fresh cigarette. 

"Will you permit me to ask, " said I, "what were the especial facilitiesthat you had for observing this evolution?"

"Yes, " he answered, softly, a tender look coming into his eyes. "She is mywife. She was thirteen when I married her. Suddenly placed without means ofsubsistence, knowing nothing of the world, she came to me. I could see noother way. We are very happy together. "

The pretty narrative of the rhymer put each of us in a delectable mood. The notes of a harp and violins came from the lower deck in the form of aseductive Italian melody. White sails dotted the far-reaching sea. 

XIX

A MAN WHO WAS NO GOOD

Hearken to the tale of how fortune fell to the widow of Busted Blake. 

The outcome has shown that "Busted" was not radically bad. But he waswretchedly weak of will to reject an opportunity of having another drinkwith the boys--or with the girls--or with anybody or with nobody. 

In the days of his ascendancy, when he was a young and newly marriedarchitect, he was a buyer of drinks for others. Waiters in cafés vied witheach other in showing readiness to take his orders. He was rated a jollygood fellow then. No one would have supposed it destined that some finenight a leering barroom wit should reply to his whispered application for asmall loan by pouring a half-glass of whiskey upon his head and saying:

"I hereby christen thee 'Busted. '"

The title stuck. Blake, through continued impecuniosity, lost all shame ofit in time; lost, too, his self-respect and his wife. Mrs. Blake, a gentleand pretty little brunette, had wedded him against the will of her parents. She had trusted, for his safety, to the allurements of his future, whicheverybody said was bright, and to his love for her. 

The years of tearful nights, the pleadings, the reproaches, the seesawof hope and despair, need not here be dwelt upon. They would make an oldstory, and some of the details might be shocking to the young person. Theyreached a culmination one day when she said to him:

"You love drink better than you love me. I have done with you. "

She was a woman and took a woman's view of the case. 

When he came back to their rooms that night, she was not there. Then heknew how much he loved her and how much he had underestimated his love. 

She did not go to her parents. There was a very musty proverb that she knewwould meet her on the threshold. "You made your bed, now lie on it. " Herfather was a man of no originality, hence he would have put it in that way. 

She got employment in a photograph gallery, where she made herself usefulby being ornamental, sitting behind a desk in the anteroom. 

I know not what duties devolve upon the woman who occupies that post in theaverage photographer's service; whatever they are she performed them. Butwithin a very short time after she had left the "bed and board" of BustedBlake, she had to ask for a vacation. She spent it in a hospital and Bustedbecame a father. She resumed her chair behind the photographer's deskin due time, found a boarding-house where infants were not tabooed, andmanaged to subsist, and to care for her child--a girl. 

Somebody lived in that boarding-house who knew Busted Blake, and it wasthrough inquiries resulting from, this somebody's jocularly calling him"papa" one night in a saloon that Busted was made aware of his accession tothe paternal relation. 

When the poor wretch heard the news, he made a prodigious effort to keephis face composed. But the muscles would not be resisted. He burst outcrying, and he laid his head upon his arm upon a beer-flooded table andwept copiously, causing a sudden hush to fall upon the crowd of topers anda group to gather around his table and stare at him, --some mystified, somegrinning, none understanding. 

The next day he made a herculean effort to pull himself together. Heobtained a position as draughtsman from one who had known him in hisrespectable period, and he went tremblingly and sheepishly to call upon hiswife and child. 

The consequence of his visit was a reunion, which endured for two wholeweeks. At the end of that time she cast him off in utter scorn. 

How he lived for the next two years can be only known to those who arefamiliar through experience with the existence of people who ask otherpeople on the street for a few cents toward a night's lodging. By thosewho knew him he was said to be "no good to himself or any one else. " Heacquired the raggedness, the impudence, the phraseology of the vagabondclass. He would hang on the edge of a party of men drinking together infront of a bar, on the slim chance of being "counted in" when the questionwent round, "What'll you have?" He was perpetually being impelled outof saloons at foot-race speed by the officials whose function it is, inbarrooms, to substitute an objectionable person's room for his company. 

One winter Sunday morning he slept late on a bench in a public square. Awakened by an officer, he arose to go. Hazy in head and stiff at joints, he slightly staggered. He heard behind him the cooing laugh of a child. Helooked around. It was himself that had awakened the infant's mirth--or thatstrange something which precedes the dawn of a sense of humour in children. The smiling babe was in a child's carriage which a plainly dressed womanwas pushing. He looked at the woman. It was his wife and the pretty childwas his own. 

He walked rapidly from the place, and on the same day he decided to leavethe city. He had herded with vagrants of the touring class. The methods offree transportation by means of freight-trains and free living, by meansof beggary and small thievery in country towns, were no secret to him. He walked to the suburbs, and at nightfall he scrambled up the side of acoal-car in a train slowly moving westward. 

What hunger he suffered, what cold he endured, what bread he begged, whatpolice station cells he passed nights in, what human scum he associatedwith, what thirst he quenched, and with what incredibly bad whiskey, areparticulars not for this unobjectionable narrative, for do they not belongto low life? And who nowadays can tolerate low life in print unless it beredeemed by a rustic environment and a laboured exposition of clodhopperEnglish and primitive expletives? Low life outside of a dialect story and adreary village? Never!

Mrs. Blake and the child lived in a fair degree of comfort upon themother's wages, but often the mother shuddered at thought of what mighthappen should she ever lose her position at the photographer's. 

Consumption had its hold on Busted Blake when he arrived in the mining-towncalled Get-there City, in Kansas, one evening. Get-there City had notgotten there beyond a single straggling street of shanties. But it hadacquired a saloon, although liquor-selling had already been forbidden inKansas. 

Busted Blake, with ten cents in his clothes, entered the saloon and askedin an asthmatic voice for as much whiskey as that sum was good for. 

While awaiting a response, his eyes turned toward the only other persons inthe saloon, --three burly, bearded miners of the conventional big-hatted, big-booted, and big-voiced type. Above their heads and against the wall wasthis sign, lettered roughly with charcoal, under a crudely drawn death'shead:

"Five thousand dollars will be paid by the undersigned to the widow ofthe sneaking hound that informs on this saloon. This is no meer bluf. P. GIBBS. "

Blake, after a brief coughing fit, looked up at the man behind the bar, --agreat thick-necked fellow with a mien of authority, and yet with a certainbluff honesty expressed about his eyes and lips. This man, whose air ofproprietorship convinced Blake that he could be none other than P. Gibbs, had first looked sneeringly at the ten cents, but had shown some small signof pity on hearing the ominous cough of the attenuated vagrant. He setforth a bottle and glass. 

"Help yerself, " said P. Gibbs. While Blake was doing so, Mr. Gibbs went on:

"Bad cough o' yourn. Y' mightn't guess it, but that same cough runs in myfam'ly. It took off a brother, but it skipped me. "

Here was a bond of sympathy between the big, law-defying saloon-keeper andthe frail toper from the East. Busted Blake drained his glass and presentlycoughed again. P. Gibbs again set forth the bottle, and this time he drankwith Blake. Before long, by dint of repeated fits of coughing on the partof Blake, the sympathy of P. Gibbs was so worked upon that he invited thethree miners in the saloon to join him and the stranger. 

Blake slept in a corner of the saloon that night. He left the next morning, a curious expression of resolution on his face. 

During the next three weeks he was now and then alluded to in P. Gibbs'ssaloon as the "coughing stranger. "

In the middle of the third week, at nine o'clock in the evening, when thelamps in P. Gibbs's saloon were exerting their smallest degree of dimnessand the bar was doing a good business, the door opened and in staggeredBusted Blake. His staggering on this occasion was manifestly not due todrink. His face had the hideous concavities of a starved man and theuncertainty of his gait was the token of a mortal feebleness. Hisemaciation was painful to behold. His eyes glowed like huge gems. 

The crowd of miners looked at him with surprise as he entered. 

"The coughing stranger!" cried one. 

"The coffin stranger, you mean, " said another. 

Busted Blake lurched over to the bar. His eyes met those of P. Gibbs on theother side, and the latter reached for a whiskey-bottle. 

Blake fumbled in his pocket and brought forth a piece of soiled paper, which he laid on the bar under the glance of P. Gibbs. 

"Keep that!" said Blake, in a husky voice, whose service he compelled withmuch effort. "And keep your word, too! That's where you'll find her. "

P. Gibbs picked up the paper. 

"What do you mean?" he asked. 

"That woman's name there. It's the name of my widow; the address, too, of aphotograph man who will tell you where she is. Get the money to her quick, before the governor and the troops comes down on you to close you up. Anddon't let her know how it comes about. Pick a man to take it to her, --lethim pay his expenses out of it, --a man you can trust, and make him tell herI made it somehow, mining or something, so she'll take it. You know. "

P. Gibbs, who had listened with increasing amazement, opened wide his eyesand drew his revolver. He spoke in a strangely low, repressed voice:

"Stranger, do you mean to say--"

"Yes, that's it, " shrieked Busted Blake, turning toward the crowd ofintensely interested onlookers. "And I call on all you here to witness andto hold him to his word. That's no mere bluff he says in his notice there, and I'm the sneaking hound that informed. My widow is entitled to $5, 000. Idid it in Topeka, and for proof, see this newspaper. "

P. Gibbs fired a shot from his revolver through the newspaper that Blakepulled from his shirt. Then the saloon-keeper brought his weapon on a levelwith Blake's face. 

"It's good your boots is on!" said P. Gibbs, ironically. 

But he did not fire. Blake stood perfectly still, awaiting the shot, andfeebly laughing. 

So the two remained for some moments, until Blake suddenly sank to thefloor, quite exhausted. He died within a half-hour on the saloon floor, hishead resting in the palm of P. Gibbs, who knelt by his side and tried torevive him. 

At the next dawn, a man whom they called Big Andy started East, and thepiece of paper that Blake handed to P. Gibbs was not all that he took withhim. The United States marshal arrived and duly closed Gibbs's saloon, which reopened very shortly afterward, minus the $5, 000 offer. 

And Big Andy found the widow of Busted Blake, to whom he told a bit offiction in accounting for the legacy conveyed by him to her that would haveimposed upon the most incredulous legatee. When she had recovered fromthe surprise of finding herself and her child provided with the means ofsurviving the possible loss of her situation, she forgave the late Busted, and there was a flow of tears unusual to a boarding-house parlour andunnerving to Big Andy. 

Presently she asked Andy whether he knew what her husband's last words hadbeen. 

"Yep, " said Andy. "I heard'm plain and clear. Pete Gibbs, --the otherexecutor of the will, you know, --Pete says, 'It's all right, pardner, meand Andy'll see to it, ' and then your husband says, 'Thank Gawd I've beensome good to her and the child at last. '"

Which account was entirely correct. When Big Andy had returned to Get-thereCity, and related how he had performed his mission, he added:

"I'd been such a lovely liar all through, it's a shame I had to go an'spoil the story by puttin' in some truth at the finish. "

They put up a wooden grave-mark where Blake was buried, and after his namethey cut in the wood this testimonial:

"A tenderfoot that was some good to his folks at last. "

XX

MR. THORNBERRY'S ELDORADO

Near the uneven road among the hills a small field of stony ground laybetween woods and cultivated land. Nothing grew upon it and no house couldbe seen from it. The sun beat upon it and crows flew over it to and fromthe woods. 

Along the road trudged a thin old negro with stooping back and gray wool. His knees were bent and his cumbrously shod feet pointed far outward fromhis line of progress. He wore an aged frock coat and a battered stiff hat, although the month was June. His small face, beginning with a smoothlycurved forehead and ending with a cleanly cut chin, was mild andconciliating, shiny, and of the colour of light chocolate. He carried a tinbucket full of cherries. Pop Thornberry was returning to the town. 

Pop, whose proper name was Moses, and who was a deacon in the AfricanMethodist Church, made his living this way and that way. He did odd jobsfor people, and he fished and hunted when fishing and hunting were inseason. 

On this June day he had risen early and walked three miles to pick cherries"on shares. " He had picked ten quarts and left four of them with thefarmer whose trees had produced them. At six cents a quart he would profitthirty-six cents by his walk of six miles and his work of a half-day. 

The sun was scorching and Pop was tired. He decided to rest in the barrenfield, at its very edge in shade of the woods. He climbed the zigzag fencewith some labour and at the expense of a few of his cherries. He sat downupon a little knob of earth, took off his hat, drew a red handkerchief fromthe inside thereof, and slowly wiped his perspiring brow. 

He looked up at the sky, which was so brightly blue that it made his eyesblink. He sought optical relief in the dark green of the woods. Then, insteadying his pail of cherries between his legs, he turned his glance tothe ground in front of him. 

His attention was caught by a lump of earth that sparkled at points In thesun's rays, a mere clod composed of clay and mica, lying In the dry bed ofa bygone streamlet. Because it glittered he picked it up and examined it. After a time he bethought him that he was yet two and a half miles fromtown and very hungry. He arose, somewhat stiff, and put the shining clod inhis coat-tail pocket. On his way back to the road he noticed other littleearth lumps that shone. He resumed his walk townward, his knees shakingregularly at every step, as was their wont. 

At three o'clock in the afternoon he had reached home, sold his cherries, and dined on dried beef and bread in his little unpainted wooden house onthe edge of the creek at the back of the town. 

He owned his house and a small lot upon which it stood. Near it was aflour-mill, whose owner held a mortgage upon Pop's house and lot. The oldnegro had been compelled to borrow $200 to pay bills incurred during theillness and subsequent funeral of the late Mrs. Thornberry, and thus toavoid a sheriff's sale. Hence came the mortgage. It would expire on the10th of September. Pop was almost ready to meet that date. He already had$192 hidden in his cellar, unknown to any one. 

He had heard rumours of the mill-owner's desire to build an addition to hismill. To do this would necessitate the acquisition of contiguous property. But Pop had not suspected any ulterior motive when the miller had offeredto lend him the money. 

"I kin soon lay by 'nuff t' pay off d' mohgage, w'en I ain't got no one butm'se'f t' puvvide foh no moah, " he had said, after the loan had been made. 

And, having dined on this June day, he took twenty cents from the amountreceived for cherries and placed it in a cigar-box to be added to the $192. He kept that sixteen cents with which to purchase provisions for to-morrow, and then he walked down the quiet street to the railway station. He oftenmade a dime by carrying some one's satchel from the station to the hotel. 

The railroad division superintendent, a well-fed and easy-going man, camedown from his office on the second floor of the station building and sawPop sitting on a baggage-truck. The old negro, forgetful of the clod in hiscoat-tail pocket, had felt it when he sat down. He had taken it out of hispocket and was now casually looking at it as he held it in his hand. 

"Hello, Pop!" said the division superintendent, upon whose hand time washanging heavily. "What have you there?"

"Doan' know, Mistah Monroe. Doan' know, sah. Looks like jes' a chunk o'mud. "

He held out the clod to Mr. Monroe. 

The spectacle of the division superintendent talking to the old negroattracted a group of lazy fellows, --the driver of an express wagon, the manwho hauls the mail to the post-office, a boy who sold fruit to passengerson the train, two porters, with tin signs upon their hats, who solicitedpatronage from the hotels. 

"Why, Pop, " said the superintendent, winking to the expressman, "this lumplooks as though it contained gold. "

"Yes, " put in the expressman, "that's how gold comes in a mine. I've oftenhandled it. That's the stuff, sure. "

The fruit-selling boy and the mail-man grinned. Pop Thornberry opened widehis mouth and eyes and softly repeated the word:

"Goal!"

"I'd be careful of it, " advised Mr. Monroe, handing the clod back to thenegro. 

Pop took it with a trembling hand and looked at it. Presently he asked:

"W'at'll you give me foh dat air goal, Mistah Monroe. "

"Oh, a piece like that would be no use to me. It has to be washed and itwouldn't be worth while putting just one piece through the whole process ofcleaning. Now. If you have a lot of it, we might go into partnership in thegold business. "

Before the old man could answer to this pleasantry a whistle was heard upthe track, and Pop was forgotten in the excitement attending the arrival ofthe train. 

Dislodged from the baggage-truck, the old man looked around for Mr. Monroe, but the superintendent had disappeared. Pop did not seek to carry anysatchels that day. His mind was full of other matters. He went behind thestation and sat down beside the river. 

"Goal!" That meant proper tombstones for the graves of his wife andchildren, a new pulpit for the African Methodist Church, equal to that ofthe African Baptist Church, future ease for his somewhat weary legs andarms and back. 

The next afternoon the division superintendent found himself awaited at hisoffice door by Pop Thornberry, who was very dusty and who carried a basketheavy with clods of clay and mica. He had been out to the arid field thatmorning. 

"H-sh!" whispered Pop. "Doan' say a word, Mistah Monroe! Hyah's a lot o'dem air goal lumps, and I know weah dey's bushels moah, --plenty 'nuff to gointo pahtnehship on. "

The superintendent, looked bewildered, then amused, then ashamed. Embarrassed for a reply, he finally said:

"I haven't time to talk to you now, Pop. Besides, I've made up my mind notto go into the gold business. You see, I'm rich enough already. Good day. "

Thereafter Pop lay in wait for Mr. Monroe daily, but the superintendentalways avoided him. Pop neglected to earn his living and spent his timegoing about town with his basket of clods in search of the superintendent. Finally being openly ignored by Mr. Monroe when the two met face to face, Pop became angry and took his secret to a jeweller on Main Street. Thejeweller laughed and told Pop that the gold in the basket must be worth atleast a thousand dollars, but he was not in a position to buy crude gold. Then the jeweller made known to many that Pop Thornberry was crazy oversome lumps of mud and mica that he mistook for gold. 

After that, people would stop Pop on the street and say:

"Let's see a piece of the gold in your basket. "

Pop, astonished that his secret was out, but somewhat proud at beingthought the possessor of a treasure, would hesitate and then comply. Thesmall boys soon recognized in Pop's delusion a new means of fun. Observingthe solicitude with which he watched his clod while out of his own hands, they would innocently ask for a glimpse into his basket. This granted, theywould grasp a piece of his treasure and run away, greatly annoying the oldman, who was in a state of keen distress until he recovered the abstractedclod. These affairs between Pop and the boys were of hourly recurrence. They diverted barroom loungers and passers-by. 

Pop called on one local capitalist after another, seeking one who wouldbuy his gold or aid into preparing it for the market. All laughed athis delusion, deeming it harmless, and all gave him good reason for notaccepting his offer of business partnership. So he went from the bankpresident to the baker, from the member of congress for whom he had votedto the barber, from the hotel proprietor to the bartender. The negroes ofthe town, feeling that their race was humiliated in Pop, began to holdaloof from him. No serious-minded person who learned of his delusion gaveit a second thought. 

"Say Pop, where do you get this gold, anyhow?" asked a tobacco-chewinggamin at the railroad station one day. 

"Dat's my business, " replied Thornberry, with some dignity. 

"Oh, " said his questioner, "I know. Tobe McStenger followed you out theother day and saw where you got it. He'd a brung some in hisself, but itwasn't on his property. "

"Yes, Pop, you better look out, " put in a telegraph operator, "or you'll betaken up for trespassing. 'Tisn't your land, you know, where you find yourgold. "

There was no truth in the assertion of the gamin. No one had taken thetrouble to follow Pop in his semiweekly excursions to the barren field. But the old man knew that the field was not his. A ludicrous expression ofoverwhelming fright came over his face. 

Three days afterward, the farmer who owned the worthless field wasastonished when Pop offered to buy it. 

"But what on earth do you want that land fer?" asked the farmer, sitting onhis barnyard fence. 

Pop made a guilty attempt to appear guileless, and told the farmer that hewished to build a shanty and raise potatoes. He was tired of living in townand sought the quietude of the hills. 

"Bein' as dat ere fiel' ain't good foh much, I thought you might be willin'to paht with it, " explained Pop. 

The farmer eventually agreed to build a shanty on the field and sell it toPop for $180. Pop desired immediate occupancy. There was a legal hitch, owing to the badness of the land and the questionable condition of Pop'smind. But the transfer of the property was finally recorded. 

Pop no longer had to fear arrest for trespass. His gold field was nowlegally his. But he was still kept uneasy by his inability to make hisgold marketable. His uneasiness increased as September approached. He hadapplied to the purchase of the field the sum saved to cancel the mortgageupon his house at the rear end of the town. 

The three days before the foreclosure of the mortgage were days ofexquisite anguish to Pop. When the foreclosure came and he and his goodswere turned out on the banks of the creek to make room for the mill-owner'simprovements, his mental turmoil ended. He took the crisis calmly. 

"Jes' wait, " he said to a neighbour who had stopped at sight of themoving-out. "Wait till I get dat ere goal on de mahket. I'll bull' a milldat'll drive dis yer mill out o' d' business. Den I'll done buy back disyer ol' home. "

But the next day, when the unexpected happened, --when builders began totear down his house, --the enormity of his deed dawned upon him. After a dayof moaning and staring, as he sat amidst his household goods on the bank ofthe creek, he became animated by a deep rage against the mill-owner. Nowmore than ever had he a special purpose for enriching himself by means ofhis treasure across the hill. 

The coming of two circuses in succession had taken the interest of the boysaway from Pop during August and part of September. Now they turned again tohim for amusement. First they besieged the abandoned stable to which he hadconveyed his goods, and in which he slept, --for he had not found will tobetake himself from the town he had so long inhabited, and his shanty inthe field remained unoccupied. His purchase of the land had betrayed togeneral knowledge the location of his treasure, of which he continued tobring in new specimens. 

One October day he had just come from vainly attempting to induce thepostmaster to join him in the enterprise of exploiting his gold-field. In front of the post-office, he was met by some boys coming noisily fromschool. They surrounded him and demanded to see the gold in his basket. Asthe town policeman was sauntering up the street, Pop felt safe in refusing. The boys, also observing the officer of the law, contented themselves withretaliating in words only, "Say, Pop, " cried one of them, "you'd better keep an eye on yourgold-field. Nick Hennessey knows where it is, and he's gittin' up a diggin'party to take a wagon out some night and bring away all your gold. "

The boys, laughing at this quickly invented announcement, ran off aftera hand-organ. The old man stood perfectly still, or as nearly so as thefeebleness of his legs would permit. 

That evening Pop was missing from the town. And when Abraham Wesley, whohad often lent his shotgun to the old man, went to look for that weapon, intending to shoot glass balls in the fairgrounds across the river, thefowling-piece too was missing. 

Pop had gone out to protect his possession. Three nights passed and threedays. The few country folk and others who travelled that way during thistime saw the old man walking about in his field or sitting in front of hisshanty, his shotgun on his shoulders, his eyes fixed suspiciously on allwho might become intruders. Night and day he patrolled his little domain. 

At dusk of the third day a lively party was returning to the town in awagon from a search for nuts. The full moon was rising and the merrymakerswere singing. One of the girls was thirsty. When she saw the shanty in therugged field, she asked a young man to get her a glass of water at the hut. The wagon stopped and the youth climbed astride the rail fence. Suddenly anunnaturally shrill and excited voice was heard:

"Hyah, you, doan' come no farder! Dese yer's my premises!"

From behind the empty shanty appeared the thin old negro, bareheaded, hisshotgun at his shoulder, a striking figure against the rising moon. 

The young man descended from the fence into the field. There came a flashand a crack from Pop Thornberry's gun. The youth felt the sting of a pieceof birdshot in his leg. Howling and limping, he turned quickly over thefence into the wagon, which made a hasty flight. 

The next morning some idlers went out from the town to the scene of theadventure. They found the old man lying hatless in the middle of the field, face downwards, upon the shotgun. He had died of sheer exhaustion, onguard--and on his own land, as befit an honest citizen who had neverintruded upon the peace of other men. 

XXI

AT THE STAGE DOOR [Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_. Copyright, 1892, by J. B. Lippincott Company. ]

First let me explain how I came to be sitting in so unsavoury a place asGorson's "fifteen cent oyster and chop house" that night. Most newspapermen--the rank and file--receive remuneration by the week. Those not givenover to domesticity, those who enjoy that alluring regularity identicalwith liberty, fare sumptuously, as a rule, on "pay-day. " Thereafter thequantity and quality of the good things of life that they enjoy diminishdaily until the next pay-day. 

Pay-day with us was Friday. This was Thursday night. I having gone tounusual lengths of good cheer in the early part of that week, had nowfallen low, and was duly thankful for what I could get--even at Gorson's. 

As my glance wandered over my table, over the beer-bottles and the oysters, beyond the crowd of ravenous and vulgar eaters and hurrying waiters, to thestreet door, some one opened that door from the outside and entered. An oddlooking personage this some one. 

A person very tall and conspicuously thin. These peculiarities wereaccentuated by the dilapidated frock coat that reached to his knees, andthus concealed the greater portion of his gray summer trousers, which"bagged" exceedingly and were picturesquely frayed at the bottom edges, asI could see when he came nearer to me. He wore a faded straw hat, whichlooked forlorn, as the month was January. His face, despite its angularityof outline and its wanness, had that expression of complacency which oftenrelieves from pathos the countenances of harmlessly demented people. Hishair was gray, but his somewhat formidable looking moustache was stilldark. He carried an unadorned walking-stick and under his left arm was whata journalistic eye immediately recognized as manuscript. From the man'saspect of extreme poverty, I deduced that his manuscripts were neveraccepted. 

As he passed the cashier's desk, he stopped, lowered his body, not bystooping in the usual way, but by bending his knees, and with a quick sweepof his eyes by way of informing himself whether or not he was observed, hepicked up a cigar stump that some one had dropped there. 

Then he walked with a rather shambling but self-important gait to the tablenext mine, carefully placed his manuscript upon a chair, and sat down uponit. He was soon lost in a prolonged contemplation of the limited bill offare posted on the wall, a study which resulted in his ordering, through ahustling, pugnacious-looking waiter, a bowl of oatmeal. 

A bowl of oatmeal is the least expensive item on the bill of fare atGorson's. When I hear a man ordering oatmeal in a cheap eating-house, myheart aches for him. I had just the money and the intention to procureanother bottle of beer and another box of cigarettes. The sum required toobtain these necessaries of life is exactly the price of a bowl of oatmealand a steak at Gorson's. So I hastily arose to go, and on my way out I hada brief conversation with the bellicose-appearing waiter, which resulted inmy unknown friend's being overwhelmed with amazement later when the waiterbrought him a warm steak with his oatmeal and said that some one else hadalready paid his bill. I did not wait to witness this result, for the manlooked one of the sort to put forth a show of indignation at being made anobject of charity. 

An hour later I saw him walking with an air of consequence up Broadway, smoking what was probably the bit of cigar he had picked up in therestaurant. He still carried his manuscript, which was wrapped in a soiledblue paper. As I was hurrying up-town on an assignment for the newspaper, I could not observe his movements further than to see that when he reachedFourteenth Street he made for one of the benches in Union Square. 

It was by the size, shape, and blue cover that I recognized that manuscripttwo days later upon the desk of the editor of the Sunday supplementarypages of the paper, as I was submitting to that personage a "special" I hadwritten upon the fertile theme, "Producing a Burlesque. "

"May I ask what that stuff is wrapped in blue?"

"Certainly. A crank in the last stages of alcoholism and mental depressionbrought it in yesterday. It's an idiotic jumble about Beautiful Women ofHistory, part in prose and part in doggerel. "

"Of course you'll reject it?"

"Naturally. I'll ease his mind by telling him the subject lackscontemporaneousness. Have a cigarette? By the way, have you any specialinterest in the rubbish?"

"No; I only think I've seen it before somewhere. What's the writer's nameand address?"

"It's to be called for. He didn't leave any address. From that fact and hisappearance, I infer that he doesn't have any permanent abode. Here's hisname, --Ernest Ruddle. Not half as much individuality in the name as in theman. I remember him because he had a straw hat on. "

The burlesque production which had served as material for my Sunday articlesaw the light for the first time on the following Monday night. There beingno other theatrical novelty in New York that night, the town--representedby the critics and the sporting and self-styled Bohemian elements--wasthere. The performance was to have a popular comedian as the centralfigure, and was to serve, also, to reintroduce a once favourite comic-operaprima donna, who had been abroad for some years. This stage queen had oncebeheld the town at her feet. She had abdicated her throne in the heightof her glory, having made the greatest success of her career on a certainMonday night, and having disappeared from New York on Tuesday, shortlyafterward materializing in Paris. 

There was abundant curiosity awaiting the appearance of Louise Moran, asthe playbills called her. It was whispered, to be sure, by some who hadseen her in burlesque in London, after her flight from America, that shehad grown a bit passée; but this was refuted by the interviewers who hadmet her on her return and had duly chronicled that she looked "as rosyand youthful as ever. " Brokers, gilded youth, all that curious lot ofmasculinity classified under the general head of "men about town, " crowdedinto the theatre that night, and when, after being heralded at length bythe chorus, the returned prima donna appeared, in shining drab tights, shehad a long and noisy reception. 

My friendly acquaintance with the leading comedian and the stage managerhad served to obtain for me an unusual privilege, --that of witnessing thefirst night's performance from the wings. As I looked out across the stageand the footlights, and saw the sea of faces in the yellowish haze, afamiliar visage held my eye. It was in the front row of the top gallery, and was projected far over the railing, putting its owner in some risk ofdecapitation. An intent look on the pale countenance at once distinguishedit from the terrace of uninteresting, monotonous faces that rose back ofit. The face was that of my man of the restaurant and of the blue-coveredmanuscript. 

I stood, somewhat in the way of the light man, where my eye could commandmost of the stage, and a brief section of the auditorium, from parquet toroof. The star of the evening, having rattled off, with much sang-froid anda London intonation, a few lines of thinly humourous dialogue, came towardthe footlights to sing. While the conductor of the orchestra poised hisbaton and cast an apprehensive look at her, she began:

 "I'm one of the swells Whose accent tells That we've done the Contenong. "

When she had sung only to this point, people in the audience wereexchanging significant smiles. There was no doubt of it; Louise Moran'svoice had lost its beauty. The years and joys of life abroad had donetheir work. We now knew why she had given up comic opera and had gone intoburlesque. The house was so taken by surprise that at the end of her secondstanza, where applause should have come, none came. There was no occasionfor her to draw upon her supply of "encore verses. "

Unprepared for the chilling silence that followed her song, she bestowedupon the audience a look of mingled astonishment, pain, and resentment. Butshe recovered self-possession promptly and delivered the few spoken linespreceding her exit gaily enough. Her face clouded as soon as she was offthe stage. She abused her maid in her dressing-room and sent the comedian's"dresser" out for some troches. The state of her mind was not improved bythe sound of a hail-storm-like sound that came from the direction of thestage shortly after, --the applause at the leading comedian's entrance. 

As the newspapers said the next day, the only honours of that performancewere with the comedian. The star of Louise Moran had set. Not only was hersinging-voice a ruin, but the actress had grown coarse in visage. The oncewillowy outlines of her figure had rounded vulgarly. On the face, audacityhad taken place of piquancy. Even the dark gray eyes, which somehow seemedblack across the footlights, had lost some lustre. 

Why had the once lovely creature come back from Europe to disturb thememories of her other radiant self, and to turn those dainty photographs ofher earlier person into lies?

Every man in the house was thinking this question at the end of the firstact. 

She had another solo to sing in the second act. It was while she wasattempting this that my glance strayed to the man in the gallery. His facethis time surprised me. 

It wore a look of ineffable sympathy and sorrow. Surely tears were fallingfrom the sad eyes. 

This pity touched me. It was so solitary. The feeling of the rest of theaudience was plainly one of resentful derision at being disappointed. 

After the performance I waited for the comedian. He was called before thecurtain and a speech was extorted from him. There were but a few faintcries for the actress, to which she did not respond. She had summoned themanager to her dressing-room. While she hastily assumed her wraps for thestreet, she was excitedly complaining of the musical director "for notknowing his business, " the comedian for "interfering" in her scenes, thecomposer for writing the music too high, and the librettist for supplyingsuch "beastly rubbish" in the way of dialogue. 

"Very well; I'll call a rehearsal to-morrow at ten, " the conciliatorymanager replied. "You talk to Myers" (the musical director) "yourself aboutit. And you can introduce those two songs you speak of. Myers will fix theother music to suit your voice. "

"And you start Elliott to write over the libretto at once, " she commanded, "and see that that song and dance clown" (the comedian) "never comes on thestage when I'm on, if it can be helped, or I won't go on at all. That'ssettled!"

The comedian and I left the stage door together. The actress's cab waswaiting at the opposite side of the dark alley-like street upon which thestage door opened. This street or court, stretching its gloomy way from amain street, is a place of tall warehouses, rear walls, and bad paving. The electric light at its point of junction with the main street does notpenetrate half-way to the stage entrance, and the blackness thereabout isdiluted with the rays of the lonely, indifferent gas-lamp that projectsabove the old wooden door. Farther on, an old-fashioned street-lamp marksthe place where the alley turns to wind about until it eventually reachesanother main street. 

This dark region, the feeble lamp above the stage door, the shadowsopposite, have a peculiar charm, especially at night. One would not thinkthat within that door is a short corridor leading to the mystic realm whichthe people "in front" idealize into a wonderful inaccessible country, the playworld. Back here, especially on a rainy night and before theplayworld's inhabitants begin to sally forth to partake of terrestrial beerand sandwiches, one seems millions of miles away from the crowds of men andwomen in the theatre and from the illumined street in front. 

The ordinary world, when passing this strange place, peers in curiouslyfrom the main street. Sometimes folks wait at the corner of the streetto see the stage people come out. If the piece is a burlesque or a comicopera, much life moves in the darkness back here. Light comes from theup-stairs windows of the theatre, the dressing rooms of the subordinateplayers being up there. Snatches of song from feminine throats, mere trillssometimes, isolated fragments of melody, break into the silence. These arealways numerous during the half-hour after the performance and before theactors have left the theatre. Chorus girls in ulsters emerge in troops, usually by twos, from the door beneath the light, and it is constantlyopening and shutting. In the gloom opposite the door hover a few boldyouths, suddenly become timid, smoking cigarettes and trying to look likemen of the world. As the comedian and I came forth, one of these young menstruck a match to light a cigarette. The momentary flash attracted my eye, and I saw in the farthest shadow, with his gaze upon the stage door, my manof the restaurant, and the manuscript, and the gallery. If possible, he looked more haggard than before, and, as it was cold, he shiveredperceptibly. 

"Whom can he be waiting for, I wonder?" I said, aloud. 

The comedian, thinking that I alluded to the cabman, half-asleep upon hisseat, replied, as he turned up the collar of his overcoat:

"Oh, he's waiting for Miss Moran. She didn't always go home from thetheatre in a cab. She acquired the habit abroad, I suppose. How she'schanged. I knew her in other days. "

"Really? I didn't know that. Tell me about her. "

"It's a common story. She's the result of a mercenary mother's schemes. She's not as old as people think, you know. Her career has beeneventful, which makes it seem long. But I was in the cast, playing asmall part in the first play she ever appeared in, and that was onlytwelve years ago. She was about twenty-one then. She waited on customersin her mother's little stationery store, until one day she eloped with apoor young fellow whom she loved, in order to escape a rich old man whomher mother had selected for a son-in-law. She could have endured povertywell enough, if the mother hadn't done the 'I--forgive--and--Heaven--bless--you--my--children' act, after which she succeeded in making thegirl quarrel with her husband continually. She was a schemer, thatmother. A theatrical manager, whom she knew, was introduced to the girl, who was more beautiful then than ever afterward. The mother managed tohave the girl's husband discharged from the bank where he was employedon the same day that the manager made the girl an offer to go on thestage. The boy naturally wanted to keep his wife with him, but themother told him he was a fool. 

"'I'll travel with her, ' she said, 'and you stay here and get anothersituation. ' The wife, intoxicated at the prospects of stage triumphs, urged, and the boy gave in. 

"A year or so after that, the girl had drifted completely out of thehusband's life, as they say in society plays, the mother managed to bringabout the estrangement so promptly. 

"The husband stayed at home and got work in a railroad office or somewhere, so as to earn money with which to drink himself to death--I say, let'sgo in here and eat. If we go to the club, I'll be bored to death withcongratulations. "

We turned into a lighted vestibule and mounted the stairs to a modestlittle café over a Broadway saloon. There, over the cigars and Pilsnerpresently the comedian continued the story:

"When the husband learned that to his charming mother-in-law's machinationshe owed the loss of his position and his wife, he bided his time, likea sensible fellow, and one day he called upon the old lady at her flat. Without a word, he proceeded to pull out much of her hair and otherwiseto disfigure her permanently, which, as she was a vain woman, made hermiserable the rest of her days. Then he disappeared, and has not been heardof since. It seems strange the thing never got into the newspapers. Bythe way, you won't print this story, my boy, until she or I leave theprofession. "

"Why not? Are you the only man who knows it?"

"No; it was general gossip in the profession at that time. "

"How did you get it so straight?"

"She told me. I knew her well in those days. Oh, use the story if you like, only don't credit it to me. She's very mad because I made a hit to-nightand she didn't. "

"But what was the name of her husband?"

"Poor devil!--his name was--what was it, anyhow? By Jove, I can't thinkof it! It'll come back to me, though, and I'll let you know later. He hadliterary aspirations, by the way. She used to laugh at the poetry he hadwritten about her. Poor boy!"

The next night, radical changes having been effected in the burlesque, theprima donna made a more creditable showing. I happened to be at the stagedoor again when she came out with her maid after the performance, as I hadunder my guidance one of the newspaper's artists, who had been making somesketches of life behind the scenes. She was in a gayer mood than that inwhich she had been on the previous night. 

As she was entering the cab, I heard a muffled exclamation, which came fromthe shadow opposite the stage door. Dimly in that shadow could be seen aform with arms outstretched toward the woman, as in an involuntary gesture. The cab rolled away. The form emerged from the darkness and wearily strodeby. It was that of my manuscript man. He had the same straw hat, stick, andfrock coat. 

"That queer old chap must be really in love with her, " I thought, smiling. Such things often happen. I knew a gallery god--but that will keep. Evidently here was an amusing case, not without its aspect of pathos. 

Being in that vicinity on the following night, I strolled up to the stagedoor, merely to see whether the straw hat would be there again. There itwas, patiently waiting, scourged by the most ferocious of January winds. 

Doubtless the man came here every night to catch a glimpse of his divinity. He was quite unobtrusive, and I was probably the only one who noticed hisconstant attendance. I learned at the newspaper office that he had calledfor the rejected manuscript bearing his name, --Ernest Ruddle. Then for atime I neither saw nor thought of him. 

One night, in the last of January, --the coldest of that savage winter, --Ihappened again to be in the corridor leading to the stage door, having comefrom within the theatre in advance of my friend the comedian, with whomI was to have supper at the Actors' Athletic Club. The actress's cab waswaiting. The dark little portion of the world back there was deserted. 

Along the corridor, through which the sound of chorus girls' laughtercame, strolled the comedian, his cigar already lighted and behind it hischeerful, hearty, smooth-shaven visage appearing ruddy from the recentwashing off of "make-up. "

"Hello!" he began, thrusting his hand into his overcoat pockets. "Bythe way, while I think of it, I just passed Miss Moran coming from thedressing-room, and suddenly that name came back to me, the name of herhusband. It was a peculiar name, --Ernest Ruddle. "

Ernest Ruddle! the name on the manuscript! The man of the restaurant andthe gallery, the tears, the waiting at the stage door, were explainednow. Ere we reached the stage door, the actress herself appeared in thecorridor, on the arm of her maid. She was laughing, rather coarsely. Westepped aside to let her pass out into the night. 

"So the manager said he'd give me $50 more on the road, " she was saying, "and I said he would have to make it $75 more--gracious! what's this?"

She had stumbled over something just outside the threshold of the stagedoor. Her companion stooped, while the actress jumped aside and looked downat the large black object with both fright and curiosity. 

"It's a man, " said the maid; "drunk, or asleep, or dead. He looks frozen. He's a tramp, I guess; hurry away! We'll tell the policeman on the corner. "

The actress passed on, with a final look of half-aversion, half-pity, atthe prostrate body. The comedian and I were both by that body within twoseconds. 

"Frozen or starved, sure!" said the comedian. "Poor beggar! Look at hisstraw hat. Observe his death-clutch on the cane. "

From down the alley came two sounds: one was a policeman's approachingfootsteps; the other, of a woman's laughter. What, to be sure, was the deador drunken body of an unknown vagabond to her?

And it seems strange that I, who never exchanged speech with either thewoman or the man, was the only one in the world who might recognize in themomentary contact of the living with the dead, a dramatic situation. 

XXII

"POOR YORICK" [Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_. Copyright, 1892, by J. B. Lippincott Company. ]

The name by which he was indicated on the playbills was Overfield. His realname was buried in the far past. By several members of the company to whichhe belonged he was often called "Poor Yorick. "

I asked the leading juvenile of the company--young Bridges, who wassupposed to attract women to the theatre, and for whose glorification "TheLady of Lyons" was sometimes revived at matinées--how the old man hadacquired the nickname. 

"I gave it to him myself last season, " replied Bridges, loftily. "Can'tyou guess why? You remember the graveyard scene in 'Hamlet. ' The skull ofYorick, you know, had lain in the earth three and twenty years. Yorick hadbeen dead that long. Well, the old man had been dead for about the samelength of time, --professionally dead, I mean. See?"

It was true that, so far as being known by the world went, the old manwas as good, or as bad, as dead. He no longer played other than quiteunimportant parts. 

It was said by some one that he was the poorest actor and the noblestman in the country; a statement commended by Jennison, an Englishman whousually played villains, to this, that his were the worst art and bestheart in the profession. 

Poor Yorick was a thin man, with a smooth, gentle face, lamblike blue eyes, and curling gray locks that receded gracefully from his forehead. He hadjust an individualizing amount of the pomposity characteristic of manyold-time actors. He was not known to have any living kin. He permittedhimself one weakness, a liking for whiskey, an indulgence which was nevernoticed to have brought appreciable harm upon him. 

Once I asked him when he had made his début. He answered, "When JoeJefferson was still young and before Billie Crane was heard of. "

"In what rôle?"

"As four soldiers, " he replied. 

"How could that be?"

He explained that he had first appeared as a super in a military drama, marching as a soldier. The procession, in order to create an illusion oflength, had passed across the stage and back, the return being made behindthe scenes four times continuously in the same direction. 

The old man took uncomplainingly to the name applied to him by Bridges. He must have known what it implied, for surely he could not have mistakenhimself for "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. " Hisnon-resentment was but an evidence of his good nature, for he was awarethat it was not a very general custom of actors to give each othernicknames, and that his case was an exception. 

When he was playing the insignificant part of the old family servant of aNew York banker, in the most successful comedy of that season, he came toknow Bridges better than ever before. Poor Yorick had little more to do inthe play than to come on and turn up some light, arrange some papers on adesk, go off, and afterward return and lower the light. Bridges was doingthe rôle of the bank clerk in love with the banker's daughter. Yorick andBridges, through some set of circumstances or other, were sharers of thesame dressing-room. 

Upon a certain Wednesday, and after a matinée, the two were in theirdressing-room, hastily washing up their faces and putting on their streetclothes. Said the old man:

"Did you notice the pretty little girl in the upper box? She reminds meof--" here his voice fell and took on suddenly a tone of sadness--"of someone I knew once, long ago. "

Bridges, drying his face with a towel before the big mirror, did notobserve the old man's change of voice, nor did he heed the last part of thesentence. 

"Notice her?" he answered, with a touch of triumphant vanity in his mannerof speech. "I should say I did. She was there on my account. I'm going tomake a date with her for supper after the performance to-night. "

Old Overfield, sitting on a trunk, stared at Bridges in surprise. 

"Do you know her?" he asked. 

"No, " replied the leading juvenile. "That is, I have never met her, butshe's been writing me mash notes lately, asking for a meeting. In thelast one she said she could get away from her house this evening, as herfather's out of town and her mother is going over to Philadelphia thisafternoon. So she invited me to have supper with her to-night, and was goodenough to say she'd occupy that box this afternoon, so I could see what shewas like. Didn't you observe her embarrassment when I came on the stage? Ipaid no attention to her first letter. But, having seen her, you bet I'llanswer the last one right away. Don't you wish you were me, old fellow?"

The old fellow stood up and looked at Bridges severely. 

"Yes, I do wish I were you, --just long enough to see that you don't answerthat girl's letter. Surely you don't mean to!"

"Hello! What have you got to do with it? Do you know the young woman?"

"No, I don't. But I can easily guess all about her. She's some romanticlittle girl, still pure and good, afflicted with one of those idioticinfatuations for an actor, which is sure to bring trouble to her if youdon't behave like a white man. You want to show her the idiocy of writingthose letters, by ignoring them. You know that actors who care to dothemselves and the profession credit make it a rule never to answer aletter from a girl like that, unless to give her a word of advice. Come, my boy, don't disgrace yourself and profession. Don't spoil the life of apretty but foolish girl who, if you do the right thing, will soon repenther silliness, and make some square young fellow a good wife. "

Bridges had continued to dress himself during this long speech, assuminga show of contemptuous indignation as it progressed. When Overfield, astonished at his own eloquence, had subsided, the young man replied, in aquiet but rather insolent tone:

"Look here, old man, don't try to work the Polonius racket on me. I don'tlike advice, and I'm going to meet that girl, see? She arranged the wholething herself; she's to be at a certain spot at eleven-thirty P. M. With acab. All I've got to do is to signify my assent in a single line, whichI'm going to write and send by messenger as soon as I get out of here. Ofcourse, if the girl was a friend of yours, it would be different, but sheisn't, and if you want to remain on good terms with me, you won't put inyour oar. Now that's all settled. "

"Is it? Well, young man, I don't want to remain on good terms with anybodyI can't respect. I can't respect a man who would take advantage of alove-struck girl's ignorance of life. If you meet her, you will simplybe obtaining favours on false pretences, anyhow, for you know you're notreally half the fascinating, romantic, clever youth that you seem whenyou're on the stage speaking another man's thoughts. That girl is probablygood, and she looks like some one I used to know. If I can save her, Iwill, by thunder!"

"Really, old man, you're quite worked up. If you could act half that wellon the stage, you'd be doing lead, instead of dusting furniture while theaudience gets settled in its seats. "

Old Yorick stood for a moment speechless, stung by the insult. Then he tookup his hat, excitedly, and left the dressing-room without a word. 

Some of the other members of the company wondered at the angry, flushedlook on his face when he hurried through the corridor to the stage door. A few minutes later he was seen walking down the street, apparently muchheated in mind. When he reached a certain café he went in, sat down, andcalled for whiskey. He remained alone in deep thought, mechanically andunconsciously answering the salutations bestowed upon him by two or threeacquaintances who strolled in. Suddenly he nodded thrice, as if denotingthe acquiescence of his judgment in some plan of action formed by hisinventive faculty. He rose quickly, paid his bill at the cashier's desk, and moved rapidly across the street to the ---- Hotel. Passing in through abroad entrance, he turned aside to a writing-room, where, without removinghis soft hat, he sat down at a desk. 

He was soon immersed in the composition of a letter, which caused him manycontractions of the brow, many lapses during which he abstractedly staredat vacancy, many fresh beginnings, and the whole of the two hours allowedhim before the evening's performance for dinner. 

When he had finished the letter, he carefully read it, and made a fewcorrections. Then he folded it up, put it in an envelope, and placedit unsealed in his inside coat pocket. He arose with an expression ofresolution about his eyes that was quite new there. 

Ascertaining by the clock in the thronged main corridor that the timewas ten minutes after seven, the old man rushed into the café, where hedevoured hastily a chicken croquette, and swallowed a cup of coffee anda glass of whiskey before starting to the theatre. He was in hisdressing-room and in his shirt-sleeves, touching up his eyebrows, whenBridges arrived. A cool greeting passed between the two. 

"You sent the note?" asked the old man. 

"What note?" gruffly queried Bridges, taking off his coat. 

"To that girl. "

"Most certainly. "

A curious look, unobserved by Bridges, shot from Poor Yorick's eyes. Itseemed to say, "Wait, things may happen that you're not looking for. "

At about the time when Bridges and Yorick were dressing for theperformance, a newspaper reporter, wishing to make a few notes of aninterview that had been accorded him by a politician staying in thehotel at which the old man had written his long letter, went into thewriting-room and made use of the desk where the actor had sat earlier inthe evening. Several sheets of blank paper were scattered over it. One ofthem contained almost a page of writing. Yorick had negligently left itthere. It was a beginning made by him before he had succeeded in obtaininga satisfactory wording for his thoughts. This rejected opening read:

"My DEAR, FOOLISH YOUNG LADY:--Something has happened which prevents Mr. Bridges from keeping the appointment with you, and you're much better offon that account, for nothing but unhappiness can come to you if you allowyourself to be carried out of your senses by your infatuation for a manwho has neither the brains nor the manliness which he seems to have whenplaying parts that call for the mere simulation of these gifts. Never makean appointment with a man you do not know, especially a young and vainactor who has once got the worst of it in a divorce suit. You'll bethankful some day for this advice, for I know what I speak of. I was once, years ago, just such an actor. The woman got into all sorts of troublebecause she wrote me such letters as you have written Bridges, and broughtto an early end a life that might have been very happy and youthful. Lookedlike you, and it is a memory of what she lost and suffered that makes mewish to save you. My dear young ----"

There were yet two lines to spare at the foot of the page. The newspaperman, interested by the fragment, thrust it into his pocket. 

When Poor Yorick had finished his final scene in the comedy at the ----Theatre that night, he made haste to dress and to leave the playhouse. Buthe loitered near the stage entrance, keeping in the shadow on the otherside of the alley, out of the range of the light from the incandescentglobe over the door. 

Bridges was slightly surprised, on returning to his dressing-room, to findthat Yorick had already gone. But he attributed this to the ill feelingthat had arisen on account of the intended meeting with the girl of theletters and the box. 

The leading juvenile attired himself for the conquest carefully butrapidly. When he was ready he surveyed his reflection complacently inthe long mirror, assuming the slightly languid look that he intended tomaintain during the first half-hour of the supper. He retained the dresssuit which he wore in the second and third act of the play, and which herarely displayed outside of the theatre. He flattered himself that he wasquite irresistible, and wondered whether she would take him to Delmonico'sor to some quiet little place. He indulged, too, in some vague speculationas to what the supper might result in. The girl was evidently of a richfamily, but her people would doubtless never hear of her making a matchwith him, that divorce affair being in recent memory. A marriage wasprobably out of the question. However, the girl was a beauty and thismeeting was at least worth the trouble. So he donned his coat and hat andswaggered out of the theatre. He had no sooner turned from the alley uponwhich the stage door opened than Yorick, unnoticed by him, darted out inpursuit. Ten minutes' walking brought the leading juvenile near the spotwhere he was to be awaited by the girl in the cab. Yorick, whose only meansof ascertaining the place of meeting was to follow Bridges, kept as nearthe young actor as was compatible with safety from discovery by the latter. Bridges, strutting along unconscious of Yorick's presence a few yardsbehind, had half-traversed the deserted block of tall brown stoneresidences, when he saw a cab standing at the corner ahead of him. Hequickened his pace in such a way as to warn the old man that the eventfulmoment was at hand. The cab stood under an electric light before anivy-grown church. 

Yorick, with noiseless steps, accelerated his gait. Bridges, as he nearedthe cab, deflected his course toward the curbstone and threw his head backimpressively. This little action, interpreted rightly by the pursuer, wasthe old man's cue. Yorick suddenly rushed forward with surprising agility. 

Before Bridges could be seen by the occupant of the cab for which he wasmaking, he was dazed by a blow on the side of the head, just beneath theear, and knocked off his feet by a sound thump on the same spot. He reeled, clutched at the air, and fell heavily upon the sidewalk. There he laystunned and silent. 

Yorick, not waiting to see what became of the man whom he had felled, dashed forward to the cab. Opening the door, he caught a momentary visionof a white, round face, with big, scared eyes, above a palpitating mass ofsoft silk and fur, and against a black background. He thrust toward her theletter, which he had quickly drawn from his pocket, and whispered, huskily:

"Mr. Bridges couldn't come. Here's a note. "

Then he slammed the cab door, and called out in a commanding tone:

"Drive on there! Quick!"

The cabman, who had evidently received directions in advance from the girl, jerked his reins, and the cab moved forward, turned, and rattled away, thehorse at a brisk trot. 

Yorick speedily left the scene. At the next corner he met a policeman, towhom he said:

"There's a man lying on the sidewalk back there by the church. I don't knowwhether he's drunk or not. "

He was off before the officer could detain him. 

Bridges spent the night in a station-house, recovering from the effects ofa fall, which the police attributed to drunkenness. Assuming that he hadreceived his blows from some masculine relative or admirer of the girl, he gave a false account of the bruises when the next night he asked themanager for a few nights of rest and enabled his understudy to obtain achance long coveted. 

The leading juvenile manifestly thought best not to attempt a renewal of aflirtation with a young woman who had so formidable a protector; and thegirl herself, whatever became of her, addressed him no more epistles ofadoration, or of any sort whatever. 

Yorick got from the stage manager permission to change his dressing-room. Thereafter he and Bridges maintained a mutual coolness, until one day theleading juvenile, warmed by cocktails, melted, and addressed the old manfamiliarly by his nickname. 

"Old fellow, " said Bridges, over a café table, "when I come to play Hamlet, I'll send for you to act Poor Yorick. You'd do it well. You're always best, you know, in parts that don't require you to come on the stage at all. "

The old man smiled grimly and then shrugged his shoulders at thispleasantry. When he died the other day, he left a curious will, in which, after naming several insignificant legacies, he bequeathed his skull "to aso-called actor, one Charles Bridges, to be used by him in the graveyardscene when he shall have become able to play Hamlet, --if the skull be notdisintegrated by that time. "

XXIII

COINCIDENCE

Max took us down into a German place into the bowels of the earth. It was abit of Berlin transplanted to Philadelphia and thriving beneath a Teutoniceating-house. Imagine a great cellar, with stone floor, ornamented ceiling, massive rectangular pillars of brown wood, substantial tables, heavymediaeval chairs, crossbeams bearing pictures of peasant girls and letteredwith sentiments of good cheer in German, and walls covered with beer-mugsof every size and device. 

Scores of men sat talking at the tables, smoking, devouring sandwiches, upturning their mugs of beer over the capacious receptacles provided bynature. 

The mediaeval chairs appealed to the romanticism that lies beneathBreffny's satirical exterior; and when Max called our attention to the factthat the mugs of beer came through apertures from caves beneath the street, we were content. 

For the hour, the problem of human happiness was solved for us three bythree foaming mugs, three sandwiches, and tobacco. 

Here communed we three, blown from various winds, to this local Bohemia:Max, native of the free German City of Frankfort, operatic manager in RioJaneiro, musician in New York, Denver resident by adoption, Philadelphianewspaperman by preference; Breffny, born in a Spanish village, reared inContinental countries, professedly an Irishman, but more than half-Latin intemperament and appearance, a cyclopedia for the benefit of his friends, and myself. 

The talk ran to the imposture recently attempted by young Mr. Herdling, whoclaimed that the dead body found at Tarrytown was that of his wife. 

"A very touching fake, " said Max. 

"Yes; thanks to the skill of the reporters who wrote up his story, " criedBreffny. 

"We visited many morgues in search of her, Louise and I, " said I, quotingthe most effective passage of the narrative. 

"I did know of one case of a husband starting off at random to find hisrunaway wife, " observed Breffny. 

"As there's yet an hour to midnight, we have time for one of your stories. "

"I can tell this in five minutes. All I know of the story is the beginning. No one ever heard of the end. It was like this:

"When I lived in Glasgow, I knew a young fellow there who was timekeeper ina shipyard. He was a very quiet, pleasant boy, so bashful that I used towonder how he had ever summoned the courage to propose to the pretty Scotchgirl who was his wife. As I got to know more of the pair, I divined thesecret. Although poor, he was of good Glasgow parentage, while the wife hadbeen a country girl so eager to get to the city that she had courted himwhile he was on a visit to the village in which she had lived. She hadmerely used him as a means for finding the life for which she had longed. 

"How much he really loved her was never suspected until he came home oneevening and found that she had run away with the youngest son of one of theproprietors of the shipyard. 

"He learned within a week that they had sailed for America. He packed avalise, took the money that he had saved, and started out. 

"'But where are you going to look for them?' I asked him. 

"'To America, ' he said, turning toward me, his face drawn and gaunt withthe grief that he had survived. 

"'But America is a vast country. '

"'I will hunt till I find her. '

"'And when you find her--you will not kill her, surely!'

"'I will try to get her to come back to me. '

"He took passage in the steerage, and I do not know what happened to himafter that. "

Each of us hid his emotions in his beer-mug. Then Max ordered fresh mugs, and said that Breffny's story recalled a somewhat similar thing that he hadwitnessed in Denver. 

"When I was a reporter out there, I was standing one evening in front of ahotel. A crowd collected to see the body of a guest brought out and placedupon an ambulance. 

"'Where are you taking him, and what is it?' I asked the driver. 

"'To the lazaretto. Smallpox. '"

For a moment, while he was being lifted into the ambulance, the victim'sface was visible. A loud cry was heard in the crowd. It came from a ragged, wild-looking man, whose unkempt beard made him look much older than Iafterward found him to be. As the ambulance hurried off, he ran after it, shouting:

"'I must see that man! Stop! I must ask him something!'

"But he tripped upon a horse-car track, and when he had staggered to hisfeet, the ambulance was out of sight. 

"I ran into the hotel and asked the clerk about the lazaretto patient. Hewas a young European--an Englishman--they thought, who had arrived from theEast two days ago, and whose condition had just been discovered. 

"Coming out, I went to the tramp who had cried out at the sight of the illman. I found him seated on the curbstone, weeping like a child. I asked himwhy he wished to see the smallpox victim, and said that I could get himadmission to the lazaretto, if he would tell me what he knew, and wouldn'tlet any other reporter have the story. 

"He jumped up eagerly. 

"'It's this, ' he said. 'That man ran away with my wife, and I've huntedthem over sea and land. This is the first sight I've had of him. '

"'Then, ' I said, 'if you mean to harm him, I'm afraid I can't bring you tohim. '

"'Him!' said the ragged man, disdainfully. 'I don't want to hurt him. Ionly want to find out where she is. I swear I wouldn't harm either ofthem. '

"I accompanied him to the city physician, with whom he had a long talk. That official finally promised to take him to the lazaretto. The doctor ledthe man to the side of the iron bed where the smallpox patient lay. Thelatter started like a frightened child at sight of his pursuer. 

"'Remember, ' said the doctor to the sick man, 'you have scarcely a chancefor life. You would do well to tell the truth. '

"'Only tell me where she is, ' pleaded the husband, 'and I'll forgive youall. '

"The sick man gasped:

"'I left her in Philadelphia--at the station. She had smallpox. It was fromher I got it. I was a coward--a cur. I left her to save myself. The money Ihad brought from home was nearly all gone. Ask her to forgive me. '

"He was dead that evening. The husband was then upon an east-boundfreight-train. The newspaper telegraphed to Philadelphia, but nothing couldbe found out about the woman. I've often wondered what became of the man. "

The loud hubbub of conversation, --nearly all in German, --the shouts of thewaiters, the noise of their footfalls upon the stone floor, the sound ofmugs being placed upon tables and of Max draining his "stein" of beer, bridged the hiatus between the ending of Max's narrative and the beginningof my own:

"Your story reminds me of one to which the city editor assigned me on oneof my 'late nights. ' I took a cab and went to the station-house. The casehad been reported by a policeman at Ninth and Locust Streets, who hadcalled for a patrol-wagon. From him I got the story. He had seen the thinghappen. 

"He was walking down Locust at half-past twelve that night, and wasopposite the Midnight Mission, when his attention was attracted to the onlytwo persons who were at that moment on the other side of the street. Onewas a man of the appearance of a vagabond, coming from Ninth Street. Theother was a woman, who had come from Tenth Street, and who seemed to walkwith great difficulty, as if ready to sink at every step from weakness. 

"The woman dropped her head as she neared the man. The man peered into herface, in the manner of one who had acquired the habit of examining thecountenances of passers-by. 

"The two met under the gas-lamp that is so conspicuous a night feature ofthe north side of Locust Street, between Ninth and Tenth. 

"The woman gave no attention to the man. So exhausted was she that sheleaned helplessly against the fence. The man ran forward, shrieking like alunatic. 

"'Jeannie!'

"The woman lifted her eyes in a dull kind of amazement and whispered:

"'Donald!'

"She fell back, but he caught her in his arms and kissed her lips a dozentimes, with a half-savage gladness, crying and laughing hysterically, aswomen do. 

"When the policeman had reached the pair, the woman had seen the last ofthis world. 

"Afterward we found that she had been discharged from the municipalhospital, where she had been in the smallpox ward two weeks before; and wesurmised that she had virtually had nothing to eat since then. 

"At the station-house the man explained that the woman was his runawaywife. He had started in search of her two years before, with no other clueas to her whereabouts than the knowledge that she had sailed for Americawith a man named Ferriss--"

"What?" cried Max. "Was the name Archibald Ferriss? That was the name ofthe man who died in the Denver lazaretto--"

But Max was stopped by Breffny, who almost shouted in excitement:

"And the name of the son of McKeown & Ferriss, of Glasgow, in whoseshipyard was employed as timekeeper the Donald Wilson--"

"Donald Wilson was the name of the man who met his wife that night in frontof the Midnight Mission, " said I, in further confirmation. 

It was remarkable. One of the three chapters of this tragic story hadentered into the experience of each of us three who sat there emptyingstone mugs. Now, for the first time, was the story complete to each of us. 

"But what became of the man?" asked Breffny. 

"When the police lieutenant spoke of having her body interred in Potter'sField, the husband spoke up indignantly. He brought forth two gold pieces, saying:

"'I have the money for her grave. I saved this through all my wanderings, because I thought that when I should find her she might be homeless andhungry and in need. '

"So he had her buried respectably in the suburbs somewhere, and I was toobusy at that time to follow up his subsequent movements. It is enough forthe story that he found his wife. "

XXIV

NEWGAG THE COMEDIAN

It was not his real name or his stage name, but it was the one under whichhe was best known by those who best knew him. It had been thrown at him ina café one night by a newspaper man after the performance, and had clungto him. Its significance lay in the fact that his "gags"--supposedlycomic things said by presumably comic men in nominal opera orburlesque--invariably were old. The man who bestowed the title upon himthought it a fine bit of irony. 

Newgag received it without expressed resentment, but without mirth, andhe bore its repetition patiently as seasons went by. He was accustomedto enduring calmly the jests, the indignities that were elicited by hispeculiar appearance, his doleful expression, his slow and bungling speechand movement, his diffident manner. 

He was one of the forbearing men, the many who are doomed to continualsuffering of a kind that their sensitiveness and timidity make it the moredifficult for them to bear. 

Undying ambition burned beneath his undemonstrative surface; dauntlesscourage lay under his lack of ability. 

He was an extremely spare man, of extraordinary height, and the bend of hisshoulders gave to his small head a comical thrust forward. His black hairwas without curl, and it would tolerate no other arrangement than beingcombed back straight. It was allowed to grow downward until it scraped theback of Newgag's collar, a device for concealing the meagreness of hisneck. 

He had a smooth, pale face, slanting from ears to nose like a wedge, andthe dimness of the blue eyes added to its introspective cast. He blushed, as a rule, when he met new acquaintances or was addressed suddenly. He hada gloomy look and a hesitating way of speech. An amusing spectacle was hismechanical-looking smile, which, when he became conscious of it, passedthrough several stages expressive of embarrassment until his normalmournful aspect was reached. 

As he usually appeared in a sack coat when off the stage, the length of hislegs was divertingly emphasized. After the fashion of great actors of abygone generation, he wore a soft black felt hat, dinged in the crown fromfront to rear. 

He had entered "the profession" from the amateur stage, by way of the comicopera chorus, and to that chance was due his being located in the comicopera wing of the great histrionic edifice. He had originally preferredtragedy, but the first consideration was the getting upon the stage by anymeans. Having industriously worked his way out of the chorus, he had beenreconciled by habit to his environment, and had come to aspire to eminencetherein. He had reached the standing of a secondary comedian, --that is tosay, a man playing secondary comic rôles in the pieces for which he iscast. He was useful in such companies as were directly or indirectlycontrolled by their leading comedians, for there never could be any fearsof his outshining those autocratic personages. Only in his wildest hopesdid he ever look upon the centre of the stage as a spot possible for him toattain. 

His means of evoking laughter upon the stage were laborious on his part andmystifying to the thoughtful observer. He took noticeable means to changefrom his real self. It mattered not what was the nature of the part hefilled, he invariably assumed an unnatural, rasping voice; he stretchedhis mouth to its utmost reach and lowered the extremities of his lips; heturned his toes inward (naturally his feet described an abnormal angle) andbowed his arms. Brought up in the school which teaches that to make otherslaugh one must never smile one's self, he wore a grotesquely lugubrious andchangeless countenance. Such was Newgag in his every impersonation. Whenhe thought he was funniest, he appeared to be in most pain and was mostdepressing. 

"My methods are legitimate, " he would say, when he had enlisted one'sattention and apparent admiration across a table bearing beer-bottles andsandwiches. "The people want horse-play nowadays. But when I've got todescend to that sort of thing, I'll go to the variety stage or circus ringat once--or quit. "

"That's a happy thought, old man, " said a comedian of the younger school, one night, when Newgag had uttered his wonted speech. "Why don't you quit?"

Such a speech sufficed to rob Newgag of his self-possession and to reducehim to silence. He could not cope with easy, offhand, impromptu jesters. In truth, no one tried more than Newgag to excel in "horse-play, " but histemperament or his training did not equip him for excelling in it; hedefended the monotony, emptiness, and toilsomeness of his humour on theground that it was "legitimate. "

One night Newgag drank two glasses of beer in rapid succession and lookedat me with a touching countenance. 

"Old boy, " he said, in his homely drawl, "I'm discouraged! I begin to thinkI'm not in it!"

"Why, what's wrong?"

"Well, I've dropped to the fact that, after all these years in thebusiness, I can't make them laugh. "

I was just about to say, "So you've just awakened to that?" but pity andpoliteness deterred me. Every one else had known it, all these years. Newgag, to be sure, should naturally have been, as he was, the last todiscover it. 

Newgag thus went one step further than any comedian I have ever known. Having detected his inability to amuse audiences, he confessed it. 

People who know actors and read this will already have said that it is afiction, and that Newgag's admission is false to life. Not so; I am writingnot about comedians in general, but about Newgag. 

That he had come to so exceptional a concession marked the depth of hisdespair. I tried to cheer him. 

"Nonsense, my boy! They give you bad parts. Go out of comic opera. Trytragedy. "

I had spoken innocently and sincerely, but Newgag thought I was jesting. Instead of his usual attempt at lofty callousness, however, he smiled thatdismal, marionette-like smile of his. That gave me an idea, of which I saidnothing at the time. 

Several months afterward, a manager, who is a friend of mine, was suddenlyplunged in distress because of the serious illness of an actor who was tofill a part in a new American comedy that the manager was to produce on thenext night. 

"What on earth shall I do?" he asked. 

"Play the part yourself, as Hoyt does in such an emergency--or get Newgag. "

"Who's Newgag?"

"He's a friend of mine, out of a position. I met him to-day very muchfrayed. "

"Bring him to me. "

Newgag was overwhelmed when I told him of the opportunity. 

"I never acted in straight comedy, " he said. "I can't do it. I might aswell try to play Juliet. "

"He wants you only to speak the lines, that's all. You're a quick study, you know. Come on!"

I had almost to drag the man to the manager. He allowed himself, in asemistupefied condition, to be engaged. He took the part, sat up allnight in his boarding-house and learned it, went to rehearsal almostletter-perfect in the morning, and nervously prepared to face the ordeal ofthe evening. 

At six o'clock, he wished to go to the manager and give up the part. 

"I can never do it, " he wailed to me. "I haven't had time to form aconception of it and to get up byplay. You see, it's an eccentric characterpart, --a man from the country whom everybody takes for a fool, but whoshows up strong at the last. I can't--"

"Oh, don't act it. You're only engaged in the emergency, you know. Simplygo on and say your lines and come off. "

"That's all I can do, " he said, with a dubious shake of the head. "If onlyI'd had time to study it!"

American plays had taken foothold, and this premier of a new one by anauthor of two previous successes drew a "typical first night audience. "Newgag, having abandoned all idea of making a hit, or of acting the partany further than the mere delivery of the speeches went, was no longerinordinately nervous. When he first entered he was a trifle frightened, and his unavoidable lack of prepared stage business made him awkward andembarrassed for a time. The awkwardness remained, but the embarrassmenteventually passed away. He spoke in his natural voice and retained hisactual manner. When the action required him to laugh, he did so, exhibitinghis characteristic perfunctory smile. 

He received a special call before the curtain after the third act. He hadno thought that it was meant for him until the stage manager pushed him outfrom the wings. He came back looking distressed. 

"Are they guying me?" he asked the stage manager. 

The papers agreed the next day that one of the hits of the performancewas made by Newgag "in an odd part which he had conceived in a strikinglyoriginal way, and impersonated with wonderful finish and subtle drollery. "

"What does it mean?" he gasped. 

I enlightened him. 

"My boy, you simply played yourself. Did it never occur to you that in yourown person you're unconsciously one of the drollest men I ever saw?"

"But I didn't act!"

"You didn't. And take my advice--don't!"

And he doesn't. Upon the reputation of his success in that comedy hearranged with another manager to appear in a play especially written forhim. He is a prosperous star now. Whatever his play or part he alwayspresents the same personality on the stage and he has made that personalitydear to many theatre-goers. He does not appear too frequently or too longin any one place; hence he is warmly welcomed wherever and whenever hereturns. He is classed among leading actors, and the ordinary person doesnot stop sufficiently long to observe that he is no actor at all. 

"This isn't exactly art, " he said to me, the other night, with a tinge ofself-rebuke. "But it's success. "

And the history of Newgag is the history of many. 

XXV

AN OPERATIC EVENING

I

_A Desperate Youth_

The second act of "William Tell" had ended at the Grand Opera House. The incandescent lights of ceiling and proscenium flashed up, showeringradiance upon the vast surface of summer costumes and gay faces in theauditorium. The audience, relieved of the stress of attention, becameaudible in a great composite of chatter. A host streamed along the aislesinto the wide lobbies, and thence its larger part jostled through the frontdoors to the brilliantly illuminated vestibule. Many passed on into thewide sidewalk, where the electric light poured its rays upon countlesspromenaders whose footfalls incessantly beat upon the aural sense. Scoresof bicyclists of both sexes sped over the asphalt up and down, some nowand then deviating to make way for a lumbering yellow 'bus or a hurryingcarriage. 

Men and women, young people composing the majority, strolled to and fro inthe roomy lobby that environs the auditorium on all sides save that of thestage. A group of enthusiasts stood between the rear door of the box-officeand the wide entrance to the long middle aisle. 

"How magnificently Guille held that last note!"

"What good taste and artistic sense Madame Kronold has!"

"Del Puente hasn't been in better voice in years. "

"But you know, Mademoiselle Islar is decidedly a lyric soprano. "

These were some of the scraps of the conversation of that group. A lithe, athletic-looking man of thirty stood mechanically listening to them, as hestroked his black moustache. He was in summer attire, evidently disdainingconventionalities, preferring comfort. 

Suddenly losing interest in the conversation in his vicinity, he startedtoward the Montgomery Avenue side of the lobby, with the apparent intentionof breathing some outside air at one of the wide-barred exits, wherechildren stood looking in from the sidewalk, and catching what glimpsesthey could of the audience through the doorways in the glass partitionbounding the auditorium. 

He by chance cast his glance up the unused staircase leading to the balconyfrom the northern part of the lobby. He saw upon the third step a youngwoman in a dark flannel outing-dress, her face concealed by a veil. Sheseemed to be watching some one among those who stood or moved near theMontgomery Avenue exits, which had wire barriers. 

"By Jove!" he said, within himself, "surely I know that figure! But Ithought she had gone to the Catskills, and I never supposed her capable ofwearing negligee clothes at the theatre. There can be no mistaking thatwrist, though, or that turn of the shoulders. "

He stepped softly to her side and lightly touched one of the admiredshoulders. 

She turned quickly and suppressed an exclamation ere it was half-uttered. 

"Why, Harry--Doctor Haslam, I mean! How did you know it was I?"

"Why, Amy--that is to say, Miss Winnett! What on earth are you doing here?Pardon the question, but I thought you were on the mountains. I'm all themore glad to see you. "

While he pressed her hand she looked searchingly into his eyes, a fact ofwhich he was conscious despite her veil. 

"I'm not here--as far as my people may know. I'm at the Catskills with mycousins--except to my cousins themselves. To them I've come back home for aweek's conference with my dressmaker. Our house isn't entirely closed up, you know. Aunt Rachel likes the hot weather of Philadelphia all summerthrough, and she's still here. When I arrived here this morning, I told herthe dressmaker story. She retires at eight and she thinks I'm in bed too. But I'm here, and nobody suspects it but you and Mary, the servant athome, who knows where I've come, and who's to stay up for me till I returnto-night. That's all of it, and now, as you're a friend of mine, youmustn't tell any one, will you?"

"But I know nothing to tell, " said the bewildered doctor. "What does allthis subterfuge, this mystery mean?"

Amy Winnett considered silently for a moment, while Doctor Haslam mentallyadmired the slim, well-rounded figure, the graceful poise of the littlehead with its mass of brown hair beneath a sailor hat of the style that"came in" with this summer. 

"I may as well tell you all, " she answered, presently. "I may need yourassistance, too. I can rely upon you?"

"Through fire and water. "

"I've come to Philadelphia to prevent a suicide. "

"Good gracious!"

"Yes. You see, I've broken the engagement between me and Tom Appleton. "

"What! You don't mean it?"

There was a striking note of jubilation in the doctor's interruption. MissWinnett made no comment thereupon, but continued:

"I finally decided that I didn't care as much for Tom as I'd thought I did, and then I had a suspicion--but I won't mention that--"

"No, you needn't. Your fortune--pardon me, I simply took the privilege ofan old friend who had himself been rejected by you. Go on. "

"Don't interrupt again. As I said, I concluded that I couldn't be Tom'swife, and I told him so. He went to the Catskills when we went, you know, as he thought he could keep up his law studies as well there as here. Youcan't imagine how he took it. I'd never before known how much he--he reallywished to marry me. But I was unflinching, and at last he left me, vowingthat he would return to Philadelphia and commit suicide. He swore aterrible oath that my next message from him would be found in his handsafter his death. And he set to-night as the time for the deed. "

"But why couldn't he have done it there and then?"

"How hard-hearted you are! Probably because he wanted to put his affairs inorder before putting an end to his life. "

She spoke in all seriousness. Doctor Haslam succeeded with difficulty inrestraining a smile. 

"You don't imagine for a moment, " he said, "that the young man intendedkeeping his oath. "

"Don't I? You should have seen the look on his face when he spoke it. "

"Well?"

"Well, I couldn't sleep with the thought that a man was going to killhimself on my account. It makes me shudder. I'd see his face in my dreamsevery night of my life. Then if a note were really found in his hands, addressed to me, the whole thing would come out in the newspapers, andwouldn't that be horrible? Of course I couldn't tell my cousins anythingabout his threat, so I invented my excuse quickly, packed a small handbag, disguised myself with Cousin Laura's hat and veil, and took the same trainthat Tom took. I've kept my eye on him ever since, and he has no idea I'mon his track. The only time I lost was in hurrying home with my handbag tosee my aunt, but I didn't even do that until I'd followed him on ChestnutStreet to the down-town box-office of this theatre and seen him buy a seat, which I later found out from the ticket-seller was for to-night. So here Iam, and there he is. "

"Where?"

"Standing over there by that wire thing like a fence next the street. "

The doctor looked over as she motioned. He soon recognized the slenderfigure, the indolent attitude of Tom Appleton, the blasé young man whom hewas so accustomed to meeting at billiard-tables, in clubs, or hotels. Atolerant, amiable expression saved the youth's smooth, handsome face fromvacuity. He was dressed with careful nicety. 

"But, " said Haslam, "a man about to take leave of this life doesn'tordinarily waste time going to the opera. "

"Why not? He probably came here to think. One can do that well at theopera. "

"Tom Appleton think?--I beg pardon again. But see, he's talking to a girlnow, Miss Estabrook, of North Broad Street. His smile to her is not thekind of a smile that commonly lights up a man's face on his way to death. "

"You don't suppose he would conceal his intentions from people by puttingon his usual gaiety, do you?" she replied, ironically; adding, ratherstiffly, "He has at least sufficiently good manners to do that, if notsufficient duplicity. "

"I didn't mean to offend you. My motive was to comfort you with theprobability that he has changed his mind about shuffling off his mortalcoil. "

"You're not very complimentary, Doctor Haslam. Perhaps you don't think thatbeing jilted by me is sufficient to make a man commit suicide. "

"Frankly I don't. If I had thought so three years ago, I'd be dust orashes at this present moment. It can't be that you would feel hurt if TomAppleton there should fail to keep his oath and should continue to live inspite of your renunciation of him?"

"How dare you think me so vain and cruel, when I've taken all this troubleand come all this distance simply to prevent him from keeping his oath?"

"But how in the world would you prevent him if he were honestly bent ongetting rid of himself?"

"By watching him until the moment he makes the attempt, and then rushingup and telling him that I'd renew our engagement. That would stop him, andgain time for me to manage so that he'd fall in love with some other girland release me of his own accord. "

"But think a moment. You can watch him until the opera is out and perhapsfor some time later. But if he means to die he certainly has a sufficientshare of good manners to induce him to die quietly in his own home. Sohe'll eventually go home. When his door is locked, how are you going tokeep your eye on him, and how can you rush to him at the proper moment?"

"I never thought of that. "

"No, you're a woman. "

She proceeded to do some thinking there upon the stairs. 

"Oh, " she said, finally, "I know what to do. I'll follow him until he doesgo home, to make sure he doesn't attempt anything before that time, andthen I'll tell the police. They'll watch him. "

"You'll probably get Mr. Tom Appleton into some very embarrassingcomplications by so doing. "

"What if I do, " she said, heroically, "if I save his life? Now, will youassist me to watch him? I'll need an escort in the street, of course. "

"I put myself at your command from now henceforth, if only for the joy ofthe time that I am thus privileged to pass with you. "

She smiled pleasantly, and with pleasure, trusting to her veil to hide thefacial indication of her feelings. But Haslam's trained gray eye noted thesmile, and also what kind of smile it was, and the discovery had a potenteffect upon him. It deprived him momentarily of the power of speech, and helooked vacantly at her while colour came and went in his face. 

Then he regained control of himself and he sighed audibly, while shedropped her eyes. 

They were still standing upon the stairs, heedless of the confusion ofvocal sounds that arose from the lobby strollers, from the boys sellinglibrettos, from the people returning from the vestibule in a thick stream, from the musicians afar in the orchestra, tuning their instruments, fromthe many sources that provide the delightful hubbub of the entr'acte. 

"Hush!" said Amy to Haslam. "Stand in front of me, so that Tom won't see meif he looks up here as he passes. He's coming this way. "

Young Appleton, chaffing with the persons whom he had met at the exit, wassharing in the general movement from the byways of the lobby to the middleentrance of the parquet. The electric bell in the vestibule had sounded thesignal that the third act was to begin. Mr. Hinrichs had returned to thedirector's stand in the orchestra and was raising his baton. 

Arrived at the middle entrance, Appleton raised his hat to those with whomhe had been talking, as if not intending to go in just then. 

Mr. Hinrichs's baton tapped upon the stand, the music began, and thecurtain rose. 

"Why doesn't he go in?" whispered Amy, alluding to Appleton. 

But the young man yawned, looked at his watch, and departed from thelobby--not to the auditorium, but out to the vestibule. 

"He's going to leave the theatre, " said Miss Winnett, excitedly. "We mustfollow. "

And she tripped hastily down the stairs, Haslam after her. 

II

_A Triangular Chase_

Tom Appleton sauntered out through the great vestibule, turning his eyescasually from the marble floor up to the balconies that look down fromaloft upon this outer lobby. He was whistling an air from "Apollo" which hehad heard a few weeks before at the New York Casino. 

He hastened his steps when he saw a 'bus passing down Broad Street. A leapdown the Grand Opera House steps and a lively run enabled him to catch the'bus before it reached Columbia Avenue. He clambered up to the top and wassoon being well shaken as he enjoyed the breeze and the changing view ofthe handsome residences on North Broad Street. 

Haslam's sharp eyes took note of Appleton's action. 

"He's on that 'bus, " said the doctor to Amy as she took his arm on thesidewalk. "Shall we take the next one?"

"No; for then we can't see where he gets off. Can't we find a cab?"

"There's none in sight. We can have one called here, but we'll have to waitfor it at least ten minutes. "

"That will never do. To think he could elude us so easily, without evenknowing that we're after him!"

Vexation was stamped upon the dainty face, with its soft brown eyes, as sheraised her veil. 

"Ah! I have it, " said Haslam, who would have gone to great lengths to drivethat vexation away. 

"A bicycle! This section teems with bicycle shops. We can hire a tandem. It's a good thing we're both expert bicyclists. "

"And that I'm suitably dressed for this kind of a race, " replied Amy, asthe two hurried down the block. 

She stood outside the bicycle store and kept her gaze upon the 'bus, whichwas growing less and less distinct to the eye as it rolled down the street, while Haslam hastily engaged a two-seated machine. 

The 'bus had not yet disappeared in the darkness when the pursuers, Amyupon the front seat, glided out from the sidewalk and down over theasphalt. The passage became rough below Columbia Avenue, where the asphaltgives away to Belgian block paving. Haslam's athletic training and theacquaintance of both with the bicycle served to minimize this disadvantage. 

The frequent stoppages of the 'bus made it less difficult for them to keepin close sight of it. Conversation was not easy between them. Both keptsilence, therefore, their eyes fixed upon the 'bus ahead, and carefullywatching its every stop. 

"You're sure he hasn't gotten off yet?" she asked, at Girard Avenue. 

"Certain. "

"He's probably going to his rooms down-town. "

"Or to his club. "

So they pressed southward. Before them stretched the lone vista of electriclights away down Broad Street to the City Hall invisible in the night. 

The difficulty of talking made thinking more involuntary. Haslam's mindturned back three years. Was it, as he had dared sometimes to fancy, ajuvenile capriciousness that had impelled this girl in front of him toreject him when she was seventeen, after having manifested an unmistakabletenderness for him? And now that she was twenty, and had in the meantimerejected several others, and broken one engagement, was it too late toattempt to revive the old spark?

His meditations were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from the girlherself. 

"Look! He's left the 'bus. He's going into the Park Theatre. "

So he was. His slim person was easily distinguishable in the wealth ofelectric light that flooded the street upon which looked the broad doorwaysand the allegorical facades of the Park. 

The second act of "La Belle Helene" was not yet over when Appleton enteredand stood at the rear of the parquet circle. He indifferently watched thefinale, made some mental comments upon the white flowing gown of PaulineHall, the make-up of Fred Solomon, and the grotesqueness of the fiveHellenic kings. Then he scanned the audience. 

Haslam and Amy dismounted near the theatre and entrusted the bicycle to asmall boy's care. When they had bought admission tickets and reached thelobby, the gay finale of the second act was being given. The curtain fell, was called up three times, and then people began to pour forth from theentrance to drink, smoke, or enjoy the air in the entr'acte. 

Appleton was involved in the movement of those who resorted to the littlegarden with flowers and fountain and asphalt paving, accessible throughthe northern exits. He paused for a time by the fountain, not sufficientlycurious to join the crowd that stood gaping at the apertures through whichthe members of the chorus could be seen ascending the stairs to the upperdressing-rooms, many of them carolling scraps of song from the opera asthey went. 

Appleton soon reëntered the lobby and again surveyed the audience closely. Haslam caught sight of him just in time to avoid him. Amy had resumed theconcealment of her veil. 

To the surprise of his watchers, Appleton left the theatre before the thirdact opened. Again he jumped upon a 'bus, but this time it was upon onemoving northward. 

"It looks as if he were going back to the Grand Opera House, " suggestedAmy, as she and her companion started to repossess the bicycle. 

"His movements are a trifle unaccountable, " said Haslam, thoughtfully. 

"Ah! Now you admit he is acting queerly. Perhaps you'll see I was quiteright. "

Again mounted upon the bicycle, the doctor and the young woman returned tothe chase. They were soon brought to a second stop by Appleton's departurefrom the 'bus at Girard Avenue. 

"Where can he be going to now?" queried Amy. 

"He's going to take that east-bound Girard Avenue car. "

"So he is. What can he mean to do in that part of town?"

They turned down Girard Avenue. The car was half a block in advance ofthem. 

"You're energetic enough in this pursuit, " Amy shouted back to the doctoras the machine fled over the stones, "even if you don't believe in it. "

"Energetic in your service, now and always. "

She made no answer. 

This time her reflections were abruptly checked--as his had been on BroadStreet--by the cry of the other. 

"See! He's getting off at the Girard Avenue Theatre. "

Again they found a custodian for their bicycle and followed Appleton into atheatre. 

The young man stopped at the box-office in the long vestibule, boughta ticket, and had a call made for a coupé. Then he passed through theluxurious little foyer, beautiful with flowers and soft colours, and stoodbehind the parquet circle railing. 

Adelaide Randall's embodiment of "The Grand Duchess" held his attention fora time. Haslam and Miss Winnett, to avoid the risk of being discovered byhim, sought the seclusion of the balcony stairs. 

"We had a few bars of Offenbach at the Park, and here we have Offenbachagain, " commented the doctor. 

"And again, only a few bars, for there goes our man. "

Appleton, having given as much attention to the few spectators as to theplayers, left the theatre and got into the cab that had been ordered forhim. 

Haslam, behind the pillar at the entrance to the theatre, overheardAppleton's direction to the driver. It was:

"To the Grand Opera House. Hurry! The opera will soon be over. "

The cab rumbled away. 

"It's well we heard his order, " observed Haslam to Amy. "We couldn't havehoped to keep up with a cab. He'll probably wait at the Grand Opera Housetill we get there. "

"But we mustn't lose any time, for, as he said, the performance will soonbe over. "

"Oh, 'Tell' is a long opera and Guille will have an encore for the aria inthe last act. That will give us a few minutes more. "

III

_A Telegraphic Revelation_

A boy walking down Girard Avenue, as Appleton got into the cab, had beenwhistling the tune of "They're After Me, "--a thing that was new to thevariety stage last fall, but is dead this summer. The air, whistled by theboy, clung to Appleton's sense, and he unconsciously hummed it to himselfas his cab went on its grinding way over the stones. 

The cabman was considerate of his horse, and he coolly ignored Appleton'soccasional shouts of, "Get along there, won't you?"

It was, therefore, not impossible for the bicyclists to keep in sight ofthe coupé. 

"All this concern about a man you say you don't care for, " said Haslam toAmy, as the bicycle turned up Broad Street. "It's unprecedented. "

"It's only humanity. "

"You didn't bother about following me around like this when you threw meover. "

"You didn't threaten to kill yourself. "

"No; if I had, I'd have carried out my threat. But for months I endured aliving death--or worse. "

"Really? Did you, though?"

Eager inquiry and sudden elation were expressed in this speech. 

"Of course I did. Why do you ask in that way?"

"Oh--you took me by surprise. Why did you never tell me it affected you so?I thought--I thought--"

"What did you think?"

"That if you really cared for me you would have--tried again. "

"What? Then I was fatally ignorant! I thought that when you said a thing, you meant it. "

"I didn't know what I meant until it was too late. "

"But is it too late--ah! see, he's getting out of the cab at the GrandOpera House. "

They quickly switched the bicycle from the street to the sidewalk, and bothdismounted. 

They were checked at the entrance to the theatre by the appearance ofAppleton. He was coming from within the building, and with him were twowomen, one elderly and unattractive, the other a plump young person withbright blue eyes in a saucy face that had more claim to piquant effronterythan to beauty. She was simply dressed and was all smiles to Appleton. 

Amy and Haslam quickly turned their backs, thus avoiding recognition, andwhile they seemed to be looking through the glass front into the vestibule, they overheard the following conversation between the blue-eyed girl andAppleton. 

"I'm glad you found us at last, Tom. Three acts of grand opera are aboutenough for me, thanks, and we'd have left sooner if your telegram thatyou'd be in town to-night hadn't made me expect to see you. "

"Well, I've been hunting for you in every open theatre in town wherethere's grand opera. In your answer to my telegram from the Catskills, yousaid merely you were going to the opera this evening. You didn't say whatopera, but I supposed it was this one, so I bought a ticket as soon as Iarrived in town at the down-town office. I got here after the first act, and spent all the second act looking around for you. "

"It's strange you didn't see us. We were in the middle of row K, right. "

"Well, I missed you, that's all, and I kept a watch on the lobby after theact, thinking you'd perhaps come out between the acts. Then I went to thePark Theatre, and then to the Girard Avenue. "

Amy and Haslam went into the vestibule. Amy was crimson with anger. Haslamquietly said:

"Do you wish to continue the pursuit?"

Before she found time to answer, another matter distracted her attention. 

"Look! There's Mary, the housemaid, who was to stay up for me till I gothome. She has come here for me. "

The servant stood by the door leading into the lobby, in a positionenabling her to scan the faces of people coming out from the auditorium. 

"Oh, Miss Amy, are you here? I was waiting for you to come out. Here's atelegram that came about a half-hour ago. I thought it might be important. "

Amy tore open the envelope. 

"Why, " she said to Haslam, "this was sent to-day from Philadelphia to meat the Catskills, and my cousins have had it repeated back to me. Andlook--it's signed by you. "

"I surely didn't send it. "

But there was the name beyond doubt, "Henry Haslam, M. D. "

"This is a mystery to me, I assure you, " reiterated the doctor. 

"But not to me, " cried Amy. "Read the message and you'll understand. "

He read these words:

"Mr. Appleton is very ill. His life depends upon his will-power. He tellsme that you alone can say the word that will save him. Henry Haslam, M. D. "

Haslam smiled. 

"A clever invention to make you think he tried to execute his threat. Nowyou know what he was doing while you were taking your handbag home. Heprobably concocted the scheme on his journey. But why did he sign my name, I wonder?"

She dropped her eyes and answered in a low tone:

"Because he knew that I would believe anything said by you. "

"Would you believe that I love you still more than I did three years ago?"

"Yes; if it came from your own lips--not by telegraph. "

She lifted her eyes now, and her lips, too; Mary the housemaid sensiblylooked another way. 

THE END.