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Title: Rolling Stones
       Introduction -- The Dream -- A Ruler of Men -- The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear -- Helping the Other Fellow -- The Marionettes -- The Marquis and Miss Sally -- A Fog in Santone -- The Friendly Call -- A Dinner at ----* -- Sound and Fury -- Tictocq -- Tracked to Doom -- A Snapshot at the President -- An Unfinished Christmas Story -- The Unprofitable Servant -- Aristocracy Versus Hash -- The Prisoner of Zembla -- A Strange Story -- Fickle Fortune, or How Gladys Hustled -- An Apology -- Lord Oakhurst's Curse -- Bexar Scrip No. 2692 -- Queries and Answers -- The Pewee -- Nothing to Say -- The Murderer -- Two Portraits -- A Contribution -- The Old Farm -- Vanity -- The Lullaby Boy -- Chanson de Bohême -- Hard to Forget -- Drop a Tear in This Slot -- Tamales -- Letters


Author: O. Henry



Release Date: September 21, 2001  [eBook #3815]
[Most recently updated: December 2, 2005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


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ROLLING STONES

by

O. HENRY

Author of "The Four Million," "The Voice of the City," "The Trimmed
Lamp," "Strictly Business," "Sixes and Sevens," etc.

1919







[Illustration: The last photograph of O. Henry, taken by
W. M. Vanderwayde (New York) in 1909]




   O. Henry, Afrite-Chef of all delight--
   Of all delectables conglomerate
   That stay the starved brain and rejuvenate
   The Mental Man! The aesthetic appetite--
   So long enhungered that the "inards" fight
   And growl gutwise--its pangs thou dost abate
   And all so amiably alleviate,
   Joy pats his belly as a hobo might
   Who haply hath obtained a cherry pie
   With no burnt crust at all, ner any seeds;
   Nothin' but crisp crust, and the thickness fit.
   And squashin'-juicy, an' jes' mighty nigh
   Too dratted, drippin'-sweet for human needs,
   But fer the sosh of milk that goes with it.

         Written in the character of "Sherrard
         Plummer" by James Whitcomb Riley




CONTENTS

   Introduction
   The Dream
   A Ruler of Men
   The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear
   Helping the Other Fellow
   The Marionettes
   The Marquis and Miss Sally
   A Fog in Santone
   The Friendly Call
   A Dinner at ----*
   Sound and Fury
   Tictocq
   Tracked to Doom
   A Snapshot at the President
   An Unfinished Christmas Story
   The Unprofitable Servant
   Aristocracy Versus Hash
   The Prisoner of Zembla
   A Strange Story
   Fickle Fortune, or How Gladys Hustled
   An Apology
   Lord Oakhurst's Curse
   Bexar Scrip No. 2692
   Queries and Answers
   Poems
      The Pewee
      Nothing to Say
      The Murderer
      Some Postscripts
         Two Portraits
         A Contribution
         The Old Farm
         Vanity
         The Lullaby Boy
         Chanson de Boheme
         Hard to Forget
      Drop a Tear in This Slot
      Tamales
   Letters


ILLUSTRATIONS

   The Last Photograph of O. Henry (Frontispiece)
   The Editor's Own Statement of His Aims
      (Advertisement for _The Rolling Stone_)
   Record of Births and Deaths from the Porter Family Bible
   O. Henry at the Age of Two
   The "Hill City Quartet," to Which O. Henry Belonged
      As a Young Man in Austin
   O. Henry in Austin, Texas, 1896
   Emigrants' Camp (an Early Drawing by O. Henry)
   "Can the Horse Run?" (Cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)
   "Will You Go In?" (Cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)
   "Here We Have Kate and John." (Cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)
   "Did He Go Up?" (Cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)
   "See Tom and the Dog." (Cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)
   "See Him Do It." (Cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)
   Letters That the Boy Will Porter Brought Along from
      North Carolina to Texas
   Letter: "A Young Man of Good Moral Character and
      an A No. 1 Druggist."
   "The Plunkville Patriot," April 2, 1895
   _The Rolling Stone_, January 26, 1895
   A Page from "The Plunkville Patriot"
   A Front Page of _The Rolling Stone_
   A Page from "The Plunkville Patriot"
   "Dear Me, General, Who Is That Dreadful Man?" (Cartoon)
   "Well, I Declare, Those Gentlemen Must Be Brothers." (Cartoon)
   "Oh Papa, What Is That?"
      (Cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_, April 27, 1895)
   Cartoon by O. Henry
   Cartoon by O. Henry
   Can He Make the Jump?
      (Cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_, October 13, 1894
   Page from "The Plunkville Patriot"
   A Letter to His Daughter Margaret.




   +------------------------------------------------+
   |                                                |
   |                      THE                       |
   |                 ROLLING STONE                  |
   |  is a weekly paper published in Austin, Texas  |
   |   every Saturday and will endeavor to fill a   |
   |      long-felt want that does not appear,      |
   |        by the way, to be altogether in-        |
   |              satiable at present.              |
   |                                                |
   |                  THE IDEA IS                   |
   | to fill its pages with matter that will make a |
   |      heart-rending appeal to every lover of    |
   |      good literature, and every person who     |
   |          has a taste for reading print;        |
   |           and a dollar and a half for          |
   |              a year's subscription.            |
   |                                                |
   |              OUR SPECIAL PREMIUM               |
   |   For the next thirty days and from that time  |
   |   on indefinitely, whoever will bring two dol- |
   |    lars in cash to _The Rolling Stone_ office  |
   |        will be entered on the list of sub-     |
   |          scribers for one year and will        |
   |              have returned to him              |
   |                  on the spot                   |
   |              FIFTY CENTS IN CASH               |
   |                                                |
   +------------------------------------------------+
         The editor's own statement of his aims




INTRODUCTION


This the twelfth and final volume of O. Henry's work gets its title from
an early newspaper venture of which he was the head and front. On April
28, 1894, there appeared in Austin, Texas, volume 1, number 3, of The
Rolling Stone, with a circulation greatly in excess of that of the only
two numbers that had gone before. Apparently the business office was
encouraged. The first two issues of one thousand copies each had been
bought up. Of the third an edition of six thousand was published and
distributed FREE, so that the business men of Austin, Texas, might know
what a good medium was at hand for their advertising. The editor and
proprietor and illustrator of _The Rolling Stone_ was Will Porter,
incidentally Paying and Receiving Teller in Major Brackenridge's bank.

Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the paper was "The Plunkville
Patriot," a page each week--or at least with the regularity of the
somewhat uncertain paper itself--purporting to be reprinted from a
contemporary journal. The editor of the Plunkville _Patriot_ was Colonel
Aristotle Jordan, unrelenting enemy of his enemies. When the Colonel's
application for the postmastership in Plunkville is ignored, his columns
carry a bitter attack on the administration at Washington. With the
public weal at heart, the _Patriot_ announces that "there is a dangerous
hole in the front steps of the Elite saloon." Here, too, appears the
delightful literary item that Mark Twain and Charles Egbert Craddock are
spending the summer together in their Adirondacks camp. "Free," runs its
advertising column, "a clergyman who cured himself of fits will send
one book containing 100 popular songs, one repeating rifle, two decks
easywinner cards and 1 liver pad free of charge for $8. Address Sucker
& Chump, Augusta, Me." The office moves nearly every week, probably in
accordance with the time-honored principle involving the comparative
ease of moving and paying rent. When the Colonel publishes his own
candidacy for mayor, he further declares that the _Patriot_ will accept
no announcements for municipal offices until after "our" (the editor's)
canvass. Adams & Co., grocers, order their $2.25 ad. discontinued and
find later in the _Patriot_ this estimate of their product: "No less
than three children have been poisoned by eating their canned vegetables,
and J. O. Adams, the senior member of the firm, was run out of Kansas
City for adulterating codfish balls. It pays to advertise." Here is the
editorial in which the editor first announces his campaign: "Our worthy
mayor, Colonel Henry Stutty, died this morning after an illness of about
five minutes, brought on by carrying a bouquet to Mrs. Eli Watts just
as Eli got in from a fishing trip. Ten minutes later we had dodgers out
announcing our candidacy for the office. We have lived in Plunkville
going on five years and have never been elected anything yet. We
understand the mayor business thoroughly and if elected some people will
wish wolves had stolen them from their cradles . . ."

The page from the _Patriot_ is presented with an array of perfectly
confused type, of artistic errors in setting up, and when an occasional
line gets shifted (intentionally, of course) the effect is alarming.
Anybody who knows the advertising of a small country weekly can, as
he reads, pick out, in the following, the advertisement from the
"personal."


   Miss Hattie Green of Paris, Ill., is
   Steel-riveted seam or water power
   automatic oiling thoroughly tested
   visiting her sister Mrs. G. W. Grubes
   Little Giant Engines at Adams & Co.
   Also Sachet powders Mc. Cormick Reapers and
   oysters.


All of this was a part of _The Rolling Stone_, which flourished, or at
least wavered, in Austin during the years 1894 and 1895. Years before,
Porter's strong instinct to write had been gratified in letters. He
wrote, in his twenties, long imaginative letters, occasionally stuffed
with execrable puns, but more than often buoyant, truly humorous, keenly
incisive into the unreal, especially in fiction. I have included a
number of these letters to Doctor Beall of Greensboro, N. C., and to his
early friend in Texas, Mr. David Harrell.

In 1895-1896 Porter went to Houston, Texas, to work on the Houston
_Post_. There he "conducted" a column which he called "Postscripts."
Some of the contents of the pages that follow have been taken from
these old files in the fair hope that admirers of the matured O. Henry
will find in them pleasurable marks of the later genius.

Before the days of _The Rolling Stone_ there are eleven years in Texas
over which, with the exception of the letters mentioned, there are few
"traces" of literary performance; but there are some very interesting
drawings, some of which are reproduced in this volume. A story is back
of them. They were the illustrations to a book. "Joe" Dixon, prospector
and inveterate fortune-seeker, came to Austin from the Rockies in 1883,
at the constant urging of his old pal, Mr. John Maddox, "Joe," kept
writing Mr. Maddox, "your fortune's in your pen, not your pick. Come
to Austin and write an account of your adventures." It was hard to woo
Dixon from the gold that wasn't there, but finally Maddox wrote him he
must come and try the scheme. "There's a boy here from North Carolina,"
wrote Maddox. "His name is Will Porter and he can make the pictures.
He's all right." Dixon came. The plan was that, after Author and Artist
had done their work, Patron would step in, carry the manuscript to New
York, bestow it on a deserving publisher and then return to await, with
the other two, the avalanche of royalties. This version of the story
comes from Mr. Maddox. There were forty pictures in all and they were
very true to the life of the Rockies in the seventies. Of course, the
young artist had no "technique"--no anything except what was native.
But wait! As the months went by Dixon worked hard, but he began to have
doubts. Perhaps the book was no good. Perhaps John would only lose his
money. He was a miner, not a writer, and he ought not to let John go to
any expense. The result of this line of thought was the Colorado River
for the manuscript and the high road for the author. The pictures,
fortunately, were saved. Most of them Porter gave later to Mrs.
Hagelstein of San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Maddox, by the way, finding a note
from Joe that "explained all," hastened to the river and recovered a few
scraps of the great book that had lodged against a sandbar. But there
was no putting them together again.

So much for the title. It is a real O. Henry title. Contents of this
last volume are drawn not only from letters, old newspaper files, and
_The Rolling Stone_, but from magazines and unpublished manuscripts.
Of the short stories, several were written at the very height of his
powers and popularity and were lost, inexplicably, but lost. Of the
poems, there are a few whose authorship might have been in doubt if the
compiler of this collection had not secured external evidence that made
them certainly the work of O. Henry. Without this very strong evidence,
they might have been rejected because they were not entirely the kind
of poems the readers of O. Henry would expect from him. Most of them
however, were found in his own indubitable manuscript or over his own
signature.

There is extant a mass of O. Henry correspondence that has not been
included in this collection. During the better part of a decade in
New York City he wrote constantly to editors, and in many instances
intimately. This is very important material, and permission has been
secured to use nearly all of it in a biographical volume that will be
issued within the next two or three years. The letters in this volume
have been chosen as an "exihibit," as early specimens of his writing and
for their particularly characteristic turns of thought and phrase. The
collection is not "complete" in any historical sense.

1912.

H.P.S.




This record of births and deaths is copied from the Porter Family Bible,
just lately discovered.


BIRTHS

ALGERNON SIDNEY PORTER
Son of
SIDNEY AND RUTH C. PORTER
Was born
August 22, 1825

MONDAY EVENING, May 29, 1858
Still-born Son of
A. S. AND M. V. PORTER

MONDAY, August 6, 1860, 9 o'clock P.M.
SHIRLEY WORTH
Son of A. S. AND M. V. PORTER

THURSDAY, September 11, 1862, 9 o'clock P.M.
WILLIAM SIDNEY [1]
Son of
A. S. AND M. V. PORTER

SUNDAY, March 26, 1865, at 8 o'clock A. M.
DAVID WEIR
Son of
A. S. AND M. V. PORTER

MARY JANE VIRGINIA SWAIM [2]
Daughter of
WILLIAM AND ABIAH SWAIM
Was born
February 12, 1833


DEATHS

MARY VIRGINIA PORTER
TUESDAY EVENING, September 26, 1865
At 7:30 o'clock

ATHOL ESTES PORTER
SUNDAY EVENING, July 25,1897
At 6 o'clock

ALGERNON SIDNEY PORTER
SUNDAY MORNING, September 30, 1888
At 20 minutes of 2 o'clock


   [Footnote 1: O. Henry]

   [Footnote 2: Mother of O. Henry]



[Illustration: O. Henry at the age of two]




THE DREAM


      [This was the last work of O. Henry. The _Cosmopolitan
      Magazine_ had ordered it from him and, after his death, the
      unfinished manuscript was found in his room, on his dusty
      desk. The story as it here appears was published in the
      _Cosmopolitan_ for September, 1910.]


Murray dreamed a dream.

Both psychology and science grope when they would explain to us the
strange adventures of our immaterial selves when wandering in the realm
of "Death's twin brother, Sleep." This story will not attempt to be
illuminative; it is no more than a record of Murray's dream. One of the
most puzzling phases of that strange waking sleep is that dreams which
seem to cover months or even years may take place within a few seconds
or minutes.

Murray was waiting in his cell in the ward of the condemned. An electric
arc light in the ceiling of the corridor shone brightly upon his table.
On a sheet of white paper an ant crawled wildly here and there as Murray
blocked its way with an envelope. The electrocution was set for eight
o'clock in the evening. Murray smiled at the antics of the wisest of
insects.

There were seven other condemned men in the chamber. Since he had been
there Murray had seen three taken out to their fate; one gone mad and
fighting like a wolf caught in a trap; one, no less mad, offering up a
sanctimonious lip-service to Heaven; the third, a weakling, collapsed
and strapped to a board. He wondered with what credit to himself his
own heart, foot, and face would meet his punishment; for this was his
evening. He thought it must be nearly eight o'clock.

Opposite his own in the two rows of cells was the cage of Bonifacio, the
Sicilian slayer of his betrothed and of two officers who came to arrest
him. With him Murray had played checkers many a long hour, each calling
his move to his unseen opponent across the corridor.

Bonifacio's great booming voice with its indestructible singing quality
called out:

"Eh, Meestro Murray; how you feel--all-a right--yes?"

"All right, Bonifacio," said Murray steadily, as he allowed the ant to
crawl upon the envelope and then dumped it gently on the stone floor.

"Dat's good-a, Meestro Murray. Men like us, we must-a die like-a men. My
time come nex'-a week. All-a right. Remember, Meestro Murray, I beat-a
you dat las' game of de check. Maybe we play again some-a time. I don'-a
know. Maybe we have to call-a de move damn-a loud to play de check where
dey goin' send us."

Bonifacio's hardened philosophy, followed closely by his deafening,
musical peal of laughter, warmed rather than chilled Murray's numbed
heart. Yet, Bonifacio had until next week to live.

The cell-dwellers heard the familiar, loud click of the steel bolts
as the door at the end of the corridor was opened. Three men came to
Murray's cell and unlocked it. Two were prison guards; the other was
"Len"--no; that was in the old days; now the Reverend Leonard Winston,
a friend and neighbor from their barefoot days.

"I got them to let me take the prison chaplain's place," he said, as he
gave Murray's hand one short, strong grip. In his left hand he held a
small Bible, with his forefinger marking a page.

Murray smiled slightly and arranged two or three books and some
penholders orderly on his small table. He would have spoken, but no
appropriate words seemed to present themselves to his mind.

The prisoners had christened this cellhouse, eighty feet long,
twenty-eight feet wide, Limbo Lane. The regular guard of Limbo Lane,
an immense, rough, kindly man, drew a pint bottle of whiskey from his
pocket and offered it to Murray, saying:

"It's the regular thing, you know. All has it who feel like they need a
bracer. No danger of it becoming a habit with 'em, you see."

Murray drank deep into the bottle.

"That's the boy!" said the guard. "Just a little nerve tonic, and
everything goes smooth as silk."

They stepped into the corridor, and each one of the doomed seven knew.
Limbo Lane is a world on the outside of the world; but it had learned,
when deprived of one or more of the five senses, to make another sense
supply the deficiency. Each one knew that it was nearly eight, and that
Murray was to go to the chair at eight. There is also in the many Limbo
Lanes an aristocracy of crime. The man who kills in the open, who beats
his enemy or pursuer down, flushed by the primitive emotions and the
ardor of combat, holds in contempt the human rat, the spider, and the
snake.

So, of the seven condemned only three called their farewells to Murray
as he marched down the corridor between the two guards--Bonifacio,
Marvin, who had killed a guard while trying to escape from the prison,
and Bassett, the train-robber, who was driven to it because the
express-messenger wouldn't raise his hands when ordered to do so. The
remaining four smoldered, silent, in their cells, no doubt feeling their
social ostracism in Limbo Lane society more keenly than they did the
memory of their less picturesque offences against the law.

Murray wondered at his own calmness and nearly indifference. In the
execution room were about twenty men, a congregation made up of prison
officers, newspaper reporters, and lookers-on who had succeeded

     *     *     *     *     *     *

Here, in the very middle of a sentence, the hand of Death interrupted
the telling of O. Henry's last story. He had planned to make this story
different from his others, the beginning of a new series in a style he
had not previously attempted. "I want to show the public," he said,
"that I can write something new--new for me, I mean--a story without
slang, a straightforward dramatic plot treated in a way that will
come nearer my idea of real story-writing." Before starting to write
the present story, he outlined briefly how he intended to develop it:
Murray, the criminal accused and convicted of the brutal murder of his
sweetheart--a murder prompted by jealous rage--at first faces the death
penalty, calm, and, to all outward appearances, indifferent to his
fate. As he nears the electric chair he is overcome by a revulsion of
feeling. He is left dazed, stupefied, stunned. The entire scene in the
death-chamber--the witnesses, the spectators, the preparations for
execution--become unreal to him. The thought flashes through his brain
that a terrible mistake is being made. Why is he being strapped to the
chair? What has he done? What crime has he committed? In the few moments
while the straps are being adjusted a vision comes to him. He dreams a
dream. He sees a little country cottage, bright, sun-lit, nestling in
a bower of flowers. A woman is there, and a little child. He speaks
with them and finds that they are his wife, his child--and the cottage
their home. So, after all, it is a mistake. Some one has frightfully,
irretrievably blundered. The accusation, the trial, the conviction, the
sentence to death in the electric chair--all a dream. He takes his wife
in his arms and kisses the child. Yes, here is happiness. It was a
dream. Then--at a sign from the prison warden the fatal current is
turned on.

Murray had dreamed the wrong dream.



[Illustration: The "Hill City Quartet," to which O. Henry
belonged as a young man in Austin]




A RULER OF MEN


      [Written at the prime of his popularity and power,
      this characteristic and amusing story was published
      in _Everybody's Magazine_ in August, 1906.]


I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight
of a stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick
and alike as the grains in a sand-storm; and you grow to hate them as
you do a friend who is always by you, or one of your own kin.

And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and
Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a
scaly-bark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool
that omnigeneously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screw-driver, a
button-hook, a nail-file, a shoe-horn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler,
and an ornament to any gentleman's key-ring.

And then a stall-fed cop shoved himself through the congregation of
customers. The vender, plainly used to having his seasons of trade thus
abruptly curtailed, closed his satchel and slipped like a weasel through
the opposite segment of the circle. The crowd scurried aimlessly away
like ants from a disturbed crumb. The cop, suddenly becoming oblivious
of the earth and its inhabitants, stood still, swelling his bulk and
putting his club through an intricate drill of twirls. I hurried after
Kansas Bill Bowers, and caught him by an arm.

Without his looking at me or slowing his pace, I found a five-dollar
bill crumpled neatly into my hand.

"I wouldn't have thought, Kansas Bill," I said, "that you'd hold an old
friend that cheap."

Then he turned his head, and the hickory-nut cracked into a wide smile.

"Give back the money," said he, "or I'll have the cop after you for
false pretenses. I thought you was the cop."

"I want to talk to you, Bill," I said. "When did you leave Oklahoma?
Where is Reddy McGill now? Why are you selling those impossible
contraptions on the street? How did your Big Horn gold-mine pan out? How
did you get so badly sunburned? What will you drink?"

"A year ago," answered Kansas Bill systematically. "Putting up windmills
in Arizona. For pin money to buy etceteras with. Salted. Been down in
the tropics. Beer."

We foregathered in a propitious place and became Elijahs, while a waiter
of dark plumage played the raven to perfection. Reminiscence needs must
be had before I could steer Bill into his epic mood.

"Yes," said he, "I mind the time Timoteo's rope broke on that cow's
horns while the calf was chasing you. You and that cow! I'd never forget
it."

"The tropics," said I, "are a broad territory. What part of Cancer of
Capricorn have you been honoring with a visit?"

"Down along China or Peru--or maybe the Argentine Confederacy," said
Kansas Bill. "Anyway 'twas among a great race of people, off-colored but
progressive. I was there three months."

"No doubt you are glad to be back among the truly great race," I
surmised. "Especially among New Yorkers, the most progressive and
independent citizens of any country in the world," I continued, with the
fatuity of the provincial who has eaten the Broadway lotus.

"Do you want to start an argument?" asked Bill.

"Can there be one?" I answered.

"Has an Irishman humor, do you think?" asked he.

"I have an hour or two to spare," said I, looking at the cafe clock.

"Not that the Americans aren't a great commercial nation," conceded
Bill. "But the fault laid with the people who wrote lies for fiction."

"What was this Irishman's name?" I asked.

"Was that last beer cold enough?" said he.

"I see there is talk of further outbreaks among the Russian peasants," I
remarked.

"His name was Barney O'Connor," said Bill.

Thus, because of our ancient prescience of each other's trail of
thought, we travelled ambiguously to the point where Kansas Bill's story
began:

"I met O'Connor in a boarding-house on the West Side. He invited me to
his hall-room to have a drink, and we became like a dog and a cat that
had been raised together. There he sat, a tall, fine, handsome man, with
his feet against one wall and his back against the other, looking over a
map. On the bed and sticking three feet out of it was a beautiful gold
sword with tassels on it and rhinestones in the handle.

"'What's this?' says I (for by that time we were well acquainted). 'The
annual parade in vilification of the ex-snakes of Ireland? And what's
the line of march? Up Broadway to Forty-second; thence east to McCarty's
cafe; thence--'

"'Sit down on the wash-stand,' says O'Connor, 'and listen. And cast no
perversions on the sword. 'Twas me father's in old Munster. And this
map, Bowers, is no diagram of a holiday procession. If ye look again.
ye'll see that it's the continent known as South America, comprising
fourteen green, blue, red, and yellow countries, all crying out from
time to time to be liberated from the yoke of the oppressor.'

"'I know,' says I to O'Connor. 'The idea is a literary one. The
ten-cent magazine stole it from "Ridpath's History of the World from the
Sand-stone Period to the Equator." You'll find it in every one of 'em.
It's a continued story of a soldier of fortune, generally named O'Keefe,
who gets to be dictator while the Spanish-American populace cries
"Cospetto!" and other Italian maledictions. I misdoubt if it's ever been
done. You're not thinking of trying that, are you, Barney?' I asks.

"'Bowers,' says he, 'you're a man of education and courage.'

"'How can I deny it?' says I. 'Education runs in my family; and I have
acquired courage by a hard struggle with life.'

"'The O'Connors,' says he, 'are a warlike race. There is me father's
sword; and here is the map. A life of inaction is not for me. The
O'Connors were born to rule. 'Tis a ruler of men I must be.'

"'Barney,' I says to him, 'why don't you get on the force and settle
down to a quiet life of carnage and corruption instead of roaming off to
foreign parts? In what better way can you indulge your desire to subdue
and maltreat the oppressed?'

"'Look again at the map,' says he, 'at the country I have the point of
me knife on. 'Tis that one I have selected to aid and overthrow with me
father's sword.'

"'I see,' says I. 'It's the green one; and that does credit to your
patriotism, and it's the smallest one; and that does credit to your
judgment.'

"'Do ye accuse me of cowardice?' says Barney, turning pink.

"'No man,' says I, 'who attacks and confiscates a country single-handed
could be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is
plagiarism or imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get away
with it, nobody else will have any right to kick.'

"'I'm not joking,' says O'Connor. 'And I've got $1,500 cash to work the
scheme with. I've taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?'

"'I'm not working,' I told him; 'but how is it to be? Do I eat during
the fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary of War
after the country is conquered? Is it to be a pay envelope or only a
portfolio?'

"I'll pay all expenses,' says O'Connor. 'I want a man I can trust. If
we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the
government.'

"'All right, then,' says I. 'You can get me a bunch of draying contracts
and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court
bench so I won't be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they
chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can
consider me on the pay-roll.'

"Two weeks afterward O'Connor and me took a steamer for the small,
green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O'Connor said
he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding
general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed
from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers. Three
dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause of liberating
an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or sustained it.
Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade rest, and
O'Connor handed ever the twenty-one dollars.

"The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me. 'Not for
me,' says I. 'It'll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or Cherry
Tree Corners when I speak of it. It's a clear case where Spelling Reform
ought to butt in and disenvowel it.'

"But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was white,
with green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf slashed
up on the sand. It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as the
pictures of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger department
of the Long Island Railroad.

"We went through the quarantine and custom-house indignities; and then
O'Connor leads me to a 'dobe house on a street called 'The Avenue of the
Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective Saints.' Ten feet
wide it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar stumps.

"'Hooligan Alley,' says I, rechristening it.

"''Twill be our headquarters,' says O'Connor. 'My agent here, Don
Fernando Pacheco, secured it for us.'

"So in that house O'Connor and me established the revolutionary centre.
In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and
a table with a conch shell on it. In the back room O'Connor had his desk
and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting.
We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and took our
meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the American plan by a
German proprietor with Chinese cooking served a la Kansas City lunch
counter.

"It seems that O'Connor really did have some sort of system planned out
beforehand. He wrote plenty of letters; and every day or two some native
gent would stroll round to headquarters and be shut up in the back room
for half an hour with O'Connor and the interpreter. I noticed that when
they went in they were always smoking eight-inch cigars and at peace
with the world; but when they came out they would be folding up a
ten- or twenty-dollar bill and cursing the government horribly.

"One evening after we had been in Guaya--in this town of
Smellville-by-the-Sea--about a month, and me and O'Connor were sitting
outside the door helping along old tempus fugit with rum and ice and
limes, I says to him:

"'If you'll excuse a patriot that don't exactly know what he's
patronizing, for the question--what is your scheme for subjugating this
country? Do you intend to plunge it into bloodshed, or do you mean to
buy its votes peacefully and honorably at the polls?'

"'Bowers,' says he, 'ye're a fine little man and I intend to make great
use of ye after the conflict. But ye do not understand statecraft.
Already by now we have a network of strategy clutching with invisible
fingers at the throat of the tyrant Calderas. We have agents at work in
every town in the republic. The Liberal party is bound to win. On our
secret lists we have the names of enough sympathizers to crush the
administration forces at a single blow.'

"'A straw vote,' says I, 'only shows which way the hot air blows.'

"'Who has accomplished this?' goes on O'Connor. 'I have. I have directed
everything. The time was ripe when we came, so my agents inform me.
The people are groaning under burdens of taxes and levies. Who will be
their natural leader when they rise? Could it be any one but meself?
'Twas only yesterday that Zaldas, our representative in the province
of Durasnas, tells me that the people, in secret, already call me "El
Library Door," which is the Spanish manner of saying "The Liberator."'

"'Was Zaldas that maroon-colored old Aztec with a paper collar on and
unbleached domestic shoes?' I asked.

"'He was,' says O'Connor.

"'I saw him tucking a yellow-back into his vest pocket as he came out,'
says I. 'It may be,' says I, 'that they call you a library door, but
they treat you more like the side door of a bank. But let us hope for
the worst.'

"'It has cost money, of course,' says O'Connor; 'but we'll have the
country in our hands inside of a month.'

"In the evenings we walked about in the plaza and listened to the band
playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious
pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes,
mostly rockaways and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at
the unveiling of the new poorhouse at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and
round the desiccated fountain in the middle of the plaza they drove,
and lifted their high silk hats to their friends. The common people
walked around in barefooted bunches, puffing stogies that a Pittsburg
millionaire wouldn't have chewed for a dry smoke on Ladies' Day at his
club. And the grandest figure in the whole turnout was Barney O'Connor.
Six foot two he stood in his Fifth Avenue clothes, with his eagle eye
and his black moustache that tickled his ears. He was a born dictator
and czar and hero and harrier of the human race. It looked to me that
all eyes were turned upon O'Connor, and that every woman there loved
him, and every man feared him. Once or twice I looked at him and thought
of funnier things that had happened than his winning out in his game;
and I began to feel like a Hidalgo de Officio de Grafto de South America
myself. And then I would come down again to solid bottom and let my
imagination gloat, as usual, upon the twenty-one American dollars due me
on Saturday night.

"'Take note,' says O'Connor to me as thus we walked, 'of the mass of the
people. Observe their oppressed and melancholy air. Can ye not see that
they are ripe for revolt? Do ye not perceive that they are disaffected?'

"'I do not,' says I. 'Nor disinfected either. I'm beginning to
understand these people. When they look unhappy they're enjoying
themselves. When they feel unhappy they go to sleep. They're not the
kind of people to take an interest in revolutions.'

"'They'll flock to our standard,' says O'Connor. 'Three thousand men
in this town alone will spring to arms when the signal is given. I am
assured of that. But everything is in secret. There is no chance for us
to fail.'

"On Hooligan Alley, as I prefer to call the street our headquarters was
on, there was a row of flat 'dobe houses with red tile roofs, some straw
shacks full of Indians and dogs, and one two-story wooden house with
balconies a little farther down. That was where General Tumbalo, the
comandante and commander of the military forces, lived. Right across the
street was a private residence built like a combination bake-oven and
folding-bed. One day, O'Connor and me were passing it, single file, on
the flange they called a sidewalk, when out of the window flies a big
red rose. O'Connor, who is ahead, picks it up, presses it to his fifth
rib, and bows to the ground. By Carrambos! that man certainly had the
Irish drama chaunceyized. I looked around expecting to see the little
boy and girl in white sateen ready to jump on his shoulder while he
jolted their spinal columns and ribs together through a breakdown, and
sang: 'Sleep, Little One, Sleep.'

"As I passed the window I glanced inside and caught a glimpse of a white
dress and a pair of big, flashing black eyes and gleaming teeth under a
dark lace mantilla.

"When we got back to our house O'Connor began to walk up and down the
floor and twist his moustaches.

"'Did ye see her eyes, Bowers?' he asks me.

"'I did,' says I, 'and I can see more than that. It's all coming out
according to the story-books. I knew there was something missing. 'Twas
the love interest. What is it that comes in Chapter VII to cheer the
gallant Irish adventurer? Why, Love, of course--Love that makes the
hat go around. At last we have the eyes of midnight hue and the rose
flung from the barred window. Now, what comes next? The underground
passage--the intercepted letter--the traitor in camp--the hero thrown
into a dungeon--the mysterious message from the senorita--then the
outburst--the fighting on the plaza--the--'

"'Don't be a fool,' says O'Connor, interrupting. 'But that's the only
woman in the world for me, Bowers. The O'Connors are as quick to love as
they are to fight. I shall wear that rose over me heart when I lead me
men into action. For a good battle to be fought there must be some woman
to give it power.'

"'Every time,' I agreed, 'if you want to have a good lively scrap.
There's only one thing bothering me. In the novels the light-haired
friend of the hero always gets killed. Think 'em all over that you've
read, and you'll see that I'm right. I think I'll step down to the
Botica Espanola and lay in a bottle of walnut stain before war is
declared.'

"'How will I find out her name?' says O'Connor, layin' his chin in his
hand.

"'Why don't you go across the street and ask her?' says I.

"'Will ye never regard anything in life seriously?' says O'Connor,
looking down at me like a schoolmaster.

"'Maybe she meant the rose for me,' I said, whistling the Spanish
Fandango.

"For the first time since I'd known O'Connor, he laughed. He got up and
roared and clapped his knees, and leaned against the wall till the tiles
on the roof clattered to the noise of his lungs. He went into the back
room and looked at himself in the glass and began and laughed all over
from the beginning again. Then he looked at me and repeated himself.
That's why I asked you if you thought an Irishman had any humor. He'd
been doing farce comedy from the day I saw him without knowing it; and
the first time he had an idea advanced to him with any intelligence
in it he acted like two twelfths of the sextet in a 'Floradora' road
company.

"The next afternoon he comes in with a triumphant smile and begins to
pull something like ticker tape out of his pocket.

"'Great!' says I. 'This is something like home. How is Amalgamated
Copper to-day?'

"'I've got her name,' says O'Connor, and he reads off something like
this: 'Dona Isabel Antonia Inez Lolita Carreras y Buencaminos y
Monteleon. She lives with her mother,' explains O'Connor. 'Her father
was killed in the last revolution. She is sure to be in sympathy with
our cause.'

"And sure enough the next day she flung a little bunch of roses clear
across the street into our door. O'Connor dived for it and found a piece
of paper curled around a stem with a line in Spanish on it. He dragged
the interpreter out of his corner and got him busy. The interpreter
scratched his head, and gave us as a translation three best bets:
'Fortune had got a face like the man fighting'; 'Fortune looks like a
brave man'; and 'Fortune favors the brave.' We put our money on the last
one.

"'Do ye see?' says O'Connor. 'She intends to encourage me sword to save
her country.'

"'It looks to me like an invitation to supper,' says I.

"So every day this senorita sits behind the barred windows and exhausts
a conservatory or two, one posy at a time. And O'Connor walks like a
Dominecker rooster and swells his chest and swears to me he will win her
by feats of arms and big deeds on the gory field of battle.

"By and by the revolution began to get ripe. One day O'Connor takes me
into the back room and tells me all.

"'Bowers,' says he, 'at twelve o'clock one week from to-day the struggle
will take place. It has pleased ye to find amusement and diversion in
this project because ye have not sense enough to perceive that it is
easily accomplished by a man of courage, intelligence, and historical
superiority, such as meself. The whole world over,' says he, 'the
O'Connors have ruled men, women, and nations. To subdue a small
and indifferent country like this is a trifle. Ye see what little,
barefooted manikins the men of it are. I could lick four of 'em
single-handed.'

"'No doubt,' says I. 'But could you lick six? And suppose they hurled an
army of seventeen against you?'

"'Listen,' says O'Connor, 'to what will occur. At noon next Tuesday
25,000 patriots will rise up in the towns of the republic. The
government will be absolutely unprepared. The public buildings will be
taken, the regular army made prisoners, and the new administration set
up. In the capital it will not be so easy on account of most of the army
being stationed there. They will occupy the president's palace and the
strongly fortified government buildings and stand a siege. But on the
very day of the outbreak a body of our troops will begin a march to the
capital from every town as soon as the local victory has been won. The
thing is so well planned that it is an impossibility for us to fail. I
meself will lead the troops from here. The new president will be Senor
Espadas, now Minister of Finance in the present cabinet.'

"'What do you get?' I asked.

"''Twill be strange,' said O'Connor smiling, 'if I don't have all the
jobs handed to me on a silver salver to pick what I choose. I've been
the brains of the scheme, and when the fighting opens I guess I won't be
in the rear rank. Who managed it so our troops could get arms smuggled
into this country? Didn't I arrange it with a New York firm before
I left there? Our financial agents inform me that 20,000 stands of
Winchester rifles have been delivered a month ago at a secret place up
coast and distributed among the towns. I tell you, Bowers, the game is
already won.'

"Well, that kind of talk kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility
of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed
that the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way.
I looked upon O'Connor with more respect, and began to figure on what
kind of uniform I might wear as Secretary of War.

"Tuesday, the day set for the revolution, came around according to
schedule. O'Connor said that a signal had been agreed upon for the
uprising. There was an old cannon on the beach near the national
warehouse. That had been secretly loaded and promptly at twelve o'clock
was to be fired off. Immediately the revolutionists would seize their
concealed arms, attack the comandante's troops in the cuartel, and
capture the custom-house and all government property and supplies.

"I was nervous all the morning. And about eleven o'clock O'Connor became
infused with the excitement and martial spirit of murder. He geared
his father's sword around him, and walked up and down in the back room
like a lion in the Zoo suffering from corns. I smoked a couple of dozen
cigars, and decided on yellow stripes down the trouser legs of my
uniform.

"At half-past eleven O'Connor asks me to take a short stroll through the
streets to see if I could notice any signs of the uprising. I was back
in fifteen minutes.

"'Did you hear anything?' he asks.

"'I did,' says I. 'At first I thought it was drums. But it wasn't; it
was snoring. Everybody in town's asleep.'

"O'Connor tears out his watch.

"'Fools!' says he. 'They've set the time right at the siesta hour when
everybody takes a nap. But the cannon will wake 'em up. Everything will
be all right, depend upon it.'

"Just at twelve o'clock we heard the sound of a cannon--BOOM!--shaking
the whole town.

"O'Connor loosens his sword in its scabbard and jumps for the door. I
went as far as the door and stood in it.

"People were sticking their heads out of doors and windows. But there
was one grand sight that made the landscape look tame.

"General Tumbalo, the comandante, was rolling down the steps of his
residential dugout, waving a five-foot sabre in his hand. He wore his
cocked and plumed hat and his dress-parade coat covered with gold braid
and buttons. Sky-blue pajamas, one rubber boot, and one red-plush
slipper completed his make-up.

"The general had heard the cannon, and he puffed down the sidewalk
toward the soldiers' barracks as fast as his rudely awakened two hundred
pounds could travel.

"O'Connor sees him and lets out a battle-cry and draws his father's
sword and rushes across the street and tackles the enemy.

"Right there in the street he and the general gave an exhibition of
blacksmithing and butchery. Sparks flew from their blades, the general
roared, and O'Connor gave the slogan of his race and proclivities.

"Then the general's sabre broke in two; and he took to his
ginger-colored heels crying out, 'Policios,' at every jump. O'Connor
chased him a block, imbued with the sentiment of manslaughter, and
slicing buttons off the general's coat tails with the paternal weapon.
At the corner five barefooted policemen in cotton undershirts and
straw fiats climbed over O'Connor and subjugated him according to the
municipal statutes.

"They brought him past the late revolutionary headquarters on the way to
jail. I stood in the door. A policeman had him by each hand and foot,
and they dragged him on his back through the grass like a turtle. Twice
they stopped, and the odd policeman took another's place while he rolled
a cigarette. The great soldier of fortune turned his head and looked
at me as they passed. I blushed, and lit another cigar. The procession
passed on, and at ten minutes past twelve everybody had gone back to
sleep again.

"In the afternoon the interpreter came around and smiled as he laid his
hand on the big red jar we usually kept ice-water in.

"'The ice-man didn't call to-day,' says I. 'What's the matter with
everything, Sancho?'

"'Ah, yes,' says the liver-colored linguist. 'They just tell me in
the town. Verree bad act that Senor O'Connor make fight with General
Tumbalo. Yes, general Tumbalo great soldier and big mans.'

"'What'll they do to Mr. O'Connor?' I asks.

"'I talk little while presently with the Juez de la Paz--what you call
Justice-with-the-peace,' says Sancho. 'He tell me it verree bad crime
that one Senor Americano try kill General Tumbalo. He say they keep
Senor O'Connor in jail six months; then have trial and shoot him with
guns. Verree sorree.'

"'How about this revolution that was to be pulled off?' I asks.

"'Oh,' says this Sancho, 'I think too hot weather for revolution.
Revolution better in winter-time. Maybe so next winter. Quien sabe?'

"'But the cannon went off,' says I. 'The signal was given.'

"'That big sound?' says Sancho, grinning. 'The boiler in ice factory he
blow up--BOOM! Wake everybody up from siesta. Verree sorree. No ice.
Mucho hot day.'

"About sunset I went over to the jail, and they let me talk to O'Connor
through the bars.

"'What's the news, Bowers?' says he. 'Have we taken the town? I've been
expecting a rescue party all the afternoon. I haven't heard any firing.
Has any word been received from the capital?'

"'Take it easy, Barney,' says I. 'I think there's been a change of
plans. There's something more important to talk about. Have you any
money?'

"'I have not,' says O'Connor. 'The last dollar went to pay our hotel
bill yesterday. Did our troops capture the custom-house? There ought be
plenty of government money there.'

"'Segregate your mind from battles,' says I. 'I've been making
inquiries. You're to be shot six months from date for assault and
battery. I'm expecting to receive fifty years at hard labor for
vagrancy. All they furnish you while you're a prisoner is water. You
depend on your friends for food. I'll see what I can do.'

"I went away and found a silver Chile dollar in an old vest of
O'Connor's. I took him some fried fish and rice for his supper. In the
morning I went down to a lagoon and had a drink of water, and then went
back to the jail. O'Connor had a porterhouse steak look in his eye.

"'Barney,' says I, 'I've found a pond full of the finest kind of water.
It's the grandest, sweetest, purest water in the world. Say the word and
I'll go fetch you a bucket of it and you can throw this vile government
stuff out the window. I'll do anything I can for a friend.'

"'Has it come to this?' says O'Connor, raging up and down his cell. 'Am
I to be starved to death and then shot? I'll make those traitors feel
the weight of an O'Connor's hand when I get out of this.' And then he
comes to the bars and speaks softer. 'Has nothing been heard from Dona
Isabel?' he asks. 'Though every one else in the world fail,' says he, 'I
trust those eyes of hers. She will find a way to effect my release. Do
ye think ye could communicate with her? One word from her--even a rose
would make me sorrow light. But don't let her know except with the
utmost delicacy, Bowers. These high-bred Castilians are sensitive and
proud.'

"'Well said, Barney,' says I. 'You've given me an idea. I'll report
later. Something's got to be pulled off quick, or we'll both starve.'

"I walked out and down to Hooligan Alley, and then on the other side of
the street. As I went past the window of Dona Isabel Antonia Concha
Regalia, out flies the rose as usual and hits me on the ear.

"The door was open, and I took off my hat and walked in. It wasn't
very light; inside, but there she sat in a rocking-chair by the window
smoking a black cheroot. And when I got closer I saw that she was about
thirty-nine, and had never seen a straight front in her life. I sat down
on the arm of her chair, and took the cheroot out of her mouth and stole
a kiss.

"'Hullo, Izzy,' I says. 'Excuse my unconventionality, but I feel like I
have known you for a month. Whose Izzy is oo?'

"The lady ducked her head under her mantilla, and drew in a long breath.
I thought she was going to scream, but with all that intake of air she
only came out with: 'Me likee Americanos.'

"As soon as she said that, I knew that O'Connor and me would be doing
things with a knife and fork before the day was over. I drew a chair
beside her, and inside of half an hour we were engaged. Then I took my
hat and said I must go out for a while.

"'You come back?' says Izzy, in alarm.

"'Me go bring preacher,' says I. 'Come back twenty minutes. We marry
now. How you likee?'

"'Marry to-day?' says Izzy. 'Good!'

"I went down on the beach to the United States consul's shack. He was
a grizzly man, eighty-two pounds, smoked glasses, five foot eleven,
pickled. He was playing chess with an india-rubber man in white clothes.

"'Excuse me for interrupting,' says I, 'but can you tell me how a man
could get married quick?'

"The consul gets up and fingers in a pigeonhole.

"'I believe I had a license to perform the ceremony  myself, a year or
two ago,' he said. 'I'll look, and--'

"I caught hold of his arm.

"'Don't look it up,' says I. 'Marriage is a lottery anyway. I'm willing
to take the risk about the license if you are.'

"The consul went back to Hooligan Alley with me. Izzy called her ma to
come in, but the old lady was picking a chicken in the patio and begged
to be excused. So we stood up and the consul performed the ceremony.

"That evening Mrs. Bowers cooked a great supper of stewed goat, tamales,
baked bananas, fricasseed red peppers and coffee. Afterward I sat in the
rocking-chair by the front window, and she sat on the floor plunking at
a guitar and happy, as she should be, as Mrs. William T. B.

"All at once I sprang up in a hurry. I'd forgotten all about O'Connor. I
asked Izzy to fix up a lot of truck for him to eat.

"'That big, oogly man,' said Izzy. 'But all right--he your friend.'

"I pulled a rose out of a bunch in a jar, and took the grub-basket
around to the jail. O'Connor ate like a wolf. Then he wiped his face
with a banana peel and said: 'Have you heard nothing from Dona Isabel
yet?'

"'Hist!' says I, slipping the rose between the bars. 'She sends you
this. She bids you take courage. At nightfall two masked men brought it
to the ruined chateau in the orange grove. How did you like that goat
hash, Barney?'

"O'Connor pressed the rose to his lips. "'This is more to me than all
the food in the world,' says he. 'But the supper was fine. Where did you
raise it?'

"'I've negotiated a stand-off at a delicatessen hut downtown,' I tells
him. 'Rest easy. If there's anything to be done I'll do it.'

"So things went along that way for some weeks. Izzy was a great cook;
and if she had had a little more poise of character and smoked a little
better brand of tobacco we might have drifted into some sense of
responsibility for the honor I had conferred on her. But as time went on
I began to hunger for the sight of a real lady standing before me in a
street-car. All I was staying in that land of bilk and money for was
because I couldn't get away, and I thought it no more than decent to
stay and see O'Connor shot.

"One day our old interpreter drops around and after smoking an hour
says that the judge of the peace sent him to request me to call on him.
I went to his office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of the
town; and there I had a surprise. I expected to see one of the usual
cinnamon-colored natives in congress gaiters and one of Pizzaro's
cast-off hats. What I saw was an elegant gentleman of a slightly
claybank complexion sitting in an upholstered leather chair, sipping a
highball and reading Mrs. Humphry Ward. I had smuggled into my brain a
few words of Spanish by the help of Izzy, and I began to remark in a
rich Andalusian brogue:

"'Buenas dias, senor. Yo tengo--yo tengo--'

"'Oh, sit down, Mr. Bowers,' says he. 'I spent eight years in your
country in colleges and law schools. Let me mix you a highball. Lemon
peel, or not?'

"Thus we got along. In about half an hour I was beginning to tell
him about the scandal in our family when Aunt Elvira ran away with a
Cumberland Presbyterian preacher. Then he says to me:

"'I sent for you, Mr. Bowers, to let you know that you can have your
friend Mr. O'Connor now. Of course we had to make a show of punishing
him on account of his attack on General Tumbalo. It is arranged that he
shall be released to-morrow night. You and he will be conveyed on board
the fruit steamer Voyager, bound for New York, which lies in the harbor.
Your passage will be arranged for.'

"'One moment, judge,' says I; 'that revolution--'

"The judge lays back in his chair and howls.

"'Why,' says he presently, 'that was all a little joke fixed up by the
boys around the court-room, and one or two of our cut-ups, and a few
clerks in the stores. The town is bursting its sides with laughing. The
boys made themselves up to be conspirators, and they--what you call
it?--stick Senor O'Connor for his money. It is very funny.'

"'It was,' says I. 'I saw the joke all along. I'll take another
highball, if your Honor don't mind.'

"The next evening just at dark a couple of soldiers brought O'Connor
down to the beach, where I was waiting under a cocoanut-tree.

"'Hist!' says I in his ear: 'Dona Isabel has arranged our escape. Not a
word!'

"They rowed us in a boat out to a little steamer that smelled of table
d'hote salad oil and bone phosphate.

"The great, mellow, tropical moon was rising as we steamed away.
O'Connor leaned on the taffrail or rear balcony of the ship and gazed
silently at Guaya--at Buncoville-on-the-Beach.

"He had the red rose in his hand.

"'She will wait,' I heard him say. 'Eyes like hers never deceive. But I
shall see her again. Traitors cannot keep an O'Connor down forever.'

"'You talk like a sequel,' says I. 'But in Volume II please omit the
light-haired friend who totes the grub to the hero in his dungeon cell.'

"And thus reminiscing, we came back to New York."



There was a little silence broken only by the familiar roar of the
streets after Kansas Bill Bowers ceased talking.

"Did O'Connor ever go back?" I asked.

"He attained his heart's desire," said Bill. "Can you walk two blocks?
I'll show you."

He led me eastward and down a flight of stairs that was covered by a
curious-shaped glowing, pagoda-like structure. Signs and figures on the
tiled walls and supporting columns attested that we were in the Grand
Central station of the subway. Hundreds of people were on the midway
platform.

An uptown express dashed up and halted. It was crowded.  There was a
rush for it by a still larger crowd.

Towering above every one there a magnificent, broad-shouldered, athletic
man leaped into the centre of the struggle. Men and women he seized in
either hand and hurled them like manikins toward the open gates of the
train.

Now and then some passenger with a shred of soul and self-respect
left to him turned to offer remonstrance; but the blue uniform on the
towering figure, the fierce and conquering glare of his eye and the
ready impact of his ham-like hands glued together the lips that would
have spoken complaint.

When the train was full, then he exhibited to all who might observe and
admire his irresistible genius as a ruler of men. With his knees, with
his elbows, with his shoulders, with his resistless feet he shoved,
crushed, slammed, heaved, kicked, flung, pounded the overplus of
passengers aboard. Then with the sounds of its wheels drowned by the
moans, shrieks, prayers, and curses of its unfortunate crew, the express
dashed away.

"That's him. Ain't he a wonder?" said Kansas Bill admiringly. "That
tropical country wasn't the place for him. I wish the distinguished
traveller, writer, war correspondent, and playright, Richmond Hobson
Davis, could see him now. O'Connor ought to be dramatized."



[Illustration: O. Henry in Austin, Texas, 1896]




THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR


      [O. Henry thought this the best of the Jeff Peters stories,
      all the rest of which are included in "The Gentle Grafter,"
      except "Cupid a la Carte" in the "Heart of the West." "The
      Atavism of John Tom Little Bear" appeared in _Everybody's
      Magazine_ for July, 1903.]


I saw a light in Jeff Peters's room over the Red Front Drug Store. I
hastened toward it, for I had not known that Jeff was in town. He is a
man of the Hadji breed, of a hundred occupations, with a story to tell
(when he will) of each one.

I found Jeff repacking his grip for a run down to Florida to look at an
orange grove for which he had traded, a month before, his mining claim
on the Yukon. He kicked me a chair, with the same old humorous, profound
smile on his seasoned countenance. It had been eight months since we
had met, but his greeting was such as men pass from day to day. Time is
Jeff's servant, and the continent is a big lot across which he cuts to
his many roads.

For a while we skirmished along the edges of unprofitable talk which
culminated in that unquiet problem of the Philippines.

"All them tropical races," said Jeff, "could be run out better with
their own jockeys up. The tropical man knows what he wants. All he
wants is a season ticket to the cock-fights and a pair of Western Union
climbers to go up the bread-fruit tree. The Anglo-Saxon man wants him
to learn to conjugate and wear suspenders. He'll be happiest in his own
way."

I was shocked.

"Education, man," I said, "is the watchword. In time they will rise to
our standard of civilization. Look at what education has done for the
Indian."

"O-ho!" sang Jeff, lighting his pipe (which was a good sign). "Yes, the
Indian! I'm looking. I hasten to contemplate the redman as a standard
bearer of progress. He's the same as the other brown boys. You can't
make an Anglo-Saxon of him. Did I ever tell you about the time my friend
John Tom Little Bear bit off the right ear of the arts of culture and
education and spun the teetotum back round to where it was when Columbus
was a little boy? I did not?

"John Tom Little Bear was an educated Cherokee Indian and an old friend
of mine when I was in the Territories. He was a graduate of one of them
Eastern football colleges that have been so successful in teaching the
Indian to use the gridiron instead of burning his victims at the stake.
As an Anglo-Saxon, John Tom was copper-colored in spots. As an Indian,
he was one of the whitest men I ever knew. As a Cherokee, he was a
gentleman on the first ballot. As a ward of the nation, he was mighty
hard to carry at the primaries.

"John Tom and me got together and began to make medicine--how to get up
some lawful, genteel swindle which we might work in a quiet way so as
not to excite the stupidity of the police or the cupidity of the larger
corporations. We had close upon $500 between us, and we pined to make it
grow, as all respectable capitalists do.

"So we figured out a proposition which seems to be as honorable as a
gold mine prospectus and as profitable as a church raffle. And inside
of thirty days you find us swarming into Kansas with a pair of fluent
horses and a red camping wagon on the European plan. John Tom is Chief
Wish-Heap-Dough, the famous Indian medicine man and Samaritan Sachem
of the Seven Tribes. Mr. Peters is business manager and half owner. We
needed a third man, so we looked around and found J. Conyngham Binkly
leaning against the want column of a newspaper. This Binkly has a
disease for Shakespearian roles, and an hallucination about a 200
nights' run on the New York stage. But he confesses that he never could
earn the butter to spread on his William S. roles, so he is willing to
drop to the ordinary baker's kind, and be satisfied with a 200-mile
run behind the medicine ponies. Besides Richard III, he could do
twenty-seven coon songs and banjo specialties, and was willing to cook,
and curry the horses. We carried a fine line of excuses for taking
money. One was a magic soap for removing grease spots and quarters from
clothes. One was a Sum-wah-tah, the great Indian Remedy made from a
prairie herb revealed by the Great Spirit in a dream to his favorite
medicine men, the great chiefs McGarrity and Siberstein, bottlers,
Chicago. And the other was a frivolous system of pick-pocketing the
Kansasters that had the department stores reduced to a decimal fraction.
Look ye! A pair of silk garters, a dream book, one dozen clothespins,
a gold tooth, and 'When Knighthood Was in Flower' all wrapped up in a
genuine Japanese silkarina handkerchief and handed to the handsome lady
by Mr. Peters for the trivial sum of fifty cents, while Professor Binkly
entertains us in a three-minute round with the banjo.

"'Twas an eminent graft we had. We ravaged peacefully through the State,
determined to remove all doubt as to why 'twas called bleeding Kansas.
John Tom Little Bear, in full Indian chief's costume, drew crowds away
from the parchesi sociables and government ownership conversaziones.
While at the football college in the East he had acquired quantities
of rhetoric and the art of calisthenics and sophistry in his classes,
and when he stood up in the red wagon and explained to the farmers,
eloquent, about chilblains and hyperaesthesia of the cranium, Jeff
couldn't hand out the Indian Remedy fast enough for 'em.

"One night we was camped on the edge of a little town out west of
Salina. We always camped near a stream, and put up a little tent.
Sometimes we sold out of the Remedy unexpected, and then Chief
Wish-Heap-Dough would have a dream in which the Manitou commanded him to
fill up a few bottles of Sum-wah-tah at the most convenient place. 'Twas
about ten o'clock, and we'd just got in from a street performance. I was
in the tent with the lantern, figuring up the day's profits. John Tom
hadn't taken off his Indian make-up, and was sitting by the campfire
minding a fine sirloin steak in the pan for the Professor till he
finished his hair-raising scene with the trained horses.

"All at once out of dark bushes comes a pop like a firecracker, and John
Tom gives a grunt and digs out of his bosom a little bullet that has
dented itself against his collar-bone. John Tom makes a dive in the
direction of the fireworks, and comes back dragging by the collar a
kid about nine or ten years young, in a velveteen suit, with a little
nickel-mounted rifle in his hand about as big as a fountain-pen.

"'Here, you pappoose,' says John Tom, 'what are you gunning for with
that howitzer? You might hit somebody in the eye. Come out, Jeff, and
mind the steak. Don't let it burn, while I investigate this demon with
the pea shooter.'

"'Cowardly redskin,' says the kid like he was quoting from a favorite
author. 'Dare to burn me at the stake and the paleface will sweep you
from the prairies like--like everything. Now, you lemme go, or I'll tell
mamma.'

"John Tom plants the kid on a camp-stool, and sits down by him. 'Now,
tell the big chief,' he says, 'why you try to shoot pellets into your
Uncle John's system. Didn't you know it was loaded?'

"'Are you a Indian?' asks the kid, looking up cute as you please at John
Tom's buckskin and eagle feathers.

"'I am,' says John Tom. 'Well, then, that's why,' answers the boy,
swinging his feet. I nearly let the steak burn watching the nerve of
that youngster.

"'O-ho!' says John Tom, 'I see. You're the Boy Avenger.  And you've
sworn to rid the continent of the savage redman. Is that about the way
of it, son?'

"The kid halfway nodded his head. And then he looked glum. 'Twas
indecent to wring his secret from his bosom before a single brave had
fallen before his parlor-rifle.

"'Now, tell us where your wigwam is, pappoose,' says John Tom--'where
you live? Your mamma will be worrying about you being out so late. Tell
me, and I'll take you home.'

"The kid grins. 'I guess not,' he says. 'I live thousands and thousands
of miles over there.' He gyrated his hand toward the horizon. 'I come on
the train,' he says, 'by myself. I got off here because the conductor
said my ticket had ex-pirated.' He looks at John Tom with sudden
suspicion 'I bet you ain't a Indian,' he says. 'You don't talk like a
Indian. You look like one, but all a Indian can say is "heap good" and
"paleface die." Say, I bet you are one of them make-believe Indians that
sell medicine on the streets. I saw one once in Quincy.'

"'You never mind,' says John Tom, 'whether I'm a cigar-sign or a Tammany
cartoon. The question before the council is what's to be done with you.
You've run away from home. You've been reading Howells. You've disgraced
the profession of boy avengers by trying to shoot a tame Indian, and
never saying: "Die, dog of a redskin! You have crossed the path of the
Boy Avenger nineteen times too often." What do you mean by it?'

"The kid thought for a minute. 'I guess I made a mistake,' he says. 'I
ought to have gone farther west. They find 'em wild out there in the
canyons.' He holds out his hand to John Tom, the little rascal. 'Please
excuse me, sir,' says he, 'for shooting at you. I hope it didn't hurt
you. But you ought to be more careful. When a scout sees a Indian in his
war-dress, his rifle must speak.' Little Bear give a big laugh with a
whoop at the end of it, and swings the kid ten feet high and sets him on
his shoulder, and the runaway fingers the fringe and the eagle feathers
and is full of the joy the white man knows when he dangles his heels
against an inferior race. It is plain that Little Bear and that kid are
chums from that on. The little renegade has already smoked the pipe of
peace with the savage; and you can see in his eye that he is figuring on
a tomahawk and a pair of moccasins, children's size.

"We have supper in the tent. The youngster looks upon me and the
Professor as ordinary braves, only intended as a background to the camp
scene. When he is seated on a box of Sum-wah-tah, with the edge of the
table sawing his neck, and his mouth full of beefsteak, Little Bear
calls for his name. 'Roy,' says the kid, with a sirloiny sound to it.
But when the rest of it and his post-office address is referred to, he
shakes his head. 'I guess not,' he says. 'You'll send me back. I want to
stay with you. I like this camping out. At home, we fellows had a camp
in our back yard. They called me Roy, the Red Wolf! I guess that'll do
for a name. Gimme another piece of beefsteak, please.'

"We had to keep that kid. We knew there was a hullabaloo about him
somewheres, and that Mamma, and Uncle Harry, and Aunt Jane, and the
Chief of Police were hot after finding his trail, but not another word
would he tell us. In two days he was the mascot of the Big Medicine
outfit, and all of us had a sneaking hope that his owners wouldn't turn
up. When the red wagon was doing business he was in it, and passed up
the bottles to Mr. Peters as proud and satisfied as a prince that's
abjured a two-hundred-dollar crown for a million-dollar parvenuess. Once
John Tom asked him something about his papa. 'I ain't got any papa,' he
says. 'He runned away and left us. He made my mamma cry. Aunt Lucy says
he's a shape.' 'A what?' somebody asks him. 'A shape,' says the kid;
'some kind of a shape--lemme see--oh, yes, a feendenuman shape. I don't
know what it means.' John Tom was for putting our brand on him, and
dressing him up like a little chief, with wampum and beads, but I vetoes
it. 'Somebody's lost that kid, is my view of it, and they may want him.
You let me try him with a few stratagems, and see if I can't get a look
at his visiting-card.'

"So that night I goes up to Mr. Roy Blank by the camp-fire, and looks at
him contemptuous and scornful. 'Snickenwitzel!' says I, like the word
made me sick; 'Snickenwitzel! Bah! Before I'd be named Snickenwitzel!'

"'What's the matter with you, Jeff?' says the kid, opening his eyes
wide.

"'Snickenwitzel!' I repeats, and I spat, the word out. 'I saw a man
to-day from your town, and he told me your name. I'm not surprised you
was ashamed to tell it. Snickenwitzel! Whew!'

"'Ah, here, now,' says the boy, indignant and wriggling all over,
'what's the matter with you? That ain't my name. It's Conyers. What's
the matter with you?'

"'And that's not the worst of it,' I went on quick, keeping him hot
and not giving him time to think. 'We thought you was from a nice,
well-to-do family. Here's Mr. Little Bear, a chief of the Cherokees,
entitled to wear nine otter tails on his Sunday blanket, and Professor
Binkly, who plays Shakespeare and the banjo, and me, that's got hundreds
of dollars in that black tin box in the wagon, and we've got to be
careful about the company we keep. That man tells me your folks live
'way down in little old Hencoop Alley, where there are no sidewalks, and
the goats eat off the table with you.'

"That kid was almost crying now. ''Taint so,' he splutters.  'He--he
don't know what he's talking about. We live on Poplar Av'noo. I don't
'sociate with goats. What's the matter with you?'

"'Poplar Avenue,' says I, sarcastic. 'Poplar Avenue! That's a street to
live on! It only runs two blocks and then falls off a bluff. You can
throw a keg of nails the whole length of it. Don't talk to me about
Poplar Avenue.'

"'It's--it's miles long,' says the kid. 'Our number's 862 and there's
lots of houses after that. What's the matter with--aw, you make me
tired, Jeff.'

"'Well, well, now,' says I. 'I guess that man made a mistake.  Maybe it
was some other boy he was talking about. If I catch him I'll teach him
to go around slandering people.' And after supper I goes up town and
telegraphs to Mrs. Conyers, 862 Poplar Avenue, Quincy, Ill., that the
kid is safe and sassy with us, and will be held for further orders. In
two hours an answer comes to hold him tight, and she'll start for him by
next train.

"The next train was due at 6 P.M. the next day, and me and John Tom was
at the depot with the kid. You might scour the plains in vain for the
big Chief Wish-Heap-Dough. In his place is Mr. Little Bear in the human
habiliments of the Anglo-Saxon sect; and the leather of his shoes is
patented and the loop of his necktie is copyrighted. For these things
John Tom had grafted on him at college along with metaphysics and the
knockout guard for the low tackle. But for his complexion, which is
some yellowish, and the black mop of his straight hair, you might
have thought here was an ordinary man out of the city directory that
subscribes for magazines and pushes the lawn-mower in his shirt-sleeves
of evenings.

"Then the train rolled in, and a little woman in a gray dress, with sort
of illuminating hair, slides off and looks around quick. And the Boy
Avenger sees her, and yells 'Mamma,' and she cries 'O!' and they meet
in a clinch, and now the pesky redskins can come forth from their caves
on the plains without fear any more of the rifle of Roy, the Red Wolf.
Mrs. Conyers comes up and thanks me an' John Tom without the usual
extremities you always look for in a woman. She says just enough, in
a way to convince, and there is no incidental music by the orchestra.
I made a few illiterate requisitions upon the art of conversation, at
which the lady smiles friendly, as if she had known me a week. And then
Mr. Little Bear adorns the atmosphere with the various idioms into which
education can fracture the wind of speech. I could see the kid's mother
didn't quite place John Tom; but it seemed she was apprised in his
dialects, and she played up to his lead in the science of making three
words do the work of one.

"That kid introduced us, with some footnotes and explanations that made
things plainer than a week of rhetoric. He danced around, and punched
us in the back, and tried to climb John Tom's leg. 'This is John Tom,
mamma,' says he. 'He's a Indian. He sells medicine in a red wagon. I
shot him, but he wasn't wild. The other one's Jeff. He's a fakir, too.
Come on and see the camp where we live, won't you, mamma?'

"It is plain to see that the life of the woman is in that boy. She has
got him again where her arms can gather him, and that's enough. She's
ready to do anything to please him. She hesitates the eighth of a second
and takes another look at these men. I imagine she says to herself about
John Tom, 'Seems to be a gentleman, if his hair don't curl.' And Mr.
Peters she disposes of as follows: 'No ladies' man, but a man who knows
a lady.'

"So we all rambled down to the camp as neighborly as coming from a
wake. And there she inspects the wagon and pats the place with her hand
where the kid used to sleep, and dabs around her eyewinkers with her
handkerchief. And Professor Binkly gives us 'Trovatore' on one string of
the banjo, and is about to slide off into Hamlet's monologue when one of
the horses gets tangled in his rope and he must go look after him, and
says something about 'foiled again.'

"When it got dark me and John Tom walked back up to the Corn Exchange
Hotel, and the four of us had supper there. I think the trouble started
at that supper, for then was when Mr. Little Bear made an intellectual
balloon ascension. I held on to the tablecloth, and listened to him
soar. That redman, if I could judge, had the gift of information. He
took language, and did with it all a Roman can do with macaroni. His
vocal remarks was all embroidered over with the most scholarly verbs and
prefixes. And his syllables was smooth, and fitted nicely to the joints
of his idea. I thought I'd heard him talk before, but I hadn't. And it
wasn't the size of his words, but the way they come; and 'twasn't his
subjects, for he spoke of common things like cathedrals and football
and poems and catarrh and souls and freight rates and sculpture. Mrs.
Conyers understood his accents, and the elegant sounds went back and
forth between 'em. And now and then Jefferson D. Peters would intervene
a few shop-worn, senseless words to have the butter passed or another
leg of the chicken.

"Yes, John Tom Little Bear appeared to be inveigled some in his bosom
about that Mrs. Conyers. She was of the kind that pleases. She had the
good looks and more, I'll tell you. You take one of these cloak models
in a big store. They strike you as being on the impersonal system.
They are adapted for the eye. What they run to is inches around and
complexion, and the art of fanning the delusion that the sealskin would
look just as well on the lady with the warts and the pocket-book. Now,
if one of them models was off duty, and you took it, and it would say
'Charlie' when you pressed it, and sit up at the table, why, then you
would have something similar to Mrs. Conyers. I could see how John Tom
could resist any inclination to hate that white squaw.

"The lady and the kid stayed at the hotel. In the morning, they say,
they will start for home. Me and Little Bear left at eight o'clock, and
sold Indian Remedy on the courthouse square till nine. He leaves me
and the Professor to drive down to camp, while he stays up town. I am
not enamored with that plan, for it shows John Tom is uneasy in his
composures, and that leads to firewater, and sometimes to the green corn
dance and costs. Not often does Chief Wish-Heap-Dough get busy with the
firewater, but whenever he does there is heap much doing in the lodges
of the palefaces who wear blue and carry the club.

"At half-past nine Professor Binkly is rolled in his quilt snoring in
blank verse, and I am sitting by the fire listening to the frogs. Mr.
Little Bear slides into camp and sits down against a tree. There is no
symptoms of firewater.

"'Jeff,' says he, after a long time, 'a little boy came West to hunt
Indians.'

"'Well, then?' says I, for I wasn't thinking as he was.

"'And he bagged one,' says John Tom, 'and 'twas not with a gun, and he
never had on a velveteen suit of clothes in his life.' And then I began
to catch his smoke.

"'I know it,' says I. 'And I'll bet you his pictures are on valentines,
and fool men are his game, red and white.'

"'You win on the red,' says John Tom, calm. 'Jeff, for how many ponies
do you think I could buy Mrs. Conyers?'

"'Scandalous talk!' I replies. ''Tis not a paleface custom.'  John Tom
laughs loud and bites into a cigar. 'No,' he answers; ''tis the savage
equivalent for the dollars of the white man's marriage settlement. Oh, I
know. There's an eternal wall between the races. If I could do it, Jeff,
I'd put a torch to every white college that a redman has ever set foot
inside. Why don't you leave us alone,' he says, 'to our own ghost-dances
and dog-feasts, and our dingy squaws to cook our grasshopper soup and
darn our moccasins?'

"'Now, you sure don't mean disrespect to the perennial blossom entitled
education?' says I, scandalized, 'because I wear it in the bosom of my
own intellectual shirt-waist. I've had education,' says I, 'and never
took any harm from it.'

"'You lasso us,' goes on Little Bear, not noticing my prose insertions,
'and teach us what is beautiful in literature and in life, and how to
appreciate what is fine in men and women. What have you done to me?'
says he. 'You've made me a Cherokee Moses. You've taught me to hate the
wigwams and love the white man's ways. I can look over into the promised
land and see Mrs. Conyers, but my place is--on the reservation.'

"Little Bear stands up in his chief's dress, and laughs again. 'But,
white man Jeff,' he goes on, 'the paleface provides a recourse. 'Tis a
temporary one, but it gives a respite and the name of it is whiskey.'
And straight off he walks up the path to town again. 'Now,' says I in my
mind, 'may the Manitou move him to do only bailable things this night!'
For I perceive that John Tom is about to avail himself of the white
man's solace.

"Maybe it was 10:30, as I sat smoking, when I hear pit-a-pats on
the path, and here comes Mrs. Conyers running, her hair twisted up
any way, and a look on her face that says burglars and mice and the
flour's-all-out rolled in one. 'Oh, Mr. Peters,' she calls out, as they
will, 'oh, oh!' I made a quick think, and I spoke the gist of it out
loud. 'Now,' says I, 'we've been brothers, me and that Indian, but I'll
make a good one of him in two minutes if--'

"'No, no,' she says, wild and cracking her knuckles, 'I haven't seen Mr.
Little Bear. 'Tis my--husband. He's stolen my boy. Oh,' she says, 'just
when I had him back in my arms again! That heartless villain! Every
bitterness life knows,' she says, 'he's made me drink. My poor little
lamb, that ought to be warm in his bed, carried of by that fiend!'

"'How did all this happen?' I ask. 'Let's have the facts.'

"'I was fixing his bed,' she explains, 'and Roy was playing on the hotel
porch and he drives up to the steps. I heard Roy scream, and ran out. My
husband had him in the buggy then. I begged him for my child. This is
what he gave me.' She turns her face to the light. There is a crimson
streak running across her cheek and mouth. 'He did that with his whip,'
she says.

"'Come back to the hotel,' says I, 'and we'll see what can be done.'

"On the way she tells me some of the wherefores. When he slashed her
with the whip he told her he found out she was coming for the kid, and
he was on the same train. Mrs. Conyers had been living with her brother,
and they'd watched the boy always, as her husband had tried to steal him
before. I judge that man was worse than a street railway promoter. It
seems he had spent her money and slugged her and killed her canary bird,
and told it around that she had cold feet.

"At the hotel we found a mass meeting of five infuriated citizens
chewing tobacco and denouncing the outrage. Most of the town was asleep
by ten o'clock. I talks the lady some quiet, and tells her I will take
the one o'clock train for the next town, forty miles east, for it is
likely that the esteemed Mr. Conyers will drive there to take the cars.
'I don't know,' I tells her, 'but what he has legal rights; but if I
find him I can give him an illegal left in the eye, and tie him up for
a day or two, anyhow, on a disturbal of the peace proposition.'

"Mrs. Conyers goes inside and cries with the landlord's wife, who is
fixing some catnip tea that will make everything all right for the poor
dear. The landlord comes out on the porch, thumbing his one suspender,
and says to me:

"'Ain't had so much excitements in town since Bedford Steegall's wife
swallered a spring lizard. I seen him through the winder hit her with
the buggy whip, and everything. What's that suit of clothes cost you you
got on? 'Pears like we'd have some rain, don't it? Say, doc, that Indian
of yorn's on a kind of a whizz to-night, ain't he? He comes along just
before you did, and I told him about this here occurrence. He gives a
cur'us kind of a hoot, and trotted off. I guess our constable 'll have
him in the lock-up 'fore morning.'

"I thought I'd sit on the porch and wait for the one o'clock train. I
wasn't feeling saturated with mirth. Here was John Tom on one of his
sprees, and this kidnapping business losing sleep for me. But then, I'm
always having trouble with other people's troubles. Every few minutes
Mrs. Conyers would come out on the porch and look down the road the way
the buggy went, like she expected to see that kid coming back on a white
pony with a red apple in his hand. Now, wasn't that like a woman? And
that brings up cats. 'I saw a mouse go in this hole,' says Mrs. Cat;
'you can go prize up a plank over there if you like; I'll watch this
hole.'

"About a quarter to one o'clock the lady comes out again, restless,
crying easy, as females do for their own amusement, and she looks
down that road again and listens. 'Now, ma'am,' says I, 'there's no
use watching cold wheel-tracks. By this time they're halfway to--'
'Hush,' she says, holding up her hand. And I do hear something coming
'flip-flap' in the dark; and then there is the awfulest war-whoop ever
heard outside of Madison Square Garden at a Buffalo Bill matinee. And up
the steps and on to the porch jumps the disrespectable Indian. The lamp
in the hall shines on him, and I fail to recognize Mr. J. T. Little
Bear, alumnus of the class of '91. What I see is a Cherokee brave, and
the warpath is what he has been travelling. Firewater and other things
have got him going. His buckskin is hanging in strings, and his
feathers are mixed up like a frizzly hen's. The dust of miles is on his
moccasins, and the light in his eye is the kind the aborigines wear. But
in his arms he brings that kid, his eyes half closed, with his little
shoes dangling and one hand fast around the Indian's collar.

"'Pappoose!' says John Tom, and I notice that the flowers of the white
man's syntax have left his tongue. He is the original proposition in
bear's claws and copper color. 'Me bring,' says he, and he lays the kid
in his mother's arms. 'Run fifteen mile,' says John Tom--'Ugh! Catch
white man. Bring pappoose.'

"The little woman is in extremities of gladness. She must wake up that
stir-up trouble youngster and hug him and make proclamation that he is
his mamma's own precious treasure. I was about to ask questions, but I
looked at Mr. Little Bear, and my eye caught the sight of something in
his belt. 'Now go to bed, ma'am,' says I, 'and this gadabout youngster
likewise, for there's no more danger, and the kidnapping business is not
what it was earlier in the night.'

"I inveigled John Tom down to camp quick, and when he tumbled over
asleep I got that thing out of his belt and disposed of it where the eye
of education can't see it. For even the football colleges disapprove of
the art of scalp-taking in their curriculums.

"It is ten o'clock next day when John Tom wakes up and looks around. I
am glad to see the nineteenth century in his eyes again.

"'What was it, Jeff?' he asks.

"'Heap firewater,' says I.

"John Tom frowns, and thinks a little. 'Combined,' says he directly,
'with the interesting little physiological shake-up known as reversion
to type. I remember now. Have they gone yet?'

"'On the 7:30 train,' I answers.

"'Ugh!' says John Tom; 'better so. Paleface, bring big Chief
Wish-Heap-Dough a little bromo-seltzer, and then he'll take up the
redman's burden again.'"



[Illustration: Emigrants' Camp (An early drawing by O. Henry)]




HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW


      [Originally published in _Munsey's Magazine_, December,
      1908.]


   "But can thim that helps others help thimselves!"
                                 --Mulvaney.


This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas
Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer
_Andador_ which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving the
Land of Always Afternoon. William was remaining, and he favored me with
a condensed oral autobiography as we sat on the sands in the shade cast
by the Bodega Nacional.

As usual, I became aware that the Man from Bombay had already written
the story; but as he had compressed it to an eight-word sentence, I have
become an expansionist, and have quoted his phrase above, with apologies
to him and best regards to _Terence_.


II

"Don't you ever have a desire to go back to the land of derby hats and
starched collars?" I asked him. "You seem to be a handy man and a man of
action," I continued, "and I am sure I could find you a comfortable job
somewhere in the States."

Ragged, shiftless, barefooted, a confirmed eater of the  lotos, William
Trotter had pleased me much, and I hated to see him gobbled up by the
tropics.

"I've no doubt you could," he said, idly splitting the bark from a
section of sugar-cane. "I've no doubt you could do much for me. If every
man could do as much for himself as he can for others, every country in
the world would be holding millenniums instead of centennials."

There seemed to be pabulum in W. T.'s words. And then another idea came
to me.

I had a brother in Chicopee Falls who owned manufactories--cotton, or
sugar, or A. A. sheetings, or something in the commercial line. He was
vulgarly rich, and therefore reverenced art. The artistic temperament of
the family was monopolized at my birth. I knew that Brother James would
honor my slightest wish. I would demand from him a position in cotton,
sugar, or sheetings for William Trotter--something, say, at two hundred
a month or thereabouts. I confided my beliefs and made my large
propositions to William. He had pleased me much, and he was ragged.

While we were talking, there was a sound of firing guns--four or five,
rattlingly, as if by a squad. The cheerful noise came from the direction
of the cuartel, which is a kind of makeshift barracks for the soldiers
of the republic.

"Hear that?" said William Trotter. "Let me tell you about it.

"A year ago I landed on this coast with one solitary dollar. I have the
same sum in my pocket to-day. I was second cook on a tramp fruiter; and
they marooned me here early one morning, without benefit of clergy, just
because I poulticed the face of the first mate with cheese omelette at
dinner. The fellow had kicked because I'd put horseradish in it instead
of cheese.

"When they threw me out of the yawl into three feet of surf, I waded
ashore and sat down under a palm-tree. By and by a fine-looking white
man with a red face and white clothes, genteel as possible, but somewhat
under the influence, came and sat down beside me.

"I had noticed there was a kind of a village back of the beach, and
enough scenery to outfit a dozen moving-picture shows. But I thought, of
course, it was a cannibal suburb, and I was wondering whether I was to
be served with carrots or mushrooms. And, as I say, this dressed-up man
sits beside me, and we become friends in the space of a minute or two.
For an hour we talked, and he told me all about it.

"It seems that he was a man of parts, conscientiousness, and
plausibility, besides being educated and a wreck to his appetites. He
told me all about it. Colleges had turned him out, and distilleries had
taken him in. Did I tell you his name? It was Clifford Wainwright. I
didn't exactly catch the cause of his being cast away on that particular
stretch of South America; but I reckon it was his own business. I asked
him if he'd ever been second cook on a tramp fruiter, and he said no; so
that concluded my line of surmises. But he talked like the encyclopedia
from 'A--Berlin' to 'Trilo--Zyria.' And he carried a watch--a silver
arrangement with works, and up to date within twenty-four hours, anyhow.

"'I'm pleased to have met you,' says Wainwright. 'I'm a devotee to the
great joss Booze; but my ruminating facilities are unrepaired,' says
he--or words to that effect. 'And I hate,' says he, 'to see fools trying
to run the world.'

"'I never touch a drop,' says I, 'and there are many kinds of fools; and
the world runs on its own apex, according to science, with no meddling
from me.'

"'I was referring,' says he, 'to the president of this republic. His
country is in a desperate condition. Its treasury is empty, it's on the
verge of war with Nicamala, and if it wasn't for the hot weather the
people would be starting revolutions in every town. Here is a nation,'
goes on Wainwright, 'on the brink of destruction. A man of intelligence
could rescue it from its impending doom in one day by issuing the
necessary edicts and orders. President Gomez knows nothing of
statesmanship or policy. Do you know Adam Smith?'

"'Lemme see,' says I. 'There was a one-eared man named Smith in Fort
Worth, Texas, but I think his first name was--'

"'I am referring to the political economist,' says Wainwright.

"'S'mother Smith, then,' says I. 'The one I speak of never was
arrested.'

"So Wainwright boils some more with indignation at the insensibility of
people who are not corpulent to fill public positions; and then he tells
me he is going out to the president's summer palace, which is four miles
from Aguas Frescas, to instruct him in the art of running steam-heated
republics.

"'Come along with me, Trotter,' says he, 'and I'll show you what brains
can do.'

"'Anything in it?' I asks.

"'The satisfaction,' says he, 'of redeeming a country of two hundred
thousand population from ruin back to prosperity and peace.'

"'Great,' says I. 'I'll go with you. I'd prefer to eat a live broiled
lobster just now; but give me liberty as second choice if I can't be in
at the death.'

"Wainwright and me permeates through the town, and he halts at a
rum-dispensary.

"'Have you any money?' he asks.

"'I have,' says I, fishing out my silver dollar. 'I always go about with
adequate sums of money.'

"'Then we'll drink,' says Wainwright.

"'Not me,' says I. 'Not any demon rum or any of its ramifications for
mine. It's one of my non-weaknesses.'

"'It's my failing,' says he. 'What's your particular soft point?'

"'Industry,' says I, promptly. 'I'm hard-working, diligent, industrious,
and energetic.'

"'My dear Mr. Trotter,' says he, 'surely I've known you long enough
to tell you you are a liar. Every man must have his own particular
weakness, and his own particular strength in other things. Now, you will
buy me a drink of rum, and we will call on President Gomez.'"


III

"Well, sir," Trotter went on, "we walks the four miles out, through a
virgin conservatory of palms and ferns and other roof-garden products,
to the president's summer White House. It was blue, and reminded you of
what you see on the stage in the third act, which they describe as 'same
as the first' on the programs.

"There was more than fifty people waiting outside the iron fence that
surrounded the house and grounds. There was generals and agitators and
epergnes in gold-laced uniforms, and citizens in diamonds and Panama
hats--all waiting to get an audience with the Royal Five-Card Draw.
And in a kind of a summer-house in front of the mansion we could see
a burnt-sienna man eating breakfast out of gold dishes and taking his
time. I judged that the crowd outside had come out for their morning
orders and requests, and was afraid to intrude.

"But C. Wainwright wasn't. The gate was open, and he walked inside and
up to the president's table as confident as a man who knows the head
waiter in a fifteen-cent restaurant. And I went with him, because I had
only seventy-five cents, and there was nothing else to do.

"The Gomez man rises from his chair, and looks, colored man as he was,
like he was about to call out for corporal of the guard, post number
one. But Wainwright says some phrases to him in a peculiarly lubricating
manner; and the first thing you know we was all three of us seated at
the table, with coffee and rolls and iguana cutlets coming as fast as
about ninety peons could rustle 'em.

"And then Wainwright begins to talk; but the president interrupts him.

"'You Yankees,' says he, polite, 'assuredly take the cake for assurance,
I assure you'--or words to that effect. He spoke English better than you
or me. 'You've had a long walk,' says he, 'but it's nicer in the cool
morning to walk than to ride. May I suggest some refreshments?' says he.

"'Rum,' says Wainwright.

"'Gimme a cigar,' says I.

"Well, sir, the two talked an hour, keeping the generals and equities
all in their good uniforms waiting outside the fence. And while I
smoked, silent, I listened to Clifford Wainwright making a solid
republic out of the wreck of one. I didn't follow his arguments with
any special collocation of international intelligibility; but he had Mr.
Gomez's attention glued and riveted. He takes out a pencil and marks
the white linen tablecloth all over with figures and estimates and
deductions. He speaks more or less disrespectfully of import and export
duties and custom-house receipts and taxes and treaties and budgets and
concessions and such truck that politics and government require; and
when he gets through the Gomez man hops up and shakes his hand and says
he's saved the country and the people.

"'You shall be rewarded,' says the president.

"'Might I suggest another--rum?' says Wainwright.

"'Cigar for me--darker brand,' says I.

"Well, sir, the president sent me and Wainwright back to the town in a
victoria hitched to two flea-bitten selling-platers--but the best the
country afforded.

"I found out afterward that Wainwright was a regular beachcomber--the
smartest man on the whole coast, but kept down by rum. I liked him.

"One day I inveigled him into a walk out a couple of miles from the
village, where there was an old grass hut on the bank of a little river.
While he was sitting on the grass, talking beautiful of the wisdom of
the world that he had learned in books, I took hold of him easy and tied
his hands and feet together with leather thongs that I had in my pocket.

"'Lie still,' says I, 'and meditate on the exigencies and irregularities
of life till I get back.'

"I went to a shack in Aguas Frescas where a mighty wise girl named
Timotea Carrizo lived with her mother. The girl was just about as nice
as you ever saw. In the States she would have been called a brunette;
but she was better than a brunette--I should say she was what you might
term an ecru shade. I knew her pretty well. I told her about my friend
Wainwright. She gave me a double handful of bark--calisaya, I think it
was--and some more herbs that I was to mix with it, and told me what
to do. I was to make tea of it and give it to him, and keep him from
rum for a certain time. And for two weeks I did it. You know, I liked
Wainwright. Both of us was broke; but Timotea sent us goat-meat and
plantains and tortillas every day; and at last I got the curse of drink
lifted from Clifford Wainwright. He lost his taste for it. And in the
cool of the evening him and me would sit on the roof of Timotea's
mother's hut, eating harmless truck like coffee and rice and stewed
crabs, and playing the accordion.

"About that time President Gomez found out that the advice of C.
Wainwright was the stuff he had been looking for. The country was
pulling out of debt, and the treasury had enough boodle in it for him
to amuse himself occasionally with the night-latch. The people were
beginning to take their two-hour siestas again every day--which was the
surest sign of prosperity.

"So down from the regular capital he sends for Clifford Wainwright and
makes him his private secretary at twenty thousand Peru dollars a year.
Yes, sir--so much. Wainwright was on the water-wagon--thanks to me and
Timotea--and he was soon in clover with the government gang. Don't
forget what done it--calisaya bark with them other herbs mixed--make a
tea of it, and give a cupful every two hours. Try it yourself. It takes
away the desire.

"As I said, a man can do a lot more for another party than he can for
himself. Wainwright, with his brains, got a whole country out of trouble
and on its feet; but what could he do for himself? And without any
special brains, but with some nerve and common sense, I put him on his
feet because I never had the weakness that he did--nothing but a cigar
for mine, thanks. And--"

Trotter paused. I looked at his tattered clothes and at his deeply
sunburnt, hard, thoughtful face.

"Didn't Cartright ever offer to do anything for you?" I asked.

"Wainwright," corrected Trotter. "Yes, he offered me some pretty good
jobs. But I'd have had to leave Aguas Frescas; so I didn't take any of
'em up. Say, I didn't tell you much about that girl--Timotea. We rather
hit it off together. She was as good as you find 'em anywhere--Spanish,
mostly, with just a twist of lemon-peel on top. What if they did live in
a grass hut and went bare-armed?

"A month ago," went on Trotter, "she went away. I don't know where to.
But--"

"You'd better come back to the States," I insisted. "I can promise you
positively that my brother will give you a position in cotton, sugar, or
sheetings--I am not certain which."

"I think she went back with her mother," said Trotter, "to the village
in the mountains that they come from. Tell me, what would this job you
speak of pay?"

"Why," said I, hesitating over commerce, "I should say fifty or a
hundred dollars a month--maybe two hundred."

"Ain't it funny," said Trotter, digging his toes in the sand, "what a
chump a man is when it comes to paddling his own canoe? I don't know. Of
course, I'm not making a living here. I'm on the bum. But--well, I wish
you could have seen that Timotea. Every man has his own weak spot."

The gig from the _Andador_ was coming ashore to take out the captain,
purser, and myself, the lone passenger.

"I'll guarantee," said I confidently, "that my brother will pay you
seventy-five dollars a month."

"All right, then," said William Trotter. "I'll--"

But a soft voice called across the blazing sands. A girl, faintly
lemon-tinted, stood in the Calle Real and called. She was
bare-armed--but what of that?

"It's her!" said William Trotter, looking. "She's come back! I'm
obliged; but I can't take the job. Thanks, just the same. Ain't it funny
how we can't do nothing for ourselves, but we can do wonders for the
other fellow? You was about to get me with your financial proposition;
but we've all got our weak points. Timotea's mine. And, say!" Trotter
had turned to leave, but he retraced the step or two that he had taken.
"I like to have left you without saying good-bye," said he. "It kind of
rattles you when they go away unexpected for a month and come back the
same way. Shake hands. So long! Say, do you remember them gunshots we
heard a while ago up at the cuartel? Well, I knew what they was, but I
didn't mention it. It was Clifford Wainwright being shot by a squad of
soldiers against a stone wall for giving away secrets of state to that
Nicamala republic. Oh, yes, it was rum that did it. He backslided and
got his. I guess we all have our weak points, and can't do much toward
helping ourselves. Mine's waiting for me. I'd have liked to have that
job with your brother, but--we've all got our weak points. So long!"


IV

A big black Carib carried me on his back through the surf to the ship's
boat. On the way the purser handed me a letter that he had brought for
me at the last moment from the post-office in Aguas Frescas. It was from
my brother. He requested me to meet him at the St. Charles Hotel in New
Orleans and accept a position with his house--in either cotton, sugar,
or sheetings, and with five thousand dollars a year as my salary.

When I arrived at the Crescent City I hurried away--far away from the
St. Charles to a dim _chambre garnie_ in Bienville Street. And there,
looking down from my attic window from time to time at the old, yellow,
absinthe house across the street, I wrote this story to buy my bread and
butter.

"Can thim that helps others help thimselves?"



[Illustration: "Can the horse run?" (cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)]




THE MARIONETTES


      [Originally published in _The Black Cat_ for April, 1902,
      The Short Story Publishing Co.]


The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a
prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the
street. The time was two o'clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch
of cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.

A man, wearing a long overcoat, with his hat tilted down in front, and
carrying something in one hand, walked softly but rapidly out of the
black alley. The policeman accosted him civilly, but with the assured
air that is linked with conscious authority. The hour, the alley's musty
reputation, the pedestrian's haste, the burden he carried--these easily
combined into the "suspicious circumstances" that required illumination
at the officer's hands.

The "suspect" halted readily and tilted back his hat, exposing, in the
flicker of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with
a rather long nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into
a side pocket of his overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the
policeman. Holding it to catch the uncertain light, the officer read the
name "Charles Spencer James, M. D." The street and number of the address
were of a neighborhood so solid and respectable as to subdue even
curiosity. The policeman's downward glance at the article carried in the
doctor's hand--a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small
silver mountings--further endorsed the guarantee of the card.

"All right, doctor," said the officer, stepping aside, with an air of
bulky affability. "Orders are to be extra careful. Good many burglars
and hold-ups lately. Bad night to be out. Not so cold, but--clammy."

With a formal inclination of his head, and a word or two corroborative
of the officer's estimate of the weather, Doctor James continued his
somewhat rapid progress. Three times that night had a patrolman accepted
his professional card and the sight of his paragon of a medicine case
as vouchers for his honesty of person and purpose. Had any one of those
officers seen fit, on the morrow, to test the evidence of that card
he would have found it borne out by the doctor's name on a handsome
doorplate, his presence, calm and well dressed, in his well-equipped
office--provided it were not too early, Doctor James being a late
riser--and the testimony of the neighborhood to his good citizenship,
his devotion to his family, and his success as a practitioner the two
years he had lived among them.

Therefore, it would have much surprised any one of those zealous
guardians of the peace could they have taken a peep into that immaculate
medicine case. Upon opening it, the first article to be seen would have
been an elegant set of the latest conceived tools used by the "box
man," as the ingenious safe burglar now denominates himself. Specially
designed and constructed were the implements--the short but powerful
"jimmy," the collection of curiously fashioned keys, the blued drills
and punches of the finest temper--capable of eating their way into
chilled steel as a mouse eats into a cheese, and the clamps that fasten
like a leech to the polished door of a safe and pull out the combination
knob as a dentist extracts a tooth. In a little pouch in the inner side
of the "medicine" case was a four-ounce vial of nitroglycerine, now half
empty. Underneath the tools was a mass of crumpled banknotes and a few
handfuls of gold coin, the money, altogether, amounting to eight hundred
and thirty dollars.

To a very limited circle of friends Doctor James was known as "The Swell
'Greek.'" Half of the mysterious term was a tribute to his cool and
gentlemanlike manners; the other half denoted, in the argot of the
brotherhood, the leader, the planner, the one who, by the power and
prestige of his address and position, secured the information upon which
they based their plans and desperate enterprises.

Of this elect circle the other members were Skitsie Morgan and Gum
Decker, expert "box men," and Leopold Pretzfelder, a jeweller downtown,
who manipulated the "sparklers" and other ornaments collected by the
working trio. All good and loyal men, as loose-tongued as Memnon and as
fickle as the North Star.

That night's work had not been considered by the firm to have yielded
more than a moderate repayal for their pains. An old-style two-story
side-bolt safe in the dingy office of a very wealthy old-style dry-goods
firm on a Saturday night should have excreted more than twenty-five
hundred dollars. But that was all they found, and they had divided
it, the three of them, into equal shares upon the spot, as was their
custom. Ten or twelve thousand was what they expected. But one of the
proprietors had proved to be just a trifle too old-style. Just after
dark he had carried home in a shirt box most of the funds on hand.

Doctor James proceeded up Twenty-fourth Street, which was, to all
appearance, depopulated. Even the theatrical folk, who affect this
district as a place of residence, were long since abed. The drizzle had
accumulated upon the street; puddles of it among the stones received the
fire of the arc lights, and returned it, shattered into a myriad liquid
spangles. A captious wind, shower-soaked and chilling, coughed from the
laryngeal flues between the houses.

As the practitioner's foot struck even with the corner of a tall brick
residence of more pretension than its fellows the front door popped
open, and a bawling negress clattered down the steps to the pavement.
Some medley of words came from her mouth, addressed, like as not, to
herself--the recourse of her race when alone and beset by evil. She
looked to be one of that old vassal class of the South--voluble,
familiar, loyal, irrepressible; her person pictured it--fat, neat,
aproned, kerchiefed.

This sudden apparition, spewed from the silent house, reached the bottom
of the steps as Doctor James came opposite. Her brain transferring
its energies from sound to sight, she ceased her clamor and fixed her
pop-eyes upon the case the doctor carried.

"Bress de Lawd!" was the benison the sight drew from her. "Is you a
doctor, suh?"

"Yes, I am a physician," said Doctor James, pausing.

"Den fo' God's sake come and see Mister Chandler, suh. He done had a fit
or sump'n. He layin' jist like he wuz dead. Miss Amy sont me to git a
doctor. Lawd knows whar old Cindy'd a skeared one up from, if you, suh,
hadn't come along. Ef old Mars' knowed one ten-hundredth part of dese
doin's dey'd be shootin' gwine on, suh--pistol shootin'--leb'm feet
marked off on de ground, and ev'ybody a-duellin'. And dat po' lamb, Miss
Amy--"

"Lead the way," said Doctor James, setting his foot upon the step, "if
you want me as a doctor. As an auditor I'm not open to engagements."

The negress preceded him into the house and up a flight of thickly
carpeted stairs. Twice they came to dimly lighted branching hallways. At
the second one the now panting conductress turned down a hall, stopping
at a door and opening it.

"I done brought de doctor, Miss Amy."

Doctor James entered the room, and bowed slightly to a young lady
standing by the side of a bed. He set his medicine case upon a chair,
removed his overcoat, throwing it over the case and the back of the
chair, and advanced with quiet self-possession to the bedside.

There lay a man, sprawling as he had fallen--a man dressed richly in the
prevailing mode, with only his shoe removed; lying relaxed, and as still
as the dead.

There emanated from Doctor James an aura of calm force and reserve
strength that was as manna in the desert to the weak and desolate among
his patrons. Always had women, especially, been attracted by something
in his sick-room manner. It was not the indulgent suavity of the
fashionable healer, but a manner of poise, of sureness, of ability to
overcome fate, of deference and protection and devotion. There was an
exploring magnetism in his steadfast, luminous brown eves; a latent
authority in the impassive, even priestly, tranquillity of his smooth
countenance that outwardly fitted him for the part of confidant and
consoler. Sometimes, at his first professional visit, women would tell
him where they hid their diamonds at night from the burglars.

With the ease of much practice, Doctor James's unroving eyes estimated
the order and quality of the room's furnishings. The appointments were
rich and costly. The same glance had secured cognizance of the lady's
appearance. She was small and scarcely past twenty. Her face possessed
the title to a winsome prettiness, now obscured by (you would say)
rather a fixed melancholy than the more violent imprint of a sudden
sorrow. Upon her forehead, above one eyebrow, was a livid bruise,
suffered, the physician's eye told him, within the past six hours.

Doctor James's fingers went to the man's wrist. His almost vocal eyes
questioned the lady.

"I am Mrs. Chandler," she responded, speaking with the plaintive
Southern slur and intonation. "My husband was taken suddenly ill about
ten minutes before you came. He has had attacks of heart trouble
before--some of them were very bad." His clothed state and the late hour
seemed to prompt her to further explanation. "He had been out late;
to--a supper, I believe."

Doctor James now turned his attention to his patient. In whichever of
his "professions" he happened to be engaged he was wont to honor the
"case" or the "job" with his whole interest.

The sick man appeared to be about thirty. His countenance bore a look of
boldness and dissipation, but was not without a symmetry of feature and
the fine lines drawn by a taste and indulgence in humor that gave the
redeeming touch. There was an odor of spilled wine about his clothes.

The physician laid back his outer garments, and then, with a penknife,
slit the shirt-front from collar to waist. The obstacles cleared, he
laid his ear to the heart and listened intently.

"Mitral regurgitation?" he said, softly, when he rose. The words ended
with the rising inflection of uncertainty. Again he listened long; and
this time he said, "Mitral insufficiency," with the accent of an assured
diagnosis.

"Madam," he began, in the reassuring tones that had so often allayed
anxiety, "there is a probability--" As he slowly turned his head to face
the lady, he saw her fall, white and swooning, into the arms of the old
negress.

"Po' lamb! po' lamb! Has dey done killed Aunt Cindy's own blessed child?
May de Lawd' stroy wid his wrath dem what stole her away; what break dat
angel heart; what left--"

"Lift her feet," said Doctor James, assisting to support the drooping
form. "Where is her room? She must be put to bed."

"In here, suh." The woman nodded her kerchiefed head toward a door.
"Dat's Miss Amy's room."

They carried her in there, and laid her on the bed. Her pulse was faint,
but regular. She passed from the swoon, without recovering
consciousness, into a profound slumber.

"She is quite exhausted," said the physician. "Sleep is a good remedy.
When she wakes, give her a toddy--with an egg in it, if she can take it.
How did she get that bruise upon her forehead?"

"She done got a lick there, suh. De po' lamb fell--No, suh"--the old
woman's racial mutability swept her into a sudden flare of indignation
--"old Cindy ain't gwineter lie for dat debble. He done it, suh. May
de Lawd wither de hand what--dar now! Cindy promise her sweet lamb she
ain't gwine tell. Miss Amy got hurt, suh, on de head."

Doctor James stepped to a stand where a handsome lamp burned, and turned
the flame low.

"Stay here with your mistress," he ordered, "and keep quiet so she will
sleep. If she wakes, give her the toddy. If she grows any weaker, let me
know. There is something strange about it."

"Dar's mo' strange t'ings dan dat 'round here," began the negress, but
the physician hushed her in a seldom employed peremptory, concentrated
voice with which he had often allayed hysteria itself. He returned to
the other room, closing the door softly behind him. The man on the bed
had not moved, but his eyes were open. His lips seemed to form words.
Doctor James bent his head to listen. "The money! the money!" was what
they were whispering.

"Can you understand what I say?" asked the doctor, speaking low, but
distinctly.

The head nodded slightly.

"I am a physician, sent for by your wife. You are Mr. Chandler, I am
told. You are quite ill. You must not excite or distress yourself at
all."

The patient's eyes seemed to beckon to him. The doctor stooped to catch
the same faint words.

"The money--the twenty thousand dollars."

"Where is this money?--in the bank?"

The eyes expressed a negative. "Tell her"--the whisper was growing
fainter--"the twenty thousand dollars--her money"--his eyes wandered
about the room.

"You have placed this money somewhere?"--Doctor James's voice was
toiling like a siren's to conjure the secret from the man's failing
intelligence--"Is it in this room?"

He thought he saw a fluttering assent in the dimming eyes. The pulse
under his fingers was as fine and small as a silk thread.

There arose in Doctor James's brain and heart the instincts of his other
profession. Promptly, as he acted in everything, he decided to learn the
whereabouts of this money, and at the calculated and certain cost of a
human life.

Drawing from his pocket a little pad of prescription blanks, he
scribbled upon one of them a formula suited, according to the best
practice, to the needs of the sufferer. Going to the door of the inner
room, he softly called the old woman, gave her the prescription, and
bade her take it to some drug store and fetch the medicine.

When she had gone, muttering to herself, the doctor stepped to the
bedside of the lady. She still slept soundly; her pulse was a little
stronger; her forehead was cool, save where the inflammation of the
bruise extended, and a slight moisture covered it. Unless disturbed, she
would yet sleep for hours. He found the key in the door, and locked it
after him when he returned.

Doctor James looked at his watch. He could call half an hour his own,
since before that time the old woman could scarcely return from her
mission. Then he sought and found water in a pitcher and a glass
tumbler. Opening his medicine case he took out the vial containing the
nitroglycerine--"the oil," as his brethren of the brace-and-bit term it.

One drop of the faint yellow, thickish liquid he let fall in the
tumbler. He took out his silver hypodermic syringe case, and screwed
the needle into its place, Carefully measuring each modicum of water in
the graduated glass barrel of the syringe, he diluted the one drop with
nearly half a tumbler of water.

Two hours earlier that night Doctor James had, with that syringe,
injected the undiluted liquid into a hole drilled in the lock of a
safe, and had destroyed, with one dull explosion, the machinery that
controlled the movement of the bolts. He now purposed, with the same
means, to shiver the prime machinery of a human being--to rend its
heart--and each shock was for the sake of the money to follow.

The same means, but in a different guise. Whereas, that was the giant in
its rude, primary dynamic strength, this was the courtier, whose no less
deadly arms were concealed by velvet and lace. For the liquid in the
tumbler and in the syringe that the physician carefully filled was now a
solution of glonoin, the most powerful heart stimulant known to medical
science. Two ounces had riven the solid door of the iron safe; with one
fiftieth part of a minim he was now about to still forever the intricate
mechanism of a human life.

But not immediately. It was not so intended. First there would be a
quick increase of vitality; a powerful impetus given to every organ and
faculty. The heart would respond bravely to the fatal spur; the blood in
the veins return more rapidly to its source.

But, as Doctor James well knew, over-stimulation in this form of heart
disease means death, as sure as by a rifle shot. When the clogged
arteries should suffer congestion from the increased flow of blood
pumped into them by the power of the burglar's "oil," they would rapidly
become "no thoroughfare," and the fountain of life would cease to flow.

The physician bared the chest of the unconscious Chandler. Easily and
skilfully he injected, subcutaneously, the contents of the syringe into
the muscles of the region over the heart. True to his neat habits in
both professions, he next carefully dried his needle and re-inserted the
fine wire that threaded it when not in use.

In three minutes Chandler opened his eyes, and spoke, in a voice faint
but audible, inquiring who attended upon him. Doctor James again
explained his presence there.

"Where is my wife?" asked the patient.

"She is asleep--from exhaustion and worry," said the doctor. "I would
not awaken her, unless--"

"It isn't--necessary." Chandler spoke with spaces between his words
caused by his short breath that some demon was driving too fast. "She
wouldn't--thank you to disturb her--on my--account."

Doctor James drew a chair to the bedside. Conversation must not be
squandered.

"A few minutes ago," he began, in the grave, candid tones of his other
profession, "you were trying to tell me something regarding some
money. I do not seek your confidence, but it is my duty to advise
you that anxiety and worry will work against your recovery. If you
have any communication to make about this--to relieve your mind about
this--twenty thousand dollars, I think was the amount you mentioned--you
would better do so."

Chandler could not turn his head, but he rolled his eyes in the
direction of the speaker.

"Did I--say where this--money is?"

"No," answered the physician. "I only inferred, from your scarcely
intelligible words, that you felt a solicitude concerning its safety.
If it is in this room--"

Doctor James paused. Did he only seem to perceive a flicker of
understanding, a gleam of suspicion upon the ironical features of his
patient? Had he seemed too eager? Had he said too much? Chandler's next
words restored his confidence.

"Where--should it be," he gasped, "but in--the safe--there?"

With his eyes he indicated a corner of the room, where now, for the
first time, the doctor perceived a small iron safe, half-concealed by
the trailing end of a window curtain.

Rising, he took the sick man's wrist. His pulse was beating in great
throbs, with ominous intervals between.

"Lift your arm," said Doctor James.

"You know--I can't move, Doctor."

The physician stepped swiftly to the hall door, opened it, and listened.
All was still. Without further circumvention he went to the safe, and
examined it. Of a primitive make and simple design, it afforded little
more security than protection against light-fingered servants. To his
skill it was a mere toy, a thing of straw and paste-board. The money was
as good as in his hands. With his clamps he could draw the knob, punch
the tumblers and open the door in two minutes. Perhaps, in another way,
he might open it in one.

Kneeling upon the floor, he laid his ear to the combination plate, and
slowly turned the knob. As he had surmised, it was locked at only a "day
com."--upon one number. His keen ear caught the faint warning click as
the tumbler was disturbed; he used the clue--the handle turned. He swung
the door wide open.

The interior of the safe was bare--not even a scrap of paper rested
within the hollow iron cube.

Doctor James rose to his feet and walked back to the bed.

A thick dew had formed upon the dying man's brow, but there was a
mocking, grim smile on his lips and in his eyes.

"I never--saw it before," he said, painfully, "medicine and--burglary
wedded! Do you--make the--combination pay--dear Doctor?"

Than that situation afforded, there was never a more rigorous test of
Doctor James's greatness. Trapped by the diabolic humor of his victim
into a position both ridiculous and unsafe, he maintained his dignity as
well as his presence of mind. Taking out his watch, he waited for the
man to die.

"You were--just a shade--too--anxious--about that money. But it never
was--in any danger--from you, dear Doctor. It's safe. Perfectly safe.
It's all--in the hands--of the bookmakers. Twenty--thousand--Amy's
money. I played it at the races--lost every--cent of it. I've been a
pretty bad boy, Burglar--excuse me--Doctor, but I've been a square
sport. I don't think--I ever met--such an--eighteen-carat rascal as you
are, Doctor--excuse me--Burglar, in all my rounds. Is it contrary--to
the ethics--of your--gang, Burglar, to give a victim--excuse
me--patient, a drink of water?"

Doctor James brought him a drink. He could scarcely swallow it. The
reaction from the powerful drug was coming in regular, intensifying
waves. But his moribund fancy must have one more grating fling.

"Gambler--drunkard--spendthrift--I've been those, but--a
doctor-burglar!"

The physician indulged himself to but one reply to the other's caustic
taunts. Bending low to catch Chandler's fast crystallizing gaze,
he pointed to the sleeping lady's door with a gesture so stern and
significant that the prostrate man half-lifted his head, with his
remaining strength, to see. He saw nothing; but he caught the cold words
of the doctor--the last sounds hie was to hear:

"I never yet--struck a woman."

It were vain to attempt to con such men. There is no curriculum that can
reckon with them in its ken. Thev are offshoots from the types whereof
men say, "He will do this," or "He will do that." We only know that they
exist; and that we can observe them, and tell one another of their bare
performances, as children watch and speak of the marionettes.

Yet it were a droll study in egoism to consider these two--one an
assassin and a robber, standing above his victim; the other baser in his
offences, if a lesser law-breaker, lying, abhorred, in the house of the
wife he had persecuted, spoiled, and smitten, one a tiger, the other
a dog-wolf--to consider each of them sickening at the foulness of the
other; and each flourishing out of the mire of his manifest guilt his
own immaculate standard--of conduct, if not of honor.

The one retort of Doctor James must have struck home to the other's
remaining shreds of shame and manhood, for it proved the _coup de
grace_. A deep blush suffused his face--an ignominious _rosa mortis_;
the respiration ceased, and, with scarcely a tremor, Chandler expired.

Close following upon his last breath came the negress, bringing the
medicine. With a hand gently pressing upon the closed eyelids, Doctor
James told her of the end. Not grief, but a hereditary rapprochement
with death in the abstract, moved her to a dismal, watery snuffling,
accompanied by her usual jeremiad.

"Dar now! It's in de Lawd's hands. He am de jedge ob de transgressor,
and de suppo't of dem in distress. He gwine hab suppo't us now. Cindy
done paid out de last quarter fer dis bottle of physic, and it nebber
come to no use."

"Do I understand," asked Doctor James, "that Mrs. Chandler has no
money?"

"Money, suh? You know what make Miss Amy fall down and so weak?
Stahvation, sub. Nothin' to eat in dis house but some crumbly crackers
in three days. Dat angel sell her finger rings and watch mont's ago.
Dis fine house, suh, wid de red cyarpets and shiny bureaus, it's all
hired; and de man talkin' scan'lous about de rent. Dat debble--'scuse
me, Lawd--he done in Yo' hands fer jedgment, now--he made way wid
ever