Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, katsuya and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915

AND THE

YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY


EDITED BY
EDWARD J. O'BRIEN




BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS


Copyright, 1915, 1916, by The Boston Transcript.

Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, Harper and Brothers, The
Century Company, The Masses Publishing Company, P.F. Collier & Son,
Incorporated, Margaret C. Anderson, Mitchell Kennerley, The Ridgway
Company, Illustrated Sunday Magazine, John T. Frederick, Every Week
Corporation, Boston Daily Advertiser, The Bellman Company, The Outlook
Company, and The Curtis Publishing Company.

Copyright, 1916, by Maxwell Struthers Burt, Donn Byrne, Will Levington
Comfort, William Addison Dwiggins, James Francis Dwyer, Ben Hecht,
Arthur Johnson, Virgil Jordan, Harris Merton Lyon, Walter J. Muilenburg,
Newbold Noyes, Seumas O'Brien, Katharine Metcalf Roof, Benjamin
Rosenblatt, Elsie Singmaster Lewars, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Mary Synon,
and Fannie Hurst.

Copyright, 1916, by Small, Maynard and Company, Incorporated.

Second Printing, June, 1916
Third Printing, October, 1916
Fourth Printing, December, 1916
Fifth Printing, May, 1917


THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.


       *       *       *       *       *


TO BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT


       *       *       *       *       *




BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT


Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories in
this volume is made to the following authors, editors, publishers,
and copyright holders:

    To Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Maxwell Struthers Burt for
    permission to reprint "The Water-Hole," first published in
    _Scribner's Magazine_; to Harper and Brothers and Mr. Donn Byrne for
    permission to reprint "The Wake," first published in _Harper's
    Magazine_; to The Masses Publishing Company and Mr. Will Levington
    Comfort for permission to reprint "Chautonville," first published in
    _The Masses_; to Mr. William Addison Dwiggins for permission to
    reprint "La Dernière Mobilisation;" to P.F. Collier & Son,
    Incorporated, Galbraith Welch, and Mr. James Francis Dwyer for
    permission to reprint "The Citizen," first published in _Collier's
    Weekly_; to Mitchell Kennerley and Mrs. Frances Gregg Wilkinson for
    permission to reprint "Whose Dog--?" first published in _The Forum_;
    to Miss Margaret C. Anderson and Mr. Ben Hecht for permission to
    reprint "Life," first published in _The Little Review_; to the
    Century Company and Mr. Arthur Johnson for permission to reprint
    "Mr. Eberdeen's House," first published in _The Century Magazine_;
    to the Ridgway Company and Mr. Virgil Jordan for permission to
    include "Vengeance is Mine!" first published in _Everybody's
    Magazine_; to _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_ and Mr. Harris
    Merton Lyon for permission to reprint "The Weaver Who Clad the
    Summer," first published in _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_; to
    Mr. John T. Frederick and Mr. Walter J. Muilenburg for permission to
    reprint "Heart of Youth," first published in _The Midland_; to the
    Every Week Corporation and Mr. Newbold Noyes for permission to
    reprint "The End of the Path," first published in _Every Week_ and
    _The Associated Sunday Magazine_; to _The Illustrated Sunday
    Magazine_ and Mr. Seumas O'Brien for permission to reprint "The
    Whale and the Grass-Hopper," first published in _The Illustrated
    Sunday Magazine_; to _The Boston Daily Advertiser_, _The Boston
    Evening Record_, and the Newspaper Enterprise Association for
    permission to reprint "In Berlin," by Mary Boyle O'Reilly, first
    published in _The Boston Daily Advertiser_; to the Century Company
    and Miss Katharine Metcalf Roof for permission to reprint "The
    Waiting Years," first published in _The Century Magazine_; to The
    Bellman Company and Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt for permission to
    reprint "Zelig," first published in _The Bellman_; to The Outlook
    Company and Mrs. Elsie Singmaster Lewars for permission to include
    "The Survivors," first published in _The Outlook_; to Harper and
    Brothers and Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele for permission to reprint "The
    Yellow Cat," first published in _Harper's Magazine_; to Charles
    Scribner's Sons and Miss Mary Synon for permission to reprint "The
    Bounty Jumper," first published in _Scribner's Magazine_; and to The
    Curtis Publishing Company and Miss Fannie Hurst for permission to
    reprint "T.B.," first published in _The Saturday Evening Post_.

    Acknowledgments are specially due to _The Boston Evening Transcript_
    for permission to reprint the large body of material previously
    published in the columns of that paper.

I wish to specially express my gratitude to the following who have
materially assisted by their efforts in making this year-book of American
fiction possible and more complete:

    Mr. A.A. Boyden, Mr. Bruce Barton, Mr. Henry A. Bellows, Professor
    Albert Frederick Wilson, Mr. Barry Benefield, Mr. Douglas Z. Doty,
    Mr. Karl Edwin Harriman, Mr. Edward Frank Allen, Mr. Carl Hovey,
    Miss Sonya Levien, Mr. William Griffith, Mr. Arthur T. Vance, Mr.
    Mitchell Kennerley, Mr. H.M. Greene, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. J.B.
    Carrington, Mr. Hayden Carruth, Mr. Frederic A. Duneka, Mr. Henry J.
    Forman, Mr. Gilman Hall, Mr. Charles Hanson Towne, Miss Margaret
    Anderson, Mr. Charles Edison, Mr. Guido Bruno, Mr. William Marion
    Reedy, Mr. John T. Frederick, Mr. Burton Kline, Miss Dorothea
    Lawrance Mann, Miss Katharine Butler, Mr. Thomas H. Uzzell, Mr.
    Virgil Jordan, Mrs. Elsie Singmaster Lewars, Mr. Alfred A. Knopf,
    Miss Hilda Baker, Mr. William Stanley Braithwaite, and Mr. Francis
    J. Hannigan, in charge of the Periodical Department of the Boston
    Public Library. To Mr. Hannigan my special gratitude is due. My
    ability to find certain back numbers of periodicals which the
    publishers were unable to supply is due to his personal helpfulness
    and unsparing pains. In fact, his assistance at certain times almost
    amounted to collaboration.

I shall be grateful to my readers for corrections and particularly
for suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume.
In particular, I shall welcome the receipt from authors and publishers,
of stories published during 1916 which have qualities of distinction,
and yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice.
For such assistance I shall make due and grateful acknowledgment in
next year's annual.

If I have been guilty of any omissions in these acknowledgments, it is
quite unintentional, and I trust that I shall be absolved for my good
intentions.

                                                      E.J.O.




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION. By the Editor

THE WATER-HOLE. By Maxwell Struthers Burt
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)

THE WAKE. By Donn Byrne
(From _Harper's Magazine_)

CHAUTONVILLE. By Will Levington Comfort
(From _The Masses_)

LA DERNIÈRE MOBILISATION. By W.A. Dwiggins
(From _The Fabulist_)

THE CITIZEN. By James Francis Dwyer
(From _Collier's Weekly_)

WHOSE DOG--? By Frances Gregg
(From _The Forum_)

LIFE. By Ben Hecht
(From _The Little Review_)

T.B. By Fannie Hurst
(From _The Saturday Evening Post_)

MR. EBERDEEN'S HOUSE. By Arthur Johnson
(From _The Century_)

VENGEANCE IS MINE. By Virgil Jordan
(From _Everybody's Magazine_)

THE WEAVER WHO CLAD THE SUMMER. By Harris Merton Lyon
(From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_)

HEART OF YOUTH. By Walter J. Muilenburg
(From _The Midland_)

THE END OF THE PATH. By Newbold Noyes
(From _Every Week_)

THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER. By Seumas O'Brien
(From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_)

IN BERLIN. By Mary Boyle O'Reilly
(From _The Boston Daily Advertiser_)

THE WAITING YEARS. By Katharine Metcalf Roof
(From _The Century Magazine_)

ZELIG. By Benjamin Rosenblatt
(From _The Bellman_)

THE SURVIVORS. By Elsie Singmaster
(From _The Outlook_)

THE YELLOW CAT. By Wilbur Daniel Steele
(From _Harper's Magazine_)

THE BOUNTY-JUMPER. By Mary Synon
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)

THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY FOR 1914 AND 1915

THE ROLL OF HONOR FOR 1914

THE ROLL OF HONOR FOR 1915

MAGAZINE AVERAGES FOR 1915

INDEX OF SHORT STORIES FOR 1914 AND 1915




INTRODUCTION


In reaffirming the significant position of the American short story as
compared with the English short story, I am more impressed than ever
with the leadership maintained by American artists in this literary
form. Mr. James Stephens has been criticising us for our curiously
negative achievement in novel writing. He has compared the American
novelist with the English novelist and found him wanting. He is
compelled to deny literary distinction to the American novel, and he
makes a sweeping indictment of American fiction in consequence. But
does he know the American short story?

If you turn to the English magazines, you will find a certain form of
_conte_ of narrow range developed to a point of high literary merit in
such a paper as the _Nation_ or the _New Statesman_. But if you look for
short stories in the literary periodicals, you will not find them, and
if you turn to the popular English magazines, you will be amazed at the
cheap and meretricious quality of the English short story.

It would be idle to dispute about the origin of the short story, for
several literatures may claim its birth, but the American short story
has been developed as an art form to the point where it may fairly
claim a sustained superiority, as different in kind as in quality from
the tale or _conte_ of other literatures.

It would be difficult to trace the reasons for its specially healthy
growth in a soil so idly fertilized as our American reading public,
but it is less difficult and far more valuable to trace its development
and changing standards from year to year as the field of its interest
widens and its technique becomes more and more assured and competent.

Accordingly it seems advisable to undertake a study of the American
short story from year to year as it is represented in the American
periodicals which care most to develop its art and its audiences, and
to appraise so far as may be the relative achievement of author and
magazine in the successful fulfilment of this aim.

We have listened to much wailing during the past year about the absence
of all literary qualities in our fiction. We have been judged by
Englishmen and Irishmen who do not know our work and by Americans who
do know it. We have been appraised at our real worth by Mr. Edward
Garnett, who is probably the only English critic competent through
sufficient acquaintance to discuss us. Mr. Owen Wister and Mr. Henry
Sydnor Harrison have discussed us with each other, and bandied names
to and fro rather uncritically. And Mr. Robert Herrick has endeavored
to reassure us kindly and a little wistfully. Mr. Stephens has scolded
us, and Mr. Howells and Mr. Alden have counselled us wisely. And many
others have ventured opinions and offered judgment. The general verdict
against American literature is Guilty! Is this wise? Is this just?

Twelve years ago, if the public had been sufficiently interested,
such a dispute might have arisen about American poetry. If it had
arisen, the jury would probably have shouted "Guilty!" with one voice.
We had no faith in our poetry, and we were afraid of enthusiasm. It was
not good form. One or two poets refused to despair of the situation.
They affirmed their faith in our spiritual and imaginative substance
persistently and in the face of apathy and discouragement. They made
us believe in ourselves, and now American poetry is at the threshold
of a new era. It is more vital than contemporary English poetry.

Has the time not come at last to cease lamenting the pitiful gray
shabbiness of American fiction? We say that we have no faith in it,
and we judge it by the books and stories that we casually read. If
we are writers of fiction ourselves, perhaps we judge it by personal
and temperamental methods and preferences, just as certain groups of
American poets of widely different sympathies judge the poetry of
their contemporaries to-day. Let us affirm our faith anyhow in our
own spiritual substance. Let us believe in our materials and shape
them passionately to a creative purpose. Let us be enthusiastic about
life around us and the work that is being done, and in much less than
twelve years from now a jury of novelists and critics will pronounce
a very different verdict on American fiction from their verdict of
to-day.

During the past year I have read over twenty-two hundred short stories
in a critical spirit, and they have made me lastingly hopeful of our
literary future. A spirit of change is acting on our literature. There
is a fresh living current in the air. The new American spirit in fiction
is typically voiced by such a man as Mr. Lincoln Colcord in a letter
from which I have his permission to quote.

"There are many signs," he writes, "that literature in America stands
at a parting of ways. The technical-commercial method has been fully
exploited, and, I think, found wanting in essential results, although
it is a step toward higher things. The machinery for a great literature
stands ready. The public taste is now being created. Add to this, the
period in our national life: we are coming to our artistic maturity.
Add the profound social transition that was upon us before the war.
And add any factor you may choose for what may come after the war; for
I think that momentous events stand on the threshold of the world.

"The main trouble with the fellows who are writing in America to-day
is that they write too much--or rather, publish too much. A writer
should be very glad to accept a small income for many years; he
should deliberately keep his fortunes within bounds; and take his
time. All this would have been a truism fifty years ago; the machinery
for the other thing didn't exist, and something in the way of a natural
condition kept him in the simple path. But I don't find fault with the
machinery; the wider field and the larger figures are a direct boon to
us. They do, however, impose an added strain upon our sincerity."

I like to believe that the American writer is stiffening himself more
and more to meet this strain. Commercialization has never affected
any literature more than it has affected the American short story
in the past. It is affecting our writing more than ever to-day. But
here and there in quiet places, usually far from great cities, artists
are laboring quietly for a literary ideal, and the leaven of their
achievement is becoming more and more impressive every day. It is
my faith and hope that this annual volume of mine may do something
toward disengaging the honest good from the meretricious mass of
writing with which it is mingled. I find that editors are beginning
to react from the commercialized fiction that prevails to-day. They
are beginning to learn that they are killing the goose which lays the
golden eggs. The commercialized short story writer has less enthusiasm
in writing for editors nowadays. The "movies" have captured him. Why
write stories when scenarios are not only much less exhausting, but
actually more remunerative? The literary tradesman is peddling his wares
in other and wider markets, and the artistic craftsman is welcomed by
the magazines more and more in his place. As Mr. Colcord points out, we
have come at last to the parting of the ways.

I have undertaken to examine the short stories published in American
magazines during 1914 and 1915 and to report upon my findings. As the
most adequate means to this end, I have taken each short story by
itself, and examined it impartially. I have done my best to surrender
myself to the writer's point of view, and granting his choice of
material and interpretation of it in terms of life, have sought to
test it by the double standard of substance and form. Substance is
something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather
than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of
facts in a story only obtain substantial embodiment when the artist's
power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a
living truth. I assume that such a living truth is the artist's
essential object. The first test of a short story, therefore, in
any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling
the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be
known as the test of substance.

But a second test is necessary in this qualitative analysis if a
story is to take high rank above other stories. The test of substance
is the most vital test, to be sure, and if a story survives it, it
has imaginative life. The true artist, however, will seek to shape
this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form,
by skilful selection and arrangement of his material, and by the
most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and
characterization.

The short stories which I have examined in this study have fallen
naturally into four groups. The first group consists of those stories
which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test of substance
or the test of form. These stories are listed in the year-book without
comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group consists of those
stories which may fairly claim to survive either the test of substance
or the test of form. Each of these stories may claim to possess either
distinction of technique alone, or more frequently, I am glad to say,
a persuasive sense of life in them to which a reader responds with
some part of his own experience. Stories included in this group are
indicated in the year-book index by a single asterisk prefixed to the
title. The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater
distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a
second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test
of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are
indicated in the year-book index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.

Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories
which possess, I believe, an even finer distinction--the distinction
of uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven
pattern with a spiritual sincerity so earnest, and a creative belief
so strong, that each of these stories may fairly claim, in my opinion,
a position of some permanence in our literature as a criticism of life.
Stories of such quality are indicated in the year-book index by three
asterisks prefixed to the title, and are also listed in a special
"Roll of Honor." Ninety-three stories published during 1915 are
included in this list, and in compiling it I must repeat that I have
permitted no personal preference or prejudice to influence my judgment
consciously for or against a story. To the titles of certain stories,
however, in this list, an asterisk is prefixed, and this asterisk, I
must confess, reveals in some measure a personal preference. Stories
indicated by this asterisk seem to me not only distinctive, but so
highly distinguished as to necessitate their ultimate preservation
between book covers. It is from this final short list that the stories
reprinted in this volume have been selected.

It has been a point of honor with me not to republish an English story
or a short story whose immediate publication in book form elsewhere
seems likely. I have also made it a rule not to include more than one
story by an individual author in the volume. The general and particular
results of my study will be found explained and carefully detailed in
the supplementary part of the volume. It only remains now to point out
certain passing characteristics of the year for the sake of
chronological completeness.

I suppose there can be no doubt that "Zelig" is by all odds the
most nobly conceived and finely wrought story of the year. It is
a peculiar satisfaction to find again this year, as in 1914, that
the best story is the work of an unknown author. Mr. Rosenblatt's
story is in my opinion even more satisfying as a report of life
than Mr. Conrad Richter's "Brothers of No Kin," which I felt to
be the best story published during 1914. The American public is
indebted to Professor Albert Frederick Wilson, of the New York
University School of Journalism for the discovery and encouragement
of Mr. Rosenblatt's literary genius. Professor Wilson's service to
American literature in this matter should be adequately acknowledged.

The _Bellman_, in which "Zelig" appeared, is remarkable for the
brilliance and power of its fiction. My averages this year show
clearly that its percentage of distinctive stories is nearly double
that of the American weekly which most nearly approaches it. The
quality of the _Bellman's_ poetry is a matter of national knowledge.
It is fully equalled by the _Bellman's_ fiction, which renders it
one of the three or four American periodicals necessary to every
student of our spiritual history.

One new periodical and one new short story writer claim unique attention
this year for their recent achievement and abundant future promise.
A year ago a slender little monthly magazine entitled the _Midland_
was first issued in Iowa City. It attracted very little attention,
and in the course of the year published but ten short stories. It has
been my pleasure and wonder to find in these ten stories the most vital
interpretation in fiction of our national life that many years have been
able to show. Since the most brilliant days of the New England men of
letters, no such group of writers has defined its position with such
assurance and modesty.

One new short story writer has appeared this year whose five published
stories open a new field to fiction and have a human richness of feeling
and imagination rare in our oversophisticated literature. I refer to the
fables of Seumas O'Brien. At first one is struck with their utter
absence of form, and then one realizes that this is a conscious art that
wanders truant over life and imagination. In Seumas O'Brien I believe
that America has found a new humorist of popular sympathies, a rare
observer and philosopher whose very absurdities have a persuasive
philosophy of their own.

The two established writers whose sustained excellence this year is
most impressive are Katharine Fullerton Gerould and Wilbur Daniel
Steele. Lincoln Colcord's two stories show qualities of artistic
conscience reënforcing an imaginative substance so real that another
year or two should suffice for him to take his place with the leaders
of American fiction. I must affirm once more the genuine literary art
of Fannie Hurst. The absolute fidelity of her dialogue to life and its
revealing spirit, not despite, but rather because of the vulgarities
she accepts, seem to me to assure her permanence in her best work.

A rare literary art, not dissimilar in fundamentals, and quite as
marvellously documented, is revealed by Rupert Hughes in his series of
stories in the _Metropolitan Magazine_ this year. In "Michaeleen!
Michaelawn!" he has succeeded greatly. It is a story which it will be
difficult for Americans to forget.

What must have begun as a doubtful experiment and been continued only
because it was a triumphantly demonstrated success has been the serial
publication for the great average American public of my selection of
the best twenty-one stories published in 1914. The _Illustrated Sunday
Magazine_ has evidently justified its daring, and the bold pioneering
of its editor, Mr. Hiram M. Greene, to judge from the host of letters
I have received from readers who have not read the best magazines in
the past because, as many of them state, they feared that they were
too "high-brow," but who have been convinced, by the introduction to
the best contemporary fiction afforded them weekly in the supplement
to their Sunday newspaper, that such periodicals as _Harper's Magazine_
and _Scribner's Magazine_ have many qualities to commend them to the
untrained reader. All this serves to illustrate my point that the
commercial short story is not preferred by that imaginary norm of
editors known as "the reading public." If adequate means are employed
to allay the average man's suspicions of literature and to introduce
him painlessly to the best that our writers are creating, my experience
shows absolutely that he will respond heartily and make higher standards
possible by his support. We have scarcely begun to build our democracy
of letters.

Because an American publisher has been found who shares my faith in
the democratic future of the American short story as something by no
means ephemeral, this year-book of American fiction is assured of
annual publication for several years. It is my wish annually to dedicate
whatever there may be of faith and hope in each volume to the writer of
short stories whose work during the year has brought to me the most
definite message of idealism. It is accordingly my privilege this year
to associate the present volume with the name of Benjamin Rosenblatt,
who has contributed in "Zelig" a noble addition to American literature.

                                           EDWARD J. O'BRIEN

  SOUTH YARMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS
    Twelfth Night, 1916




THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915




THE WATER-HOLE[1]

BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT

From _Scribner's Magazine_

[1] Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1916, by
    Maxwell Struthers Burt.


Some men are like the twang of a bow-string. Hardy was like that--short,
lithe, sunburned, vivid. Into the lives of Jarrick, Hill, and myself,
old classmates of his, he came and went in the fashion of one of those
queer winds that on a sultry day in summer blow unexpectedly up a city
street out of nowhere. His comings excited us; his goings left us
refreshed and a little vaguely discontented. So many people are gray.
Hardy gave one a shock of color, as do the deserts and the mountains he
inhabited. It was not particularly what he said--he didn't talk much--it
was his appearance, his direct, a trifle fierce, gestures, the sense of
mysterious lands that pervaded him. One never knew when he was coming to
New York and one never knew how long he was going to stay; he just
appeared, was very busy with mining companies for a while, sat about
clubs in the late afternoon, and then, one day, he was gone.

Sometimes he came twice in a year; oftener, not for two or three years
at a stretch. When he did come we gave him a dinner--that is, Jarrick,
Hill, and myself. And it was rather an occasion. We would procure a
table in the gayest restaurant we could find, near, but not too near,
the music--Hill it was who first suggested this as a dramatic bit of
incongruity between Hardy and the frequenters of Broadway--and the
most exotic food obtainable, for a good part of his time Hardy, we
knew, lived upon camp fare. Then we would try to make him tell about
his experiences. Usually he wouldn't. Impersonally, he was entertaining
about South Africa, about the Caucasus, about Alaska, Mexico, anywhere
you care to think; but concretely he might have been an illustrated
lecture for all he mentioned himself. He was passionately fond of
abstract argument. "Y' see," he would explain, "I don't get half as
much of this sort of thing as I want. Of course, one does run across
remarkable people--now, I met a cow-puncher once who knew Keats by
heart--but as a rule I deal only with material things, mines and
prospects and assays and that sort of thing." Poor chap! I wonder
if he thought that we, with our brokering and our writing and our
lawyering, dealt much with ideas! I remember one night when we sat
up until three discussing the philosophy of prohibition over three
bottles of port. I wonder how many other men have done the same thing!

But five years ago--no, it was six--Hardy really told us a real
story about himself. Necessarily the occasion is memorable in our
recollections. We had dined at Lamb's, and the place was practically
empty, for it was long after the theatre hour--only a drowsy waiter
here and there, and away over in one corner a young couple who, I
suppose, imagined themselves in love. Fancy being in love at Lamb's!
We had been discussing, of all things in the world, bravery and
conscience and cowardice and original sin, and that sort of business,
and there was no question about it that Hardy was enjoying himself
hugely. He was leaning upon the table, a coffee-cup between his relaxed
brown hands, listening with an eagerness highly complimentary to the
banal remarks we had to make upon the subject. "This is talk!" he
ejaculated once with a laugh.

Hill, against the combined attack of Jarrick and myself, was maintaining
the argument. "There is no such thing as instinctive bravery," he
affirmed, for the fifth time at least, "amongst intelligent men. Every
one of us is naturally a coward. Of course we are. The more imagination
we've got the more we can realize how pleasant life is, after all, and
how rotten the adjuncts of sudden death. It's reason that does the
trick--reason and tradition. Do you know of any one who is brave when
he is alone--except, that is, when it is a case of self-preservation?
No! Of course not. Did you ever hear of any one choosing to go along
a dangerous road or to ford a dangerous river unless he had to--that
is, any one of our class, any man of education or imagination? It's
the greater fear of being thought afraid that makes us brave. Take a
lawyer in a shipwreck--take myself! Don't you suppose he's frightened?
Naturally he is, horribly frightened. It's his reason, his mind, that
after a while gets the better of his poor pipe-stem legs and makes them
keep pace with the sea-legs about them."

"It's condition," said Jarrick doggedly--"condition entirely. All has to
do with your liver and digestion. I know; I fox-hunt, and when I was
younger--yes, leave my waist alone!--I rode jumping races. When you're
fit there isn't a horse alive that bothers you, or a fence, for that
matter, or a bit of water."

"Ever try standing on a ship's deck, in the dark, knowing you're going
to drown in about twenty minutes?" asked Hill.

Hardy leaned forward to strike a match for his cigarette. "I don't agree
with you," he said.

"Well, but--" began Hill.

"Neither of you."

"Oh, of course, you're outside the argument. You lead an adventurous
life. You keep in condition for danger. It isn't fair."

"No." Hardy lit his cigarette and inhaled a puff thoughtfully. "You
don't understand. All you have to say does have some bearing upon
things, but, when you get down to brass tacks, it's instinct--at the
last gasp, it's instinct. You can't get away from it. Look at the
difference between a thoroughbred and a cold-blooded horse! There you
are! That's true. It's the fashion now to discount instinct, I know;
well--but you can't get away from it. I've thought about the thing--a
lot. Men are brave against their better reason, against their
conscience. It's a mixed-up thing. It's confusing and--and sort of
damnable," he concluded lamely.

"Sort of damnable!" ejaculated Hill wonderingly.

"Yes, damnable."

I experienced inspiration. "You've got a concrete instance back of
that," I ventured.

Hardy removed his gaze from the ceiling. "Er--" he stammered. "Why,
yes--yes. That's true."

"You'd better tell it," suggested Hill; "otherwise your argument is not
very conclusive."

Hardy fumbled with the spoon of his empty coffee-cup. It was a curious
gesture on the part of a man whose franknesses were as clean-cut as his
silences. "Well--" he began. "I don't know. Perhaps. I did know a man,
though, who saved another man's life when he didn't want to, when there
was every excuse for him not to, when he had it all reasoned out that
it was wrong, the very wrongest possible thing to do; and he saved him
because he couldn't help it, saved him at the risk of his own life,
too."

"He did!" murmured Hill incredulously.

"Go on!" I urged. I was aware that we were on the edge of a revelation.

Hardy looked down at the spoon in his hand, then up and into my eyes.

"It's such a queer place to tell it"--he smiled deprecatingly--"here,
in this restaurant. It ought to be about a camp-fire, or something
like that. Here it seems out of place, like the smell of bacon or
sweating mules. Do you know Los Pinos? Well, you wouldn't. It was
just a few shacks and a Mexican gambling-house when I saw it. Maybe
it isn't there any more, at all. You know--those places! People build
them and then go away, and in a year there isn't a thing, just desert
again and shifting sand and maybe the little original old ranch by the
one spring." He swept the table-cloth with his hand, as if sweeping
something into oblivion, and his eyes sought again the spoon. "It's
queer, that business. Men and women go out to lonely places and build
houses, and for a while everything goes on in miniature, just as it does
here--daily bread and hating and laughing--and then something happens,
the gold gives out or the fields won't pay, and in no time nature is
back again. It's a big fight. You lose track of it in crowded places."
He raised his head and settled his arms comfortably on the table.

"I wasn't there for any particular purpose. I was on a holiday. I'd been
on a big job up in Colorado and was rather done up, and, as there were
some prospects in New Mexico I wanted to see, I hit south, drifting
through Santa Fé and Silver City, until I found myself way down on the
southern edge of Arizona. It was still hot down there--hot as blazes--it
was about the first of September--and the rattlesnakes and the scorpions
were still as active as crickets. I knew a chap that had a cattle outfit
near the Mexican border, so I dropped in on him one day and stayed two
weeks. You see, he was lonely. Had a passion for theatres and hadn't
seen a play for five years. My second-hand gossip was rather a godsend.
But finally I got tired of talking about Mary Mannering, and decided to
start north again. He bade me good-by on a little hill near his place.
'See here!' he said suddenly, looking toward the west. 'If you go a
trifle out of your way you'll strike Los Pinos, and I wish you would.
It's a little bit of a dump of the United Copper Company's, no good, I'm
thinking, but the fellow in charge is a friend of mine. He's got his
wife there. They're nice people--or used to be. I haven't seen them for
ten years. They say he drinks a little--well, we all do. Maybe you could
write me how she--I mean, how he is getting on?' And he turned red. I
saw how the land lay, and as a favor to him I said I would.

"It was eighty miles away, and I drifted in there one night on top
of a tired cow-horse just at sundown. You know how purple--violet,
really--those desert evenings are. There was violet stretching away
as far as I could see, from the faint violet at my stirrups to the
deep, almost black violet of the horizon. Way off to the north I
could make out the shadow of some big hills that had been ahead of
me all day. The town, what there was of it, lay in a little gully.
Along its single street there were a few lights shining like small
yellow flowers. I asked my way of a Mexican, and he showed me up to
where the Whitneys--that name will do as well as any--lived, in a
decent enough sort of bungalow, it would seem, above the gully. He
left me there, and I went forward and rapped at the door. Light shone
from between the cracks of a near-by shutter, and I could hear voices
inside--a man's voice mostly, hoarse and high-pitched. Then a Chinaman
opened the door for me and I had a look inside, into a big living-room
beyond. It was civilized all right enough, pleasantly so to a man
stepping out of two days of desert and Mexican adobes. At a glance I
saw the rugs on the polished floor, and the Navajo blankets about,
and a big table in the centre with a shaded lamp and magazines in
rows; but the man in riding-clothes standing before the empty fire-place
wasn't civilized at all, at least not at that moment. I couldn't see the
woman, only the top of her head above the back of a big chair, but as
I came in I heard her say, 'Hush!--Jim!--please!' and I noticed that
what I could see of her hair was of that fine true gold you so seldom
find. The man stopped in the middle of a sentence and swayed on his
feet, then he looked over at me and came toward me with a sort of
bulldog, inquiring look. He was a big, red-faced, blond chap, about
forty, I should say, who might once have been handsome. He wasn't now,
and it didn't add to his beauty that he was quite obviously fairly
drunk. 'Well?' he said, and blocked my way.

"'I'm a friend of Henry Martin's,' I answered. 'I've got a letter for
you.' I was beginning to get pretty angry.

"'Henry Martin?' He laughed unsteadily. 'You'd better give it to my wife
over there. She's his friend. I hardly know him.' I don't know when I'd
seen a man I disliked as much at first sight.

"There was a rustle from the other side of the room, and Mrs. Whitney
came toward us. I avoided her unattractive husband and took her hand,
and I understood at once whatever civilizing influences there were
about the bungalow we were in. Did you ever do that--ever step out
of nowhere, in a wild sort of country, and meet suddenly a man or a
woman who might have come straight from a pleasant, well-bred room
filled with books and flowers and quiet, nice people? It's a sensation
that never loses its freshness. Mrs. Whitney was like that. I wouldn't
have called her beautiful; she was better; you knew she was good and
clean-cut and a thoroughbred the minute you saw her. She was lovely,
too; don't misunderstand me, but you had more important things to think
about when you were talking to her. Just at the moment I was wondering
how any one who so evidently had been crying could all at once greet a
stranger with so cordial a smile. But she was all that--all nerve; I
don't think I ever met a woman quite like her--so fine, you understand."

Hardy paused. "Have any of you chaps got a cigarette?" he asked; and I
noticed that his hand, usually the steadiest hand imaginable, trembled
ever so slightly. "Well," he began again, "there you are! I had tumbled
into about as rotten a little, pitiful a little tragedy as you can
imagine, there in a God-forsaken desert of Arizona, with not a soul
about but a Chinaman, a couple of Scotch stationary engineers, an Irish
foreman, two or three young mining men, and a score of Mexicans. Of
course, my first impulse was to get out the next morning, to cut it--it
was none of my business--although I determined to drop a line to Henry
Martin; but I didn't go. I had a talk with Mrs. Whitney that night,
after her attractive husband had taken himself off to bed, and somehow I
couldn't leave just then. You know how it is, you drop into a place
where nothing in the world seems likely to happen, and all of a sudden
you realize that something _is_ going to happen, and for the life of you
you can't go away. That situation up on top of the hill couldn't last
forever, could it? So I stayed on. I hunted out the big Irish foreman
and shared his cabin. The Whitneys asked me to visit them, but I didn't
exactly feel like doing so. The Irishman was a fine specimen of his
race, ten years out from Dublin, and everywhere else since that time;
generous, irascible, given to great fits of gayety and equally
unexpected fits of gloom. He would sit in the evenings, a short pipe in
his mouth, and stare up at the Whitney bungalow on the hill above.

"'That Jim Whitney's a divvle,' he confided to me once. 'Wan of these
days I'll hit him over th' head with a pick and be hung for murther.
Now, what in hell d'ye suppose a nice girl like that sticks by him for?
If it weren't for her I'd 'a' reported him long ago. The scut!' And I
remember that he spat gloomily.

"But I got to know the answer to that question sooner than I had
expected. You see, I went up to the Whitneys' often, in the afternoon,
or for dinner, or in the evening, and I talked to Mrs. Whitney a great
deal; although sometimes I just sat and smoked and listened to her play
the piano. She played beautifully. It was a treat to a man who hadn't
heard music for two years. There was a little thing of Grieg's--a spring
song, or something of the sort--and you've no idea how quaint and sad
and appealing it was, and incongruous, with all its freshness and
murmuring about water-falls and pine-trees, there, in those hot,
breathless Arizona nights. Mrs. Whitney didn't talk much; she wasn't
what you'd call a particularly communicative woman, but bit by bit I
pieced together something continuous. It seems that she had run away
with Whitney ten years before--Oh, yes! Henry Martin! That had been a
schoolgirl affair. Nothing serious, you understand. But the Whitney
matter had been different. She was greatly in love with him. And the
family had disapproved. Some rich, stuffy Boston people, I gathered. But
she had made up her mind and taken matters in her own hands. That was
her way--a clean-cut sort of person--like a gold-and-white arrow; and
now she was going to stick by her choice no matter what happened; owed
it to Whitney. There was the quirk in her brain; we all have a quirk
somewhere, and that was hers. She felt that she had ruined his career;
he had been a brilliant young engineer, but her family had kicked up the
devil of a row, and, as they were powerful enough, and nasty enough, had
more or less hounded him out of the East. Of course, personally, I never
thought he showed any of the essentials of brilliancy, but that's
neither here nor there; she did, and she was satisfied that she owed him
all she had. I suppose, too, there was some trace of a Puritan
conscience back of it, some inherent feeling about divorce; and there
was pride as well, a desire not to let that disgusting family of hers
know into what ways her idol had fallen. Anyway, she was adamant--oh,
yes, I made no bones about it, I up and asked her one night why she
didn't get rid of the hound. So there she was, that white-and-gold
woman, with her love of music, and her love of books, and her love of
fine things, and her gentleness, and that sort of fiery, suppressed
Northern blood, shut up on top of an Arizona dump with a beast that got
drunk every night and twice a day on Sunday. It was worse even than
that. One night--we were sitting out on the veranda--her scarf slipped,
and I saw a scar on her arm, near her shoulder." Hardy stopped abruptly
and began to roll a little pellet of bread between his thumb and his
forefinger; then his tense expression faded and he sat back in his
chair.

"Let me have another cigarette," he said to Jarrick. "No. Wait a minute!
I'll order some."

He called a waiter and gave his instructions. "You see," he continued,
"when you run across as few nice women as I do that sort of thing is
more than ordinarily disturbing. And then I suppose it was the setting,
and her loneliness, and everything. Anyway, I stayed on, I got to be
a little bit ashamed of myself. I was afraid that Mrs. Whitney would
think me prompted by mere curiosity or a desire to meddle, so after
a while I gave out that I was prospecting that part of Arizona, and
in the mornings I would take a horse and ride out into the desert. I
loved it, too; it was so big and spacious and silent and hot. One day
I met Whitney on the edge of town. He was sober, as he always was when
he had to be; he was a masterful brute, in his way. He stopped me and
asked if I had found anything, and when I laughed he didn't laugh back.
'There's gold here,' he said. 'Lots of gold. Did you ever hear the story
of the Ten Strike Mine? Well, it's over there.' He swept with his arm
the line of distant hills to the north. 'The crazy Dutchman that found
it staggered into Almuda, ten miles down the valley, just before he
died; and his pockets were bulging with samples--pure gold, almost. Yes,
by thunder! And that's the last they ever heard of it. Lots of men have
tried--lots of men. Some day I'll go myself, surer than shooting.' And
he let his hands drop to his sides and stared silently toward the north,
a queer, dreamy anger in his eyes. I've seen lots of mining men, lots of
prospectors, in my time, and it didn't take me long to size up that look
of his. 'Aha, my friend!' I said to myself. 'So you've got another vice,
have you! It isn't only rum that's got a hold on you!' And I turned my
horse into the town.

"But our conversation seemed to have stirred to the surface something
in Whitney's brain that had been at work there a long time, for after
that he would never let me alone about his Ten Strike Mine and the
mountains that hid it. 'Over there!' he would say, and point to the
north. From the porch of his bungalow the sleeping hills were plainly
visible above the shimmering desert. He would chew on the end of a
cigar and consider. 'It isn't very far, you know. Two days--maybe
three. All we need's water. No water there--at least, none found. All
those fellows who've prospected are fools. I'm an expert; so are you.
I tell you, Hardy, let's do it! A couple of little old pack-mules! Eh?
How about it? Next week? I can get off. God, I'd like money!' And he
would subside into a sullen silence. At first I laughed at him; but
I can tell you that sort of thing gets on your nerves sooner or later
and either makes you bolt it or else go. At the end of two weeks I
actually found myself considering the fool thing seriously. Of course,
I didn't want to discover a lost gold-mine, that is, unless I just
happened to stumble over it; I wanted to keep away from such things;
they're bad; they get into a man's blood like drugs; but I've always
had a hankering for a new country, and those hills, shining in the heat,
were compelling--very compelling. Besides, I reflected, a trip like that
might help to straighten Whitney up a little. I hadn't much hope, to be
sure, but drowning men clutch at straws. It's curious what sophistry you
use to convince yourself, isn't it? And then--something happened that
for two weeks occupied all my mind."

Hardy paused, considered for a moment the glowing end of his cigarette,
and finally looked up gravely; there was a slight hesitation, almost
an embarrassment, in his manner. "I don't exactly know how to put it,"
he began. "I don't want you chaps to imagine anything wrong; it was
all very nebulous and indefinite, you understand--Mrs. Whitney was a
wonderful woman. I wouldn't mention the matter at all if it wasn't
necessary for the point of my story; in fact, it is the point of my
story. But there was a man there--one of the young engineers--and
quite suddenly I discovered that he was in love with Mrs. Whitney,
and I think--I never could be quite sure, but I think she was in love
with him. It must have been one of those sudden things, a storm out
of a clear sky, deluging two people before they were aware. I imagine it
was brought to the surface by the chap's illness. He had been out riding
on the desert and had got off to look at something, and a rattlesnake
had struck him--a big, dust-dirty thing--on the wrist, and, very faint,
he had galloped back to the Whitneys'. And what do you suppose she had
done--Mrs. Whitney, that is? Flung herself down on him and sucked the
wound! Yes, without a moment's hesitation, her gold hair all about his
hand and her white dress in the dirt. Of course, it was a foolish thing
to do, and not in the least the right way to treat a wound, but she had
risked her life to do it; a slight cut on her lip--you understand; a
tiny, ragged place. Afterward, she had cut the wound crosswise, so, and
had put on a ligature, and then had got the man into the house some way
and nursed him until he was quite himself again. I dare say he had been
in love with her a long while without knowing it, but that clinched
matters. Those things come overpoweringly and take a man, down in places
like that--semitropical and lonely and lawless, with long, empty days
and moonlit nights. Perhaps he told Mrs. Whitney; he never got very far,
I am sure. She was a wonderful woman--but she loved him, I think. You
can tell those things, you know; a gesture, an unavoidable look, a
silence.

"Anyway, I saw what had happened and I was sorry, and for a fortnight
I hung around, loath to go, but hating myself all the while for not
doing so. And every day Whitney would come at me with his insane scheme.
'Over there! It isn't very far. Two days--maybe three. How about it?
Eh?' and then that tense sweep of the arm to the north. I don't know
what it was, weariness, disgust, irritation of the whole sorry plan
of things, but finally, and to my own astonishment, I found myself
consenting, and within two days Whitney had his crazy pack outfit ready,
and on the morning of the third day we set out. Mrs. Whitney had said
nothing when we unfolded our intentions to her, nor did she say anything
when we departed, but stood on the porch of the bungalow, her hand up
to her throat, and watched us out of sight. I wondered what she was
thinking about. The Voodoos--that was the name of the mountains we were
heading for--had killed a good many men in their time."

Hardy took a long and thoughtful sip from the glass in front of him
before he began again. "I've knocked about a good deal in my life," he
said; "I've been lost--once in the jungle; I've starved; I've reached
the point where I've imagined horrors, heard voices, you understand, and
seen great, bearded men mouthing at me--a man's pretty far gone when
that happens to him--but that trip across the desert was the worst I've
ever taken. By day it was all right, just swaying in your saddle, half
asleep a good part of the time, the smell of warm dust in your nose, the
three pack-mules plodding along behind; but the nights!--I tell you,
I've sat about camp-fires up the Congo and watched big, oily black men
eat their food, and I once saw a native village sacked, but I'd rather
be tied for life to a West Coast nigger than to a man like Whitney. It
isn't good for two people to be alone in a place like that and for one
to hate the other as I hated him. God knows why I didn't kill him; I'd
have to get up and leave the fire and go out into the night, and, mind
you, I'd be shuddering like a man with the ague under that warm, soft
air. And he never for a minute suspected it. His mind was scarred with
drink as if a worm had bored its slow way in and out of it. I can see
him now, cross-legged, beyond the flames, big, unshaven, heavy-jowled,
dirty, what he thought dripping from his mouth like the bacon drippings
he was too lazy to wipe away. I won't tell you what he talked about;
you know, the old thing; but not the way even the most wrong-minded of
ordinary men talks; there was a sodden, triumphant deviltry in him that
was appalling. He cursed the country for its lack of opportunity of a
certain kind; he was like a hound held in leash, gloating over what he
would do when he got back to the kennels of civilization again. And all
the while, at the back of my mind, was a picture of that white-and-gold
woman of his, way back toward the south, waiting his return because she
owed him her life for the brilliant career she had ruined. It made you
sometimes almost want to laugh--insanely. I used to lie awake at night
and pray whatever there was to kill him, and do it quickly. I would have
turned back, but I felt that every day I could keep him away from Los
Pinos was a day gained for Mrs. Whitney. He was a dangerous maniac, too.
The first day he behaved himself fairly well, but the second, after
supper, when we had cleaned up, he began to fumble through the packs,
and finally produced a bottle of brandy.

"'Fine camping stuff!' he announced. 'Lots of results for very little
weight. Have some?'

"'Are you going to drink that?' I asked.

"'Oh, go to the devil!' he snapped. 'I've been out as much as you have.'
I didn't argue with him further; I hoped if he drank enough the sun
would get him. But the third night he upset the water-kegs, two of
them. He had been carrying on some sort of weird celebration by himself,
and finally staggered out into the desert, singing at the top of his
lungs, and the first thing I knew he was down among the kegs, rolling
over and over, and kicking right and left. The one that was open was
gone; another he kicked the plug out of, but I managed to save about
a quarter of its contents. The next morning I spoke to him about it.
He blinked his red eyes and chuckled.

"'Poor sort of stuff, anyway,' he said.

"'Yes,' I agreed; 'but without it you would blow out like a candle in
a dust storm.' After that we didn't speak to each other except when it
was necessary.

"We were in the foot-hills of the Voodoos by now, and the next day we
got into the mountains themselves--great, bare ragged peaks, black and
red and dirty yellow, like the cooled-off slake of a furnace. Every
now and then a dry gully came down from nowheres; and the only human
thing one could see was occasionally, on the sides of one of these,
a shivering, miserable, half-dead piñon--nothing but that, and the
steel-blue sky overhead, and the desert behind us, shimmering like
a lake of salt. It was hot--good Lord! The horn of your saddle burned
your hand. That night we camped in a canyon, and the next day went
still higher up, following the course of a rutted stream that probably
ran water once in a year. Whitney wanted to turn east, and it was all
a toss-up to me; the place looked unlikely enough, anyway, although
you never can tell. I had settled into the monotony of the trip by
now and didn't much care how long we stayed out. One day was like
another--hot little swirls of dust, sweat of mules, and great black
cliffs; and the nights came and went like the passing of a sponge over
a fevered face. On the sixth day the tragedy happened. It was toward
dusk, and one of the mules, the one that carried the water, fell over
a cliff.

"He wasn't hurt; just lay on his back and smiled crossly; but the
kegs and the bags were smashed to bits. I like mules, but I wanted
to kill that one. It was quiet down there in the canyon--quiet and
hot. I looked at Whitney and he looked at me, and I had the sudden,
unpleasant realization that he was a coward, added to his other
qualifications. Yes, a coward! I saw it in his blurred eyes and the
quivering of his bloated lips--stark dumb funk. That was bad. I'm
afraid I lost my nerve, too; I make no excuses; fear is infectious.
At all events, we tore down out of that place as if death was after
us, the mules clattering and flapping in the rear. After a time I
rode more slowly, but in the morning we were nearly down at the
desert again; and there it lay before us, shimmering like a lake of
salt--three days back to water.

"The next two days were rather a blur, as if a man were walking on
a red-hot mirror that tipped up and down and tried to take his legs
from under him. There was a water-hole a little to the east of the
way we had come, and toward that I tried to head. One of the mules
gave out, and staggered and groaned, and tried to get up again. I
remember hearing him squeal, once; it was horrible. He lay there,
a little black speck on the desert. Whitney and I didn't speak to
each other at all, but I thought of those two kegs of water he had
upset. Have you ever been thirsty--mortally thirsty, until you feel
your tongue black in your mouth? It's queer what it does to you. Do
you remember that little place--Zorn's--at college? We used to sit
there sometimes on spring afternoons. It was cool and cavern-like,
and through the open door one could see the breeze in the maple-trees.
Well, I thought about that all the time; it grew to be an obsession,
a mirage. I could smell the moss-like smell of bock beer; I even
remembered conversations we had had. You fellows were as real to me
as you are real to-night. It's strange, and then, when you come to,
uncanny; you feel the sweat on you turn cold.

"We had ridden on in that way I don't know how long, snatching a
couple of feverish hours of sleep in the night, Whitney groaning and
mumbling horribly, when suddenly my horse gave a little snicker--low,
the way they do when you give them grain--and I felt his tired body
straighten up ever so little. 'Maybe,' I thought, and I looked up.
But I didn't much care; I just wanted to crawl into some cool place and
forget all about it and die. It was late in the afternoon. My shadow was
lengthening. Too late, really, for much mirage; but I no longer put
great stock in green vegetation and matters of that kind; I had seen
too much of it in the last two days fade away into nothing--nothing
but blistering, damned sand. And so I wouldn't believe the cool reeds
and the sparkling water until I had dipped down through a little swale
and was actually fighting my horse back from the brink. I knew enough
to do that, mind you, and to fight back the two mules so that they drank
just a little at a time--a little at a time; and all the while I had to
wait, with my tongue like sand in my mouth. Over the edge of my horse's
neck I could see the water just below; it looked as cool as rain. I was
always a little proud of that--that holding back; it made up, in a way,
for the funk of two nights earlier. When the mules and my horse were
through I dismounted and, lying flat, bathed my hands, and then, a tiny
sip at a time, began to drink. That was hard. When I stood up the heat
seemed to have gone, and the breeze was moist and sweet with the smell
of evening. I think I sang a little and waved my hands above my head,
and, at all events, I remember I lay on my back and rolled a cigarette;
and quite suddenly and without the slightest reason there were tears in
my eyes. Then I began to wonder what had become of Whitney; I hadn't
thought of him before. I got to my feet, and just as I did so I saw him
come over the little rise of sand, swaying in his saddle, and trying,
the fool, to make his horse run. He looked like a great scarecrow blown
out from some Indian maize-field into the desert. His clothes were torn
and his mask of a face was seamed and black from dust and sweat; he saw
the water and let out one queer, hoarse screech and kicked at his horse
with wabbling legs.

"'Look out!' I cried, and stepped in his way. I had seen this sort
of thing before and knew what to expect; but he rode me down as if
I hadn't been there. His horse tried to avoid me, and the next moment
the sack of grain on its back was on the sands, creeping like a great,
monstrous, four-legged thing toward the water. 'Stay where you are,'
I said, 'and I'll bring you some.' But he only crawled the faster. I
grabbed his shoulder. 'You fool!' I said. 'You'll kill yourself!'

"'Damn you!' he blubbered. 'Damn you!' And before I knew it, and with
all the strength, I imagine, left in him, he was on his feet and I was
looking down the barrel of his gun. It looked very round and big and
black, too. Beyond it his eyes were regarding me; they were quite mad,
there was no doubt about that, but, just the way a dying man achieves
some of his old desire to will, there was definite purpose in them.
'You get out of my way,' he said, and began very slowly to circle me.
You could hardly hear his words, his lips were so blistered and swollen.

"And now this is the point of what I am telling you." Hardy fumbled
again for a match and relit his cigarette. "There we were, we two,
in that desert light, about ten feet from the water, he with his gun
pointing directly at my heart--and his hand wasn't trembling as much
as you would imagine, either--and he was circling me step by step,
and I was standing still. I suppose the whole affair took two minutes,
maybe three, but in that time--and my brain was still blurred to other
impressions--I saw the thing as clearly as I see it now, as clearly as
I saw that great, swollen beast of a face. Here was the chance I had
longed for, the hope I had lain awake at night and prayed for; between
the man and death I alone stood; and I had every reason, every instinct
of decency and common sense, to make me step aside. The man was a devil;
he was killing the finest woman I had ever met; his presence poisoned
the air he walked in; he was an active agent of evil, there was no doubt
of that. I hated him as I had never hated anything else in my life, and
at the moment I was sure that God wanted him to die. I knew then that
to save him would be criminal; I think so still. And I saw other
considerations as well; saw them as clearly as I see you sitting here.
I saw the man who loved Mrs. Whitney, and I saw Mrs. Whitney herself,
and in my keeping, I knew, was all her chance for happiness, the one
hope that the future would make up to her for some of the horror of
the past. It would have been an easy thing to do; the most ordinary
caution was on my side. Whitney was far larger than I, and, even in
his weakened condition--I was weak myself--stronger, and he had a gun
that in a flash of light could blow me into eternity. And what would
happen then? Why, when he got back to Los Pinos they would hang him;
they would be only too glad of the chance; and his wife?--she would
die; I knew it--just go out like a flame from the unbearableness of
it all. And there wasn't one chance in a thousand that he wouldn't kill
me if I made a single step toward him. I had only to let him go and in
a few minutes he would be dead--as dead as his poor brute of a horse
would be within the hour. I felt already the cool relief that would be
mine when the black shadow of him was gone. I would ride into town and
think no more of it than if I had watched a tarantula die. You see, I
had it all reasoned out as clearly as could be; there was morality and
common sense, the welfare of other people, the man's own good, really,
and yet--well, I didn't do it."

"Didn't?" It was Jarrick who put the question a little breathlessly.

"No. I stepped toward him--so! One step, then another, very slowly,
hardly a foot at a time, and all the while I watched the infernal circle
of that gun, expecting it every minute to spit fire. I didn't want to
go; I went against my will. I was scared, too, mortally scared; my legs
were like lead--I had to think every time I lifted a foot--and in a
queer, crazy way I seemed to feel two people, a man and a woman, holding
me back, plucking at my sleeves. But I went. All the time I kept saying,
very steady and quiet: 'Don't shoot, Whitney! D'you hear! Don't shoot or
I'll kill you!' Wasn't it silly? Kill him! Why, he had me dead ten times
before I got to him. But I suppose some trace of sanity was knocking at
his drink-sodden brain, for he didn't shoot--just watched me, his red
eyes blinking. So! One step at a time--nearer and nearer--I could feel
the sweat on my forehead--and then I jumped. I had him by the legs, and
we went down in a heap. He shot then; they always do! But I had him tied
up with the rags of his own shirt in a trice. Then I brought him water
in my hat and let him drink it, drop by drop. After a while he came to
altogether. But he never thanked me; he wasn't that kind of a brute. I
got him into town the morning of the second day and turned him over to
his wife. So you see"--Hardy hesitated and looked at the circle of our
faces with an odd, appealing look--"it _is_ queer, isn't it? All mixed
up. One doesn't know." He sank back in his chair and began to scratch,
absent-mindedly, at a holder with a match.

The after-theatre crowd was beginning to come in; the sound of
laughter and talk grew steadily higher; far off an orchestra wailed
inarticulately.

"What became of them?" I asked.

Hardy looked up as if startled. "The Whitneys? Oh--she died--Martin
wrote me. Down there, within a year. One would know it would happen.
Like a flame, I suppose--suddenly."

"And the man--the fellow who was in love with her?"

Hardy stirred wearily. "I haven't heard," he said. "I suppose he is
still alive."

He leaned over to complete the striking of his match, and for an instant
his arm touched a glass; it trembled and hung in the balance, and he
shot out a sinewy hand to stop it, and as he did so the sleeve of his
dinner jacket caught. On the brown flesh of his forearm I saw a queer,
ragged white cross--the scar a snake bite leaves when it is cicatrized.
I meant to avoid his eyes, but somehow I caught them instead. They were
veiled and hurt.




THE WAKE[2]

BY DONN BYRNE

From _Harper's Magazine_

[2] Copyright, 1915, by Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 1916, by Donn
    Byrne.


At times the muffled conversation in the kitchen resembled the resonant
humming of bees, and again, when it became animated, it sounded like the
distant cackling of geese. Then there would come a pause; and it would
begin again with sibilant whispers, and end in a chorus of dry laughter
that somehow suggested the crackling of burning logs.

Occasionally a figure would open the bedroom door, pass the old man
as he sat huddled in his chair, never throwing a glance at him, and
go and kneel by the side of the bed where the body was. They usually
prayed for two or three minutes, then rose and walked on tiptoe to the
kitchen, where they joined the company. Sometimes they came in twos,
less often in threes, but they did precisely the same thing--prayed
for precisely the same time, and left the room on tiptoe with the same
creak of shoe and rustle of clothes that sounded so intensely loud
throughout the room. They might have been following instructions laid
down in a ritual.

The old man wished to heaven they would stay away. He had been sitting
in his chair for hours, thinking, until his head was in a whirl. He
wanted to concentrate his thoughts, but somehow he felt that the
mourners were preventing him.

The five candles at the head of the bed distracted him. He was glad when
the figure of one of the mourners shut off the glare for a few minutes.
He was also distracted by the five chairs standing around the room like
sentries on post and the little table by the window with its crucifix
and holy-water font. He wanted to keep thinking of "herself," as he
called her, lost in the immensity of the oaken bed. He had been looking
at the pinched face with its faint suspicion of blue since early that
morning. He was very much awed by the nun's hood that concealed the back
of the head, and the stiffly posed arms and the small hands in their
white-cotton gloves moved him to a deep pity.

Somebody touched him on the shoulder. "Michael James."

It was big Dan Murray, a gaunt red farmer, who had been best man at his
wedding.

"Michael James."

"What is it?"

"I hear young Kennedy's in the village."

"What of that?"

"I thought it was best for you to know."

Murray waited a moment, then he went out, on tiptoe, as everybody did,
his movements resembling the stilted gestures of a mechanical toy.

Down the drive Michael heard steps coming. Then a struggle and a shrill
giggle. Some young people were coming to the wake, and he knew a boy had
tried to kiss a girl in the dark. He felt a dull surge of resentment.

She was nineteen when he married her; he was sixty-three. Because he had
over two hundred acres of land and many head of milch and grazing cattle
and a huge house that rambled like a barrack, her father had given her
to him; and young Kennedy, who had been her father's steward for years,
and had been saving to buy a house for her, was thrown over like a bale
of mildewed hay.

Kennedy had made several violent scenes. Michael James remembered the
morning of the wedding. Kennedy waylaid the bridal-party coming out of
the church. He was drunk. "Mark me," he had said, very quietly for a
drunken man--"mark me. If anything ever happens to that girl at your
side, Michael James, I'll murder you. I'll murder you in cold blood. Do
you understand?"

Michael James could be forgiving that morning. "Run away and sober up,
lad," he had said, "and come up to the house and dance."

Kennedy had gone around the countryside for weeks, drunk every night,
making threats against the old farmer. And then a wily sergeant of the
Connaught Rangers had trapped him and taken him off to Aldershot.

Now he was home on furlough, and something had happened to her, and he
was coming up to make good his threat.

What had happened to her? Michael James didn't understand. He had given
her everything he could. She had taken it all with a demure thanks, but
he had never had anything of her but apathy. She had gone around the
house apathetically, growing a little thinner every day, and then a few
days ago she had lain down, and last night she had died, apathetically.

And young Kennedy was coming up for an accounting to-night. "Well,"
thought Michael James, "let him come!"

Silence suddenly fell over the company in the kitchen. Then a loud
scraping as they stood up, and a harsher grating as chairs were pushed
back. The door of the bedroom opened and the red flare from the fire and
lamps of the kitchen blended into the sickly yellow candle-light of the
bedroom.

The parish priest walked in. His closely cropped white hair, strong,
ruddy face, and erect back gave him more the appearance of a soldier
than a clergyman. He looked at the bed a moment, and then at Michael
James.

"Oh, you mustn't take it like that, man," he said. "You mustn't take
it like that. You must bear up." He was the only one who spoke in his
natural voice.

He turned to a lumbering farmer's wife who had followed him in, and
asked about the hour of the funeral. She answered in a hoarse whisper,
dropping a courtesy.

"You ought to go out and take a walk," he told Michael James. "You
oughtn't to stay in here all the time." And he left the room.

Michael James paid no attention. His mind was wandering to strange
fantasies he could not keep out of his head. Pictures crept in and
out of his brain, joined as by some thin filament. He thought somehow
of her soul, and then wondered what a soul was like. And then he
thought of a dove, and then of a bat fluttering through the dark,
and then of a bird lost at twilight. He thought of it as some lonely
flying thing with a long journey before it and no place to rest. He
could imagine it uttering the vibrant, plaintive cry of a peewit. And
then it struck him with a great sense of pity that the night was cold.

In the kitchen they were having tea. The rattle of the crockery sounded
very distinctly. He could distinguish the sharp, staccato ring when a
cup was laid in a saucer, and the nervous rattle when cup and saucer
were passed from one hand to the other. Spoons struck china with a faint
metallic tinkle. He felt as if all the sounds were made at the back of
his neck, and the crash seemed to burst in his head.

Dan Murray creaked into the room. "Michael James," he whispered, "you
ought to take something. Have a bite to eat. Take a cup of tea. I'll
bring it in to you."

"Oh, let me alone, Daniel," he answered. He felt he would like to kick
him and curse him while doing so.

"You must take something." Murray's voice rose from a whisper to a low,
argumentative sing-song. "You know it's not natural. You've got to eat."

"No, thank you, Daniel," he answered. It was as if he were talking to a
boy who was good-natured but tiresome. "I don't feel like eating. Maybe
afterward I will."

"Michael James," Murray continued.

"Well, what is it, Daniel?"

"Don't you think I'd better go down and see young Kennedy and tell him
how foolish it would be of him to come up here and start fighting? You
know it isn't right. Hadn't I better go down? He's at home now."

"Let that alone, Daniel, I tell you." The thought of Murray breaking
into the matter that was between himself and the young man filled him
with a sense of injured delicacy.

"I know he's going to make trouble."

"Let me handle that, like a good fellow, and leave me by myself, Daniel,
if you don't mind."

"Ah well, sure. You know best." And Murray crept out of the room.

As the door opened Michael could hear some one singing in a subdued
voice and many feet tapping like drums in time with the music. They
had to pass the night outside, and it was the custom, but the singing
irritated him. He could fancy heads nodding and bodies swaying from
side to side with the rhythm. He recognized the tune, and it began to
run through his head, and he could not put it out of it. The lilt of
it captured him, and suddenly he began thinking of the wonderful brain
that musicians must have to compose music. And then his thoughts
switched to a picture he had seen of a man in a garret with a fiddle
beneath his chin.

He straightened himself up a little, for sitting crouched forward as
he was put a strain on his back, and he unconsciously sat upright to
ease himself. And as he sat up he caught a glimpse of the cotton gloves
on the bed, and it burst in on him that the first time he had seen her
she was walking along the road with young Kennedy one Sunday afternoon,
and they were holding hands. When they saw him they let go suddenly,
and grew very red, giggling in a half-hearted way to hide their
embarrassment. And he remembered that he had passed them by without
saying anything, but with a good-humored, sly smile on his face, and
a mellow feeling within him, and a sage reflection to himself that
young folks will be young folks, and what harm was there in courting
a little on a Sunday afternoon when the week's work had been done?

And he remembered other days on which he had met her and Kennedy;
and then how the conviction had come into his mind that here was a
girl for him to marry; and then how, quietly and equably, he had gone
about getting her and marrying her, as he would go about buying a team
of horses or make arrangements for cutting the hay.

Until the day he married her he felt as a driver feels who has his team
under perfect control, and who knows every bend and curve of the road
he is taking. But since that day he had been thinking about her and
worrying and wondering exactly where he stood, until everything in
the day was just the puzzle of her, and he was like a driver with a
restive pair of horses who knows his way no farther than the next bend.
And then he knew she was the biggest thing in his life.

The situation as it appeared to him he had worked out with difficulty,
for he was not a thinking man. What thinking he did dealt with the
price of harvest machinery and the best time of the year for buying
and selling. He worked it out this way: here was this girl dead, whom
he had married, and who should have married another man, who was coming
to-night to kill him. To-night sometime the world would stop for him.
He felt no longer a personal entity--he was merely part of a situation.
It was as if he were a piece in a chess problem--any moment the player
might move and solve the play by taking a pawn.

Realities had taken on a dim, unearthly quality. Occasionally a sound
from the kitchen would strike him like an unexpected note in a harmony;
the whiteness of the bed would flash out like a piece of color in a
subdued painting.

There was a shuffling in the kitchen and the sound of feet going toward
the door. The latch lifted with a rasp. He could hear the hoarse, deep
tones of a few boys, and the high-pitched sing-song intonations of
girls. He knew they were going for a few miles' walk along the roads.
He went over and raised the blind on the window. Overhead the moon
showed like a spot of bright saffron. A sort of misty haze seemed to
cling around the bushes and trees. The out-houses stood out white, like
buildings in a mysterious city. Somewhere there was the metallic whir
of a grasshopper, and in the distance a loon boomed again and again.

The little company passed down the yard. There was the sound of a
smothered titter, then a playful resounding slap, and a gurgling laugh
from one of the boys.

As he stood by the window he heard some one open the door and stand
on the threshold.

"Are you coming, Alice?" some one asked.

Michael James listened for the answer. He was taking in eagerly all
outside things. He wanted something to pass the time of waiting, as
a traveler in a railway station reads trivial notices carefully while
waiting for a train that may take him to the ends of the earth.

"Alice, are you coming?" was asked again.

There was no answer.

"Well, you needn't if you don't want to," he heard in an irritated
tone, and the speaker tramped down toward the road in a dudgeon. He
recognized the figure of Flanagan, the football-player, who was always
having little spats with the girl he was going to marry. He discovered
with a sort of shock that he was slightly amused at this incident.

From the road there came the shrill scream of one of the girls who had
gone out, and then a chorus of laughter. And against the background
of the figure behind him and of young Kennedy he began wondering at
the relationship of man and woman. He had no word for it, for "love"
was a term he thought should be confined to story-books, a word to be
suspicious of as sounding affected, a word to be scoffed at. But of
this relationship he had a vague understanding. He thought of it as
a criss-cross of threads binding one person to the other, or as a web
which might be light and easily broken, or which might have the strength
of steel cables and which might work into knots here and there and
become a tangle that could crush those caught in it.

It puzzled him how a thing of indefinable grace, of soft words on June
nights, of vague stirrings under moonlight, of embarrassing hand-clasps
and fearful glances, might become, as it had become in the case of
himself, Kennedy, and what was behind him, a thing of blind, malevolent
force, a thing of sinister silence, a shadow that crushed.

And then it struck him with a sense of guilt that his mind was wandering
from her, and he turned away from the window. He thought how much more
peaceful it would be for a body to lie out in the moonlight than on
a somber oak bedstead in a shadowy room with yellow, guttering
candle-light and five solemn-looking chairs. And he thought again how
strange it was that on a night like this Kennedy should come as an
avenger seeking to kill rather than as a lover with high hope in his
breast.

Murray slipped into the room again. There was a frown on his face and
his tone was aggressive.

"I tell you, Michael James, we'll have to do something about it." There
was a truculent note in his whisper.

The farmer did not answer.

"Will you let me go down for the police? A few words to the sergeant
will keep him quiet."

Michael James felt a pity for Murray. The idea of pitting a sergeant of
police against the tragedy that was coming seemed ludicrous to him. It
was like pitting a school-boy against a hurricane.

"Listen to me, Dan," he replied. "How do you know Kennedy is coming up
at all?"

"Flanagan, the football-player, met him and talked to him. He said that
Kennedy was clean mad."

"Do they know about it in the kitchen?"

"Not a word." There was a pause.

"Well, listen here, now. Go right back there and don't say a word about
it. Wouldn't it be foolish if you went down to the police and he didn't
come at all? And if he does come I can manage him. And if I can't I'll
call you. Does that satisfy you?" And he sent Murray out, grumbling.

As the door closed he felt that the last refuge had been abandoned. He
was to wrestle with destiny alone. He had no doubt that Kennedy would
make good his vow, and he felt a sort of curiosity as to how it would be
done. Would it be with hands, or with a gun, or some other weapon? He
hoped it would be the gun. The idea of coming to hand-grips with the boy
filled him with a strange terror.

The thought that within ten minutes or a half-hour or an hour he
would be dead did not come home to him. It was the physical act that
frightened him. He felt as if he were terribly alone and a cold wind
were blowing about him and penetrating every pore of his body. There
was a contraction around his breast-bone and a shiver in his shoulders.

His idea of death was that he would pitch headlong, as from a high
tower, into a bottomless dark space.

He went over to the window again and looked out toward the barn. From a
chink in one of the shutters there was a thread of yellow candle-light.
He knew there were men there playing cards to pass the time.

Then terror came on him. The noise in the kitchen was subdued. Most of
the mourners had gone home, and those who were staying the night were
drowsy and were dozing over the fire. He felt he wanted to rush among
them and to cry to them to protect him, and to cower behind them and to
close them around him in a solid circle. He felt that eyes were upon
him, looking at his back from the bed, and he was afraid to turn around
because he might look into the eyes.

She had always respected him, he remembered, and he did not want to lose
her respect now; and the fear that he would lose it set his shoulders
back and steadied the grip of his feet on the floor.

And then there flashed before him the thought of people who kill, of
lines of soldiery rushing on trenches, of a stealthy, cowering man who
slips through a jail door at dawn, and of a figure he had read of in
books--a sinister figure with an ax and a red cloak.

As he looked down the yard he saw a figure turn in the gate and come
toward the house. It seemed to walk slowly and heavily, as if tired. He
knew it was Kennedy. He opened the kitchen door and slipped outside.

The figure coming up the pathway seemed to swim toward him. Then it
would blur and disappear and then appear again vaguely. The beating of
his heart was like the regular sound of a ticking clock. Space narrowed
until he felt he could not breathe. He went forward a few paces. The
light from the bedroom window streamed forward in a broad, yellow beam.
He stepped into it as into a river.

"She's dead," he heard himself saying. "She's dead." And then he knew
that Kennedy was standing in front of him.

The flap of the boy's hat threw a heavy shadow over his face, his
shoulders were braced, and his right hand, the farmer could see, was
thrust deeply into his coat pocket.

"Aye, she's dead," Michael James repeated. "You knew that, didn't you?"
It was all he could think of saying. "You'll come in and see her, won't
you?" He had forgotten what Kennedy had come for. He was dazed. He
didn't know what to say.

Kennedy moved a little. The light from the window struck him full in
the face, and Michael James realized with a shock that it was as grim
and thin-lipped as he had pictured it. A prayer rose in his throat,
and then fear seemed to leave him all at once. He raised his head. The
right hand had left the pocket now. And then suddenly he saw that
Kennedy was looking into the room, and he knew he could see, through
the little panes of glass, the huge bedstead and the body on it. And
he felt a desire to throw himself between Kennedy and it, as he might
jump between a child and a threatening danger.

He turned away his head, instinctively--why, he could not understand,
but he felt that he should not look at Kennedy's face.

Over in the barn voices rose suddenly. They were disputing over the
cards. There was some one complaining feverishly and some one arguing
truculently, and another voice striving to make peace. They died away
in a dull hum, and Michael James heard the boy sobbing.

"You mustn't do that," he said. "You mustn't do that." And he patted him
on the shoulders. He felt as if something unspeakably tense had relaxed
and as if life were swinging back into balance. His voice shook and he
continued patting. "You'll come in now, and I'll leave you alone there."
He took him under the arm.

He felt the pity he had for the body on the bed envelop Kennedy, too,
and a sense of peace came over him. It was as though a son of his had
been hurt and had come to him for comfort, and he was going to comfort
him. In some vague way he thought of Easter-time.

He stopped at the door for a moment.

"It's all right, laddie," he said. "It's all right," and he lifted the
latch.

As they went in he felt somehow as if high walls had crumbled and the
three of them had stepped into the light of day.




CHAUTONVILLE[3]

BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

From _The Masses_

[3] Copyright, 1915, by The Masses. Copyright, 1916, by Will Levington
    Comfort.


They said that the Russian line was a hundred miles long. I know nothing
about that, but I know that it extended as far as the eye could reach
to the east and west, and that this had been so for many weeks. But
_time_, as it is known in the outer world, had stopped for us. It was
now November, and we had been without mails since late in August. Three
days of hideous cold had come without warning, and before the snows,
so that there was a foot of iron frost in the ground. This had to be
bitten through in all our trench-making, and though we were on the
southern slopes of the Carpathians, timber was scarce. At each of our
recent meetings with the Austrian enemy, we had expected to feel the
new strike--the different resistance of German reinforcement.

A queer sense had come to us from the Austrians. I had thought of
it many times and others had spoken the same: that it didn't matter
greatly to them. They gave us fierce fighting, but always when we
were exhausted and insane with our dead--they fell away before us.
This had happened so often that we came to expect it, our chief puzzle
being just how long they would hold out in each battle. Especially when
our brigade was engaged, and we had entered into an intensity that was
all the human could endure, I would almost stop breathing in the
expectancy of the release of tension before us. When it did not come,
I invariably found afterward that I was out of perspective with the
mainline, on account of the fierceness of our immediate struggle. We
were but one snapping loop of the fighting--too localized to affect
the main front. The Austrians gave all in a piece, when they drew back.

Days were the same, a steady suffering. I did not know before what
men could stand. We had weeks of life that formerly I would have
considered fatal to adventure with through one night or day--exposure,
fatigue, famine--and over all the passion for home, that slow lasting
fire. I began to understand how the field-mice winter--how the northern
birds live through, and what a storm, on top of a storm, means to all
creatures of the north country that are forced to take what comes, when
the earth tilts up into the bleak and icy gray. We forget this as men,
until a war comes.

But all measuring of the world had ceased for our eyes. A man must
have emotions for this, and we thought our emotions dead. I wonder
if it can be understood--this being shaken down to the end, this facing
of life and death without a personal relation?... Crawling out of the
blanket in the morning, I have met the cold--such a shock throughout,
that it centered like a long pin driven in the heart. I have seen my
friends go, right and left on the field--those who helped tend the fire
the night before--and met their end and my own peril without a quickened
pulse. Of course, I knew something was changed for me, because I had not
been this way. I had even lost the love of courage--that quality of
field-work that used to raise my hair, so high and pure did it seem to
my eyes.... But the night came, when I heard a little man mumbling over
the fire to the effect that he hated it all--that the Little Father was
making monkeys of us all--and a thrill shot over me, so that I knew I
was alive. Yes, there was something to that.

"Sh-shh--" said I. Two others drew near, as if a bottle had been opened.
And Firthus, my closest friend, gripped my arm, leaving a blue welt
where his thumb had pressed.

"It's as bad to say 'sh-sh--' as to say what he said," Firthus
whispered.

Yes, even in the coldness, there was a thrill to that. Perhaps we thrill
at the first breath of that which is to come and change us over.

... For three days they had given our part of the line a different
and extraordinary resistance, so that for three nights we camped in
the same place. A valley was before us, and the infantry had tried
to cross again and again, always meeting at a certain place in the
hollows an enfilading fire from the forward low hills. We could not
get enough men across to charge the emplacements.... We were mid-west
of the west wing, it was said; and word came the third day that we were
holding up the whole line; that the east was ready to drive through,
in fact, was bending forward; that the west was marking time on our
account--and here we were keeping the whole Russian invasion from
spending the holidays in Budapest.

On that third day I was dispatching from brigade-headquarters to the
trenches. The General and his staff stood in a shepherd's house in the
midst of a circle of rocks. Waiting there I began to understand that
they were having difficulty in forcing the men forward in the later
charges. The lines could see their dead of former advances, black and
countless upon the valley snow. This was not good for the trenches.

... Now I realized that they were talking of Chautonville, the singer,
the master of our folk-songs. We had heard of him along the line--how
he had come running home to us out of Germany at the last moment in
July--literally pelted forth, changed from an idol into an enemy and
losing a priceless engagement-series on the Continent. He had not been
the least bewildered, as the story went, rather enjoying it all....
They had monopolized him at the central headquarters, so that we had
not heard him sing, but the gossip of it fired the whole line--a
baritone voice like a thick starry dusk, having to do with magnolias
and the south, and singing of the Russia that was to mean the world.
Somehow he had made us gossip to that extent. So I was interested now
to hear the name of Chautonville, and that he was coming.

He was to sing us forward again. There was a pang in that, as I craned
forward to look at the valley. It was not for our entertainment, but
to make us forget our dead, to make us charge the valley again over our
dead--it being planned that a remnant might make the crossing and charge
the emplacements.... He came--a short barrel of a man and fat. They had
kept him well at the Center. He was valuable in the hospitals, it was
said.

The least soldierly kind of a man I had seen in many days, save the
Brigadier--so white and fat was Chautonville, the top of his head
small, his legs short and thick, hands fat and white and tapering,
a huge neck and chin with folds of white fat under it--a sort of a
perfect bird dressed for present to the Emperor. Chautonville was
big-eyed with all this--large, innocent brown eyes--innocent to me,
but it was the superb health of the creature, his softness, clearness
of skin and eye, that gave the impression to us, so lean and stringy.
For his eyes were not innocent--something in them spoiled that. We
were worn to buckskin and ivory, while here was a parlor kind of
health--so clean in his linen, white folds of linen, about his collar
and wrists. His chest was a marvel to look at--here in the field after
weeks in the Carpathians. We were all range and angles, but this was a
round barrel of a man, as thick as broad, his lips plump and soft,
while we for weeks had licked a dry faded line, our faces strange with
bone and teeth.

"What is it?" he asked the General.

I thought of a little doctor, called by others after consultation--an
extra bit of dexterity required, this being the high-priced man. There
was that indoor look of a barber about him, too.

The General explained that a new charge was to be ordered--that three
had failed--that the men (while not exactly rebellious) faltered before
the valley a fourth time this day--that the failures were costly in
men--in short, that the inspiration of Chautonville was required now to
sing them and the reserves across.... The Austrians would quickly give
way, if the valley were passed.... Then the thousands would flood up the
slopes and--Budapest and holidays.

"You want me to sing to them for courage--as it were?" Chautonville
questioned.

I had marked his voice. I saw now that he needed all the thickness of
throat and bust--that he used it all. I hoped they would not send me
away with a message....

"You want me to walk up and down the trenches?"

"Yes, singing."

He puffed his cheeks and blew out a long breath--as if enjoying the
effect of the steam in the icy light.

"Are they under fire?" he asked.

"You see them from here--how silent they are! The enemy does not fire
until we reach the valley."

So he made no bones about his fears. Nothing of the charge would be
required of him. He could withdraw after his inspiration.... Hate
was growing within me. God, how I came to hate him--not for his
cowardice--that was a novelty, and so freely acknowledged, but because
he would sing the men to their death. This was the tame elephant that
they use to subdue the wild ones--this the decoy--the little white
bastard.

"Very well, I will walk up and down the trenches, singing--" He said it
a bit cockily.

I was in no way a revolutionist, yet I vowed some time to get him,
alone.... I seemed to see myself in a crowded city street at night--some
city full of lights, as far as heaven from now--going in with the crowd
under the lights--to hear him sing. There I could get him.... Not a
revolutionist, at all; no man in the enlisted ranks more trusted than
I; attached for dispatch-work at brigade-headquarters; in all likelihood
of appearance so stupid, as to be accepted as a good soldier and nothing
more.... Now I remembered how far I was from the lights of any city and
crowded streets--here in the desperate winter fighting, our world crazed
with punishment, and planning for real fighting in the Spring. The dead
of the valley arose before my eyes.... Perhaps within an hour _my_ room
would be ready. Still I should be sorry to pass, and leave Chautonville
living on.

They beckoned me to his escort. I followed, hoping to see him die
presently. This new hope was to watch him die--and not do it with my
hands. Yes, I _trusted_ that Chautonville would not come back from the
trenches.

The pits stretched out in either direction--bitten into the ground
by the most miserable men the light of day uncovered--bitten through
the snow and then through a thick floor of frost as hard as cement. I
heard their voices--men of my own country--voices as from swooning
men--lost to all mercy, ready to die, not as men, but preying, cornered
animals--forgotten of God, it seemed, though that was illusion;
forgotten of home which was worse to their hearts, and illusion, too.
For we could not hold the fact of home. It had proved too hard for us.
The bond had snapped. Only death seemed sure.

Chautonville opened his mouth.

It was like sitting by a fire, and falling into a dream.... He sang
of our fathers and our boyhood; the good fathers who taught us all they
knew, and whipped us with patience and the fear of God. He sang of the
savory kitchen and the red fire-lit windows (bins full of corn and boxes
high with wood); of the gray winter and the children of our house, the
smell of wood-smoke and the low singing of the tea-kettle on the hearth.

And the officers followed him along the trenches, crying to us,
"_Prepare to charge_!"

He sang of the ice breaking in the rivers--the groan of ice rotting in
the lakes under the softness of the new life--of the frost coming up
out of the fallows, leaving them wet-black and gleaming-rich. He sang
of Spring, the spring-plowing, the heaviness of our labor, with spring
lust in our veins, and the crude love in our hearts which we could only
articulate in kisses and passion.

A roar from us at that--for the forgotten world was rushing home--the
world of our maidens and our women.... He sang of the churches--sang of
Poland, sang of Finland--of the churches and the long Sabbaths, the
ministry of the gentle, irresistible Christ, of the Mary who mothered
Him and mothered us all.

We were roaring like school-boys now behind him--the officer-men
shouting to us to stand in our places and prepare to charge.

... He was singing of the Spring again--of the warm breath that comes
up over the hills and plains--even to _our_ little fields. On he went
singing, and I followed like a dog or a child--hundreds of others
following--the menacing voices just stabbing in through the song of
open weather and the smell of the ground.... My father had sung it to
me--the song of the soil, the song _from_ the soil. And the smell of
the stables came home, and the ruminating cattle at evening, the warm
smell of the milking and the red that shot the dusk.... My mother taking
the pails in the purple evening.

And this about us was the soldiery of Russia--the reek of powder, the
iron frost, and the dead that moved for our eyes in the dip of the white
valley. And each of us saw _our_ field, our low earth-thatched barns,
and each of us saw our mothers, and every man's father sang.... We cried
to him, when he halted a moment--and our hearts, they were burning in
his steps--burning, and not with hatred.

Now he sang of the Springtime--and, my God--of our maidens! On the
road from her house, I had sung it--coming home in the night from her
house--when, in that great happiness which a man knows but once, I had
leaped in the softness of the night, my heart traveling up the moon-ray
in the driven flame of her kiss. (She did not sleep that night, nor I,
for the husk of the world had been torn away.) ... He sang our maidens
back to us--to each man, his maiden--their breasts near, and shaken with
weeping. They held out our babes, to lure us home--crying "_Come back_!"
to us....

And some had not seen the latest babe at _her_ breast; and some of us
only longed for that which we knew--the little hands and the wondering
eyes at her skirts--hands that had helped us over the first rough
mysteries of fatherhood.

And now I glimpsed the face of Chautonville in the mass--the open mouth.
It was not the face that I had seen. For he had lied to me, as he had
lied to the officers, and this was the face of an angel, and so happy.
Long had he dreamed and long had he waited for this moment--and happy,
he was, as a child on a great white horse. He was not singing us across
the red-white valley. He was singing us home.

Then I heard the firing, and saw the officers trying to reach him, but
we were there. We laughed and called to him, "Sing us the maidens
again!"... "_For I have a maiden_--" a man said.... "Sing us the good
Christ." ... "_For I was called to the ministry_--" another cried....
"Sing of the Spring and the mothers at the milking--" for we all had
our mothers who do not die.... He was singing of our homes in the north
country--singing as if he would sing the Austrians home--and the
Germans--and would to God that he had!

Then his voice came through to us--not in the great dusky baritone of
song, but like a command of the Father: "_Come on, men, we are going
home!_"

... But I could not go. A pistol stopped me. So I lay on my elbow
watching them turn back--a little circle of hundreds eager to die
for him. All who had heard the singing turned homeward. And the lines
came in from the east and from the west and deluged them.... Propped
on my elbow, I saw them go down in the deluge of the obedient--watched
until the blood went out and blurred the picture. But I saw enough in
that darkening--that there was fine sanity in their dying. I wished
that I could die with them. It was not slaughter, but martyrdom. It
called me through the darkness--and I knew that some man's song would
reach _all_ the armies--all men turning home together--each with his
vision and unafraid.




LA DERNIÈRE MOBILISATION[4]

BY W.A. DWIGGINS

From _The Fabulist_

[4] Copyright, 1915, by W.A. Dwiggins.


On the left the road comes up the hill out of a pool of mist; on the
right it loses itself in the shadow of a wood. On the farther side of
the highway a hedgerow, dusty in the moonlight, spreads an irregular
border of black from the wood to the fog. Behind the hedgerow slender
poplar trees, evenly spaced, rule off the distance with inky lines.

A movement stirs the mist at the bottom of the hill. A monotonous
rhythm grows in the silence. The mist darkens, and from it there emerges
a strange shadowy column that reaches slowly up the hill, moving in
silence to the sombre and muffled beating of a drum. As it draws nearer
the shadow becomes two files of marching men bearing between them a long
dim burden.

The leaders advance into the moonlight. Each two men are carrying
between them a pole, and from pole to pole have been slung planks making
a continuous platform. But that which is heaped upon the platform is
hidden with muddy blankets.

The uniforms of the men--of various sorts, indicating that they are from
many commands--are in shreds and spotted with stains of mould and earth;
their heads are bound in cloths so that their faces are covered. The
single drummer at the side of the column carries slung from his shoulder
the shell of a drum. No flag flies from the staff at the column's head,
but the staff is held erect.

Slowly the head of the line advances to the shadow of the wood, touches
it and is swallowed. The leaders, the bare flag-staff, the drummer
disappear; but still from the shade is heard the muffled rhythm of the
drum. Still the column comes out of the mist, still it climbs the hill
and passes with its endless articulated burden. At last the rearmost
couple disengages itself from the mist, ascends, and is swallowed by
the shadow. There remain only the moonlight and the dusty hedgerow.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the left the road runs from Belgium; to the right it crosses into
France.

       *       *       *       *       *

The dead were leaving their resting places in that lost land.




THE CITIZEN[5]

BY JAMES FRANCIS DWYER

From _Collier's Weekly_

[5] Copyright, 1915, by P.F. Collier and Son, Incorporated. Copyright,
    1916, by James Francis Dwyer


The President of the United States was speaking. His audience comprised
two thousand foreign-born men who had just been admitted to citizenship.
They listened intently, their faces, aglow with the light of a new-born
patriotism, upturned to the calm, intellectual face of the first citizen
of the country they now claimed as their own.

Here and there among the newly made citizens were wives and children.
The women were proud of their men. They looked at them from time to
time, their faces showing pride and awe.

One little woman, sitting immediately in front of the President, held
the hand of a big, muscular man and stroked it softly. The big man was
looking at the speaker with great blue eyes that were the eyes of a
dreamer.

The President's words came clear and distinct:

_You were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope,
by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some
expectation of a better kind of life. You dreamed dreams of this
country, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. A man enriches
the country to which he brings dreams, and you who have brought them
have enriched America._

The big man made a curious choking noise and his wife breathed a soft
"Hush!" The giant was strangely affected.

The President continued:

_No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us, but remember this,
if we have grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with
you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man
does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some
of us have forgotten what America believed in, you at any rate imported
in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. Each of you, I am sure,
brought a dream, a glorious, shining dream, a dream worth more than
gold or silver, and that is the reason that I, for one, make you
welcome._

The big man's eyes were fixed. His wife shook him gently, but he did
not heed her. He was looking through the presidential rostrum, through
the big buildings behind it, looking out over leagues of space to a
snow-swept village that huddled on an island in the Beresina, the
swift-flowing tributary of the mighty Dnieper, an island that looked
like a black bone stuck tight in the maw of the stream.

It was in the little village on the Beresina that the Dream came to
Ivan Berloff, Big Ivan of the Bridge.

The Dream came in the spring. All great dreams come in the spring,
and the Spring Maiden who brought Big Ivan's Dream was more than
ordinarily beautiful. She swept up the Beresina, trailing wondrous
draperies of vivid green. Her feet touched the snow-hardened ground
and armies of little white and blue flowers sprang up in her footsteps.
Soft breezes escorted her, velvety breezes that carried the aromas of
the far-off places from which they came, places far to the southward,
like Kremenchug and Kerch, and more distant towns beyond the Black Sea
whose people were not under the sway of the Great Czar.

The father of Big Ivan, who had fought under Prince Menshikov at Alma
fifty-five years before, hobbled out to see the sunbeams eat up the snow
hummocks that hid in the shady places, and he told his son it was the
most wonderful spring he had ever seen.

"The little breezes are hot and sweet," he said, sniffing hungrily with
his face turned toward the south. "I know them, Ivan! I know them! They
have the spice odor that I sniffed on the winds that came to us when we
lay in the trenches at Balaklava. Praise God for the warmth!"

And that day the Dream came to Big Ivan as he plowed. It was a wonder
dream. It sprang into his brain as he walked behind the plow, and for
a few minutes he quivered as the big bridge quivers when the Beresina
sends her ice squadrons to hammer the arches. It made his heart pound
mightily, and his lips and throat became very dry.

Big Ivan stopped at the end of the furrow and tried to discover what
had brought the Dream. Where had it come from? Why had it clutched him
so suddenly? Was he the only man in the village to whom it had come?

Like his father, he sniffed the sweet-smelling breezes. He thrust his
great hands into the sunbeams. He reached down and plucked one of a
bunch of white flowers that had sprung up overnight. The Dream was
born of the breezes and the sunshine and the spring flowers. It came
from them and it had sprung into his mind because he was young and
strong. He knew! It couldn't come to his father or Donkov, the tailor,
or Poborino, the smith. They were old and weak, and Ivan's dream was
one that called for youth and strength.

"Ay, for youth and strength," he muttered as he gripped the plow. "And
I have it!"

That evening Big Ivan of the Bridge spoke to his wife, Anna, a little
woman, who had a sweet face and a wealth of fair hair.

"Wife, we are going away from here," he said.

"Where are we going, Ivan?" she asked.

"Where do you think, Anna?" he said, looking down at her as she stood
by his side.

"To Bobruisk," she murmured.

"No."

"Farther?"

"Ay, a long way farther."

Fear sprang into her soft eyes. Bobruisk was eighty-nine versts away,
yet Ivan said they were going farther.

"We--we are not going to Minsk?" she cried.

"Ay, and beyond Minsk!"

"Ivan, tell me!" she grasped. "Tell me where we are going!"

"We are going to America."

"_To America?_"

"Yes, to America!"

Big Ivan of the Bridge lifted up his voice when he cried out the words
"To America," and then a sudden fear sprang upon him as those words
dashed through the little window out into the darkness of the village
street. Was he mad? America was 8,000 versts away! It was far across
the ocean, a place that was only a name to him, a place where he knew
no one. He wondered in the strange little silence that followed his
words if the crippled son of Poborino, the smith, had heard him. The
cripple would jeer at him if the night wind had carried the words to
his ear.

Anna remained staring at her big husband for a few minutes, then she
sat down quietly at his side. There was a strange look in his big blue
eyes, the look of a man to whom has come a vision, the look which came
into the eyes of those shepherds of Judea long, long ago.

"What is it, Ivan?" she murmured softly, patting his big hand. "Tell
me."

And Big Ivan of the Bridge, slow of tongue, told of the Dream. To no
one else would he have told it. Anna understood. She had a way of
patting his hands and saying soft things when his tongue could not
find words to express his thoughts.

Ivan told how the Dream had come to him as he plowed. He told her how
it had sprung upon him, a wonderful dream born of the soft breezes, of
the sunshine, of the sweet smell of the upturned sod and of his own
strength. "It wouldn't come to weak men," he said, baring an arm that
showed great snaky muscles rippling beneath the clear skin. "It is a
dream that comes only to those who are strong and those who want--who
want something that they haven't got." Then in a lower voice he said:
"What is it that we want, Anna?"

The little wife looked out into the darkness with fear-filled eyes.
There were spies even there in that little village on the Beresina,
and it was dangerous to say words that might be construed into a
reflection on the Government. But she answered Ivan. She stooped
and whispered one word into his ear, and he slapped his thigh with
his big hand.

"Ay," he cried. "That is what we want! You and I and millions like us
want it, and over there, Anna, over there we will get it. It is the
country where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the blood!"

Anna stood up, took a small earthenware jar from a side shelf, dusted it
carefully and placed it upon the mantel. From a knotted cloth about her
neck she took a ruble and dropped the coin into the jar. Big Ivan looked
at her curiously.

"It is to make legs for your Dream," she explained. "It is many versts
to America, and one rides on rubles."

"You are a good wife," he said. "I was afraid that you might laugh at
me."

"It is a great dream," she murmured. "Come, we will go to sleep."

The Dream maddened Ivan during the days that followed. It pounded
within his brain as he followed the plow. It bred a discontent that
made him hate the little village, the swift-flowing Beresina and the
gray stretches that ran toward Mogilev. He wanted to be moving, but
Anna had said that one rode on rubles, and rubles were hard to find.

And in some mysterious way the village became aware of the secret.
Donkov, the tailor, discovered it. Donkov lived in one half of the
cottage occupied by Ivan and Anna, and Donkov had long ears. The
tailor spread the news, and Poborino, the smith, and Yanansk, the
baker, would jeer at Ivan as he passed.

"When are you going to America?" they would ask.

"Soon," Ivan would answer.

"Take us with you!" they would cry in chorus.

"It is no place for cowards," Ivan would answer. "It is a long way,
and only brave men can make the journey."

"Are you brave?" the baker screamed one day as he went by.

"I am brave enough to want liberty!" cried Ivan angrily. "I am brave
enough to want--"

"Be careful! Be careful!" interrupted the smith. "A long tongue has
given many a man a train journey that he never expected."

That night Ivan and Anna counted the rubles in the earthenware pot.
The giant looked down at his wife with a gloomy face, but she smiled
and patted his hand.

"It is slow work," he said.

"We must be patient," she answered. "You have the Dream."

"Ay," he said. "I have the Dream."

Through the hot, languorous summertime the Dream grew within the
brain of Big Ivan. He saw visions in the smoky haze that hung above
the Beresina. At times he would stand, hoe in hand, and look toward
the west, the wonderful west into which the sun slipped down each
evening like a coin dropped from the fingers of the dying day.

Autumn came, and the fretful whining winds that came down from the
north chilled the Dream. The winds whispered of the coming of the
Snow King, and the river grumbled as it listened. Big Ivan kept out
of the way of Poborino, the smith, and Yanansk, the baker. The Dream
was still with him, but autumn is a bad time for dreams.

Winter came, and the Dream weakened. It was only the earthenware pot
that kept it alive, the pot into which the industrious Anna put every
coin that could be spared. Often Big Ivan would stare at the pot as he
sat beside the stove. The pot was the umbilical cord which kept the
Dream alive.

"You are a good woman, Anna," Ivan would say again and again. "It was
you who thought of saving the rubles."

"But it was you who dreamed," she would answer. "Wait for the spring,
husband mine. Wait."

It was strange how the spring came to the Beresina that year. It
sprang upon the flanks of winter before the Ice King had given the
order to retreat into the fastnesses of the north. It swept up the
river escorted by a million little breezes, and housewives opened
their windows and peered out with surprise upon their faces. A
wonderful guest had come to them and found them unprepared.

Big Ivan of the Bridge was fixing a fence in the meadow on the
morning the Spring Maiden reached the village. For a little while
he was not aware of her arrival. His mind was upon his work, but
suddenly he discovered that he was hot, and he took off his overcoat.
He turned to hang the coat upon a bush, then he sniffed the air, and
a puzzled look came upon his face. He sniffed again, hurriedly,
hungrily. He drew in great breaths of it, and his eyes shone with
a strange light. It was wonderful air. It brought life to the Dream.
It rose up within him, ten times more lusty than on the day it was
born, and his limbs trembled as he drew in the hot, scented breezes
that breed the _Wanderlust_ and shorten the long trails of the world.

Ivan clutched his coat and ran to the little cottage. He burst through
the door, startling Anna, who was busy with her housework.

"The Spring!" he cried. "_The Spring!_"

He took her arm and dragged her to the door. Standing together they
sniffed the sweet breezes. In silence they listened to the song of
the river. The Beresina had changed from a whining, fretful tune into
a lilting, sweet song that would set the legs of lovers dancing. Anna
pointed to a green bud on a bush beside the door.

"It came this minute," she murmured.

"Yes," said Ivan. "The little fairies brought it there to show us that
spring has come to stay."

Together they turned and walked to the mantel. Big Ivan took up the
earthenware pot, carried it to the table, and spilled its contents
upon the well-scrubbed boards. He counted while Anna stood beside him,
her fingers clutching his coarse blouse. It was a slow business, because
Ivan's big blunt fingers were not used to such work, but it was over at
last. He stacked the coins into neat piles, then he straightened himself
and turned to the woman at his side.

"It is enough," he said quietly. "We will go at once. If it was not
enough, we would have to go because the Dream is upon me and I hate
this place."

"As you say," murmured Anna. "The wife of Littin, the butcher, will buy
our chairs and our bed. I spoke to her yesterday."

Poborino, the smith; his crippled son; Yanansk, the baker; Dankov, the
tailor, and a score of others were out upon the village street on the
morning that Big Ivan and Anna set out. They were inclined to jeer at
Ivan, but something upon the face of the giant made them afraid. Hand
in hand the big man and his wife walked down the street, their faces
turned toward Bobruisk, Ivan balancing upon his head a heavy trunk that
no other man in the village could have lifted.

At the end of the street a stripling with bright eyes and yellow curls
clutched the hand of Ivan and looked into his face.

"I know what is sending you," he cried.

"Ay, _you_ know," said Ivan, looking into the eyes of the other.

"It came to me yesterday," murmured the stripling. "I got it from the
breezes. They are free, so are the birds and the little clouds and the
river. I wish I could go."

"Keep your dream," said Ivan softly. "Nurse it, for it is the dream of a
man."

Anna, who was crying softly, touched the blouse of the boy. "At the
back of our cottage, near the bush that bears the red berries, a pot
is buried," she said. "Dig it up and take it home with you and when
you have a kopeck drop it in. It is a good pot."

The stripling understood. He stooped and kissed the hand of Anna, and
Big Ivan patted him upon the back. They were brother dreamers and they
understood each other.

Boris Lugan has sung the song of the versts that eat up one's courage as
well as the leather of one's shoes.

    "Versts! Versts! Scores and scores of them!
    Versts! Versts! A million or more of them!
    Dust! Dust! And the devils who play in it
    Blinding us fools who forever must stay in it."

Big Ivan and Anna faced the long versts to Bobruisk, but they were not
afraid of the dust devils. They had the Dream. It made their hearts
light and took the weary feeling from their feet. They were on their
way. America was a long, long journey, but they had started, and every
verst they covered lessened the number that lay between them and the
Promised Land.

"I am glad the boy spoke to us," said Anna.

"And I am glad," said Ivan. "Some day he will come and eat with us in
America."

They came to Bobruisk. Holding hands, they walked into it late one
afternoon. They were eighty-nine versts from the little village on the
Beresina, but they were not afraid. The Dream spoke to Ivan, and his
big hand held the hand of Anna. The railway ran through Bobruisk, and
that evening they stood and looked at the shining rails that went out
in the moonlight like silver tongs reaching out for a low-hanging star.

And they came face to face with the Terror that evening, the Terror that
had helped the spring breezes and the sunshine to plant the Dream in the
brain of Big Ivan.

They were walking down a dark side street when they saw a score of men
and women creep from the door of a squat, unpainted building. The little
group remained on the sidewalk for a minute as if uncertain about the
way they should go, then from the corner of the street came a cry of
"Police!" and the twenty pedestrians ran in different directions.

It was no false alarm. Mounted police charged down the dark thoroughfare
swinging their swords as they rode at the scurrying men and women who
raced for shelter. Big Ivan dragged Anna into a doorway, and toward
their hiding place ran a young boy who, like themselves, had no
connection with the group and who merely desired to get out of harm's
way till the storm was over.

The boy was not quick enough to escape the charge. A trooper pursued
him, overtook him before he reached the sidewalk, and knocked him down
with a quick stroke given with the flat of his blade. His horse struck
the boy with one of his hoofs as the lad stumbled on his face.

Big Ivan growled like an angry bear, and sprang from his hiding place.
The trooper's horse had carried him on to the sidewalk, and Ivan seized
the bridle and flung the animal on its haunches. The policeman leaned
forward to strike at the giant, but Ivan of the Bridge gripped the left
leg of the horseman and tore him from his saddle.

The horse galloped off, leaving its rider lying beside the moaning boy
who was unlucky enough to be in a street where a score of students were
holding a meeting.

Anna dragged Ivan back into the passageway. More police were charging
down the street, and their position was a dangerous one.

"Ivan!" she cried, "Ivan! Remember the Dream! America, Ivan! _America!_
Come this way! _Quick!_"

With strong hands she dragged him down the passage. It opened into a
narrow lane, and, holding each other's hands, they hurried toward the
place where they had taken lodgings. From far off came screams and
hoarse orders, curses and the sound of galloping hoofs. The Terror was
abroad.

Big Ivan spoke softly as they entered the little room they had taken.
"He had a face like the boy to whom you gave the lucky pot," he said.
"Did you notice it in the moonlight when the trooper struck him down?"

"Yes," she answered. "I saw."

They left Bobruisk next morning. They rode away on a great, puffing,
snorting train that terrified Anna. The engineer turned a stopcock
as they were passing the engine, and Anna screamed while Ivan nearly
dropped the big trunk. The engineer grinned, but the giant looked up
at him and the grin faded. Ivan of the Bridge was startled by the rush
of hot steam, but he was afraid of no man.

The train went roaring by little villages and great pasture stretches.
The real journey had begun. They began to love the powerful engine. It
was eating up the versts at a tremendous rate. They looked at each other
from time to time and smiled like two children.

They came to Minsk, the biggest town they had ever seen. They looked out
from the car windows at the miles of wooden buildings, at the big church
of St. Catharine, and the woolen mills. Minsk would have frightened them
if they hadn't had the Dream. The farther they went from the little
village on the Beresina the more courage the Dream gave to them.

On and on went the train, the wheels singing the song of the road.
Fellow travelers asked them where they were going. "To America," Ivan
would answer.

"To America?" they would cry. "May the little saints guide you. It is a
long way, and you will be lonely."

"No, we shall not be lonely," Ivan would say.

"Ha! you are going with friends?"

"No, we have no friends, but we have something that keeps us from being
lonely." And when Ivan would make that reply Anna would pat his hand and
the questioner would wonder if it was a charm or a holy relic that the
bright-eyed couple possessed.

They ran through Vilna, on through flat stretches of Courland to Libau,
where they saw the sea. They sat and stared at it for a whole day,
talking little but watching it with wide, wondering eyes. And they
stared at the great ships that came rocking in from distant ports,
their sides gray with the salt from the big combers which they had
battled with.

No wonder this America of ours is big. We draw the brave ones from the
old lands, the brave ones whose dreams are like the guiding sign that
was given to the Israelites of old--a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar
of fire by night.

The harbor master spoke to Ivan and Anna as they watched the restless
waters.

"Where are you going, children?"

"To America," answered Ivan.

"A long way. Three ships bound for America went down last month."

"Ours will not sink," said Ivan.

"Why?"

"Because I know it will not."

The harbor master looked at the strange blue eyes of the giant, and
spoke softly. "You have the eyes of a man who sees things," he said.
"There was a Norwegian sailor in the _White Queen_, who had eyes like
yours and he could see death."

"I see life!" said Ivan boldly. "A free life--"

"Hush!" said the harbor master. "Do not speak so loud." He walked
swiftly away, but he dropped a ruble into Anna's hand as he passed
her by. "For luck," he murmured. "May the little saints look after
you on the big waters."

They boarded the ship, and the Dream gave them a courage that
surprised them. There were others going aboard, and Ivan and Anna
felt that those others were also persons who possessed dreams. She
saw the dreams in their eyes. There were Slavs, Poles, Letts, Jews,
and Livonians, all bound for the land where dreams come true. They
were a little afraid--not two per cent of them had ever seen a ship
before--yet their dreams gave them courage.

The emigrant ship was dragged from her pier by a grunting tug and
went floundering down the Baltic Sea. Night came down, and the devils
who, according to the Esthonian fishermen, live in the bottom of the
Baltic, got their shoulders under the stern of the ship and tried to
stand her on her head. They whipped up white combers that sprang on
her flanks and tried to crush her, and the wind played a devil's lament
in her rigging. Anna lay sick in the stuffy women's quarters, and Ivan
could not get near her. But he sent her messages. He told her not to
mind the sea devils, to think of the Dream, the Great Dream that would
become real in the land to which they were bound. Ivan of the Bridge
grew to full stature on that first night out from Libau. The battered
old craft that carried him slouched before the waves that swept over
her decks, but he was not afraid. Down among the million and one smells
of the steerage he induced a thin-faced Livonian to play upon a mouth
organ, and Big Ivan sang Paleer's "Song of Freedom" in a voice that
drowned the creaking of the old vessel's timbers, and made the seasick
ones forget their sickness. They sat up in their berths and joined in
the chorus, their eyes shining brightly in the half gloom:

    "Freedom for serf and for slave,
    Freedom for all men who crave
    Their right to be free
    And who hate to bend knee
    But to Him who this right to them gave."

It was well that these emigrants had dreams. They wanted them. The sea
devils chased the lumbering steamer. They hung to her bows and pulled
her for'ard deck under emerald-green rollers. They clung to her stern
and hoisted her nose till Big Ivan thought that he could touch the door
of heaven by standing on her blunt snout. Miserable, cold, ill, and
sleepless, the emigrants crouched in their quarters, and to them Ivan
and the thin-faced Livonian sang the "Song of Freedom."

The emigrant ship pounded through the Cattegat, swung southward through
the Skagerrack and the bleak North Sea. But the storm pursued her. The
big waves snarled and bit at her, and the captain and the chief officer
consulted with each other. They decided to run into the Thames, and the
harried steamer nosed her way in and anchored off Gravesend.

An examination was made, and the agents decided to transship the
emigrants. They were taken to London and thence by train to Liverpool,
and Ivan and Anna sat again side by side, holding hands and smiling at
each other as the third-class emigrant train from Euston raced down
through the green Midland counties to grimy Liverpool.

"You are not afraid?" Ivan would say to her each time she looked at him.

"It is a long way, but the Dream has given me much courage," she said.

"To-day I spoke to a Lett whose brother works in New York City," said
the giant. "Do you know how much money he earns each day?"

"How much?" she questioned.

"Three rubles, and he calls the policemen by their first names."

"You will earn five rubles, my Ivan," she murmured. "There is no one as
strong as you."

Once again they were herded into the bowels of a big ship that
steamed away through the fog banks of the Mersey out into the Irish Sea.
There were more dreamers now, nine hundred of them, and Anna and Ivan
were more comfortable. And these new emigrants, English, Irish, Scotch,
French, and German, knew much concerning America. Ivan was certain that
he would earn at least three rubles a day. He was very strong.

On the deck he defeated all comers in a tug of war, and the captain of
the ship came up to him and felt his muscles.

"The country that lets men like you get away from it is run badly," he
said. "Why did you leave it?"

The interpreter translated what the captain said, and through the
interpreter Ivan answered.

"I had a Dream," he said, "a Dream of freedom."

"Good," cried the captain. "Why should a man with muscles like yours
have his face ground into the dust?"

The soul of Big Ivan grew during those days. He felt himself a man, a
man who was born upright to speak his thoughts without fear.

The ship rolled into Queenstown one bright morning, and Ivan and his
nine hundred steerage companions crowded the for'ard deck. A boy in
a rowboat threw a line to the deck, and after it had been fastened
to a stanchion he came up hand over hand. The emigrants watched him
curiously. An old woman sitting in the boat pulled off her shoes, sat
in a loop of the rope, and lifted her hand as a signal to her son on
deck.

"Hey, fellers," said the boy, "help me pull me muvver up. She wants to
sell a few dozen apples, an' they won't let her up the gangway!"

Big Ivan didn't understand the words, but he guessed what the boy
wanted. He made one of a half dozen who gripped the rope and started
to pull the ancient apple woman to the deck.

They had her halfway up the side when an undersized third officer
discovered what they were doing. He called to a steward, and the steward
sprang to obey.

"Turn a hose on her!" cried the officer. "Turn a hose on the old woman!"

The steward rushed for the hose. He ran with it to the side of the
ship with the intention of squirting the old woman, who was swinging
in midair and exhorting the six men who were dragging her to the deck.

"Pull!" she cried. "Sure, I'll give every one of ye a rosy red apple an'
me blessing with it."

The steward aimed the muzzle of the hose, and Big Ivan of the Bridge let
go of the rope and sprang at him. The fist of the great Russian went out
like a battering ram; it struck the steward between the eyes, and he
dropped upon the deck. He lay like one dead, the muzzle of the hose
wriggling from his limp hands.

The third officer and the interpreter rushed at Big Ivan, who stood
erect, his hands clenched.

"Ask the big swine why he did it?" roared the officer.

"Because he is a coward!" cried Ivan. "They wouldn't do that in
America!"

"What does the big brute know about America?" cried the officer.

"Tell him I have dreamed of it," shouted Ivan. "Tell him it is in my
Dream. Tell him I will kill him if he turns the water upon this old
woman."

The apple seller was on deck then, and with the wisdom of the Celt she
understood. She put her lean hand upon the great head of the Russian and
blessed him in Gaelic. Ivan bowed before her, then as she offered him a
rosy apple he led her toward Anna, a great Viking leading a withered old
woman who walked with the grace of a duchess.

"Please don't touch him," she cried, turning to the officer. "We have
been waiting for your ship for six hours, and we have only five dozen
apples to sell. It's a great man he is. Sure he's as big as Finn
MacCool."

Some one pulled the steward behind a ventilator and revived him by
squirting him with water from the hose which he had tried to turn upon
the old woman. The third officer slipped quietly away.

The Atlantic was kind to the ship that carried Ivan and Anna. Through
sunny days they sat up on deck and watched the horizon. They wanted to
be among those who would get the first glimpse of the wonderland.

They saw it on a morning with sunshine and soft winds. Standing
together in the bow, they looked at the smear upon the horizon, and
their eyes filled with tears. They forgot the long road to Bobruisk,
the rocking journey to Libau, the mad buckjumping boat in whose timbers
the sea devils of the Baltic had bored holes. Everything unpleasant was
forgotten, because the Dream filled them with a great happiness.

The inspectors at Ellis Island were interested in Ivan. They walked
around him and prodded his muscles, and he smiled down upon them
good-naturedly.

"A fine animal," said one. "Gee, he's a new white hope! Ask him can he
fight?"

An interpreter put the question, and Ivan nodded. "I have fought," he
said.

"Gee!" cried the inspector. "Ask him was it for purses or what?"

"For freedom," answered Ivan. "For freedom to stretch my legs and
straighten my neck!"

Ivan and Anna left the Government ferryboat at the Battery. They started
to walk uptown, making for the East Side, Ivan carrying the big trunk
that no other man could lift.

It was a wonderful morning. The city was bathed in warm sunshine, and
the well-dressed men and women who crowded the sidewalks made the two
immigrants think that it was a festival day. Ivan and Anna stared at
each other in amazement. They had never seen such dresses as those worn
by the smiling women who passed them by; they had never seen such
well-groomed men.

"It is a feast day for certain," said Anna.

"They are dressed like princes and princesses," murmured Ivan. "There
are no poor here, Anna. None."

Like two simple children, they walked along the streets of the City of
Wonder. What a contrast it was to the gray, stupid towns where the
Terror waited to spring upon the cowed people. In Bobruisk, Minsk,
Vilna, and Libau the people were sullen and afraid. They walked in
dread, but in the City of Wonder beside the glorious Hudson every person
seemed happy and contented.

They lost their way, but they walked on, looking at the wonderful shop
windows, the roaring elevated trains, and the huge skyscrapers. Hours
afterward they found themselves in Fifth Avenue near Thirty-third
Street, and there the miracle happened to the two Russian immigrants.
It was a big miracle inasmuch as it proved the Dream a truth, a great
truth.

Ivan and Anna attempted to cross the avenue, but they became confused
in the snarl of traffic. They dodged backward and forward as the stream
of automobiles swept by them. Anna screamed, and, in response to her
scream, a traffic policeman, resplendent in a new uniform, rushed to
her side. He took the arm of Anna and flung up a commanding hand. The
charging autos halted. For five blocks north and south they jammed on
the brakes when the unexpected interruption occurred, and Big Ivan
gasped.

"Don't be flurried, little woman," said the cop. "Sure I can tame 'em by
liftin' me hand."

Anna didn't understand what he said, but she knew it was something nice
by the manner in which his Irish eyes smiled down upon her. And in front
of the waiting automobiles he led her with the same care that he would
give to a duchess, while Ivan, carrying the big trunk, followed them,
wondering much. Ivan's mind went back to Bobruisk on the night the
Terror was abroad.

The policeman led Anna to the sidewalk, patted Ivan good-naturedly upon
the shoulder, and then with a sharp whistle unloosed the waiting stream
of cars that had been held up so that two Russian immigrants could cross
the avenue.

Big Ivan of the Bridge took the trunk from his head and put it on the
ground. He reached out his arms and folded Anna in a great embrace. His
eyes were wet.

"The Dream is true!" he cried. "Did you see, Anna? We are as good as
they! This is the land where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the
blood!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The President was nearing the close of his address. Anna shook Ivan, and
Ivan came out of the trance which the President's words had brought upon
him. He sat up and listened intently:

_We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things
in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's
evening. Some of us let those great dreams die, but others nourish and
protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the
sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that
their dreams will come true._

The President finished. For a moment he stood looking down at the faces
turned up to him, and Big Ivan of the Bridge thought that the President
smiled at him. Ivan seized Anna's hand and held it tight.

"He knew of my Dream!" he cried. "He knew of it. Did you hear what he
said about the dreams of a spring day?"

"Of course he knew," said Anna. "He is the wisest in America, where
there are many wise men. Ivan, you are a citizen now."

"And you are a citizen, Anna."

The band started to play "My Country, 'tis of Thee," and Ivan and Anna
got to their feet. Standing side by side, holding hands, they joined in
with the others who had found after long days of journeying the blessed
land where dreams come true.





WHOSE DOG--?[6]

BY FRANCES GREGG

From _The Forum_

[6] Copyright, 1915, by Mitchell Kennerley.


"Hey--there's ladies here, move on--you!" The tone was authoritative and
old John, the village drunkard, crouched away.

"I warn't doin' nothin'," he clutched feebly at the loose hanging rags
that clothed him, "only wanted to see same's them. Guess this pier's big
enough to hold us all."

"Halloo, John, have a drink?" A grinning boy held a can of salt water
toward him.

The quick maudlin tears sprang to the old man's eyes. "Little fellers,"
he muttered, "little fellers, they oughtn't ter act that way."

"Give him a new necktie, he's gotta go to dinner with the Lodge." A
handful of dank sea-weed writhed around the old man's neck. "That's a
turtle, that is," the boy went on, the need for imparting information
justifying his lapse from ragging the drunkard. "There--swimming
round--it's tied to that stake. You orter've seen it at low tide when
it was on the beach. It weighs ninety pounds."

"I seen a turtle onct," the drunkard quavered. "It was bigger'n that.
En they tied it to a stake--en it swam round--en it swam round--." His
sodden brain clutched for something more to say, some marvel with which
to hold the interest of the gathered boys. It was good to talk. If only
they would let him talk to them. If only they would let him sit on the
store porch and smoke and gossip. He wouldn't be the town disgrace--

"Well--go on--what'd't do?"

"Hey you!"--the boys were interrupted by the authoritative voice--"I
told you to move on, didn't I--now if I tell you again I'll run you in.
D'yer hear? What you boys let that old bum hang around you for anyway.
What's he doin' here?"

"Aw, he's fun. He warn't doin' nothin'. He was just awatchin' it swim.
It's tied to that post. It don't come up no more."

"Watchin' it swim, eh, was he? A'right. Whose dog is it?" The officer
turned and sauntered away.

Sudden horror seized the old man. The liquor seemed drained out of his
veins: his brain worked almost quickly. "Whose dog--whose dog? Say!" he
darted after the retreating boys. "Say--that ain't no dog--is it--no
_dog_? Tied up like that to drown--say--"

"Aw--keep off--I told you onct--it's a turtle for the Lodge dinner." The
boy shook himself free.

The old man stood a moment, shaken. His pulpy brain worked dimly toward
the conception of the pain that was consuming him. "Whose dog--" that
man had asked--and he hadn't meant to help it--"whose dog!" They could
do it--tie up a dog to drown in sight of people--like that--cruel. He
saw the policeman coming toward him again. In a sudden frenzy he
clutched his tattered garments about him and began to run, to run toward
the end of the pier.

The boys raced after him. "What yer gonter do?" they shouted. "What yer
gonter do?"

The old man turned and looked at them a moment with twitching features.
"I'm gonter die," he said.

"Come on, you fellers--come on--the drunk's gonter dive--come on--he's
cryin'!"

There was a splash. A surge of green filth and mud spread and dyed the
water. A row of expectant heads leaned over the rail. "Say--he ain't
come up." They waited.

The policeman strolled leisurely down in response to their repeated
cries. "_Who_ ain't come up? What, him--the drunk?" The officer leaned
lethargically over the rail. "What'm I gonter do? Why, leave 'm. He
ain't got no folks gonter sit up nights waitin' fer 'm. Now you young
ones go along home to your suppers," he indulgently commanded, "and you
little fellers, if you want crabs, be 'round here early. By to-morrow
this place will be fairly swarmin' with them."




LIFE[7]

BY BEN HECHT

From _The Little Review_

[7] Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson. Copyright, 1916, by Ben
    Hecht.


The sun was shining in the dirty street.

Old women with shapeless bodies waddled along on their way to market.

Bearded old men who looked like the fathers of Jerusalem walked
flatfooted, nodding back and forth.

"The tread of the processional surviving in Halsted Street," thought
Moisse, the young dramatist who was moving with the crowd.

Children sprawled in the refuse-laden alleys. One of them ragged and
clotted with dirt stood half-dressed on the curbing and urinated into
the street.

Wagons rumbled, filled with fruits and iron and rags and vegetables.

Human voices babbled above the noises of the traffic. Moisse watched the
lively scene.

"Every day it's the same," he thought; "the same smells, the same noise
and people swarming over the pavements. I am the only one in the street
whose soul is awake. There's a pretty girl looking at me. She suspects
the condition of my soul. Her fingers are dirty. Why doesn't she buy
different shoes? She thinks I am lost. In five years she will be fat.
In ten years she will waddle with a shawl over her head."

The young dramatist smiled.

"Good God," he thought, "where do they come from? Where are they going?
No place to no place. But always moving, shuffling, waddling, crying
out. The sun shines on them. The rain pours on them. It burns. It
freezes. To-day they are bright with color. To-morrow they are gray with
gloom. But they are always the same, always in motion."

The young dramatist stopped on the corner and looking around him spied a
figure sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall of a building.

The figure was an old man.

He had a long white beard.

He had his legs tucked under him and an upturned tattered hat rested in
his lap.

His thin face was raised and the sun beat down on it, but his eyes were
closed.

"Asleep," mused Moisse.

He moved closer to him.

The man's head was covered with long silky white hair that hung down to
his neck and hid his ears. It was uncombed. His face in the sun looked
like the face of an ascetic, thin, finely veined.

He had a long nose and almost colorless lips and the skin on his cheeks
was white. It was drawn tight over his bones, leaving few wrinkles.

An expression of peace rested over him--peace and detachment. Of the
noise and babble he heard nothing. His eyes were closed to the crowded
frantic street.

He sat, his head back, his face bathed in the sun, smileless and
dreaming.

"A beggar," thought Moisse, "asleep, oblivious. Dead. All day he sits
in the sun like a saint, immobile. Like one of the old Alexandrian
ascetics, like a delicately carved image. He is awake in himself but
dead to others. The waves cannot touch him. His thoughts, oh to know
his thoughts and his dreams?"

Suddenly the eyes of the young dramatist widened. He was looking at the
beggar's long hair that hung to his neck.

"It's moving," he whispered half aloud. He came closer and stood over
the old man and gazed intently at the top of his head.

The hair was swaying faintly, each separate fiber moving alone....

It shifted, rose imperceptibly and fell. It quivered and glided....

"Lice," murmured Moisse.

He watched.

Silent and asleep the old man sat with his thin face to the sun and his
hair moved.

Vermin swarmed through it, creeping, crawling, tiny and infinitesimal.

Every strand was palpitating, shuddering under their mysterious energy.

At first Moisse could hardly make them out, but his eyes gradually grew
accustomed to the sight. And as he watched he saw the hair swell like
waves riding over the water, saw it drop and flutter, coil and uncoil of
its own accord.

Vermin raised it up, pulled it out, streaming up and down tirelessly in
vast armies.

They crawled furiously like dust specks blown thick through the white
beard.

They streamed and shifted and were never still.

They moved in and out, from no place to no place, but always moving,
frantic and frenzied.

An old woman passed and with a shake of her head dropped two pennies
into the upturned hat. Moisse hardly saw her. He saw only the
palpitating swarms that were now facing, easily visible, through the
gray white hair.

Some ventured down over the white ascetic face, crawling in every
direction, traveling around the lips and over the closed eyes, emerging
suddenly in thick streams from behind the covered ears and losing
themselves under the ever moving beard.

And Moisse, his senses strained, thought he heard a noise--a faint
crunching noise.

He listened.

The noise seemed to grow louder. He began to itch but he remained
bending over the head. He could hear them, like a faraway murmur, a
purring, uncertain sound.

"They're shouting and groaning, crying out, weeping and laughing," he
mused. "It is life ... life...."

He looked up and down the crowded burning street with its frantic crowd,
and smiled.

"Life," he repeated....

He walked away. Before him floated the hair of the beggar moving as if
stirred by a slow wind, and he itched.

"But who was the old man?" he thought.

A young woman, plump and smiling, jostled him. He felt her soft hip
pressing against him for a moment.

A child running barefoot through the street brushed against his legs. He
felt its sticky fingers seize him for an instant and then the child was
gone. On he walked.

Three young men confronted him for a second time. He passed between two
of them, squeezed by their shoulders.

A shapeless old woman bumped him with her back as she shuffled past.

Two children dodged in and out screaming and seized his arm to turn on.

The young dramatist stopped and remained standing still, looking about
him.

Then he laughed.

"Life," he murmured again; and

"I am the old man," he added, "I ... I...."




T.B.[8]

BY FANNIE HURST

From _The Saturday Evening Post_

[8] Copyright, 1915, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1916,
    by Fannie Hurst.


The figurative underworld of a great city has no ventilation, housing
or lighting problems. Rooks and crooks who live in the putrid air of
crime are not denied the light of day, even though they loathe it.
Cadets, social skunks, whose carnivorous eyes love darkness, walk in
God's sunshine and breathe God's air. Scarlet women turn over in wide
beds and draw closer velvet curtains to shut out the morning. Gamblers
curse the dawn.

But what of the literal underworld of the great city? What of the
babes who cry in fetid cellars for the light and are denied it? What
of the Subway trackwalker, purblind from gloom; the coalstoker, whose
fiery tomb is the boiler room of a skyscraper; sweatshop workers, a
flight below the sidewalk level, whose faces are the color of dead
Chinese; six-dollar-a-week salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars
of six-million-dollar corporations?

This is the literal underworld of the great city, and its sunless
streets run literal blood--the blood of the babes who cried in vain; the
blood from the lungs of the sweatshop workers whose faces are the color
of dead Chinese; the blood from the cheeks of the six-dollar-a-week
salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars. But these are your problems
and my problems and the problems of the men who have found the strength
or the fear not to die rich. The babe's mother, who had never known
else, could not know that her cellar was fetid; she only cried out in
her anguish and hated vaguely in her heart.

Sara Juke, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Department Store,
did not know that lint from white goods clogs the lungs, and that the
air she breathed was putrefied as from a noxious swamp. Sometimes a
pain, sharp as a hatpin, entered between her shoulder blades. But what
of that? When the heart is young the heart is bold, and Sara could laugh
upward with the musical glee of a bird.

There were no seasons, except the spring and fall openings and
semi-annual clearing sales, in the bargain basement of the Titanic
store. On a morning when the white-goods counter was placing
long-sleeve, high-neck nightgowns in its bargain bins, and knit
underwear was supplanting the reduced muslins, Sara Juke drew her
little pink knitted jacket closer about her narrow shoulders and
shivered--shivered, but smiled. "Br-r-r! October never used to get under
my skin like this."

Hattie Krakow, roommate and co-worker, shrugged her bony shoulders and
laughed; but not with the upward glee of a bird--downward rather, until
it died in a croak in her throat. But then Hattie Krakow was ten years
older than Sara Juke; and ten years in the arc-lighted subcellar of the
Titanic Department Store can do much to muffle the ring in a laugh.

"Gee, you're as funny as your own funeral--you are! You keep up the
express pace you're going and there won't be another October left on
your calendar."

"That's right; cheer me up a bit, dearie. What's the latest style in
undertaking?"

"You'll know sooner 'n me if--"

"Aw, Hat, cut it! Wasn't I home in bed last night by eleven?"

"I ain't much on higher mathematics."

"Sure I was. I had to shove you over on your side of the bed; that's how
hard you was sleeping."

"A girl can't gad round dancing and rough-housing every night and work
eight hours on her feet, and put her lunch money on her back, and not
pay up for it. I've seen too many blue-eyed dolls like you get broken.
I--"

"Amen!"

Sara Juke rolled her blue eyes upward, and they were full of points of
light, as though stars were shining in them; and always her lips
trembled to laugh.

"There ain't nothing funny, Sara."

"Oh, Hat, with you like a owl!"

"If I was a girl and had a cough like I've seen enough in this basement
get; if I was a girl and my skirtband was getting two inches too big,
and I had to lie on my left side to breathe right, and my nightie was
all soaked round the neck when I got up in the morning--I wouldn't just
laugh and laugh. I'd cry a little--I would."

"That's right, Hat; step on the joy bug like it was a spider. Squash
it!"

"I wouldn't just laugh and laugh, and put my lunch money on my back
instead of eggs and milk inside of me, and run round all hours to dance
halls with every sporty Charley-boy that comes along."

"You leave him alone! You just cut that! Don't you begin on him!"

"I wouldn't get overheated, and not sleep enough; and--"

"For Pete's sake, Hat! Hire a hall!"

"I should worry! It ain't my grave you're digging."

"Aw, Hat."

"I ain't got your dolly face and your dolly ways with the boys; but I
got enough sense to live along decent."

"You're right pretty, I think, Hat."

"Oh, I could daub up, too, and gad with some of that fast gang if I
didn't know it don't lead nowheres. It ain't no cinch for a girl to
keep her health down here, even when she does live along decent like
me, eating regular and sleeping regular, and spending quiet evenings
in the room, washing-out and mending and pressing and all. It ain't
no cinch even then, lemme tell you. Do you think I'd have ever asked
a gay bird like you to come over and room with me if I hadn't seen
you begin to fade like a piece of calico, just like my sister Lizzie
did?"

"I'm taking that iron-tonic stuff like you want and spoiling my
teeth--ain't I, Hat? I know you been swell to me and all."

"You ain't going to let up until somebody whispers T.B. in your
shell-pink ear; and maybe them two letters will bring you to your
senses."

"T.B.?"

"Yes--T.B."

"Who's he?"

"Gee, you're as smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet
dunce cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke bonnet. T.B.
was what I said--T.B."

"Honest, Hat, I dunno--"

"For heaven's sake! _Too Berculosis_ is the way the exhibits and the
newspapers say it. L-u-n-g-s is another way to spell it. T.B."

"Too Berculosis!" Sara Juke's hand flew to her little breast. "Too
Berculosis! Hat, you--you don't--"

"Sure I don't. I ain't saying it's that--only I wanna scare you up a
little. I ain't saying it's that; but a girl that lets a cold hang on
like you do and runs round half the night, and don't eat right, can
make friends with almost anything, from measles to T.B."

Stars came out once more in Sara Juke's eyes, and her lips warmed and
curved to their smile. She moistened with her forefinger a yellow spit
curl that lay like a caress on her cheek. "Gee, you oughtta be writing
scare heads for the _Evening Gazette_!"

Hattie Krakow ran her hand over her smooth salt-and-pepper hair and sold
a marked-down flannellette petticoat.

"I can't throw no scare into you so long as you got him on your mind.
Oh, lud! There he starts now--that quickstep dance again!"

A quick red ran up into Miss Juke's hair and she inclined forward in the
attitude of listening as the lively air continued.

"The silly! Honest, ain't he the silly? He said he was going to play
that for me the first thing this morning. We dance it so swell together
and all. Aw, I thought he'd forget. Ain't he the silly--remembering me?"

The red flowed persistently higher.

"Silly ain't no name for him, with his square, Charley-boy face and
polished hair; and--"

"You let him alone, Hattie Krakow! What's it to you if--"

"Nothing--except I always say October is my unlucky month, because it
was just a year ago that they moved him and the sheet music down to the
basement. Honest, I'm going to buy me a pair of earmuffs! I'd hate to
tell you how unpopular popular music is with me."

"Huh! You couldn't play on a side comb, much less play on the piano like
Charley does. If I didn't have no more brains than some people--honest,
I'd go out and kill a calf for some!"

"You oughtta talk! A girl that ain't got no more brains than to gad
round every night and every Sunday in foul-smelling, low-ceilinged
dance halls, and wear paper-soled slippers when she oughtta be wearing
galoshes, and cheesecloth waists that ain't even decent instead of wool
undershirts! You oughtta talk about brains--you and Charley Chubb!"

"Yes, I oughtta talk! If you don't like my doings, Hattie Krakow,
there ain't no law says we gotta room together. I been shifting for
myself ever since I was cash-girl down at Tracy's, and I ain't going
to begin being bossed now. If you don't like my keeping steady with
Charley Chubb--if you don't like his sheet-music playing--you gotta
lump it! I'm a good girl, I am; and if you got anything to in-sinuate;
if--"

"Sara Juke, ain't you ashamed!"

"I'm a good girl, I am; and there ain't nobody can cast a reflection
on--on--"

Tears trembled in her voice and she coughed from the deep recesses of
her chest, and turned her head away, so that her profile was quivering
and her throat swelling with sobs.

"I--I'm a good girl, I am."

"Aw, Sara, don't I know it? Ain't that just where the rub comes? Don't I
know it? If you wasn't a good girl would I be caring?"

"I'm a good girl, I am!"

"It's your health, Sara, I'm kicking about. You're getting as pale and
skinny as a goop; and for a month already you've been coughing, and
never a single evening home to stick your feet in hot water and a
mustard plaster on your chest."

"Didn't I take the iron tonic and spoil my teeth?"

"My sister Lizzie--that's the way she started, Sara; right down here
in this basement. There never was a prettier little queen down here.
Ask any of the old girls. Like you in looks and all; full of vim too.
That's the way she started, Sara. She wouldn't get out in the country
on Sundays or get any air in her lungs walking with me evenings. She
was all for dance halls, too, Sara. She--she--Ain't I told you about
her over and over again? Ain't I?"

"Sh-h-h! Don't cry, Hat. Yes, yes; I know. She was a swell little kid;
all the old girls say so. Sh-h-h!"

"The--the night she died I--I died too; I--"

"Sh-h-h, dearie!"

"I ain't crying, only--only I can't help remembering."

"Listen! That's the new hit Charley's playin'--Up to Snuff! Say, ain't
that got some little swing to it? Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m! Some little
quick-step, ain't it? How that boy reads off by sight! Looka, will you?
They got them left-over ribbed undervests we sold last season for
forty-nine cents out on the grab table for seventy-four. Looka the
mob fighting for 'em! Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m!"

The day's tide came in. Slowly at first, but toward noon surging
through aisles and round bins, upstairs and downstairs--in, round
and out. Voices straining to be heard; feet shuffling in an
agglomeration of discords--the indescribable roar of humanity, which
is like an army that approaches but never arrives. And above it all,
insistent as a bugle note, reaching the basement's breadth, from
hardware to candy, from human hair to white goods, the tinny voice
of the piano--gay, rollicking.

At five o'clock the patch of daylight above the red-lighted exit door
turned taupe, as though a gray curtain had been flung across it; and
the girls, with shooting pains in their limbs, braced themselves for
the last hour. Shoppers, their bags bulging and their shawls awry,
fumbled in bins for a last remnant; hatless, sway-backed women, carrying
children, fought for mill ends. Sara Juke stood first on one foot and
then on the other to alternate the strain; her hands were hot and dry as
flannel, but her cheeks were pink--very pink.

At six o'clock Hattie Krakow untied her black alpaca apron, pinned a hat
as nondescript as a bird's nest at an unrakish angle and slid into a
warm gray jacket.

"Ready, Sara?"

"Yes, Hat." But her voice came vaguely, as through fog.

"I'm going to fix us some stew to-night with them onions Lettie brought
up to the room when she moved--mutton stew, with a broth for you, Sara."

"Yes, Hat."

Sara's eyes darted out over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned
on her velveteen poke bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a
few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and, with
obvious subterfuge, slid into her little unlined silk coat with a
deliberation not her own. "Coming, Sara?"

"Wait, can't you? My--my hat ain't on right."

"Come on; you're dolled up enough."

"My--my gloves--I--I forgot 'em. You--you can go on, Hat." And she must
burrow back beneath the counter.

Miss Krakow let out a snort, as fiery with scorn as though flames were
curling on her lips.

"Hanging round to see whether he's coming, ain't you? To think they shot
Lincoln and let him live! Before I'd run after any man living, much less
the excuse of a man like him! A shiny-haired, square-faced little rat
like him!"

"I ain't neither, waiting. I guess I got a right to find my gloves.
I--I guess I gotta right. He's as good as you are, and better. I--I
guess I gotta right." But the raspberry red of confusion dyed her face.

"No, you ain't waiting! No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss
Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot.
"Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come
on home with me now, like you ought to."

"I--you go on! I gotta tell him something. I guess I'm my own boss. I
got to tell him something."

Miss Krakow folded her well-worn hand bag under one arm and fastened her
black cotton gloves.

"Pf-f-f! What's the use of wasting breath!"

She slipped into the flux of the aisle, and the tide swallowed her and
carried her out into the bigger tide of the street and the swifter tide
of the city--a flower on the current, her blush withered under the
arc-light substitution for sunlight, the petals of her youth thrown to
the muddy corners of the city streets.

Sara Juke breathed inward, and under her cheaply pretentious lace blouse
a heart, as rebellious as the pink in her cheeks and the stars in her
eyes, beat a rapid fantasia; and, try as she would, her lips would
quiver into a smile.

"Hello, Charley!"

"Hello yourself, Sweetness!" And, draping himself across the white-goods
counter in an attitude as intricate as the letter S, behold Mr. Charley
Chubb! Sleek, soap-scented, slim--a satire on the satyr and the
haberdasher's latest dash. "Hello, Sweetness!"

"How are you, Charley?"

"Here, gimme your little hand. Shake."

She placed her palm in his, quivering.

You of the classes, peering through lorgnettes into the strange world
of the masses, spare that shrug. True, when Charley Chubb's hand closed
over Sara Juke's she experienced a flash of goose flesh; but, you of
the classes, what of the Van Ness ball last night? Your gown was low,
so that your neck rose out from it like white ivory. The conservatory,
where trained clematis vines met over your heads, was like a bower of
stars; music; his hand, the white glove off, over yours; the suffocating
sweetness of clematis blossoms; a fountain throwing fine spray; your
neck white as ivory, and--what of the Van Ness ball last night?

Only Sara Juke played her poor little game frankly and the cards of her
heart lay on the counter.

"Charley!" Her voice lay in a veil.

"Was you getting sore, Sweetness?"

"All day you didn't come over."

"Couldn't, Sweetness. Did you hear me let up on the new hit for a
minute?"

"It's swell, though, Charley; all the girls was humming it. You play it
like lightning too."

"It must have been written for you, Sweetness. That's what you are, Up
to Snuff, eh, Queenie?" He leaned closer, and above his tall, narrow
collar dull red flowed beneath the sallow, and his long white teeth and
slick-brushed hair shone in the arc light. "Eh, Queenie?"

"I gotta go now, Charley. Hattie's waiting home for me." She attempted
to pass him and to slip into the outgoing stream of the store, but with
a hesitation that belied her. "I--I gotta go, Charley."

He laughed, clapped his hat slightly askew on his polished hair and slid
his arm into hers.

"Forget it! But I had you going--didn't I, sister? Thought I'd forgot
about to-night, didn't you? and didn't have the nerve to pipe up. Like
fun I forgot!"

"I didn't know, Charley; you not coming over all day and all. I thought
maybe your friend didn't give you the tickets like he promised."

"Didn't he? Look! See if he didn't!"

He produced a square of pink cardboard from his waistcoat pocket and she
read it, with a sudden lightness underlying her voice:

         HIBERNIAN MASQUE AND HOP

    Supper                 Wardrobe Free
    Admit Gent and Lady    Fifty Cents

"Oh, gee, Charley! And me such a sight in this old waist and all. I
didn't know there was supper too."

"Sure! Hurry, Sweetness, and we'll catch a Sixth Avenue car. We wanna
get in on it while the tamales are hot."

And she must grasp his arm closer and worm through the sidewalk crush,
and straighten her velveteen poke so that the curls lay pat; and once
or twice she coughed, with the hollow resonance of a chain drawn upward
from a deep well.

"Gee, I bet there'll be a jam!"

"Sure! There's some live crowd down there."

They were in the street car, swaying, swinging, clutching; hemmed in by
frantic, home-going New York, nose to nose, eye to eye, tooth to tooth.
Round Sara Juke's slim waist lay Charley Chubb's saving arm, and with
each lurch they laughed immoderately, except when she coughed.

"Gee, ain't it the limit? It's a wonder they wouldn't open a window in
this car!"

"Nix on that. Whatta you wanna do--freeze a fellow out?"

Her eyes would betray her.

"Any old time I could freeze you, Charley."

"Honest?"

"You're the one that freezes me all the time. You're the one that keeps
me guessing and guessing where I stand with you."

A sudden lurch and he caught her as she swayed.

"Come, Sweetness, this is our corner. Quit your coughing there, hon;
this ain't no T.B. hop we 're going to."

"No what?"

"Come along; hurry! Look at the crowd already."

"This ain't no--what did you say, Charley?"

But they were pushing, shoving, worming into the great lighted entrance
of the hall. More lurching, crowding, jamming. "I'll meet you inside,
kiddo, in five minutes. Pick out a red domino; red's my color."

"A red one? Gee! Looka; mine's got black pompons on it. Five minutes,
Charley; five minutes!"

Flags of all nations and all sizes made a galaxy of the Sixth Avenue
hall. An orchestra played beneath an arch of them. Supper, consisting
of three-inch-thick sandwiches, tamales, steaming and smelling in their
buckets, bottles of beer and soda water, was spread on a long picnic
table running the entire length of the balcony.

The main floor, big as an armory, airless as a tomb, swarmed with
dancers.

After supper a red sateen Pierrette, quivering, teeth flashing beneath
a saucy half mask, bowed to a sateen Pierrot, whose face was as slim as
a satyr's and whose smile was as upturned as the eye slits in his mask.

"Gee, Charley, you look just like a devil in that costume--all red, and
your mouth squinted like that!"

"And you look just like a little red cherry, ready to bust."

And they were off in the whirl of the dance, except that the
close-packed dancers hemmed them in a swaying mob; and once she fell
back against his shoulder, faint.

"Ain't there a--a upstairs somewheres, Charley, where they got air? All
this jam and no windows open! Gee ain't it hot? Let's go outside where
it's cool--let's."

"There you go again! No wonder you got a cold on you--always wanting air
on you! Come, Sweetness; this ain't hot. Here, lemme show you the dip I
get the girls crazy with. One, two, three--dip! One, two, three--dip!
Ugh!"

"Gee, ain't it a jam, though?"

"One, two, three!"

"That's swell, Charley! Quit! You mustn't squeeze me like that
till--till you've asked me to be engaged, Charley. We--we ain't engaged
yet, are we, Charley?"

"Aw, what difference does that make? You girls make me sick--always
wanting to know that."

"It--it makes a lot of difference, Charley."

"There you go on that Amen talk again. All right, then; I won't squeeze
you no more, Stingy!"

Her step was suddenly less elastic and she lagged on his arm.

"I--I never said you, couldn't, Charley. Gee, ain't you a great one to
get mad so quick. Touchy! I only said not till we're engaged."

He skirted the crowd, guiding her skillfully.

"Stingy! Stingy! I know 'em that ain't so stingy as you."

"Charley!"

"What?"

"Aw, I'm ashamed to say it."

"Listen! They're playin' the new one--Up to Snuff! Faster! Don't make me
drag you, kiddo. Faster!"

They were suddenly in the center of the maze, as tight-packed as though
an army had conspired to close round them. She coughed and, in her
effort at repression coughed again.

"Charley, I--honest, I--I'm going to keel. I--I can't stand it packed in
here--like this."

She leaned to him, with the color drained out of her face; and the crowd
of black and pink and red dominos, gnomes gone mad, pressed, batted,
surged.

"Look out, Sweetness! Don't give out in here! They'll crush us out.
Ain't you got no nerve? Here; don't give out now! Gee! Watch out, there!
The lady's sick. Watch out! Here; now sit down a minute and get your
wind."

He pressed her shoulders downward and she dropped whitely on a little
camp chair hidden underneath the balcony.

"I gotta get out, Charley; I gotta get out and get air. I feel like I'm
going to suffocate in here. It's this old cough takes the breath out of
me."

In the foyer she revived a bit and drank gratefully of the water he
brought; but the color remained out of her cheeks and the cough would
rack her.

"I guess I oughtta go home, Charley."

"Aw, cut it! You ain't the only girl I've seen give out. Sit here and
rest a minute and you'll be all right. Great Scott! I came here to
dance."

She rose to her feet a bit unsteadily, but smiling.

"Fussy! Who said I didn't?"

"That's more like it."

And they were off again to the lilt of the music but, struggle as she
would, the coughing and the dizziness and the heat took hold of her and
at the close of the dance she fainted quietly against his shoulder.

And when she finally caught at consciousness, as it passed and repassed
her befuddled mind, she was on the floor of the cloak room, her head
pillowed on the skirt of a pink domino.

"There, there, dearie; your young man's waiting outside to take you
home."

"I--I'm all right!"

"Certainly you are. The heat done it. Here; lemme help you out of your
domino."

"It was the heat done it."

"There; you're all right now. I gotta get back to my dance. You fainted
right up against him, dearie; and I seen you keel."

"Gee, ain't I the limit!"

"Here; lemme help you on with your coat. Right there he is, waiting."

In the foyer Sara Juke met Charley Chubb shamefacedly.

"I spoilt everything, didn't I?"

"I guess you couldn't help it. All right?"

"Yes, Charley." She met the air gratefully, worming her little hand into
the curve of his elbow. "Gee! I feel fine now."

"Come; here's a car."

"Let's walk up Sixth Avenue, Charley; the air feels fine."

"All right."

"You ain't sore, are you, Charley? It was so jammed dancing, anyway."

"I ain't sore."

"It was the heat done it."

"Yeh."

"Honest, it's grand to be outdoors, ain't it? The stars and--and
chilliness and--and--all!"

"Listen to the garden stuff!"

"Silly!"

She squeezed his arm and drew back, shamefaced. His spirits rose.

"You're a right loving little thing when you wanna be."

They laughed in duet; and before the plate-glass window of a
furniture emporium they must stop and regard the monthly-payment
display, designed to represent the $49.50 completely furnished sitting
room, parlor and dining room of the home felicitous--a golden-oak room,
with an incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp
redly diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting
a dart from the mantelpiece; and, last, two figures of connubial bliss,
smiling and waxen, in rocking chairs, their waxen infant, block-building
on the floor, completing the picture.

"Gee, it looks as snug as a bug in a rug! Looka what it says too: 'You
Get the Girl; We'll Do the Rest!' Some little advertisement, ain't it?
I got the girl all right--ain't I, hon?"

"Aw!"

"Look at the papa--slippers and all! And the kid! Look at the kid,
Sweetness."

Her confusion nearly choked her and her rapid breath clouded the window
glass.

"Yeh, Charley! Looka the little kid! Ain't he cute?"

An Elevated train crashed over their heads, drowning out her words; but
her smile, which flickered like light over her face, persisted and her
arm crept back into his. At each shop window they must pause, but the
glow of the first one remained with her.

"Look, Sweetness--Red Swag, the Train King! Performance going on now.
Wanna go in?"

"Not to-night. Let's stay outside."

"Anything your little heart de-sires."

They bought hot chestnuts, city harbingers of autumn, from a vender and
let fall the hulls as they walked. They drank strawberry ice-cream soda,
pink with foam. Her resuscitation was complete; his spirits did not
wane.

"I gotta like a queen pretty much not to get sore at a busted evening
like this. It's a good thing the ticket didn't cost me nothing."

"Ain't it, though?"

"Look! What's in there--a exhibit?"

They paused before a white-lighted store front and he read laboriously:

             FREE TUBERCULOSIS EXHIBIT

    TO EDUCATE PEOPLE HOW TO PREVENT CONSUMPTION

"Oh!" She dragged at his arm.

"Aw, come on, Sweetness; nothing but a lot of T.B.'s."

"Let's--let's go in. See, it's free. Looka--it's all lit up and all;
see, pictures and all."

"Say, ain't I enough of a dead one without dragging me in there? Free! I
bet they pinch you for something before you get out."

"Come on, Charley; I never did see a place like this."

"Aw, they're all over town."

He followed her in surlily enough and then, with a morbid interest,
round a room hung with photographs of victims in various emaciated
stages of the white plague.

"Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful? Ain't it awful? Read them symptoms. Almost with
nothing it--it begins. Night sweats and losing weight and coughing,
and--oh--"

"Look! Little kids and all! Thin as matches."

"Aw, see, a poor little shaver like that! Look! It says sleeping in
that dirty room without a window gave it to him. Ugh, that old man!
'Self-indulgence and intemperance.' Looka that girl in the tobacco
factory. Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful! Dirty shops and stores, it says;
dirty saloons and dance halls--weak lungs can't stand them."

"Let's get out of here."

"Aw, look! How pretty she is in this first picture; and look at her
here--nothing but a stack of bones on a stretcher. Aw! Aw!"

"Come on!"

"Courage is very important, it says. Consumptives can be helped and many
are cured. Courage is--"

"Come on; let's get out of this dump. Say, it's a swell night for a
funeral."

She grasped at his coat sleeve, pinching the flesh with it, and he drew
away half angrily.

"Come on, I said."

"All right!"

A thin line filed past them, grim-faced, silent. At the far end of the
room, statistics in red inch-high type ran columnwise down the wall's
length. She read, with a gasp in her throat:

  1--Ten thousand people died from tuberculosis in the city of New York
     last year.

  2--Two hundred thousand people died from tuberculosis in the United
     States last year.

  3--Records of the Health Department show that there are 31,631
     living cases of tuberculosis in the city of New York.

  4--Every three minutes some one in the United States dies from
     consumption.

"Oh, Charley, ain't it awful!"

At a desk a young man, with skin as pink as though a strong wind had
whipped it into color, distributed pamphlets to the outgoing visitors--a
thin streamlet of them; some cautious, some curious, some afraid.

"Come on; let's hurry out of here, Sweetness. My lung's hurting this
minute."

They hurried past the desk; but the young man with the clear pink skin
reached over the heads of an intervening group, waving a long printed
booklet toward the pair.

"Circular, missy?"

Sara Juke straightened, with every nerve in her body twanging like a
plucked violin string; and her eyes met the clear eyes of the young
clerk.

Like a doll automaton she accepted the booklet from him; like a doll
automaton she followed Charley Chubb out into the street, and her limbs
were trembling so she could scarcely stand.

"Gotta hand it to you, Sweetness. Even made a hit on the fellow in the
lung shop! He didn't hand me out no literachure. Some little hit!"

"I gotta go home now, Charley."

"It's only ten."

"I better go, Charley. It ain't Saturday night."

At the stoop of her rooming house they lingered. A honey-colored moon
hung like a lantern over the block-long row of shabby-fronted houses. On
her steps and to her fermenting fancy the shadow of an ash can sprawled
like a prostrate human being.

"Charley!"

She clutched his arm.

"Whatcha scared about, Sweetness?"

"Oh, Charley, I--I feel creepy to-night."

"That visit to the Morgue was enough to give anybody the blind
staggers."

Her pamphlet was tight in her hand.

"You ain't mad at me, Charley?"

He stroked her arm, and the taste of tears found its way to her mouth.

"I'm feeling so sillylike to-night, Charley."

"You're all in, kiddo."

In the shadow he kissed her.

"Charley, you--you mustn't, unless we're--engaged." But she could not
find the strength to unfold herself from his arms. "You mustn't,
Charley!"

"Great little girl you are, Sweetness--one great little girl!"

"Aw, Charley!"

"And, to show you that I like you, I'm going to make up for this
to-morrow night. A real little Saturday-night blow! And don't forget
Sunday afternoon--two o'clock for us, down at Crissey's Hall. Two
o'clock."

"Two o'clock."

"Good!"

"Oh, Charley, I--"

"What, Sweetness?"

"Oh, nothing; I--I'm just silly to-night."

Her hand lay on his arm, white in the moonlight and light as a leaf; and
he kissed her again, scorching her lips.

"Good night, Sweetness."

"Good night, Charley."

Then up four flights of stairs, through musty halls and past closed
doors, their white china knobs showing through the darkness, and up to
the fourth-floor rear, and then on tiptoe into a long, narrow room, with
the moonlight flowing in.

Clothing lay about in grotesque heaps--a woman's blouse was flung across
the back of a chair and hung limply; a pair of shoes stood beside the
bed in the attitude of walking--tired-looking shoes, run down at the
heels and skinned at the toes. And on the far side of the three-quarter
bed the hump of an outstretched figure, face turned from the light, with
sparse gray-and-black hair flowing over the pillow.

Carefully, to save the slightest squeak, Sara Juke undressed, folded
her little mound of clothing across the room's second chair, groping
carefully by the stream of moonlight. Severe as a sibyl in her
straight-falling night-dress, her hair spreading over her shoulders,
her bare feet pattered on the cool matting. Then she slid into bed
lightly, scarcely raising the covers. From the mantelpiece the alarm
clock ticked with emphasis.

An hour she lay there. Once she coughed, and smothered it in her pillow.
Two hours. She slipped from under the covers and over to the littered
dresser. The pamphlet lay on top of her gloves; she carried it to the
window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her night
robe, read it. Then again, standing there by the window in the
moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.

After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a
current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the
bedside.

On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses
battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the
air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She
stirred and half opened her eyes.

"For Gawd's sake, Sara, are you crazy? Put that window down! Tryin' to
freeze us out? Opening a window with her cough and all! Put it down!
Put--it--down!"

Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed
with teeth that clicked. After a while she slept; but lightly, with
her mouth open and her face upturned. And after a while she woke to
full consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips. Her gown
at the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with
cold perspiration.

"Oh--oh--Hattie! Oh--oh!"

She burrowed under her pillow to ease the trembling that seized her.
The moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed
her in--the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is
full of peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold
agony that comes in the night watches, when the business of the day is
but a dream and Reality visits the couch.

Deeper burrowed Sara Juke, trembling with chill and night sweat.

Drowsily Hattie Krakow turned on her pillow, but her senses were too
weary to follow her mind's dictate.

"Sara! 'Smatter, Sara? 'Smat-ter?" Hattie's tired hand crept toward her
friend; but her volition would not carry it across and it fell inert
across the coverlet. "'Smatter, dearie?"

"N-nothin'."

"'Smat-ter, dear-ie?"

"N-nothin'."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the watches of the night a towel flung across the bedpost becomes
a gorilla crouching to spring; a tree branch tapping at the window an
armless hand, beckoning. In the watches of the night fear is a panther
across the chest sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light
of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of
Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike by
day.

So Sara Juke found new courage with the day, and in the subbasement of
the Titanic store the morning following her laughter was ready enough.
But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the
importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday
swarm of Sixth Avenue.

Down one block--two, three; then a sudden pause before a narrow store
front liberally placarded with invitatory signs to the public, and with
a red cross blazoning above the doorway. And Sara Juke, whose heart was
full of fear, faltered, entered.

The same thin file passed round the room, halting, sauntering, like grim
visitors in a grim gallery. At a front desk a sleek young interne,
tiptilted in a swivel chair, read a pink sheet through horn-rimmed
glasses.

Toward the rear the young man whose skin was the wind-lashed pink sorted
pamphlets and circulars in tall, even piles on his desk.

Round and round the gallery walked Sara Juke; twice she read over the
list of symptoms printed in inch-high type; her heart lay within her as
though icy dead, and her eyes would blur over with tears. Once, when she
passed the rear desk, the young man paused in his stacking and regarded
her with a warming glance of recognition.

"Hello!" he said. "You back?"

"Yes." Her voice was the thin cry of a quail.

"You must like our little picture gallery, eh?"

"Oh! Oh!" She caught at the edge of his desk and tears lay heavy in her
eyes.

"Eh?"

"Yes; I--I like it. I wanna buy it for my yacht."

Her ghastly simulacrum of a jest died in her throat; and he said
quickly, a big blush suffusing his face:

"I was only fooling, missy. You ain't got the scare, have you?"

"The scare?"

"Yes; the bug? You ain't afraid you've ate the germ, are you?"

"I--I dunno."

"Pshaw! There's a lot of 'em comes in here more scared than hurt, missy.
Never throw a scare till you've had a examination. For all you know you
got hay fever, eh! Hay fever!" And he laughed as though to salve his
words.

"I--got all them things on the red-printed list, I tell you. I--I got
'em all, night sweats and all. I--I got 'em."

"Sure you got 'em, missy; but that don't need to mean nothin' much."

"I got 'em, I tell you."

"Losin' weight?"

"Feel."

He inserted two fingers in her waistband.

"Huh!"

"You a doctor?"

He performed a great flourish.

"I ain't in the profesh, missy. I'm only chief clerk and bottle washer
round here; but--"

"Where is the doctor? That him reading down there? Can I ask him--I--Oh!
Ain't I scared!"

He placed his big, cool hand over her wrist and his face had none of its
smile.

"I know you are, little missy. I seen it in you last night when you
and--and--"

"My--my friend."

"--your friend was in here. There's thousands come in here with the
scare on, and most of 'em with a reason; but I picked you out last
night from the gang. Funny thing, but right away I picked you. 'A
pretty little thing like her'--if you'll excuse me for saying it--'a
pretty little thing like her,' I says to myself. 'And I bet she ain't
got nobody to steer her!'"

"Honest, did you?"

"Gee, it ain't none of my put-in; but when I seen you last night--funny
thing--but when I seen you, why, you just kinda hit me in the eye; and,
with all that gang round me, I says to myself: 'Gee, a pretty little
thing like her, scared as a gazelle, and so pretty and all; and no one
to give her the right steer!'"

"Aw, you seen me?"

"Sure! Wasn't it me reached out the pamphlet to you? You had on that
there same cutey little hat and jacket and all."

"Does it cost anything to talk to the doctor down there?"

"Forget it! Go right down and he'll give you a card to the Victoria
Clinic. I know them all over there and they'll look you over right,
little missy, and steer you. Aw, don't be scared; there ain't nothing
much wrong with you--maybe a sore spot, that's all. That cough ain't
a double-lunger. You run over to the clinic."

"I gotta go back to the store now."

"After store, then."

"Free?"

"Sure! Old Doc Strauss is on after five too. If I ain't too nervy I'm
off after six myself. I could meet you after and we could talk over what
he tells you--if I ain't too nervy?"

"I--"

"Blaney's my name--Eddie Blaney. Ask anybody round here about me. I--I
could meet you, little missy, and--"

"I can't to-night, Mr. Blaney. I gotta go somewheres."

"Aw!"

"I gotta."

"To-morrow? To-morrow's Sunday, little missy. There's a swell lot of
country I bet you ain't never seen, and Old Doc Strauss is going to tell
you to get acquainted with it pretty soon."

"Country?"

"Yes. That's what you need, outdoors; that's what you need, little
missy. You got a color like all indoors--pretty, but putty."

"You--you don't think there's nothing much the matter with me, do you,
Mr. Blaney?"

"Sure I don't. Why, I got a bunch of Don'ts for you up my sleeve that'll
color you up like drug-store daub."

Tears and laughter trembled in her voice.

"You mean that the outdoor stuff will do it, Mr. Blaney?"

"That's the talk!"

"But you--you ain't the doctor."

"I ain't, but I ain't been deaf and dumb and blind round here for three
years. I can pick 'em every time. You're taking your stitch in time,
little missy. You ain't even got a wheeze in you. Why, I bet you ain't
never seen red!"

"No!" she cried, with quick comprehension.

"Sure you ain't!"

More tears and laughter in her voice.

"I'm going to-night, then--at six, Mr. Blaney."

"Good! And to-morrow? There's a lot of swell country and breathing
space round here I'd like to introduce you to. I bet you don't know
whether Ingleside Woods is kindling or a breakfast food--now do you?"

"No."

"Ever had a chigger on you?"

"Huh?"

"Ever sleep outdoors in a bag?"

"Say, whatta you think I am?"

"Ever seen the sun rise, or took the time to look up and see several
dozen or a couple of thousand or so stars glittering all at once?"

"Aw, come off! We ain't doing teamwork in vaudeville."

"Gee, wouldn't I like to take you out and be the first one to make you
acquainted with a few of the things that are happening beyond Sixth
Avenue--if I ain't too nervy, little missy?"

"I gotta go somewheres at two o'clock to-morrow afternoon, Mr.--Mr.
Blaney; but I can go in the morning--if it ain't going to look like I'm
a freshie."

"In the morning! Swell! But where--who--" She scribbled on a slip of
paper and fluttered it into his hand. "Sara Juke! Some little name. Gee!
I know right where you live. I know a lot of cases that come from round
there. I used to live near there myself, round on Henry Street. I'll
call round at nine, little missy. I'm going to introduce you to the
country, eh?"

"They won't hurt at the clinic, will they, Mr. Blaney? I'm losing my
nerve again."

"Shame on a pretty little thing like you losing her nerve! Gee! I've
seen 'em come in here all pale round the gills and with nothing but
the whooping cough. There was a little girl in here last week who
thought she was ready for Arizona on a canvas bed; and it wasn't nothing
but her rubber skirt-band had stretched. Shame on you, little missy!
Don't you get scared! Wait till you see what I'm going to show you out
in the country to-morrow--leaves turning red and all. We're going to
have a heart-to-heart talk out there--eh? A regular lung-to-lung talk!"

"Aw, Mr. Blaney! Ain't you killing!"

She hurried down the room, laughing.

       *       *       *       *       *

At Sharkey's on Saturday night the entire basement café and dance hall
assumed a hebdomadal air of expectancy; extra marble-topped tables were
crowded about the polished square of dancing space; the odor of hops and
sawdust and cookery hung in visible mists over the bar.

Girls, with white faces and red lips and bare throats, sat alone at
tables or tête-à-tête with men too old or too young, and ate; but drank
with keener appetite.

A self-playing piano performed beneath a large painting of an undraped
Psyche; a youth with yellow fingers sang of Love. A woman whose shame
was gone acquired a sudden hysteria at her lone table over her
milky-green drink, and a waiter hustled her out none too gently.

In the foyer at seven o'clock Sara Juke met Charley Chubb, and he slid
up quite frankly behind her and kissed her on the lips. At Sharkey's a
miss is as good as her kiss!

"You--you quit! You mustn't!"

She sprang back, quivering, her face cold-looking and blue; and he
regarded her with his mouth quirking.

"Huh! Hoity-toity, ain't you? Hoity-toity and white-faced and late, all
at once, ain't you? Say, them airs don't get across with me. Come on!
I'm hungry."

"I didn't mean to yell, Charley--only you scared me. I thought maybe it
was one of them fresh guys that hang round here; all of 'em look so
dopey and all. I--you know I never was strong for this place, Charley."

"Beginning to nag, are you?"

"No, no, Charley. No, no!"

They drew up at a small table.

"No fancy keeling act to-night, kiddo. I ain't taking out a hospital
ward, you know. Gad, I like you, though, when you're white-looking like
this! Why'd you dodge me at noon to-day and to-night after closing? New
guy? I won't stand for it, you know, you little white-faced Sweetness,
you!"

"I hadda go somewheres, Charley. I came near not coming to-night,
neither, Charley."

"What'll you eat?"

"I ain't hungry."

"Thirsty, eh?"

"No."

He regarded her over the rim of the smirchy bill of fare.

"What are you, then, you little white-faced, big-eyed devil?"

"Charley, I--I got something to--to tell you. I--"

"Bring me a lamb stew and a beer, light. What'll you have, little
white-face?"

"Some milk and--"

"She means with suds on, waiter."

"No--no; milk, I said--milk over toast. Milk toast--I gotta eat it. Why
don't you lemme talk, Charley? I gotta tell you."

He was suddenly sober.

"What's hurting you? One milk toast, waiter; tell them in the kitchen
the lady's teeth hurt her. What's up, Sweetness?" And he must lean
across the table and imprint a fresh kiss on her lips.

"Don't--don't--don't! For Gawd's sake, don't!" She covered her face with
her hands; and such a trembling seized her that they fell pitifully away
again and showed her features, each distorted, "You mustn't, Charley!
Mustn't do that again, not--not for three months--you--you mustn't."

He leaned across the table; his voice was like sleet--cold, thin,
cutting:

"What's the matter--going to quit?"

"No--no--no!"

"Got another guy you like better?"

"Oh! Oh!"

"A queenie can't quit me first and get away with it, kiddo. I may be a
soft-fingered sort of fellow, but a queenie can't quit me first and get
away with it. Ask 'em about me round here; they know me. If anybody in
this little duet is going to do the quitting act first it ain't going
to be you. What's the matter? Out with it!"

"Charley, it ain't that--I swear it ain't that!"

"What's hurting you, then?"

"I gotta tell you. We gotta go easy for a little while. We gotta quit
doing the rounds for a while till--only for a little while. Three months
he said would fix me. A grand old doc he was!

"I been to the clinic, Charley. I hadda go. The cough--the cough was
cuttin' me in two. It ain't like me to go keeling like I did. I never
said much about it; but, nights and all, the sweats and the cough and
the shooting pains was cutting me in two. We gotta go easy for a while,
Charley; just--"

"You sick, Sara?" His fatty-white face lost a shade of its animation.
"Sick?"

"But it ain't, Charley. On his word he promised it ain't! A grand old
doc, with whiskers--he promised me that. I--I am just beginning; but
the stitch was in time. It ain't a real case yet, Charley. I swear, on
my mother's curl of hair, it ain't."

"Ain't what? Ain't what?"

"It ain't! Air, he said, right living--early hours and all. I gotta get
out of the basement. He'll get me a job. A grand old man! Windows open;
right living. No--no dancing and all, for a while, Charley. Three months
only, Charley; and then--"

"What, I say--"

"It ain't, Charley! I swear it ain't. Just one--the left one--a little
sore down at the base--the bottom. Charley, quit looking at me like
that! It ain't a real case--it ain't; it ain't!"

"It ain't what?"

"The--the T.B. Just the left one; down at--"

"You--you--" An oath as hot as a live coal dropped from his lips and he
drew back, strangling. "You--you got it, and you're letting me down
easy. You got it, and it's catching as hell! You got it, you white
devil, and--and you're tryin' to lie out of it--you--you--"

"Charley! Charley!"

"You got it, and you been letting me eat it off your lips! You devil,
you! You devil, you! You devil, you!"

"Charley, I--"

"I could kill you! Lemme wash my mouth! You got it; and if you got it I
got it! I got it! I got it! I--I--"

He rushed from the table, strangling, stuttering, staggering; and his
face was twisted with fear.

For an hour she sat there, waiting, her hands folded in her lap and her
eyes growing larger in her face. The dish of stew took on a thin coating
of grease and the beer died in the glass. The waiter snickered. After a
while she paid for the meal out of her newly opened wage envelope and
walked out into the air.

Once on the street, she moaned audibly into her handkerchief. There is
relief in articulation. Her way lay through dark streets, where figures
love to slink in the shadows. One threw a taunt at her and she ran. At
the stoop of her rooming house she faltered, half fainting and breathing
deep from exhaustion, her head thrown back and her eyes gazing upward.

Over the narrow street stars glittered, dozens and myriads of them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Literature has little enough to say of the heartaches and the heartburns
of the Sara Jukes and the Hattie Krakows and the Eddie Blaneys. Medical
science concedes them a hollow organ for keeping up the circulation. Yet
Mrs. Van Ness' heartbreak over the death of her Chinese terrier, Wang,
claims a first-page column in the morning edition; her heartburn--a
complication of midnight terrapin and the strain of her most recent rôle
of corespondent--obtains her a suite de luxe in a private sanitarium.

Vivisectionists believe the dog is less sensitive to pain than man;
so the social vivisectionists, in problem plays and best sellers, are
more concerned with the heartaches and heartburns of the classes. But
analysis would show that the sediment of salt in Sara Juke's and Mrs.
Van Ness' tears is equal.

Indeed, when Sara Juke stepped out of the street car on a golden Sunday
morning in October, her heart beat higher and more full of emotion than
Mrs. Van Ness could find at that breakfast hour, reclining on her fine
linen pillows, an electric massage and a four-dollar-an-hour masseuse
forcing her sluggish blood to flow.

Eddie Blaney gently helped Sara to alight, cupping the point of her
elbow in his hand; and they stood huddled for a moment by the roadway
while the car whizzed past, leaving them in the yellow and ocher,
saffron and crimson countryside.

"Gee! Gee-whiz!"

"See! I told you. And you not wanting to come when I called for you this
morning--you trying to dodge me and the swellest Indian summer Sunday on
the calendar!"

"Looka!"

"Wait! We ain't started yet, if you think this is swell."

"Oh! Let's go over in them woods. Let's." Her lips were apart and pink
crept into her cheeks, effacing the dark rims of pain beneath her eyes.
"Let's hurry."

"Sure; that's where we're going--right over in there, where the woods
look like they're on fire; but, gee, this ain't nothing to the country
places I know round here. This ain't nothing. Wait!"

The ardor of the inspired guide was his, and with each exclamation from
her the joy of his task doubled itself.

"If you think this is great, wait--just you wait. Gee, if you like this,
what would you have said to the farm? Wait till we get to the top of the
hill."

Fallen leaves, crisp as paper, crackled pleasantly under their feet; and
through the haze that is October's veil glowed a reddish sun, vague as
an opal. A footpath crawled like a serpent through the woods and they
followed it, kicking up the leaves before them, pausing, darting,
exclaiming.

"I--Honest, Mr. Blaney, I--"

"Eddie!"

"Eddie, I--I never did feel so--I never was so--so--Aw, I can't say it."
Tears sprang to her eyes.

"Sure, you never was. I never was, neither, before--before--"

"Before what?"

"Before I had to."

"Had to?"

"Yeh; both of them. Bleedin' all the time. Didn't see nothing but red
for 'leven months."

"You!"

"Yeh; three years ago. Looked like Arizona on a stretcher for me."

"You--so big and strong and all!"

He smiled at her and his teeth flashed.

"Gad, little girl, if you got a right to be scared, whatta you think I
had? I seen your card over at the clinic last night, and you ain't got
no right to have that down-and-out look on you had this morning. If you
think you got something to be scared at you looka my old card at the
clinic some day; they keep it for show. You oughtta seen me the day I
quit the shipping room, right over at the Titanic, too, and then see
whether you got something to be scared at."

"You--you used to work there?"

"Six years."

"I--I ain't scared no more, Eddie; honest, I ain't!"

"Gee, I should say not! They ain't even sending you up to the farm."

"No, no! They're going to get me a job. A regular outdoor, on-the-level
kind of a job. A grand old doc, with whiskers! I ain't a regular one,
Eddie; just the bottom of one lung don't make a regular one."

"Well, I guess not, poor little missy. Well, I guess not."

"Three months he said, Eddie. Three months of right livin' like this,
and air and all, and I'll be as round as a peach, he said. Said it
hisself, without me asking--that's how scared I was. Round as a peach!"

"You can't beat that gang over there at the clinic, little missy. They
took me out of the department when all the spring water I knew about ran
out of a keg. Even when they got me out on the farm--a grown-up guy like
me--for a week I thought the crow in the rooster was a sidewalk faker.
You can't beat that, little missy."

"He's a grand old man, with whiskers, that's going to get me the job.
Then in three months I--"

"Three months nothing! That gang won't let you slip back after the three
months. They took a extra shine to me because I did the prize-pupil
stunt; but they won't let anybody slip back if they give 'em half
a chance. When they got me sound again, did they ship me back to the
shipping department in the sub-basement? Not muchy! Looka me now, little
missy! Clerk in their biggest display; in three months a raise to ninety
dollars. Can you beat it? Ninety dollars would send all the shipping
clerks of the world off in a faint."

"Gee, it--it's swell!"

"And--"

"Look! Look!"

"Persimmons!" A golden mound of them lay at the base of a tree, piled up
against the hole, bursting, brown. "Persimmons! Here; taste one, little
missy. They're fine."

"Eat 'em?"

"Sure!"

She bit into one gently; then with appetite.

"M-m-m! Good!"

"Want another?"

"M-m-m--my mouth! Ouch! My m--mouth!"

"Gee, you cute little thing, you! See, my mouth's the same way too.
Feels like a knot. Gee, you cute little thing, you--all puckered up and
all."

And he must link her arm in his and crunch-crunch over the brittle
leaves and up a hillside to a plateau of rock overlooking the flaming
country; and from the valley below, smoke from burning mounds of leaves
wound in spirals, its pungency drifting to them.

"See that tree there? It's a oak. Look; from a little acorn like this it
grew. See, this is a acorn, and in the start that tree wasn't no bigger
than this little thing."

"Quit your kiddin'!" But she smiled and her lips were parted sweetly;
and always unformed tears would gloze her eyes.

"Here, sit here, little lady. Wait till I spread this newspaper out.
Gee! Don't I wish you didn't have to go back to the city by two o'clock,
little lady! We could make a great day of it here, out in the country;
lunch at a farm and see the sun set and all. Some day of it we could
make if--"

"I--I don't have to go back, Eddie."

His face expanded into his widest smile.

"Gee, that's great! That's just great!"

Silence.

"What you thinking of, little lady, sitting there so pretty and all?"

"N-nothing."

"Nothing? Aw, surely something!"

A tear formed and zigzagged down her cheek.

"Nothing, honest; only I--I feel right happy."

"That's just how you oughtta feel, little lady."

"In three months, if--aw, ain't I the nut?"

"It'll be a big Christmas, won't it, little missy, for both of us? A big
Christmas for both of us; you as sound and round as a peach again, and
me shooting up like a skyrocket on the pay roll."

A laugh bubbled to her lips before the tear was dry.

"In three months I won't be a T.B., not even a little bit."

"Sh-h-h! On the farm we wasn't allowed to say even that. We wasn't
supposed to even know what them letters mean."

"Don't you know what they mean, Eddie?"

"Sure I do!" He leaned toward her and placed his hand lightly over hers.
"T.B.--True Blue--that's what they mean, little lady."

She could feel the veins in his palm throbbing.




MR. EBERDEEN'S HOUSE[9]

By ARTHUR JOHNSON

From _The Century_

[9] Copyright, 1915, by The Century Company. Copyright, 1916, by Arthur
    Johnson.


It loomed there, high and large, uncompromised by the gloom of mist
about it, unruffled by the easterly gusts that bent the two rows of
larches which stretched in deliberate diagonal lines from the street
to the corners of its grim façade. Hastings could hear the beating of
the sea; it was probably in that chaos of space behind the house. As
he stood leaning against one of the tall gate-posts and surveying the
scene, he began to feel, almost in spite of himself, in sympathy with
it.

A motor drew up near where he stood. Instinctively his attention was
directed from it to the green Georgian portal, which at the moment was
drawn in to permit somebody to pass out. She was in glaring contrast to
her setting; she was fresh and lovely, young and fashionable-looking.
She paused on the wide stone step, glanced up at the sky, opened her
umbrella, and briskly proceeded down the avenue to the gate. Within a
few yards of it she raised her eyes from the puddled gravel and started
back at sight of him.

"Jack!" she cried out. "How did you get here? Why didn't you tell me? I
am this minute on my way to meet you."

"I'm admiring your summer home, Julia--Julia dear," he said to her,
a little constrained. "It's sad and desolate, and everything that I
suppose you want it to be. I expected to hate it. I thought that having
spent most of my life away from all this, I should have lost every scrap
of--tolerance for New England. But ever since I set foot in Rockface--"

"When _did_ you, Jack?" she demanded.

"An hour ago. I've been in the strangest mood ever since."

"Come, now, and tell me about it," she suddenly saw the need to say,
walking away from him to dismiss the grinning chauffeur.

Hastings lingered alone in the hall.

"It's much nicer by the fire," Julia called to him impatiently from
the next room. And he followed the sound of her voice; he moved slowly
over to a chair, opposite her own, and sat down, forgetting to talk.
"I vow I'm amused," she exclaimed, "at the way you take it. You've made
letters full of fun of me for settling my parents 'on that ugly little
Massachusetts point'; you've laid it all down to my 'Middle-Western love
of Puritan relics' and 'Eastern culturine,' and scorned my 'romantic
inexperience'; and here you come, redolent of Europe, to be as much
impressed by our choice as if you were a Montana school-girl!" He smiled
back, but it was obvious that he hadn't heard a word. "What's the matter
with you, Jacky?" she asked interestedly; "had a bad journey?"

He tried to concentrate his faculties on looking genial and at the same
time intelligent.

"It was just like me, Julia," he began, the ghost of cheerfulness on
his face. "I took the earliest sort of train, instead of the one I
telephoned you I'd take. You see, to have landed at night, after all
the years--think of it! And then to go walking around by myself, seeing
things crop suddenly up that I hadn't thought of since--well--scarcely
since I was born. No wonder I couldn't sleep. This morning, like a
stranded idiot, I got out at that little way-station of yours, and
realized for the first time that I didn't have a blessed idea where
you lived."

"Rockface is about as enormous as a biscuit. Anybody could have told
you."

"That's the strangest part of it," recollected Hastings. "You see, I
had a curious hunch about it; I felt a little forsaken. I was actually
surprised and irritated that somebody--I didn't know who--wasn't waiting
to meet me.

"There was something about the place, Julia," he gravely pursued, "made
me feel justified in thinking a hospitable welcome was due me ... Oh
I don't mean because you were here! But--well--the veil of sea-turn
that half-hid the buildings across the square made me feel the need of
some kind of greeting--I expected one!--right on the spot! Can you
understand? And--instead--the cold east wind blew round me as if I were
an outcast.

"I stole down the first crooked street I came to. I stared at the
house-fronts, at the little square panes of the sagging window-sashes,
at the dingy doors, with those short, steep flights of steps leading
down to the side-walks."

Julia sobered to a tentative frown. Jack's eyes were bigger than
usual, and he did look, notwithstanding the feverish flush on his
cheeks, rather fagged. How she had been counting the days for him
to come! It didn't seem possible that the visit which he had been
promising for so long to make her should have finally materialized.
Wasn't it really an indication,--she pondered while again happily she
sized up the situation,--if he took so much trouble for her, that he
did, after all, care more perhaps than she had sometimes thought? But
what an extraordinary meeting it had been! He had at once launched
forth on this extreme discourse. She sat back, and let her eyes rest
on him with amused tolerance, her smile attentively adjusted to suit
his mood; for her moment's anxiety vanished at further sight of his
strong, broad shoulders and the handsome appearance he made in her
favorite high-back chair, his firm hands grasping the arms of it.

"You've stayed away from America too long," she said carelessly; "Paris
is bad for you."

He leaned forward, his delicately modeled cheekbones emphasized by the
firelight, his hair becomingly awry.

"I _knew_ it would all be as it was," he went inspiredly on. "There was
a thick clump of hedge, cold and dreary in the mist, that awoke pictures
of a prison I used to dread the sight of when I was--I don't know how
old. Once I partly thought I must be dreaming; so I put out my hand and
touched the wet, sodden picket of an old fence. I looked suspiciously
behind me. But there was only an old man behind, fully two hundred yards
away. Then the idea came to me that it would be a relief to talk to
somebody; I hadn't interchanged a word with any one since I got off the
ship. All kinds of impressions, you see, had been accumulating, and they
thronged like phantoms about me.

"I wanted to hear myself speak--to see if I could. So I turned, and
waited for him to come. The rain was dripping all around; there wasn't
another sound anywhere. Now, this is the queerest thing of all: what do
you think I said to him?" Jack leaned forward, his eyes darting
intensely over her face. "I said: 'Can you tell me the way to Mr.
Eberdeen's house?'"

"Mr.--_Eberdeen's_ house!" She stood abruptly up. "Who--who told you,"
she gasped, "that this was Mr. Eberdeen's house?"

He stood up, too, stepping back from her. "You must have told me," he
said, aware of his quivering lips, "in one of your letters. The name
came to me--"

"I never told you," she stated emphatically, "I never told any
one--for--for--why did you ask such a question of that old man?"

His gaze wandered.

"My throat felt parched from disuse. It took a distinct effort to make
the words sound articulate.

"'Sure, now,' answered the old man, while I was still puzzling to
explain to myself the question I had asked him, 'but never have I
heard it called _that_--not since my father died from the cold he
caught drivin' the mare up from Portsville. Ther' was a time, in the
days when they talked of it bein' ha'nted, you'd hear folks call it
Eberdeen Manor; but not--no, and my father likely's been dead these
forty years now--never, Mr. Eberdeen's house!"

"'Mr. Eberdeen--there was such a person, then?'

"'There'll be a time, me boy, when they'll doubt yerself was a living
thing.' He straightened his bent body reprehensibly; he shook his head.
'Walk back to the next corner,' he muttered, 'and turn to yer left.
It'll be down there ber the cliffs, if nobody's stolen it. Somebody'll
sure 'nough be there ter point it out to yer.'

"'I'm a stranger,' I apologized; 'I really didn't know.'

"'_Know!_' he shouted. 'Who was it owned the land this 'ere street
runs over? Who built it? Who was it paid fer the church on the hill?
Who did fer the sick, and gave to the poor, and got nothin' hisself
fer the trouble but grief and loneliness and a broken heart? Wher'
did yer come from?'

"And he surveyed me, as if the mere fact of his seeing me for the first
time made him doubt my intentions. Still I stood there waiting.

"'What was he like? What did he do? Who was he?' I couldn't help
flinging out in my wonderment.

"'As good's'll ever come back from wher' yer've been, or 'll pray fer
the like of yer, I reckon. Judge not, I tell yer, that yer be not
yerself judged.'

"I tried to smile at the old man.

"'Good-day to yer,' he grumbled, and walked back in the direction from
which he had come. I watched until he was lost in the thickness."

Julia looked at Hastings in astonishment. Just another glimmer of
anxiety crossed her mind; but any foolish worry she might have had for
him was merged in her consciousness of something indeed more staggering.

"Do you think," she brooded, "that it can be true--that--that the house
is--_was_--haunted?"

"I had," Jack unresponsively continued--"I couldn't help it--on the
way a queer loathing of the little village. The gaunt house-fronts
obtruded themselves so obstinately, so self-satisfiedly, like anemic
country parsons, with their eyes close together, giving me a mean,
soulless stare. Every object testified to its lack of any temperamental
share in the joy of living. The emptiness of the streets seemed
pitiless; their narrowness was oppressive."

"I love every inch of it," said Julia, defiantly.

Hastings was silent. He looked at the dry, colorless walls, covered with
circuitous lines of crackling old paint.

"Was this furniture here, Julia?" he asked.

"Not this," she exclaimed with pride.

"No wonder," he argued half to himself, "that the next generation
preferred black walnut, even with all its grapes and gewgaws! Horrible
as it was, it wasn't so orthodox and priggish and mirthless as what came
before."

He strayed out into the hall again; he viewed its stateliness, its
expurgated elegance. "Well, this has got me, Julia--seriously," he said
with a surprised realization that she was standing beside him.
"It's--it's immense."

"Oh, _that_," she cried out, "from _you_!" And slowly she stepped closer
to say something to him; but she thought better of it. "Don't you
think," she just let slip, "I've made it look at least--well--_old_?"

"As only a Westerner could want to make it look." His sense of humor
affectionately covered any lack of enthusiasm.

"Come, Jacky," she urged at last, "I'll show you all of it before lunch
is ready."

The stairs rose straight in the rear of the hall, directly opposite the
main entrance, with its border of finely traceried windows, branching
squarely to right and left two thirds of the way up. By the first door
above the side whither Julia conducted her guest she stepped fondly back
and announced:

"This, Jack, is your room. I hope you will like it."

"Yes," he murmured, distractedly gazing about him.

Despite the freshness of everything, despite the new woolen carpets,
with their correct geometric designs, ones Julia had had copied from
some battered relics which she had somehow acquired, despite the new
chintzes and the recently refinished furniture so deliberately assembled
there for the first time, despite the spickness and spanness of each
suitably collected detail of the room's decorations, a musty smell in
the air caught his breath. The floor swooped reminiscently down toward
the right; the boards of it made a stifled creak as he stepped across
them. He himself was a little unsteady. The window gave on impenetrable
fog. Hastings threw up the sash and peered out into the dampness; he
heard the sound of unseen boats groping their ways through the distance;
the water lapped and laved below him.

"Jack!" Julia called.

He turned to her, dazed, smiling in that way he had of trying to conceal
his consciousness of inattention.

"Of course, it seems plain and spare and--rather humble, after Europe. I
know _that_."

As if directed by her words, his eyes swept rapidly over the room.

"It's no use, Julia," he answered; "if you're New England to the core,
you can't get free of it. I'd like every drop of New England blood
drained out of me, and something--say Hebrew or--or Middle-West," he
laughed, "substituted in place of it. To you this is 'pretty' and 'cozy'
and--and 'cheerful'; to me--well, it's like an orgy of blue laws; it's
the personification of witch-lore--like self-inflicted penance for I
don't know what." He glanced at her in excitement, shifting his hands
uneasily in and out of his pockets.

"Yes," she said slowly. "I had thought, nevertheless, that you might
like it."

"Like it?" he echoed. "That's the trouble. I wish I weren't so full of
the meaning of it all. Can you fancy how a monk might feel, who'd been
away on a vacation, just getting back to his cell? _Like_ it? I can't
help liking it. It's my proper setting; I see that fast enough. But
I've come back to find how inexorable and harsh and catechismical it is,
and naturally I resent being what I am. Oh--" he broke off, suddenly
realizing the folly of his harangue, and after another moment he added:
"It's delightful, Julia dear, really. If only all the Westerners could
come to New England and revive it--and all the New-Englanders move West
and revive themselves!"

They went on from room to room.

"You Westerners," Hastings reiterated--"oh, I don't just know what the
difference is, for you're New England, too. Only you've got so much else
mixed up with it. You've become free-lances; your more recent, less
bigoted adventures have made you forget."

"What?" asked Julia, indignantly.

But he was at a loss, as he looked about him, to explain, however
much each new survey of the scene convinced him. "Here," he muttered,
"everything has been steeping so long in the attenuated resolutions
that drove us to come; everything is still conscientiously
soaked--saturated--in the barren memory of it."

"_You're_ not," said Julia, testily, to draw him out. "Precious little
of it _you've_ had! Two years at a school! You're more foreign than you
are New England. Remember--your--"

"Yes. I don't forget I've one foreign ancestor to boast of, and bless
Heaven for it! How my great-grandmother ever happened to marry--see
this!" Hastings went on, incoherently catching her arm and waving his
other over the exquisite array of her "colonial" chamber. "Now, this, to
you, is--well--it's as 'amusing' as if you'd tried to furnish a room to
imitate one in Cinderella's palace, as 'interesting' as if you'd done it
Louis Sixteenth, or--or--its meaning is hardly more personal to you than
the room you furnished in Munich that winter."--She blushed admiringly
at memory of their first meeting.--"The problem appealed to you, and you
made it charming. But to me--"

"You really hate it," said Julia, determined to face the facts.

"I really love it," he retorted sadly, "the way you couldn't help loving
a parent, even though you mightn't believe in him."

"Jack," she characteristically cried out to him again, "there is one
thing more that I hardly dare show you then. You'll think me such a
fool. I--"

A servant appeared to announce that luncheon was ready.

"Don't say anything to _them_ against it," she told him on the way down.

That wasn't, however, what made him silent during the meal. He took
little part in the conversation except when Mr. and Mrs. Elliott plied
him with questions, which he then found himself answering with only
unsatisfactory vagueness--answers that he could do nothing, not even
when Julia flew tenderly to his rescue, to make any better. Yes, he
liked the house, he said gravely. It was a nice old house. And he
thought how murky, despite its new coats of cleaning, was that far
corner up near the ceiling. No, he wasn't sorry, he responded, that he
had left the École des Beaux Arts to devote all his time to painting; it
was the one thing he was suited for. Yes, his foreign great-grandfather
had been a portrait-painter. He couldn't remember what his name was.
Tremaine? Henry Tremaine. That was it. Julia was looking hard at him.
She was gazing down at her plate. He knew he had eaten nothing. He
could not eat. No, he wasn't at all hungry. Why was it so chilly? he
thought. Doubtless he had picked up a germ. The house, he muttered to
himself, was on his nerves. It was so everlastingly gloomy! Julia had
reinhabited it too authentically. "Eberdeen Manor"--"Mr. Eberdeen's
House." What names!

An hour afterward he told Julia he was dead sleepy and that, contrary
to all his habits, he was going up-stairs to take a nap. Dinner was
at seven? All right, he would be in better shape by then. He felt
wretchedly, but he didn't say so.

Out in the hall he paused a moment at the foot of the wide lower
staircase. The ticking of a good many clocks came to him from different
parts of the house; they seemed to focus their monotonous activity
especially on his hearing. Extraordinary recollections swept him. He
remembered having heard an old nurse, Sarah Teale, describe how her aunt
once rushed out the back door right in the midst of frying doughnuts,
and was instantly stricken with paralysis on account of it. There was
a low groaning; a moan floated to him from somewhere above. Bravely he
forced himself to climb the stairs toward it. He turned the knob. The
door stuck. He shook it again, and it yielded.


II

It was nearly dark when he awoke. A late, a very late, an unnaturally
late, afternoon dusk shadowed in streaks across the floor. He could
hardly breathe. The windows were close shut. The striped shades were
drawn down to the sills. But he could see the yellowed print of Da
Vinci's "Last Supper"--the one he had bought at Milan--hanging on the
panel above the empty hearth. There was the sand-shaker on his maple
desk. That old lithograph of the two kittens over beside the bureau was
crooked. He must remember to straighten it. The wall-paper was getting
dingy.

He stretched himself. A sharp pain was going through his head. But it
was late; he must get up and dress, or he wouldn't be ready in time.

The clothes he had just taken off lay across an arm of the painted
chair by his bed. He lifted the coat, and let it fall from his grasp.
He moved over to the wash-stand. The Chinese pitcher was as light as
if filled with air when he turned its nose to the basin. The hat-tub
stood on end between the wash-stand and the closet door. He reached
for the battered old red tassel of the bell-rope and pulled it. It
was so late,--it was getting later,--he must hurry, whether Simpkins
came or not. He could manage. And he opened the closet door, sighing
at the bothersome prospect of getting into his togs. He ran his hand
over his hair. Where was the mirror? And, damme! he had no light!

The shoes were a trifle hard to draw on, too small for him; the
breeches were badly in need of pressing; the coat was stiff. He began
opening drawers in the bureau, delving through piles of neatly folded
linen and silk. At last he chose a shirt and put it on over his head.
He laid aside the purple satin waistcoat until he should have arranged
his stock, which he found tight, and difficult to make meet in the back.
But he finally got it adjusted; he brought the thick, wide ends around
in front, tied them in a huge bow while he walked over to the window
and gazed out. Fine night. The mist had gone, the stars were dimly
appearing. He turned back for his waistcoat and jacket. By mistake he
opened the closet door again instead of the one which led into the hall.

"I knew you would come!" she said, approaching so near to him from
out the somber blackness of the garments which draped the walls that
he could see her quite plainly by the light of the candle in her hand.
She wasn't a day over twenty. If she was pale, it was more the pallor
of fright than of ill health, or perhaps only because her skin showed
so white, lighted by the faint glare, in contrast to her deep eyes and
to the thick, glossy braids bound round and round above her forehead.
"John, John, won't you speak to me?"

He took a step forward, faltering. At that moment there was a brusque
movement beside him, and he turned to behold there a young man, dressed
in knee-breeches, wearing a purple waistcoat and velvet coat, as like
unto himself as his own image.

"Duty bade me come," the stranger answered stiffly, as if it was for his
ears that her words had been intended.

Hastings' gaze flew to meet hers, which he was astonished to find still
directed on him instead of on the speaker. He felt himself melted to
pity by her frailness and beauty and charm, so that he turned almost
angrily toward the intruder, who, at that moment, however, began to
address her in tones Hastings could but admire:

"To you!" cried out the young stranger--"you, for whom duty knows no
promptings!"

At that, Hastings turned to her again, his heart rent by the plea she
uttered.

"But you love me? You love me? Oh, say it to me!" And she was looking
not at his counterpart; she was imploring _him_, she was stretching her
arms out to _him_, she was veritably making her plea to _him_, as if he
were the one who had elicited it.

"I will do anything for you--anything!" he would have promised her had
not the threat of the stranger so like unto himself interrupted.

"Don't mock my patience, Lydia," Hastings heard as once more he shifted
his eyes to the speaker.

It was maddening how from one to the other of them his sympathies
veered. The sepulchral voice of the man seemed to express Hastings'
own thoughts; yet her sweet appeal awoke resentful fury for what words
he dared say to her. If only Hastings might explain, when she stared
so reproachfully, that it was only he who had spoken!

Momentarily at a loss, she put the candle down on a little shelf. She
rubbed her hands one about the other as if her doing so might lessen
the affront which she had now somehow to meet. When at last she spoke,
her calm, even tones were like the loveliness of primroses; her eyes
were brimming with simple trustfulness.

"You own me, O my husband," she said, "heart--heart, body, and soul. Do
with me what you will."

Why should she be so abject? But when Hastings heard the voice of that
other, he was again awed by it.

"Think not that I haven't avenged myself!" the voice sneeringly
proclaimed.

Hastings looked. For the first time he noticed that the stranger's arm
was in a sling; there was a mole on the cheek near the corner of those
tightly compressed lips.

She shook like a leaf in a gale. For dread minutes she faced Hastings
tremblingly. Coming nearer to him she murmured:

"Are you badly hurt, my--my husband?"

Hastings glanced down at his own arm, on which her eyes seemed to rest;
then he suddenly beheld, almost as one beholds one's self in a mirror,
his counterpart recoil from her reach while he exclaimed scornfully:

"Don't--don't touch me! Nor pray think that your wiles will ever win
from me any forgiveness."

She stopped stock-still.

"Is he dead?" she demanded.

"Ah, then, you do admit, do you, that you love him?" the other flung
at her. "Say it to me! say it to me!" he charged, and he half closed his
eyes; "or--by Heaven! I will--"

Hastings felt the justice of this accusation, and turned doubtingly back
to the girl for her answer. She stared at him, waiting.

"What is the use?" she asked in despair. "Would you believe me?"

"If you _confess_ I will believe you," stated the stranger.

It seemed to Hastings that she grew visibly taller; her face underwent a
spasm of pain; and apparently unable longer to remain silent, she cried
out to him:

"Can it be that for you a confession is more to be believed than aught
which has not to be confessed?" And Hastings could feel the touch of her
hand cold on his wrist.

But the other insisted so convincingly that Hastings looked at him once
more with confidence.

"The truth," she said sadly, "is only for those who have faith; you--you
prefer the sinner, whom you may crush into a penitent. Your egotism
demands the power to forgive; you have not the courage to love."

The stranger took a step nearer her, but she was looking at Hastings.

"He is the only one who is worthy to believe me--he, whom you blame me
for loving. I do love him, then, but with a love no codes of yours can
understand. For I am innocent, to use the word by which you forgivingly
call the unjustly accused."

Hastings quailed beneath the bitterness of her irony; he saw, too, how
the man who so resembled him fell back against an old calico bag,
stuffed with remnants probably, that hung on a hook right behind where
he had been standing; but when he faced her once more, he marveled at
the change in her appearance.

Her brows were raised, contracted gently, resolutely; her eyes were
yearningly fixed on Hastings; her lips were parted tenderly for the
generous appeal she had at last found the need to make to him.

"Forgive me, O my husband!" she begged. "Nothing can come between
us, nothing shall. But I could not love you as I do if I loved not
others--if, for the chance love that came my way, I should give in
exchange no thanks. You understand me? You would not have me avoid
what I was made to love? You would not have me disregard the sunlight
and the sea and the stars in the sky? Yes, it is true, my husband, I
loved him. He said that my fingers on the spinet made into harmony all
the discords of the day; he said that I wove them away, with the notes
of birds and the sound of running brooks and the sighing of the wind,
into patterns, as in the long winter evenings I could spin flax at my
wheel. It made me happy to have him love me. It filled me with strength.
It taught me many new things I could do for you. John, John, say that
you forgive me?"

Though Hastings wanted to take her in his arms, he was impelled to turn
away from her and to view that silent figure still leaning against
the calico bag, whose head was lifted haughtily in deference to her
supplication.

"He loved you, too," she continued to Hastings, "because you loved
me. He did not mean to kiss me." She just raised her hands, as if
involuntarily, and let them fall at her sides. "You thought that he
was stealing me from you. He couldn't; he can't; and nobody can--now,
nor ever. His kiss was as pure as the perfume of lilies, pressed close
to breathe; it but made sweeter your love and mine, your life and mine."

"Adulteress! With my curses go to him, then, forever!"

The cry brought Hastings round to that other whose presence he had
forgotten. But next moment she was down before him; Hastings felt her
arms tight clasped about his knees.

"My husband, listen to me!" she implored. "I--we--there is somebody
else to be considered." Hastings shuddered. "We--you and I--shall be
the parents of a child! I have not told you. For the sake of our child,
from you, that child's father, I must ask forgiveness!"

She bowed her head sobbingly against Hastings. He put his hand on her
hair and was drawing her up to him when the stranger rushed forward to
tear her fiercely away.

"Lies! lies!" the stranger ranted. "Go to him, I tell you! _His_
child--his mistress shall not dishonor my house. Go to him, for he
isn't dead, and he needs you--you who are not needed here."

"Don't! don't!" she screamed out to Hastings. "I am your wife, the
mother of your--!"

Hastings sprang toward her. He saw that her hands were raised straight
up in the air. Just as he was about to reach forth to her, the stranger
plunged before him, caught the gray chiffon from her shoulders, and
pressed it madly on her throat. Hastings leaped upon him, pulled him
away, pinned him to the floor, rolled over him.

She had gone. The room was in darkness.

Hastings felt for the door. It yielded. He opened another door, and
stepped through it.

His head swam in the midst of the lights outside. He slunk back like one
who hesitates to confront the unknown. The stairs were there before him;
he began to descend, his right hand held forth, his eyes fastened in
horror upon it. Then, as he heard the distant hum of voices below, once
more pompous and erect he swung down the last broad treads between the
landing and the floor.

A servant who passed uttered a cry and vanished; but that did not deter
him. With long strides he boldly rounded the familiar corner to the
dining-room door and entered.

He flourished his right hand wildly in the air. He saw that it was
bleeding.

"See, see!" he called to them. "At last he is dead. I have killed him! I
have killed him!"

The room seemed to recede in the distance. Something snapped inside his
brain. Everything was different. Mr. and Mrs. Elliott, with shrieks of
terror, were moving to the pantry-door far at the other end. Confusedly
he saw Julia try to force herself toward him; saw her half come, heard
his name on her lips. He wanted to smile, he wanted to bend down over
her affectionately; but when he sought to reach her with his bloody
hand, she shrank back, turned, and fled with the others. He shouted to
them; but he stumbled, and thought he might fall. He caught hold of the
table. After that all was blackness.

       *       *       *       *       *

He awoke amid the appointments of the chamber which Julia had called
his room. A quick flood of memories, some clear and accurate, others
vague and troublesome, inundated his tired consciousness. Gradually he
became aware of a thick, muddy pain rolling in dreadful rhythmic waves
through his head. He looked toward the clock on the mantelpiece to see
if it wasn't time to get up. He met the eyes of Mrs. Elliott. He lifted
himself, falling back on the pillow. The pillow was as cold as ice. She
came over to him.

"Dear boy--you feel better?"

"Better? Better?" he echoed. "Why are you here?"

"Your head is cooler. You've been--you--my dear child, you may as well
know it--you fainted last night--yesterday. You were worn out; you
caught cold, and had--a chill. You hadn't eaten anything since--not
since--" She fondled the bed-clothes. "You'll be all right now. Your
head--struck something. The doctor said you weren't to talk--"

It hurt him to move his eyes. The sockets ached. He tried hard to
realize what she had told him, repeating snatches of it feverishly over
to himself.

"Is it dangerous?" he finally got to the point of asking.

"No; a slight--just a very slight concussion."

"Concussion?" He floundered in the ominous meaning of it until Julia
came in. Every time he spoke they begged him not to. She looked so real
to him, so natural, so tangibly alive! When she put her face down by his
he trembled, and burst out crying like a child. He was afraid she would
go away. She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands about one of his. The
other hand lay bandaged on the counterpane.

The next day he was better, but he wasn't allowed to get up; and he
was secretly not sorry not to have to try. The weakness which followed
the first shock had made him submissive to the situation; he began to
be used to the fact that he was ill; even the nurse's presence he
philosophically accepted, so resigned was he to the necessity. He
asked questions concerning his pulse and temperature, wanted to know
if the bags of ice could be dispensed with soon. Julia read aloud to
him for an hour every morning.

But, having a half-attentive interest in what she read, he would look
fixedly at her and try to piece together his jumbled recollections.
Partly from lack of strength, mostly because he was loath to admit to
anybody that his brain wasn't normally clear, he let the questions which
rose to his lips pass unuttered. Once he exclaimed irrelevantly:

"Where, Julia, did that portrait come from?" And when he caught
the intensity of her stare, he looked around the walls, and, smiling
bashfully, concealed his embarrassment by saying, "I'm really listening,
but I must have dozed for a second." At times he would gaze wonderingly
at the ceiling, lose himself following the lines of the panels, or
counting the little square panes in the window-sashes. He sometimes
slept, but not quite soundly; half his somnolence was busy with
irrational calculations beyond his control.

A musty smell elusively kept fading as soon as he was aware of
breathing it; a dim room, in which the windows were shut close and
the shades pulled down, drifted through his quick fancy into darkness;
he would find himself deliriously sorting many strange garments into
piles, counting them, opening drawers to take others out, until the
accumulations drove him to despair. His right hand throbbed under the
tight bandage; he kept fingering the bandage and pressing on the sore
spots. Everything about him would seem suddenly definite and real as
compared with the dismal bewilderment of his dreamings. Perhaps the
doctor would enter, with professional cheerfulness. But then, right
in the middle of answering some question, Hastings would be blinded
by a great rush of bright light through the opened door.

A day came when all this phantasmagoria ceased to bother him; with
returning vigor he had to make less and less effort to forget it,
until at last it altogether went. The joy of new health swept over
him, filling the gaps and low, miasmic areas of his mentality, as
the rising tide fills the empty pools of the shore.


III

It was a month after the day of John Hastings's arrival at Rockface.
Unlike that day, the weather was sunny and mild; big cumulus clouds
moved languidly through the sky, as if it were midsummer instead of
late October. Julia was crocheting, and he was watching her. They
were sitting in front of the house on a leaf-strewn grass-plot near
the avenue between the lines of larches that, now calm in the windless
forenoon, stretched diagonally from the street to the corners of the
bland old façade.

"But if you knew all along," he, with his habitual freshness of wonder,
put to her, "that it was, that it _is_, really Mr. Eberdeen's house, why
in the name of things didn't you tell me _then_?"

She became irritatingly absorbed in her work.

"I thought," she at length said, "that you were pretending not to know,
and I wanted, in that case, to discover what other--what else you might
be holding back from me."

"Holding back from you? What _else_?" he echoed. "What else was there?"

"I wasn't sure, you see. Nothing that I knew," she affirmed frankly,
laughing away the sudden rigor of sadness on his face. "There was
another reason, though. There was something which I had been saving
for the very last moment to show you. But I was rather ashamed of
wanting to so much, and, after the way you had taken the rest of
the house, I hesitated. Just as I finally was going to, lunch was
ready--remember?"

Hastings awkwardly withdrew his right hand, which had been resting palm
downward on his knee, and thrust it into his pocket.

"Julia," he cried out, in characteristic disregard of all context,
"suppose Mr. Eberdeen should turn out to have been--well--a relative,
or something? It might account, you know, for my asking that question,
and--and for how everything here"--he looked inclusively round him--"for
how this all impressed me so."

She waited, hopeful of the time having at last come when he might
wish to confide in her whatever it was--if, indeed, he knew--that
had happened; but he only ingenuously continued to hold out to her
the possibility of his new idea.

"No," she told him, with a disappointment which she couldn't conceal,
"he wasn't. I've looked up his entire history. He died right here, and
he had no children. _Your_ pedigree I know by heart."

Hastings smiled at her thoroughness.

"What," he exclaimed, "if some unrecorded forebear of mine has eluded
you? Somebody," he dreamily improvised, "who knew this house, who was
familiar with every turn of the road, every habit of the mist. It's just
such a smug little, old, weather-worn town like Rockface, where any New
Englander is likely to find traces of forgotten ancestors."

The sound of footsteps made them both look toward the gate.

"Who is it? Why is he coming here?" Julia demanded half-indignantly
under her breath.

"The same old man I met, but so much older!" whispered Hastings,
unexpectedly puzzled whether to welcome or dread this intrusion.

"I have searched the streets through for him ever since," she
remonstrated; "I have asked everybody I saw, and no one in the whole
place could tell me of any old man answering his description."

They watched his slow, difficult approach over the gravel. He came
forward without making the slightest recognition of their presence.
Stopping full in front of them, he took off his hat, applied a
straggling red handkerchief uncertainly to his face, and stared
up at the house-front.

"They tell me," he muttered, not once looking at either of his
interlocutors, "that yer've been and sold it. So yer couldn't stand
it, eh, after all? It's what Al Makepeace said 'u'd be the case. Looks
innocent, though, as herself did, now, don't it?"

"We've sold it," Julia protested, "only because--because we can't stay
here. Jack--Mr. Hastings--and I are going to be married. We are going
to live in Europe. My father and mother didn't want--"

"Yer can't make a new dog out of an old dog, ner learn an old dog new
tricks," he went on disregardingly; "and I guess it's the same fur's
houses be concerned."

"Who are you, anyway?" Hastings asked, getting up to offer the old man a
chair.

"Who am I?" the old man echoed, suddenly attentive. "Dear me, dear me!
Whose father was it as planted--and I had his own word fer it--all these
'ere tam'rack trees, and dug the well by the south door? And seen the
lady of the house herself, mind yer, go out 'tween them stone posts fer
the last time--and darker than pitch it was, too--on her way that night
she went to meet Henry--"

At this point the old man was seized by a fit of coughing. When he
recovered from it, he just stood there, gazing ahead of him, shaken with
the palsy of years, so that he failed to heed the questions they thrice
repeated to him.

"No wonder yer couldn't sleep in it, with her curse on the big empty
halls! When the crops themselves died the night afterward, without a
sign of a frost comin' down to touch them! It was the devil's own
guilt in her that did it, Al says. Poor man! poor man! And yer tried
ter dress it all up like a corpse, as if yer thought it was dead; but
it came to life on yer, did it?" he mumbled, laughing incomprehensibly
to himself. "When yer leavin'? To-morrer? Sooner the better fer yer, I
guess. Good-day." With which imprecation the old man turned, feebly put
on his hat, and dragged himself back down the avenue whence he had come.

They saw the last vestige of him disappear forever.

"He's like a broken spirit brooding over the neighborhood," Hastings
said, shivering despite himself.

Julia began to crochet again, nervously absorbed in what she was doing.

"His scattered, crazy words are like the last gasp of the little
village. How he epitomizes all the cramped, pent-up emotions of the
starved inhabitants who have gone--all the passions that must have
so drearily burnt themselves out here, with nothing to note but the
shifting of the winds or the digging of some well! They who were
obliged, from sheer ennui, to create dramas out of their Puritan
prejudices. Can't you breathe contagion in the very atmosphere?
Julia, I've had enough of it; I'm glad we're going. If I stayed
here a month longer, I should get to feel as indigenous as that
gnarled old apple-tree; the ghosts of the soil would claim me."

She stood up and walked away from him across the gravel avenue, as
if doing so might help her to seize this occasion for what she had
decided at last to tell him. She realized that she must be quick,
that in another hour her parents' return might end this one good
opportunity for which she had longed and waited.

"Jack dear," she said, moving back toward him, seeing how her own
excitement was reflected in the way he, too, had arisen and taken
a few steps towards her, "to-morrow is our last day, and there's
something that we must talk about before we go."

His head was bowed, his eyes focused tensely up at hers, his arms
hanging beside him; the sensitive smile hovered more and more dimly
on his lips; his whole body swayed imperceptibly, like the beating
of a pulse.

"Jack," she got out, going still closer to him, "I want to show
you--Mrs. Eberdeen's room."

He would never quite realize the fullness of the shock it gave him;
no deliberate attack could have been so vulnerably aimed, and the
completeness of the blow was the greater for being one which he had
been unwittingly preparing all along to receive. The house looked
miles away; far over it three ducks flew southward.

On the landing above the broad part of the staircase they paused
a moment. Instead of going up the left branch, which led to Jack's
door, she took him to the right, where, at the head of the stairs,
there was another door directly opposite his. As soon as he saw it
he went forward quickly and turned the knob. It stuck; it was locked;
and rather timorously he stepped back to meet Julia's searching look
as she handed him a rusty old key.

The musty smell poured out on them like the damp from an opened vault.

She took his hand. They stepped across the threshold.

He saw the lithograph of the two kittens, age-worn and time-blurred,
still crooked on the wall beside the bureau; there was the sand-shaker
on the maple desk; there hung the yellowed print of the "Last Supper"
above the fireplace--all stark and ghostly in that uncannily late
afternoon light, which not even the morning sun could dispel.

He clutched her hand. He looked at the bed, which hadn't been smoothed
or touched since he had lain in it a month ago. He remembered it
as uncomprehendingly as one remembers mislaying a lost object in a
forgotten place. He remembered waking. But the rest he had done was
lost in the shadows.

"So this is where it happened--_here!_ How have I ever been in this room
before?"

"_What_ happened?" she asked him eagerly, firmly.

"I fainted--before I was sick. But why--why here?" he begged.

She had prepared her answer; she had many times rehearsed it; but the
words now served inadequately.

"You hadn't eaten anything," she stated softly. "You hadn't slept. You
had a fever, and your brain was so tired from--from everything that when
you started for _your_ room,--the one opposite, which I had shown to
you,--you carelessly turned to the right, and came into this room
instead, which I hadn't had a chance yet to tell you about. Haven't
you ever known, _since_, that you did it?"

He shook his head.

"This was Mrs. Eberdeen's room," she went on. "It has always been
just like this,--at least I think it has,--always, since the house was
built. I kept it as a curiosity. I called it Mrs. Eberdeen's room
because the natives said she was wicked and had brought ruin to the
house. I reasoned that this was why nobody had taken these things away
or changed them--the wall-paper, I mean, the bed, the carpet, the
pictures. And there's precisely one thing," she impetuously concluded,
as if she couldn't postpone longer telling him, "that I myself have
added."

Hastings smiled wanly at her. She guided him round to the wall at the
side of the door in front of which they had been standing; she started
to speak again before she saw what it was to which she had referred; and
so her own words prevented her from hearing the smothered sound of his
recognition.

"I found this," she said, trying to speak carelessly and forcing herself
steadfastly to regard it, "in an old shop twelve miles down the Poochuck
Road. Isn't it quaint? I got it--because, Jack, it looked like you,
and--and because it exactly fitted this panel!"

But her attempted gaiety sank dismally in the silence which followed.
They just stood there. The minutes thudded by; the mustiness enwrapped
them. Outside the window a dead piece of branch fell crackling to the
ground. Gradually he grew to be unaware of her presence, so sharp and
rapid were the currents which successively swept him; and her petty
curiosity, all her poor need for speculation, was lost in the depth of
the spell cast over him now. She dared not look at him, she dared not
take her eyes off the object before them.

It was crudely painted. It was the portrait of a young man dressed a
hundred or more years ago. He seemed to be walking forward out of the
picture. In many places the pigment was so nearly gone that the brown
fuzz of canvas showed through. The colors clung as delicate as cobwebs
to the stern face and erect stalwart figure.

"Who is it?" Hastings articulated, scarce audibly. But though he had
to ask, if only to save himself from going mad, his words were no more
than frail signals of his distress, for he knew that he alone knew the
answer. Electrically, crashingly, it had been borne in upon him at
almost the first instant of his beholding them where it was that he had
seen before those tightly compressed lips, with the mole still visible
near the corner; he knew those calm, cruel eyes, still averted from his
own; in a flash he had identified the purple satin waistcoat.

"You, Jack,"--she faced him determinedly--"you looked like _him_; you
were like him, absolutely, in every detail, when you came into the
dining-room!"

"When I came--" he repeated at a loss.

"Yes. It wasn't here, in this room, that you fainted. You went outside,
down the stairs. Elizabeth saw you. You pushed open the dining-room
door. Mother, father, I--we all saw you come in, wearing clothes like
_these_," she pointed.

"Yes, yes, yes. I remember; I did put them on."

"But you didn't, you couldn't have! O Jack, don't you understand me? You
weren't _really_ wearing them!"

All at once he felt something crunch beneath his feet, and he looked
down, then back up at the portrait. The large square of glass which
apparently once covered it had been shattered; there were a few
triangles still sticking in the edge of the frame; the rest was in
smaller bits on the floor. Instinctively he brought his right hand
to a level with his face, and saw the scar upon it.

"It's a mystery, Jack dear. Can't you see it is? And it is so much more
interesting never to explain it," she essayed fearfully, feigning a
laugh of regained naturalness. "We shall never, never find out who he
was, by whom it was painted, or what made you break it, or why--"

"Ah," he shouted eagerly, defying, as the memories came crowding into
his brain, the doubts which had freshly assailed him. "I told you it
might be possible! And he did have, after all--for that man was the
father of her child!"

"Whose child?" Julia gasped.

But love and pity for her whom he could not name kept him from
answering. And in the drift of his silence the vision capriciously
failed him. He looked at Julia. He looked back at the wall. It was
nothing but a funny old picture which hung there confronting them.
The commonplaceness, beside it, of Julia's long-drawn expression made
him snicker, until, as a result of this accidental reaction, they were
both actually giggling aloud.

He turned away from her. She watched him cross to the bureau. He pulled
out each one of the drawers in turn. He peered blankly into them, where
there was only the smell of mold and whirring dust to greet his pains.

He persistently scanned the room again. What had become of the hat-tub?
Why had the Chinese water-jug gone from the squalid little wash-stand?
Baffled and solemn, he went back over to her.

"Haven't you taken some things away?"

"Nothing. Not even so much as a splinter. What are you trying to find?"

Timidly catching her hand he cried:

"Come with me, please." And he drew her to the closet door. But when he
opened it, he let go her hand in his amazement.

A slit of window at the far end let in a ray of sun. There were rows and
rows of wooden hooks, but there seemed nothing on them. Steeling himself
boldly to view it, he turned to where there might have dangled that
calico bag stuffed with pieces against which the stranger had leaned. He
went forward and felt over the empty spaces to satisfy himself.

"Yes, Julia," he slowly brought out, "you are right; it was a dream--a
mystery." And he nodded vacantly to her.

"If only, Jack, you could remember it all!"

She stretched out her arms to him. But just as she was coming nearer, he
caught sight of something lying between them on the floor. He darted for
it, picked it up, and ran with it out of the shadow. Then, in terror, he
saw that it was a piece of crumpled gray chiffon, and that there were
the stains of blood upon it.




VENGEANCE IS MINE[10]

BY VIRGIL JORDAN

From _Everybody's Magazine_

[10] Copyright, 1915, by The Ridgway Company. Copyright, 1916, by Virgil
     Jordan.


A psychologist has said that most dreams indicate some deep fear or some
deep wish that lies dormant in the dreamer. One curious thing about this
is that the psychologist was a German. Another is that none of my
companions in the dugout at Le Prêtre seemed to find in my experience
anything entirely new to them. I leave you to judge which it was--fear
or desire--that came to light in me in the trenches of Pont-à-Mousson.

Foot by foot we had driven the Germans out of the forest of Le Prêtre;
and when the winter came down on us we had brought up behind the ridge
overlooking the Moselle, with the enemy on the other side, fifteen miles
away from Metz.

They managed to keep the river open, but otherwise let us alone. There
was nothing to do for weeks but to sit tight. With cement, moss, burlap,
and a few rugs and a boiler and some steam-pipe we stole at
Pont-à-Mousson, we made our dugouts pretty comfortable.

Excepting myself and the rest of the aëroplane corps, our work had been
each day to do so and so much digging, hauling, figuring, firing into
the air, mechanically protecting ourselves from shells that we took as
a matter of course, like wind and rain. We did not even know when we had
won a point against the unseen enemy. We did not feel their resistance
as one feels a push. Some one who had charge of those matters figured it
out on paper, and we moved forward or back as their calculations said.
Outside our company we knew nothing of the general state of affairs.

Once in a while, especially about Christmas, one of us would get
a bundle of books, papers and magazines from a friend. Then we
talked--talked; we discussed again and again the reasons for the war,
the object of it, what we were going to do to Germany when it was over.
Every evening we tried Germany over again, put her culture, commerce,
social system on the rack, found her guilty and had her hanged, drawn,
and quartered.

Christmas Eve, 1914, I had turned in warm and excited and confused
with the whirl of ideas we had been discussing, gathered around our
steam-pipe. I had a restless night in the stuffy dugout. About midnight
the German firing commenced in the direction of Metz. Toward morning,
Christmas Day, they stopped, and I fell into a long, dreamy sleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was Christmas Eve, 1916. Two long, haggard years of the war had
dragged by, to a wailing crescendo of misery, famine, disease, and
madness. We had been hurled up and down an invisible line of death,
bending and pressing it back and forth like a horde of ants at a thread.

Every human thought and fact had by now changed in us. As we formerly
recognized our friends, we seemed to know each other now as the citizens
of a new state on earth, in which the people did not live by productive
labor, nor in houses, nor in families, but like strange bees in an
unknown place, sexless, unconscious of our activity, destroying instead
of building. It was as if we had been born that way. All memory of
another life was sunk deep into the subconscious. We had become highly
specialized things, yet knew not in what or for what. Birth and death
had lost their meaning.

Tens of thousands of us had disappeared. Thousands took their places
nonchalantly. As the opening of the third year approached, there was
in the air the wild and brooding sense of the millions of German and
Austrian lives and as many of the Allies that had gone out before their
time.

Earth seemed to stir into consciousness of it.

The carnival of Chaos had spread like a wanton dementia. Italy had
long since flung aside her sane reserve and plunged into the carnage
for the shreds of Austria she desired--Tyrol, Dalmatia, Istria, and
Albania. Rumania and Greece had joined with Servia and bound the Balkans
into a temporary brotherhood. Together with Russia and Italy at Haskoi
they had scattered the crazy Turkish army like chaff and swarmed on to
the Bosphorus. The allied fleet drove a withering wedge of steel and
fire through the Dardanelles. Constantinople fell.

As to a Bacchanal of Blood, the colonies tore out of the map every
shred of German colonial territory there was, and poured into Europe
their flood of black, white, and yellow men. Little Denmark, catching
the festive spirit, reached out for Schleswig-Holstein; and the rest,
coveting the Kiel Canal, lent a willing hand to the useful tool.
Holland, sore from being the frail buffer between the struggling
combatants, placed her interests in the British hands, and opened
another gate to the heart of Germany.

Russia debouched her million after million upon the East, and though
they died dumbly like flies before the German walls of steel at Thorn
and Bromberg, they swept the Germans back over the Vistula and out of
East Prussia down to the line of the Warthe and Oder. Austria, torn by
internal dissension, was ringed in the upper basin of the Danube, where
the Tyrol, the Carpathians, and the Germans protected the few shattered
loyal ones.

There was not a German vessel left on the Seven Seas. Her fleet had been
put to sleep in the Frisian marshes, outnumbered by the British on the
outside, and cut off from supplies by troops landed through Denmark and
Holland.

On the West they stood behind the Rhine. The drive had been rapid and
relentless from all sides. They left their villages empty except for the
dead as they went before the closing ring of steel. They took everything
with them that might be used as fuel, as material for ammunition, and
left their cities razed more completely than the invader could have done
it.

Christmas night found us where Ludwigshafen had been. For two months we
had stood, unable to move an inch farther. The thick deluge of fire the
Germans rolled upon us at every advance amazed us. There could not long
be a bit of iron or copper or saltpeter or food left inside the ring.

We had no knowledge of the source of this indomitable resistance. For
months not a living soul had been able to pass across the lines, nor
had a single message of any kind or a reply to any, by any means, come
out of Germany. For three to five miles about the lines there was a
devastated ring, bare of everything, swept by fire and death. Beyond
that was grim and gruesome silence. The airmen could see little. Houses
were apparently deserted and the people lived in the woods or in the
ground. Every particle of earth that could be spared was used to grow
something to eat. In the large cities buildings and bridges were torn
down. Their cut stone and iron went to the making of fort and cannon.

This Christmas Eve, as we sat in our cement dugout, the silence outside
was brooding and heavy. Snow had fallen for a week and there had been no
fighting. In the intervals of our talk there was only the sound of a
famished cat's wailing outside. We talked of the war, and of what we
were going to do with Germany when the end came.

The talk of the world had been done. The nations at home sat like the
knitting ring about the guillotine, waiting for the final scene to be
staged. Germany was no more in the world's mind. They had tried to
think about her. Their thought had been brought to folly and confusion.
Already she was forgotten. She had become a piece of territory that
shortly their armies would occupy. Condemnations of her culture, of her
aspirations, of her part in the greatest of the world's wars, had come
to nothing, and were abandoned. Pompous plans for her reorganization,
superior homilies to the German people on peace and freedom from their
wicked masters, good advice on the improvement of their culture--all
these had been written to a shred. To preserve its dignity the world
wished to forget them. Its dull, avid gaze saw not beyond the moment
toward which it had strained, leaving its mind and simple sincerity of
soul behind.

This was the night of the final assault. In a circle of three hundred
miles, the word was written, on land and sea, in seven tongues and among
a score of races--"AT MIDNIGHT." We were then to draw tight the halter
upon the throat of Germany. Der Tag had become The Hour--Ours. The
mailed fist was to have its gauntlet stripped from it and a naked hand
should pay us tribute.

Steadily we had battered down the stone and steel chain about her. We
stood before the Rhine in dead of winter. At one sweep we were to
stretch our arm across it and with the other crush the mighty militant
menace that lay at bay between.

The slopes that were old in story, that had sustained the surge of
unnumbered hordes from East and West and South and North; in whose
grapes were the bloods of Roman, Teuton, Slav, Mongol, and Frank; that
had been the source and shelter of a race's song, science, and
story--lay in silent slumber, muffled in midwinter's snows.

That race stood at bay before its fellow's vengeance. By this time
all those of alien blood had dropped away from its single body like
engrafted limbs. Its trunk stood bare and barkless before the blast,
we to wring from its bloody, unbowed head, obeisance to our will--a will
that had begun in covetousness of commerce, in rancor of humiliating
reminiscence, in rage of race rivalry, a will that had grown beyond our
grasp, beyond our consciousness. We lusted for the day that should press
from Germany's lips, "Your will be done."

Unthinking were we that then would come the days of dull and devious
diplomacy, of division of domain, of dragging indemnity from a people
dumb and disheartened by devastation and death. At all costs to beat the
breath from her body! The hour had come when this resistant something
should be ours, ours, the Briton's, the Frenchman's, the Russian's, the
Italian's, the Serb's, the Rumanian's, the Montenegrin's, the Dane's,
the Mongol's!

At midnight we moved, in silence. It seemed as if we heard from the
Carpathians to the Rhine, from the sea to the Alps, the anthem of arms,
the stir of destruction go up as we moved. We wrangled for the outpost
places, that when the closing of the steel ring was flashed across the
circle we might be first to see the white flag at our point.

I was fortunate--one of the three sent to see how clear the road from
Ludwigshafen to Mannheim, and to cover the river crossing.

I was off and my aëroplane rose quickly. There were no lights beyond the
Rhine. Where Mannheim used to be was darkness. The three miles between
us and the river lay motionless in the moonlight. The Rhine was tight in
ice. The batteries at the angle of the Neckar were invisible. In wonder
I came down to three hundred feet and circled, watching our men creep
tentatively up to the sharp-cut bank, hesitate, clamber down, and start
across the ice recklessly. They were not spiked, never dreaming of
getting to the ice at all.

The dark figures slipped and slid and fell. It was so still and
the moon so bright I could hear the cracks shoot across the untried
sheet and see the men's faces twisted in apprehension. They were the
only moving things. It was clear the Germans had fallen back. They
had abandoned Malstatt by night--but Mannheim--and the Rhine! It
was unbelievable. I rose and coasted down to above the Mannheim
parade-ground. There was nothing to be heard but the distant stir
of our line.

I touched. My machine ran along, bumping over hundreds of bodies
lightly covered by the new snow. I got out, stumbled over them at
my feet, felt them. They were not long dead. I looked about me at the
dark, silent city of Mannheim. A panic took me. I ran to my machine,
tried to get it off, but failed and sat numb and transfixed, vainly
groping in the darkness of my mind for the thought that would not
form, till my comrades came to me with blanched faces and bit by bit
in swift succession pieced for me the words that could not find
utterance, having never been uttered in the world's life before.

The rest--a flowing phantasmagoria that tore me too far out of human
experience, even of dream--to tell again. The thousands crumpled up
in full-dress uniform, stained and tattered, beneath the new snow of
the parade-ground, fallen at a moment, at a word, hands here and there
stiffened in salute to the flag slow moving in the graying winter's
dawn. Death we had seen,--but here in the streets and in the houses,
in all corners and in all byways, the vivid faces of those who had
sought death freely, each face telling with ghastly eloquence a tale
that had never been told in the life of man, of a race self-destroyed
at a moment, at a word, for a vision which it alone had understood,
leaving its epitaph in the words on the poison vials which a government
machine efficient to the last had supplied--"_Der Tag ist zu uns_"--"The
Day is Ours."

Then through the blenching words that flashed along the closed circle of
steel in all the tongues of Europe, the shrinking thought leaped to our
dumb, numb mind and throbbed upon them like the insistent resounding
clangor of a titanic brazen shield, as if beaten by a grimacing god:

Germany is yours, O sons of men! What now?

       *       *       *       *       *

I woke at dawn to the boisterous, bold boom of the batteries of Metz.
They seemed to speak in glorious wide-mouthed joy of Til Eulenspiegel
and the young Siegfried.

I thanked God for the Germans.





THE WEAVER WHO CLAD THE SUMMER[11]

BY HARRIS MERTON LYON

From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_

[11] Copyright, 1915, by The Illustrated Sunday Magazine. Copyright,
     1916, by Harris Merton Lyon.


I had always felt vaguely that there must be at times an intense pathos
which overcame the master-worker in perishable materials--the actor
in his supreme moment; the singer, the musician--I thought--must feel
a bitter regret that his glory cannot live but must die, _in articulo
gloriæ_, with the sound, the effect he has created. Bernhardt seemed
to me to have that in the back of her mind when she exulted over her
appearance in the moving pictures. "I am immortal," she cried,
dramatically--always dramatic, that old lady--"I am a film." So thin
a bridge to immortality!

The actor, the singer, the musician; struggling through years and over
obstacles to attain perfection--and then what? A brief triumph in a
perishable art; a transient, fugitive gracing of a day, an hour, a
moment ... and then another forgotten mortal artist. I remembered
Gautier's decision, "The coin outlasts Tiberius." Paint, chisel, then,
or write if you wish your work to endure.

No doubt here was wisdom in a little box; and I fell to wondering
stupidly what there could possibly be in being a worker at the other,
the evanescent thing. I remembered a certain kind of moth that dies soon
after it is born. Are these people moths?

And then one night a ragtag ghost came and answered me.


I

It was eleven o'clock. Outside it was snowing, and so I remained in
Pigalle's, loath to leave, and killing the time with a book. Pigalle's
was one of those basement eating places in New York's West Thirties, a
comfy, tight, cosy sort of a cellar. An Italian table d'hôte, of course,
though not like the usual; it had more character and less popularity.
You seldom saw a blond skin there, the place being unknown to the
night-tramping hordes of avid New Yorkers who crowd into all the
"foreign" places and devour all the foreign food they can find. Mostly
the _habitués_ were French and Italian, gentle, noisy people who did,
in their way, slight damage to the fine arts. By nine-thirty, they were
done eating and gone; almost all the lights were turned out and chairs
were piled up on the tables, out of the way of the early morning mop.
By ten Pigalle and his wife and several others, mostly sculptors, scene
painters and musicians, were gathered beneath the light at the main
table and had begun their nightly game of poker. From then on it was
slim gambling and loud, staccato chatter in French and Italian.

At eleven, then, this night, the cautious door-bell tinkled. Some kind
of a world knocking at mine and wanting to get in, I thought. Some kind
of an adventure out there, demanding to be encountered; some kind of a
soul pounding at the walls of my soul. Every time the doorbell tinkles,
whoever has this Show is setting a new scene. Or, no. The wall opens
and the genie slips through, spreads his rug on the ground and begins
to make new magic before your very eyes. Never a doorbell rang yet, I
thought, that didn't bring a bit of heaven or hell--or mere
purgatory--with it.

At eleven the doorbell tinkled and the fat little
waitress-maid-scrubwoman-second cook, a Lombard wench by the name, the
sweet ineffable name of Philomène, waddled over and opened the door a
tiny space. Pigalle occasionally sold liquor without a license; hence
his caution as to visitors. She let in an odd apparition; with doubts,
I thought; certainly with mutterings and rolling of her black eyes. At
any rate she knew him, whether for well or ill.

The man cast his eyes around, saw that the only open table save the
poker table was the one I held, and came and sat down opposite me. With
a slightly insolent motion he dragged his chair around sidewise, turned
his shoulder to me and stared across the room at a gaudy lithograph of
the good ship Isabella bound for Naples, eighty-five dollars first
class. Philomène, with a porky look, asked him what he wished.

He announced in French that he desired of all things to "strangle a
parrokeet." This was some absurd slang for saying he wanted an absinthe.

He was a gaunt, tall, round-shouldered, queer old fellow with a gray
beard and a matted moustache, colored with the brown stain of cigarette
smoke. As ugly, I thought, as ugly as--oh, Socrates. And yet with
something lovable about him. And his combination of dress was certainly
odd enough: a frayed, cutaway coat with extremely long tails, dripping
wet and dangling cylindrically like sections of melted stovepipe; mussy,
baggy old gray trousers; a blue plush waistcoat; a black, but clean
muffler pinned tight up under his chin with a safety pin of the
brassiest; and a broad-brimmed black slouch hat, so broad of brim that
he walked forever in its shadow. This hat he kept on all the time. His
hands were long and clean and white--the virile, sensitive hands of a
poet, I thought. The eyes were the fascinating feature of the man. I
said to myself right away, "This man is a mystic." Though they burned
brightly in their sockets, they had a trick of turning abruptly dim; a
sort of film or veil, closed over them. "Druid or old Celt," I murmured.
"Give him a bit of mistletoe and he'd call his gods right down into my
_demi-tasse_ and scare the poker game into fits."

He swallowed his whole glass of absinthe in five gulps--a performance
that it would make a cow shudder to watch--threw back his head, and,
with a hoarse burr, called for another. This time he spoke English; but
the burr was decidedly Scotch. Pigalle now looked around at him--gross,
pleasant, Provençal Pigalle--and nodded; then went on placidly shuffling
the tiny cards in his great fat hands.

When the second absinthe came the old man took it slowly; settled
himself back on his shoulder-blades and the tail of his spine, and
pulled his hat down level with his eyes, as if he intended to spend
a considerable time with us. He called for a package of French
cigarettes--_cigarettes jaunes_--and proceeded to color his moustache
a riper brown. "Now my adventure has knocked and come in," I thought.
"If he is my adventure, I cannot help him--nor can I keep him off. He
is the _primum mobile_. It is up to him."

Suddenly my ears were shocked with a sharp argument between two young
fellows at the poker table. No, it was not about the game. One said
something; the other shrieked his answer; the first shouted back; the
second in a violent burst that had a finality about it slammed down his
cards and said something curt, with a solemn rolling of his eyes.

To my amazement, the odd old fish across from me boomed out with equal
violence: "_Ben trovato_!" None of them paid any attention to him.

I may have shown some of my surprise at his action, for he turned
suddenly to me, and asked: "Did you understand what he said?"

I replied that I did not.

"He said, roughly translated: 'Sufficient unto eternity is the glory of
the hour.' Yes. And it is true. Sufficient unto eternity is the glory of
the hour, young man. There's many an artist who must--" he stopped short
and began biting his finger ends.

My mind reverted to Bernhardt's film and the question about the moth.
"Who must--what?" I prodded. "Content himself with this catch phrase?"

"Content himself? Damnation, no! Must feel the keener triumph in a piece
of work, young man, just because it _is_ perishable." He thumped the
table and breathed hard. I got the full paregoric reek of his drink.
"What is this stork-legged Verlaine going to say?" I thought to myself.
But he contented himself with breathing for a few moments and that odd
film dropped over his eyes. "Just because the thing is ended, and dies
out of men's minds almost as soon as it is ended"--he seemed to be
feeling slowly for the words--"_if_ the work was right, was masterly
done, there's a sort of higher joy in knowing that it triumphed--and was
suddenly gone--like a sunset, like a light on the water, like a summer."
He asked abruptly: "You think I have 'spiders on my ceiling'--you think
I am crazy?"

"On the contrary. Can you make this clearer to me, this--?"

"My agreement that sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour?"
He sipped his absinthe. "With your patience. Let me see. I can give you
a favorite example of mine, about a friend of mine named Andy
Gordon--something like a story?" Now in his eyes there was an eager
shine.

"Go on."

"You know, my friend, I am Highland Scotch." (He pronounced it Heeland.)
"I may be queer. That all depends. But don't be alarmed at the way I put
things. I am not out of my head. Now this yarn about Andy Gordon.
Remember," said he, tapping the table with his long white finger, and
smiling at me in a charming manner, "sufficient unto eternity is the
glory of the hour. By the way, that young fellow over there who said
that is a violoncellist. 'Grand ducal 'cello to the imperial violin,'
you know."

I reconsidered him in the wink of an eye. He is not Socrates and he
is not Verlaine, I said to myself. This old lovable scarecrow is the
Ancient Mariner, and he is going to hold me with his glittering eye
and I am going to listen like a three years' child. The very fellow:
the "skinny hand," the "long gray beard"--and doubtless, too, the
true Ancient Mariner smelled of tobacco and drink. Certainly he talked
poetry. And so did my old man, miraculously, almost without effort. So
I sat back and listened, while he told his story.


II

Andy Gordon was for all his years a weaver in the mills at Glastonbury;
just an ordinary human stick or stone, as you might call it, doing his
mechanical work at the machine like a machine--until one day he drew
his pay, before you could say Jack Robinson, and started off walking
anywhere. He did it of a sudden and without seeming cause, but inwardly
there was a pressing retraction upon his soul that told him to get away
from the mechanical actualities.

He was feeling himself tired to death that day he drew his money; and,
of course, he was still young. And when a young man really wants very
much to die, he always comes out of that valley (at any rate, so people
say) with something new in his heart. Andy walked off anywhere, just so
he got to the hills.

And when he arrived at the hills, it was all very, very sweet. They
were just coming light yellow and the bluebirds were there before him,
touring the air just for the fun of it. And he made right away a queer
discovery--he knew for the first time that New Year's is not the first
day of January, at all. It's the first day of spring. Men are right
silly, Andy thought, calling some dead and sodden day in mid-winter by
the fancy, saucy name of New. The thing that is New, of course, is the
Green. The New Year is the Green Year.

Well, he had a hunk of bread in his pocket and some onions, and a man
can walk a long way upon the strength of that; so he went along up a
road when he felt like it and over a hill when he felt like that. But
most of the time his heart was very sad in his body and his mind took
no pleasure of the bluebirds. For he was thinking that his life wasn't
very much. He could see nothing in working year after year at the mill.
And yet that was all he was good for (so he thought).

On and on and on walked Andy. There were parts of those hills where
he walked that probably nobody, not even the Indian, ever traversed.
Anything could happen there--where the woods are dark with pine or sunny
with birch, and where echoes are the only memory (and they never last
long). It was so far away, up in through there; as I've said, anything
could happen there and we would never hear of it. All day long the cold
brooks run down, brown from the juices of the hemlock bark, over browned
stones--but of course they never talk and tell anything.

About noon, Andy found himself upon an old disused and overgrown
road, that for years had been traveled only by rabbits and skunks and
woodchucks and deer. And in a clearing at one side he saw an old log
cabin which had not been lived in for years and years. There was a bit
of brook at the back and an old wind-break of pine trees.

"Now I will eat a snack here," Andy said to himself, "and afterward, may
God have mercy on my soul, I will lie down and nap under the pine and
try to sleep off whatever it is that is bothering me."

And he did so, lying down beneath the pine--

He closed one eye gently and slowly (like letting a lid down on a box
of playthings) and then he closed the other eye the same way; and then
he knew nothing at all until suddenly a Voice came clap out of the blue
sky, calling his name, "Andy Gordon, man! Andy Gordon!" over the hills
and far.

Andy was amazed, of course, and said: "Here I am," with all his might,
but without making a bit of sound (just as we all do in dreams).

"The thing the matter with you," went on the great Voice, without
any introduction or anything of the sort but coming from everywhere
and nowhere at once, "is that you need Work. You are tired to death
with work; work-with-a-little-'w' is killing the soul out of you, Andy;
work-with-a-little-'w' always does that to men, if you give it the whole
chance. But that can't be helped. You're bound to have a whole lot of it
in your life But--_if_ you don't mix some Big-'W' Work in with it, then
indeed and indeed your life will be disastrous and your days will be
dead."

Andy did not know but what he was a-dreaming, though his eyes were now
wide open and he could see a robin hopping on the sod. "What is it you
mean by Big-'W' Work?" he asked.

"Of course, that's the Work you love for the Work's sake. It's Work you
do because you love the thing itself you're working for."

"You make that hard to understand," said Andy.

"Well, and it will be hard for people to understand _you_ when you're
at that sort of Work. They know well enough what you're about as long
as you turn 'em out yards of flannel down at Glastonbury, don't they?"

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Andy.

"And it would be the same way if you were a smith and turned 'em out
horse shoes, or a bill clerk and turned 'em out bills. They'd understand
_that_."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Andy.

"But the trouble with that work-with-a-little-'w' is that you do it only
for the pay there is in it--never for the love of it--that's why it
seems to you a shame to waste your whole life at it, you know."

"Indeed it does, and that's why I'm here away from it all," said Andy.

"All very well for a while," said the Voice. "But you'll have to keep on
at it somewhat--say, half your life at work-with-a-little-'w,' sitting
at your machine down yonder at the mill, turning 'em out the stuff they
know to be useful."

At that Andy fell silent and was sad again. Where would he find a
beginning at the Big-"W" Work? he asked himself.

But the Voice seemed to know what was in his mind, and answered him:
"I can give you that sort of Work. But it will take the best there is
in you to do that sort of Work; and the Work will surely die as soon
as you've accomplished it. And there will be no money in it for you,
at all, and a great deal of pain, care and weariness. But you will find
great love in your Work, and for your Work; and though it all vanishes
at once you will experience so wonderful a joy that it will seem as if,
night and day, God is whispering the secrets of life in your ear."

"What is the Work like?" asked Andy.

"Would you be willing to try it? Remember, it is difficult and wearying
and is dead as soon as it is born."

"Yes, by glory, I would," shouted Andy.

"_Then dress this maid until you die!_" commanded the Voice.

At the words, my friend, there was music of a million armies of all
sorts of birds, whistling and whirring over the green earth; and the
echoes of their tremendous singing shook all the trillions of tiny new
leaves and made the waves of air to dance--how shall I say?--like the
waves of a sea of music running out forever.

And there, on the grass, sure enough, was a little naked baby girl just
able to stand.

Very quiet, she was, and she looked up at Andy with eyes of a fairy
blue--as if they'd been colored by that very same fairy that goes about
with a brush coloring all the violets we ever see. (The ones we never
see, you know, are never colored.)

"We-e-ell!" cried Andy, puckering up his lips and squinting up his
eye-lids. "And who are you?"

"I'm early Summer," she lisped. "And I'm in a dreadful hurry. I'd like
some lemon-colored silk--for a mantle, you know?--And some apple-green
tassels for my hair. And please do be quick about it. I'm due, you see.
So I'll be ever so much obliged if you'll only hurry."

Andy whistled ruefully. "Now, _that_ would take some weaving, miss." He
hesitated. "I don't think I'm that skillful."

The little goddess looked hurriedly away over her shoulder as if she
were about to depart.

"And then," Andy continued, "I have no loom up here; and no warp; and no
filling. Nothing at all to work with, you see. I--"

But while he was stumbling about with his excuses, he saw the little one
actually fading away before his eyes; and a pain most bitter caught at
his heart, as if he were losing all his life. So he cried out:

"But I'll _try_ miss. Give me a little time, miss. Oh, please, my wee
bairn. I have an old handloom of my grandfather's; and I can go and
hurry and fetch all the stuff up here somehow and I'll work as fast as
I can. Indeed, I'll try my best."

Whereat, you see, the babe came back to him, smiling as sweetly as early
Summer ever smiled. "There really isn't such an awful hurry," she said.
"We can always have Weather, you know, and hold these things back a
bit."

That was the beginning of it.

Andy was about twenty-eight years old then, and he really had an awful
time of it at first trying to work out by hand the wonderful stuffs
and colors. There was the fern-design, spangled with Sweet William,
for instance. It was only to be the edging on a shawl for her, but he
spent three days and two nights on it; and then she asked him to make
it over with jack-in-the-pulpit inset, because she was sure to grow
tired very soon of Sweet William; then she changed her mind about
jack-in-the-pulpit and decided on wintergreen berries. This is just
a sample of one teeny bit of what she demanded. And Andy was very
awkward; so naturally he began complaining of his shuttles being too
clumsy for such fine work and the cobwebby filling getting tangled up
in his thumbs and after a bit of chewing his nails in despair he swore
the thing never could be done by hand.

No sooner had he got that out, than he heard the Voice roar loud like an
emperor's voice and say:

"The Big-'W' Work you love to do _must_ be done by hand. It _can't_ be
done any other way. That is why you were given thumbs, when the other
beasts got none."

So Andy found it was no use quarreling with the tools. He looked at his
hands, holding them up before him, and he thought: "Well, the Voice is
right. My hands wouldn't be any good without my thumbs. I have hands and
thumbs both and surely they were given me for the reason the Voice
mentions. At any rate, I know no better."

That made Andy set to work all the harder, for the idea of
Thumb-and-Craft was new to him; and that made his craft very interesting
to him, so that he became determined to stick to it until he got the
beauty out of it. (All the same, it was a frightfully backward Summer
that year; and nobody--except Andy--thought very well of her.)

He found indeed that he would have to work as fast as his fingers could
go. For the little Summer grew big and bigger in an amazingly short
time; and she kept throwing things away as fast as she put them on just
as the Voice had foretold.

Her days, though, went happily along, all full of sweet smells out of
cups and umbels of flowers and from the liquor of the leaves as they
steeped in the hot sun; and Andy himself felt quite happy (when he
wasn't terribly interested in his Work, and then he paid attention to
nothing at all save what was between his thumb and forefinger). But
while he worked and the Summer danced or dozed and grew before him, he
noticed something he had never noticed until then--As the Summer grew
older, she kept asking him for darker blues. While she was little she
had liked light greens, but week by week as time went on she insisted
more and more that he put in plenty of blue.

"Bluer and bluer," muttered Andy, and a wee shot of pain hit his heart.
"Yes, it's bluer and bluer, all right, I know. And finally some day
'twill all be steel-blue everywhere--in the snow-drifts and in the
skies--and neither the lass nor I will be here then."

Well may you believe that the departing of that first Summer was a sad
matter to him. He had done his best, you see, and a whole new world of
trying had been thrown open to him. And really he was beginning to get
the knack of that kind of weaving. And she was a fine big apple-cheeked
woman now, and--

"Well, if I do say it myself," growled Andy, "she looks very handsome in
those dresses; and for the first time in my life I take a Pride in my
Work."

But in spite of all that the Voice came, you must know, and told him
this little dream-girl must die, and there would be another, a different
little girl next year; and all the weaving must be gone through with
again.

"Shall I be weaving this lass her shroud?" asked Andy of the Voice.

But the Voice did not answer him.

When Andy told all this to _her_, his first Summer cried for a whole
week in amongst the trees and over the pastures and meadows--

And then one morning, she was no longer there.

Andy sat in the doorway of the cabin and stared across the hills. He
saw pine trees, ever green, and he made up his mind she had not died
but had gone into one of them so as to live forever. And then he fell to
thinking how there were so many millions of pine trees, and he guessed
to himself how each of the millions of Summers we have had must have
gone into one of those trees so as never to die but to be always of the
Green Folk, ever green. Well, he rocked back and forth keening soft to
himself, when he happened to hear the Voice again and the Voice said:

"You must see by now, Andy, it's just as I told you. You've no money
now, have you? You have spent it all, buying stuff to weave her garments
from. And she has worn the garments and has thrown them away; so there
is nothing left. Nothing left except the joy of good work well done, and
the feeling that God has really whispered in your ear. Now you'll have
to go back down to Glastonbury and the work with-the-little-'w.' You'll
have to stay there through the winter, Andy, and save your pay. But when
the time comes again, I'll call you."

So Andy put a padlock on the old log cabin where his loom was set up and
went back down to the mill-town. And being as he was a clever man, he
was put back on his job right away. And the gray mists of winter packed
down on the gray town and on the little gray people in the town. And
Andy worked at his machine.

The next spring he got the call, just as the Voice had said he would.
He drew his pay and, now that he knew a bit of what was required of him,
he laid in a fair supply of what he should need. Then he was off into
the hills. And one day there came the birds riding up on the winds like
cavaliers with feathers dancing about; and when they began their keen
bugling it pierced here and there and everywhere and made the walls of
Winter to tumble down the same as Jericho's did. And sure enough, there
a new babe teetered on her toes in the midst of the grass. Naked as a
flower she was, and she smiled up at him.

So he wove for her with the lightest heart you can ever imagine. But,
afterward, she went away in tears, the same as the other had done and as
all Summers do; and Andy picked out a new pine tree and guessed she was
keeping it green.

"Shall I be weaving _this_ lass her shroud?" he had asked again. But
again the Voice had made no answer.

So, naturally, the Summers came and came; and Andy wove and Worked and
clad them. In time he became, as you may well believe, the finest
hand-weaver (of Summer things, I mean) that was on earth in his day.
He became so good at his hand-work that in winter, at the mill, he was
actually clumsy at his machine! So it was just 'tother way round, as you
see, from what it was when he started. He was so clumsy then with his
hands that he thought everything had to be done by machine you remember.
But now he could outdo with his mortal hands anything that was ever done
by machine.

And another queer thing happened to him; he got so he had a totally
different idea of what work was. For his mates down in Glastonbury told
him, "You work only during the winter, don't you?"

Whereas, he found himself answering: "Why, no. 'Tis just the other way
around. I can work only during the summer. I can't work at all during
the winter. I'm dead all winter long--like all the Green Things." Then
his comrades spoke wildly of him and touched their heads. They had
learned the American idea, you see. Andy was crazy and he was lazy; and
he didn't know when he had a good job; and there was no money in
loafing. And all that sort of thing.

Now, I could keep you here all night telling you what all went on with
Summer after Summer, and Summer after Summer, and Summer after Summer;
until Andy grew old and wrinkled and ugly and very sweet in his mind and
cleverer and defter and finer in his finger-weaving. But the main carry
of it all is just as I've been telling you--So we have him coming along,
year after year, loving his little lasses and his blues and greens and
yellows and the way he could put 'em together and make Beauty.

That was the way he lived. And now this is the way he died.

Always, I think I told you, Andy asked the question: "And shall I be
weaving this lass a shroud?"

And never had the Voice answered him.

Well, came one Summer that lived a long, long time and ran and tried to
hide in far places when told she had to die; and to Andy it seemed he
loved that Summer so fond and fair, more than any and all. Andy was
sixty-eight then and for full forty years had done his winter stint and
his Big 'W' Work in the hills. But he did not feel tired that year. No;
he simply felt odd-like, as if it might be something unforeseen was
going to happen to him and it would not tell its name to him first. (You
know how you feel that way sometimes--as if wings were flying over your
head and you think you see their shadows on the grass; but you look up
and see no wings at all in the sky. Then you say: "Isn't the sky a queer
color to-day?" and you feel uneasy.)

So it came about that while that Summer lingered and hid and ran, Andy
again asked the old, old question he had always asked and to which he
had never received an answer:

"Shall I be weaving _this_ lass her shroud?"

And, lo and behold, the Voice, very soft and full of kindness, said: "If
'twill please you, you might as well, Andy. Your Work is done. But--a
question first. Have you ever once regretted the labor and the loss I
have put upon you?"

Andy said to himself, "I am about to die." In a loud, clear tone though
he answered: "Not once, O Voice! The joy I felt, the triumph I felt as
I handed her a bit of master-work and she flung it to the idle winds was
in itself enough. As I look back at it, there has been no labor and
there has been no loss. I have heard God's whisper in my ears, and that
will be sufficient for me until the end of eternity."

So the Voice said: "You know all there is to know. Weave the shroud."

Andy took steel-blue floss and at right angles he shot it with white;
and he made it so thin and fine that a million miles of it would not
weigh a hundred pounds. And he said to himself, "I will weave a hundred
pounds of it; and I'll wrap her in it myself, all softly, around and
around, like as if she was a dead bride of the Green Folk's king, I
will."

So Andy set to work, grim as Death himself. He bit his lip hard, and a
queer shine came into his eyes; and he worked day and night, fast and
faster, eating nothing and sleeping not at all--smoking away like a
demon on his pipe and weaving miles and miles to his heart's desire.

"It shall be my master-bit," he told himself.

He never even looked out the window, so close was he on the heel of his
work. "It shall be my master-bit," he kept saying to himself. The light
got poorer and dimmer and there was a shorter lasting of it. Less light
meant longer work; so it was thirty days and thirty nights before he got
it anywhere near finished. No, it wasn't fully done. How could it be?
The Summer Fellows never finished anything complete, you know.

But 'twas beautiful, just the same, all shimmering cold blue, and white
like apple blossoms that have blanched and are ready to fall. And there
was mile upon mile of it. It was wondrously fine, finer than anything
Andy had done until then. It was really his master-bit, as he had said
it would be. And he would have kept on and woven more, but--

He looked of a sudden out his window, one morning, in the gray, and he
could not see that Summer anywhere!

He went to the door and shaded his eyes with his hands and peered over
miles and miles of hills; and far down one gusset of valley he saw her
dull-green robes a-trailing. He cried for joy. (You know--when you have
lost a thing that you loved and found it again.)

Famished and weak he was, but he gathered the miles and pounds of that
shroud in his arms and started down the roads and over the hills after
her, calling till his heart would break and his voice went dry:

"Wait for me, lass. I've woven your shroud! Wait for me, lass. I'm
coming! I've your beautiful, downy shroud here--"

And he would stumble along, so weak the sweat broke out on him and he
scarce could lift a leg. But with the shroud over his arm, he went on
and on and on as best he could; his long, ragged gray hair a-flying and
a wild glare in his eyes and those eyes fast fixed on the Summer as she
slipped away.

'Twas in this fashion he came to the summit of a foothill and could go
no further. The cold had smitten to his bones, though the sweat still
stood on his skin. He dropped down on the ground and slept a bit--but
not sound asleep, and in his sleep he had awful dreams which made him
wake.

He started up, crying weakly: "I have your shroud, lass. Wait for me!"

And then he noticed--_It was snowing_!

The soft white flakes he saw, dropping upon the earth like light years,
my boy, years that themselves will be dropping and dropping forever
and ever by tens of hundreds of thousands of millions and covering
everything, all we do, all we are or were, far and wide with a white
sameness--a big mound here where a Hero Worked, a flatness there where
a zero worked--but all white, and all the same.

Andy put his hand to his forehead as if in a dream, and then--let me
see; what did he do?--he wrung his hands and he cried out:

"Look yonder, look yonder! Oh, now I see why the Voice never answered
me when I asked about the shroud! Now I see. I see my presumption, and I
understand the silence--'tis God Himself who weaves the shroud for every
Summer. Look yonder at the snowflakes a-coming down! I can see God's
shuttle weaving in and out amongst them. In and out amongst the years
of snowflakes I can see God's hand, pushing the shuttle and weaving the
shroud that will wrap the Summers and all and all--And I was so bold
with my poor little shroud here, my master-bit of weaving--"

And he broke down and began sobbing and threw himself face down upon the
ground, wiping away at his tears with the wonderful weft he had made.

Then the great Voice came out of the wind and the darkening sky, sturdy
as a great captain's, and shouted aloud through the thick of the flakes:

"_Pray, but regret not, Andy. You did the Work of your Hand!_"

So he died in the snow on the top of that hill, the contented artist
of a perished dream, the master worker in a fabric that immediately
dissolved. What he had told the Voice was true; the triumph he felt as
he handed over to the Summer a bit of his best and she threw it away to
the drifting winds like a bit of dying music--the joy he felt then was
enough to last him till eternity ended. He had heard God's whisper in
his ear; and he never would have heard it if he had stayed in the mill.
He had done what God wanted him to do, a beautiful thing as beautifully
as he knew how--and he felt at last that the beauty of it was somehow
not lost at all.


III

Abruptly the old man left and went out into the snowy night. For there
were tears in his eyes.


IV

The poker game was finished. Pigalle sauntered slowly over to my table.

"You know Handy?" he asked, slowly, in his broken English.

"Who's that?"

"The hole man that ees just go out. 'Is name ees Handy Gor-don." He
rolled his great expressive eyes. "'E's cra-zee man. Also wot you call
loafer: 'e do not work wen 'e wish not to. But, _mon Dieu_, 'ow 'e can
play, that man!" He made a suave, swelling gesture with his hands and
arms and heaved up his great bulk gracefully. "'Ow 'e can play! 'Ow 'e
can _play_!"

"He is Andy Gordon!" I exclaimed. "What is he? A weaver?"

"_Comment_?"

"A weaver? Makes cloth--like this?" I held up the corner of the
tablespread.

"_Corpo_, no!" ejaculated the astonished Pigalle. "Handy ees
violinist-a."




HEART OF YOUTH[12]

BY WALTER J. MUILENBURG

From _The Midland_

[12] Copyright, 1915, by John T. Frederick. Copyright, 1916, by Walter
     J. Muilenburg.


The boy on the cultivator straightened as the horses walked from the
soft, spongy ground of the cornfield to the firmer turf at the side
of the road. He spoke sharply to the plodding team and turned the
cultivator around, lowering the blades for another row. Then, when
the horses had fallen into a slow walk, he slouched down, and with
bent head watched the hills of young corn pass beneath him.

He could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, for his eager
eyes looked out from under soft lashes, and his face showed the smooth,
healthy tan of a boy. His brown hands were so small that he could barely
keep a firm grasp on the heavy levers. When he raised the blades, his
fingers became streaked with red and the corners of his mouth drew back
and grew hard with concentrated effort. Occasionally he tugged at the
reins knotted about his shoulders, but, except for his low, abrupt
commands to the horses, he was silent. At the end of the row he raised
the shovels, got off the cultivator stiffly, and stretched himself out
in the new spring grass of a little rise by the roadside.

All around him the world was full of soft color and light. Close by,
in the sun the corn-field was a sea of shimmering green, while the more
distant fields of grain were dark against the light ash of plowed land.
Above, the sun shone slanting from the blue of an early June sky. The
air, clean and clear, was already pervaded with the drowsy lassitude of
noon.

The boy looked listlessly out over the long rows of corn still to be
cultivated. Near at hand the young stalks seemed strong enough to win
in their struggle toward the sun, but the distant corn lay like a filmy
shadow of green on the black soil. Behind the cultivator, a flock of
blackbirds fed in the fresh-turned earth. The boy watched them with
half-shut eyes. When one of the birds had fed, it would hop upon a lump
of wet, black earth, and being satisfied that it could eat no more,
would skim in rapid, undulating flight to the row of willows in the next
pasture. On a fence-post, a meadow-lark filled the silence with a liquid
flow of music. As it laid back its head in an abandon of joy, the boy
noticed how the sun accentuated the vivid splash of black on its yellow
throat.

The meadow-lark flew away. The boy got up and climbed listlessly into
the cultivator seat. The tugs straightened and the horses walked again
into the corn. One of the team, however, a heavy, powerful bay, lagged
continually, at times almost stopping.

The cultivator slid sidewise, and the blades tore the corn out by the
roots. The boy jerked the reins, slapping them over the horse's back.
"Get along there, Jim!" he called. Jim pulled evenly for a moment, then
lagged again. In sudden violence of anger, the boy pulled cruelly at the
horse's mouth, cursing in low, abrupt sentences. The horse stopped, the
blades slipped, again tearing up a hill of corn. From sheer rage the boy
was silent, then he jumped from the cultivator, and gathering the slack
of the reins, hit the horse about the head with all his might. His face
was dry and white, his eyes blazing. As he continued to strike the
horse, he found expression.

"You damn, lazy brute, you! I'll show you who's running this job--you
or me!" His words came sharply, in gasps, between blows. Then he cursed
again; cursed the work and the horse. Fine lines of fatigue showed in
his face. At last he stopped. A slight color had come to his cheeks.
For a moment he watched the horse, which stood with muscles moving in
quivering ripples of pain and fear; then he walked soberly back and
climbed upon the cultivator seat. The horses moved on. They walked
evenly now, starting at any movement of the boy, who stared steadily
at the swiftly moving ground, two red spots still burning through the
tan of his cheeks.

They went once across the field. On the return, the boy stopped
impetuously by the road and jumping down from the seat walked to the
horse he had beaten. The horse quivered and shied toward its mate. The
boy stroked its neck.

"Whoa, Jim! Whoa, boy!" he repeated.

He hesitated a moment, then went across the road to the meadow and
picked an armful of young tufts of clover. He fed it to the horses, a
handful at a time. They ate eagerly, all trace of fear gone as they
reached out their necks for the young grass. Over the boy's face passed
a conflict of expressions. At one time the cheeks were soft, and a
boyish look lay in his eyes. Then came a strange, dry expression, as
of age, which formed tense lines about his mouth; but as he climbed up
to the seat of the cultivator, the softer expression remained.

The horses were beginning to draw at the tugs when the boy heard a horse
galloping on the road behind him. He looked back. One of the neighbor
boys, Bill Symonds, was riding furiously down the hill. The boy turned
quickly about in the seat as if he had not seen Bill and tried to hurry
the horses. What did Bill want, anyway? It was like him to blunder along
when he wasn't wanted! His big, greasy face shaded by the long hair
falling unkempt over his forehead had always made the boy dislike Bill.
He tightened the reins.

"Hey, Frank, wait a minute!" Bill slid awkwardly from the colt's back.

The boy twisted the reins about the levers and turned in the seat.

"How are you, Bill," he answered without animation.

Bill tied the colt, a bay, to the willows.

"Well, what do you think of my new colt?" He came closer and lounged
forward against the fence. "I broke him in myself--all alone, too! Now,
that was a job, Lord! You ought t' seen him buckin' an' standin' on his
hind legs!"

They were silent for a moment. Bill amused himself by flinging clods
at the colt, which jumped wildly each time one struck him, his body
quivering, his eyes white and distended.

After a few clods Bill turned to the boy.

"I guess maybe I'll be leavin' soon."

The boy looked up quickly.

"Yep. I'm goin' off to my brother's ranch in Dakota. I'm gettin' tired
of the work here--it's too hard. It's work, work, work all the time with
a little while for eatin' and sleepin'. All summer you c'n work your
head off and then in winter you can lay off for a couple of months and
don't know what to do."

The boy looked out over the fields. Even Bill could go away. The heavy,
flabby cheeks, from which the small eyes peered inquisitively, disgusted
the boy. Bill picked up another bit of turf and threw it so that the
colt jumped wildly, pulling the young willows almost to the ground.

The boy turned to Bill, his face flushed.

"Say--if you want to stay around here you got to cut out firing stones
at that colt. You'll never get 'im tame that way--you thick-headed
fool!"

Bill stood quiet for a moment. The boy saw an expression of incredulous
surprise on Bill's face. Then it became brick-red. He did not wait for
Bill to answer but started the horses.

When he looked back, Bill was riding away over the top of the hill, his
body swaying with the rhythm of the gallop. The boy was glad that Bill
was angry. He didn't want people around. And besides, why did Bill have
a chance to go away? His eyes grew hot.

The morning passed slowly. When finally the shadow of the cottonwood
tree at the corner of the pasture pointed directly to the north, the
boy unhitched, cleaned the cultivator shovels carefully with a handful
of grass and placed them upon the hooks. With the reins about his back,
he trudged up the long slope of the hill, through the warm dust,
swinging his water-pail in cadence with his steps. They reached the
top of the hill. The house was only a short distance from the road.
He could see his father carrying a basket of wood to the house. He
hoped that his father would not come and help him unharness the horses.
He wanted to be alone; he dreaded facing their conversation at the
dinner-table. His eyes grew hot again. Everything was so old to him!
He always came home just at dinner time, his father always worked about
the barn, finishing work a little before so that he might help unharness
the horses. And dinner was always ready when they came in the house. The
boy kicked a clod viciously.

At the water trough he stopped and the thirsty horses drank deeply. His
father came out of the barn, a pitchfork in his hand, and sat down on
the edge of the trough, fanning himself with his hat. The boy noticed
that his father seemed more tired than usual. His brown hair was already
mixed with gray and was damp where the hat had rested. His eyes seemed
less cheerful than usual, and his face less red.

When the horses raised their heads from the trough, the boy led them to
their stalls. His father followed him.

"How was cultivatin', Frank?" he asked as he stepped into the barn.

"Oh, it wasn't bad."

"The ground was pretty hard, wasn't it?"

"Not very."

In silence they unharnessed the horses, which buried their heads in the
newly-cut hay and blew the fragrant, spicy dust from their nostrils. As
the boy unloosed the collar of his horse, it slipped and fell upon his
foot. His face writhed in a flash of temper and he began cursing in a
low tone, heavily and deliberately. Then he picked up the collar and
struck the horse. Under lowered eyelashes he saw his father stand in the
doorway, his face white with repressed anger. The boy stopped suddenly.
He had never seen his father look like that before. He heard him turn in
the doorway.

The horses fed, they walked through the hot, deserted farm-yard to the
house. As they entered the shaded living-room, his mother came from the
kitchen, humming a bit of tune. Her eyes lit up when she saw them. She
talked cheerfully as she worked. The boy said nothing. He seemed to be
looking out of the open window into the orchard; instead, through his
lowered eyelashes, he followed his mother's movements about the room
as she set the small table for three, still humming as she worked. The
boy saw that she stopped often to cough. This was not unusual, but once
the cough became so strong that it left her face colorless. Uneasily
sympathetic, he noted that after this she did not hum again. Whenever
she looked his way, the boy turned his head, not so soon but that he
could see and feel the half-fearful appeal that darkened her eyes.

After the glasses had been filled, the three drew up to the table. The
dinner was eaten in silence. The eyes of the boy constantly returned to
his mother's face. Somehow she seemed different to-day. He wished that
she didn't wear that black dress, it made her face look too white and
her eyes too large and bright. He ate rapidly. Why didn't his father and
mother talk? They used to tease him about one of the neighbor girls. But
they had not for a long time now. He wondered why. Why didn't they say
something? It was too still.

As soon as he had finished his meal, he drank the water left in his
glass and pushed back his chair. His mother looked quickly at his
father. The boy watched them closely and uneasily. Both seemed to be
shrinking from something. His father carefully folded and unfolded his
newspaper. Then he laid it beside his plate and cleared his throat. He
turned in his chair.

"Wait a minute, Frank," he spoke with hesitation.

The boy turned, looked at his father a moment, and then sat down.

"I don't think we'll cultivate this afternoon, Frank," his father
commenced slowly.

"Why--" The boy started to speak but stopped. He saw the frightened
grayness return to his mother's face. His father, too, seemed restless.
He crossed and recrossed his knees nervously.

"Well, Frank," he continued, "it's this way. Your Ma ain't been feelin'
well for quite a while and we rode over to the doctor's this morning to
see what was the matter."

His mother had gone back of his chair. He could feel her hand on his
shoulders. He turned half-round, his hands grasping the chair tightly.

"You mustn't be scared, Frank--the doctor said it wasn't so very bad."

He could feel her twining his hair about her fingers.

He turned, faced his mother silently, half afraid, as though some grim
barrier stood between them. He saw fine lines about her gray eyes, and
their color seemed heavy and faded. The boy sat staring at his mother
with an intensity that made a color come to her cheeks, but he was not
looking at her any more. Instead, he was wondering fiercely why he had
never noticed the gray in her hair or the lines in her face, or the
cough. The cough--surely he might have noticed that. His body lay limp
against the back of the chair.

"The doctor said that Ma was pretty sick," his father was speaking on,
his voice devoid of life or feeling. "But he said that she 'ud be all
right if she went some place where the air was drier."

"What did he say it was?" he asked in a strained voice.

"It's her lungs, he says."

They were silent after this. He was looking out of the window at a
far-away straw-stack which lay a mass of dull gold in the sombre setting
of plowed land.

His mother still stood behind his chair. In the heavy silence of the
room he could hear her uneven breathing. He heard his father turn in his
chair.

"Well, Mother's got to go west--we might all of us go," he spoke with an
attempt at cheerfulness. "Maybe we can work a small farm out there."

"What will we do with the farm here?" As she spoke the boy felt his
mother's hand press more heavily on his shoulder. He turned from the
window and caught his father's eyes looking at him. He saw his face
flush.

"I guess we got to sell it. I can get a fair price. Help is scarce and
rent's low since the dry years. We can't afford to rent it."

Again the boy caught his father's glance resting hopefully on him.

"But we can't sell the old place; we have worked it too long."

The boy was uneasily conscious of the break in his mother's voice. He
sat up, his body stiffened. Did they expect him to stay on the farm? He
wouldn't--he could not do that! They had no right to ask this of him.
But he remembered the quick hope in his father's eyes.

He got up from his chair, walked past his mother without looking at her,
picked up his hat and went outside, closing the screen-door noiselessly
behind him.

The earth slept warm in the drowsiness of early afternoon. The freshness
of the morning had passed and a languorous mist had fallen. The boy
looked out to where earth and sky met in a haze of indefinable color.
What a wonderful earth was beyond! He turned and walked heavily away.
They hadn't any right to expect that!

Half-unconsciously he went toward the grove north of the house where he
had played when he was a little boy. The neighbor boys would collect in
the grove on a quiet summer afternoon, dressed as Indians, and in heavy
seriousness would plan a desperate attack on the little white house with
its green trimmings. What happy times they used to have! But he wasn't a
boy any more, he had grown up; still he felt an expectant eagerness as
he entered the cool shade of the trees.

He followed a path, indistinct now in the rank growth of gooseberry
bushes, until he reached his destination. A tree, broken off a couple of
feet from the ground, had left a high stump with some ragged splinters,
serving as the back of a natural chair.

The boy sat for a while, leaning back with lowered eyelashes. The dim
spaces of the grove brought old memories. As he brooded there, relaxed,
the sunlight coming in broken fragments through the oak leaves softened
his face into almost that of a child.

Suddenly he straightened in desperate rebellion. Why did things have
to happen so? He didn't want to grow older--he would rather be a boy.
If he were, his father and mother would not expect him to stay on the
farm. With his reflections came the picture of his mother, her dark
eyes shining unnaturally out of the rigid paleness of her face. Then
the black dress with its long folds--it was horrible. The boy's thoughts
blurred into a confusion of sharp emotions.

As he lay back again, with lowered eyelids, he was vaguely conscious
of the life about him. Robins hopped from branch to branch, singing
and chirping. A blue-jay, in a cracked crescendo, was attacking the
established order of things among birds. A bee droned idly past.
Occasionally all sounds ceased, and silence, deep and impenetrable,
seemed to close in. After a moment, the confused murmur of the woods
began again.

In the underbrush near him, the boy became aware of fluttering noise. At
first he could see nothing; then he saw a snake--a blue racer--writhing
along the ground, while above it, making queer little noises of
distress, hovered a brown wood-thrush. He stiffened. His flesh always
crawled at the sight of a snake! Yet, leaning forward, he watched
intently. The thrush, its body a blur of brown feathers, rose and
fell in continuous attack. Then he saw the reason. A few yards from
the tree-stump lay a nest, hidden in a clump of gooseberry bushes. Above
the rim showed a circle of hungry gaping beaks. The snake was crawling
steadily toward the nest.

It was almost there. The thrush became wild in fear for its young. Again
and again its body flashed in silent deadly attack. The snake, rearing
its head from the ground, its jaws wide, struck back at the fluttering
terror above it.

The snake reached the nest. It writhed over the edge. With a quick,
sharp note the bird flung itself upon its enemy. A blur of brown
feathers and a glimpse of a twisting, bluish body were all that the
boy could see. A moment, and the snake writhed out from the nest. The
thrush lay on the ground, blood crimsoning the speckled white of its
breast. Its wings fluttered slightly, then the body was still.

The boy leaned back against the trunk and closed his eyes. He released
his breath sharply. His throat contracted so that he almost choked. He
had always had a horror of seeing a creature maimed or killed. He felt
it doubly now, and he might have helped the bird,--no one else could.
Yet it was only a bird; such things happened continually--they had to
be: but he could not forget the flutterings of the dying thrush. Then,
suddenly, he remembered his mother.

After a long time, he opened his eyes. The trees, the sky,--all the
country was asleep; the absolute tranquillity of space lay lightly in
the air and bathed the earth with a drowsy light. And the boy yielded
himself to the silence. His eyes mirrored the mystic, reflective mood
of the afternoon.

In the west, ragged clouds massed together and spread over the sky,
their long streamers, black where they reached the sun, darkening the
earth with the gray misty twilight of the storm. Then a cool breeze
sprang up, the clouds receded, and the sun shone out.

The boy became conscious that it was late and jumped down from his seat.
He felt strangely cheerful. The confused emotions which had raged in him
all the afternoon had spent themselves, and he whistled as he walked on
between the trees. When he turned into the lane near the house, he could
see, in the west, a few black masses of cloud, vivid against the crimson
flame of the sky--wandering spirits in an infinity of lonely space.

At the windmill he stopped and looked toward the house. The kitchen was
lighted; the rest of the house was dark and shadowy. A thin spiral of
smoke twisted up until it became lost in the gray light. How home-like
it all was! The boy walked quickly toward the house, took the milk pails
from the hooks on the porch and went into the barn. The horses did
not raise their heads from the grain as he entered. The sound of their
crunching, the sweet smell of the hay, seemed part of the pervading rest
and content about him. His father came up from the gloom of the barn,
carrying a pail of milk. He glanced at the boy.

"I thought I'd do the chores to-night, son. You don't get a vacation
very often. You ought to rest."

"Oh!" The boy felt sudden embarrassment. He had a queer pity for his
father. He almost wished that he could have done the chores himself.

It was dark as they walked slowly to the house. In the dusk of the
east, the moon appeared red on the rim of the horizon. Everything seemed
asleep, yet infinite life still vibrated through its sleep. Out of the
oak-grove sounded the hopeless lament of the turtle-dove, voicing the
mystery and sadness of the night. From the farm to the north came the
faint cry of someone calling the cows, "Co-o, boss; co-o, boss!" A
moment, the boy felt as though it were the wonder and music of the
horizon that called. Then he smiled at the idea.

His father stopped on the porch. The boy knew what his father was
thinking, knew with a wave of pity and understanding. It seemed to him
there, in the darkness, that suddenly he was able to comprehend the
shadows which he had not known before in his boyish dream of life.

He took off his hat. The night wind was cool. How intense the night was!
Nature seemed a living and beautiful power, ever-veiled but always near.
For a moment his father rested his hand upon the boy's shoulder. The boy
moved closer to him.




THE END OF THE PATH[13]

BY NEWBOLD NOYES

From _Every Week_

[13] Copyright, 1915, by Every Week Corporation. Copyright, 1916, by
     Newbold Noyes.


Set far back in the hills that have thrown their wall of misty purple
about the laughing blue of Lake Como, on a sheer cliff three thousand
feet above the lake, stands a little weather-stained church. Beneath it
lie the two villages of Cadenabbia and Menaggio; behind and up are rank
on rank of shadowy mountains, sharply outlined against the sky,--the
foothills leading back to the giant Alps.

The last tiny cream-colored house of the villages stands a full two
miles this side of the tortuous path that winds up the face of the
chrome-colored cliff. Once a year, in a creeping procession of black
and white, the natives make a pilgrimage to the little church to pray
for rain in the dry season. Otherwise it is rarely visited.

Blagden climbed slowly up the narrow path that stretched like a clean
white ribbon from the little group of pastel-colored houses by the
water. There was not a breath of wind, not a rustle in the gray-green
olive trees that shimmered silver in the sunlight. Little lizards,
sunning themselves on warm flat stones, watched him with brilliant eyes,
and darted away to safety as he moved. The shadows of the cypress trees
barred the white path like rungs of a ladder. And Blagden, drinking deep
of the beauty of it all, climbed upward.

When he opened the low door of the little chapel the cold of the
darkness within was as another barrier. He stepped inside, his footsteps
echoing heavily through the shadows, though he walked on tiptoe. After
the brilliant sunlight outside he could make out but little of the
interior at first. At the far end four candles were burning, and he made
his way toward them across the worn floor.

In a cheap, tarnished frame of gilt, above the four flickering pencils
of light, hung a picture of the Virgin. Blagden stared at it in
amazement. It had evidently been painted by a master hand. Blagden
was no artist; but the face told him that. It was drawn with wonderful
appreciation of the woman's sweetness. Perhaps the eyes were what was
most wonderful,--pitiful, trusting, a little sad perhaps.

The life-sized figure, draped in smoke-colored blue, blended softly
with the dusky shadows, and the flickering candlelight lent a witchery
to blurred outlines that half deceived him,--at moments the picture
seemed alive. She was smiling a little wistful smile.

And the canvas over the heart of the Virgin was cut in a long, clean
stroke--and opened in a disfiguring gash. Beneath it, on a little stand,
lay a slim-bladed, vicious knife, covered with dust.

Blagden wonderingly stooped to pick it up--and a voice spoke out of the
darkness behind him.

"I would not touch it, Signor," it said, and Blagden wheeled guiltily.

A man was standing in the shadow, almost at his elbow.

He was old, the oldest man Blagden had ever seen, and he wore the long
brown gown of a monk. His face was like a withered leaf, lined and
yellow, and his hair was silver white.

Only the small, saurian eyes held Blagden with their strange brilliance.
The rest of his face was like a death mask.

"Why not?" said Blagden.

The monk stepped forward into the dim light, crossing himself as he
passed the picture. He looked hesitatingly at the younger man before
him, searching his face with his wonderfully piercing eyes. He seemed to
find there what he was searching for, and when he spoke Blagden wondered
at the gentleness of his voice.

"There is a story. Would the Signor care to hear?"

Blagden nodded, and the two moved back in the shadows a short distance
to the front line of little low chairs. Before them, over the dancing
light of the four candles, stood the mutilated picture of Mary, beneath
it the dust-covered dagger.

And then the withered monk began speaking, and Blagden listened, looking
up at the picture.

"It all happened a great many years ago," said the old man; "but I am
old, so I remember.

"Rosa was the girl's name. She lived with her father and mother in a
little house above Menaggio. And every day in the warm sunlight of the
open fields she sang as she watched the goats for the old people, and
her voice was like cool water laughing in the shadows of a little brook.

"She was always singing, little Rosa; for she was young, and the sun had
never stopped shining for her. People used to call her beautiful.

"And there was Giovanni. Each morning he would pass her home where the
yellow roses with the pink hearts grew so sweetly, and always she would
blow him a kiss from the little window.

"Then Giovanni would toil with all the strength of his youth, and he too
would sing while he toiled; for was it not all for her?

"Often Rosa's goats would stray toward Giovanni's vineyard as dusk
came, and they would drive them home together, always laughing, always
singing, hand in hand, as the sun slipped golden over the top of the
hills across the lake. Sometimes they would walk together in the
afterglow, and Giovanni would weave a crown of the little flowers that
grew about them, and his princess would wear it, laughing happily.

"They were like two children, Signor. There were nights spent together
on the lake, when he told her of his dreams, while the gentlest of winds
stirred her curls against his brown cheek, and the moon's wake stretched
like a golden pathway from shore to shore.

"They were to be married when the grapes were picked, people used to
whisper.

"And then one day a new force came into the girl's life. The Church,
Signor!

"No one understands when or why this comes to a young girl, I think.
She was torn with the idea that she should join her church, go into the
little nunnery across the lake, and leave the sunshine.

"She did not want to go, and it was a strange yet a beautiful thing.
This young, beautiful girl who seemed so much a part of the sunshine
and the flowers was to close the door of the Church upon it all!

"You are thinking it was strange, Signor.

"Giovanni was frantic--you can understand.

"He had dreamed so happily of that which was to be, that now to have the
cup snatched from his lips was torture. He took her little sun-kissed
hands in his and begged on his knees with tears streaming down his
cheeks. And Rosa wept also--but could not answer as he begged. I think
she loved the boy, Signor. Yet there is something stronger than the
love of a boy and a girl.

"She asked for one more night in which to decide. She would come up here
to this little church and pray for Mary to guide her. He kissed her cold
lips and came away.

"He was a boy, and he never doubted but that she would choose his strong
young arms.

"The girl came here. All night she knelt on the rough stone floor,
praying and--weeping; for she loved him. And the Virgin above the four
candles looked down with the great, wistful eyes you see--and bound
the girl's soul faster and faster to her own.

"And when morning came she entered the white walls across the lake
without seeing her lover again.

"Giovanni went mad, I think, when they told him. He screamed out his
hate for the world and his God, and rushed up the little white path to
where we are sitting now, Signor.

"Once here, he drew the dagger you see beneath the Virgin and stabbed
with an oath on his lips. That is why I did not let you touch it."

Blagden nodded, and the old monk was silent for a moment before he went
on.

"Giovanni disappeared for two days. When he came back his face was that
of a madman still. He was met by a white funeral winding up the little
path. You understand, Signor,--a virgin's funeral. Giovanni was hurrying
blindly past when they stopped him.

"There was no reproach spoken for what he had done, no bitterness; only
a kind of awe--and pity.

"Rosa had died on her knees in the nunnery at the exact time he stabbed
yonder picture. And they told him months afterward that her face was
strangely like that of the Virgin when they found her,--beautiful and
pleading and sad. There was no given cause for her death--there are
things we cannot understand. She was praying for strength, the sisters
said."

The monk ceased speaking, and for a long moment they sat silent, Blagden
and the withered, white-haired man, staring mutely up at the beautiful
face above them. It was Blagden who broke the silence.

"What do you think happened?" he asked slowly.

"I do not know," said the monk.

There was another pause, then Blagden spoke again.

"Anyway," he said, brushing his hand across his eyes, "she paid in part
the debt Giovanni owed his God."

"Yes?" said the monk softly. "I wonder, Signor! For I am Giovanni."




THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER[14]

BY SEUMAS O'BRIEN

From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_


[14] Copyright, 1915, by The Illustrated Sunday Magazine. Copyright,
     1916, by Seumas O'Brien.


When Standish McNeill started talking to his friend Felix O'Dowd as they
walked at a leisurely pace towards the town of Castlegregory on a June
morning, what he said was: "The world is a wonderful place when you come
to think about it, an' Ireland is a wonderful place an' so is America,
an' though there are lots of places like each other there's no place
like Ballysantamalo. When there's not sunshine there, there's moonshine
an' the handsomest women in the world live there, an' nowhere else
except in Ireland or the churchyards could you find such decent people."

"Decency," said Felix, "when you're poor is extravagance, and bad
example when you're rich."

"And why?" said Standish.

"Well," said Felix, "because the poor imitate the rich an' the rich give
to the poor an' when the poor give to each other they have nothing of
their own."

"That's communism you're talking," said Standish. "an' that always comes
from education an' enlightenment. Sure if the poor weren't dacent they'd
be rich an' if the rich were dacent they'd be poor an' if everyone had a
conscience they'd be less millionaires."

"'Tis a poor bird that can't pick for himself."

"But suppose a bird had a broken wing an' couldn't fly to where the
pickings were?" said Felix.

"Well, then bring the pickings to him. That would be charity."

"But charity is decency and wisdom is holding your tongue when you don't
know what you're talking about."

"If the people of Ballysantamalo are so decent, how is it that there are
so many bachelors there? Do you think it right to have all the young
women worrying their heads off reading trashy novels an' doin' all sorts
of silly things like fixin' their hair in a way that was never intended
by nature an' doin' so for years an' years an' havin' nothin' in the end
but the trouble of it all."

"Well, 'tis hard blamin' the young men because every young lady you
meet looks better to you than the last until you meet the next an' so
you go on to another until you're so old that no one would marry you at
all unless you had lots of money, a bad liver, an' a shaky heart."

"An old man without any sense, lots of money, a bad liver, an' a shaky
heart can always get a young lady to marry him," said Felix, "though
rheumatics, gout, an' a wooden leg are just as good in such a case."

"Every bit," said Standish, "but there's nothin' like a weak
constitution, a cold climate, an' a tendency to pneumonia."

"Old men are quare," said Felix.

"They are," said Standish, "an' if they were all only half as wise as
they think they are then they'd be only young fools in the world. I
don't wonder a bit at the suffragettes. An' a time will come when we
won't know men from women unless some one tells us so."

"Wisha, 'tis my belief that there will be a great reaction some day,
because women will never be able to stand the strain of doin' what
they please without encountering opposition. When a man falls in love
he falls into trouble likewise, an' when a woman isn't in trouble you
may be sure that there's something wrong with her."

"Well," said Standish, "I think we will leave the women where the devil
left St. Peter--"

"Where was that?" asked Felix.

"Alone," answered Standish.

"That would be all very fine if they stayed there," said Felix.

"Now," said Standish, "as I was talking of me travels in foreign
parts, I want to tell you about the morning I walked along the beach
at Ballysantamalo, an' a warm morning it was too. So I ses to meself,
'Standish McNeill,' ses I, 'what kind of a fool of a man are you? Why
don't you take a swim for yourself?' So I did take a swim, an' I swam
to the rocks where the seals goes to get their photograph's taken an'
while I was havin' a rest for meself I noticed a grasshopper sittin' a
short distance away an' 'pon me word, but he was the most sorrowful
lookin' grasshopper I ever saw before or since. Then all of a sudden a
monster whale comes up from the sea and lies down beside him an' ses:
'Well,' ses he, 'is that you? Who'd ever think of finding you here.
Why, there's nothing strange under the sun but the ways of woman.'

"''Tis me that's here, then,' said the grasshopper. 'Me grandmother died
last night an' she wasn't insured either.'

"'The practice of negligence is the curse of mankind and the root of
sorrow,' ses the whale. 'I suppose the poor old soul had her fill of
days, an' sure we all must die, an' 'tis cheaper to be dead than alive
at any time. A man never knows that he's dead when he's dead an' he
never knows he's alive until he's married.'

"'You're a great one to expatiate on things you know nothing about, like
the barbers and the cobblers,' said the grasshopper. 'I only want to
know if you're coming to the funeral to-morrow?'

"'I'm sorry I can't,' ses the whale. 'Me grandfather is getting married,
for the tenth time, an' as I was in China on the last few occasions I
must pay me respects by being present at to-morrow's festivities,' ses
he.

"'I'm sorry you can't come,' ses the grasshopper, 'because you are
heartily welcome an' you'd add prestige to the ceremony besides.'

"'I know that,' ses the whale, 'but America doesn't care much about
ceremony.'

"'Who told you that?' ses the grasshopper.

"'Haven't I me eyesight, an' don't I read the newspapers,' ses the
whale.

"'You mustn't read the society columns, then,' ses the grasshopper.

"'Wisha, for the love of St. Crispin,' ses the whale 'have they society
columns in the American newspapers?'

"'Indeed they have,' ses the grasshopper, 'and they oftentimes devote a
few columns to other matters when the dressmakers don't be busy.'

"'America is a strange country surely, a wonderful country, not to say
a word about the length and breadth of it. I swam around it twice last
week without stoppin,' to try an' reduce me weight, an' would you
believe me that I was tired after the journey, but the change of air
only added to me proportions.'

"'That's too bad,' said the grasshopper.

"'Are you an American?' said the whale.

"'Of course I am,' ses the grasshopper. 'You don't think 'tis the way
I'd be born at sea an' no nationality at all like yourself. I'm proud
of me country.'

"'And why, might I ask?'

"'Well don't we produce distinguished Irishmen? Don't we make Americans
of the Europeans and Europeans of the Americans? Think of all the
connoisseurs who wouldn't buy a work of art in their own country when
they could go to Europe and pay ten times its value for the pot-boilers
that does be turned out in the studios of Paris and London.'

"'There's nothin' like home industry,' ses the whale, 'in a foreign
country, I mean.'

"'After all, who knows anything about a work of art but the artist? and
very little he knows about it, either. A work of art is like a flower,
it grows, it happens. That's all. An' unless you charge the devil's own
price for it, people will think you are cheating them.'

"'Wisha, I suppose the best anyone can do is to take all you can get an'
if you want to be a philanthropist, give away what you don't want,' ses
the grasshopper.

"'All worth missing I catches,' ses the whale, 'an' all worth catchin'
I misses, like the fisherwoman who missed the fish and caught a crab.
How's things in Europe? I didn't see the papers this morning.'

"'Europe is in a bad way,' ses the grasshopper. 'She was preaching
civilization for centuries so that she might be prepared when war came
to annihilate herself.'

"'It looks that way to me,' ses the whale. 'Is there anything else worth
while going on in the world?'

"'There's the Irish question,' ses the grasshopper.

"'Where's that, Ireland is?' ses the whale. 'Isn't that an island to the
west of England?'

"'No,' ses the grasshopper, 'but England is an island to the east of
Ireland.'

"'Wisha,' ses the whale, 'it gives me indigestion to hear people talking
about Ireland. Sure, I nearly swallowed it up be mistake while I was on
a holiday in the Atlantic last year, an' I'm sorry now that I didn't.'

"'An' I'm sorry that you didn't try,' ses the grasshopper. 'Then you'd
know something about indigestion. The less you have to say about Ireland
the less you'll have to be sorry for. Remember that me father came from
Cork.'

"'Can't I say what I like?' ses the whale.

"'You can think what you like,' ses the grasshopper, 'but say what other
people like if you want to be a good politician.'

"'There's nothin' so much abused as politics,' ses the whale.

"'Except politicians,' ses the grasshopper. 'Only for the Irish they'd
be no one bothering about poetry and the drama to-day. Only for fools
they'd be no wise people an' only for sprats, hake, and mackerel there
'ud be no whales an' a good job that would be, too.'

"'What's that you're saying?' ses the whale very sharply.

"'Don't have me to lose me temper with you,' ses the grasshopper.

"'Wisha, bad luck to your impudence an' bad manners, you insignificant
little spalpeen. How dare you insult your superiors?' ses the whale.

"'Who's me superior?' ses the grasshopper. 'You, is it?'

"'Yes, me then,' ses the whale.

"'Another word from you,' ses the whale, 'an' I'll put you where
Napoleon put the oysters.'

"'Well,' ses the grasshopper, 'there's no doubt but vanity, ignorance
and ambition are three wonderful things an' you have them all.'

"'Neither you nor Napoleon, nor the Kaiser himself an' his hundred
million men could do hurt or harm to me. You could have every soldier
in the German Army, the French Army, an' the Salvation Army lookin'
for me an' I'd put the comether on them all.'

"'I can't stand this any longer,' ses the whale, an' then and there
he hits the rock a whack of his tail an' when I went to look for the
grasshopper, there he was sitting on the whale's nose as happy an'
contented as if nothing happened. An' when he jumped back to the rock
again he says: 'A little exercise when 'tis tempered with discretion,
never does any harm, but violent exertion is a very foolish thing if
you value your health. But it is only people who have no sinse but
think they have it all who make such errors.'

"'If I could get a hold of you,' ses the whale, 'I'd knock some of the
pride out of you.'

"'That would be an ungentlemanly way of displaying your displeasure,'
ses the grasshopper.

"'I'd scorn,' ses he, 'to use violent means with you, or do you physical
injury of any kind. All you want is self-control and a little education.
You should know that quantity without quality isn't as good as quality
without quantity.'

"'Sure 'tis I'm the fool to be wasting me time listening to the likes of
you,' ses the whale. 'If any of me family saw me now, I'd never hear the
end of it.'

"'Indeed,' ses the grasshopper, 'no one belonging to me would ever
recognize me ever again if they thought I was trying to make a whale
behave himself. There would be some excuse for one of my attainments
feeling proud. But as for you!--'

"'An' what in the name of nonsense can you do except give old guff out
of you?'

"'I haven't time to tell you all,' ses the grasshopper. 'But to
commence with, I can travel all over the world an' have the use of
trains, steamers, sailing ships and automobiles and will never be asked
to pay a cent, an' I can live on dry land all me life if I choose, while
you can't live under water, or over water, on land or on sea, and while
all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't catch me if they
were trying till the crack of doom, you could be caught be a few poor,
harmless sailors, who wouldn't know a crow from a cormorant, and who'd
sell your carcass to make oil for foolish wives to burn an' write
letters to other people's husbands an' fill the world with trouble.'

An' what about all the whalebone we supplies for ladies' corsets an'
paper knives, and what about all the stories we make for the novelists
an' the moving pictures an'--'"

"We're at the Sprig of Holly now," said Felix. "Is it a pint of porter
or a bottle you'll have?"

"I'll have a pint, I think," said Standish.




IN BERLIN[15]

BY MARY BOYLE O'REILLY

From _The Boston Daily Advertiser_

[15] Copyright, 1915, by The Boston Daily Advertiser.


The train crawling out of Berlin was filled with women and children,
hardly an able-bodied man. In one compartment a gray-haired Landsturm
soldier sat beside an elderly woman who seemed weak and ill. Above
the click-clack of the car wheels passengers could hear her counting:
"One, two, three," evidently absorbed in her own thoughts. Sometimes she
repeated the words at short intervals. Two girls tittered, thoughtlessly
exchanging vapid remarks about such extraordinary behavior. An elderly
man scowled reproval. Silence fell.

"One, two, three," repeated the obviously unconscious woman. Again the
girls giggled stupidly. The gray Landsturm leaned forward.

"Fräulein," he said gravely, "you will perhaps cease laughing when I
tell you that this poor lady is my wife. We have just lost our three
sons in battle. Before leaving for the front myself I must take their
mother to an insane asylum."

It became terribly quiet in the carriage.




THE WAITING YEARS[16]

BY KATHARINE METCALF ROOF

From _The Century Magazine_

[16] Copyright 1915, by The Century Co. Copyright, 1916, by Katharine
     Metcalf Roof.


The shadow on the sun-dial, blue upon its white-marble surface, marked
four o'clock, but its edge was broken by the irregular silhouette of
an encroaching rose-bush. The sun-dial in the midst of the wide, sunny
garden, the old red-brick house among the elms--these were the most
sharply defined elements of Mark Faraday's picture of home. Born in
Italy, for most of his young life a sojourner in foreign lands, he yet
remembered being utterly happy at "Aunt Lucretia's" when at seven he
had made his first visit to his mother's country. That memory had never
faded. He had recalled and reclaimed each detail of its serene charm at
his second visit ten years later, after his mother's death. And now in
America again, he had naturally gravitated toward the old place.

The young man gave a careless friendliness to his faded little aunt,
and spent long hours with his dreams, creative and subjective, in her
garden. For the most part they were dreams of unheard melodies, for Mark
Faraday was a composer. So little of his life had been spent in his own
country that outside the garden he felt less at home in America than in
Florence or Vienna. Yet place mattered little to him. An artist and a
creator, his kingdom was within. Of his environment he demanded only
harmony and space.

A bee buzzed into the open heart of a rose, bending it with his weight.
A little breeze wafted its perfume toward him. His eyes wandered over
the delicate, riotous color of the sweet-pea hedge and rested in content
upon the mignonette border. A circular path of white gravel surrounded
the grass plot about the dial. From it as a center curved paths wandered
outward dividing the flower-beds. The flowers were planted without much
regularity except for the borders of four o'clock and mignonette. It was
this spot that had inspired Mark's song cycle, "The Sun-dial." A certain
quality of youth and freshness as natural as a spring in the woods had
won for it quick recognition. Mark's artistic tendency was not exotic.
Although not retrogressive, he had drunk deep at the springs of Bach,
Schubert, and Mozart, and the basis of his work was sound.

Alone in the fragrant silence, he began dreaming sounds. The notes
of the bee's drone, one high, one low, combining in uneven rhythm,
had given him a suggestion for an accompaniment. His mind was far
away, working out his pattern of harmony, when another sound, actual,
familiar, broke into his reverie--the preliminary chords of one of
the songs of his "Sun-dial" cycle, "Youth and Crabbéd Age." Then a
woman began to sing. It was Stella's voice; he recognized it at once,
pleasant, sufficiently trained. Stella was a fair musician and was
fond of trying over new music, but to-day she was playing in a more
musicianly manner than he had believed her capable of playing. He
had expected that his aunt would ask her over for tea. He enjoyed
the girl's companionship. He had not known many of his own countrywomen.
Their naturalness and freedom from the personal attitude of the
Continental woman interested him. It was perhaps this quality in
Stella that most appealed to him. He was aware that his Aunt Lucretia
hoped for a romantic conclusion to the friendship. He himself had given
the matter an occasional thought. Yet somehow Stella's definiteness
left no room for the imaginative element to become active. It was
difficult for him to visualize her as an established factor in his
life, either as the restful center of a home or the adaptable companion
of his nomadic wanderings. The precise nature of her lack he had not
felt the necessity to characterize.

The concluding chords of his song vibrated into silence. With the
ceasing of the actual sounds, his imagined music began to move again
along its interrupted course; then a crash of Brahms broke into his
creative weavings, and he frowned, not only for the interruption:
Stella should not attempt Brahms. The hazardous attempt broke off
as abruptly as it had begun. There was something fragmentary, or
perhaps more correctly, something unfinished about Stella. She never
had just fulfilled the promise of their first meeting. The bee theme
drifted into his mind again, and had progressed a few measures, when
the evolving harmonic pattern was again invaded by an alien presence,
a soft one of dim outline and faded voice, his Aunt Lucretia.

"You are coming in for tea, Mark." She paused, characteristically
tentative, wavering, fearful of intruding, a gentle, kindly, ineffectual
presence. "And Stella is here," she added.

"I heard her." Mark rose to his excellent height and stood an instant
looking down at the little old lady shading her eyes from the sunlight.
They had been large and dark once; now the filmy rim of age was visible
about the iris. Her white hair lay in neat ringlets upon her brow, which
was wrinkled like a fine parchment. Her skin, bleached to a bloodless
whiteness, retained still some of the soft texture of youth.

"And Allison Clyde," she finished her announcement: "but you won't mind
her," she added, recalling the restiveness of the present generation
under boredom.

"Allison Clyde?" he repeated. He remembered the name vaguely as one of
some old friend of the family. "An old lady." He had not reckoned his
indifferent label a question, but his aunt took it up.

"We never think of her as that. She is younger," Lucretia Hall conceded,
"than I am. Allison is universally admired. Mrs. Herrick"--she quoted
the oracle of her circle in that last-generation manner that proclaims
the accepted--"says that Allison is a personage."

Miss Lucretia turned toward the house; her nephew followed her.

"Any relation to the historian, bane of my youth?" he asked.

"His daughter," Lucretia gladly expounded; "and her brother, the poet,
died young. Allison herself--very gifted musically." The fragments
came back to him as his aunt preceded him with her small, hesitating
steps up the narrow path. The picture of an old lady playing the "Songs
without Words" passed through Mark's mind, and he began to plan flight.
"But she was obliged to give up her music to care for her invalid
father."

"I heard Stella playing," Mark commented.

His aunt rejoined after a moment:

"She doesn't seem at all nervous. Young people aren't in these days. At
her age, if any one asked me to play, I was terrified."

Her nephew smiled down at her, hooking her with an affectionate arm.

"What used you to play, _Tante_? The 'Blue Alsatian Mountains' and the
'Stéphanie Gavotte'?"

Her faded smile held a faint surprise.

"How did you know?"

"I am a clairvoyant, and did you sing, 'Then You'll Remember Me?'"

"No, I never sang; but Mary--your mother--did."

They reached the back porch and passed through the wide hall into
the shaded spaciousness of the drawing-room. In that quiet interior
light that rested softly upon the decorous portraits of his forebears,
the mahogany, and the accumulated bric-à-brac of three generations,
he became aware of the incongruous presence of Stella. He realized
again her clean-cut, finished daintiness, the incisiveness of voice
and feature. As he released her hand, still aware of its hard, boyish
grip, he heard his aunt's voice, light, wandering, non-arresting, as if
continuing some conversational thread, "And Miss Allison Clyde, Mark--my
old friend." He had been vaguely aware of some one else in the room, but
when he met the smile of the older woman who held out her hand to him,
he wondered that he had not realized it more promptly; for Miss Allison
Clyde, although far removed from the youth of years, had about her
something immediately and quietly charming--something, it occurred to
him, that suggested autumnal perfumes and the warmth of late sunlight.
It was a face with a certain fine austerity belonging to a generation
at once more natural and more reserved than ours.

"So this is Mary's boy," she said. "You have her eyes." He looked at her
and unconsciously glanced at Stella. The older woman belonged to the
quiet old room. Stella, despite the same inheritance, did not.

Tea was brought in by a maid grown gray in his aunt's service, and Miss
Lucretia presided. Mark's eyes again wandered from Miss Allison Clyde to
Stella with involuntary comparison.

No one would have accused Stella of not being a well-bred young
woman, yet she sat, Mark noted, carelessly and not quite gracefully.
Miss Allison Clyde was taller than Stella, yet she was adjusted to her
chair with a disciplined grace and dignity far removed from stiffness.

"Stella has promised to sing 'Crabbéd Age' for me again," she announced
when tea was finished.

"Shall I sing it now?" Stella rose with her promptness, and, going to
the piano, plunged at once into the opening bars. Although the composer
was not an egoist, he shuddered.

"I am making frightful hash of it, I know," Stella confessed, unabashed,
as her fingers stumbled. "I think Miss Allison had better play it." Mark
glanced quickly at the older woman.

"Then it was _you_ I heard a moment ago."

"I tried it," she admitted, with a smile. "The title had a melancholy
attraction for me. I had no idea the composer was overhearing, or I
should have had stage-fright dreadfully."

"Play something else," Mark suggested. "It would give me so much
pleasure. Something _not_ Mark Faraday."

Miss Allison rose decisively.

"No, I will play 'Crabbed Age,'" she decided, "and youth shall sing
it." And then they ran through it together, the older woman playing it
with a musician's sense of its qualities, and Stella singing it through
passably in her firm young voice.

In answer to Mark's sincere, "Play more," as she started to rise from
the piano stool, Miss Allison let her fingers wander through passages
of "Meistersinger" in a way that showed a musician's knowledge of the
score.

"How wonderful that you can play like that still!" exclaimed Stella.
The gaucherie of that "still" struck upon Mark's artistic sensibilities,
trained in Italian habits of speech. "What a resource it must be!"

"For crabbed age," Miss Allison finished. Her smile held a faint
amusement. Stella, momentarily silenced, if not abashed, by this
explicit voicing of her thought, did not contradict, and Miss Allison
continued, "The technic of a Paderewski would be small compensation
for lost youth, I fear." She said it without sentimentality, but, as
she spoke, lightly touched the delicate theme of the "Golden Apples"
that brought eternal youth to the gods, passing into the sublimity of
the Valhalla motive. Looking up, she met Mark's comprehension and
smiled, then, bringing her chord to a resolution, rose from the piano
stool. Mark watched her as she paused to turn over the pages of his
"Sun-dial," noting the titles--Sunrise, Morning, High Noon, Afternoon,
Evening, Night. "'Youth and Crabbed Age' is Evening, I see," she
commented. "Then what is this?" She held up a separate sheet loosely
set in the book, reading the title, "Too Late for Love and Loving."

"That was an attempt with words of my own before I resigned in favor
of Shakespeare," Mark explained. "I am not a poet. They are just words
for music."

She read them over:

    "Sweet love, too late!
    Life is Time's prisoner,
    Love's hour has fled,
    The flowers are dead,
    Love has passed by.
    Sweet love, too late!
    Death stands at the gate."

She sat down again without comment, and ran it through softly, then
again more assuredly, with appreciation. The warm afternoon light from
the open window fell upon her, revealing what the years had worn, what
they had been powerless to touch. Her hair was half gray; but her eyes
were as dark, vivid, and expectant as the eyes of youth--autumn pools
shot through with the sun. The mouth was a generous one, finely molded
by the experience of the years. He remembered that she was a spinster,
yet there was about her none of the emptiness, the starved quality, of
the woman with her destiny unfulfilled; nothing of the futility, the
incompletion, of the celibate that causes the imagination to turn with
relief to contemplation of the most bovine mother of a family. It must
have been an impervious boor indeed who would venture to jest upon Miss
Allison's single state. It spoke of naught but dignity. Life, it would
seem, had not deprived her.

It was that warm, alive, expectant quality, Mark reflected, that
revealed that Allison Clyde was neither wife nor mother. She had
turned, no doubt, to other interests with her unquenchable vividness,
and so could still look out upon the world with young, hopeful eyes.

Yet what, at her age, could the years still bring her? It had been
surely a vain waiting; yet, viewed as a picture, it had, he felt, an
autumnal beauty of its own.

That night Miss Allison Clyde wrote a long letter to her lifelong
friend, Miss Augusta Penfield:

I met Lucretia's nephew, Mary's boy, to-day. He is you know, a
composer already on the road to fame. You remember that he was born
abroad. There is for all his undiluted American ancestry a foreign
touch about him, a something warm and ardent caught under the Italian
skies that even our children seem to take on when born there. He is
indeed a beautiful boy, a dreamer, yet manly. A boy I call him, yet
he is twenty-nine. My dear father had four sons and a daughter at
his age. Still he is a boy. It is strange in this generation, Augusta,
that though in many ways they seem so advanced, so beyond us, in others
they are further away from life's responsibilities than we were at their
age. There is a suggestion of his Uncle William about Mark, but he is
somehow stronger, more imperative. I was drawn to him at once because
of his music. And he has the charming manner, the almost excessive
chivalry, toward our sex that we see so little of any more, or at least
seldom encounter at our age. Lucretia had asked Stella in for tea. She
is a dear child and quite alarmingly composed, but not altogether
musical, despite her excellent musical opportunities. She played one
of the boy's songs, a delicious thing, rather dreadfully. I felt sorry
for him. Lucretia insisted upon my playing his "Youth and Crabbed Age,"
which every one has been singing, although he seems delightfully unaware
of that fact. He was so courteous about insisting that I should play
more, I ran through a bit of "Meistersinger,"--he seemed so truly a
young _Walther_,--and then discovered another little song that he has
not published, "Too Late for Love and Loving," full of a kind of pathos
that it seems impossible youth could understand. But I suppose that is
where genius comes in.

The rest of the letter was made of messages and the mild, small daily
occurrences that are of moment to such as Miss Augusta Penfield.

That night, searching in an old secretary in his room for some missing
notes, Mark came upon a little daguerreotype in a drawer. It was of a
young girl, taken apparently in the late sixties or early seventies.
Something in the face, clear-eyed, warm-lipped, trusting, caught and
held his attention. He turned it over to see if the girl's name was on
the back, but the only inscription was a date in his Uncle William's
writing, June, 1863. Poor Uncle William, who had been so full of
promise, they said, but who had died from a bullet wound, a sacrifice to
his country two years after the war!

Some girl that his uncle had loved, perhaps. The young man's face,
dark-eyed, romantic, familiar to him through the old picture in
uniform always on his mother's dressing-table, rose before his mind's
eye. Perhaps Uncle William had taken the little picture away with him
to the war. The date must have been just about the time that he had
enlisted and marched away. He had gone without telling her perhaps;
she could have been little more than a child. Perhaps he had never told.
Or they might have had their brief tragic happiness upon the edge of
death, they two "embracing under death's spread hand."

He stared at the picture. It would have been easy to love a girl with
those eyes, that mouth. A fancy came upon him to put Uncle William's
picture beside the girl's, and impulsively he went back to the darkened
drawing-room, groped for the framed picture that stood upon the mantel,
found it, and carried it up to his room. Then side by side he studied
the two faces.

His imagination began to reconstruct their story. He wished that he
might learn more. He went back to the old desk. It might have been
his uncle's. He opened a drawer; it was empty. A second and a third;
the last contained some valueless miscellany, an old glass knob a faded
bit of worsted fringe, some papers. Poking under them, he actually found
a package of letters. He picked it up, and with a little thrill of
realization recognized his uncle's writing. The paper was old and
yellowed with time. It had no address, but was sealed with red wax.
Scarcely expecting fulfillment of his romantic hope, he broke the seal
and opened the package. There was no address on the first envelope. Some
business memorandum, no doubt; yet nothing surely that at this late day
he might not in honor examine. He drew out the closely written sheet and
turned it over. After all the years his eyes were surely the first to
read it. There was no name in the inscription. Uncle William's fine
writing was very legible.


II

July 15, 1863.

My little love with the smooth hair and the great eyes, you do not
know that I have the little daguerreotype next my heart. I stole it
from Lucretia, and packed it among my things. How often I shall take it
out in the long days ahead before the war is over and I can come back to
tell you that I love you. You will wait for me, sweetheart. No other man
shall be the one to make those clear eyes fall, to change them from a
child's to a woman's eyes. I can see you as you stood there beside the
sun-dial. "Fight a brave fight, William," you said, "and come back
soon." You were brave and glorious. Your eyes were not even wet, yet you
care enough for me to shed a tear. I know that, little Allison. We have
been such good comrades, you and I. I looked back and saw you waving.
But you trust life so fearlessly, child. You are only fifteen. At that
age one cannot imagine death. I am twenty-three and am a man. I knew I
must not speak. I knew it, though my heart was knocking against my sides
for love of you. So I shall not send these letters. I shall send you a
line now and then, but not of love. You will hear the news of me from
mother and the girls. I shall write these letters just the same, and
keep them, and if the day comes when those great eyes, those dear and
wonderful eyes, give the promise my heart is waiting for, then I shall
hand them to you to read, and you shall know how long and faithfully I
have loved you. I shall not write you of the war and the long marches;
those things will be in my home letters. To you I shall write only of
ourselves, not as if I were in the midst of battle and sudden death,
but as if I were at home in Beechwood, where my heart is, at my window
overlooking a corner of your garden. I am there now, sitting at my
window as I write. I have just caught a glimpse of you in your Sunday
gown, the white-and-green striped silk, with the tiny lavender flowers
scattered on the white ground. You were picking a spray of lemon verbena
to take to church. I see you in the little green bonnet in the high pew
beside your mother. You have the soul of a lover, my Allison. I know it
when I see you smell the fragrant flowers. Little Allison, how you will
love when your day comes! Your mouth, so young, so warm, so generous,
was made to give all; your pure eyes for complete trust. You belong to
me, my Allison, although you do not know it yet. Even as I write this,
fear shakes my heart. Have not all lovers thought the same? So strong
is the sense of possession in love, so impossible it seems to the human
heart that we should give all and receive nothing. What if some one
should rudely awaken your clear soul from its young sleep, lay hot
human hands upon you, my rose, my little cool, white flower! I can not
bear these thoughts. You are mine, and I shall let you sleep until the
moment comes for love to knock at the door of your heart. There shall
be no rude awakening. I shall speak first so gently, yes, you shall be
roused slowly from that sleep of childhood. Then you will put your hands
in mine and say, "William, I love you," just as you said to me to-day,
"Fight a good fight." And I will take those dear hands and draw you
slowly toward me and kiss you on your fine, straight brows, your serene
forehead, that is like that of the angels in the Italian pictures father
brought home from Italy. Then I will let you go. I shall not be too
impetuous, lest I frighten you. And then some day you will say again,
"Come home soon William," and it will mean that I am to go home to you.

Yours till death,

WILLIAM.


August, '63.

My love with the dove's eyes:

Why were you so shy when I met you to-day on the gravel path? I asked
you where you were going. You would not stop; you almost ran past, like
a little gray moth. I love you in that gray little gown; your little
bare shoulders are pink beside it, like a spring flower beside a stone.
Why were you so shy? You are too young to have a lover. There is no one
except the tow-headed Bowman boy across the street. It could not have
been he. Then you went to the piano, and I heard you singing softly, "My
Love is like a Red, Red Rose." What can you know of love, my little one?
I am jealous of life itself that must bring that change to you. I would
delay that day. Not yet would I have the bud open for the hot sun to
draw out its fragrance. I would keep you yet a while in the white,
austere innocence of your youth. My little love, my child, the hour is
not yet.

WILLIAM.


September, '64.

Where I sit at my window, sweetheart, I can see the corner of the
grape-arbor in your garden. Do you remember the day we sat there, and I
read you my story, and you listened, with your great dreaming eyes on
the slippery leaf shadows, and your mouth stained with the purple
grapes? And when I had finished, you asked me, "Why did Reginald think
he had to die, William?" And I told you, "Because he loved Eleanor so
much and she loved another man." "Then why didn't he love some one else,
too? How silly they all were!" you said. You were too young to
understand. I look in the eyes of the little girl in the picture, and
she does not understand. The little girl is a year younger than you, and
the green-and-white frock in the picture was torn and darned last
summer. I remember how you looked, bent over your needle, your red lips
a little heavy with unspoken protest as you sewed the long rent. What a
child you always were to tear your frocks and get berry stains on your
white aprons and scratch your fingers and arms with briers! And how I
have loved each scratch and stain. My sweet, wild little Allison! Now
perhaps you begin to understand, to wonder and dream a little. You may
even have your dreams of lovers. You wonder yet with no intimation
behind your clear eyes of what this thing is that incites men to courage
or drives them to madness and death. Have you wondered yet if some day
it will come to you? Or does it live still in that fair, fragrant world
of your imagination as a tale that is told?

       *       *       *       *       *

To-day you came home from your sewing circle, where you sewed garments
for the soldiers, and when you came away you let me carry your package.
The sleeve of your little gray gown had been darned, and you had
outgrown the dress. "It isn't pretty any more, but I mustn't have a
new one," you said. "It is wicked for us to have new things when the
soldiers are ragged and cold." And that look that is like tears came
into your eyes. Oh, how I longed to kiss the hand you held out for your
bundle at the gate! Not yet, Allison. You are just sixteen. You are a
child yet. I must wait.

WILLIAM.


December, '64.

My Allison, I signed myself last your William, and I called you mine.
It is no bold assumption. Neither life nor death can make me other than
yours, whether you will or not, neither can it make you any less mine.
Isn't it our George William Curtis who said that the land belonged to
his rich neighbor, but the view was his? No matter if I never touch your
dear hands save as a friend, my Allison, you will still be mine, because
I have divined the fine mysteries of your spirit. I am your worshiper
and knight, whatever fate befalls us. "We needs must love the highest
when we see it," says the new poet across the water. No truer words
were ever spoken. So in that fine inner sense I am yours and you are
mine whether you ever come to love me or not. To-day I found you chasing
a butterfly in the garden. What a child you are still! You brushed me as
you ran past, then, as you turned, ran almost into my arms. Ah, my
Allison, you did not know how it set my heart beating when that loose
strand of your hair blew across my face! Your cheeks were flushed, and
you drew back laughing.

"What do you want with the butterfly, Allison?" I asked. "You surely
would not hurt it. If you throw your bonnet over it, you will break its
wings."

You looked at me with your great eyes.

"I would not do that, William. I only wanted to see the gold spots on
its wings."

"You can do that best without touching it, my dear," I said. "A touch
will destroy its gold dust." You looked at me with your pure eyes and
said,--like a little child, yet you are almost a woman,--"Oh, William,
I would not break its wings." And then sharply a thought struck me like
a pang. Can I perhaps see you better with my soul's eyes, Allison, if
you are never mine? Would I break _your_ wings in touching you? Are
you something too fine and fair for human experience? It came like a
presentiment then that you would never be mine in the dear common human
way. Can it be so, dear love? No, no; I would have you when the hour
comes. Despite the angel in your eyes, you were made to make fair a
home, to know in all its phases a man's love, to hold your children in
your arms,--children with eyes such as you have now,--and teach them
such things as pure beings like you can teach to children.

"Isn't it nice that they are butterflies last, William?" you said.
"Suppose they had to grow brown and ugly and to move slowly, instead
of flying, when they are old like people."

"It is like life and death," I told you, although God knows I am no
preacher. Perhaps it is because my body is at the war while my soul
is in Beechwood that I must sometimes think these thoughts of death.
Your eyes looked straight into mine then, with something like a
reflection of heaven's light. Then again all at once they were a child's
again, and you said: "Grandma's portrait in the hall is beautiful. She
was sixteen then. But she isn't pretty any more."

"No, she isn't pretty any more, Allison, yet once like you she chased
butterflies in the garden. And that portrait was painted the year before
she was married."

Why was it then that you turned away your eyes and the soft curve of
your cheek grew pink? Perhaps it is always so with the young girl at
the thought of love and marriage; but you are still a child.

"The butterfly has flown away, Allison, and you never even looked at
its golden wings," I reminded you, and you laughed and shrugged. "There
will be another," you said. Yes, there will always be more butterflies
in the garden, and there will always be more lovers in the world for
such as you while your sweet youth lasts, whether I live to woo you or
not. That thought saddens me. Yet should I not feel it enough to have
known and loved you? Suppose you had never been in the world, and I had
loved some commonplace pretty girl instead of little Allison, with eyes
like an autumn brook in the sun?

Oh, my dear, the time is long, and I grow weary with my make-believing.
I am a thousand miles away. A cold rain is falling. I could not bear it
were it not for your voice in my ears: "Fight a good fight. Come back
home soon, William." As soon, God pity me as I can. My country first,
even if it robs me of life's dearest treasure. Ah, that I had dared
before I left to speak the words in my heart, "Wait for me, sweetheart,
wait till I come home; for it will be no true home unless you make it
for me."

But I did not say it. The hour was not yet. Pray God it may come for us
both, for never will another know how to love you as I do, my Allison.

YOUR FAITHFUL WILLIAM.


March, '65.

In battle, on the march, there has been no time for my letters, my
sweetheart, and only in my dreams have I been able to fancy myself at
the window overlooking your garden. But now there is a lull for writing.
We feel that the end is drawing near. And so once more I can trust my
dream self back in Beechwood with you.

Last night I took you home from Uncle Alvin's. We walked slowly
under the moon. The air was cool. You wore your little brown hood.
You are taller now, little Allison. I lingered at the gate when I
said good night. You lingered, too, and for the first time I knew--I
cannot say how--that your soft childhood was unfolding its wings to
depart. Not that I dared even to linger over your hand, still less
to pull off the brown mitten and kiss the little hand curled soft and
warm within; but the eyes that you turned to me had a graver light.
Was it the sad news of the war, the death and tragedy about you?
Jolly Dick Burrows, Arthur and Henry, struck down, blotted out. These
are aging times, my sweetheart. Had you the consciousness of me as
anything nearer than your old friend Lucretia's brother? Some day
life will bring to you this thing that tears at my heart. Some day not
so far off now. Sometimes I wonder that I dare hope it will come to me.

WILLIAM.


April 10, '65.

It has come, the news has come; the war is over. A few days, weeks,
and I shall be with you. I have been wounded. They have told you that,
have they not? But it is nothing, a scratch. It troubles me now, but it
will soon be over. Last night I sat in the hot Southern twilight that
smelled of jessamine and dreamed myself back with you in New England,
where the spring nights are cold. But I did not dream any more the
meetings of fantasy. My mind leaped forward, and dreamed of my real
home-coming. I had greeted them all, my dear mother, the girls, Alice,
and Lucretia. Then they left us alone in the little circle about the
sun-dial, only it was summer, and the bees were heavy with the flower
dust, the air was fragrant. And then at last I saw the consciousness
of womanhood in your eyes--those clear eyes that have always looked
so straight at mine, straight into my heart, it seemed, although I
knew they were too young to see. Not once except for that first moment
when you said, with lowered lids, "Welcome home, William," did you look
at me. And as we sat on the garden seat, I could see your color rise,
the lace scarf tremble with your quickened breath. And then I took your
hand. "I have come home to you, Allison," I said. "What have you to say
to me?" But you would not raise your eyes. I took both of your hands
then. "Look at me, Allison," I said, and something ran through you like
the wind through a rose shaking out its perfume, and I seemed to draw
into my very soul the fragrance of your young emotion; and I said again,
"Look at me, Allison." And then, half like a child commanded, you raised
your eyes.... There is a majestic purity about you, Allison! Even in the
young confusion of that moment it pierced me, humbled me in adoring love
before you. "Allison, speak," I said, and I could scarcely get out the
words. "Do you love me?" and you, stammering like a child, said, "I
don't know, William. I don't know." "Then at least you do not love any
other man?" I asked you, and you shook your head.

Oh, Allison, if I come home to find that some other man has taught you
love, how shall I live through the burden of my days!

WILLIAM.


July, '65.

My Allison:

Here I sit in verity at my window and write. I shall never speak,
after all; for now I know that I haven't the right. The wound was
fatal, it seems, and I have only a short time to live, so I dare not
tell you until after I am gone. It would hurt you too much. Even now
I can scarcely bear to see your pity in your eyes. Suppose that pity
were to imagine itself love! When I am myself, my whole being rejects
that thought. It is not such love I dreamed to win from you, my Allison.
Then again there are moments, weak moments, when I would have anything,
take you at any price, only to have you nearer, only to wring those
brief hours of warmth and sunshine from the cold outstretched hand of
death. But that is only weakness. Such sad companionship with oncoming
death shall not be for you, my beloved. You shall see me till the last
as Lucretia's brother, not your lover. I cannot trust myself to think
of that other man who will live my dreams. Yet for myself I ask only
to live till the end with my eyes filled with the sight of you; to live
in fact and memory over each tone of your voice, each light and shade
on that dear face. You are not a child now. With your dark braids about
your star-like face, you are a woman, ready to waken to the knowledge
of love; but, thank God! not yet awakened. So I may know still the cool,
unconscious touch of your hand, your dear daily gift of flowers, watch
your sweet down-bent head as you come to read to me here in our garden,
and not heed the words for the dearness of dreaming over your face,
living so intensely each moment of you. Oh, my sweet, why did you go
so soon to-day? I know it was to buy ribbons for a new muslin for Molly
Dearborn's party. You must go to your parties, be happy. That is all I
wish. Yet you would so gladly have given me that hour if you had known.
Some one could have matched the ribbon for you. "Allison does not know,"
I heard Lucretia say the other day. "We do not want her to know. It
would distress her too much." I shall not let you know, my darling.
I write it now, but I shall blot it out lest it hurt you too much to
know afterward how precious each moment you gave me was, lest it grieve
your tender heart to know there was something more you might have given
had you known.

WILLIAM.


Like one coming out of a dream, Mark glanced about the room, noted the
hands of the clock marking the half hour past midnight, then picked up
the picture of the girl who was young more than forty years ago.

With a little sense of shock it came to him that she existed no more. He
wondered whether she also had died in her sweet youth or lived still, an
old woman.

If she was alive, had she married some one not Uncle William? Or had she
never married? Had she loved him? Had she known that he loved her? He
picked up the picture again. The face seemed vaguely familiar. It seemed
to speak to him. He lost himself in dreams and roused himself with a
laugh.

"I believe I am half in love with you myself, little Allison, in love
with your lost youth, in love with the shadow of a shadow. And _that_
is a subject for a song--"

Allison, a quaint little name it was. Allison what? Who was she? It
struck him suddenly,--he wondered that he had not thought of it
before,--it must be, it surely was, Miss Allison Clyde. He studied the
young pictured face more closely, and felt sure he traced a resemblance
in it to the old. To-morrow he would find out.

The pathos of it--too old for love, the theme of his song. Reverently he
gathered up the letters, replaced them in their envelope, and put them
away. Suddenly, sharply the consciousness smote him: the woman to whom
those letters were written had never read them.


III

The next afternoon at tea-time he took the daguerreotype to his Aunt
Lucretia. She received it with her slow, uncertain, frail old hands,
lifting it to the light.

"Why, that little old picture of Allison!" she said. "I had forgotten we
had it. Where did you find it? It was William's." She stared at it with
the pitiful look the eyes of the old show at reawakening memories. "I
always thought your Uncle William was in love with her," she confided,
"although he never told us so."

"Miss Allison Clyde?" Mark questioned, and Miss Lucretia nodded faintly,
marveling:

"Why, didn't you know!"

"And was Miss Allison in love with Uncle William?"

Miss Lucretia answered doubtfully:

"I don't know. She was a child. She never said so."

"Did she ever, later on, have a love-affair?"

His aunt shook her head.

"Not that I know of. She was always so taken up with her own household.
They were very close to each other, a very united family."

"It is a wonderful little face," Mark said, looking down at the
daguerreotype.

"She was only a child then," Lucretia repeated, "not more than fifteen."
Her eyes became reminiscent. "She was still so young, only seventeen,
when he died. When he came home, he knew he had not long to live. He
used to sit out here and watch her as she moved about. He never talked
much, but the look in his eyes was," Aunt Lucretia stated in her quiet
way, "very moving."

Mark heard a step, and glanced up to see Miss Allison Clyde herself
standing beside them, looking down at them with a smile.

"To whom am I indebted for this honor? That funny little old ambrotype!
Where did you unearth it, Lucretia?"

"It was Brother William's," Lucretia explained, with her gentle
melancholy. "Mark found it in his room and asked me about it."

Mark looked to see some revelation in Miss Allison Clyde's face, but
found none. Her kindly smile had not faded or changed except to take
on a shade of amusement as she picked up the ambrotype.

"How proud I was of that mantilla!" she said. "I remember it so well.
It was green. Do you recall it, Lucretia?"

Miss Lucretia nodded, her frail hands busy with the tea-cups.

"I do. And the turban with the green plume you wore with it."

Mark glanced from the picture of the child to the face of the woman
whose youth was past. Was it tragedy for her, he wondered, that she
had never known in its fullness the meaning of love and home? Or was
she happy burning with her own diffusing light full of the warmth of
humanity, loving, and giving to all the world instead of one lover?

Miss Lucretia interrupted his reverie.

"I suppose you are going over to see Stella this evening, and we old
people shall have to amuse ourselves without you as best we can."

Mark lifted his Lowestoft tea-cup and set it down again before he
answered slowly:

"No, I think not. I am going to stay and have some music with Miss
Allison."

He wondered why Miss Allison had made Stella seem suddenly hard, new,
almost crude, like the modern furniture in the drawing-room beside the
fine old mahogany, with its simple decoration and tone of time.

It was that evening, which he had decided should be his last, that,
when their music was over, he handed Miss Allison Clyde a sheet of
manuscript music.

"Since you liked it," he said.

She took it, a faint color coming in her cheek. It was the manuscript
of the fifth song of his cycle, "Evening," and he had dedicated it to
her. Involuntarily she moved to give it back to him.

"No, not to me. You are too kind. But you must dedicate it to youth."

He nodded, with his smile.

"So I have: to the woman who has youth in her heart." Then he drew
out the package of letters. "And these," he said in a lower voice,
"are yours also." He handed them to her silently.

"Mine?" She turned over the package in doubtful wonder.

"I found them in the desk with the daguerreotype. When you open them
you will understand."

Turning from the doorway for a last good night, Mark saw Miss Allison,
as he always afterward remembered her, standing by the tall mantel in
the candle-light with the unopened package of Uncle William's letters
in her hand.




ZELIG[17]

BY BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT

From _The Bellman_

[17] Copyright, 1915, by The Bellman Company. Copyright, 1916, by
     Benjamin Rosenblatt.


Old Zelig was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him
"Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent--"Mr."
"The old one is a barrel with a stave missing," knowingly declared his
neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres." For "to
belong," on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means
being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew
must join "A Society for Burying Its Members," to be provided at least
with a narrow cell at the end of the long road. Zelig was not even a
member of one of these. "Alone, like a stone," his wife often sighed.

In the cloakshop where Zelig worked he stood daily, brandishing his
heavy iron on the sizzling cloth, hardly ever glancing about him. The
workmen despised him, for during a strike he returned to work after
two days' absence. He could not be idle, and thought with dread of the
Saturday that would bring him no pay envelope.

His very appearance seemed alien to his brethren. His figure was tall,
and of cast-iron mold. When he stared stupidly at something, he looked
like a blind Samson. His gray hair was long, and it fell in disheveled
curls on gigantic shoulders somewhat inclined to stoop. His shabby
clothes hung loosely on him; and, both summer and winter, the same old
cap covered his massive head.

He had spent most of his life in a sequestered village in Little Russia,
where he tilled the soil and even wore the national peasant costume.
When his son and only child, a poor widower with a boy of twelve on
his hands, emigrated to America, the father's heart bled. Yet he chose
to stay in his native village at all hazards, and to die there. One day,
however, a letter arrived from the son that he was sick; this sad news
was followed by words of a more cheerful nature--"and your grandson
Moses goes to public school. He is almost an American; and he is not
forced to forget the God of Israel. He will soon be confirmed. His Bar
Mitsva is near." Zelig's wife wept three days and nights upon the
receipt of this letter. The old man said little; but he began to sell
his few possessions.

To face the world outside his village spelled agony to the poor rustic.
Still he thought he would get used to the new home which his son had
chosen. But the strange journey with locomotive and steamship bewildered
him dreadfully; and the clamor of the metropolis, into which he was
flung pell-mell, altogether stupefied him. With a vacant air he regarded
the Pandemonium, and a petrifaction of his inner being seemed to take
place. He became "a barrel with a stave missing." No spark of animation
visited his eye. Only one thought survived in his brain, and one desire
pulsed in his heart: to save money enough for himself and family to
hurry back to his native village. Blind and dead to everything, he moved
about with a dumb, lacerating pain in his heart,--he longed for home.
Before he found steady employment, he walked daily with titanic strides
through the entire length of Manhattan, while children and even adults
often slunk into byways to let him pass. Like a huge monster he seemed,
with an arrow in his vitals.

In the shop where he found a job at last, the workmen feared him at
first; but, ultimately finding him a harmless giant, they more than once
hurled their sarcasms at his head. Of the many men and women employed
there, only one person had the distinction of getting fellowship from
old Zelig. That person was the Gentile watchman or janitor of the shop,
a little blond Pole with an open mouth and frightened eyes. And many
were the witticisms aimed at this uncouth pair. "The big one looks like
an elephant," the joker of the shop would say; "only he likes to be fed
on pennies instead of peanuts."

"Oi, oi, his nose would betray him," the "philosopher" of the shop
chimed in; and during the dinner hour he would expatiate thus: "You
see, money is his blood. He starves himself to have enough dollars to
go back to his home: the Pole told me all about it. And why should he
stay here? Freedom of religion means nothing to him, he never goes to
synagogue; and freedom of the press? Bah--he never even reads the
conservative Tageblatt!"

Old Zelig met such gibes with stoicism. Only rarely would he turn up
the whites of his eyes, as if in the act of ejaculation; but he would
soon contract his heavy brows into a scowl and emphasize the last with
a heavy thump of his sizzling iron.

When the frightful cry of the massacred Jews in Russia rang across
the Atlantic, and the Ghetto of Manhattan paraded one day through
the narrow streets draped in black, through the erstwhile clamorous
thoroughfares steeped in silence, stores and shops bolted, a wail of
anguish issuing from every door and window--the only one remaining
in his shop that day was old Zelig. His fellow-workmen did not call
upon him to join the procession. They felt the incongruity of "this
brute" in line with mourners in muffled tread. And the Gentile watchman
reported the next day that the moment the funeral dirge of the music
echoed from a distant street, Zelig snatched off the greasy cap he
always wore, and in confusion instantly put it on again. "All the rest
of the day," the Pole related with awe, "he looked wilder than ever,
and so thumped with his iron on the cloth that I feared the building
would come down."

But Zelig paid little heed to what was said about him. He dedicated his
existence to the saving of his earnings, and only feared that he might
be compelled to spend some of them. More than once his wife would be
appalled in the dark of night by the silhouette of old Zelig in
nightdress, sitting up in bed and counting a bundle of bank notes which
he always replaced under his pillow. She frequently upbraided him for
his niggardly nature, for his warding off all requests outside the
pittance for household expense. She pleaded, exhorted, wailed. He
invariably answered: "I haven't a cent by my soul." She pointed to the
bare walls, the broken furniture, their beggarly attire.

"Our son is ill," she moaned. "He needs special food and rest; and our
grandson is no more a baby; he'll soon need money for his studies. Dark
is my world; you are killing both of them."

Zelig's color vanished; his old hands shook with emotion. The poor woman
thought herself successful, but the next moment he would gasp: "Not a
cent by my soul."

One day old Zelig was called from his shop, because his son had a sudden
severe attack; and, as he ascended the stairs of his home, a neighbor
shouted: "Run for a doctor; the patient cannot be revived." A voice as
if from a tomb suddenly sounded in reply, "I haven't a cent by my soul."

The hallway was crowded with the ragged tenants of the house, mostly
women and children; from far off were heard the rhythmic cries of the
mother. The old man stood for a moment as if chilled from the roots
of his hair to the tips of his fingers. Then the neighbors heard his
sepulchral mumble: "I'll have to borrow somewheres, beg some one," as
he retreated down the stairs. He brought a physician; and when the
grandson asked for money to go for the medicine, Zelig snatched the
prescription and hurried away, still murmuring: "I'll have to borrow,
I'll have to beg."

Late that night, the neighbors heard a wail issuing from old Zelig's
apartment; and they understood that the son was no more.

Zelig's purse was considerably thinned. He drew from it with palsied
fingers for all burial expenses, looking about him in a dazed way.
Mechanically he performed the Hebrew rites for the dead, which his
neighbors taught him. He took a knife and made a deep gash in his
shabby coat; then he removed his shoes, seated himself on the floor,
and bowed his poor old head, tearless, benumbed.

The shop stared when the old man appeared after the prescribed three
days' absence. Even the Pole dared not come near him. A film seemed to
coat his glaring eye; deep wrinkles contracted his features, and his
muscular frame appeared to shrink even as one looked. From that day on,
he began to starve himself more than ever. The passion for sailing back
to Russia, "to die at home at last," lost but little of its original
intensity. Yet there was something now which by a feeble thread bound
him to the New World.

In a little mound on the Base Achaim, the "House of Life," under
a tombstone engraved with old Hebrew script, a part of himself lay
buried. But he kept his thoughts away from that mound. How long and
untiringly he kept on saving! Age gained on him with rapid strides.
He had little strength left for work, but his dream of home seemed
nearing its realization. Only a few more weeks, a few more months!
And the thought sent a glow of warmth to his frozen frame. He would
even condescend now to speak to his wife concerning the plans he had
formed for their future welfare, more especially when she revived her
pecuniary complaints.

"See what you have made of us, of the poor child," she often argued,
pointing to the almost grown grandson. "Since he left school, he works
for you, and what will be the end?"

At this, Zelig's heart would suddenly clutch, as if conscious of some
indistinct, remote fear. His answers touching the grandson were abrupt,
incoherent, as of one who replies to a question unintelligible to him
and is in constant dread lest his interlocutor should detect it.

Bitter misgivings concerning the boy began to mingle with the reveries
of the old man. At first, he hardly gave a thought to him. The boy grew
noiselessly. The ever-surging tide of secular studies that runs so high
on the East Side caught this boy in its wave. He was quietly preparing
himself for college. In his eagerness to accumulate the required sum,
Zelig paid little heed to what was going on around him; and now, on
the point of victory, he became aware with growing dread of something
abrewing out of the common. He sniffed suspiciously; and one evening
he overheard the boy talking to grandma about his hatred of Russian
despotism, about his determination to remain in the States. He ended by
entreating her to plead with grandpa to promise him the money necessary
for a college education.

Old Zelig swooped down upon them with wild eyes. "Much you need it,
you stupid," he thundered at the youngster in unrestrained fury. "You
will continue your studies in Russia, durak, stupid." His timid wife,
however, seemed suddenly to gather courage and she exploded: "Yes, you
should give your savings for the child's education here. Woe is me, in
the Russian universities no Jewish children are taken."

Old Zelig's face grew purple. He rose and abruptly seated himself again.
Then he rushed madly, with a raised, menacing arm, at the boy in whom he
saw the formidable foe--the foe he had so long been dreading.

But the old woman was quick to interpose with a piercing shriek: "You
madman, look at the sick child; you forget from what our son died, going
out like a flickering candle."

That night Zelig tossed feverishly on his bed. He could not sleep. For
the first time, it dawned upon him what his wife meant by pointing to
the sickly appearance of the child. When the boy's father died, the
physician declared that the cause was tuberculosis.

He rose to his feet. Beads of cold sweat glistened on his forehead,
trickled down his cheeks, his beard. He stood pale and panting. Like a
startling sound, the thought entered his mind--the boy, what should be
done with the boy?

The dim, blue night gleamed in through the windows. All was shrouded
in the city silence, which yet has a peculiar, monotonous ring in
it. Somewhere, an infant awoke with a sickly cry which ended in a
suffocating cough. The grizzled old man bestirred himself, and with
hasty steps he tiptoed to the place where the boy lay. For a time
he stood gazing on the pinched features, the under-sized body of the
lad; then he raised one hand, passed it lightly over the boy's hair,
stroking his cheeks and chin. The boy opened his eyes, looked for a
moment at the shriveled form bending over him, then he petulantly
closed them again.

"You hate to look at granpa, he is your enemy, eh?" The aged man's
voice shook, and sounded like that of the child's awaking in the night.
The boy made no answer; but the old man noticed how the frail body
shook, how the tears rolled, washing the sunken cheeks.

For some moments he stood mute, then his form literally shrank to that
of a child's as he bent over the ear of the boy and whispered hoarsely:
"You are weeping, eh? Granpa is your enemy, you stupid! To-morrow I will
give you the money for the college. You hate to look at granpa; he is
your enemy, eh?"




THE SURVIVORS[18]

_A Memorial Day Story_

BY ELSIE SINGMASTER

From _The Outlook_

[18] Copyright, 1915, by The Outlook Company. Copyright, 1916, by Elsie
     Singmaster Lewars


In the year 1868, when Memorial Day was instituted, Fosterville had
thirty-five men in its parade. Fosterville was a border town; in it
enthusiasm had run high, and many more men had enlisted than those
required by the draft. All the men were on the same side but Adam
Foust, who, slipping away, joined himself to the troops of his mother's
Southern State. It could not have been any great trial for Adam to fight
against most of his companions in Fosterville, for there was only one of
them with whom he did not quarrel. That one was his cousin Henry, from
whom he was inseparable, and of whose friendship for any other boys he
was intensely jealous. Henry was a frank, open-hearted lad who would
have lived on good terms with the whole world if Adam had allowed him
to.

Adam did not return to Fosterville until the morning of the first
Memorial Day, of whose establishment he was unaware. He had been ill
for months, and it was only now that he had earned enough to make his
way home. He was slightly lame, and he had lost two fingers of his left
hand. He got down from the train at the station, and found himself at
once in a great crowd. He knew no one, and no one seemed to know him.
Without asking any questions, he started up the street. He meant to go,
first of all, to the house of his cousin Henry, and then to set about
making arrangements to resume his long-interrupted business, that of a
saddler, which he could still follow in spite of his injury.

As he hurried along he heard the sound of band music, and realized that
some sort of a procession was advancing. With the throng about him he
pressed to the curb. The tune was one which he hated; the colors he
hated also; the marchers, all but one, he had never liked. There was
Newton Towne, with a sergeant's stripe on his blue sleeve; there was
Edward Green, a captain; there was Peter Allinson, a color-bearer. At
their head, taller, handsomer, dearer than ever to Adam's jealous eyes,
walked Henry Foust. In an instant of forgetfulness Adam waved his hand.
But Henry did not see; Adam chose to think that he saw and would not
answer. The veterans passed, and Adam drew back and was lost in the
crowd.

But Adam had a parade of his own. In the evening, when the music and the
speeches were over and the half-dozen graves of those of Fosterville's
young men who had been brought home had been heaped with flowers, and
Fosterville sat on doorsteps and porches talking about the day, Adam put
on a gray uniform and walked from one end of the village to the other.
These were people who had known him always; the word flew from step to
step. Many persons spoke to him, some laughed, and a few jeered. To no
one did Adam pay any heed. Past the house of Newton Towne, past the
store of Ed Green, past the wide lawn of Henry Foust, walked Adam, his
hands clasped behind his back, as though to make more perpendicular than
perpendicularity itself that stiff backbone. Henry Foust ran down the
steps and out to the gate.

"Oh, Adam!" cried he.

Adam stopped, stock-still. He could see Peter Allinson and Newton Towne,
and even Ed Green, on Henry's porch. They were all having ice-cream and
cake together.

"Well, what?" said he, roughly.

"Won't you shake hands with me?"

"No," said Adam.

"Won't you come in?"

"Never."

Still Henry persisted.

"Some one might do you harm, Adam."

"Let them!" said Adam.

Then Adam walked on alone. Adam walked alone for forty years.

Not only on Memorial Day did he don his gray uniform and make the
rounds of the village. When the Fosterville Grand Army Post met on
Friday evenings in the post room, Adam managed to meet most of the
members either going or returning. He and his gray suit became gradually
so familiar to the village that no one turned his head or glanced up
from book or paper to see him go by. He had from time to time a new
suit, and he ordered from somewhere in the South a succession of gray,
broad-brimmed military hats. The farther the war sank into the past,
the straighter grew old Adam's back, the prouder his head. Sometimes,
early in the forty years, the acquaintances of his childhood, especially
the women, remonstrated with him.

"The war's over, Adam," they would say. "Can't you forget it?"

"Those G.A.R. fellows don't forget it," Adam would answer. "They haven't
changed their principles. Why should I change mine?"

"But you might make up with Henry."

"That's nobody's business but my own."

"But when you were children you were never separated. Make up, Adam."

"When Henry needs me, I'll help him," said Adam.

"Henry will never need you. Look at all he's got!"

"Well, then, I don't need him," declared Adam, as he walked away. He
went back to his saddler shop, where he sat all day stitching. He had
ample time to think of Henry and the past.

"Brought up like twins!" he would say. "Sharing like brothers! Now
he has a fine business and a fine house and fine children, and I have
nothing. But I have my principles. I ain't never truckled to him. Some
day he'll need me, you'll see!"

As Adam grew older, it became more and more certain that Henry would
never need him for anything. Henry tried again and again to make
friends, but Adam would have none of him. He talked more and more to
himself as he sat at his work.

"Used to help him over the brook and bait his hook for him. Even built
corn-cob houses for him to knock down, that much littler he was than me.
Stepped out of the race when I found he wanted Annie. He might ask me
for _something_!" Adam seemed often to be growing childish.

By the year 1875 fifteen of Fosterville's thirty-five veterans had died.
The men who survived the war were, for the most part, not strong men,
and weaknesses established in prisons and on long marches asserted
themselves. Fifteen times the Fosterville Post paraded to the cemetery
and read its committal service and fired its salute. For these parades
Adam did not put on his gray uniform.

During the next twenty years deaths were fewer. Fosterville prospered
as never before; it built factories and an electric car line. Of all
its enterprises Henry Foust was at the head. He enlarged his house and
bought farms and grew handsomer as he grew older. Everybody loved him;
all Fosterville, except Adam, sought his company. It seemed sometimes
as though Adam would almost die from loneliness and jealousy.

"Henry Foust sittin' with Ed Green!" said Adam to himself, as though he
could never accustom his eyes to this phenomenon. "Henry consortin' with
Newt Towne!"

The Grand Army post also grew in importance. It paraded each year with
more ceremony; it imported fine music and great speakers for Memorial
Day.

Presently the sad procession to the cemetery began once more. There
was a long, cold winter, with many cases of pneumonia, and three
veterans succumbed; there was an intensely hot summer, and twice in
one month the post read its committal service and fired its salute.
A few years more, and the post numbered but three. Past them still
on post evenings walked Adam, head in air, hands clasped behind his
back. There was Edward Green, round, fat, who puffed and panted; there
was Newton Towne, who walked, in spite of palsy, as though he had won
the battle of Gettysburg; there was, last of all, Henry Foust, who at
seventy-five was hale and strong. Usually a tall son walked beside him,
or a grandchild clung to his hand. He was almost never alone; it was
as though every one who knew him tried to have as much as possible of
his company. Past him with a grave nod walked Adam. Adam was two years
older than Henry; it required more and more stretching of arms behind
his back to keep his shoulders straight.

In April Newton Towne was taken ill and died. Edward Green was
terrified, though he considered himself, in spite of his shortness
of breath, a strong man.

"Don't let anything happen to you, Henry," he would say. "Don't let
anything get you, Henry. I can't march alone."

"I'll be there," Henry would reassure him. Only one look at Henry, and
the most alarmed would have been comforted.

"It would kill me to march alone," said Edward Green.

As if Fosterville realized that it could not continue long to show
its devotion to its veterans, it made this year special preparations
for Memorial Day. The Fosterville Band practiced elaborate music, the
children were drilled in marching. The children were to precede the
veterans to the cemetery and were to scatter flowers over the graves.
Houses were gayly decorated, flags and banners floated in the pleasant
spring breeze. Early in the morning carriages and wagons began to bring
in the country folk.

Adam Foust realized as well as Fosterville that the parades of veterans
were drawing to their close.

"This may be the last time I can show my principles," said he, with grim
setting of his lips. "I will put on my gray coat early in the morning."

Though the two veterans were to march to the cemetery, carriages were
provided to bring them home. Fosterville meant to be as careful as
possible of its treasures.

"I don't need any carriage to ride in, like Ed Green," said Adam
proudly. "I could march out and back. Perhaps Ed Green will have to ride
out as well as back."

But Edward Green neither rode nor walked. The day turned suddenly warm,
the heat and excitement accelerated his already rapid breathing, and the
doctor forbade his setting foot to the ground.

"But I will!" cried Edward, in whom the spirit of war still lived.

"No," said the doctor.

"Then I will ride."

"You will stay in bed," said the doctor.

So without Edward Green the parade was formed. Before the court-house
waited the band, and the long line of school-children, and the burgess,
and the fire company, and the distinguished stranger who was to make
the address, until Henry Foust appeared, in his blue suit, with his flag
on his breast and his bouquet in his hand. On each side of him walked
a tall, middle-aged son, who seemed to hand him over reluctantly to the
marshal, who was to escort him to his place. Smilingly he spoke to the
marshal, but he was the only one who smiled or spoke. For an instant men
and women broke off in the middle of their sentences, a husky something
in their throats; children looked up at him with awe. Even his own
grand-children did not dare to wave or call from their places in the
ranks. Then the storm of cheers broke.

Round the next corner Adam Foust waited. He was clad in his gray
uniform--those who looked at him closely saw with astonishment that it
was a new uniform; his brows met in a frown, his gray moustache seemed
to bristle.

"How he hates them!" said one citizen of Fosterville to another. "Just
look at poor Adam!"

"Used to bait his hook for him," Adam was saying. "Used to carry him
pick-a-back! Used to go halves with him on everything. Now he walks
with Ed Green!"

Adam pressed forward to the curb. The band was playing "Marching Through
Georgia," which he hated; everybody was cheering. The volume of sound
was deafening.

"Cheering Ed Green!" said Adam. "Fat! Lazy! Didn't have a wound. Dare
say he hid behind a tree! Dare say--"

The band was in sight now, the back of the drum-major appeared, then
all the musicians swung round the corner. After them came the little
children with their flowers and their shining faces.

"Him and Ed Green next," said old Adam.

But Henry walked alone. Adam's whole body jerked in his astonishment.
He heard some one say that Edward Green was sick, that the doctor had
forbidden him to march, or even to ride. As he pressed nearer the curb
he heard the admiring comments of the crowd.

"Isn't he magnificent!"

"See his beautiful flowers! His grandchildren always send him his
flowers."

"He's our first citizen."

"He's mine!" Adam wanted to cry out. "He's mine!"

Never had Adam felt so miserable, so jealous, so heartsick. His eyes
were filled with the great figure. Henry was, in truth, magnificent,
not only in himself, but in what he represented. He seemed symbolic
of a great era of the past, and at the same time of a new age which
was advancing. Old Adam understood all his glory.

"He's mine!" said old Adam again, foolishly.

Then Adam leaned forward with startled, staring eyes. Henry had bowed
and smiled in answer to the cheers. Across the street his own house
was a mass of color--red, white, and blue over windows and doors, gay
dresses on the porch. On each side the pavement was crowded with a
shouting multitude. Surely no hero had ever had a more glorious passage
through the streets of his birthplace!

But old Adam saw that Henry's face blanched, that there appeared
suddenly upon it an expression of intolerable pain. For an instant
Henry's step faltered and grew uncertain.

Then old Adam began to behave like a wild man. He pushed himself
through the crowd, he flung himself upon the rope as though to tear
it down, he called out, "Wait! wait!" Frightened women, fearful of some
sinister purpose, tried to grasp and hold him. No man was immediately
at hand, or Adam would have been seized and taken away. As for the
feeble women--Adam shook them off and laughed at them.

"Let me go, you geese!" said he.

A mounted marshal saw him and rode down upon him; men started from under
the ropes to pursue him. But Adam eluded them or outdistanced them. He
strode across an open space with a surety which gave no hint of the
terrible beating of his heart, until he reached the side of Henry. Him
he greeted, breathlessly and with terrible eagerness.

"Henry," said he, gasping, "Henry, do you want me to walk along?"

Henry saw the alarmed crowds, he saw the marshal's hand stretched
to seize Adam, he saw most clearly of all the tearful eyes under the
beetling brows. Henry's voice shook, but he made himself clear.

"It's all right," said he to the marshal. "Let him be."

"I saw you were alone," said Adam. "I said, 'Henry needs me.' I know
what it is to be alone. I--"

But Adam did not finish his sentence. He found a hand on his, a blue
arm linked tightly in his gray arm, he felt himself moved along amid
thunderous roars of sound.

"Of course I need you!" said Henry. "I've needed you all along."

Then, old but young, their lives almost ended, but themselves immortal,
united, to be divided no more, amid an ever-thickening sound of cheers,
the two marched down the street.




THE YELLOW CAT[19]

BY WILBUR DANIEL STEELE

From _Harper's Magazine_

[19] Copyright 1915, by Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 1916, by Wilbur
     Daniel Steele.


At least once in my life I have had the good fortune to board a deserted
vessel at sea. I say "good fortune" because it has left me the memory
of a singular impression. I have felt a ghost of the same thing two or
three times since then, when peeping through the doorway of an abandoned
house.

Now that vessel was not dead. She was a good vessel, a sound vessel,
even a handsome vessel, in her blunt-bowed, coastwise way. She sailed
under four lowers across as blue and glittering a sea as I have ever
known, and there was not a point in her sailing that one could lay a
finger upon as wrong. And yet, passing that schooner at two miles, one
knew, somehow, that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine
a vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea,
carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion
of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no
landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their
foreheads with just the shadow of a smile.

I wonder if they all scream--these ships that have lost their souls?
Mine screamed. We heard her voice, like nothing I have ever heard
before, when we rowed under her counter to read her name--the
_Marionnette_ it was, of Halifax. I remember how it made me shiver,
there in the full blaze of the sun, to hear her going on so, railing
and screaming in that stark fashion. And I remember, too, how our
footsteps, pattering through the vacant internals in search of that
haggard utterance, made me think of the footsteps of hurrying warders
roused in the night.

And we found a parrot in a cage; that was all. It wanted water. We
gave it water and went away to look things over, keeping pretty close
together, all of us. In the quarters the table was set for four. Two
men had begun to eat, by the evidence of the plates. Nowhere in the
vessel was there any sign of disorder, except one sea-chest broken out,
evidently in haste. Her papers were gone and the stern davits were
empty. That is how the case stood that day, and that is how it has
stood to this. I saw this same _Marionnette_ a week later, tied up
to a Hoboken dock, where she awaited news from her owners; but even
there, in the midst of all the water-front bustle, I could not get rid
of the feeling that she was still very far away--in a sort of shippish
other-world.

The thing happens now and then. Sometimes half a dozen years will go by
without a solitary wanderer of this sort crossing the ocean paths, and
then in a single season perhaps several of them will turn up: vacant
waifs, impassive and mysterious--a quarter-column of tidings tucked away
on the second page of the evening paper.

That is where I read the story about the _Abbie Rose_. I recollect how
painfully awkward and out-of-place it looked there, cramped between
ruled black edges and smelling of landsman's ink--this thing that had
to do essentially with air and vast colored spaces. I forget the exact
words of the heading--something like "Abandoned Craft Picked Up At
Sea"--but I still have the clipping itself, couched in the formal patter
of the marine-news writer:

"The first hint of another mystery of the sea came in to-day when
the schooner _Abbie Rose_ dropped anchor in the upper river, manned
only by a crew of one. It appears that the out-bound freighter _Mercury_
sighted the _Abbie Rose_ off Block Island on Thursday last, acting
in a suspicious manner. A boat-party sent aboard found the schooner
in perfect order and condition, sailing under four lower sails, the
topsails being pursed up to the mastheads but not stowed. With the
exception of a yellow cat, the vessel was found to be utterly deserted,
though her small boat still hung in the davits. No evidences of disorder
were visible in any part of the craft. The dishes were washed up, the
stove in the galley was still slightly warm to the touch, everything in
its proper place with the exception of the vessel's papers, which were
not to be found.

"All indications being for fair weather, Captain Rohmer of the _Mercury_
detailed two of his company to bring the find back to this port, a
distance of one hundred and fifteen miles. The only man available with
a knowledge of the fore-and-aft rig was Stewart McCord, the second
engineer. A seaman by the name of Björnsen was sent with him. McCord
arrived this noon, after a very heavy voyage of five days, reporting
that Björnsen had fallen overboard while shaking out the foretopsail.
McCord himself showed evidences of the hardships he has passed through,
being almost a nervous wreck."

Stewart McCord! Yes, Stewart McCord would have a knowledge of the
fore-and-aft rig, or of almost anything else connected with the
affairs of the sea. It happened that I used to know this fellow. I
had even been quite chummy with him in the old days--that is, to
the extent of drinking too many beers with him in certain hot-country
ports. I remembered him as a stolid and deliberate sort of a person,
with an amazing hodge-podge of learning, a stamp collection, and a
theory about the effects of tropical sunshine on the Caucasian race,
to which I have listened half of more than one night, stretched out
naked on a freighter's deck. He had not impressed me as a fellow who
would be bothered by his nerves.

And there was another thing about the story which struck me as rather
queer. Perhaps it is a relic of my seafaring days, but I have always
been a conscientious reader of the weather reports; and I could remember
no weather in the past week sufficient to shake a man out of a top,
especially a man by the name of Björnsen--a thorough-going seafaring
name.

I was destined to hear more of this in the evening from the ancient
boatman who rowed me out on the upper river. He had been to sea in his
day. He knew enough to wonder about this thing, even to indulge in a
little superstitious awe about it.

"No sir-ee. Something _happened_ to them four chaps. And another
thing--"

I fancied I heard a sea-bird whining in the darkness overhead. A shape
moved out of the gloom ahead, passed to the left, lofty and silent, and
merged once more with the gloom behind--a barge at anchor, with the
sea-grass clinging around her water-line.

"Funny about that other chap," the old fellow speculated. "Björnsen--I
b'lieve he called 'im. Now that story sounds to me kind of--" He
feathered his oars with a suspicious jerk and peered at me. "This McCord
a friend of yourn?" he inquired.

"In a way," I said.

"Hm-m--well--" He turned on his thwart to squint ahead. "There she is,"
he announced, with something of relief, I thought.

It was hard at that time of night to make anything but a black blotch
out of the _Abbie Rose_. Of course I could see that she was pot-bellied,
like the rest of the coastwise sisterhood. And that McCord had not
stowed his topsails. I could make them out, pursed at the mastheads
and hanging down as far as the cross-trees, like huge, over-ripe pears.
Then I recollected that he had found them so--probably had not touched
them since; a queer way to leave tops, it seemed to me. I could see also
the glowing tip of a cigar floating restlessly along the farther rail. I
called: "McCord! Oh, McCord!"

The spark came swimming across the deck. "Hello! Hello there--ah--"
There was a note of querulous uneasiness there that somehow jarred with
my remembrance of this man.

"Ridgeway," I explained.

He echoed the name uncertainly, still with that suggestion of
peevishness, hanging over the rail and peering down at us. "Oh! By
gracious!" he exclaimed, abruptly. "I'm glad to see you, Ridgeway. I
had a boatman coming out before this, but I guess--well, I guess he'll
be along. By gracious! I'm glad--"

"I'll not keep you," I told the gnome, putting the money in his palm
and reaching for the rail. McCord lent me a hand on my wrist. Then
when I stood squarely on the deck beside him he appeared to forget my
presence, leaned forward heavily on the rail, and squinted after my
waning boatman.

"Ahoy--boat!" he called out, sharply, shielding his lips with his
hands. His violence seemed to bring him out of the blank, for he fell
immediately to puffing strongly at his cigar and explaining in rather
a shame-voiced way that he was beginning to think his own boatman had
"passed him up."

"Come in and have a nip," he urged with an abrupt heartiness, clapping
me on the shoulder.

"So you've--" I did not say what I had intended. I was thinking that
in the old days McCord had made rather a fetish of touching nothing
stronger than beer. Neither had he been of the shoulder-clapping sort.
"So you've got something aboard?" I shifted.

"Dead men's liquor," he chuckled. It gave me a queer feeling in the
pit of my stomach to hear him. I began to wish I had not come, but
there was nothing for it now but to follow him into the afterhouse.
The cabin itself might have been nine feet square, with three bunks
occupying the port side. To the right opened the master's stateroom,
and a door in the forward bulkhead led to the galley.

I took in these features at a casual glance. Then, hardly knowing why
I did it, I began to examine them with greater care.

"Have you a match?" I asked. My voice sounded very small, as though
something unheard of had happened to all the air.

"Smoke?" he asked. "I'll get you a cigar."

"No." I took the proffered match, scratched it on the side of the galley
door, and passed out. There seemed to be a thousand pans there, throwing
my match back at me from every wall of the box-like compartment. Even
McCord's eyes, in the doorway, were large and round and shining. He
probably thought me crazy. Perhaps I was, a little. I ran the match
along close to the ceiling and came upon a rusty hook a little aport
of the center.

"There," I said. "Was there anything hanging from this--er--say a
parrot--or something, McCord?" The match burned my fingers and went
out.

"What do you mean?" McCord demanded from the doorway. I got myself back
into the comfortable yellow glow of the cabin before I answered, and
then it was a question.

"Do you happen to know anything about this craft's personal history?"

"No. What are you talking about! Why?"

"Well, I do," I offered. "For one thing, she's changed her name.
And it happens this isn't the first time she's--well, damn it all,
fourteen years ago I helped pick up this whatever-she-is off the
Virginia Capes--in the same sort of condition. There you are!" I was
yapping like a nerve-strung puppy.

McCord leaned forward with his hands on the table, bringing his face
beneath the fan of the hanging-lamp. For the first time I could mark
how shockingly it had changed. It was almost colorless. The jaw had
somehow lost its old-time security and the eyes seemed to be loose
in their sockets. I had expected him to start at my announcement; he
only blinked at the light.

"I am not surprised," he remarked at length. "After what I've seen and
heard--". He lifted his fist and brought it down with a sudden crash on
the table. "Man--let's have a nip!"

He was off before I could say a word, fumbling out of sight in the
narrow state-room. Presently he reappeared, holding a glass in either
hand and a dark bottle hugged between his elbows. Putting the glasses
down, he held up the bottle between his eyes and the lamp, and its
shadow, falling across his face, green and luminous at the core, gave
him a ghastly look--like a mutilation or an unspeakable birth-mark. He
shook the bottle gently and chuckled his "Dead men's liquor" again.
Then he poured two half-glasses of the clear gin, swallowed his portion,
and sat down.

"A parrot," he mused, a little of the liquor's color creeping into his
cheeks. "No, this time it was a cat, Ridgeway. A yellow cat. She was--"

"_Was?_" I caught him up. "What's happened--what's become of her?"

"Vanished. Evaporated. I haven't seen her since night before last, when
I caught her trying to lower the boat--"

"_Stop it!_" It was I who banged the table now, without any of the
reserve of decency. "McCord, you're drunk--_drunk_, I tell you. A _cat_!
Let a _cat_ throw you off your head like this! She's probably hiding out
below this minute, on affairs of her own."

"Hiding?" He regarded me for a moment with the queer superiority of
the damned. "I guess you don't realize how many times I've been over
this hulk, from decks to keelson, with a mallet and a foot-rule."

"Or fallen overboard," I shifted, with less assurance. "Like this fellow
Björnsen. By the way, McCord--". I stopped there on account of the look
in his eyes.

He reached out, poured himself a shot, swallowed it, and got up to
shuffle about the confined quarters. I watched their restless
circuit--my friend and his jumping shadow. He stopped and bent forward
to examine a Sunday-supplement chromo tacked on the wall, and the two
heads drew together, as though there were something to whisper. Of a
sudden I seemed to hear the old gnome croaking, "Now that story sounds
to me kind of--"

McCord straightened up and turned to face me.

"What do you know about Björnsen?" he demanded.

"Well--only what they had you saying in the papers," I told him.

"Pshaw!" He snapped his fingers, tossing the affair aside. "I found her
log," he announced in quite another voice.

"You did, eh? I judged, from what I read in the paper, that there was't
a sign."

"No, no; I happened on this the other night, under the mattress in
there." He jerked his head toward the state-room. "Wait!" I heard him
knocking things over in the dark and mumbling at them. After a moment
he came out and threw on the table a long, cloth-covered ledger, of
the common commercial sort. It lay open at about the middle, showing
close script running indiscriminately across the column ruling.

"When I said 'log,'" he went on, "I guess I was going it a little
strong. At least, I wouldn't want that sort of log found around _my_
vessel. Let's call it a personal record. Here's his picture,
somewhere--". He shook the book by its back and a common kodak blueprint
fluttered to the table. It was the likeness of a solid man with a
paunch, a huge square beard, small squinting eyes, and a bald head.
"What do you make of him--a writing chap?"

"From the nose down, yes," I estimated. "From the nose up, he will 'tend
to his own business if you will 'tend to yours, strictly."

McCord slapped his thigh. "By gracious! that's the fellow! He hates the
Chinaman. He knows as well as anything he ought not to put down in black
and white how intolerably he hates the Chinaman, and yet he must sneak
off to his cubby-hole and suck his pencil, and--and how is it Stevenson
has it?--the 'agony of composition,' you remember. Can you imagine the
fellow, Ridgeway, bundling down here with the fever on him--"

"About the Chinaman," I broke in. "I think you said something about a
Chinaman?"

"Yes. The cook, he must have been. I gather he wasn't the master's
pick, by the reading-matter here. Probably clapped on to him by the
owners--shifted from one of their others at the last moment; a queer
trick. Listen." He picked up the book and, running over the pages with
a selective thumb, read:

"'_August second_. First part, moderate southwesterly breeze--' and so
forth--er--but here he comes to it:

"'Anything can happen to a man at sea, even a funeral. In special to a
Chinyman, who is of no account to social welfare, being a barbarian as
I look at it.'

"Something of a philosopher, you see. And did you get the reserve in
that 'even a funeral?' An artist, I tell you. But wait; let me catch
him a bit wilder. Here:

"'I'll get that mustard-colored ---- [This is back a couple of days.]
Never can hear the ---- coming, in them carpet slippers. Turned round
and found him standing right to my back this morning. Could have stuck
a knife into me easy. "Look here!" says I, and fetched him a tap on the
ear that will make him walk louder next time, I warrant. He could have
stuck a knife into me easy.'

"A clear case of moral funk, I should say. Can you imagine the fellow,
Ridgeway--"

"Yes; oh, yes." I was ready with a phrase of my own. "A man handicapped
with an imagination. You see he can't quite understand this 'barbarian,'
who has him beaten by about thirty centuries of civilization--and his
imagination has to have something to chew on, something to hit--a 'tap
on the ear,' you know."

"By gracious! that's the ticket!" McCord pounded his knee. "And now
we've got another chap going to pieces--Peters, he calls him. Refuses
to eat dinner on August the third, claiming he caught the Chink making
passes over the chowder-pot with his thumb. Can you believe it,
Ridgeway--in this very cabin here?" Then he went on with a suggestion
of haste, as though he had somehow made a slip. "Well, at any rate, the
disease seems to be catching. Next day it's Bach, the second seaman, who
begins to feel the gaff. Listen:

"'Back he comes to me to-night, complaining he's being watched. He
claims the ---- has got the evil eye. Says he can see you through a
two-inch bulkhead, and the like. The Chink's laying in his bunk, turned
the other way. "Why don't you go aboard of him," says I. The Dutcher
says nothing, but goes over to his own bunk and feels under the straw.
When he comes back he's looking queer. "By God!" says he, "the devil has
swiped my gun!"... Now if that's true there is going to be hell to pay
in this vessel very quick. I figure I'm still master of this vessel.'"

"The evil eye," I grunted. "Consciences gone wrong there somewhere."

"Not altogether, Ridgeway. I can see that yellow man peeking. Now
just figure yourself, say, eight thousand miles from home, out on
the water alone with a crowd of heathen fanatics crazy from fright,
looking around for guns and so on. Don't you believe you'd keep an
eye around the corners, kind of--eh? I'll bet a hat he was taking it
all in, lying there in his bunk, 'turned the other way.' Eh? I pity
the poor cuss--Well, there's only one more entry after that. He's
good and mad. Here:

"'Now, by God! this is the end. My gun's gone, too; right out from under
lock and key, by God! I been talking with Bach this morning. Not to let
on, I had him in to clean my lamp. There's more ways than one, he says,
and so do I.'"

McCord closed the book and dropped it on the table.

"Finis," he said. "The rest is blank paper."

"Well!" I will confess I felt much better than I had for some time past.
"There's _one_ 'mystery of the sea' gone to pot, at any rate. And now,
if you don't mind, I think I'll have another of your nips, McCord."

He pushed my glass across the table and got up, and behind his back his
shoulder rose to scour the corners of the room, like an incorruptible
sentinel. I forgot to take up my gin, watching him. After an uneasy
minute or so he came back to the table and pressed the tip of a
forefinger on the book.

"Ridgeway," he said, "you don't seem to understand. This particular
'mystery of the sea' hasn't been scratched yet--not even _scratched_,
Ridgeway." He sat down and leaned forward, fixing me with a didactic
finger. "What happened?"

"Well, I have an idea the 'barbarian' got them, when it came to the
pinch."

"And let the--remains over the side?"

"I should say."

"And then they came back and got the 'barbarian' and let _him_ over the
side, eh? There were none left, you remember."

"Oh, good Lord, I don't know!" I flared with a childish resentment at
this catechising of his. But his finger remained there, challenging.

"I do," he announced. "The Chinaman put them over the side, as we have
said. And then, after that, he died--of wounds about the head."

"So?" I had still sarcasm.

"You will remember," he went on, "that the skipper did not happen to
mention a cat, a _yellow_ cat, in his confessions."

"McCord," I begged him, "please drop it. Why in thunder _should_ he
mention a cat?"

"True. Why _should_ he mention a cat? I think one of the reasons why
he should _not_ mention a cat is because there did not happen to be a
cat aboard at that time."

"Oh, all right!" I reached out and pulled the bottle to my side of the
table. Then I took out my watch. "If you don't mind," I suggested, "I
think we'd better be going ashore. I've got to get to my office rather
early in the morning. What do you say?"

He said nothing for the moment, but his finger had dropped. He leaned
back and stared straight into the core of the light above, his eyes
squinting.

"He would have been from the south of China, probably." He seemed to
be talking to himself. "There's a considerable sprinkling of the belief
down there, I've heard. It's an uncanny business--this transmigration
of souls--"

Personally, I had had enough of it. McCord's fingers came groping across
the table for the bottle. I picked it up hastily and let it go through
the open companionway, where it died with a faint gurgle, out somewhere
on the river.

"Now," I said to him, shaking the vagrant wrist, "either you come ashore
with me or you go in there and get under the blankets. You're drunk,
McCord--_drunk_. Do you hear me?"

"Ridgeway," he pronounced, bringing his eyes down to me and speaking
very slowly. "You're a fool, if you can't see better than that. I'm not
drunk. I'm sick. I haven't slept for three nights--and now I can't. And
you say--you--" He went to pieces very suddenly, jumped up, pounded the
legs of his chair on the decking, and shouted at me: "And you say that,
you--you landlubber, you office coddler! You're so comfortably sure
that everything in the world is cut and dried. Come back to the water
again and learn how to wonder--and stop talking like a damn fool. Do
you know where--. Is there anything in your municipal budget to tell
me where Björnsen went? Listen!" He sat down, waving me to do the same,
and went on with a sort of desperate repression.

"It happened on the first night after we took this hellion. I'd stood
the wheel most of the afternoon--off and on, that is, because she sails
herself uncommonly well. Just put her on a reach, you know, and she
carries it off pretty well--"

"I know," I nodded.

"Well, we mugged up about seven o'clock. There was a good deal of canned
stuff in the galley, and Björnsen wasn't a bad hand with a kettle--a
thoroughgoing Square-head he was--tall and lean and yellow-haired, with
little fat, round cheeks and a white mustache. Not a bad chap at all.
He took the wheel to stand till midnight, and I turned in, but I didn't
drop off for quite a spell. I could hear his boots wandering around over
my head, padding off forward, coming back again. I heard him whistling
now and then--an outlandish air. Occasionally I could see the shadow of
his head waving in a block of moonlight that lay on the decking right
down there in front of the state-room door. It came from the companion;
the cabin was dark because we were going easy on the oil. They hadn't
left a great deal, for some reason or other."

McCord leaned back and described with his finger where the illumination
had cut the decking.

"There! I could see it from my bunk, as I lay, you understand. I must
have almost dropped off once when I heard him fiddling around out here
in the cabin, and then he said something in a whisper, just to find out
if I was still awake, I suppose. I asked him what the matter was. He
came and poked his head in the door."

"'The breeze is going out,' says he. 'I was wondering if we couldn't get
a little more sail on her.' Only I can't give you his fierce Square-head
tang. 'How about the tops?' he suggested.

"I was so sleepy I didn't care, and I told him so. 'All right,' he says,
'but I thought I might shake out one of them tops.' Then I heard him
blow at something outside. 'Scat, you--!' Then: 'This cat's going to
set me crazy, Mr. McCord,' he says, 'following me around everywhere.' He
gave a kick, and I saw something yellow floating across the moonlight.
It never made a sound--just floated. You wouldn't have known it ever lit
anywhere, just like--"

McCord stopped and drummed a few beats on the table with his fist, as
though to bring himself back to the straight narrative.

"I went to sleep," he began again. "I dreamed about a lot of things. I
woke up sweating. You know how glad you are to wake up after a dream
like that and find none of it is so? Well, I turned over and settled to
go off again, and then I got a little more awake and thought to myself
it must be pretty near time for me to go on deck. I scratched a match
and looked at my watch. 'That fellow must be either a good chap or
asleep,' I said to myself. And I rolled out quick and went above-decks.
He wasn't at the wheel. I called him: 'Björnsen! Björnsen!' No answer."

McCord was really telling a story now. He paused for a long moment, one
hand shielding an ear and his eyeballs turned far up.

"That was the first time I really went over the hulk," he ran on. "I
got out a lantern and started at the forward end of the hold, and I
worked aft, and there was nothing there. Not a sign, or a stain,
or a scrap of clothing, or anything. You may believe that I began to
feel funny inside. I went over the decks and the rails and the house
itself--inch by inch. Not a trace. I went out aft again. The cat sat
on the wheel-box, washing her face. I hadn't noticed the scar on her
head before, running down between her ears--rather a new scar--three
or four days old, I should say. It looked ghastly and blue-white in
the flat moonlight. I ran over and grabbed her up to heave her over
the side--you understand how upset I was. Now you know a cat will
squirm around and grab something when you hold it like that, generally
speaking. This one didn't. She just drooped and began to purr and looked
up at me out of her moonlit eyes under that scar. I dropped her on the
deck and backed off. You remember Björnsen had _kicked_ her--and I
didn't want anything like that happening to--"

The narrator turned upon me with a sudden heat, leaned over and shook
his finger before my face.

"There you go!" he cried. "You, with your stout stone buildings and your
policemen and your neighborhood church--you're so damn sure. But I'd
just like to see you out there, alone, with the moon setting, and all
the lights gone tall and queer, and a shipmate--" He lifted his hand
overhead, the finger-tips pressed together and then suddenly separated
as though he had released an impalpable something into the air.

"Go on," I told him.

"I felt more like you do, when it got light again, and warm and
sunshiny. I said 'Bah!' to the whole business. I even fed the cat, and
I slept awhile on the roof of the house--I was so sure. We lay dead most
of the day, without a streak of air. But that night--! Well, that night
I hadn't got over being sure yet. It takes quite a jolt, you know, to
shake loose several dozen generations. A fair, steady breeze had come
along, the glass was high, she was staying herself like a doll, and so
I figured I could get a little rest lying below in the bunk, even if I
didn't sleep.

"I tried not to sleep, in case something should come up--a squall or the
like. But I think I must have dropped off once or twice. I remember I
heard something fiddling around in the galley, and I hollered 'Scat!'
and everything was quiet again. I rolled over and lay on my left side,
staring at that square of moonlight outside my door for a long time.
You'll think it was a dream--what I saw there."

"Go on," I said.

"Call this table-top the spot of light, roughly," he said. He placed a
finger-tip at about the middle of the forward edge and drew it slowly
toward the center. "Here, what would correspond with the upper side of
the companion-way, there came down very gradually the shadow of a tail.
I watched it streaking out there across the deck, wiggling the slightest
bit now and then. When it had come down about half-way across the light,
the solid part of the animal--its shadow, you understand--began to
appear, quite big and round. But how could she hang there, done up in a
ball, from the hatch?"

He shifted his finger back to the edge of the table and puddled it
around to signify the shadowed body.

"I fished my gun out from behind my back. You see I was feeling
funny again. Then I started to slide one foot over the edge of the bunk,
always with my eyes on that shadow. Now I swear I didn't make the sound
of a pin dropping, but I had no more than moved a muscle when that
shadowed thing twisted itself around in a flash--and there on the floor
before me was the profile of a man's head, upside down, listening--a
man's head with a tail of hair."

McCord got up hastily and stepped in front of the state-room door, where
he bent down and scratched a match.

"See," he said, holding the tiny flame above a splintered scar on the
boards. "You wouldn't think a man would be fool enough to shoot at a
shadow?"

He came back and sat down.

"It seemed to me all hell had shaken loose. You've no idea, Ridgeway,
the rumpus a gun raises in a box like this. I found out afterward the
slug ricochetted into the galley, bringing down a couple of pans--and
that helped. Oh yes, I got out of here quick enough. I stood there, half
out of the companion, with my hands on the hatch and the gun between
them, and my shadow running off across the top of the house shivering
before my eyes like a dry leaf. There wasn't a whisper of sound in the
world--just the pale water floating past and the sails towering up like
a pair of twittering ghosts. And everything that crazy color--

"Well, in a minute I saw it, just abreast of the mainmast, crouched down
in the shadow of the weather rail, sneaking off forward very slowly.
This time I took a good long sight before I let go. Did you ever happen
to see black-powder smoke in the moonlight? It puffed out perfectly
round, like a big, pale balloon, this did, and for a second something
was bounding through it--without a sound, you understand--something a
shade solider than the smoke and big as a cow, it looked to me. It
passed from the weather side to the lee and ducked behind the sweep of
the mainsail like _that_--" McCord snapped his thumb and forefinger
under the light.

"Go on," I said. "What did you do then?"

McCord regarded me for an instant from beneath his lids, uncertain. His
fist hung above the table. "You're--" He hesitated, his lips working
vacantly. A forefinger came out of the fist and gesticulated before my
face. "If you're laughing, why, damn me, I'll--"

"Go on," I repeated. "What did you do then?"

"I followed the thing." He was still watching me sullenly. "I got up
and went forward along the roof of the house, so as to have an eye on
either rail. You understand, this business had to be done with. I kept
straight along. Every shadow I wasn't absolutely sure of I _made_ sure
of--point-blank. And I rounded the thing up at the very stem--sitting
on the butt of the bowsprit, Ridgeway, washing her yellow face under
the moon. I didn't make any bones about it this time. I put the bad end
of that gun against the scar on her head and squeezed the trigger. It
snicked on an empty shell. I tell you a fact; I was almost deafened by
the report that didn't come.

"She followed me aft. I couldn't get away from her. I went and sat on
the wheel-box and she came and sat on the edge of the house, facing me.
And there we stayed for upwards of an hour, without moving. Finally she
went over and stuck her paw in the water-pan I'd set out for her; then
she raised her head and looked at me and yawled. At sun-down there'd
been two quarts of water in that pan. You wouldn't think a cat could
get away with two quarts of water in--"

He broke off again and considered me with a sort of weary defiance.

"What's the use?" He spread out his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.
"I knew you wouldn't believe it when I started. You _couldn't_. It would
be a kind of blasphemy against the sacred institution of pavements.
You're too damn smug, Ridgeway. I can't shake you. You haven't sat two
days and two nights, keeping your eyes open by sheer teeth-gritting,
until they got used to it and wouldn't shut any more. When I tell you
I found that yellow thing snooping around the davits, and three bights
of the boat-fall loosened out, plain on deck--you grin behind your
collar. When I tell you she padded off forward and evaporated--flickered
back to hell and hasn't been seen since, then--why, you explain to
yourself that I'm drunk. I tell you--" He jerked his head back abruptly
and turned to face the companionway, his lips still apart. He listened
so for a moment, then he shook himself out of it and went on:

"I tell you, Ridgeway, I've been over this hulk with a foot-rule.
There's not a cubic inch I haven't accounted for, not a plank I--"

This time he got up and moved a step toward the companion, where he
stood with his head bent forward and slightly to the side. After what
might have been twenty seconds of this he whispered, "Do you hear?"

Far and far away down the reach a ferry-boat lifted its infinitesimal
wail, and then the silence of the night river came down once more,
profound and inscrutable A corner of the wick above my head sputtered
a little--that was all.

"Hear what?" I whispered back. He lifted a cautious finger toward the
opening.

"Somebody. Listen."

The man's faculties must have been keyed up to the pitch of his nerves,
for to me the night remained as voiceless as a subterranean cavern. I
became intensely irritated with him; within my mind I cried out against
this infatuated pantomime of his. And then, of a sudden, there _was_ a
sound--the dying rumor of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness,
as though an object had been let into the water with extreme care.

"You heard?"

I nodded. The ticking of the watch in my vest pocket came to my ears,
shucking off the leisurely seconds, while McCord's fingernails gnawed
at the palms of his hands. The man was really sick. He wheeled on me
and cried out, "My God! Ridgeway--why don't we go out?"

I, for one, refused to be a fool. I passed him and climbed out of the
opening; he followed far enough to lean his elbows on the hatch, his
feet and legs still within the secure glow of the cabin.

"You see, there's nothing." My wave of assurance was possibly a little
over-done.

"Over there," he muttered, jerking his head toward the shore lights.
"Something swimming."

I moved to the corner of the house and listened.

"River thieves," I argued. "The place is full of--"

"_Ridgeway. Look behind you!_"

Perhaps it _is_ the pavements--but no matter; I am not ordinarily a
jumping sort. And yet there was something in the quality of that voice
beyond my shoulder that brought the sweat stinging through the pores
of my scalp even while I was in the act of turning.

A cat sat there on the hatch, expressionless and immobile in the gloom.

I did not say anything. I turned and went below. McCord was there
already, standing on the farther side of the table. After a moment or
so the cat followed and sat on her haunches at the foot of the ladder
and stared at us without winking.

"I think she wants something to eat," I said to McCord.

He lit a lantern and went into the galley. Returning with a chunk of
salt beef, he threw it into the farther corner. The cat went over and
began to tear at it, her muscles playing with convulsive shadow-lines
under the sagging yellow hide.

And now it was she who listened, to something beyond the reach of even
McCord's faculties, her neck stiff and her ears flattened. I looked at
McCord and found him brooding at the animal with a sort of listless
malevolence. "_Quick_! She has kittens somewhere about." I shook his
elbow sharply. "When she starts, now--"

"You don't seem to understand," he mumbled. "It wouldn't be any use."

She had turned now and was making for the ladder with the soundless
agility of her race. I grasped McCord's wrist and dragged him after
me, the lantern banging against his knees. When we came up the cat was
already amidships, a scarcely discernible shadow at the margin of our
lantern's ring. She stopped and looked back at us with her luminous
eyes, appeared to hesitate, uneasy at our pursuit of her, shifted here
and there with quick, soft bounds, and stopped to fawn with her back
arched at the foot of the mast. Then she was off with an amazing
suddenness into the shadows forward.

"Lively now!" I yelled at McCord. He came pounding along behind me,
still protesting that it was of no use. Abreast of the foremast I took
the lantern from him to hold above my head.

"You see," he complained, peering here and there over the illuminated
deck. "I tell you, Ridgeway, this thing--" But my eyes were in another
quarter, and I slapped him on the shoulder.

"An engineer--an engineer to the core," I cried at him. "Look aloft,
man."

Our quarry was almost to the cross-trees, clambering the shrouds with
a smartness no sailor has ever come to, her yellow body, cut by the
moving shadows of the ratlines, a queer sight against the mat of the
night. McCord closed his mouth and opened it again for two words: "By
gracious!" The following instant he had the lantern and was after her.
I watched him go up above my head--a ponderous, swaying climber into
the sky--come to the cross-trees, and squat there with his knees clamped
around the mast. The clear star of the lantern shot this way and that
for a moment, then it disappeared and in its place there sprang out
a bag of yellow light, like a fire-balloon at anchor in the heavens.
I could see the shadows of his head and hands moving monstrously over
the inner surface of the sail, and muffled exclamations without meaning
came down to me. After a moment he drew out his head and called: "All
right--they're here. Heads! there below!"

I ducked at his warning, and something spanked on the planking a yard
from my feet. I stepped over to the vague blur on the deck and picked
up a slipper--a slipper covered with some woven straw stuff and soled
with a matted felt, perhaps a half-inch thick. Another struck somewhere
abaft the mast, and then McCord reappeared above and began to stagger
down the shrouds. Under his left arm he hugged a curious assortment of
litter, a sheaf of papers, a brace of revolvers, a gray kimono, and a
soiled apron.

"Well," he said when he had come to deck, "I feel like a man who has
gone to hell and come back again. You know I'd come to the place where I
really believed that about the cat. When you think of it--By gracious!
we haven't come so far from the jungle, after all."

We went aft and below and sat down at the table as we had been. McCord
broke a prolonged silence.

"I'm sort of glad he got away--poor cuss! He's probably climbing up
a wharf this minute, shivering and scared to death. Over toward the
gas-tanks, by the way he was swimming. By gracious! now that the world's
turned over straight again, I feel I could sleep a solid week. Poor
cuss! can you imagine him, Ridgeway--"

"Yes," I broke in. "I think I can. He must have lost his nerve when
he made out your smoke and shinnied up there to stow away, taking the
ship's papers with him He would have attached some profound importance
to them--remember, the 'barbarian,' eight thousand miles from home.
Probably couldn't read a word. I suppose the cat followed him--the
traditional source of food He must have wanted water badly."

"I should say! He wouldn't have taken the chances he did."

"Well," I announced, "at any rate, I can say it now--there's another
'mystery of the sea' gone to pot."

McCord lifted his heavy lids.

"No," he mumbled. "The mystery is that a man who has been to sea all
his life could sail around for three days with a man bundled up in his
top and not know it. When I think of him peeking down at me--and playing
off that damn cat--probably without realizing it--scared to death--by
gracious! Ridgeway, there was a pair of funks aboard this craft, eh?
Wow--yow--I could sleep--"

"I should think you could."

McCord did not answer.

"By the way," I speculated. "I guess you were right about Björnsen,
McCord--that is, his fooling with the foretop. He must have been caught
all of a bunch, eh?"

Again McCord failed to answer. I looked up, mildly surprised, and found
his head hanging back over his chair and his mouth opened wide. He was
asleep.





THE BOUNTY-JUMPER[20]

By MARY SYNON

From _Scribner's Magazine_

[20] Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1916, by
     Mary Synon.


    "... While faith, that in the mire was fain to wallow,
        Returns at last to find
    The cold fanes desolate, the niches hollow,
        The windows dim and blind,

    "And strown with ruins around, the shattered relic
        Of unregardful youth,
    Where shapes of beauty once, with tongues angelic,
        Whispered the runes of Truth."

            --_From "The Burden of Lost Souls_."


On the day before Isador Framberg's body was brought back to Chicago
from Vera Cruz, James Thorold's appointment as ambassador to Forsland
was confirmed by the Senate of the United States. Living, Isador
Framberg might never have wedged into the affairs of nations and the
destinies of James Thorold. Marines in the navy do not intrigue with
chances of knee-breeches at the Court of St. Jerome. More than miles
lie between Forquier Street and the Lake Shore Drive. Dead, Isador
Framberg became, as dead men sometimes become, the archangel of a
nation, standing with flaming sword at the gateway to James Thorold's
paradise.

For ten years the Forsland embassy had been the goal of James Thorold's
ambition. A man past seventy, head of a great importing establishment,
he had shown interest in public affairs only within the decade, although
his very build, tall, erect, commanding, and his manner suavely
courteous and untouched by futile haste, seemed to have equipped him
with a natural bent for public life. Marrying late in life, he seemed
to have found his bent more tardily than did other men. But he had
invested wealth, influence, and wisdom in the future of men who, come
to power, were paying him with this grant of his desire. The news,
coming to him unofficially but authoritatively from Washington, set
him to cabling his wife and daughter in Paris and telegraphing his son
whose steamer was just docking in New York. The boy's answer, delayed
in transit and announcing that he was already on his way to Chicago,
came with the morning newspapers and hurried his father through their
contents in order that he might be on time to meet Peter at the station.

The newspapers, chronicling Thorold's appointment briefly, were heavy
with harbingering of the funeral procession of the boy who had fallen
a fortnight before in the American navy's attack upon Vera Cruz. The
relative values that editors placed upon the marine's death and his own
honoring nettled Thorold. Ambassadors to the Court of St. Jerome were
not chosen from Chicago every day, he reasoned, finding Isador Framberg
already the fly in the amber of his contentment. To change the current
of his thought he read over Peter's telegram, smiling at the exuberant
message of joy in which the boy had vaunted the family glory. The yellow
slip drove home to James Thorold the realization of how largely Peter's
young enthusiasm was responsible for the whetting of his father's desire
to take part in public affairs. For Peter's praise James Thorold would
have moved mountains; and Peter's praise had a way of following the man
on horseback. Thorold's eager anticipation of the boy's pride in him
sped his course through rosy mists of hope as his motor-car threaded
the bright drive and through the crowded Parkway toward the Rush Street
bridge.

A cloud drifted across the sky of his serenity, however, as a blockade
of traffic delayed his car in front of the old Adams homestead, rising
among lilacs that flooded half city square with fragrance. The old
house, famous beyond its own day for Judge Adams's friendship with
Abraham Lincoln and the history-making sessions that the little group
of Illinois idealists had held within its walls, loomed gray above the
flowering shrubs, a saddening reminder of days that James Thorold must
have known; but Thorold, glimpsing the place, turned away from it in a
movement so swift as to betoken some resentment and gave heed instead
to the long line of motors rolling smoothly toward the city's heart.

Over the bridge and through the packed streets of the down-town
district Thorold, shaken from his revery of power and Peter, watched
the film that Chicago unrolled for the boulevard pilgrims. The boats
in the river, the long switch-tracks of the railroads, the tall
grain-elevators, the low warehouses from which drifted alluring
odors of spices linked for James Thorold the older city of his youth
with the newer one of his age as the street linked one division of the
city's geography with another. They were the means by which Chicago had
risen from the sand-flats of the fifties to the Michigan Avenue of the
present, that wide street of the high skyline that fronted the world
as it faced the Great Lakes, squarely, solidly, openly. They were the
means, too, by which James Thorold had augmented his fortune until it
had acquired the power to send him to Forsland. To him, however, they
represented not ladders to prosperity but a social condition of a
passing generation, the Chicago of the seventies, a city distinctively
American in population and in ideals, a youthful city of a single
standard of endeavor, a pleasant place that had been swallowed by the
Chicago of the present, that many-tentacled monster of heterogeneous
races, that affected him as it did so many of the older residents,
with an overwhelming sensation of revolt against its sprawling lack
of cohesion. Even the material advantages that had accrued to him from
the growth of the city could not reconcile James Thorold to the fact
that the elements of the city's growth came from the races of men whom
he held in contempt. What mattered it, he reasoned, that Chicago waxed
huge when her grossness came from the unassimilated, indigestible mass
of Latins and Greeks, Poles and Russians, Czechs, Bulgars, Jews, who
filled the streets, the factories, and the schools?

The prejudice, always strong within him, rose higher as he found his
machine blocked again, this time by the crowd that stood across Jackson
Boulevard at La Salle Street. Even after the peremptory order of a
mounted police officer had cleared the way for him James Thorold frowned
on the lines of men and women pressed back against the curbstones. The
thought that they were waiting the coming of the body of that boy who
had died in Mexico added to his annoyance the realization that he would
have to fight his way through another crowd at the station if he wished
to reach the train-shed where Peter's train would come. The struggle was
spared him, however, by the recognition of a newspaper reporter who took
it for granted that the ambassador to Forsland had come to meet the
funeral cortège of the marine and who led him through a labyrinthine
passage that brought him past the gates and under the glass dome of the
train-shed.

Left alone, Thorold paced the platform a little apart from the group
of men who had evidently been delegated to represent the city. Some
of them he knew. Others of them, men of Isador Framberg's people and
of the ten tribes of Israel, he did not care to know. He turned away
from them to watch the people beyond the gates. Thousands of faces,
typical of every nation of Europe and some of the lands of Asia, fair
Norsemen and Teutons, olive-skinned Italians and men and women of the
swarthier peoples of Palestine, Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Russians,
Bulgars, Bohemians, units of that mass which had welded in the city
of the Great Lakes of America, looked out from behind the iron fence.
The tensity written on their faces, eager yet awed, brought back to
James Thorold another time when men and women had stood within a
Chicago railway terminal waiting for a funeral cortège, the time when
Illinois waited in sorrow to take Abraham Lincoln, dead, to her heart.
The memory of that other day of dirges linked itself suddenly in the
mind of James Thorold with the picture of the lilacs blooming in the
yard of the Adams homestead on the parkway, that old house where Abraham
Lincoln had been wont to come; and the fusing recollections spun the
ambassador to Forsland upon his heel and sent him far down the platform,
where he stood, gloomily apart, until the limited, rolling in from the
end of the yards, brought him hastening to its side.

Peter Thorold was the first to alight.

A boy of sixteen, fair-haired, blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked, springing
from the platform of the Pullman into his father's arms, he brought
with him the atmosphere of high adventure. In height, in poise of
shoulders, in bearing, in a certain trick of lifting his chin, he
was a replica of the dignified man who welcomed him with deep emotion;
but a difference--of dream rather than of dogma--in the quality of their
temperaments accoladed the boy. It was not only that his voice thrilled
with the higher enthusiasms of youth. It held besides an inflexibility
of tone that James Thorold's lacked. Its timbre told that Peter
Thorold's spirit had been tempered in a furnace fierier than the one
which had given forth the older man's. The voice rang out now in excited
pleasure as the boy gripped his father's shoulders. "Oh, but it's good
to see you again, dad," he cried. "You're a great old boy, and I'm proud
of you, sir. Think of it!" he almost shouted. "Ambassador to Forsland!
Say, but that's bully!" He slipped his arm around his father's shoulder,
while James Thorold watched him with eyes that shone with joy. "What do
you call an ambassador?" he demanded laughingly.

"Fortunately," the older man said, "there is no title accompanying the
office."

"Well, I should think not," the boy exclaimed. "Oh, dad, isn't it the
greatest thing in the world that you're to represent the United States
of America?"

James Thorold smiled. "No doubt," he said dryly. His gaze passed his
son to glimpse the crowd at the gate, frantic now with excitement, all
looking forward toward some point on the platform just beyond where the
man and boy were standing. "These United States of America have grown
past my thought of them," he added. The boy caught up the idea eagerly.
"Haven't they, though?" he demanded. "And isn't it wonderful to think
that it's all the same old America, 'the land of the free and the home
of the brave?' Gee, but it's good to be back in it again. I came up
into New York alongside the battleship that brought our boys home from
Mexico," he went on, "and, oh, say, dad, you should have seen that
harbor! I've seen a lot of things for a fellow," he pursued with a touch
of boyish boastfulness, "but I never saw anything in all my life like
that port yesterday. People, and people, and people, waiting, and flags
at half-mast, and a band off somewhere playing a funeral march, and that
battleship with the dead sailors--the fellows who died for our country
at Vera Cruz, you know--creeping up to the dock. Oh, it was--well, I
cried!" He made confession proudly, then hastened into less personal
narrative.

"One of them came from Chicago here," he said. "He was only nineteen
years old, and he was one of the first on the beach after the order to
cross to the customhouse. He lived over on Forquier Street, one of the
men was telling me--there are six of them, the guard of honor for him,
on the train--and his name was Isador Framberg. He was born in Russia,
too, in Kiev, the place of the massacres, you remember. See, dad, here
comes the guard!"

Peter Thorold swung his father around until he faced six uniformed
men who fell into step as they went forward toward the baggage-car.
"It's too bad, isn't it," the boy continued, "that any of the boys had
to die down in that greaser town? But, if they did, I'm proud that we
proved up that Chicago had a hero to send. Aren't you, dad?" James
Thorold did not answer. Peter's hands closed over his arm. "It reminds
me," he said, lowering his voice as they came closer to the place where
the marines stood beside the iron carrier that awaited the casket of
Isador Framberg's body, "of something the tutor at Westbury taught us
in Greek last year, something in a funeral oration that a fellow in
Athens made on the men who died in the Peloponnesian War. 'Such was
the end of these men,'" he quoted slowly, pausing now and then for a
word while his father looked wonderingly upon his rapt fervor, "'and
they were worthy of Athens. The living need not desire to have a more
heroic spirit. I would have you fix your eyes upon the greatness of
Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and, when you
are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire
has been acquired by men who knew their duty and who had the courage
to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always
present to them.'" With the solemnity of the chant the young voice
went on while the flag-covered casket was lifted from car to bier.
"'For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men; not only are
they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country,
but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them,
graven not in stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples,
and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do
not weigh too nicely the perils of war.'"

He pulled off his cap, tucking it under his arm and dragging his
father with him to follow the men who had fallen in behind the marines
as they moved forward toward the gates and the silent crowd beyond.
Almost unwillingly James Thorold doffed his hat. The words of Peter's
unexpected declamation of Pericles's oration resounded in his ears.
"Once before," he said to the boy, "I heard that speech. Judge Adams
said it one night to Abraham Lincoln."

"Father!" Peter's eyes flashed back from the cortège to meet James
Thorold's. "I never knew that you knew Abraham Lincoln." His tone
betokened an impression of having been cheated of some joy the older
man had been hoarding. But James Thorold's voice held no joy. "Yes,"
he said. "I knew him."

The gates, sliding back, opened the way for the officers who led the
procession with which Isador Framberg came back to the city of his
adoption. The crowd yawned to give space to the guard of honor, walking
erectly beside the flag-draped coffin, to the mourners, men and women
alien as if they had come from Kiev but yesterday, to the little group
of men, public officials and rabbis, who trailed in their wake, and to
James Thorold and Peter, reverently following. Then it closed in upon
the cortège, urging it silently down the broad stairways and out into
the street where other crowds fell in with the strange procession.
Surging away after the shabby hearse, drawn by its listless horses and
attended by the marines, the crowd left the Thorolds, father and son,
on the pavement beside the station. "Don't you want to go?" There was
a wistfulness in Peter's voice that told his father that the boy had
sensed some lack of responsiveness in him. "He's going to lie in state
to-day at the city hall. Don't you think we should go, dad?" Not Peter's
query but Peter's eyes won his father's answer. "After a while," he
promised. "Then let's find a breakfast," the boy laughed. "I spent my
last dollar sending you that telegram."

All the way over to his father's club on Michigan Avenue, and all
through the breakfast that he ordered with lusty young appetite, Peter
kept up a running fire of reminiscence of his European adventures. That
the fire held grapeshot for his father when he talked of the latter's
worthiness for the ambassadorship to Forsland he could not guess; but
he found that he was pouring salt in a wound when he went back to
comment upon Isador Framberg's death. "Why make so much of a boy who
happened to be at Vera Cruz?" the older man said at last, nettled that
even his son found greater occasion for commendation in the circumstance
of the Forquier Street hero than in his father's selection to the most
important diplomatic post in the gift of the government. Peter's brows
rose swiftly at his father's annoyance. He opened his lips for argument,
then swiftly changed his intention. "Tell me about Judge Adams, dad," he
said, bungling over his desire to change the topic, "the fellow who knew
his Pericles."

"It's too long a story," James Thorold said. He watched Peter closely
in the fashion of an advocate studying the characteristics of a judge.
The boy's idealism, his vivid young patriotism, his eager championship
of those elements of the new America that his father contemned, had
fired his personality with a glaze that left James Thorold's smoothly
diplomatic fingers wandering over its surface, unable to hold it within
his grasp. He had a story to tell Peter--some time--a story of Judge
Adams, of the house among the lilacs, of days of war, of Abraham
Lincoln; but the time for its telling must wait upon circumstance that
would make Peter Thorold more ready to understand weakness and failure
than he now seemed. Consciously James Thorold took a change of venue
from Peter Thorold of the visions to Peter Thorold of the inevitable
disillusions. But to the former he made concession. "Shall we go to the
city hall now?" he asked as they rose from the table.

The city hall, a massive white granite pile covering half of the square
east of La Salle Street and north of Washington and meeting its twin
of the county building to form a solid mass of masonry, flaunted black
drapings over the doorways through which James Thorold and his son
entered. Through a wide corridor of bronze and marble they found their
way, passing a few stragglers from the great crowd that had filled the
lower floors of the huge structures when Isador Framberg's body had
been brought from its hearse and carried to the centre of the aisles,
the place where the intersecting thoroughfares met. Under a great bronze
lamp stood the catafalque, covered with the Stars and Stripes and
guarded by the men of the fleet.

Peter Thorold, pressing forward, took his place, his cap thrust under
his arm, at the foot of the bier, giving his tribute of silence to the
boy who had died for his country. But James Thorold went aside to stand
beside an elevator-shaft. Had his son watched him as he was watching
Peter, he would have seen the swift emotions that took their way across
his father's face. He would have seen the older man's look dilate with
the strained horror of one who gazed back through the dimming years to
see a ghost. He would have seen sorrow, and grief, and a great remorse
rising to James Thorold's eyes. He might even have seen the shadow of
another bier cast upon the retina of his father's sight. He might have
seen through his father's watching the memory of another man who had
once lain on the very spot where Isador Framberg was lying, a man who
had died for his country after he had lived to set his country among the
free nations of the earth. But Peter Thorold saw only the boy who had
gone from a Forquier Street tenement to the Mexican sands that he might
prove by his dying that, with Irish, and Germans, and French, he too,
the lad who had been born in Kiev of the massacres, was an American.

With the surge of strange emotions flooding his heart, Peter Thorold
crossed to where his father stood apart. The tide of his thought
overflowed the shore of prose and landed his expression high on a
cliff of poetry. No chance, but the urging of his own exalted mood,
brought him the last lines of Moody's "Ode in Time of Hesitation":

    "Then on your guiltier head
    Shall our intolerable self-disdain
    Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain;
    For manifest in that disastrous light
    We shall discern the right
    And do it, tardily.--O ye who lead,
       Take heed!
    Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite."

But to the older man, seeing as he stood the picture of that other
catafalque to which he had crept one night in the lilac time of a year
nearly a half century agone, the words flung anathema. He leaned back
against the bronze grating of the shaft with a sudden look of age that
brought Peter's protective arm to his shoulder. Then, with Peter
following, he went out to the sun-bright street.

Like a man in a daze he dismissed his car, crossing pavements under
Peter's guiding until he came to the building where the fortunes of
the great Thorold mercantile business were administered. Through the
outer room, where clerks looked up in surprise at the appearance which
their chief presented on the morning when they had learned of the
Forsland embassy, he led Peter until they came to the room where he
had reigned for twenty years. It was a room that had always mirrored
James Thorold to his son. Tall bookcases, stiff, old-fashioned, held
long rows of legal works, books on history, essays on ethical topics,
and bound volumes of periodicals. Except for its maps, it was a lawyer's
room, although James Thorold never claimed either legal ability or legal
standing. Peter seldom entered it without interest in its possibilities
of entertainment, but to-day his father's strange and sudden
preoccupation of manner ingulfed all the boy's thought. "What is it,
dad?" he asked, a tightening fear screwing down upon his brain as he
noted the change that had come over the mask that James Thorold's
face held to the world.

James Thorold made him no answer. He was standing at the wide walnut
table, turning over and over in his hands the letters which his
secretary had left for his perusal. Finally, he opened one of them,
the bulkiest. He scanned it for a moment, then flung it upon the floor.
Then he began to pace the room till in his striding he struck his foot
against the paper he had cast aside. He picked it up, tossing it toward
Peter. The boy turned from his strained watching of his father's face
to read the letter. It was the official notification of the Senate's
confirmation of the President's appointment of James Thorold as
ambassador to the Court of St. Jerome.

"Why, father!" Incredulity heightened the boyishness in Peter's tone.
James Thorold wheeled around until he faced him. "Peter," he said
huskily, "there's something you'll have to know before I go to
Forsland--if ever I go to Forsland. You'll have to decide." The boy
shrank from the ominous cadence of the words. "Why, I can't judge for
you, dad," he said awkwardly. "Our children are always our ultimate
judges," James Thorold said.

"I have sometimes wondered," he went on, speaking to himself rather than
to the puzzled boy, "how the disciples who met Christ but who did not go
his way with him to the end felt when they heard he had died. I knew a
great man once, Peter. I went his way for a little while, then I took my
own. I saw them bring him, dead, over the way they have brought that boy
to-day. I came down to the court-house that night, and there, just where
that boy lies, Peter, I made a promise that I have not kept."

Again he resumed his pacing, speaking as he went, sometimes in low
tones, sometimes with tensity of voice, always as if urged by some force
that was driving him from silence. The boy, leaning forward at the edge
of the chair, watched his father through the first part of the story.
Before the end came he turned away.

"You remember," James Thorold began, his voice pleading patience,
"that I've told you I came to Chicago from Ohio before the war? I was
older than you then, Peter, but I was something of a hero-worshipper,
too. Judge Adams was my hero in those troublous times of the fifties.
I knew him only by sight for a long time, watching him go in and out of
the big white house where he lived. After a time I came to know him. I
was clerking in a coffee-importing house during the day and studying law
at night. Judge Adams took me into his office. He took me among his
friends. Abraham Lincoln was one of them.

"I remember the night I met Lincoln. Judge Adams had talked of him
often. He had been talking of him that day. 'Greatness,' he had said,
'is the holding of a great dream, not for yourself, but for others.
Abraham Lincoln has the dream. He has heard the voice, and seen the
vision, and he is climbing up to Sinai. You must meet him, James.'
That night I met him in the old white house.

"We were in the front parlor of the old house," James Thorold continued,
resetting the scene until his only listener knew that it was more real
to him than the room through which he paced, "when some one said, 'Mr.
Lincoln.' I looked up to see a tall, awkward man standing in the arched
doorway. Other men have said that they had to know Lincoln a long time
to feel his greatness. My shame is the greater that I felt his greatness
on the instant when I met his eyes.

"There was talk of war that night. Lincoln did not join in it, I
remember, although I do not recall what he said. But when he rose to go
I went with him. We walked down the street past dooryards where lilacs
were blooming, keeping together till we crossed the river. There our
ways parted. I told him a little of what Judge Adams had said of him.
He laughed at the praise, waving it away from himself. 'It's a good
thought, though,' he said, 'a great dream for others. But we need more
than the dreaming, my friend. When the time comes, will you be ready?'

"I held out my hand to him in pledge.

"My way home that night took me past the armory where the Zouaves, the
boys whom Ellsworth trained, were drilling. You remember Ellsworth's
story, Peter? He was the first officer to die in the war." The boy
nodded solemnly, and the man went on. "With Abraham Lincoln's voice
ringing in my ears I enlisted.

"Years afterward, when Abraham Lincoln was President, war came. I'd seen
Lincoln often in the years between." James Thorold stopped his restless
pacing and stood at the end of the table away from Peter, leaning over
it slightly, as he seemed to keep up his story with difficulty. "He came
often to Judge Adams's house. There were evenings when the three of us
sat in the parlor with the dusk drifting in from the lake, and spoke of
the future of the nation. Judge Adams thought war inevitable. Abraham
Lincoln thought it could be averted. They both dreaded it. I was young,
and I hoped for it. 'What'll you do, Jim, if war should come?' they
asked me once. 'I'd go as a private,' I told them.

"If the war had come then I should have gone with the first regiment
out. But when the call sounded Ellsworth had gone to New York and the
Zouaves had merged with another regiment. I didn't go with them in the
beginning because I told myself that I wanted to be with the first troop
that went from Illinois to the front. I didn't join until after Lincoln
had sent out his call for volunteers.

"You see," he explained to the silent boy, "I had left Judge Adams's
office and struck out for myself. Chicago was showing me golden
opportunities. Before me, if I stayed, stretched a wide road of
success."

"And you didn't go?" Peter interrupted his father for the first time.
"I thought--" His voice broke.

"I went," James Thorold said. "The regiment, the Nineteenth, was at the
border when Lincoln gave the call. There was a bounty being offered to
join it. I would have gone anyhow, but I thought that I might just as
well take the money. I was giving up so much to go, I reasoned. And so
I took the bounty. The provost marshal gave me the money in the office
right across the square from the old court-house. I put it in the bank
before I started south.

"I left Chicago that night with a great thrill. I was going to fight
for a great cause, for Abraham Lincoln's great dream, for the country
my father had died for in Mexico, that my grandfather had fought for at
Lundy's Lane. I think," he said, "that if I might have gone right down
to the fighting, I'd have stood the test. But when I came to Tennessee
the regiment had gone stale. We waited, and waited. Every day I lost a
little interest. Every day the routine dragged a little harder. I had
time to see what opportunities I had left back here in Chicago. I wasn't
afraid of the fighting. But the sheer hatred of what I came to call the
uselessness of war gnawed at my soul. I kept thinking of the ways in
which I might shape my destiny if only I were free. I kept thinking of
the thousand roads to wealth, to personal success, that Chicago held
for me. One night I took my chance. I slipped past the lines."

"Father!" The boy's voice throbbed with pain. His eyes, dilated with
horror at the realization of the older man's admission, fixed their gaze
accusingly on James Thorold. "You weren't a--a deserter?" He breathed
the word fearfully.

"I was a bounty-jumper."

"Oh!" Peter Thorold's shoulders drooped as if under the force of a vital
blow. Vaguely as he knew the term, the boy knew only too well the burden
of disgrace that it carried. Once, in school, he had heard an old tutor
apply it to some character of history whom he had especially despised.
Again, in a home where he had visited, he had heard another old man use
the phrase in contempt for some local personage who had attempted to
seek public office. Bounty-jumper! Its province expressed to the lad's
mind a layer of the inferno beneath the one reserved for the Benedict
Arnolds and the Aaron Burrs. Vainly he bugled to his own troops of
self-control; but they, too, were deserters in the calamity. He flung
his arms across the table, surrendering to his sobs.

Almost impassively James Thorold watched him, as if he himself had gone
so far back into his thought of the past that he could not bridge the
gap to Peter now. With some thought of crossing the chasm he took up his
tale of dishonor. Punctuated by the boy's sobs it went on.

"I came back to Chicago and drew the money from the bank. I knew I
couldn't go back to the practise of law. I changed my name to Thorold
and started in business as an army contractor. I made money. The money
that's made us rich, the money that's sending me to Forsland"--a
bitterness not in his voice before edged his mention of the
embassy--"came from that bounty that the provost marshal gave me."

He turned his back upon the sobbing boy, walking over to the window
and staring outward upon the April brightness of the noonday ere he
spoke again. "You know of the Nineteenth's record? They were at
Nashville, and they were at Chattanooga after my colonel came back,
dead. I went out of Chicago when his body was brought in. Then Turchin
took command of the brigade. The Nineteenth went into the big fights.
They were at Chickamauga. Benton fell there. He'd been in Judge Adams's
office with me. After I'd come back he'd joined the regiment. The day
the news of Chickamauga came I met Judge Adams on Washington Street.
He knew me. He looked at me as Peter might have looked at Judas."

Slowly Peter Thorold raised his head from his arms, staring at the
man beside the window. James Thorold met his look with sombre sorrow.
"Don't think I've had no punishment," he said. "Remember that I loved
Judge Adams. And I loved Abraham Lincoln."

"Oh, no, no!" The boy's choked utterance came in protest. "If you'd
really cared for them you wouldn't have failed them."

"I have prayed," his father said, "that you may never know the grief of
having failed the men you have loved. There's no heavier woe, Peter."
Again his gaze went from the boy, from the room, from the present. "I
did not see Abraham Lincoln again until he was dead," he said. "They
brought him back and set his bier in the old court-house. The night he
lay there I went in past the guards and looked long upon the face of him
who had been my friend. I saw the sadness and the sorrow, the greatness
and the glory, that life and death had sculptured there. He had dreamed
and he had done. When the time had come he had been ready. I knelt
beside his coffin; and I promised God and Abraham Lincoln that I would,
before I died, make atonement for the faith I had broken."

Peter's sobbing had died down to husky flutterings of breath, but he
kept his face averted from the man at the other side of the table.
"I meant to make some sort of reparation," James Thorold explained,
listlessness falling like twilight on his mood as if the sun had gone
down on his power, "but I was always so busy, so busy. And there seemed
no real occasion for sacrifice. I never sought public office or public
honors till I thought you wanted me to have them, Peter." He turned
directly to the boy, but the boy did not move. "I was so glad of
Forsland--yesterday. Through all these years I have told myself that,
after all, I had done no great wrong. But sometimes, when the bands were
playing and the flags were flying, I knew that I had turned away from
the Grail after I had looked upon it. I knew it to-day when I stood
beside that boy's coffin. I had said that times change. I know now that
only the time changes. The spirit does not die, but it's a stream that
goes underground to come up, a clear spring, in unexpected places. My
father died in Mexico. I failed my country. And Isador Framberg dies
at Vera Cruz."

"For our country," the boy said bitterly.

"And his own," his father added. "For him, for his people, for all these
who walk in darkness Abraham Lincoln died. The gleam of his torch shone
far down their lands. His message brought them here. They have known him
even as I, who walked with him in life, did not know him until to-day.
And they are paying him. That dead boy is their offering to him, their
message that they are the Americans."

Into Peter Thorold's eyes, as he looked upon his father, leaped a flash
of blue fire. Searchingly he stared into the face of the older man as
Galahad might have gazed upon a sorrowing Percival. "You're going to
give up Forsland?" he breathed, touching the paper on the table. "I gave
up Forsland," James Thorold said, "when I saw you at Isador Framberg's
side. I knew that I was not worthy to represent your America--and his."
He held out his hands to Peter longingly. The boy's strong one closed
over them. Peter Thorold, sighting the mansion of his father's soul, saw
that the other man had passed the portals of confession into an empire
of expiation mightier than the Court of St. Jerome.




THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY FOR 1914 AND 1915




THE ROLL OF HONOR FOR 1914


BUZZELL, FRANCIS.
  Addie Erb and Her Girl Lottie.

CONRAD, JOSEPH.
  Laughing Anne.
  The Planter of Malata.

DWIGHT, H.G.
  The Leopard of the Sea.

FREEMAN, MARY E. WILKINS-.
  Daniel and Little Dan'l.

GALSWORTHY, JOHN.
  A Simple Tale.

GEROULD, KATHARINE FULLERTON.
  The Dominant Strain.
  The Toad and the Jewel.
  The Tortoise.
  The Triple Mirror.

GORDON, ARMISTEAD C.
  Maje.

HOPPER, JAMES.
  The Night School.

JOHNSTON, CALVIN.
  Traitors Both.

LONG, JOHN LUTHER.
  The Sandwich-Man.

MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR.
  When the Devil Was Better.

POST, MELVILLE DAVISSON.
  A Twilight Adventure.
  The Doomdorf Mystery.

RICHTER, CONRAD.
  Brothers of No Kin.

SINGMASTER, ELSIE.
  The Ishmaelite.

SYNON, MARY.
  The Bravest Son.

WHARTON, EDITH.
  The Triumph of Night.

NOTE.--"The Roll of Honor for 1914" is based on the reading of the eight
periodicals listed on page 288.

[Transcriber's Note: See "INDEX OF SHORT STORIES FOR 1914 AND 1915" for
the page 288 list of periodicals from 1914.]




THE ROLL OF HONOR FOR 1915


ALLEN, FREDERICK LEWIS.
  Madame Zaranova.

ANONYMOUS.
  Safety in Numbers.

ARCOS, RENÉ.
  One Evening--The Meeting.

AUMONIER, STACY.
  *The Friends.

BLACKWOOD, ALGERNON.
  The Other Wing.

BROWN, ALICE.
  The Return of Martha.

BROWN, KATHARINE HOLLAND.
  The Old-Fashioned Gift.

BURT, MAXWELL STRUTHERS.
  *The Water-Hole.

BUTLER, KATHARINE.
  *In No Strange Land.

BYRNE, DONN.
  *The Wake.

CANFIELD, DOROTHY.
  *Flint and Fire.

CHILD, RICHARD WASHBURN.
  Not in the Dispatches.

COBB, IRVIN S.
  *Blacker Than Sin.

COLCORD, LINCOLN.
  A Life and a Ship.
  Rescue at Sea.

COLUM, PADRAIC.
  *A Woman of the West.

COMFORT, WILL LEVINGTON.
  *Chautonville.

COWDERY, ALICE.
  Chains.

DAY, MARY LOUISE.
  His Surrender.

DIX, BEULAH MARIE.
  *Across the Border.

DUNCAN, NORMAN.
  A Nice Little Morsel o' Dog Meat.

DUNNING, HAROLD WOLCOTT.
  The Little Captain.

DUNSANY, LORD.
  *A Story of Land and Sea.
  *The Exiles' Club.
  The Three Infernal Jokes.

DWIGGINS, W.A.
  *La Dernière Mobilisation.

DWYER, JAMES FRANCIS.
  *The Citizen.

EARLE, MARY TRACY.
  "The Tropic Bird."

EWERS, HANNS HEINZ.
  The Spider.

FINCH, LUCINE.
  The Woman Who Waited.

FITCH, ANITA.
  Colin McCabe: Renegade.

FORMAN, HENRY JAMES.
  The Monk and the Stranger.

FREEMAN, MARY E. WILKINS-.
  Emancipation.

GALSWORTHY, JOHN.
  *Ultima Thule.

GEROULD, KATHARINE FULLERTON.
  Blue Bonnet.
  *Martin's Hollow.
  *Miss Marriott and the Faun.
  *Sea-Green.
  The Penalties of Artemis.

GIBBON, PERCEVAL.
  *The Town of His Dream.

GREGG, FRANCES.
  *Whose Dog--?

HALL, GERTRUDE.
  *An Epilogue.

HALL, WILBUR.
  The Fiddler of Glory Hole.

HAMPTON, EDGAR LLOYD.
  Finsen.

HARRIS, BURT.
  The Truth.

HECHT, BEN.
  Depths.
  Gratitude.
  *Life.

HOPPER, JAMES.
  Forty Years Hence.

HUGHES, RUPERT.
  *Michaeleen! Michaelawn!
  Sent For Out.

HURST, FANNIE.
  Ever Ever Green.
  *Rolling Stock.
  *T.B.

JOHNSON, ARTHUR.
  *Mr. Eberdeen's House.

JOHNSTON, CALVIN.
  Promise Lands.

JORDAN, VIRGIL.
  *Vengeance Is Mine!

KAUN, ALEXANDER S.
  Gratitude.

KOIZUMI, K.
  *Uguisu. (A Japanese Nightingale).

LYON, HARRIS MERTON.
  The Son of Santa Claus.
  *The Weaver Who Clad the Summer.

McINTYRE, JOHN T.
  The Hand of Glory.

MITCHELL, MARY ESTHER.
  A New England Pippa.

MUILENBURG, WALTER J.
  *Heart of Youth.
  *The Prairie.

MYERS, WALTER L.
  *Mates.

NICHOLS, WILLIAM T.
  The Other Woman.

NOYES, NEWBOLD.
  *The End of the Path.

O'BRIEN, SEUMAS.
  *The House in the Valley.
  *The Whale and the Grasshopper.

O'REILLY, MARY BOYLE.
  *In Berlin.

PAINE, GUSTAVUS S.
  "Here He Is."

PALMER, VANCE.
  The Law of the Dark.

PICKTHALL, MARJORIE L.C.
  Stories.

POST, MELVILLE DAVISSON.
  The New Administration.

ROBERTSON, MORGAN.
  *The Poison Ship.

ROOF, KATHARINE METCALF.
  *The Waiting Years.

ROSENBLATT, BENJAMIN.
  *Zelig.

SINGMASTER, ELSIE.
  *The Survivors.

SMITH, GORDON ARTHUR.
  *Jeanne, the Maid.

SNEDDON, ROBERT W.
  One Mother.
  The Musician.

STEELE, WILBUR DANIEL.
  A Matter of Education.
  *On Moon Hill.
  *Romance.
  *The Yellow Cat.

STRINGER, ARTHUR.
  *The Ivy and the Tower.

SYNON, MARY.
  *The Bounty-Jumper.

WALLACE, EDGAR.
  The Greater Battle.

WALPOLE, HUGH.
  *The Twisted Inn.

WESTON, GEORGE.
  *The Martial Mood of M'sieur.

WHARTON, EDITH.
  Coming Home.

WHITE, WILLIAM ALLEN.
  *The Gods Arrive.

WINSLOW, HORATIO.
  The Wonderful City.




MAGAZINE AVERAGES FOR 1915


_The following table includes the averages of all American magazines
published during 1915 of which complete files for the period covered
were placed at my disposal. One, two, and three asterisks are employed
to indicate relative distinction. "Three-asterisk stories" are of
somewhat permanent literary value._


______________________________________________________________________
MAGAZINES                | NO OF     | NO OF         | PERCENTAGE OF  |
                         | STORIES   | DISTINCTIVE   | DISTINCTIVE    |
                         | PUBLISHED | STORIES       | STORIES        |
                         |           | PUBLISHED     | PUBLISHED      |
                         |           |_______________|________________|
                         |           |  * | ** | *** |   * | ** | *** |
_________________________|___________|____|____|_____|_____|____|_____|
American Magazine        |    53     | 23 | 11 |   3 |  43 | 21 |   6 |
Associated Sunday        |           |    |    |     |     |    |     |
  Magazines              |    39     |  9 |  2 |   1 |  24 |  5 |   3 |
  (Jan-May See also      |           |    |    |     |     |    |     |
  Every Week)            |           |    |    |     |     |    |     |
Atlantic Monthly         |    24     | 16 |  8 |   2 |  67 | 33 |   8 |
Bellman                  |    39     | 20 | 11 |   7 |  51 | 28 |  18 |
Black Cat                |   108     |  8 |  0 |   0 |   7 |  0 |   0 |
Bruno Chap Books         |     7     |  3 |  0 |   0 |  43 |  0 |   0 |
Century Magazine         |    53     | 32 | 15 |   7 |  60 | 28 |  13 |
Collier's Weekly         |   142     | 46 | 21 |   9 |  32 | 15 |   6 |
Delineator               |    30     |  7 |  3 |   1 |  23 |  7 |   3 |
Everybody's Magazine     |    46     | 13 |  3 |   1 |  28 |  6 |   2 |
Every Week (See also     |    77     | 23 |  2 |   1 |  30 |  3 |   2 |
  Associated Sunday      |           |    |    |     |     |    |     |
  Magazines)             |           |    |    |     |     |    |     |
Forum                    |    13     | 12 |  6 |   3 |  92 | 46 |  23 |
Good Housekeeping        |    42     |  4 |  1 |   1 |  10 |  2 |   2 |
Harper's Bazar           |    23     |  6 |  4 |   0 |  26 | 17 |   0 |
Harper's Magazine        |   101     | 56 | 28 |  12 |  56 | 28 |  12 |
Harper's Weekly          |    25     | 18 |  4 |   0 |  72 | 16 |   0 |
Illustrated Sunday       |           |    |    |     |     |    |     |
  Magazine               |   182     | 59 | 27 |  16 |  32 | 15 |   9 |
  Or excluding reprints  |   169     | 46 | 15 |   5 |  27 |  9 |   3 |
International            |    17     | 10 |  5 |   2 |  59 | 29 |  12 |
Ladies' Home Journal     |    42     |  8 |  3 |   1 |  19 |  7 |   3 |
Life                     |    68     | 10 |  0 |   0 |  15 |  0 |   0 |
Lippincott's and         |           |    |    |     |     |    |     |
    McBride's Magazines  |    98     | 36 |  6 |   1 |  36 |  6 |   1 |
Little Review            |     9     |  9 |  5 |   5 | 100 | 56 |  56 |
McClure's Magazine       |    63     | 22 |  9 |   0 |  35 | 14 |   0 |
Masses                   |    10     |  7 |  3 |   1 |  70 | 30 |  10 |
Metropolitan             |    47     | 24 |  7 |   5 |  51 | 15 |  11 |
Midland                  |    10     | 10 |  7 |   3 | 100 | 70 |  30 |
Munsey's Magazine        |    48     |  4 |  1 |   0 |   8 |  2 |   0 |
National Sunday Magazine |    22     |  9 |  5 |   0 |  41 | 23 |   0 |
New Republic             |     9     |  7 |  3 |   1 |  78 | 33 |  11 |
Outlook                  |     9     |  6 |  4 |   1 |  67 | 44 |  11 |
Pictorial Review         |    68     | 15 |  4 |   1 |  22 |  6 |   1 |
Saturday Evening Post    |   162     | 29 | 12 |   6 |  18 |  7 |   4 |
Scribner's Magazine      |    52     | 37 | 24 |   7 |  71 | 46 |  13 |
Smart Set                |   242     | 34 | 12 |   3 |  14 |  5 |   1 |
Sunset Magazine          |    42     | 13 |  3 |   0 |  31 |  7 |   0 |
Woman's Home Companion   |    49     |  4 |  0 |   0 |   8 |  0 |   0 |
______________________________________________________________________|


_The following tables indicate the rank, during 1915, by number and
percentage of distinctive stories published, of the eighteen periodicals
coming within the scope of my examination which have published during
the past year over twenty-five stories and which have exceeded an
average of 15% in stories of distinction. The lists exclude reprints._


BY PERCENTAGE OF DISTINCTIVE STORIES

 1.  Scribner's Magazine                   71%
 2.  Century Magazine                      60%
 3.  Harper's Magazine                     56%
 4.  Metropolitan                          51%
 5.  Bellman                               51%
 6.  American Magazine                     43%
 7.  Lippincott's and McBride's Magazines  36%
 8.  McClure's Magazine                    35%
 9.  Collier's Weekly                      32%
10.  Sunset Magazine                       31%
11.  Every Week                            30%
12.  Everybody's Magazine                  28%
13.  Illustrated Sunday Magazine           27%
14.  Associated Sunday  Magazine           24%
       (excluding Every Week)
15.  Delineator                            23%
16.  Pictorial Review                      22%
17.  Ladies' Home Journal                  19%
18.  Saturday Evening Post                 18%


BY NUMBER OF DISTINCTIVE STORIES

 1.  Harper's Magazine                      56
 2.  Illustrated Sunday Magazine            46
 3.  Collier's  Weekly                      46
 4.  Scribner's Magazine                    37
 5.  Lippincott's and McBride's Magazines   36
 6.  Century Magazine                       32
 7.  Saturday Evening Post                  29
 8.  Metropolitan                           24
 9.  American Magazine                      23
10.  Every Week                             23
11.  McClure's Magazine                     22
12.  Bellman                                20
13.  Pictorial Review                       15
14.  Sunset Magazine                        13
15.  Everybody's Magazine                   13
16.  Associated Sunday Magazine
       (excluding Every Week)                9
17.  Ladies' Home Journal                    8
18.  Delineator                              7

_The following periodicals have published during 1915 ten or more
"two-asterisk stories." The list excludes reprints._

 1.  Harper's Magazine                      28
 2.  Scribner's Magazine                    24
 3.  Collier's Weekly                       21
 4.  Illustrated Sunday Magazine            15
 5.  Century Magazine                       15
 6.  Saturday Evening Post                  12
 7.  Smart Set                              12
 8.  Bellman                                11
 9.  American Magazine                      11


_The following periodicals have published during 1915 three or more
"three-asterisk stories." The list excludes reprints._

 1.  Harper's Magazine                      12
 2.  Collier's Weekly                        9
 3.  Scribner's Magazine                     7
 4.  Century Magazine                        7
 5.  Bellman                                 7
 6.  Saturday Evening Post                   6
 7.  Little Review                           5
 8.  Metropolitan                            5
 9.  Illustrated Sunday Magazine             5
10.  Midland                                 3
11.  Forum                                   3
12.  American Magazine                       3
13.  Smart Set                               3


_The best short story of the year is "Zelig," by Benjamin Rosenblatt,
published in The Bellman._

_Ties in the above lists have been decided by taking relative rank in
other lists into account._




INDEX OF SHORT STORIES FOR 1914 AND 1915


_All short stones published in the following magazines during 1914 are
listed in this index._

Atlantic Monthly.
Century Magazine.
Collier's Weekly.
Forum.
Harper's Magazine.
Metropolitan Magazine.
Saturday Evening Post.
Scribner's Magazine.

_All short stories published in the following magazines and newspapers
during 1915 are indexed._

American Magazine.
Associated Sunday Magazines.
  (_January to May, excluding stories in_ Every Week, _q.v._).
Atlantic Monthly.
Bellman.
Boston Evening Transcript.
Boston Daily Advertiser.
Bruno Chap Books.
Century Magazine.
Collier's Weekly.
Delineator.
Everybody's Magazine.
Every Week.
Fabulist.
Forum.
Harper's Bazar.
Harper's Magazine.
Harper's Weekly.
Illustrated Sunday Magazine.
International.*
Ladies' Home Journal.
Lippincott's Magazine.
Little Review.
McBride's Magazine.
McClure's Magazine.
Masses.
Metropolitan.
Midland.
National Sunday Magazine.
New Republic.
Outlook.
Pictorial Review.
Reedy's Mirror.
Saturday Evening Post.
Scribner's Magazine.
Sunset Magazine.

_Short stories, of distinction only, published in the following
magazines during 1915 are indexed._

Black Cat.
Bruno's Weekly.
Chicago Sunday Tribune.
Cosmopolitan.
Good Housekeeping.
Greenwich Village.
Hearst's Magazine.
Life.
Munsey's Magazine.
Smart Set.
Woman's Home Companion.

_One, two, or three asterisks are prefixed to the titles of stories to
indicate distinction. Three asterisks prefixed to a title indicate the
more or less permanent literary value of a story, and entitle it to a
place on the annual "Roll of Honor."_

_The following abbreviations are used in the index:--_

_Am._        American Magazine
_A.S.M._     Associated Sunday Magazines
_Atl._       Atlantic Monthly
_B.C._       Black Cat
_B.C.B._     Bruno Chap Books
_B.D.A._     Boston Daily Advertiser
_Bel._       Bellman
_B.E.T._     Boston Evening Transcript
_Brun. W._   Bruno's Weekly
_Cen._       Century Magazine
_Ch. Trib._  Chicago Sunday Tribune
_Col._       Collier's Weekly
_Cos._       Cosmopolitan Magazine
_Del._       Delineator
_Ev._        Everybody's Magazine
_E.W._       Every Week
_Fab._       Fabulist
_For._       Forum
_G.H._       Good Housekeeping
_G.V._       Greenwich Village
_Harp. B._   Harper's Bazar
_Harp. M._   Harper's Magazine
_Harp. W._   Harper's Weekly
_Int._       International
_I.S.M._     Illustrated Sunday Magazine
_L.H.J._     Ladies' Home Journal
_Lip._       Lippincott's Magazine
_Lit. R._    Little Review
_McB._       McBride's Magazine
_McC._       McClure's Magazine
_Met._       Metropolitan
_Mid._       Midland
_Mir._       Reedy's Mirror
_Mun._       Munsey's Magazine
_N. Rep._    New Republic
_N.S.M._     National Sunday Magazine
_Outl._      Outlook
_Pict. R._   Pictorial Review
_Scr._       Scribner's Magazine
_S.E.P._     Saturday Evening Post
_S.S._       Smart Set
_Sun._       Sunset Magazine
_W.H.C._     Woman's Home Companion
_'14._       1914
_'15._       1915


A

A., 1.
  The Broken Wheel. I.S.M. April 4, '15.

ABBOTT, AVERY.
  "And They Lived Happily ----." Del. Aug., '15.
  *The Powerful Wobberjohn. Mid. Dec., '15.

ABBOTT, ELEANOR HALLOWELL.
  Man of My Dreams. Col. Sept. 4, '15.
  Tinsel-Toes. Met. Dec., '14.

ABBOTT, KEENE.
  "Every Summer." Harp. M. June, '15.
  **In the Switch-yard. Harp. M. March, '15.
  *"Maybe Wild Parsnips." Harp. M. July, '14.
  **Silent Battle. Mid. Jan., '15.

ABBOTT, MABEL.
  The Advantage. Mun. May, '15.

ABDULLAH, ACHMED.
  **Black Lily. Lip. July, '15.
  *The Flowering Stone. Lip. April, '15.
  **The Infidel. Lip. Jan., '15.
  *The Man Who Wished. McB. Sept., '15.
  *The Rock Whence Ye Were Hewn. Lip. Feb., '15.

ADAMS, FRANK R.
  *Buster. S.S. Oct., '15.

ADAMS, SAMUEL HOPKINS.
  The Fairy Princess. Ev. Aug., '15.

ADAMS, WILL.
  Betting on Shorty. Col. Jan. 3, '14.
  Mix-ups in Troop J. Col. Feb. 28, '14.
  Off-Agin-on-Agin Finnegan. Col. July 25, '14.
  Shorty's Victorious Maneuvers. Col. Jan. 24, '14.

ADDISON, THOMAS.
  Educated Sausages. Lip. Feb., '15.
  The Taming of Aunt Maria. Lip. May, '15.

ALEXANDER, H.B.
  **The Pixie. Mid. Feb., '15.

ALEXANDER, HELEN.
  Her Own Life. Harp. M. Sept., '14.

ALLEN, FREDERICK LEWIS.
  Cart Before the Horse. Cen. Oct., '15.
  ***Madame Zaranova. Bel. Dec. 18, '15.

ALLEN, IRVING R.
  What in the World Do You Want? I.S.M. Jan. 24, '15.

ALLEN, JAMES LANE.
  **A Cathedral Singer. Cen. May, '14.

ALLEN, LEWIS.
  Jessop's Valet. I.S.M. Nov. 14, '15.
  "Oh, Pearl!" I.S.M. April 18, '15.
  The Lady and the Veil. I.S.M. June 6, '15.
  Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I.S.M. March 14, '15.
  Why Can't You? I.S.M. April 4, '15.

ALLEN, MARYLAND.
  The Strayed Reveler. Sun. May, '15.
  Torry the Man-Maker. S.E.P. Oct. 3, '14.

ALLEN, WILLIS BOYD.
  *The End of His Rope. S.S. May, '15.

ALLENSON, A.C.
  Pandora the Resolute. McB. Nov., '15.
  Second-Chance Lidcote. Lip. April, '15.
  The Morrow Man. A.S.M. Feb. 7, '15.
  The Snail Man. McB. Dec., '15.

ALTENBERG, PETER.
  *Music. Brun. W. Oct. 7, '15.

AMID, JOHN.
  A Turkey-Yard Napoleon. Del. July, '15.
  Beefsteak _vs._ Bankruptcy. Col. Jan. 10, '14.

ANDERSON, ELIZABETH.
  Fried Onions. Del. June, '15.

ANDERSON, FREDERICK IRVING.
  An All-Star Cast. S.E.P. Jan. 24, '14.
  The Alchemists. S.E.P. Jan. 2, '15.
  The Angle of Refraction. S.E.P. Aug. 14, '15.
  The Ingénue. S.E.P. Feb. 27, '15.
  The Makeshift. S.E.P. Sept. 5, '14.
  The Man Who Couldn't Go Home. S.E.P. March 28, '14.
  *The Unknown Masterpiece. S.E.P. June 5, '15.
  *Vanities. S.E.P. Nov. 14, '14.

ANDERSON, SHERWOOD.
  *Sister. Lit. R. Dec., '15.
  The Rabbit-pen. Harp. M. July, '14.

ANDERSON, WILLIAM ASHLEY.
  The Dryad of Reouw Straits. Ev. March, '15.
  *The Fight in Buddha's Caldron. Ev. April, '15.

ANDREWS, MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN.
  Achilles the Butler. Scr. Sept., '14.
  **Coals of Fire. Scr. Jan., '15.
  Her Fling. S.E.P. Dec. 19, '14.
  **Peace on Earth. N.S.M. Dec. 12, '15.
  *The Fête of M'sieur Bob. Scr. March, '14.
  *The Star-Spangled Banner. Del. July, '15.
  *The Three Things. L.H.J. Nov.-Dec., '15.
  *The Very Lilac One. Scr. Dec., '15.

ANONYMOUS.
  Broke! or The Busted Lady. McC. June, '15.
  *Immortality. S.S. Aug., '15.
  ***Safety in Numbers. N. Rep. July 10, '15.
  The Brief Career of Matty Vandam. A.S.M. April 18, '15.
  **The Killing of Different Man. N. Rep. Aug. 28, '15.
  *The Manicure Girl. N. Rep. July 3, '15.
  *The Parable of the Red Hag. S.S. Aug., '15.
  The Triple Entente. A.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.
  The Woman Behind the Bottle. McC. July, '15.
  Twelve Dollars. McC. July, '15.
  Twelve Years With Alcohol. McC. Oct., '15.

APPLE, E. ALBERT.
  Santa Claus by Special Delivery. I.S.M. Dec. 12, '15.

ARCOS, RENÉ.
  ***One Evening--The Meeting. Int. Jan., '15.

ARMSTRONG, EVERHARDT.
  *Zelda. S.S. Feb., '15.

ARNOLD, EDWIN L.
  The Treasure Maid. I.S.M. July 4, '15.

ARNY, GRACE LEA.
  The Hope Chest. McB. Nov., '15.

ARTZYBASHEV, MICHAEL.
  *The Revolutionist. Met. Aug., '15.

"ASHE, ELIZABETH."
  Blue Reefers. Atl. Nov., '14.
  *The Glory-Box. Atl. Dec., '14.

ASKUE, RUSSELL PETTIS.
  Myself and Conrad Grines. Lip. Feb., '15.

AUMONIER, STACY.
  ***The Friends. Cen. Oct., '15.
  *The Preposterous Princess. S.S. Aug., '15.

AUSTIN, F. BRITTEN.
  **Nerves. Col. Nov. 14, '14.

AVERCHENKO, ARKADYI.
  *A Spiritual Drama: The Life of Man. N. Rep. Nov. 6, '15.


B

B., R.H. and O., G.R.
  *Thicker Than Water. Life. Nov. 25, '15.

BACHELLER, IRVING.
  *Left Behind. Col. Oct. 30, '15.
  *The Hero of Sam Hill. Col. Sept. 4, '15.

BACON, JOSEPHINE DASKAM.
  Darby and Joan, Limited. S.E.P. Nov. 14, '14.
  *The Fly in the Ointment. L.H.J. Aug., '15.
  The Test. S.E.P. May 16, '14.

BAILEY, CAROLYN SHERWIN.
  Orphan No. 873. Del. Jan., '15.

BAILEY, TEMPLE.
  A Rebellious Grandmother. Harp. M. Sept., '14.
  **Made in Germany. Scr. June, '15.
  Petronella. Harp. M. Jan., '14.
  The Man Who Was Never a Boy. Col. Oct. 10, '14.

BAILLIE-GROHMAN, O.
  **Seppel. For. Nov., '14.

BAKER, KATHARINE.
  For Distinguished Conduct. For. Jan., '14.

BAKER, RAY STANNARD.
  **The Last Phase of the Great War. Am. Jan., '15.

BAKER, VIRGINIA.
  Grandfather Crane Invokes the Aid of Sorcery. Atl. Oct., '14.
  The Afternoon Ride of Paul Revere Columbus Dobbs. Atl. Aug., '14.

BALL, WALTER SAVAGE.
  *A Stranger in Town. Harp. W. Feb. 27, '15.

BALMER, EDWIN.
  'Mid the Flotsam of the Seas. S.E.P. Sept. 11, '15.
  *Over the Sheer. Met. April, '15.
  Radames of the Rock Cut. E.W. Aug. 23, '15.
  *The Black Star. Met. Feb., '14.
  The Celluloid Hero. E.W. Nov. 22, '15.
  The Ordeal of Silence. N.S.M. Jan. 10, '15.

BANCROFT, ALBERTA.
  The Nurses of Alwyn. Sun. Sept., '15.

BARBOUR, RALPH HENRY.
  Artichokes to Herbs. Ev. Feb., '15.
  Flood-Tide. McC. May, '15.
  Looking After Christine. L.H.J. June, '15.
  The Last Hurdle. L.H.J. Oct., '15.
  The Man Up-Stairs. Pict. R. Feb., '15.

BARCYNSKA, THE COUNTESS.
  Mothers of Men. Sun. March, '15.
  *The Dark Hour. Sun. Nov., '15.
  **The King Passes. Sun. Dec., '15.
  *The Understudy. Harp. W. Aug. 7, '15.

BARNETT, JOHN.
  The Man Who Paid. I.S.M. June 6, '15.

BARNEY, JR., CHARLES GORHAM.
  *The Leper. G.V. May 20, '15.

BARTLETT, FREDERICK ORIN.
  The Young Man Who Was Always There. L.H.J. June, '15.

BASCOM, LOUISE RAND.
  *The White Shoes. Harp. M. Nov., '14.

BATES, KATHARINE LEE.
  *A Spanish Elopement. Harp. M. March, '15.

BATES, SYLVIA CHATFIELD.
  *The Canterbury Candlestick. W.H.C. Aug., '15.

BAURY, LOUIS.
  What is "Life"? I.S.M. Jan. 17, '15.

BEARD, WOLCOTT LE CLÉAR.
  Her Friend, Sergeant John. Scrib. April, '14.

BEASLEY, N.B.
  The Greater Love. I.S.M. Dec. 12, '15.

BEERBOHM, MAX.
  *James Pethel. Cen. Jan., '15.

BEERE, ROSE KIDD.
  A Rally on the Colors. Col. May 30, '14.

BEFFEL, JOHN NICHOLAS.
  *The Mysterious Foot. S.S. Feb., '15.

BEGBIE, HAROLD.
  *The Motto Over the Mantelpiece. Del. Dec., '15.

BELL, J.J.
  A Packet of Letters. McB. Sept., '15.
  Miss Tobey's Matchmaking. I.S.M. Sept. 12, '15.
  The Christmas Rush. McB. Dec., '15.
  **The Ghost. Bel. Dec. 11, '15.
  The Second Youth of Austin Service. Bel. Feb. 27, '15.

BENEFIELD, BARRY.
  *Soldiers of Time. Scrib. April, '14.
  *The Serpent. Cen. July, '15.
  *Wind in the Pines. Scrib. Oct., '14.

BENNETT, ENOCH ARNOLD.
  The Life of Nash Nicklin. Met. Sept., '15.
  The Muscovy Ducks. Met. July, 15.

BENSON, CLAUDE E.
  The Wild Man's Justice. Col. Oct. 3, '14.

BENTLEY, EDMUND C.
  The Clever Cockatoo. Met. July, '14.
  The Inoffensive Captain. Met. March, '14.

BERGENGREN, RALPH.
  The "Ultra-Violet Madonna." Cent. Jan., '14.

BEST, MOLLIE.
  **The Sinews of Peace. Am. Jan., '15.
  **What Worried Him. Am. Aug., '15.

BEYMER, WILLIAM GILMORE.
  **Go In and Out the Window. Met. Jan., '14.
  The Six-Day Sharp-Shooter. Harp. M. Oct., '14.

BICKNELL, BERNICE.
  The Shepherd Man. Col. April 11, '14.

BINGHAM, EDFRID A.
  Brixtonite No. 76. Lip. March, '15.

BIRCHALL, SARA HAMILTON.
  The Changing Pierrot. I.S.M. Nov. 21, '15.
  **The Girl Who Got On to Her Job. I.S.M. Nov. 28, '15.

"BIRMINGHAM, GEORGE A." (CANON JAMES O. HANNAY.)
  Sir Isaac's Ragamuffins. McC. April, '15.
  The Argonauts: Sonny. S.E.P. June 20, '14.

BISHOP, WILL.
  Comrades in the Making. Sun. June, '15.

BLACKWOOD, ALGERNON.
  **An Egyptian Hornet. Mir. March 19, '15.
  ***The Other Wing. McB. Nov., '15.
  **The Wings of Horus. Cen. Nov., '14.

"BLISS, REGINALD." (_See_ WELLS, H.G.)

BOSHER, KATE LANGLEY.
  Horatio. Harp. M. Oct., '15.

BOUCICAULT, RUTH HOLT.
  The Rendezvous. I.S.M. March 21, '15.

BOYCE, NEITH.
  *Funerals. Harp. W. May 15, '15.
  *Maddalena Speaks. For. Jan., '14.
  The Faithful Wife. Harp. W. Jan. 2, '15.
  *The Inlaid Chest. Harp. W. Jan. 16, '15.
  *The Return. Harp. W. Jan. 9, '15.
  *Thirty Years. Harp W. May 22, '15.

BOYESEN, ALGERNON.
  *The Puppet Show. S.S. Feb., '15.

BRADLEY, HARRIET LEWIS.
  The Second Voice. Atl. March, '14.

BRADY, CYRUS TOWNSEND.
  *And Thus He Came. Pict. R. Dec., '15.

BRAINERD, ELEANOR HOYT.
  Cutting Out Skirts. Pict. R. Jan., '15.
  The Amateur Bridegroom. Pict. R. Nov., '15.

BRALEY, BERTON.
  Delivering the Goods. I.S.M. June 6, '15.
  Putting It Over Handel. I.S.M. May 9, '15.
  Sherlocking the Tango King. I.S.M. July 25, '15.
  Switching the Line. I.S.M. March 28, '15.
  The Wise Shift. I.S.M. Aug. 15, '15.
  Three Rousing Cheers. I.S.M. Aug. 8, '15.

BRAY, MARY.
  It Might Have Been Worse. I.S.M. April 18, '15.

BRENNER, WALTER D.
  "Putting One Over." Col. Aug. 15, '14.
  Tweedy's Tryout. Col. March 27, '15.

BRONSON-HOWARD, GEORGE. (_See_ HOWARD, GEORGE BRONSON-).

BROOKE, L.
  *Knives and Forks. Scrib. Nov., '14.

BROOKS, WALTER R.
  *Harden's Chance. For. Dec., '15.

BROWN, ALICE.
  **A Mind-Cure. Harp. M. Aug., '14.
  **The Flags on the Tower. Harp. M. April, '15.
  **The House With the Tower. Harp. M. May, '14.
  *The Lost Cup. W.H.C. April, '15.
  ***The Return of Martha. Harp. M. Aug., '15.
  *The Unbroken Dynasty. Del. March, '15.
  **Wedding-gifts. Harp. M. Nov., '15.

BROWN, KATHARINE HOLLAND.
  Alice's Child. Scr. March, '15.
  *Brewster Blood. Scr. Jan., '15.
  *Raw Prose. Scr. May, '14.
  **The First-born. Scr. Dec., '15.
  *The Girl Who Was Talked About. E.W. May 3, '15.
  *The High Cost of Honor. E.W. Oct. 11, '15.
  *The New Nest. Cen. Feb., '14.
  ***The Old-Fashioned Gift. A.S.M. Jan. 17, '15.
  *The Quality of Genius. Cen. March, '14.
  *The Ragged Edge of Forty. Scrib. Dec., '14.

BROWN, MAY BELLEVILLE.
  Scotch Ann. Sun. Nov., '15.

BRUBAKER, HOWARD.
  An Experiment in Journalism. Harp. M. March,'14.
  An Imaginary Vacation. Harp. M. May, '14.
  Aunt Mary, Preferred. Harp. M. Oct., '15.
  Dividing Up. Harp. M. Jan., '15.
  Enemy Wanted. Harp. M. March, '15.
  Malady Aforethought. Harp. M. April, '15.
  Mumping the Mumps. Harp. M. June, '15.
  Nipper's Crowded Hour. Harp. M. Oct., '14.
  *Ranny Discovers America. Harp. M. Sept., '14.
  The Battle of Frogtown Harbor. Harp. M. July, '15.
  *The Intemperate Zone. Harp. M. Dec., '15.
  *The Power of the Press. Harp. M. Dec., '14.
  The Way of the Reformer. Harp. M. Sept., '15.
  Twenty-three Dollars. Harp. M. April, '15.

BRUNO, GUIDO.
  *Diogenes in Our Village. Brun. W. Nov. 13, '15.
  *Four Dollars and Ninety-five Cents. B.C.B. Special Series, '15.
  *Hassan and His Wives. G.V. April 28, '15.
  *Just Love. G.V. Aug. 15, '15.
  *The Peace Was Broken. Brun. W. Oct. 21, '15.
  *The Tragedy in the Birdhouse. B.C.B. Special Series. No. 4, '15.
  *Three Dollars and Sixty Cents. B.C.B. Special Series, '15.

BRYSON, LYMAN.
  Courage. I.S.M. Jan. 3, '15.
  In His Own House. I.S.M. Jan. 24, '15.
  *The Horse Heaver. Life. Aug. 12, '15.
  The Yellow Streak. I.S.M. May 2, '15.

BUFFUM, GEORGE T.
  *The Low-Burned Candle. G.H. March, '15.

BULGER, BOZEMAN.
  A Pinch Hit in Vaudeville. S.E.P. Sept. 25, '15.
  The Bolivar. S.E.P. Nov. 27, '15.
  The Fainting Finish. Ev. April, '15.
  The Ladder Gal. S.E.P. Oct. 23, '15.

BULLARD, ARTHUR.
  The Escape of Tommy Waite. Harp. M. Aug., '14.

BULLOCK, WILLIAM.
  The Fence Breaker. Col. March 13, '15.

BUNNER, HENRY CUYLER.
  A Plain Girl. Scr. Dec., '14.

BUREN, EVELYN VAN.
  Dorothea's Diary of Life. Cen. Jan., '14.

BURGESS, GELETT.
  **War the Creator. Col. July 17-24, '15.

BURHANS, VIOLA.
  A Million for Sara. Lip. July, '15.
  An Adventure in Duplicity. Lip. March, '15.
  Love's Death Test. Col. Jan. 30, '15.
  The Swords of Her Neighbors. McB. Nov., '15.
  The Tack-Hammer Instinct. Col. July 3, '15.
  The Ungiven Kiss. Col. Nov. 27, '15.

BURNET, DANA.
  A Dumb-Waiter Destiny. Harp. M. Aug., '15.
  *Sobs. E.W. July 12, '15.
  "X." Harp. M. Dec., '15.

BURNETT, FRANCES HODGSON.
  **The Little Hunchback Zia. Cen. Dec., '15.

BURNHAM, NELSON.
  Mandy's Methods. Col. Sept. 5, '14.

BURR, AMELIA JOSEPHINE.
  Humanizing Sylvia. Bel. April 17, '15.
  Light of Other Days. Bel. May 15, '15.
  The Game at Bay. Bel. Oct. 9, '15.
  *The Invasion of Reality. Cen. April, '14.
  *The Reed of Pan. Cen. Mar., '15.

BURROWS, DUDLEY.
  *A Latter-Day Cyrano. McB. Sept., '15.
  Geraniums. Lip. Aug., '15.

BURROWS, ETHELBERT D.
  A Mighty Man Was He. Lip. March, '15.
  Jamaica Ginger. Lip. May, '15.

BURT, MAXWELL STRUTHERS.
  ***The Water-Hole. Scr. July, '15.

BURTON, GEORGE LEE.
  As Seen By His Bride. I.S.M. Jan. 17, '15.

BURTON, RICHARD.
  Ladies First. Bel. Aug. 21, '15.

BUTLER, ELLIS PARKER.
  **Hidden Treasure. Am. March, '15.
  **Miss Kimpton's Bones. Lip. Jan., '15.
  Mr. Busby's Telephone Affinity. N.S.M. June 27, '15.
  Mr. Middlemay's Alibi. Pict. R. April, '15.
  *Swatty. Am. May, '15.
  Teacher's Pet. Am. April, '15.
  *The Demigod. Am. Sept., '15.
  *The Gray-Green Platypus. Ev. Nov., '15.
  *The Murderers. Am. Dec., '15.
  The Son and Father Movement. Am. June, '15.
  The Unscrambling. E.W. July 12, '15.
  When John Fixed the Cuckoo Clock. E.W. May 10, '15.

BUTLER, KATHARINE.
  ***In No Strange Land. Atl. March, '15.

BUZZELL, ARTHUR L.
  The Peace Advocate. Am. Nov., '15.

BUZZELL, FRANCIS.
  ***Addie Erb and Her Girl Lottie. Cen. Nov., '14. I.S.M. Oct. 10, '15.

BYRNE, DONN.
  **Biplane No. 2. Cen. Sept., '14.
  Eve and the Gopher. McB. Dec., '15.
  *The Balance of Might. McB. Oct., '15.
  ***The Wake. Harp. M. Oct., '15.


C

C., S.
  Business: A Real Conversation. N. Rep. July 17, '15.

CABELL, JAMES BRANCH.
  *A Brown Woman. Lip. Aug., '15.
  *Belhs Cavaliers. Lip. June, '15.
  *Judith's Creed. Lip. July, '15.
  *Pro Honoria. McB. Sept., '15.
  *The Irresistible Ogle. McB. Oct., '15.

CADY, C.M. (_See_ MATSUMURA, KEISEKI, _and_ CADY, C.M.)

CAHN, ED.
  Bothering Nobody. Col. June 6, '14.
  *The Punch Parisian. Col. Feb. 21, '14.

CAMERON, MARGARET.
  The Captive Bridegroom. Harp. M. Jan., '15.

CAMERON, MARGARET, _and_ RECTOR, JESSIE LEACH.
  The Company Dinner. Harp. M. Oct., '15.
  The Web They Wove. Harp. M. Dec., '15.
  The White Elephant. Harp. M. Sept., '15.

CAMP, CHARLES WADSWORTH.
  The Doctor's Wife. Col. Nov. 13, '15.
  The Gray Mask. Col. Aug. 7, '15.

CAMPBELL, HELEN B.
  **The Shirker. For. Aug., '15.

CAMPEN, HELEN VAN.
  Goldie and the Spade Man. Pict. R. April, '15.
  The Dancing Carnival. S.E.P. June 13, '14.
  The Jackpot's Dentist. S.E.P. Jan. 31, '14.
  Trippit and Dailey Go Racing. S.E.P. March 21, '14.
  Under the Doctor's Care. Pict. R. Aug., '15.

CANBY, HENRY SEIDEL.
  The Best Bait for Mosquitoes. Cen. May, '15.

CANFIELD, DOROTHY.
  A Roman Thanksgiving. Del. Nov., '15.
  ***Flint and Fire. Harp. M. April, '15.
  *The Conviction of Sin. Harp. M. May, '15.
  The Truly Mother. Lip. July, '15.

CAPES, BERNARD.
  **Blue Roses. Mir. June 4, '15.
  Expiation. Mir. May 14, '15.
  *Mr. Thewlis. Mir. March 5, '15.
  *The Dark Compartment. Mir. Jan. 29, '15.
  The Flying Man. Mir. July 23, '15.
  **The Golden Goat. Mir. July 30, '15.
  The Queen Bee. Mir. June 25, '15.

CARLETON, WILLIAM.
  *The Call to the Colors. L.H.J. Jan., '15.

CARMAN, KATHLEEN.
  *The Debt. Atl. Feb., '15.

CARR, HARRY C.
  Giving Mary the Double-Cross. Am. Feb., '15.

CARTMELL, JR., VAN H.
  *Quarry. S.S. May, '15.

CASEY, PATRICK.
  *The Gay-Cat. S.E.P. April 4, '14.
  *Thief of the World. Col. Aug. 8, '14.

CATHER, WILLA SIBERT.
  *Consequences. McC. Nov., '15.

CHAMBERLAIN, GEORGE AGNEW.
  *Mongrels, McC. March, '15.
  **O'Leary's Dream of Empire. McC. Jan., '15.
  *Passengers. McC. Feb., '15.

CHANNING, GRACE ELLERY.
  Dea ex Machina. S.E.P. May 22, '15.
  *The Idealist. Harp. M. Aug., '14.
  The Lantescane Roses. S.E.P. June 6, '14.
  The Maternal Sacrifice. S.E.P. July 10, '15.
  *The Requital. S.E.P. May 9, '14.

CHAPIN, ANNA ALICE.
  *The Tie. I.S.M. Aug. 22, '15.

CHAPIN, CARL MATTISON.
  *Destiny. Am. Nov., '15.

CHAPPEL, EVA.
  *Youth's Sweet Scented Manuscript. Am. July, 15.

CHARD, CECIL.
  With Flags Flying. Harp. M. Feb., '14.

CHESLEY, A.C.
  The Diamond Ring. I.S.M. March 14, '15.

CHESNEY, PHILIP.
  The Black Prince and Miriam. Lip. May, '15.

CHESTER, GEORGE RANDOLPH.
  Fundamental Justice. Col. July 25, '14.
  Indignation Runs High. Col. Sept. 19, '14.
  The Edge of the Boom. Col. May 8, '15.
  The Smash in the Ear. Col. July 11, '14.

CHILD, RICHARD WASHBURN.
  Elsie. Col. July 3, '15.
  **For Freedom. Col. Nov. 27, '15.
  He Looked Like a Fighter. S.E.P. Jan. 9, '15.
  Her Dark Past. S.E.P. Feb. 27, '15.
  Her Negatives. S.E.P. June 19, '15.
  Made of Steel. S.E.P. May 15, '15.
  *"My Boy." S.E.P. April 17, '15.
  No Man Knows. S.E.P. March 27, '15.
  ***Not in the Dispatches. Col. April 3, '15.
  One Feels It. S.E.P. May 1, '15.
  *Pode. Col. March 6, '15.
  *That's Good. S.E.P. May 29, '15.
  **The Gorilla. Harp. M. Jan., '15.
  *The Last of the Family. Col. May 2, '14.
  The Phoenix. S.E.P. Nov. 28, '14.
  The Round Table. Col. Dec. 11, '15.
  *The Vampire. E.W. Sept. 6, '15.
  *The Velvet Black. S.E.P. July 31, '15.
  Very Truly Yours. S.E.P. Sept. 4, '15.

CHITTENDEN, GERALD.
  The  Stuff That Dreams Are Made On. Scrib.  March, '14.

CHRISTIE, HENRY CHRISTOPHER.
  *The Sponge-Spoilers. Atl. Jan., '14.
  The Turtlers. Atl. April, '14.

CLANCY, EUGENE A.
  *The Cleansing Tears. Harp. M. Feb., '15.
  The One Great Thing. Harp. M. March, '14.

CLARK, RUTH.
  *Fireworks. S.S. July, '15.

CLARKE, KENNETH B.
  It Being Sunday. L.H.J. June, '15.
  The Blue Tattooing. S.E.P. May 15, '15.

CLARKE, LAWRENCE.
  *The Gray Guest. Cen. Dec., '14.

CLARK-WILKINS, C. WILTON. (_See_ WILKINS, C. WILTON CLARK-.)

CLIFFORD, MRS. W.K.
  *The Ghost on the Stairs. Scr. March, '14.

COBB, IRVIN S.
  A Blending of the Parables. S.E.P. Aug. 28, '15.
  A Card to the Public. S.E.P. Oct. 24, '14.
  ***Blacker than Sin. S.E.P. Nov. 27, '15.
  Fibble, D.D., Takes Pen in Hand. S.E.P. Dec. 25, '15.
  Judge Priest Comes Back. S.E.P. Aug. 7, '15.
  *Local Color. S.E.P. Aug. 8, '14.
  Smooth Crossing. S.E.P. Aug. 22, '14.
  *The Last Charge of Forrest's Cavalry. S.E.P. Nov. 13, '15.
  The Lord Provides. S.E.P. Oct. 9, '15.
  *The Smart Aleck. S.E.P. July 18, '14.
  The Undoing of Stonewall Jackson Bugg. McC. Sept., '15.

COHEN, OCTAVUS ROY.
  Curly Locks. E.W. Aug. 2, '15.
  Personality, Etc. E.W. Oct. 11, '15.
  The False Alarm. Col. April 17, '15.
  The Fool Maker. E.W. Sept. 20, '15.
  The Movie Maid and the Martinet. E.W. Nov. 15, '15.
  The Rainy Day. I.S.M. July 11, '15.
  The Squeeze Play. I.S.M. June 27, '15.
  The Understudy. I.S.M. May 30, '15.

COLCORD, LINCOLN.
  ***A Life and a Ship. Am. Aug., '15.
  ***Rescue at Sea. Am. May, '15.

COLLIER, TARLETON.
  *Non-Combatants. Harp. W. Jan. 23, '15.
  **The Mob. Harp. W. Aug. 21, '15.
  *The Patriot. Harp. W. April 10, '15.

COLTER, ALICE M.
  "Even Unto Bethlehem." Del. Dec., '15.

COLUM, PADRAIC.
  ***A Woman of the West. Ch. Trib. Jul. 25, '15.

COMER, CORNELIA A.P.
  **Seth Miles and the Sacred Fire. Atl. Dec., '14.
  The Wealth of Timmy Zimmerman. Atl. June, '14.

COMFORT, WILL LEVINGTON.
  ***Chautonville. Masses. Aug., '15.
  *Fleming the Twice-Born. E.W. Sept. 20, '15.

COMSTOCK, SARAH.
  *The Sheep-Woman. Cen. Sept., '14.

CONNELY, WILLARD.
  It Can't Be Done Without a Blue Book. Met. Oct., '15.
  Tony Gets Fired. McC. May, '15.
  Tony Goes Gunning for a Job. McC. June, '15.
  Tony Haunts the Butterfinger Building. McC. July, 15.

CONNOLLY, JAMES BRENDAN.
  *About the Weeping Annie and What Followed. Col. Oct. 23, '15.
  **Mother Machree. Scr. Aug., '15.
  ***The Medicine Ship. Scr. Dec., '15.
  *The Rakish Brigantine. Scr. Aug., '14.
  **The Trawler. Col. Oct. 31, '14.
  *Tom Rockett's Boy. Ev. Feb., '15.

CONNOLLY, LOUISE.
  Darby and Joan. Harp. M. Dec., '14.

CONNOR, BREVARD MAYS.
  Billy's Cashier. L.H.J. March, '15.

"CONRAD, JOSEPH."
  ***Laughing Anne. Met. Sept., '14.
  ***The Planter of Malata. Met. June-July, '14.

CONVERSE, FLORENCE.
  *Maggie's Minstrel. Cen. Nov., '14.

COOK, GEORGE CRAM.
  The C.T.U. For. Oct., '14.

COOKE, GRACE MacGOWAN.
  **Moongwe the Son-Daughter. N.S.M. May 23, '15.
  *The Girl Who Was Afraid to Get Married. E.W. Aug. 30, '15.

COOKE, MARJORIE BENTON.
  *Harrigan--of the Rockies. Am. Dec., '15.
  The Littlest Scout. Pict. R. May, '15.

COOLIDGE, HERBERT.
  The Blood Charivari. Col. Nov. 7, '14.

COOMBS, ELIZABETH MAURY.
  *Love-in-a-Mist. Lip. Feb., '15.
  The End of the Dream. Cen. Jan., '14.

CORNELL, V.H.
  The Narrow Way. Harp. M. March, '14.
  *The One and the Other. Harp. M. Nov., '15.

COSTELLO, ALEXANDER.
  Aboard the Floating Wall Street. McC. Oct., '15.
  Poor on $10,000 a Year. McC. Sept., '15.

COULTER, ERNEST K.
  Aloysius--Better Baby. Lip. Jan., '15.

COURT, G.
  "P.S.--" Bel. April 10, '15.

COURT, G. _and_ M.
  A Grocer Baronet. Bel. Aug. 14, '15.

COURTNEY, W.L.
  *His First Wife. McC. Feb., '15.

COUZENS,  H.D.
  *The Pearls of Moku Pilau. I.S.M. Sept. 5, '15.

COWDERY, ALICE.
  ***Chains. Harp. M. March, '15.
  Constance the Parasite. Harp. M. Oct., '15.
  **Gallant Age. Harp. M. Sept., '14.
  Roscoe the Invincible. Harp. M. Aug., '15.

CRANE, LEO.
  An Arctic Adventure. I.S.M. Oct. 24, '15.
  *At Chimney Butte. I.S.M. Nov. 14, '15.
  **One Man's Story. I.S.M. Nov. 28, '15.
  The Little Brother. I.S.M. Sept. 26, '15.
  *The Real Thing. I.S.M. March 14, '15.
  *Two Shots at "Carson's." I.S.M. Nov. 21, '15.
  *When the Gods Sneer. I.S.M. Oct. 31, '15.

CRAWFORD, CHARLOTTE HOLMES.
  Enemy's Child. For. Sept., '15.

CREEL, GEORGE.
  Pro Patria. Harp. W. July 17, '15.

CRISSEY, FORREST.
  The Tobacco Famine at Tamarac. Harp. M. May, '14.

CROFF, GRACE A.
  **A May Flitting. Harp. M. June, '15.

CROWLEY, ALEISTER.
  The Chute. Int. Nov., '15.

CUMMINGS, E. HAROLD.
  *The Nick of Time. B.C. March, '15.

CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM, R.B. (_See_ GRAHAM, R.B. CUNNINGHAME.)

CURTISS, PHILIP.
  The Geniuses of Lutton's Hill. Scr. Jan., '14.
  **The Patrician. E.W. May 31, '15.

CUTTING, MARY STEWART.
  As Lochinvar. Pict. R. Oct., '15.
  Benson's Day. S.E.P. May 2, '14.
  Boggybrae. Ev. July, '15.
  Dance-Mad Billy. McC. Sept., '15.
  Leslie's Friend. S.E.P. April 17, '15.
  On With the Dance. S.E.P. June 20, '14.
  Winifred's Dance. L.H.J. March, '15.


D

DALRYMPLE, LEONA.
  The Red Grainger. E.W. Aug. 9, '15.

DANENHOWER, RUTH.
  Miss Millie's Reconstruction. McB. Nov., '15.

DAUDET, ALPHONSE.
  *The Sous-Prefet Afield. Brun. W. Oct. 21-30, '15.

DAVIDSON, MARIE HICKS.
  In Search of a Niche. I.S.M. Aug. 22, '15.
  Squaring the Circle for Jimmie. I.S.M. Oct. 17, '15.

DAVIES, GEORGE.
  Love and the Business. Col. Aug. 29, '14.

DAVIES, OMA ALMONA.
  *Of Arms and the Man. Cen. April, '15.

DAVIESS, MARIA THOMPSON.
  Both. E.W. Dec. 6, '15.
  Digging Up Sam. Cen. June, '14.
  The Beloved Maverick. Harp. B. Nov., '15.
  The Milk-Fed Chicken. Harp. B. June, '15.
  *Under Silken Skies. Cen. July, '14.

DAVIS, CHARLES BELMONT.
  Gusenburger. McB. Nov., '15.
  Her Own Sort. Scr. Dec., '15.
  The Wreath of Pines. I.S.M. Aug. 15, '15.
  *When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Met. Oct, '14.

DAVIS, RICHARD HARDING.
  *Billy and the Big Stick. Met. May, '14.
  Playing Dead. Met. March, '15.
  *"Somewhere in France." Met. June, '15.
  The Boy Scout. Met. March, '14.
  *The Card Sharp. Met. June, '14.
  *The Frame-Up. Met. Aug., '15.
  The Log of the Jolly Polly. Met. Oct., '15.

DAWSON, CONINGSBY.
  She Wanted to Know. Met. June, '15.
  The Little Brown Mouse. Pict. R. April, '15.
  The Poison Word. Met. Sept., '14.

DAY, JR., CLARENCE.
  The Back Door. Harp. M. April, '14.

DAY, HOLMAN F.
  The Throne of Old Tantrybogus. S.E.P. Jan. 10, '14.

DAY, MARY LOUISE.
  ***His Surrender. For. April, '15.

"DEHAN, RICHARD." (_See_ GRAVES, CLOTILDE.)

DELAND, MARGARET.
  **Miss Clara's Perseus. Harp. M. Sept.-Oct., '14.
  **The Third Volume. Del. May-June, '15.

DELANO, EDITH BARNARD.
  Spring Recurrent. Harp. M. March, '14.
  The Flaming Ramparts. Harp. M. Oct., '14.
  *The Gift of the Manger. Harp. M. Dec., '15.

DELL, FLOYD.
  The Ways of Life. Masses. Dec., '15.

DICKSON, HARRIS.
  Suspicion. S.E.P. May 29, '15.
  The Custard Nine. S.E.P. July 25, '14.
  *The Striped Man. Pict. R. Oct., '15.
  When Pussy-Foot Came to Town. S.E.P. March 14, '14

DIX, BEULAH MARIE.
  ***Across the Border. G.H. Feb., '15.
  **The Bend of the Stair. Harp. B. March, '15.
  **The Thing That Couldn't Happen. Harp. B. Oct., '15.

DODGE, MARGARET.
  *The Damaged-Dogs Man. Cen. Sept., '14.
  *The Oasis. Cen. Aug., '14.

DONNELL, ANNIE HAMILTON.
  The Beautiful Thing. Col. Oct. 17, '14.
  The Glory. Col. Feb. 27, '15.

DOUGLAS, DAVID.
  *Casey. McC. Oct., '15.
   Casey Makes a Governor. McC. Dec., '15.
   Casey Plays 'Possum. McC. Nov., '15.

DOWNIE, VALE.
  *Prester Jim. E.W. Oct. 25, '15.
  *Robin the Bobbin. Harp. M. Dec., '14.
  The Confidential Doll Insurance Co. Harp. M. April, '14.

DOWST, HENRY P.
  *The Tempter and Maria. Col. Jan. 10, '14.

DRAYHAM, WILLIAM.
  *Children of Apollo. S.S. Dec., '15.

DRISCOLL, LOUISE.
  *A Lear of the Tenements. Col. Oct. 10, '14.

DUCEY, LILIAN.
  "I'm Going to Marry Peggy." E.W. June 28, '15.

DUDENEY, MRS. HENRY.
  **On Truly Hill. Harp. M. June, '14.
  **The Royal Way. Harp. M. July, '15.

DUER, CAROLINE.
  The Disengaged. Cen. Dec., '14.
  The Man Who Was Too Good. Cen. Feb., 15.
  What a Woman Wants. Cen. Feb., '14.

DUFFY, ALICE E.
  Love in a Mask. Met. Aug., '14.

DUNBAR, OLIVIA HOWARD.
  *Educating the Binneys. Scr. July, '15.
  *The "Destroying Angel." McB. Dec., '15.
  *The Long Chamber. Harp. M. Oct., '14.
  **The Phoenix. Harp. M. Jan., '15.
  *Whose Is This Image? Harp. M. Nov., '15.

DUNBLANE, NORA.
  Jasmine's Decision. I.S.M. Sept. 19, '15.
  The Sweet White Gardenia. I.S.M. Feb. 21, '15.

DUNCAN, NORMAN.
  *A Certain Recipient. Harp. M. Dec., '15.
  **A Hypothetical Case. Harp. M. June, '15.
  ***A Nice Little Morsel o' Dog Meat. S.E.P. Oct. 16, '15.
  *A Point of Honor. Harp. M. Nov., '15.
  **Battle Royal. S.E.P. July 3, '15.

DUNN, ALLAN.
  Tamatan of Totulu. S.E.P. Jan. 3, '14.
  The Island of the Four M's. S.E.P. March 20, '15.

DUNNING, HAROLD WOLCOTT.
  ***The Little Captain. Pict. R. June, '15.

DUNSANY, LORD.
  ***A Story of Land and Sea. For. Feb., '15.
  **A Tale of London. S.S. April, '15.
  **Lobster Salad. S.S. March, '15.
  **The Assignation. S.S. March, '15.
  **The Bureau d'Echange de Maux. S.S. Jan., '15.
  **The Dream of King Karna-Vootra. S.S. April, '15.
  *The Eight Wishes. Mir. March 26, '15.
  ***The Exiles' Club. S.S. Nov., '15.
  *The Greatest Painter in the World. S.S. April, '15.
  **The Hen. S.S. March, '15.
  ***The Three Infernal Jokes. S.S. July, '15.
  **The Tomb of Pan. S.S. March, '15.

DUTTON, LOUISE ELIZABETH.
  In the Country of the Young. Met. Jan., '15.

DWIGGINS, WILLIAM ADDISON.
  ***La Dernière Mobilisation. Fab. Autumn, '15

DWIGHT, H.G.
  In the Pasha's Garden. Atl. Aug., '14.
  **The House of the Giraffe. Atl. Dec., '15.
  ***The Leopard of the Sea. Atl. April, '14. I.S.M. Sept. 19, '15.
  **The River of the Moon. Atl. Jan., '15.
  *Under the Arch. Atl. Sept., '15.

DWYER, JAMES FRANCIS.
  A Five-Word Torpedo. N.S.M. July 18, '15.
  Legs. L.H.J. Oct., '15.
  ***The Citizen. Col. Nov. 20, '15.
  **The Lascar. I.S.M. Aug. 22, '15.

DYER, GEORGE.
  Ship's Spirit. Harp. W. Nov. 6, '15.

DYER, WALTER A.
  Emerson's Christmas. Am. Dec., '15.

DYKE, HENRY VAN.
  *The Antwerp Road. Scr. Dec., '15.


E

EARLE, MARY TRACY.
  ***"The Tropic Bird." Harp. M. April, '15.

EASTMAN, REBECCA HOOPER.
  Mrs. Byington's Four-Poster. Lip. April, '15.
  Our Painted Aunt. Cen. May, '14.
  *Their Second Meeting. Am. June, '15.
  The Purple Star. Atl. July, '15.
  *The Sad-Glad Lady. Harp. M. Sept.,'15.

EATON, WALTER PRICHARD.
  A Roof-Top Romance. Col. March 20, '15.
  The Bamboo Forest. Col. May 29, '15.
  *The Gladiolus Man. L.H.J. July, '15.
  The Hermit. Am. Sept., '15.
  The Little Gray Goose. Am. Aug., '15.
  The Song Sparrow. Am. June, '15.
  The Wild Duck. Am. Dec., '15.
  The Wren. Am. July, '15.
  With the Help of Anthony Hope. Pict. R. July, '15.

EDHOLM, CHARLTON LAWRENCE.
  Larry McSanta Claus. E.W. Aug. 23, '15.

EDMONDSON, VERA.
  Before I Come for You. E.W. Sept. 6, '15.
  The Pretender. E.W. Aug. 9, '15.

EDWARDS, HARRY STILLWELL.
  **Princess of Sunflower Alley. A.S.M. Jan. 24, '15.

EDWARDS, HARRY STILLWELL, _and_ EDWARDS, JACKSON LANE, E.E.
  *The Third Light. S.E.P. Dec. 18, '15.

EGAN, MAURICE FRANCIS.
  The Necessity of Being Irish. Scr. Nov., '14.

ELLIOTT, SARAH BARNWELL.
  **The Last Flash. Scr. June, '15.

ELLIS, CARLYLE.
  Cabbages and Kids. Ev. Jan., '15.

ELLIS, MRS. HAVELOCK.
  **Love the Pilgrim. For. Sept., '14.
  *Porky's Cissy. For. Jan., '15.

ERNEST, JOSEPH.
  That Movie Queen Notion. E.W. Oct. 25, '15.
  *Zizi's Hat. Cen. April, '15.

ERVINE, ST. JOHN G.
  *The Burial. For. May, '14.

ESTABROOK, ALMA MARTIN.
  When Mrs. Adney Died. Harp. M. June, '14.

EVANS, FRANK E.
  Mother Carey's Chick. Sun. Sept., '15.
  *The Big Fellow. Col. Oct. 9, '15.
  The Diamond Jester. Col. Oct. 17, '14.

EVANS, IDA MAY.
  Discards. S.E.P. June 13, '14.
  Flesh Under Fleshings. S.E.P. March 28, '14.
  Mudpuddles. S.E.P. Jan. 24, '14.
  Poor Old Skirts. Col. Dec. 4, '15.
  *Slimmy's Chance. Col. Nov. 13, '15.
  Soap Wrappers. S.E.P. Oct. 24, '14.
  The Grouch. S.E.P. Sept. 4, '15.

EVANS, LARRY.
  The Long Chance. I.S.M. March 14, '15.
  *The Man Who Made Believe. Met. Oct., '14.
  The Redemption of Red-Eye Lucas. Pict. R. Sept., '15.

EWALD, CLARA BOUVIER.
  *The River. Col. Aug. 14-21, '15.

EWERS, HANNS HEINZ.
  **"C.3.3." Int. June, '15.
  ***The Spider. Int. Dec., '15.

"EYE-WITNESS."
  *A Cockney Cavalier. Mir. Oct. 29, '15.


F

FERBER, EDNA.
  Sophy-as-She-Might-Have-Been. S.E.P. Sept. 19, '14.
  The Guiding Miss Gowd. S.E.P. Aug. 15, '14.

FERRIS, ELEANOR.
  The Uttermost Farthing. L.H.J. Aug., '15.

FERRIS, ELMER E.
  Bringing Home the Bacon. Am. March, '15.

FIELD, MARY.
  *The "Calling" of Josephine. Sun. April, '15.

FIELDING-HALL, H. (_See_ HALL, H. FIELDING-.)

FIFERLIK, HAROLD WILLIAM.
  **The Fatherland. Harp. M. Aug., '14.

FINCH, LUCINE.
  *The Boy at the Window. Harp. M. Oct., '14.
  ***The Woman Who Waited. Am. May, '15.

FINNEGAN, FRANK X.
  And Your Neighbor As Yourself. Col. Jan. 16, '15.
  Birdie's Mixed Motives. Col. Jan. 17, '14.
  Birdie's Sane Christmas. Col. Dec. 19, '14.
  Birdie the Strikebreaker. Col. March 28, '14.
  From the Brink. Col. May 22, '15.
  Marconi _vs_. Hymen. Col. Sept. 12, '14.
  So Much Down. Col. Aug. 21, '15.
  The Pulse of Spring. Lip. April, '15.
  The Voice of Spring. Col. June 20, '14.
  What the Siren Shrieked. E.W. July 26, '15.

FISHER, C.E.
  The Riders. Col. Feb. 13, '15.

FISK, MAY ISABEL.
  The Village Dressmaker. Pict. R. Feb., '15.

FITCH, ANITA.
  ***Colin McCabe: Renegade. Col. Jan. 9, '15.

FITCH, GEORGE.
  Sam and I. Am. Nov., '15.

FITZGERALD, HENRY.
  *The Pink 'Un. Col. June 5, '15.

FITZPATRICK, JAMES WILLIAM.
  *The Hospital Ticket. Col. Dec. 19, '14.
  **The Last Laugh. Col. Aug. 7, '15.

FLOWER, ELLIOTT.
  Editor Parkin's Defeat. Pict. R. March, '15.
  What Barnum Said. Cen. Dec., '15.

FLYNT, WENTWORTH.
  The Mist. I.S.M. June 13, '15.

FOOTE, ELVERA.
  The Escape of Cyrus. Sun. Oct., '15.

FOOTE, JOHN TAINTOR.
  A Cake in the Fourteenth Round. S.E.P. April 24, '15.
  Acknowledged With Thanks. Am. Oct., '15.
  A Permanent Intruder. S.E.P. April 10, '15.
  Dumb-Bell's Check. Am. Aug., '15.
  Goldie May and the Faithful Servant. S.E.P. July 24, '15.
  Opus 43, Number 6. S.E.P. Feb. 13, '15.
  The Look of Eagles. S.E.P. July 3, '15.
  The Runt. Am. July, '15.

FORD, ASHBY.
  *The Statement for the Defense. Col. Feb. 13, '15.

FORD, SEWELL.
  *A Fifty-Fifty Split With Hunk. A.S.M. Jan. 17, '15.
  *A Late Flop by Hicks. E.W. Aug. 30, '15.
  Back a Ways With Gertie. E.W. July 5, '15.
  Backing Baxy in a Split. E.W. Nov. 29, '15.
  Bayard Ducks His Past. A.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.
  Beal Pulls a Blinger. E.W. Aug. 2, '15.
  Getting Dora Into High. E.W. Oct. 4, '15.
  *How Ham Passed the Buck. E.W. Dec. 20, '15.
  Hub Ducks the Flivver Class. E.W. Nov. 1, '15.
  J. Bayard Springs a Bird. A.S.M. April 11, '15.
  Letting Ripley Write the Tags. E.W. June 14, '15.
  Mr. Robert Gets a Slant. E.W. July 19, '15.
  On the Way With Cyril. E.W. Nov. 15, '15.
  *Sifting Out Uncle Bill. A.S.M. March 28, '15.
  Some Hoop-la for the Boss. E.W. Sept. 13, '15.
  Sully Gets the Jump on Pomp. A.S.M. April 25, '15.
  Teamwork With Aunty. A.S.M. Jan. 31, '15.
  Then Along Came Sukey. A.S.M. Jan. 3, '15.
  Torchy Tackles a Short Circuit. E.W. June 21, '15.
  Towing Cecil to a Smeer. E.W. Oct. 11, '15.
  When Aunty Got the News. E.W. May 3, '15.
  When Ella May Came By. E.W. Aug. 16, '15.
  Wilbur's Place in the Run. A.S.M. March 14, '15.
  Zenobia Digs Up a Late One. A.S.M. Feb. 28, '15.

FORMAN, HENRY JAMES.
  ***The Monk and the Stranger. Col. Dec. 25, '15.

FORMAN, JUSTUS MILES.
  Carnevale di Venezia. Pict. R. Feb., '15.
  Her Burglar. L.H.J. May, '15.
  The Conspiracy. E.W. May 24, '15.
  The Duel by the Bosporus. S.E.P. Feb. 28, '14.
  The Two Rembrandts. Met. July, '14.

FORSSLUND, LOUISE.
  Bobby Liscum's Mother. Col. Jan. 24, '14.

FOSTER, MAXIMILIAN.
  Camphor, Ltd. S.E.P. Jan. 23, '15.
  Not Enough Mustard. S.E.P. May 23, '14.
  Shoestrings. S.E.P. March 7, '14.
  The Double Cross. S.E.P. Jan. 9, '15.
  The Dub. S.E.P. Dec. 18-25, '15.
  The Hardest Ride a Man Can Take. McC. Aug., '15.
  The Kitten and the Mouse. S.E.P. Oct. 31, '14.
  The Road to Mandel's. Ev. Oct., '15.
  *The Tie That Binds. Pict. R. Mar., '15.
  "Whom God Hath Joined." Pict. R. June, '15.

FOX, EDWARD LYELL.
  The Booming of Barrington. Lip. Feb., '15.
  **The Mummery of Zeb Squires. I.S.M. Sept. 5, '15
  The Pelt of the Silver Fox. I.S.M. April 11, '15.

FOX, PAUL HERVEY.
  **The Chameleon. Bel. Oct. 2, '15.

FRANK, FLORENCE KIPER.
  *The Death of Anton Tarasovich. Lit. R. June-July, '15.

FRANKLIN, EDGAR.
  Blue Motors. S.E.P. April 3, '15.
  C.O.D. To-night. S.E.P. Aug. 14, '15.
  Keeping It Dark. S.E.P. July 17, '15.

FRAZER, ELIZABETH.
  The Swimmer. Harp. B. July, '15.

FREDERICKS, ARNOLD.
  Ten Dollar Corsets. I.S.M. May 30, '15.

FREEMAN, MARY E. WILKINS-.
  **Criss-Cross. Harp. M. Aug., '14.
  ***Daniel and Little Dan'l. Harp. M. April, '14.
  ***Emancipation. Harp. M. Dec., '15.
  *Sour Sweetings. Harp M. Jan., '15.
  **Sweet-Flowering Perennial. Harp. M. July, '15.
  *The Amethyst Comb. Harp. M. Feb., '14.
  *The Outside of the House. Harp. M. Nov., '14.
  *The Saving of Hiram Sessions. Pict. R. May, '15.

FROST, PHILIP PRESCOTT.
  En Route. Cen. March, '15.
  The Paying Teller. Cen. May, '14.
  The President's Son. Cen. Nov., '14.

FUESSLE, NEWTON A.
  One Rich Young Man. Lip. May, '15.

FULLER, ANNA.
  **The Boy. Atl. Aug., '14.

FULLER, RUTH.
  *Heilige Nacht. Mid. Dec., '15.

FUMET, HENRI.
  *Roma Lucida. G.V. April 5, '15.

FUTRELLE, MAY (MRS. JACQUES FUTRELLE).
  The Merger. I.S.M. April 18, '15.


G

GALBREATH, THOMAS CRAWFORD.
  **The Miracle. Am. Feb., '15.

GALE, ZONA.
  *A Christmas for Tony. W.H.C. Dec., '15.
  Friday. Cen. Aug., '14.
  Something Plus. Pict. R. Dec., '15.
  *The Story of Jeffro. Ev. March, '15.

GALSWORTHY, JOHN.
  ***A Simple Tale. Scr. Dec., '14. I.S.M. Oct. 24, '15.
  *Buttercup-Night. Atl. Jan., '14.
  **Hathor: A Memory. Scr. Feb., '15.
  **Sekhet: A Dream. Scr. April, '15.
  ***Ultima Thule. Del. April, '15.

GARDNER, ROY R.
  A Temperament to Discipline. Harp. M. Feb., '15.

GARLAND, HAMLIN.
  Kelley of Brimstone Basin. N.S.M. March 28, '15.
  **Partners for a Day. Col. March 14, '14.

GATLIN, DANA.
  One Day--and Another. McC. July, '15.
  That Vague Something. Col. Nov. 6, '15.
  Toward Freedom. Cen. Oct., '14.
  With Loving Wishes for a Happy Birthday. Cen. Aug., '14.
  Woman Stuff. McC. Dec., '15.

GAUSS, MARIANNE.
  **The Final Escape. Col. March 28, '14.
  *The Fugitive and His Judas. Col. March 7, '14.

GAYLORD, WILLIAM L.
  Enough for a Million Meals. Bel. July 17, '15.

GEROULD, GORDON HALL.
  Experience. Scr. March, '14.
  Occupation. Scr. May, '14.
  Pseudonymous. Scr. Oct., '14.
  *The Best-Seller. Scr. Sept., '15.

GEROULD, KATHARINE FULLERTON.
  **A Moth of Peace. Atl. Jan., '15.
  ***Blue Bonnet. Cen. Feb., '15.
  **Leda and the Swan. Scr. Feb., '15.
  ***Martin's Hollow. Scr. June, '15.
  ***Miss Marriott and the Faun. Scr. July, '15
  *Pearls. Harp. M. July, '14.
  ***Sea-Green. Harp. M. Aug., '15.
  *The Cup and the Lip. Harp. M. April, '15.
  ***The Dominant Strain. Scr. June, '14. I.S.M. Nov. 7, '15.
  *The Great Tradition. Cen. July, '14.
  **The Miracle. Harp. M. Nov., '14.
  ***The Penalties of Artemis. Harp. M. Dec., '15.
  *The Straight Tip. Scr. Aug., '14.
  ***The Toad and the Jewel. Harp. M. April, '14. I.S.M. Sept. 12, '15.
  ***The Tortoise. Scr. Jan., '14. I.S.M. Nov. 28, '15
  ***The Triple Mirror. Cen. April, '14. I.S.M. Oct. 31, '15.

GERRY, MARGARITA SPALDING.
  An Apple Blossom Pilgrimage. Del. June, '15.
  *The Man Who Couldn't Miss. Harp. M. Nov., '14.

GIBBON, PERCEVAL.
  *Alms and the Man. E.W. Dec. 27, '15.
  **A Ship in Distress. McC. Jan., '15.
  **Promotion. McC. March, '15.
  **The Charmed Life. Col. Oct. 9, '15.
  **The Finn. McC. Feb., '15.
  ***The Town of His Dream. L.H.J. Aug., '15.

GIBBS, PHILIP.
  The Knock at the Door. I.S.M. July 18, '15.

GIBSON, DAVID.
  *Amongst All Them City People. I.S.M. Jan. 17, '15.
  How Grandma Cleaned the Attic. I.S.M. April 25, '15.

GIEBLER, A.M.
  Christmas at Sage Brush. I.S.M. Dec. 20, '15.

GILBERTS, THE.
  Princess Laura's One Day. Pict. R. Dec., '15.

GILDER, RODMAN.
  Sweet-Pea. Cen. June, '14.

GILLMORE, INEZ HAYNES.
  Ann's New Set. Met. Sept., '14.
  Beckie Hears Her Mother's Voice. Met. Sept., '15.
  Beckie's Job. Met. Sept., '14.
  Lainey and the Eternal Masculine. Met. Nov., '14.
  Lainey's Gift. Met. Jan., '14.
  Matt Looks Upon the Wine. Met. Aug., '15.
  Roland's Friend. Met. Feb., '14.
  Roly Comes Through. Met. June, '15.
  The Pleasure of Your Company. Met. Oct., '15.

GILLMORE, NELLIE CRAVEY.
  The Leaden Hours. I.S.M. May 9, '15.

GILMORE, FLORENCE.
  A Little Mother. Atl. Sept., '14.

GILMORE, ROBERT A.
  **The Alchemy of the Lady. Mid. June, '15.

GILTNER, LEIGH GORDON.
  The Fighting Edge. I.S.M. July 25, '15.

GINGER, BONNIE R.
  *Raphael and the Motorman. Lip. March, '15.
  *Reclamation. McB. Oct., '15.

GIRARDEAU, CLAUDE M.
  The Diamond Collar. Harp. B. Aug., '15.
  The Gem Dealer. Harp. B. May, '15.
  The Sapphire Necklace. Harp. B. April, '15.

GLASPELL, SUSAN.
  *Agnes of Cape's End. Am. Sept., '15.
  *The Manager of Crystal Sulphur Springs. Harp. M. July, 15.
  *The Rules of the Institution. Harp. M. Jan., '14.

GLASS, MONTAGUE.
  *Lucky Numbers. S.E.P. Dec. 12, '14.
  One Way. S.E.P. Jan. 17, '14.
  *Perfectly Neuter. S.E.P. May 22, '15.
  Rudolph Where Have You Been? S.E.P. March 7, '14.
  *The Late Mr. Krein. S.E.P. Aug. 1, '14.
  The Spoils of the Vanquished. S.E.P. Sept 26, '14.

GLEASON, ARTHUR H.
  Gilbert the Filbert. I.S.M. Aug. 29, '15.
  Silvia the Incomparable. I.S.M. March 14, '15.
  The American. I.S.M. Sept. 5, '15.
  The Chevalier. I.S.M. Sept. 19, '15.
  The Piano of Pervyse. I.S.M. Sept. 12, '15.
  The Ribbons That Stuck in His Coat. I.S.M. Aug. 22, '15.
  Young Hilda at the Wars. I.S.M. Aug. 15, '15.

GODDARD, RALPH.
  *The Bird-Man's Bombardment. Harp. W. Feb. 6, '15.

GOODLOE, ABBIE CARTER.
  *Darius and Alexander. Scr. Oct., '14.
  **The Genius Loci. Scr. Feb., '14.
  *The Jade. Scr. Dec., '15.

GORDON, ARMISTEAD C.
  **Baytop. Scr. May, '15.
  ***Maje. Scr. Jan.-Feb., '14.
  *Ommirandy. Scr. Dec., '14.
  **The King's Harnt. Scr. Oct., '15.
  **The Shunway. Scr. March, '15.

GORDON, SLOANE.
  The Kickin'est Mule. Col. Aug. 8, '14.

GORKY, MAXIM.
 *Man and the Simplon. Mir. March 19, '15.

GRAEVE, OSCAR.
  Parallel Street. For. Sept., '14.

GRAHAM, R.B. CUNNINGHAME.
  *Mudejar. Mir. July 30, '15.
  *Signalled. Mir. Nov. 5, '15.

GRAVES, CLOTILDE. ("DEHAN, RICHARD.")
  Clothes and the Man. Harp. B. April, '15.
  Society and the Macwaugh. Col. June 19, '15.
  Susanna and Her Elders. S.E.P. May 23, '14.
  The Infamy of the Macwaugh. Col. Aug. 28, '15.
  The Macwaugh's Self-Denial. Col. July 10, '15.
  The Tug-of-War. S.E.P. July 11, '14.
  Valcourt's Grin. S.E.P. April 17, '15.

GRAVES, LOUIS.
  *Making Up "The Record." Am. April, '15.

GRAY, DAVID.
  Dalhousie's Lady of the Morning. S.E.P. April 3, '15.
  John Greene and the New Woman. I.S.M. May 2, '15.
  The Alethephone. S.E.P. Sept. 19, '14.

GRAY, JOSEPH.
  The Wash of Driven Waters. I.S.M. July 18, '15.

GREENE, FREDERICK STUART.
  *Galway Intrudes. Cen. June, '15.
  The Compact. E.W. Nov. 8, '15.

GREGG, FRANCES.
  **The Two Brothers. For. Aug., '15.
  ***Whose Dog--? For. Dec., '15.

GRIMSHAW, BEATRICE.
  A Successful Woman. Col. Sept. 11, '15.
  Pack-Horse Bells. Col. Oct. 23, '15.
  The Story of Mermaid Jane. S.E.P. Oct. 24, '14.
  **The Swan-Song of Jane Meakin. Lip. Feb., '15.
  The Tale of the Beautiful Barmaid. S.E.P. Oct. 31, '14.
  The Tale of the Celebes Rubber Queen. S.E.P. Sept. 26, '14.
  The Tale of the Dangerous Town. S.E.P. Oct 10, '14.
  The Tale of the Golden Nutmeg of Banda. S.E.P. Oct. 3, '14.
  The Tale of the Pink Beast. S.E.P. Oct. 17, '14.
  'Twixt Capricorn and Cancer. Col. Jan. 23, '15.

GROHMAN, O. BAILLIE-. (_See_ BAILLIE-GROHMAN, O.)

GUÉRIN, MARY.
  The Freedom of Edith. Scr. June, '15.

GUEST, STEPHEN.
  Mr. Hudson's Left Eye. N.S.M. June 13, '15.

GURR, T.S.
  The Sheik's Bondswoman. I.S.M. June 27, '15.


H

HAGEDORN, HERMANN.
  *A Pair of Shoes. Outl. April 21, '15.

HAINES, DONAL HAMILTON.
  *A By-Product of Justice. Harp. W. July 3, '15.
  The Tinker's Pack. Outl. Aug. 4, '15.

HALE, LOUISE CLOSSER.
  **Emma. Harp. M. Feb., '14.
  Miss Herter's Christmas Adventure. L.H.J. Dec., '15.
  Miss Herter's Young Couple. L.H.J. Jan., '15.
  The Broughtons' Baby. I.S.M. June 27, '15.
  The Fur Sale. McC. March, '15.
  The Romancing of Miss Ellison Paddock. Col. Jan. 2, '15.

HALL, GERTRUDE.
  ***An Epilogue. Cen. June, '15.

HALL, H. FIELDING-.
  **How Bradford Rejoined His Regiment. Atl. March, '15.

"HALL, HOLWORTHY." (HAROLD E. PORTER).
  A Guest in Time. S.E.P. Sept. 18, '15.
  A Thousand for Incidentals. E.W. Nov. 15, '15.
  If It Interferes With Business. Col. Oct. 2, '15.
  It's Born in Them. S.E.P. Aug. 7, '15.
  John the XXII. Pict. R. Dec., '15.
  Out of the Sky. Ev. Dec., '15.
  Saving Grace. McC. May, '15.
  The Admirable Tortoise. McC. Oct., '15.
  The Brown Eyes of the Law. E.W. Sept. 20, '15.
  The Expert Husband. S.E.P. Oct. 16, '15.
  *The Men They Once Were. McC. June, '15.
  *The Show-down. Harp. M. July, '15.
  Threshold of Eden. McC. Nov., '15.
  Two in a Tent. E.W. June 21, '15.

HALL, JOSEPH.
  The Other Burglar. I.S.M. Sept. 19, '15.

HALL, R. CANBY.
  The Four of 'Em. Col. Nov. 7, '14.

HALL, WILBUR.
  A Change of Pace. S.E.P. April 10, '15.
  A Hick Race. Col. Jan. 9, '15.
  Just Outside the Money. Col. April 10, '15.
  "Keep Going!" Col. June 12, '15.
  The Benevolent Exploitation. S.E.P. May 8, '15.
  ***The Fiddler of Glory Hole. Col. Dec. 4, 15.
  The Man Who Owned Soledad. Bel. Oct. 16, '15.
  The Rain Maker. S.E.P. July 10, '15.
  Twice in the Same Place. Col. Oct. 9, '15.

HALLET, RICHARD MATTHEWS.
  Southampton Bill and the Siren. Ev. July, '15.
  *Stradivarius and the Food of Love. Ev. May, '15.
  The Family Tree. Ev. Aug., '15.

HALVERSON, FRANK A.
  The Turning of Joe. Col. Sept. 12, '14.

HAMBIDGE, HELEN.
  The Reprieve. McB. Sept., '15.

HAMILTON, COSMO.
  *His Forever and Ever Sweetheart. I.S.M. March 7, '15.
  *In Regard to Optimism. I.S.M. Oct. 29, '15.
  *The Happy Wife. I.S.M. June 6, '15.
  Till the End of Time. I.S.M. Aug. 1, '15.

HAMILTON, GERTRUDE BROOKE.
  Joy Three Flights Up. E.W. Nov. 8, '15.
  The Doll Baby. E.W. Sept. 27, '15.
  *The Prune-Stone Dope. Pict. R. May, '15.
  **The Worm in the "Skylight." Pict. R. Oct., '15.
  *Warming Up Luke. Pict. R. Jan., '15.

HAMMOND, LILLIAN KIRK.
  Jupiter. Atl. Sept., '15.

HAMPTON, EDGAR LLOYD.
  ***Finsen. Met. Feb., '15.
  Skippy Limited. Am. Oct., '15.
  *The Law-Breaker. Met. Jan., '15.
  The Outlaw. Col. May 1, '15.

HANKINS, ARTHUR PRESTON.
  The Pensioner. Col. June 20, '14.

HANNAY, CANON JAMES O. (_See_ "BIRMINGHAM, GEORGE A.")

HANSELL, MARY E.
  *The Awakening of Archimedes. For. Jan., '14.

HARD, ANN.
  "Come Hither." Del. Sept., '15.

HARDY, LOWELL EDWIN.
  Borrowed Money. Sun. July, '15.

HARKER, L. ALLEN.
  A Soldier's Button. Scr. April, '15.
  The Contagion of Honour. Del. Nov., '15.

HARRÉ, T. EVERETT.
  The Doves of Aphrodite. Int. March, '15.
  *The Heart of a Priest. Int. Aug., '15.

HARRIS, BURT.
  ***The Truth. Lit. R. Oct., '15.

HARRIS, CORRA.
  *Justice. G.H. May, '15.
  Sally Domesticates Sam. Pict. R. Oct., '15.
  *The Biography of Mary According to Martha. Met. Aug., '14.
  The Scarlet Flower. Met. June, '14.

HARRIS, JOEL CHANDLER.
  *The Young Minstrels. Col. Sept. 19, '14.

HARRIS, KENNETT.
  Entirely Irregular. S.E.P. Dec. 25, '15.
  Johnny and the Red Demon. Col. Nov. 20, '15.
  Lorenzo and the Clinging Vine. S.E.P. Sept. 19, '14.
  Sim's Sudden Sotness. S.E.P. June 20, '14.
  The Floodtide of Fortune. S.E.P. April 11, '14.
  The Follies of Mrs. Joe. S.E.P. Feb. 7, '14.
  The Lady Bountiful. Sun. Jan., '15.
  The Widow's Mite. Col. June 27, '14.
  Turn and Turn About. S.E.P. March 27, '15.
  With Tabasco Sauce. S.E.P. May 16, '14.

HARRISON, C.Y.
  *The Treasure. S.S. Oct., '15.

HART, HORNELL.
  *Molten Metal. Life. Nov. 18, '15.

HARTE, EMMET F.
  The Idle Rich. A.S.M. Feb. 21, '15.

HARTLEY, RANDOLPH.
  *The Black Patch. Life. Dec. 16, '15.

HARTMAN, LEE FOSTER.
  **"Migraine, No. 3." S.E.P. Oct. 3,'14.
  *The Cat's-Paw. S.E.P. Jan. 16, '15.

HARTMANN, SADAKICHI.
  **The Odor of Murder. G.V. April 28, '15.
  *Wistaria. G.V. March 15, '15.

HARTSWICK, F. GREGORY.
  The Detour. Harp. W. Oct. 23, '15.

HARTT, CLAUDINE M.
  *Lily Johnson's Man. I.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.

HARTT, MARY BRONSON.
  *"Hup!" E.W. Sept. 13, '15.
  The Star Assignment. A.S.M. March 7, '15.

HARVEY, ALEXANDER.
  The Exploration of Boov. Int. Feb., '15.
  **The King Who Wished to be Hated. Int. April, '15.
  The Trowsers. Int. March, '15.
  *The Window in the School. Int. May, '15.

HASTINGS, WELLS.
  *Gideon. Cen. April, '14.

HATCH, LEONARD.
  The Muff. Col. June 26, '15.

HAWKINS, ANTHONY HOPE. (_See_ HOPE, ANTHONY.)

HAWKINS, WILLARD E.
  *Jack in the Box. B.C. June, '15.

HAWTHORNE, JULIAN.
  Catching Up With Cupid. E.W. Nov. 22, '15.

HAY, IAN.
  *Locum-Tenens. Cen. Sept., '14.
  *Scally. S.E.P. June 13, '14.

HAY, JR., JAMES.
  **The Betrayal. Col. Oct. 16, '15.
  **The Capture. S.E.P. Jan. 10, '14.

HAYWOOD, ARTHUR.
  *The Drought Fighter. N.S.M. Sept. 26, '15.

HEASLIP, CHARLES T.
  "Beat the Franchise." A.S.M. Jan. 10, '15.
  Lonny of the "Two Million." A.S.M. Feb. 7, '15.

HECHT, BEN.
  ***Depths. Lit. R. Nov., '15.
  ***Gratitude. Lit. R. Nov., '15.
  ***Life. Lit. R. Nov., '15.

HELM, G.P.
  **The Visitor. Harp. M. June, '15.

HENDERSON, JESSIE E.
  Thomas Talbot's Time. Lip. July, '15.

HENRIKSON, CARL I.
  *My First Concert. Ev. Dec., '15.

HERGESHEIMER, JOSEPH.
  Solvig's Saga. S.E.P. Nov. 6, '15.
  The Big Doc. S.E.P. May 22, '15.
  The Fifth Ace and Fenella. S.E.P. Dec. 18, '15.
  The Professional Game. S.E.P. April 3, '15.

HERRICK, ELIZABETH.
  The Unit. Scr. July, '14.

HERRICK, ZELLA M.
  Impressing Mr. Marwood. Del. Oct., '15.

HIBBARD, GEORGE.
  *Arthur Orton's Career. Scr. Feb., '15.
  "Ten Thousand Horses." Scr. Oct., '15.

HIGGINSON, ELLA.
  *The Message of Ann Laura Sweet. Col. Dec. 26, '14.

HILDER, JOHN CHAPMAN.
  The Perfect Failure. Lip. March, '15.

HILL, FRANCIS.
  Anent a Biscuit-Shooter. Col. April 24, '15.
  Minerva Victrix. Col. Jan. 30, '15.
  The Shepherd's Idyll. Col. Nov. 21, '14.
  Wild-Rose in the Cañon. Col. Feb. 21, '14.

HILL, MARION.
  Bennie-Boy. Am. Aug., '15.

HILTON-TURVEY, C.
  *Uplifting Father. Col. March 14, '14.

HINCKLEY, JULIAN.
  *Jermym the Magnificent. S.E.P. Dec. 5, '14.
  You Brat! S.E.P. Aug. 8, '14.

HINES, JACK.
  A One-Man Dog. Ev. March, '15.
  "This Aims to be a Dog-Country." Ev. Sept., '15.

HINRICHSEN, ANNIE.
  The King's Test. A.S.M. March 7, '15.

HINTON, LEONARD.
  "Double Stamps." Sun. July, '15.

HOFFLUND, RAYMOND WARD.
  The Return. I.S.M. March 7, '15.
  Too Much Efficiency. Col. April 10, '15.

HOLLINGSWORTH, CEYLON.
  Digging Out a Nobleman. Col. March 20, '15.
  *Saleratus Smith. Col. Feb. 20, '15.
  The Biggest Thing in the World. Col. Oct. 3, '14.
  The Boy's Politics. Col. July 18, '14.
  The Pestimus. Col. Sept. 25, '15.

HOLLOWAY, WILLIAM.
  Fruits of Repentance. Cen. Oct., '14.

HOLT, H.P.
  *Joe Grummitt's Ghost. B.C. Jan., '15.

HOOKER, BRIAN.
  **Alan of Lesley. Harp. M. Oct., '15.

HOPE, ANTHONY.
  The Fossils. Met. Feb., '14.

HOPKINS, WILLIAM JOHN.
  A Maker of Salt. Harp. B. Feb., '15.
  With the Savour of Salt. Harp. B. Sept., '15.

HOPPER, JAMES.
  ***Forty Years Hence. Col. Sept. 18, '15.
  **John Kent. S.E.P. July 11, '14.
  Peewee Peters. S.E.P. Nov. 20, '15.
  **The Army of Jeanne-Marie. L.H.J. Feb., '15.
  The Last Enterprise. S.E.P. June 27, '14.
  *The Map, the Button, and the Little Girl. Col. May 15, '15.
  *The Mean Little Fellow. Col. May 1, '15.
  ***The Night School. Cen. March, '14. I.S.M. Nov. 14, '15.
  **The Painted Letter. N.S.M. June 13, '15.
  *The Persistent Lady. S.E.P. Aug. 8, '14.

HOUGH, EMERSON.
  Cupid and the Car. Pict. R. May, '15.

HOVEY, E. VON R.
  **"I'll Go the Reaper." Col. May 15, '15.

HOWARD, GEORGE BRONSON-.
  **Monsieur Bluebeard. Cen. Sept., '15.
  *Shadows. Cen. Feb., '14.
  *The Higher Law. Cen. Oct., '14.
  *The Ninety Black Boxes of Bishop Balue. Cen. June, '15.
  **The Oubliette. Cen. Sept., '14.
  The Romaunt of the Rose. Cen. June, '14.

HOWARD, KEBLE.
  Aunt Janie and the Moonlight. Pict. R. May, '15.
  The Sword on the Hearth. I.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.

HOWE, HERBERT RILEY.
  *What the Vandals Leave. Life. Sept. 9, '15.

HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN.
  **An Experience. Harp. M. Nov., '15.
  **Somebody's Mother. Harp. M. Sept., '15.
  *The Return to Favor. Harp. M. July, '15.

HUFFAKER, LUCY.
  Eve's Daughters. For. Dec., '14.
  *Money Poor. For. July, '14.
  Rowena and the Front Page. Am. July, '15.
  With Eyes of Faith. Del. Feb., '15.

HUGHES, ELIZABETH BURGESS.
  Some Day He'll Come. A.S.M. April 11, '15.

HUGHES, RUPERT.
  Baby Talk. S.E.P. March 28, '14.
  Daughters of Shiloh. S.E.P. July 4, '14.
  Don't You Care! S.E.P. Oct. 31, '14.
  *Except He Were a Bird. Met. March, '15.
  ***Michaeleen! Michaelawn! Met. Jan., '15.
  ***Sent For Out. Met. Feb., '15.
  *The Bitterness of Sweets. Met. June, '14.
  "The Last Rose of Summer." Met. March, '14.
  The Thumb-Twiddlers. S.E.P. Nov. 13-20, '15.
  You Hadn't Ought To. S.E.P. Sept. 25, '15.

HUGINS, ROLAND.
  The Devil and the Deep Sea. N.S.M. Nov. 14, '15.

HULL, HELEN R.
  *A Man's Right. Harp. M. June, '15.
  *The Soul-Maker. Harp. M. March, '15.

HUMPHREY, ZEPHINE.
  *Nothing. Atl. Oct., '15.

HUNEKER, JAMES GIBBONS.
  *His Best Friend. S.S. March, '15.

HUNT, UNA.
  *"As Long As Yo's Single Dere's Hope." Scr. Sept., '15.
  **Her First Marrying. Scr. Aug., '15.

HURD, BURTON.
  The Waters of Marah. A.S.M. March 28, '15.

HURLBUT, EDWARD H.
  After Many Days. I.S.M. June 13, '15.
  A Mother from the Crucible. McB. Dec., '15.
  Greater Love Than This. I.S.M. July 11, '15.
  Sad-Eyed Casey. I.S.M. July 4, '15.
  The Fascinating Miss Ho Hi. I.S.M. Oct. 3, '15.
  The Prodigal Son. I.S.M. May 23, '15.
  The Sinking of Submarine S-3. I.S.M. July 18-25, '15.

HURST, FANNIE.
  ***Ever Ever Green. Met. March, '15.
  "Home Grown." Met. Feb., '14.
  *Mind-Cat! S.E.P. Dec. 26, '14.
  Mr. Hochenheimer of Cincinnati. S.E.P. Feb. 13, '15.
  ***Rolling Stock. Met. Sept., '15.
  *Sea-Gullibles. S.E.P. Dec. 4, '15.
  **Superman. S.E.P. June 20, '14.
  ***T.B. S.E.P. Jan. 9, '15.
  The Character Woman. S.E.P. Sept. 12, '14.
  **The Good Provider. S.E.P. Aug. 15, '14.
  **The Name and the Game. Met. Dec., '15.
  The New Commandment. S.E.P. Dec. 5, '14.
  The Other Check. S.E.P. April 11, '14.
  The Paradise Trail. S.E.P. Sept. 5, '14.
  *The Spring Song. S.E.P. May 23, '14.
  **White Goods. Met. July, '15.

HUTCHISON, PERCY ADAMS.
  **The Blood of Admirals. Col. April 24, '15.

HYNE, C.J. CUTCLIFFE.
  The Mine Layer. S.E.P. Nov. 21, '14.


I

I.
  *Portrait of a Mexican General. Mir. Oct. 29, '15.
  *The Bread Line. Mir. Oct. 1, '15.

INGE, CHARLES.
  Understanding. Harp. W. Aug. 28, '15.

INGLIS, WILLIAM.
  Tim Coolahan and the Ladies. Col. Oct. 24, '14.

INWEGEN, MILDRED VAN.
  Humanity. Sun. Oct., '15.

IRWIN, WALLACE.
  *He Shot the Bird of Paradise. McC. Sept., '15.
  What Became of Deegan Folk. McC. Feb., '15.

IRWIN, WILL.
  The Amachure Grafter. S.E.P. Aug. 22, '14.
  The Liar. S.E.P. Oct. 10, '14.


J

JACKS, L.P.
  The Chest of Cedar. Atl. June, '15.

JACOBS, W.W.
  Easy Money. Met. Oct., '14.
  Keeping Watch. Met. Jan., '14.
  *Made to Measure. Met. May, '15.
  **Paying Off. Met. Dec., '14.
  Stepping Backward. Met. Aug., '14.
  *The Understudy. Met. April, '14.

JAMES, E.O.
  *In the Visitor's Room. Col. Sept. 4, '15.

JAMES, FRANKLIN.
  Badinage at Breakfast. Harp. M. March, '15.
  Breakfast for Two. Harp. M. Jan., '15.
  Mrs. Weldon Breakfasts Early. Harp. M. Feb., '15.

JAMESON, E.M.
  The Puppet. McB. Oct., '15.

JENISON, MADGE.
  Patience and Shuffle the Cards. McC. Jan., '15.
  The Militant Moment of Lou Grey. Harp. M. Nov., '15.
  The Unfortunate Miss De Noyelles. Harp. B. March, '15.

JENKINS, HERBERT.
  A Coward of Sorts. Lip. March, '15.
  The Rustic Fête Fiasco. Lip. Aug., '15.

JEPSON, EDGAR.
  **The Way to Tipperary. Cen. March, '15.

JEROME, JEROME KLAPKA.
  His Evening Out. Cen. Nov., '15.
  Sylvia of the Letters. McB. Oct., '15.

JOHNSON, ANNETTE THACKWELL.
  Their House of Love. Lip. Feb., '15.

JOHNSON, ARTHUR.
  *Charley the Chorus Boy. Met. Aug., '14.
  George's Client. Harp. M. Sept., '14.
  ***Mr. Eberdeen's House. Cen. Sept., '15.
  My Cousin's Bridegroom. Harp. M. March, '15.
  The Dream Drummer. Harp. M. Dec., '14.
  The Stone Dog. Harp. M. Feb., '15.
  The Trap. Met. Nov., '15.

JOHNSON, E.S.
  Safe-Deposit Annie. Col. Dec. 5, '14.

JOHNSON, HUGH.
  A Man and His Dog. I.S.M. Jan. 31, '15.
  **At La Haye Farm. Sun. Dec., '15.
  Clown's Rue. I.S.M. March 7, '15.
  *Cogged Dice. I.S.M. Feb. 7, '15.
  Fingering the Buzz Saw. Col. Feb. 14, '14.
  *Harlequin to the Rescue. Scr. Nov., '15.
  Made in Germany. Sun. Nov., '15.
  *Officer of the Day. I.S.M. Feb. 21, '15.
  Race. Cen. Aug., '14.
  *The Desperado. Sun. Jan., '15.
  The Jade Seals. Sun. Oct., '15.

JOHNSON, MARTYN.
  *A Christmas Cynic. Bel. Dec. 25, '15.

JOHNSON, OWEN.
  The Eyes of the Past. Pict. R. Aug., '15.

JOHNSON, WILLIAM SAMUEL.
  *Greater than Dante. For. March, '14.

JOHNSTON, CALVIN.
  **Great Folks. Harp. M. June, '14.
  ***Promise Lands. S.E.P. March 20, '15.
  **Redcrossie. S.E.P. March 6, '15.
  *The Empire of Con O'Connel. S.E.P. July 24,'15.
  **The Head of the Fambly. S.E.P. May 16, '14.
  **The Refugees. S.E.P. Jan. 2, '15.
  ***Traitors Both. S.E.P. Feb. 14, '14.

JOHNSTON, CHARLES.
  How the Army Was Kidnapped. Atl. Oct., '14.
  *Jones of the Fourth Dimension. Harp. M. June, '14.
  Mr. McMorrogh. Col. Feb. 20, '15.
  Okhoy Babu's Adventure. Atl. Sept., '14.
  The Reincarnation of Maung Hkin. Atl. Nov., '15.
  The Soul of a Girl. Atl. May, '14.

JOHNSTON, ELIZABETH.
  A Soldier of the Good. Del. April, '15.

JONES, FRANK GOEWEY.
  *A Problem in Eugenics. Col. Nov. 14, '14.
  A Wise Jane. E.W. June 28, '15.
  Clean Competition. Col. Aug. 28, '15.
  Delilah Jane--Detective. E.W. Dec. 6, '15.
  His Horseshoe. McC. Jan., '15.
  Miss Trimble Tries Sabotage. McC. April, '15.
  Primitive Methods. Col. June 12, '15.
  Reserved Rights. S.E.P. Dec. 26, '14.
  Revenge is Sweet. Am. July, '15.

JORDAN, ELIZABETH.
  An Interlude. Harp. M. May, '14.
  Her Man Friday. Harp. B. Aug., '15.
  How the Atwoods Kept Their Cook. L.H.J. Feb., '15.
  Lieutenant Crumley--Idler. McB. Sept., '15.
  *The Comforter. Harp. M. March, '14.
  The Crosbys' Rest Cure. Harp. M. April, '14.
  The Gift of the Princess Sophia. E.W. Oct. 25, '15.
  Young Love. Harp. M. Jan., '15.

JORDAN, KATE.
  Egg-Shell China. Cen. April, '14.
  His Heart in His Feet. Col. Jan. 9, '15.
  *I Hold My House With Claws. E.W. Aug. 16, '15.
  In the Gray Land of Drugs. McC. Dec., '15.
  "Orchestra D-2," S.E.P. Dec. 25, '15.
  *Two Hands. Col. July 10, '15.

JORDAN, VIRGIL.
  ***Vengeance is Mine! Ev. April, '15.

JOYCE, JAMES.
  **A Little Cloud. S.S. May, '15.
   *The Boarding-House. S.S. May, '15.


K

KALLAND, MINA.
  The Life Clinic. Harp. B. May, '15.

KAUFFMAN, RUTH.
  *Her People. For. Feb., '14. I.S.M. Oct. 17, '15.

KAUN, ALEXANDER S.
  ***Gratitude. Lit. R. Oct., '15.
  *Nocturne. Lit. R. Oct., '15.
  *Will to Power. Lit. R. Oct., '15.

KEELER, HARRY STEPHEN.
  *John Jones's Dollar. B.C. Aug., '15.
  *When Time Ran Backward. B.C. Feb., '15.

KELLAND, CLARENCE BUDINGTON.
  Settling Ophelia. Harp. M. Sept., '14.
  Simeon Small--Peacemaker. Harp. M. Oct., 15.
  The Sardonic Adventure of Simeon Small. Harp. M. Sept., '15.
  Up There. Del. March, '15.

KELLEY, ETHEL M.
  Making Over Mary. Cen. Jan., '15.
  Marrying Anne. Cen. Aug., '15.
  Sterner Stuff. Ev. Nov., '15.
  The Epidemic. Ev. July, '15.
  The Lady Who Wore the Willow. Harp. M. July, '14.
  The Revolt of Youth. Harp. M. May, '15.

KELLEY, JOHN BARTRAM.
  The American Passenger. Masses. Dec., '15.

KELLY, ELEANOR MERCEIN.
  Hunger. Cen. Nov., '15.

KEMP, HARRY.
  The First Courtship. For. Sept., '14.

KEMPER, S.H.
  Woman's Sphere. Atl. April, '15.

KENNON, HARRY B.
  Carpets of Bagdad. Mir. July 30, '15.
  *The North Window. Mir. Nov. 12, '15.
  The Screen. Mir. March 26, '15.
  The Solitaire. Mir. Nov. 26, '15.

KERR, SOPHIE.
  Eggs Chipolata. McC. April, '15.
  Gooseberry. Col. July 10, '15.
  *How Joe Won the Crown Imperial. E.W. Aug. 30, '15.
  Julietta-Tired-of-Her-Husband. McC. Feb., '15.
  Kidnapped. Col. Oct. 30, '15.
  "Love at Large." McC. June, '15.
  Piece of Fluff. McC. Aug., '15.
  **The Bees. Cen. March, '15.
  *The Poor Working Girl. McC. Jan., '15.
  The Second Wife. Harp. M. May, '15.
  West Wind. Col. Sept. 18, '15.

KILBOURNE, FANNIE.
  "And Forsaking All Others." L.H.J. Oct., '15.
  Being Like Nita. L.H.J. Sept., '15.

KINROSS, ALBERT.
  The Accident of War. Atl. Feb., '15.
  The Challenger. Atl. Feb., '14.
  *The Symphony. Harp. W. Feb. 20, '15.

KIPER, FLORENCE. (_See_ FRANK, FLORENCE KIPER.)

KIPLING, RUDYARD.
  *Friendly Brook. Met. March, '14.
  *Mary Postgate. Cen. Sept., '15.
  Sea Constables. Met. Sept., '15.
  **"Swept and Garnished." Cen. Jan., '15.
  The Dog Harvey. Cen. April, '14.
  The Vortex. Scr. Aug., '14.

KIPLINGER, WALTER C.
  **The Germ War. Harp. W. July 10, '15.

KLAHR, EVELYN GILL.
  Molly Rafferty. Col. Sept. 26, '14.
  *Sade Mulligan. Col. May 29, '15.

KLINE, BURTON.
  *The Mysterious Mrs. Osgood. N.S.M. April 25, '15.

KNIGHT, LEAVITT ASHLEY.
  Giddy Girl. S.E.P. Aug. 21, '15.
  Suppose the Emperor Had--. L.H.J. March, '15.
  The Booby Prizer. S.E.P. Nov. 13, '15.
  The Last Cruise of the John L. S.E.P. Dec. 4, '15.

KNIGHT, REYNOLDS.
  **Candles. Col. Aug. 14, '15.

KOIZUMI, K.
  ***Uguisu. (A Japanese Nightingale.) G.V. July 15, '15.

KUMMER, FREDERIC ARNOLD.
  Fixing the Porch Steps. I.S.M. Feb. 21, '15.
  *Pan Passes. Harp. B. Oct., '15.
  *The Seventh Glass. Cen. June, '14.
  The Wrong Santa Claus. Pict. R. Jan., '15.

KYLIE, HARRY R.
  Squire Benson's Luck. Lip. April, '15.

KYNE, PETER B.
  A Little Taste of Business. S.E.P. May 29, '15.
  A Motion to Adjourn. S.E.P. Sept. 5, '14.
  An Order for Grape Stakes. S.E.P. Nov. 27, '15.
  Art for Art's Sake. S.E.P. Jan. 30, '15.
  By Dead Reckoning. S.E.P. April 10, '15.
  *Distant Firing. Met. July, '14.
  Matt Peasley, Sea Lawyer. S.E.P. Oct. 2, '15.
  Mike the Vagabone--and the Root of Evil. Col. April 3, '15.
  Mr. Burdock's Insurance. Col. April 25, '14.
  Mr. Tinker's Conscience. Sun. April, '15.
  Over the Bar. S.E.P. June 12, '15.
  Salt-Water Diplomacy. S.E.P. Sept. 4, '15.
  *Silver Threads Among the Gold. Met. April '14.
  The Devil Drives. S.E.P. May 1, '15.
  The Handshake Agreement. S.E.P. Dec. 12 '14.
  The Land Just Over Yonder. S.E.P. March 27, '15.
  *The Light to Leeward. S.E.P. May 15, '15.
  The Master Mariner. S.E.P. March 13, '15.
  The Parson of Panamint. S.E.P. Feb. 20, '15.
  *The Real Santa Claus. Col. Dec. 25, '15.
  The Strange Adventures of Mike, "the Vagabone." Col. June 6, '14.
  Under the Blue Star Flag. S.E.P. Oct. 23, '15.


L

LANCASTER, G.B.
  Stranlagh of the Gold Coast. Harp. M. April, '14.
  The Passport of a Wolf. I.S.M. Jan. 17, '15.

LANCASTER, HEWES.
  **The Will. For. Aug., '14.

LANDON, HERMAN.
  Nobody's Baby. E.W. Nov. 1, '15.

LARDNER, RING W.
  Alibi Ike. S.E.P. July 31, '15.
  Harmony. McC. Aug., '15.
  Horseshoes. S.E.P. Aug. 15, '14.
  My Roomy. S.E.P. May 9, '14.
  Oh, You Bonehead! S.E.P. Oct. 30, '15.
  Sick 'Em. S.E.P. July 25, '14.
  The Poor Simp. S.E.P. Sept. 11, '15.
  Where Do You Get That Noise? S.E.P. Oct. 23, '15.

LARSON, EMMA MAURITZ.
  *Lucky No. 59. Sun. Aug., '15.
  Tammas. Atl. March, '14.

LAVEDAN, HENRI.
  The Spectre in the Wardrobe. Mir. Jan. 22, '15.

LAWRENCE, D.H.
  *Honor and Arms. Met. Nov., '14.

LAWSON, W.P.
  *With the Column. Harp. W. Jun. 5, '15.

LEA, FANNIE HEASLIP.
  A Change of Venue. Col. July 17, '15.
  By Margarita Trench. Col. March 13, '15.
  The Movie Girl and Little Patterson. Col. Feb. 13, '15.
  The Other Girl. Col. Oct. 2, '15.
  The Tame Cat. Harp. M. Nov., '14.
  With the Follies. Col. Sept. 11, '15.

LEACOCK, STEPHEN.
  *Two Little Boys: An Allegory. Col. Nov. 27, '15.

LEANDRE, MADAME.
  *Bagatelle. S.S. March, '15.

LEBLANC, MAURICE.
  Presentiment. Mir. Aug. 6, '15.

LECLERCQ, PAUL.
  **A Story in White. Brun. W. Nov. 13, '15.

LEE, JENNETTE.
  **At the End of the Rainbow. Scr. Aug., '15.
  *The Serenade. Cen. Nov., '14.

LEE, MUNA.
  **The Vigil. S.S. Oct.,'15.

LEFEVRE, EDWIN.
  The Exit Finder. S.E.P. Oct. 2, '15.
  The Natural Question Not to Ask. S.E.P. June 6, '14.
  The Reluctant Appendix. S.E.P. Feb 28 '14.
  *The Two Acorns. S.E.P. Aug. 8, '14.
  The Wireless Confession. S.E.P. April 25, '14.

LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD.
  The Mystery of the Girl and the Hand-Bag. N.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.

LERNER, MARY.
  *Summons. For. Oct., '14.

LEVIN, LOUIS H.
  *Little Tragedies. For. Sept., '14.

LEVY, DAVID S.
  *The Coffin. B.C. Oct., '15.

LEWER, LILY JOSEPHINE.
  The Story of a Hungry Heart. Pict. R. Aug., '15.

LEWIS, SINCLAIR.
  Commutation: $9.17. S.E.P. Oct. 30, '15.
  Nature, Inc. S.E.P. Oct. 2, '15.
  The Other Side of the House. S.E.P. Nov. 27, '15.

LIEBE, HAPSBURG.
  *The International Baby. A.S.M. Feb. 28, '15.
  The Lad From Dixie. I.S.M. July 18, '15.

LIGHTON, WILLIAM R.
  Billy Fortune and the Besetting Sin. E.W. Nov. 29, '15.
  Billy Fortune and the Gee-Whizzer. Sun. May, '15.
  Billy Fortune and the Lady Who Spoke Her Mind. S.E.P. April 3, '15.
  *Billy Fortune and the Man Who Didn't Care. S.E.P. Feb. 20, '15.
  Billy Fortune and the Ten-Cent Limit. S.E.P. Dec. 5, '14.
  Doubled Stakes. S.E.P. April 17-24, '15.
  The Dismal Optimist. Pict. R. Sept., '15.

LINCOLN, JOSEPH C.
  *The Guest From Samaria. Ev. May, '15.

LIPSETT, E.R.
  *The Amateur Jew. Ev. June, '15.

LISLE, CHARLES J.
  The Nester. I.S.M. May 30, '15.

LLOYD, NELSON.
  The Adventurer. Scr. Nov., '14.
  The Raging Chariot. Scr. Sept., '14.

LOAN, CHARLES E. VAN.
  A Cure for Lumbago. Col. July 18, '14.
  A Mile, a Muddy Track, and Ninety Pounds. S.E.P. Jan. 30, '15.
  Author! Author! S.E.P. Aug. 1, '14.
  Back to the White Paint. S.E.P. Feb. 6, '15.
  Buck's Lady Friend. S.E.P. March 14, '14.
  By a Hair. Col. July 31, '15.
  Eliphaz, Late Fairfax. Col. Nov. 6, '15.
  His Own Stuff. S.E.P. April 25, '14.
  Leveling With Elisha. Col. May 22, '15.
  Lo, the Poor Piute. S.E.P. Dec. 11, '15.
  Mister Conley. S.E.P. Jan. 17, '14.
  On Account of a Lady. S.E.P. June 6, '14.
  Peter and the Prescription. S.E.P. Nov. 28, '14.
  Pinch Hitting for Cupid. S.E.P. June 27, '14.
  Piute vs. Piute. Ev. Oct., '15.
  Playing Even for Obadiah. Col. June 26, '15.
  Sanguinary Jeremiah. Col. Sept. 25, '15.
  Shylock Semple. S.E.P. Nov. 14, '14.
  Snow Stuff. S.E.P. Sept. 19, '14.
  The Bone Doctor. S.E.P. July 4, '14.
  The Bullhead and the Beeville Idol. S.E.P. Sept. 26, '14.
  The Indian Sign. Col. Aug. 1, '14.
  The Last Chance. Col. Aug. 28, '15.
  The Morning Glory. S.E.P. Aug. 29, '14.
  The Price of Rawhide. Col. June 6, '14.
  The Spotted Sheep. S.E.P. Nov. 7, '14
  "This Is the Life." S.E.P. March 13, '15.
  To Macedonia and Return. S.E.P. March 6, '15.
  Too Much Pepper. Ev. June, '15.
  Traumatic Neurosis. S.E.P. Dec. 19, '14.

LOCKE, WILLIAM J.
  *Ladies in Lavender. I.S.M. April 11, '15.

LOFTING, HUGH.
  Manuelita of the Bees. Ev. Nov., '15.

LOGAN, ESTANYA LLOYD.
  The Welcher. I.S.M. June 20, '15.

LONDON, JACK.
  **A Hyperborean Brew. I.S.M. April 4, '15.
  **A Relic of the Pliocene. I.S.M. Jan. 10, '15.

LONG, JOHN LUTHER.
  Her Dear Barbarian. Met. July, '14.
  ***The Sandwich-Man. Cen. July, '14.
  *The Temple of the Countless Gods. Cen. Feb., '14.
  *Vari San. Pict. R. Nov., '15.

LOOMIS, CHARLES BATTELL.
  *What Happened Afterward. Cen. March, '14.

LOON, HENDRICK WILLEM VAN.
  *No. 45,637 Missing. Cen. Aug., '15.

LOPEZ, JOHN S.
  *Instinct of the Race. A.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.

LOWELL, AMY.
  **The Paper Windmill. Cen. Dec., '15.

LYLE, JR., EUGENE P.
  All for Patricia. Ev. Jan., '15.
  *A Wardrobe in Jeopardy. Lip. July, '15.
  His Biggest Venture. Cen. July, '14.
  Iron In His Blood. Col. June 19, '15.
  The Four--and Patricia. Ev. Feb., '15.
  **The Shark. Cen. April, '14.
  *The Spadassin. Lip. May, '15.

LYNN, MARGARET.
  Ivy of the Negatives. Atl. June, '14.

LYON, HARRIS MERTON.
  Cablegrams for Two. I.S.M. April 4, '15.
  Ella Dies. Masses. June, '15.
  ***The Son of Santa Claus. Mir. Dec. 17, '15.
  ***The Weaver Who Clad the Summer. I.S.M. Aug. 8, 15.


M

MABIE, LOUISE KENNEDY.
  On Schedule. Harp. M. May, '15.

MacALARNEY, ROBERT EMMET.
  The Wedding Film. L.H.J. Feb., '15.

"MacARTHUR, B."
  *You Never Can Tell. Life. Nov. 11, '15.

MacCARTHY, IVIE.
  *One Night at Pap's. B.C. July, '15.

McCARTHY, JOHN EDWARD.
  Molly's Bridegroom. A.S.M. April 18, '15.

McCOURT, EDNA WAHLERT.
  *At the Hippodrome. S.S. Aug., '15.

McCREAGH, GORDON.
  Everett, Commissioner of Justice. I.S.M. Jan. 3, '15.
  The Miracle of Kali. I.S.M. April 18, '15.

McDONALD, ROBERT.
  The Little Son. Col. April 25, '14.

McFARLANE, ARTHUR E.
  *A Pair of Socks. E.W. Sept. 13, '15.
  The Hand of Nature. Cen. July, '14.
  *The Human Problem. E.W. June 7, '15.

MacGRATH, HAROLD.
  The Non-Combatants. N.S.M. Sept. 12, '15.

McGREW, DONALD FRANCIS.
  The Colors of Our Battalion. Col. Aug. 22, '14.

MacHARG, WILLIAM.
  Otto. S.E.P. March 21, '14.

McHENRY, MAY.
  A Serpent in Eden. Col. Oct. 10, '14.

McINTYRE, JOHN T.
  ***The Hand of Glory. I.S.M. May 9, '15.
  The Holdsworth Limousine. I.S.M. March 28, '15.

MacKALL, LAWTON.
  The Creeping Fingers. Cen. Oct., '15.
  The Man With the Hose. Cen. Sept., '15.
  The Night of the Fleece. Cen. Aug., '15.

McKENNA, EDMOND.
  **Hero. Masses. Sept., '15.

MacKENZIE, COMPTON.
  *The Night of the Ghastly Entrances. Met. Jan., '14.
  *The Night of the Importunate Suicide. Met. Feb., '14.
  *The Night of the Stricken Room. Met. March, '14.

MacKLIN, CHESTER.
  The Prize Winner. I.S.M. March 14, '15.

McLENON, ANDREW.
  The Return of the Kid. I.S.M. July 11, '15.

McMAHON, WILLIAM MARCUS.
  Red Blood. N.S.M. June 27, '15.

MacMANUS, SEUMAS.
  And Mary Married. A.S.M. Jan. 24, '15.
  *The Man Who Would Dream. Pict. R. April, '15.
  *The Mistress of Magic. Pict. R. March, '15.
  "Unto the Least of These." Col. Aug. 29, '14.

McMORROW, THOMAS.
  Paying Off the Swede. Ev. Jan., '15.

MacNAMAR, R.S.
  He That Will Not. I.S.M. Jan. 10, '15.

McPEAK, IVAL.
  *Long--Short--and a Long. Mid. Oct., '15.

MADDEN, ALMA G.
  *The Compact. Harp. M. Feb., '15.

MAGRUDER, MARY LANIER.
  *Feud and Flood. Col. Feb. 7, '14.
  First Love. Col. July 18, '14.
  The Courting Candle. S.E.P. June 19, '15.
  The Lonely Road. Col. July 31, '15.

MANN, JANE.
  *Fighting the Surf. Col. Oct. 24, '14.

MANNING, MARIE.
  A Choice of Romeos. Harp. M. Dec., '15.
  Buffy's Hegira. Harp. M. July, '14.
  *Curls, Cæsar--Maternal Instinct. Col. Aug. 7, '15.
  Miss Donnithorne's Arabian Night. Harp. M. June, '15.
  Mr. Swift's Romance. Harp. M. Nov., '15.
  The Elixir. S.E.P. April 10, '15.
  **The Out-of-Door Janitor. Col. Nov. 13, '15.
  The Statesman. Harp. M. Jan., '14.
  *The Wetmore Clothes. Harp. M. Aug., '14.

MARQUIS, DON.
  *Blood Will Tell. Am. Nov., '15.

MARRIOTT, CHARLES.
  Rabbits. Met. Sept., '14.

MARRIOTT, CRITTENDEN.
  On Her Own Ground. Pict. R. Aug., '15.
  *The Broken Monument. I.S.M. Nov. 7, '15.
  The Law and the Lady. Pict. R. Sept., '15.
  The Quitter. I.S.M. May 9, '15.
  *Uncle Moses Plays Cupid. Del. Sept., '15.

MARRIOTT WATSON, H.B. (_See_ WATSON, H.B. MARRIOTT.)

MARSH, GEORGE T.
  *A Little Tragedy at Coocoocache. Scr. Aug.,'15.
  When the Prince Came Home. Scr. May, '14.
  **With the White Mail. Scr. Jan., '14.

MARSH, RICHARD.
  The Princess Fredegonda. S.E.P. July 4, '14.

MARSHALL, D.J.
  Private Williams and Mutt. Col. Feb. 21, '14.

MARTIN, GEORGE MADDEN.
  Emmy Lou's Recruiting Day. McC. Nov., '15.

MARTIN, MARGARET BURROWS.
  The True from the False. Pict. R. Sept., '15.

MARTIN, MABEL WOOD.
  Charity. Scr. Jan., '14.

MARTYN, WYNDHAM.
  The Explorer. I.S.M. March 28, '15.

MASON, A.E.W.
  North of the Tropic of Capricorn. Met. Jan., '14.
  Raymond Byatt. Met. Dec., '14.
  *The Violet Book. Met. Feb., '15.

MASON, ELMER BROWN.
  *The Old Club. Lip. March, '15.

MASON, GRACE SARTWELL.
  *Something for Father. E.W. Dec. 20, '15.
  *Sunday Afternoon. Ev. Oct., '15.

MASON, WARREN.
  A Splash in the Bosphorus. I.S.M. April 18, '15.
  *His Own Business. I.S.M. March 14, '15.

MATHEWS, AMANDA.
  Cormac O'Brien, Piper. Scr. March, '14.
  The Emigration of Mary Anne. Atl. Jan., '14.

MATSUMURA, KEISEKI, _and_ CADY, C.M.
  **Araki Mataemon. (The Fencing Master.) Outl. July 14, '15.
  **Hakuin Jenji. (The Hater of Hypocrisy.) Outl. July 21, '15.
  **Hojo Soun. (A Model Feudal Lord.) Outl. July 21, '15.

MAXWELL, W. KEE.
  The Baseball Mascot. Col. March 7, '14.

MEAD, LEON.
  The Master of Lumberhurst. Col. Dec. 5, '14.

MEARS, MARY.
  **Nan. For. July, '15.

MELLETT, BERTHE KNATVOLD.
  "Like the Book." Cen. April, '15.

MELONEY, WILLIAM BROWN.
  Jonah. S.E.P. Aug. 21, '15.
  *The Everlasting Miracle. E.W. Oct. 4, '15.
  *The Squarehead. S.E.P. May 30, '14.

MENA, MARÍA CRISTINA.
  *Doña Rita's Rivals. Cen. Sept., '14.
  The Birth of the God of War. Cen. May, '14.
  The Education of Popo. Cen. March, '14.
  The Emotions of María Concepción. Cen. Jan., '14.
  *The Sorcerer and General Bisco. Cen. April, '15.
  The Vine-Leaf. Cen. Dec., '14.

MERWIN, SAMUEL.
  *The Broadway Thing. Cos. Dec., '15.

MEYER, JOSEPHINE A.
  *Apprenticeship. Lip. May, '15.
  *Fighting-Stock. Ev. Sept., '15.

MEZQUIDA, ANNA BLAKE.
  *The Tiptoe House. Sun. Dec., '15.

MILES, EMMA BELL.
  At the Top of Sourwood. Lip. Aug., '15.

MILLARD, GERTRUDE B.
  The Transfiguration of Angelita Lopez. Cen. Aug., '14.

MILLER, ALICE DUER.
(_See ALSO_ MILLER, HENRY, _and_ MILLER, ALICE DUER.)
  Middle Age. Scr. May, '15.
  The Relapse. Harp. M. May, '15.

MILLER, HELEN TOPPING.
  **First Peter. Mun. Sept., '15.
  Frost Blossoms. Del. Oct., '15.

MILLER, HENRY, _and_ MILLER, ALICE DUER.
(_See ALSO_ MILLER, ALICE DUER.)
  Worse Than Married. Scr. April, '14.

MILNE, A.A.
  Our Magazine Story. Cen. July, '15.

MINITER, E.
  *Worthless Neighbors. Col. Aug. 1, '14.

MIRRIELEES, EDITH R.
  The Hero Business. Ev. June, '15.

MITCHELL, MARY ESTHER.
  ***A New England Pippa. Harp. M. Nov., '15.

MOISE, E.E.
  The Streak of Gold. Col. Aug. 8, '14.

MONTAGUE, MARGARET PRESCOTT.
  Something Big, Like Red Bird. Atl. Aug., '14.
  The Little Sign for Friend. Atl. May, '14.
  **What Mr. Grey Said. Atl. May, '15.

MOORE, T.P.
  The Dead Letter. Col. June 5, '15.

MORDAUNT, ELINOR.
  *A Puff of Wind. McB. Dec., '15.
  The Twisted Thread. I.S.M. Sept. 26, '15.

MOROSO, JOHN A.
  Buddy and Waffles. L.H.J. Aug., '15.
  *Carl Blum of the Ninth. I.S.M. Jan. 3, '15.
  *Finnerty. I.S.M. April 25, '15.
  Garibald'. Am. Sept., '15.
  **Giddap. Am. Jan., '15.
  Lupo. Col. May 29, '15.
  Murphy of the Legion. Met. Aug., '14.
  The House Next Door. I.S.M. Aug. 8, '15.
  Three-Alarm Casey. Met. Aug., '15.

MORRIS, CLARA.
  *Psychology of a Suicide. For. Aug., '15.

MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR.
  *Golgotha. Cos. Nov., '15.
  Romance. Pict. R. April, '15.
  Tango Taught in Ten Teachings. Met. April, '14.
  The Bluffs of Jordan. Met. Jan., '15.
  When is a Promise Not a Promise? Met. May, '15.
  ***When the Devil Was Better. Met. Feb., '14.

MORSE, EDWIN W.
  **The Trick of the Voice. Scr. June, '14.

MORTEN, MARJORY.
  *Sophy So-and-So. Harp. M. Aug., '15.

MUILENBURG, WALTER J.
  ***Heart of Youth. Mid. Nov., '15.
  ***The Prairie. Mid. Aug., '15.

MULTATULI.
  *Sermon on the Mountain. Brun. W. Oct. 14, '15.

MUMFORD, ETHEL WATTS.
  "My Ain Countree." Del. Jan., '15.
  *The Miracle of Neith. Pict. R. Nov., '15.
  The Power and the Glory. Col. July 3, '15.

MUMFORD, JOHN.
  *Reorganizing Reggie. Sun. July, '15.

MUNFORD, JOSEPHINE UNDERWOOD.
  Georgina's American Triumph. Del. Jan., '15.

MUREDACH, MYLES.
  *The Race of the O'Murchada. Col. Nov. 7, '14.

MURRAY, KATHARINE J.
  For Old Sake's Sake. I.S.M. Oct. 24, '15.

MURRAY, JR., P.A.
  Counsel Fees. I.S.M. March 21, '15.

MURRAY, ROY IRVING.
  *Sealed Orders. McB. Dec., '15.

MUTH, EDNA TUCKER.
  The Lemon in the Game. L.H.J. Nov., '15.

MYERS, ELIZABETH.
  The Lace Shawl. I.S.M. Oct. 3, '15.

MYERS, WALTER L.
  ***Mates. Mid. April, '15.


N

NEEDHAM, HENRY BEACH.
  A Treeful of Owls. Col. Feb. 14, '14.
  Thief in Khaki. Col. Aug. 14, '15.

NEVINS, ALLAN.
  *The Dogs of Joe Gone. N. Rep. Nov. 13, '15.

NEWTON, W. DOUGLAS.
  **The Charge. Pict. R. Feb., '15.
  **The Telegraphist. Bel. Feb. 13, '15.
  *The Trimmer. I.S.M. Aug. 29, '15.

NICHOLS, WILLIAM T.
  ***The Other Woman. Cen. Feb., '15.

NICHOLSON, MEREDITH.
  Arabella's House Party. S.E.P. Nov. 21, '14.
  *Honor Bright. Harp M. Aug., '15.
  *The Boulevard of Rogues. Atl. Dec., '15.
  The Church for Honest Sinners. Atl. Feb., '15.
  The Girl at the Ad Counter. Col. July 4, '14.
  The Heart Cure at Banning Farms. E.W. May 17, '15.
  The Imprudences of Prudence. S.E.P. Jan. 3, 14.
  The Lady of Landor Lane. Atl. Feb., '14.
  The Last of the Kings. Col. Sept. 26, '14.

NOONAN, EDWARD THOMAS.
  *Hope. Life. Aug. 12, '15.

NORRIS, KATHLEEN.
  *Aggie. McC. June, '15.
  At Ellis Island. L.H.J. Sept., '15.
  "Brooks of Sheffield." Ev. June, '15.
  His Wife. L.H.J. Aug., '15.
  *Just a Pack of Cards. Pict. R. Dec., '15.
  Miss Smith of Bellevue. McC. Aug., '15.
  Two Old Men and Christmastime. L.H.J. Dec., '15.
  Where the Janitor Has the Best of It. L.H.J. Nov., '15.

NORTON, ROY.
  *The Pot of Gold. A.S.M. May 16, '15.

NOYES, NEWBOLD.
  ***The End of the Path. E.W. July 12, '15.


O

O., G.R. (_See_ B., R.H. _and_ O., G.R.)

O'BRIEN, JOSEPH.
  A Montessori Father. Pict. R. Feb., '15.

O'BRIEN, SEUMAS.
  **Peace and War. I.S.M. Sept. 19, '15.
  **Rebellions. I.S.M. Dec. 26, '15.
  **The Folly of Being Foolish. I.S.M. Dec. 5, '15.
  ***The House in the Valley. I.S.M. Oct. 24, '15.
  ***The Whale and the Grasshopper. I.S.M. Oct. 10, '15.

OEMLER, MARIE CONWAY.
  Anybody Want This Little Boy? L.H.J. Feb., '15.
  The One With the Eye. Cen. Feb., '15.
  *The Spirit of the House. Harp. B. Dec., '15.

OGDEN, G.W.
  Luisa Pays in Gold. Col. Jan. 17, '14.

O'GRADY, R.
  **A Gun. Mid. March, '15.

O'HARA, FRANK HURBURT.
  Just Human. Am. Nov., '15.

O'HIGGINS, HARVEY J.
  Barney Has a Hunch. Col. Sept. 5, '14.

OLIVER, OWEN.
  **Aunt Elizabeth. Harp. M. April, '14.
  The Exception. I.S.M. June 13, '15.
  The Governor's Stocking. Lip. Jan., '15.
  Under the Skin. Pict. R. March, '15.

OLMSTEAD, STANLEY.
  Rivalry. Lip. March, '15.

OPPENHEIM, JAMES.
  *Fourteen. McB. Sept., '15.
  *I Fill This Cup. S.S. Dec., '15.
  Melting Ice. McC. May, '15.
  "Miser'ble." Cen. Aug., '15.
  Planted. McC. Sept., '15.
  The Girl in the Hall Bedroom. L.H.J. May, '15.
  *Where Love Comes From. Del. May, '15.

O'REILLY, MARY BOYLE.
  ***In Berlin. B.D.A. Dec. 22, '15.
  *In London. B.D.A. Dec. 22, '15.

ORR, EDITH.
  The American Savage. Col. March 21, '14.
  The Anarchist. S.E.P. May 15, '15.

OSBORNE, DUFFIELD.
  The Refugees. Lip. Aug., '15.

OSBORNE, WILLIAM HAMILTON.
  Adrienne Gascoyne. I.S.M. Aug. 1, '15.
  All Paid in Advance. Col. May 8, '15.
  Bridal Blush. Col. June 5, '15.
  Found--A Thousand Dollar Bill. Sun. Feb., '15.
  Hen Takes Possession. S.E.P. April 4, '14.
  Irresistible Impulse. Pict. R. Aug., '15.
  Suite Number Nineteen. Harp. M. March, '14.
  Two Fools and a Frolic. Pict. R. Sept., '15.

OSBOURNE, LLOYD.
  Hushed Up. McC. Oct., '15.
  Only the Engineer. Ev. Nov., '15.
  The Jacksonboy. S.E.P. April 18, '14.

O'SHEA, PETER F.
  Artistic Temperament. Cen. July, '15.
  Savages. Col. Oct. 31, '14.
  Under the Pitcher's Wing. Lip. April, '15.

OSKISON, JOHN.
  The Apples of Hesperides, Kansas. For. March, '14.

OSMUN, LEIGHTON GRAVES.
  *The Ends of Ambition. I.S.M. Jan. 10, '15.

OSTRANDER, ISABEL.
  All at Sea. Pict. R. Aug., '15.
  The Eagle's Claw. I.S.M. Jan. 31, '15.

OVERTON, GWENDOLEN.
  At Twilight. Harp. M. Oct., '15.

OVINGTON, MARY WHITE.
  **The White Brute. Masses. Oct.-Nov., '15.

OWEN, FRANK.
  The Undecided Woman. Lip. Feb., '15.

OWINGS, EDNA M.
  Their Deferred Moment. Harp. M. May, '15.

OYLER, P.B.
  Clothes and the Man. Mir. March 5, '15.


P

PAIN, BARRY.
  Not on the Passenger List. I.S.M. Aug. 1, '15.

PAINE, ALBERT BIGELOW.
  *Mr. 'Possum's Sick Spell. Harp. M. Oct., '15.
  The Palace of His Soul. Scr. Aug., '14.

PAINE, GUSTAVUS S.
  ***"Here He Is." Col. Dec. 18, '15.

PAINE, RALPH D.
  *A Better Man Than His Father. E.W. July 5, '15.
  *As In His Youth. Scr. Feb., '14.

PALMER, FREDERICK.
  The Make-Good Country. Scr. Sept., '14.

PALMER, VANCE.
  *The Coward. Bel. June 19, '15.
  *The Law of Sanctuary. Bel. March 13, '15.
  ***The Law of the Dark. Bel. Dec. 4, '15.
  The Man Who Won. Bel. Jan. 30, '15.
  The Place of Sanctuary. I.S.M. May 16, '15.

PANGBORN, GEORGIA WOOD.
  Alice and May. Harp. M. June, '14.
  **Cara. Harp. M. Jan., '14.
  Munnern. Scr. May, '14.
  *Out of the Question. McB. Sept., '15.
  The Ring of the Great Wish. For. May, '14.
  The Substitute. Harp. M. Dec., '14.
  *The Thirty Years' Ghost. Lip. July, '15.

PAPE, LEE.
  Kathleen Goes A-Sketching. Harp. W. March 6, '15.
  *Truce for a Day. W.H.C. Sept., '15.

PAPINI, GIOVANNI.
  **The Debt of a Day. Int. April, '15.

PARKER, SIR GILBERT.
  *Norah. I.S.M. May 30, '15.

PARKER, HELEN BAKER.
  For One Night. Col. Dec. 12, '14.
  The Narrow Margin. Col. March 13, '15.
  The Window in the Wall. Ev. Aug., '15.

PARKER, MARION.
  *The Recoil of the Gun. Life. Nov. 18, '15.

PARSONS, FRANCIS.
  *The Border-Land. Scr. March, '15.

PATTERSON, ETHEL LLOYD.
  On the Brink. Pict. R. July, '15.
  The Courage of the Conviction. Ev. May, '15.

PATTULLO, GEORGE.
  Bad Bill Bobo. S.E.P. June 5, '15.
  Blue Blazes. S.E.P. Sept. 11, '15.
  Charlie Mattox of Vassar. L.H.J. Feb., '15.
  Miss Fanny. S.E.P. Jan. 23, '15.
  Naughty Henree. S.E.P. Nov. 27, '15.
  The Blind Goddess. Sun. Aug., '15.
  The Camp Follower. S.E.P. Sept. 12, '14.
  The Liberator. S.E.P. Aug. 1, '14.
  *The Night Riders. Sun. June, '15.
  The Summons. S.E.P. Feb. 14, '14.
  The Victory. S.E.P. Oct. 17, '14.
  The Ways of a Man. S.E.P. July 25, '14.

PAYNE, WILL.
  A Board Meeting. S.E.P. Feb. 13, '15.
  A Dispensation. S.E.P. June 12, '15.
  **A Just Man. McC. March, '15.
  An International Affair. S.E.P. Oct. 30, '15.
  A Question of Character. S.E.P. Feb. 6, '15.
  A Ridiculous Affair. E.W. Dec. 13, '15.
  A Sentimental Adventure. S.E.P. Nov. 27, '15.
  Back to the Land. S.E.P. Oct. 16, '15.
  In Fine Feathers. S.E.P. Nov. 13, '15.
  On the Pirate Ship. S.E.P. Dec. 11, '15.
  *On the Swamp Road. Met. Oct., '15.
  The Crow's Nest. S.E.P. Jan. 2, '15.
  The Gas War. S.E.P. Jan. 16, '15.
  *The Memorandum Book. Met. May, '14.
  The Salted Show. S.E.P. Sept. 25, '15.
  What Happened at Revere's. McC. April, '15.
  **Wind and Water. McC. Jan., '15.

PEAKE, ELMORE ELLIOTT.
  Bantry. S.E.P. June 20, '14.
  *Clapsaddle's Girl. E.W. Nov. 1, '15.
  The Babylonish One. Pict. R. March, '15.

PEATTIE, ELIA W.
  Fruit of the Tree. A.S.M. March 21, '15.
  Greed. E.W. Oct. 4, '15.

PENDEXTER, HUGH.
  Cynthia Spillings and the Spider. L.H.J. June, '15.
  Devil Bannon's Girl. I.S.M. Aug. 29, '15.
  Miss Philbrick's Change of Pew. L.H.J. Feb., '15.
  The Boss. I.S.M. Oct. 10, '15.
  The Dark Man of Red Ant. A.S.M. March 21, '15.
  The Sins of Satanx Syntax. I.S.M. Dec. 26, '15.

PENDLETON, T.D.
  *The Life Belt. Bel. July 10, '15.

PENFIELD, CORNELIA STERRETT.
  *The Unit. Harp. W. Sept. 11, '15.

PERRY, LAWRENCE.
  *A Man of Action. Cen. Oct., '14.
  A Question of Bigness. Scr. Sept., '15.
  "Mother." Cen. Feb., '14.

PETERS, SALLY.
  The Greatest of These. Lip. Jan., '15.

PHILLIPS, HENRY ALBERT.
  *Glory. McB. Nov., '15.

PHILLIPS, HENRY WALLACE.
  Susie, Sans Souci. Harp. M. Feb., '14.
  *The Devouring Demon and the Don. Harp. M. Jan., '14.

PHILLPOTTS, EDEN.
  *The Church-Grim. Cen. Sept., '14.
  *The Legacy. Del. Sept., '15.
  *The Old Soldier. Cen. June, '14.

PICKTHALL, MARJORIE L.C.
  **Cheap. Harp. M. May, '14.
  Friends. Cen. March, '14.
  *He That Cometh After. Harp. M. Dec., '14.
  ***Stories. Bel. June 12, '15.

PIERCE, FREDERICK.
  *The Sunday Night Before Tuesday. Col. Oct. 24, '14.

PIERSON, NITA.
  The Court of the Four Seasons. Sun. July, '15.

PITNEY, ALBERT DE FORD.
  La Croix. Sun. Nov., '15.

POPE, T. MICHAEL.
  Horror of War in London. Mir. Nov. 5, '15.

PORTER, ELEANOR H.
  The Most Wonderful Woman. Pict. R. May, '15.
  When Grandma Took to Tangoing. L.H.J. Aug., '15.

PORTER, HAROLD E. (_See_ "HALL, HOLWORTHY.")

PORTOR, LAURA SPENCER.
  *Spendthrifts. Atl. Oct., '15.
  *The Greater Art. Atl. March, '14.

POST, CHARLES JOHNSON.
  **At the Ebb Tide. Cen. March, '14.

POST, MELVILLE DAVISSON.
  ***A Twilight Adventure. Met. April, '14.
  The Ally. S.E.P. July 10, '15.
  ***The Doomdorf Mystery. S.E.P. July 18, '14.
  *The Hidden Law. Met. Aug., '14.
  The Laughter of Allah. Pict. R. July, '15.
  *The Man in the Green Hat. S.E.P. Feb. 27, '15.
  *The Miller of Ostend. S.E.P. Oct. 31, '14.
  ***The New Administration. S.E.P. Nov. 20, '15.
  **The Stolen Life. S.E.P. Jan. 17, '14.
  **The Treasure Hunter. S.E.P. Aug. 14, '15.

POWELL, ARTHUR.
  His Artistic Temperament. Pict. R. Aug., '15.

POWELL, MARIAN BRUNTLETT.
  Beauty Instead of Pep. E.W. July 19, '15.

PRESTON, GEORGE HYDE.
  Elsie Goes Aboard. Pict. R. June, '15.

PRESTON, SYDNEY.
  Wings for a Day. Cen. June, '15.

PRYCE, RICHARD.
  *The Whistle. Lip. April, '15.

PULVER, MARY BRECHT.
  His Day of Days. S.E.P. Oct. 9, '15.
  Leviathan. Col. Jan. 10, '14.
  *Minnie Good of Manheim. S.E.P. July 24, '15.

PUTNAM, NINA WILCOX.
  *A Little Milk. Harp. M. May, '14.
  Tents of the Mighty. Pict. R. June, '15.


R

R., S.B.
  **Sophronisba. N. Rep. Nov. 13, '15.

RAINE, WILLIAM MacLEOD.
  *His Purloined Wife. Harp. B. Jan., '15.
  Mustapha Stumbles. Lip. Feb., '15.
  Pasqual and the Puncher. Am. April, '15.
  The Shanghaied Millionaire. McB. Nov., '15.

RAMSEY, JAMES NELSON.
  Children of Omen. Bel. April 3, '15.

RANSOME, ARTHUR.
  *Two Dead Soldiers. Mir. March 26, '15.

RAY, ANNA CHAPIN.
  Pitou's Offertory. Col. April 24, '15.

READ, MARION PUGH.
  Keepsakes. Cen. July, '14.
  *Namesakes. Atl. Nov., '15.
  *The Old Road. Cen. June, '14.
  *Where the Lightning Struck. E.W. Sept. 27, '15.

RECTOR, JESSIE LEACH.
(_See_ CAMERON, MARGARET, _and_ RECTOR, JESSIE LEACH.)

REED, HERBERT.
  Kicking to Beat the Band. Col. Nov. 21, '14.

REED, JOHN.
  *A Daughter of the Revolution. Masses. Feb., '15.
  *The Barber of Lille. Met. July, '15.
  **The Cook and the Captain Bold. Met. Nov., '14.
  *The Rights of Small Nations. N. Rep. Nov. 27, '15.

REID, ALAN.
  An Academic Question. Lip. July, '15.

REMENYI, JOSEPH.
  *Grotesque Children. Int. May, '15.

REMER, KARL.
  Atavism. For. Oct., '14.
  *Europe. For. May, '15.

REMNITZ, VIRGINIA YEAMAN.
  *The Imprisoned Voice. Cen. Jan., '14.

RHODES, EUGENE MANLOVE.
  The Fool's Heart. S.E.P. May 1, '15.

RHODES, HARRISON.
  **The Saint. Harp. M. Sept., '15.

RICE, ALICE HEGAN.
  Hoodooed. Cen. Aug., '14.

RICHTER, CONRAD.
  ***Brothers of No Kin. For. April, '14. I.S.M. Sept. 26, '15.
      Mir. June 4, '15.
  *The Wall of the House of Ryland. I.S.M. Nov. 21, '15.

RICKERT, EDITH.
  The Lifting of the Burden. Scr. June, '14.
  The Lilac Lady. Outl. Aug. 18, '15.

RIDEOUT, HENRY MILNER.
  **The Hand of Glory. S.E.P. June 26, '15.
  *The Rainbow. S.E.P. March 13, '15.

RIDER, MARY.
  The Criminal Shop. Met. Sept., '14.

RINEHART, MARY ROBERTS.
  Clara's Little Escapade. S.E.P. July 17, '15.
  Sauce for the Gander. S.E.P. May 16, '14.
  The Family Friend. S.E.P. Dec. 11, '15.
  The Little General. S.E.P. April 11, '14.
  **The Papered Door. Col. March 21, '14.
  The Secret House. Met. May, '14.
  The Truce of God. Col. Dec. 12, '14.

RITCHIE, ROBERT WELLES.
  Lord of Many Peaks. S.E.P. Oct. 9-16, '15.

RITTENBERG, MAX.
  *The Greatest Dread. I.S.M. Jan. 10, '15.

ROBERTS, CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS.
  *Back to the Water World. I.S.M. May 23, '15.
  *Black Swamp. I.S.M. July 18, '15.
  *How a Cat Played Robinson Crusoe. I.S.M. July 4, '15.
  *The Advent of Woolly Billy. I.S.M. Feb. 7, '15.
  The Bear Who Thought He Was a Dog. Pict. R. Oct., '15.
  The Black Boar of Lonesome Water. I.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.
  The Book Agent. I.S.M. Feb. 28, '15.
  The Cabin in the Flood. I.S.M. Jan. 17, '15.
  The Destroying Splendor. Sun. Jan., '15.
  **The Dog That Saved the Bridge. N.S.M. April 11, '15.
  The Feasting of the Cave Folk. Sun. March, '15.
  The Terrors of the Dark. Sun. Feb., '15.
  *When Bear Met Ram. I.S.M. Oct. 31, '15.

ROBERTS, MERVIN.
  Putting the Machine Out of Business. Sun. April, '15.

ROBERTSON, MORGAN.
  *The Fog Voices. I.S.M. June 20, '15.
  ***The Poison Ship. Harp. M. May, '15.

ROBERTSON, WILLIAM HENDERSON.
  *The Return of Jamie Macgregor. Met. April, '15.

ROBINS, ELIZABETH.
  Lost and Found. Harp. M. Sept., '15.

ROBINSON, FRANK R.
  The Toe of Retribution. Col. June 27, '14.

ROCHE, ARTHUR SOMERS.
  Jimmy Winter's Finish. I.S.M. June 20, '15.

ROCHE, MAZO DE LA.
  *Buried Treasure. Atl. Aug., '15.

ROE, VINGIE E.
  Black Thunder. Col. Oct. 30, '15.
  The Virtue of Neils Hansen. Col. May 22, '15.
  What Happened at El Rancho Verde. Col. Dec. 18, '15.

"ROHMER, SAX." (ARTHUR SARSFIELD WARD.)
  Cragmire Tower. Col. July 17, '15.
  The Avenue Mystery. Col. Feb. 6, '15.
  The Coughing Horror. Col. April 3, '15.
  The Cry of the Nighthawk. Col. Dec. 26, '14.
  The Fiery Hand. Col. Sept. 25, '15.
  The Mummy. Col. Dec. 4, '15.
  The Silver Buddha. Col. May 15, '15.
  The Six Gates. Col. Oct. 23, '15.
  The White Peacock. Col. March 6, '15.
  The Wire Jacket. Col. Nov. 21, '14.

ROOD, HENRY.
  A Ferry-boat Engagement. Del. Jan., '15.
  Our Elopement. Del. Aug., '15.

ROOF, KATHARINE METCALF.
  *Elsa and the Swan Boat. S.S. Feb., '15.
  ***The Waiting Years. Cen. May, '15.

ROSEBORO', VIOLA.
  The Advertising Star. A.S.M. May 30, '15.
  The Peacemaker of Tolley's Ledge. Col. Dec. 12, '14.

ROSENBLATT, BENJAMIN.
  ***Zelig. Bel. Aug. 28, '15.

ROUSE, WILLIAM MERRIAM.
  **A Yankee Don Quixote. N.S.M. Nov. 28, '15.
  Corn on the Cob. Lip. Feb., '15.
  *Jules of the Strong Heart. Col. Dec. 25, '15.
  Little Pig Pork. Cen. Dec., '14.
  **The Fruit of the Tree. Cen. Dec., '15.
  The Kettle of Rusty Gold. Col. July 24, '15.

ROUSSEAU, VICTOR.
  Cousin Paul. Harp. M. Oct., '14.
  *The Blue Dimity Dress. Harp. M. March, '14.

ROWE, ELIZABETH G.
  *The Escape. Sun. Dec., '15.

RUGG, GEORGE BIGELOW CHEEVER.
  *Matt Sweeney, Scowman. Bel. Nov. 6, '15.
  *Old John's Trip on the Hawser. Bel. Aug. 7, '15.
  **The Dub. I.S.M. Nov. 14, '15.

RYAN, MARAH ELLIS.
  *The Pasear of Doña Carmel. Sun. Sept., '15.

RYDER, CHARLES T.
  A Dungaree Superman. Bel. Sept. 25, '15.

RYDER, WORTH.
  *The Emperor. Sun. June, '15.

RYERSON, FLORENCE.
  Conchita. E.W. Aug. 2, '15.
  *In the Room Across From His. E.W. June 14, '15.
  The Girl and Sylvester. E.W. Oct. 18, '15.


S

SAANEN, MARIE LOUISE VAN.
  *A Station of Broken Men. Col. March 27, '15.

SABIN, EDWIN L.
  A Cold in the Head. Am. June, '15.
  Cards or Gifts. Am. Dec., '15.
  Ralph Learns to Drive. Am. Aug., '15.
  The Third Person. Lip. Jan., '15.

ST. MARS, F.
  With Thanks to the Wolf. L.H.J. June, '15.

SALTUS, EDGAR.
  An Old-Fashioned Man. Harp. B. June, '15.

SANFORD, EDWARD.
  Gamblers' Wives. Col. June 27, '14.

SANGSTER, JR., MARGARET E.
  In Lilac Time. Lip. June, '15.

SAPINSKY, RUTH.
  A Bird in the Hand. Am. Aug., '15.
  *For Better and For Worse. Am. Oct., '15.

SAVAGE, C. COURTENAY.
  Devoted to Art. I.S.M. June 6, '15.
  My Cabaret Girl. I.S.M. April 18, '15.

SAWYER, RUTH.
  *A Lad from Nowhere. Outl. Oct. 27, '15.
  Denis. Harp. M. Sept., '14.
  **Peter-Peter. Ev. Dec., '15.
  *The Love Promise. L.H.J. Feb., '15.
  **The Wee Road to Bethlehem. Harp. B. Dec., '15.

SAXBY, CHESTER L.
  The Revolution in Camp 24. Bel. July 31, '15.

SCHAEFFER, EVELYN SCHUYLER.
  At the Call of Chance. Scr. April, '15.
  In Pursuit of an Interest. Scr. Oct., '15.

SCHAICK, GEORGE VAN.
  Mishee Bill's Kid. Bel. Feb. 6, '15.

SCHAYER, E. RICHARD.
  **The Man Who Would Not Kill. Am. Dec., '15.

SCHEFFAUER, HERMAN.
  *The Battle-Film. Cen. Jan., '15.
  *The Scourge. Lip. March, '15.

SCHERR, MARIE.
  *The Wax Bust. Harp. M. Feb., '15.

SCHMIDT, KARL.
  *A Pair of 'Em. Harp. W. Dec. 18, '15.

SCHURMAN, CATHERINE.
  Egeria Substitutes. Harp. M. June, '14.

SCOFIELD, KENDRICK.
  Over Years and Tides. Col. Sept. 26, '14.

SCOTT, LEROY.
  The Case of Mary Regan. Met. May, '15.
  The Honor of Slant-Face Regan. Met. June, '15.
  The Third Watchman. Met. Nov., '15.
  With the Goods On. Met. April, '15.

SCOTT, MARGRETTA.
  Miss Meyer. Mir. Oct. 22, '15.
  The Serious Baby. Mir. Dec. 31, '15.

SEAGROVE, GORDON.
  *The Black Door. Life. Sept. 23, '15.

SEARING, MRS. A.E.P.
  Finding a Family. Del. April, '15.

SEAWELL, MOLLY ELLIOT.
  Bettina Loved a Soldier. Pict. R. Jan., '15.
  "The Bat" Comes To Her Own. Pict. R. Sept., '15.
  The Golden Voice. A.S.M. April 4, '15.

SEDGWICK, ANNE DOUGLAS.
  **Hepaticas. Atl. Aug., '15.

SELDES, GILBERT V.
  Emancipated. For. June, '14.

SHAW, CAPTAIN FRANK H.
  *A Slave of Eros. N.S.M. April 11, '15.

SHEEHAN, PERLEY POORE.
  *The Belated Tears of Marcel. Mun. July, '15.

SHELTON, GEORGE HENRY.
  Mary Long-Ago. Col. May 9, '14.

SHERRARD, MARION.
  *The Rustlers' Pay. Col. Oct. 17, '14.

SHERWOOD, MARGARET.
  The Clearest Voice. Atl. July, '15.

SHIPPEY, LEE.
  Uncle Joe's Romance. Harp. M. Sept., '15.

SHORT, O'DONOVAN.
  A Good Loser. Sun. Feb., '15.
  The God of Happy Chance. Sun. Sept., '15.

SHULGOVSKY, N.
  **A Tragedy in Russian. B.E.T. Oct. 16, '15.

SIMPICH, FREDERICK.
  Distinguished Service. Lip. May, '15.

SIMRALL, JOSEPHINE P.
  "Charity." Lip. Aug., '15.

SIMS, CHARLES N.
  Love at Patty-Cake. Col. Nov. 14, '14.
  Love's Water Test. Col. Jan. 10, '14.

SINCLAIR, MAY.
  **The Collector. Cen. Jan., '14.
  *The Pin-Prick. Harp. M. Feb., '15.

SINGMASTER, ELSIE.
  **A Pair of Lovers. Scr. Nov., '15.
  The High Constable. Outl. April 28, '15.
  ***The Ishmaelite. Cen. June, '14. I.S.M. Oct. 3, '15.
  ***The Survivors. Outl. May 26, '15.

SKINNER, CONSTANCE LINDSAY.
  Contraband of War. S.E.P. June 12, '15.

SMITH, F. BERKELEY.
  The Watch. Pict. R. Dec., '15.

SMITH, FRANK LEON.
  An Idea for a Comic. Ev. Jan., '15.
  Between the Lines. Ev. March, '15.
  Business and Partners. Col. April 18, '14.
  *"Here Comes Grover!" Cen. Oct., '15.

SMITH, FREDERICK M.
  Under False Pretenses. Harp. M. Jan., '14.

SMITH, GORDON ARTHUR.
  **City of Lights. Scr. Dec., '14.
  *Every Move. Scr. June, '14.
  ***Jeanne the Maid. Scr. Dec., '15.
  Letitia. Scr. Aug., '15.
  The Reluctant Prince. Scr. Aug., '14.

SMITH, LEWIS WORTHINGTON.
  Chasing a Holiday. Mir. June 18, '15.

SMITH, W. EDSON.
  From Daybreak to Breakfast. Col. Sept. 5, '14.

SNAITH, JOHN COLLIS.
  *The Gentlemanly Thing. S.E.P. June 27, '14.

SNEDDON, ROBERT W.
  **A Book of Verse. Bel. Jan. 23, '15.
  *A Woman in the City. Harp. W. June 26, '15.
  ***One Mother. Bel. May 22, '15.
  *"The Field of Honour." Bel. Aug. 21, '15.
  *The Hero. Harp. W. July 24, '15.
  ***The Musician. Bel. May 1, '15.

SNYDER, ELIZABETH HARDING.
  The Old Maid Prospect. Ev. April, '15.

"SOCIAL PROMOTER, THE."
  The Brief Career of Matty Vandam. A.S.M. April 18, '15.
  The Triple Entente. A.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.

SOLOMONS, THEODORE SEIXAS.
  *The Eskimo Messenger. Col. Feb. 6, '15.

SOMERVILLE, CHARLES.
  The Fright Cure. I.S.M. June 13, '15.

SOMERVILLE, ROY.
  How Temperance Came to Devil Chute. I.S.M, Feb. 21, '15.

SOULE, GEORGE.
  The Vendor of Learning. N. Rep. July 7, '15.

SOUTAR, ANDREW.
  Cain. I.S.M., April 4, '15.

SPADONI, ADRIANA.
  *Pirates of the Back Stairs. G.H. Dec., '15.
  *Real Work. Masses. July, '15.

SPEARS, JOHN R.
  "Coggie." Scr. Oct., '15.

SPENCE, LIDA HERVEY.
  The Day's Work. Col. June 13, '14.

SPERANZA, GINO C.
  Marco Baldi, Owner. Atl. June, '14.
  *Wander. Atl. July, '14.

SPOFFORD, HARRIET PRESCOTT.
  **A Homely Sacrifice. Harp. M. Nov., '14.
  The Best Christmas Ever. I.S.M. Dec. 26, '15.

SPRINGER, FLETA CAMPBELL.
  **In Step. Harp. M. July, '14.
  Salvage. McB. Nov., '15.
  The Prosecuting Witness. Lip. Jan., '15.

SPRINGER, NORMAN.
  The Measure of a Man. A.S.M. Jan. 10, '15.

SPRINGER, THOMAS GRANT.
  *The Sparrow. Lip. Jan., '15.

STEELE, ALICE GARLAND.
  An Optical Illusion. Pict. R. Feb., '15.
  Fortune's Wheel. Del. Nov., '15.

STEELE, RUFUS.
  New Rules for the Road. S.E.P. July 18, '14.

STEELE, WILBUR DANIEL.
  ***A Matter of Education. Harp. M. May, '15.
  *Captain Ulysses G. Dadd (Retired). Scr. July, '14.
  *Heritage. Harp. M. July, '15.
  ***On Moon Hill. Cen. April, '15.
  **"Pa-Jim." Scr. Nov., '14.
  ***Romance. Atl. June, '15.
  *The Free Agent. Col. July 17, '15.
  **The Handkerchief Lady's Girl. Harp. M. Feb., '14.
  *The Miracle. Masses. Jan., '15.
  *The Real Thing. Cen. May, '15.
  The Wickedness of Father Veiera. Atl. July, '14.
  ***The Yellow Cat. Harp. M. March, '15.
  The Younger Twin. Harp. M. Aug., '14.

STEFFENS, LINCOLN.
  *Collusion. Life. Aug. 26, '15.
  Pop's Place for Sassy Sally. Ev. Dec., '15.
  Pop's Ribbon-Thief. Ev. Sept., '15.
  **The Honesty of Honest Tom. McC. July, '15.
  The Master of Women. Ev. July, '15.
  **The Reluctant Briber. McC. March, '15.

STELLMANN, LOUIS J.
  **A Christmas on Russian Hill. Sun. Dec., '15.

STEPHENS, JAMES.
  **The Three-Penny Piece. Mir. Dec. 17, '15.

STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS.
  **The Waif Woman. Scr. Dec., '14.

STEWART, CHARLES D.
  The Dagger. Cen. July, '14.

STILES, GEORGE K.
  Zulik the Magnificent. Harp. M. Feb., '14.

STILLMAN, HARRY INNESS.
  Of a Fighting Clan. Harp. W. Dec. 25, '15.

STOCK, RALPH.
  Cobb's Neutrality. N.S.M. Feb. 28, '15.
  Partners. Col. Aug. 21, '15.
  The Corona Keffordi. Bel. Jan. 2, '15.

STONE, AMY WENTWORTH.
  *Catching It. Cen. March, '14.
  Possessing Prudence. Atl. Sept., '14.

STOREY, BOYCE.
  The Darkest Hour. I.S.M. April 11, '15.

STRAHAN, KAY CLEAVER.
  Eve's Uncle Arkády. Col. Nov. 28, '14.
  Eve, With Adam's Assistance. Col. Oct. 31, '14.
  Society Smith. Col. Feb. 6, '15.

STRATTON, GEORGE FREDERIC.
  Bobby Junior. Bel. April 24, '15.

STREET, JULIAN.
  Probably Pique. S.E.P. Oct. 23, '15.
  The Rainbow Lie. Ev. Sept., '15.

STRINDBERG, AUGUST.
  *Above the Clouds. Int. Sept., '15.

STRINGER, ARTHUR.
  ***The Ivy and the Tower. I.S.M. Feb. 21, '15.
  *The Man from the Front. McC. April, '15.

STRUNSKY, SIMEON.
  *The Quality of Mercy. Scr. June, '14.

STUART, ELEANOR.
  *The Deeper Diagnosis. Harp. M. April, '15.

STUART, RUTH McENERY.
  *The Luck of Batture Baptiste. Cen. May, '14.

STURDEVANT, LUCY HUSTON.
  Flag-Root. Atl. July, '14.

SULLIVAN, ALAN.
  *An Adventure in Paleontology. Harp. M. March, '14.
  *Art Triumphant. Cen. Dec., '15.
  *Messages of Spring. Harp. M. April, '15.
  The Suit-Case. Harp. M. April, '14.

SULLIVAN, CHARLES J.
  From Out the Centuries. B.C. April, '15.
  The Last Dance. Col. Feb. 27, '15.

SULLIVAN, FRANCIS WILLIAM.
  Long Trail's End. N.S.M. Oct. 24, '15.

SYNON, MARY.
  **A Toast to Dewey. Scr. July, '14.
  *Esau's Daughter. Scr. April, '15.
  ***The Bounty-Jumper. Scr. Feb., '15.
  ***The Bravest Son. Scr. March, '14. I.S.M. Dec 5, '15.
  **The Fleet Goes By. Scr. Feb., '14.
  The Popcorn Man. E.W. Nov. 29, '15.
  **The Sun-Dials of Civilization. Met. Dec., '14.
  **Undesirables. Scr. Nov., '15.
  **White Hyacinths. Scr. Jan., '15.


T

TARKINGTON, BOOTH.
  *At Home To His Friends. Met. July, '15.
  **"Bing!" Cos. Jan., '15.
  *Little Sister. Met. March, '15.
  *Penrod's Busy Day. Cos. May, '15.
  *Penrod--Zoölogist. Met. May, '14.
  *Rupe Collins. Met. April, '14.
  *Seventeen. Met. Feb., '15.
  *The Big Fat Lummox. Met. Nov., '15.
  *The Empty House. Met. June, '14.
  *The Fairy Father. Met. April, '15.
  *The Reward of Merit. Cos. July, '15.
  *Wednesday Madness. Cos. Dec., '15.

TARPLEY, FORD.
  Paying the Price. Int. Oct., '15.

TASSIN, ALGERNON.
  *Elmira and Four-Thirteen. Scr. Dec., '14.
  **The Conversion of Lucia Bragg. Scr. July, '14.
  **The Solvent. Harp. M. May, '14.

TAYLOR, EMERSON.
  Made of Strong Clay. N.S.M. March 14, '15.

TCHEKOV, ANTON.
  **On the Perils of Pestilent Playwrights. B.E.T. Nov. 20, '15.

TEAPLE, G.L.
  The Steam-Shovel. Cen. Sept., '14.

TERRILL, LUCY STONE.
  *After Long Years. S.S. April, '15.
  *In Cupid's Second Childhood. Am. May, '15.

TERRY, KATHARINE.
  The Pretender. I.S.M. July 4-11, '15.

THOMPSON, MARAVENE.
  Dorothy "Comes Back." Am. Jan., '15.
  Dorothy Speaks in Meeting. Am. Feb., '15.

THRUSTON, LUCY MEACHAM.
  The Truant Wife. I.S.M. April 25, '15.

THURSTON, E. TEMPLE.
  *Tares. For. June, '15.
  *The Refugee. Outl. Dec. 22, '15.

THURSTON, KATHERINE CECIL.
  Taken From Life. I.S.M. June 20, '15.

TILDEN, FREEMAN.
  *Artistic Temperament. Col. May 1, '15.
  That Night. Harp. B. July, '15.
  The Georgia Song-Bird. Cen. Aug., '14.
  The Other Dimensions. Harp. B. Sept., '15.
  When the Jitney Came to Enderby. E.W. Oct. 18, '15.

TOMPKINS, JULIET WILBOR.
  The "G." Del. March, '15.
  The Lady Who Couldn't Grow Up--and the Man Who Had Never Been Young.
      Scr. Jan., '15.

TONJOROFF, SVETOZAR.
  *Friends. Mun. Nov., '15.

TOOKER, L. FRANK.
  Mr. MacIvor Resents Christmas. Cen. Dec., '14.
  The Dark Night. Cen. July, '14.
  **The Man Who Died Without Death. Cen. April, '14.
  *The Man Who Was Afraid. Cen. Oct., '14.
  *The Two Admirals. Cen. May, '14.

TOWNER, HORACE.
  The Idealist. Int. Feb., '15.

TRACY, VIRGINIA.
  The Golden Goose. Cen. Aug., '15.
  *The Web. Cen. Jan., '15.

TRAIN, ARTHUR C.
  The Dead-Game Sport. S.E.P. Sept. 5, '14.
  *The Pot-Boiler. S.E.P. March 21, '14.
  The Romance of Obadiah Terwilliger. Pict. R. Aug., '15.
  The Thirty-Ninth Pearl. S.E.P. Feb. 7, '14.

TRENDON, HORACE.
  Providence à la Tipperary. Col. Sept. 19, '14.

TRETHEWEY, CHARLES.
  **The Fugitive. S.E.P. June 26, '15.
  **The Spell. Col. Oct. 2, '15.

TRIEM, PAUL.
  The Skirt of His Robe. Lip. Feb., '15.

TRIMBLE, JESSIE.
  Looking for a Play. Met. Sept., '15.
  The First Night. Met. Dec., '15.

TRITES, W.B.
  The Slacker. S.E.P. Dec. 11, '15.
  War. S.E.P. June 19, '15.

TRUMBULL, ANNIE ELIOT.
  Sinews of War. Scr. May, '15.

TURNER, GEORGE KIBBE.
  *Butterflies. McC. Nov., '15.
  *The Little Finger of the Colberts. McC. Dec., '15.

TURVEY, C. HILTON-. (_See_ HILTON-TURVEY, C.)

TUTTLE, MARGARETTA.
  "I Shall Marry a Millionaire." L.H.J. April, '15.


U

UNDERHILL, ELSIE MORRIS.
  *A Little Dabble in Iniquity. McB. Oct., '15.

UNDERWOOD, SOPHIE KERR. (_See_ KERR, SOPHIE.)

UPDEGRAFF, ALLAN.
  A Matter of Investments. Cen. March, '14.
  Atalanta and Meleager. For. Sept., '14.

UZZELL, THOMAS H.
  *Mobilizing Ivan. Lip. Jan., '15.
  *The Crucible of Peace. S.E.P. Sept. 18, '15.


V

VAIL, LAURENCE.
  The Gray Princess. Int. April, '15.

VAKA, DEMETRA.
  **She Who Sowed the Seed. Cen. May, '15.

"VALE, CHARLES."
  The Widow's Mite. For. Aug., '15.

VALKENBURGH, HELEN VAN.
  **The Sword-Maker. Lip. April, '15.

VAN BUREN, EVELYN. (_See_ BUREN, EVELYN VAN.)

VAN CAMPEN, HELEN. (_See_ CAMPEN, HELEN VAN.)

VAN DE WATER, VIRGINIA TERHUNE. (_See_ WATER, VIRGINIA TERHUNE VAN DE.)

VAN DYKE, HENRY. (_See_ DYKE. HENRY VAN.)

VAN INWEGEN, MILDRED. (_See_ INWEGEN, MILDRED VAN.)

VAN LOAN, CHARLES E. (_See_ LOAN, CHARLES E. VAN.)

VAN LOON, HENDRIK WILLEM. (_See_ LOON, HENDRIK WILLEM VAN.)

VAN SAANEN, MARIE LOUISE. (_See_ SAANEN, MARIE LOUISE VAN.)

VAN SCHAICK, GEORGE. (_See_ SCHAICK, GEORGE VAN.)

VAN VALKENBURGH, HELEN. (_See_ VALKENBURGH, HELEN VAN.)

VAN VORST, MARIE. (_See_ VORST, MARIE VAN.)

VENABLE, EDWARD C.
  The Neutrality of Mr. Antello. Scr. Sept., '15.

VERNÉDE, R.E.
  *The Outrage at Port Allington. Harp. M. Feb., '14.

VORSE, MARY HEATON.
  A Child's Heart. Cen. Oct., '14.
  Brushes. L.H.J. Sept., '15.
  In a Florentine Frame. Pict. R. Oct., '15.
  The Devastation of Dennisport. Atl. Nov., '14.
  The Disintegrator. Harp. M. July, '14.
  **The Eyes of the Blind. Harp. M. June, '15.
  *The Happy Woman. Masses. April, '15.
  **The Highest Power. Cen. Nov., '15.
  **The Pure in Heart. S.S. Dec., '15.

VORST, MARIE VAN.
  *The Baptism. Harp. M. Dec., '15.


W

WAGNER, EDITH.
  "Old Hundred." Bel. March 20, '15.

WALKEY, S.
  The Enemy in the House. I.S.M. March 21, '15.

WALKLEY, WILLIAM S.
  The Unknown Woman at the Nativity. L.H.J. Dec., '15.

WALLACE, EDGAR.
  *"Bones." Col. Jan. 16, '15.
  ***The Greater Battle. Col. Nov. 6, '15.
  The Green Crocodile. Col. March 20, '15.
  The Soul of the Native Woman. Col. Jan. 30, '15.
  **The Straightened Angle. Col. Dec. 18, '15.
  The Stranger Who Walked By Night. Col. April 17, '15.

WALLACE, MINNIE McINTIRE.
  *Complete Romance. I.S.M. April 18, '15.
  The Wax Works. I.S.M. May 2, '15.

WALLING, ANNA STRUNSKY.
  *Torture. Int. May, '15.

WALPOLE, HUGH.
  ***The Twisted Inn. S.S. June, '15.

WALSH, GEORGE E.
  La Revanche. I.S.M. Feb. 28, '15.

WARD, ARTHUR SARSFIELD. (_See_ "ROHMER, SAX.")

WARD, BENJAMIN.
  The Key to Nowhere. Ev. Jan.,'15.

WARNER, ANNE.
  Susan Goes Boarding. L.H.J. Dec., '15.

WARNER, GERTRUDE CHANDLER.
  *Miss Anne's "Things." McB. Oct., '15.

WARREN, MAUDE RADFORD.
  A Lily of the Field. S.E.P. June 27, '14.
  Mr. Durgan and the Futurists. Harp. M. April, '15.
  Mr. Durgan and the Servant Problem. Harp. M. Feb., '15.
  Mr. Durgan and the Tango. Harp. M. Aug., '14.
  Mr. Durgan and Violet. Harp. M. Oct., '14.
  Mr. Durgan Rides Down Cupid. Harp. M. Aug., '15.
  Mr. Durgan's Cousin Beatrice. Harp. M. Dec., '14.
  The Human Fraction. S.E.P. Dec. 26, '14.
  The Miracle. A.S.M. Feb. 21, '15.
  **The Mother. Pict. R. Nov., '15.
  The Torch. Harp. M. March, '15.

WASHBURN, ELIZABETH.
  *A Yellow Dog. Bel. Nov. 20, '15.

WASSON, DAVID A.
  Campaigning in Cucharras. Bel. Jan. 9, '15.

WATER, VIRGINIA TERHUNE VAN DE.
  The Bluffer. Harp. B. Feb., '15.

WATSON, H.B. MARRIOTT.
  *The Prisoners for Virginia. A.S.M. Feb. 14, '15.

WATTS, C.S.
  A Little Sugar. Col. Nov. 28, '14.

WATTS, MARY S.
  Personally Conducted. Am. March, '15.

WEADOCK, LOUIS.
  The Love Affair of No. 9. Col. Jan. 31, '14.

WEBSTER, HENRY KITCHELL.
  *Amber. McC. May, '15.
  How to Appreciate Henry. S.E.P. March 20, '15.
  *Strictly Vicarious. Met. Jan., '14.
  The Highbrow Lady. S.E.P. Feb. 21, '14.
  **The Honorable Sylvia. Harp. M. Jan., '14.
  The One Girl. McC. Feb., '15.
  **The Painted Scene. Col. April 4, '14.
  **The Redeemer. McC. Jan., '15.
  The Spring of the Year. S.E.P. Jan. 31, '14.
  Vanilla. S.E.P. May 9, '14.

WEIMAN, RITA.
  Curtis Capitulates. N.S.M. July 18, '15.

WEIR, F. RONEY.
  Father or Fatherland. Bel. March 6, '15.

WELLS, CAROLYN.
  The Adventure of the Clothes-Line. Cen. May, '15.
  The Happily Married Holdens. N.S.M. Aug. 15, '15.

WELLS, H.G. ("REGINALD BLISS.")
  *The Lost Last Trump. Cen. July, '15.

WELLS, LEILA BURTON.
  Bondage. Harp. M. Jan., '15.
  The Obstacle. Harp. M. Sept., '15.

WELLS, STEWART.
  According to Specifications. Lip. March, '15.
  Pants, Pegasus, and Patricia. Lip. April, '15.

WELLS, WARNER.
  "A Dawg Done It." Lip. May, '15.

WEST, PAUL.
  Bruto the Bolt Breaker. A.S.M. March 14, '15.
  *Paint. A.S.M. Jan. 3, '15.

WESTON, GEORGE.
  A Disappearing Bridegroom. S.E.P. Nov. 13, '15.
  **A Fine Domestic Finish. Col. Aug. 1, '14.
  Balm for Lovers. S.E.P. May 1, '15.
  **Exit Madame. Col. June 13, '14.
  Handsome Mr. Smith. McC. July, '15.
  **Madame's Doctor. Col. Jan. 3, '14.
  **Madame's Mexican Mix-Up. Col. April 4, '14.
  Madame's Thanksgiving. Col. Nov. 21, '14.
  *Madame's Third Affair. Col. Jan. 31, '14.
  Marrying Maude. Col. Oct. 16, '15.
  Miss Mallaby's Mistake. S.E.P. May 8, '15.
  *Myrtle McGuire--Detective. Col. Jan. 23, '15.
  Pom-Pom _vs_. Henri. Cen. Aug., '14.
  *The Girl Who Invented Sweethearts. Met. Dec., '15.
  *The Honorable Pinky-Pink. S.E.P. Nov. 20, '15.
  **The Immemorial Manner. Col. July 24, '15.
  The Local Correspondent. S.E.P. Aug. 7, '15.
  The Making of Madigan. E.W. July 26, '15.
  *The Man Who Needed Nerve. S.E.P. Dec. 4, '15.
  ***The Martial Mood of M'sieur. Col. June 19, '15.
  *The Triumph of Tristan. Cen. Sept., '14.
  Where the Story Begins. Col. July 11, '14.
  Why I Eloped With Mary. L.H.J. Oct., '15.

WHARTON, EDITH.
  ***Coming Home. Scr. Dec., '15.
  ***The Triumph of Night. Scr. Aug., '14.

WHIPPLE, LEON RUTLEDGE.
  **Peter Winchester, Star Maker. Ev. Jan., '15.

WHITAKER, HERMAN.
  The Third Wreck. Sun. Nov., '15.
  The Widow's Might. Sun. March, '15.

WHITBY, THOMAS.
  "Belle Air." I.S.M. May 2, '15.

WHITE, HENRY.
  Capturing the Delegate. Col. April 11, '14.

WHITE, MICHAEL.
  Ordeal of the Ring. A.S.M. Jan. 10, '15.
  The Great Hassanbad Handicap. A.S.M. April 18, '15.

WHITE, SAMUEL ALEXANDER.
  A Harvest of Fur. Col. Dec. 11, '15.
  His Own Salvation. Col. Nov. 27, '15.
  The Cup of Calamity. Col. Jan. 2, '15.
  The False Stampede. Col. Jan. 16, '15.
  The River Race. Col. April 10, '15.
  The Rush on Davidson Creek. Col. Feb. 27, '15.

WHITE, STEWART EDWARD.
  **Charley. L.H.J. Nov., '15.
  The Tide. Col. Oct. 16, '15.

WHITE, WILLIAM ALLEN.
  A Prosperous Gentleman. S.E.P. Oct. 10, '14.
  A Social Quadrangle. S.E.P. March 6, '15.
  ***The Gods Arrive. S.E.P. April 24, '15.
  *The Strange Boy. S.E.P. Aug. 1, '14.

WHITING, ROBERT RUDD.
  **The Lemon Seed. For. Aug., '14.

WHITLOCK, BRAND.
  **The Lame Duck. Am. April, '15.
  **The Rehabilitation of General Todhunter. Harp. M. June, '14.
      I.S.M. Dec. 20, '15.

WHITMAN, STEPHEN.
  *One of Those Nice Little Evenings. Harp. M. Aug., '15.
  **The Story of Thaddeus Gookin. Cen. Dec., '14.

WIDDEMER, MARGARET.
  The Little Gold Curl. A.S.M. April 25, '15.

WILBY, THOMAS W.
  The Rise of Menai Tarbell. Cen. May, '14.

WILCOX, ADA LOUISE.
  Miss Caroline, Merchant Peddler. Del. Feb., '15.

WILDE, OSCAR.
  **The Disciple. Brun. W. Nov. 27, '15.

WILKINS, C. WILTON CLARK-.
  Cast Away. I.S.M. Dec. 5, '15.

WILKINS, MARY E. (_See_ FREEMAN, MARY E. WILKINS-.)

WILLIAMS, HOWE.
  Two-Fingered Alec. I.S.M. May 2, '15.

WILLIS, LLOYD DORSEY.
  Pal. Scr. March, '15.

WILSON, HARRY LEON.
  A King Among Kings. S.E.P. April 25, '14.
  Corporal Billy's Come-Back. S.E.P. May 30, '14.
  Crooks All. S.E.P. June 6, '14.
  Ma Pettengill and the Song of Songs. S.E.P. Aug. 28, '15.
  *The Boy Who Counted a Million. S.E.P. April 4, '14.
  The Real Peruvian Doughnuts. S.E.P. Oct. 9, '15.
  The Red Splash of Romance. S.E.P. Nov. 6, '15.
  The Two Bad Men. S.E.P. May 2, '14.

WILSON, JOHN FLEMING.
  *Bred in the Purple. S.E.P. July 25, '14.
  Cupid in the Laboratory. S.E.P. Nov. 7, '14.
  *Junk. S.E.P. April, 18, '14.
  On the Morning of Our Tale. Met. March, '14.
  The House of Snell. Pict. R. Jan., '15.
  The Story of Gunderson. S.E.P. Feb. 28, '14.

WINCHFIELD, ERNEST.
  From the Teeth of the Rocks. I.S.M. May 16, '15.

WINSLOW, HELEN STERLING.
  The Wonder-Worker. Scr. Aug., '14.

WINSLOW, HORATIO.
  ***The Wonderful City. Bel. Sept. 11, '15.

WINTER, GERTRUDE M.
  *An April Night's Mischief. Harp. M. May, '14.

WINTERS, OWEN B.
  The Last Rivet. Lip. June, '15.

WITHERBEE, NORTH.
  The Paths of Memory. I.S.M. Feb. 7, '15.

WODEHOUSE, PELHAM GRENVILLE.
  "Bill, the Bloodhound." Cen. Feb., '15.
  Concealed Art. Pict. R. July, '15.
  Extricating Young Gussie. S.E.P. Sept. 18, '15.
  Parted Ways. Pict. R. June, '15.
  T. Geisenheimer's. S.E.P. Aug. 21, '15.
  The Test Case. I.S.M. Dec. 12, '15.

WOLFE, LOUISE.
  The Pomeranian. E.W. Dec. 20, '15.

WOLJESKA, HELEN.
  *Grandmother. S.S. April, '15.

WONDERLY, W. CAREY.
  Romance for Two. I.S.M. Oct. 10, '15.
  The Way of Success. I.S.M. April 25, '15.

WOOD, JOHN SEYMOUR.
  **The Nippon Garden. Scr. Nov., '15.
  **Under Three Steeples. Scr. Dec., '14.

WOOD, JR., LEONARD.
  The Drifter. Lip. April, '15.

WOODROW, MRS. WILSON.
  Men Are So Queer: Women Are So Strange. I.S.M. Jan. 24, '15.
  The Bargain. Harp. B. July, '15.
  The Psychological Decider. Pict. R. July, '15.
  The Show-Down. McC. Oct., '15.
  This Matter of Marriage. A.S.M. April 18, '15.

WOODS, ALICE.
  Dawn. Am. Oct., '15.

"WORTH, PATIENCE."
  **The Stranger. Mir. Oct. 15, '15.

WORTHINGTON, LOUISA SKINNER.
  In Her Official Capacity. Pict. R. April, '15.

WRIGHT, AUSTIN TAPPAN.
  *"1915?" Atl. April, '15.

WRIGHT, RICHARDSON.
  *"Wolf! Wolf!" Bel. Oct. 30, '15.

WRIGHT, WILLIAM.
  *The Speed King. Scr. July, '15.


X

XAVIER, GERTRUDE.
  "Miss Peek-A-Boo." Sun. March, '15,
  Obliging Amelia. Sun. June, '15.


Y

YATES, L.B.
  Beating the Barrier. S.E.P. Oct. 16, '15.
  Major Miles and the Grim Reaper. S.E.P. July 18, '14.
  Major Miles and the Humming Bird. S.E.P. Jan. 2, '15.
  Major Miles' Chickens. S.E.P. Oct. 17, '14.
  Marrying a Meal Ticket. S.E.P. Sept. 18, '15.
  The Art of Singin' Kid. Col. Aug. 15, '14.
  The Chalk Game. S.E.P. June 5, '15.
  The Hustler's Handicap. Col. Oct. 3, '14.
  The Melting of an Ice Trust. S.E.P. Aug. 29, '14.
  Troupin' With Dan Cupid. S.E.P. May 8, '15.

YEZIERSKA, ANZIA.
  *The Free Vacation House. For. Dec., '15.


Z

ZANGWILL, E. AYRTON.
  The Love of Women. Lip. Aug., '15.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber's Note: Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation are|
|as in the original.                                                |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+





End of Project Gutenberg's The Best Short Stories of 1915, by Various