Modern Short Stories: A Book for High Schools

by Unknown

II

Another day, hot and breathless. A deserted farmhouse, large, with many outbuildings and an orchard, standing in a clearing. From the woods, on a roan horse, carbine across pommel, rode the young man with the quick black eyes. He breathed with relief as he gained the house. That a fight had taken place here earlier in the season was evident. Clips and empty cartridges, tarnished with verdigris, lay on the ground, which, while wet, had been torn up by the hoofs of horses. Hard by the kitchen garden were graves, tagged and numbered. From the oak tree by the kitchen door, in tattered, weather-beaten garments, hung the bodies of two men. The faces, shriveled and defaced, bore no likeness to the faces of men. The roan horse snorted beneath them, and the rider caressed and soothed it and tied it farther away.

Entering the house, he found the interior a wreck. He trod on empty cartridges as he walked from room to room to reconnoiter from the windows. Men had camped and slept everywhere, and on the floor of one room he came upon stains unmistakable where the wounded had been laid down.

Again outside, he led the horse around behind the barn and invaded the orchard. A dozen trees were burdened with ripe apples. He filled his pockets, eating while he picked. Then a thought came to him, and he glanced at the sun, calculating the time of his return to camp. He pulled off his shirt, tying the sleeves and making a bag. This he proceeded to fill with apples.

As he was about to mount his horse, the animal suddenly pricked up its ears. The man, too, listened, and heard, faintly, the thud of hoofs on soft earth. He crept to the corner of the barn and peered out. A dozen mounted men, strung out loosely, approaching from the opposite side of the clearing, were only a matter of a hundred yards or so away. They rode on to the house. Some dismounted, while others remained in the saddle as an earnest that their stay would be short. They seemed to be holding a council, for he could hear them talking excitedly in the detested tongue of the alien invader. The time passed, but they seemed unable to reach a decision. He put the carbine away in its boot, mounted, and waited impatiently, balancing the shirt of apples on the pommel.

He heard footsteps approaching, and drove his spurs so fiercely into the roan as to force a surprised groan from the animal as it leaped forward. At the corner of the barn he saw the intruder, a mere boy of nineteen or twenty for all of his uniform, jump back to escape being run down. At the same moment the roan swerved, and its rider caught a glimpse of the aroused men by the house. Some were springing from their horses, and he could see the rifles going to their shoulders. He passed the kitchen door and the dried corpses swinging in the shade, compelling his foes to run around the front of the house. A rifle cracked, and a second, but he was going fast, leaning forward, low in the saddle, one hand clutching the shirt of apples, the other guiding the horse.

The top bar of the fence was four feet high, but he knew his roan and leaped it at full career to the accompaniment of several scattered shots. Eight hundred yards straight away were the woods, and the roan was covering the distance with mighty strides. Every man was now firing. They were pumping their guns so rapidly that he no longer heard individual shots. A bullet went through his hat, but he was unaware, though he did know when another tore through the apples on the pommel. And he winced and ducked even lower when a third bullet, fired low, struck a stone between his horse’s legs and ricochetted off through the air, buzzing and humming like some incredible insect.

The shots died down as the magazines were emptied, until, quickly, there was no more shooting. The young man was elated. Through that astonishing fusillade he had come unscathed. He glanced back. Yes, they had emptied their magazines. He could see several reloading. Others were running back behind the house for their horses. As he looked, two already mounted, came back into view around the corner, riding hard. And at the same moment, he saw the man with the unmistakable ginger beard kneel down on the ground, level his gun, and coolly take his time for the long shot.

The young man threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very low, and swerved in his flight in order to distract the other’s aim. And still the shot did not come. With each jump of the horse, the woods sprang nearer. They were only two hundred yards away, and still the shot was delayed.

And then he heard it, the last thing he was to hear, for he was dead ere he hit the ground in the long crashing fall from the saddle. And they, watching at the house, saw him fall, saw his body bounce when it struck the earth, and saw the burst of red-cheeked apples that rolled about him. They laughed at the unexpected eruption of apples, and clapped their hands in applause of the long shot by the man with the ginger beard.

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THE BATTLE OF THE MONSTERS
By Morgan Robertson

Extract from hospital record of the case of John Anderson, patient of Dr. Brown, Ward 3, Room 6:

August 3. Arrived at hospital in extreme mental distress, having been bitten on the wrist three hours previously by dog known to have been rabid. Large, strong man, full-blooded and well nourished. Sanguine temperament. Pulse and temperature higher than normal, due to excitement. Cauterized wound at once (2 P.M.) and inoculated with antitoxin.

As patient admits having recently escaped, by swimming ashore, from lately arrived cholera ship, now at quarantine, he has been isolated and clothing disinfected. Watch for symptoms of cholera.

August 3, 6 P.M. Microscopic examination of blood corroborative of Metschnikoff’s theory of fighting leucocytes. White corpuscles gorged with bacteria.

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He was an amphibian, and, as such, undeniably beautiful; for the sunlight, refracted and diffused in the water, gave his translucent, pearl-blue body all the shifting colors of the spectrum. Vigorous and graceful of movement, in shape he resembled a comma of three dimensions, twisted, when at rest, to a slight spiral curve; but in traveling he straightened out with quick successive jerks, each one sending him ahead a couple of lengths. Supplemented by the undulatory movement of a long continuation of his tail, it was his way of swimming, good enough to enable him to escape his enemies; this, and riding at anchor in a current by his cable-like appendage, constituting his main occupation in life. The pleasure of eating was denied him; nature had given him a mouth, but he used it only for purposes of offense and defense, absorbing his food in a most unheard-of manner—through the soft walls of his body.

Yet he enjoyed a few social pleasures. Though the organs of the five senses were missing in his economy, he possessed an inner sixth sense which answered for all and also gave him power of speech. He would converse, swap news and views, with creatures of his own and other species, provided that they were of equal size and prowess; but he wasted no time on any but his social peers. Smaller creatures he pursued when they annoyed him; larger ones pursued him.

The sunlight, which made him so beautiful to look at, was distasteful to him; it also made him too visible. He preferred a half-darkness and less fervor to life’s battle—time to judge of chances, to figure on an enemy’s speed and turning-circle, before beginning flight or pursuit. But his dislike of it really came of a stronger animus—a shuddering recollection of three hours once passed on dry land in a comatose condition, which had followed a particularly long and intense period of bright sunlight. He had never been able to explain the connection, but the awful memory still saddened his life.

And now it seemed, as he swam about, that this experience might be repeated. The light was strong and long-continued, the water uncomfortably warm, and the crowd about him denser—so much so as to prevent him from attending properly to a social inferior who had crossed his bow. But just as his mind grasped the full imminence of the danger, there came a sudden darkness, a crash and vibration of the water, then a terrible, rattling roar of sound. The social inferior slipped from his mouth, and with his crowding neighbors was washed far away, while he felt himself slipping along, bounding and rebounding against the projections of a corrugated wall which showed white in the gloom. There was an unpleasant taste to the water, and he became aware of creatures in his vicinity unlike any he had known,—quickly darting little monsters about a tenth as large as himself,—thousands of them, black and horrid to see, each with short, fish-like body and square head like that of a dog; with wicked mouth that opened and shut nervously; with hooked flippers on the middle part, and a bunch of tentacles on the fore that spread out ahead and around. A dozen of them surrounded him menacingly; but he was young and strong, much larger than they, and a little frightened. A blow of his tail killed two, and the rest drew off.

The current bore them on until the white wall rounded off and was lost to sight beyond the mass of darting creatures. Here was slack water, and with desperate effort he swam back, pushing the small enemies out of his path, meeting some resistance and receiving a few bites, until, in a hollow in the wall, he found temporary refuge and time to think. But he could not solve the problem. He had not the slightest idea where he was or what had happened—who and what were the strange black creatures, or why they had threatened him.

His thoughts were interrupted. Another vibrant roar sounded, and there was pitch-black darkness; then he was pushed and washed away from his shelter, jostled, bumped, and squeezed, until he found himself in a dimly lighted tunnel, which, crowded as it was with swimmers, was narrow enough to enable him to see both sides at once. The walls were dark brown and blue, broken up everywhere into depressions or caves, some of them so deep as to be almost like blind tunnels. The dog-faced creatures were there—as far as he could see; but besides them, now, were others, of stranger shape—of species unknown to him.

A slow current carried them on, and soon they entered a larger tunnel. He swam to the opposite wall, gripped a projection, and watched in wonder and awe the procession gliding by. He soon noticed the source of the dim light. A small creature with barrel-like body and innumerable legs or tentacles, wavering and reaching, floated past. Its body swelled and shrank alternately, with every swelling giving out a phosphorescent glow, with every contraction darkening to a faint red color. Then came a group of others; then a second living lamp; later another and another: they were evenly distributed, and illumined the tunnel.

There were monstrous shapes, living but inert, barely pulsing with dormant life, as much larger than himself as the dog-headed kind were smaller—huge, unwieldy, disk-shaped masses of tissue, light gray at the margins, dark red in the middle. They were in the majority, and blocked the view. Darting and wriggling between and about them were horrible forms, some larger than himself, others smaller. There were serpents, who swam with a serpent’s motion. Some were serpents in form, but were curled rigidly into living cork-screws, and by sculling with their tails screwed their way through the water with surprising rapidity. Others were barrel-or globe-shaped, with swarming tentacles. With these they pulled themselves along, in and out through the crowd, or, bringing their squirming appendages rearward,—each an individual snake,—used them as propellers, and swam. There were creatures in the form of long cylinders, some with tentacles by which they rolled along like a log in a tide-way; others, without appendages, were as inert and helpless as the huge red-and-gray disks. He saw four ball-shaped creatures float by, clinging together; then a group of eight, then one of twelve. All these, to the extent of their volition, seemed to be in a state of extreme agitation and excitement.

The cause was apparent. The tunnel from which he had come was still discharging the dog-faced animals by the thousand, and he knew now the business they were on. It was war—war to the death. They flung themselves with furious energy into the parade, fighting and biting all they could reach. A hundred at a time would pounce on one of the large red-and-gray creatures, almost hiding it from view; then, and before they had passed out of sight, they would fall off and disperse, and the once living victim would come with them, in parts. The smaller, active swimmers fled, but if one was caught, he suffered; a quick dart, a tangle of tentacles, an embrace of the wicked flippers, a bite—and a dead body floated on.

And now into the battle came a ponderous engine of vengeance and defense. A gigantic, lumbering, pulsating creature, white and translucent but for the dark, active brain showing through its walls, horrible in the slow, implacable deliberation of its movements, floated down with the current. It was larger than the huge red-and-gray creatures. It was formless, in the full irony of the definition—for it assumed all forms. It was long—barrel-shaped; it shrank to a sphere, then broadened laterally, and again extended above and below. In turn it was a sphere, a disk, a pyramid, a pentahedron, a polyhedron. It possessed neither legs, flippers, nor tentacles; but out from its heaving, shrinking body it would send, now from one spot, now from another, an active arm, or feeler, with which it swam, pulled, or pushed. An unlucky invader which one of them touched made few more voluntary movements; for instantly the whole side of the whitish mass bristled with arms. They seized, crushed, killed it, and then pushed it bodily through the living walls to the animal’s interior to serve for food. And the gaping fissure healed at once, like the wounds of Milton’s warring angels.

The first white monster floated down, killing as he went; then came another, pushing eagerly into the fray; then came two, then three, then dozens. It seemed that the word had been passed, and the army of defense was mustering.

Sick with horror, he watched the grim spectacle from the shelter of the projection, until roused to an active sense of danger to himself—but not from the fighters. He was anchored by his tail, swinging easily in the eddy, and now felt himself touched from beneath, again from above. A projection down-stream was extending outward and toward him. The cave in which he had taken refuge was closing on him like a great mouth—as though directed by an intelligence behind the wall. With a terrified flirt of his tail he flung himself out, and as he drifted down with the combat the walls of the cave crunched together. It was well for him that he was not there.

The current was clogged with fragments of once living creatures, and everywhere, darting, dodging, and biting, were the fierce black invaders. But they paid no present attention to him or to the small tentacled animals. They killed the large, helpless red-and-gray kind, and were killed by the larger white monsters, each moment marking the death and rending to fragments of a victim, and the horrid interment of fully half his slayers. The tunnel grew larger, as mouth after mouth of tributary tunnels was passed; but as each one discharged its quota of swimming and drifting creatures, there was no thinning of the crowd.

As he drifted on with the inharmonious throng, he noticed what seemed the objective of the war. This was the caves which lined the tunnel. Some were apparently rigid, others were mobile. A large red-and-gray animal was pushed into the mouth of one of the latter, and the walls instantly closed; then they opened, and the creature drifted out, limp and colorless, but alive; and with him came fragments of the wall, broken off by the pressure. This happened again and again, but the large creature was never quite killed—merely squeezed. The tentacled non-combatants and the large white fighters seemed to know the danger of these tunnel mouths, possibly from bitter experiences, for they avoided the walls; but the dog-faced invaders sought this death, and only fought on their way to the caves. Sometimes two, often four or more, would launch themselves together into a hollow, but to no avail; their united strength could not prevent the closing in of the mechanical maw, and they were crushed and flung out, to drift on with other debris.

Soon the walls could not be seen for the pushing, jostling crowd, but everywhere the terrible, silent war went on until there came a time when fighting ceased; for each must look out for himself. They seemed to be in an immense cave, and the tide was broken into cross-currents rushing violently to the accompaniment of rhythmical thunder. They were shaken, jostled, pushed about and pushed together, hundreds of the smaller creatures dying from the pressure. Then there was a moment of comparative quiet, during which fighting was resumed, and there could be seen the swiftly flying walls of a large tunnel. Next they were rushed through a labyrinth of small caves with walls of curious, branching formation, sponge-like and intricate. It required energetic effort to prevent being caught in the meshes, and the large red-and-gray creatures were sadly torn and crushed, while the white ones fought their way through by main strength. Again the flying walls of a tunnel, again a mighty cave, and the cross-currents, and the rhythmical thunder, and now a wild charge down an immense tunnel, the wall of which surged outward and inward, in unison with the roaring of the thunder.

The thunder died away in the distance, though the walls still surged—even those of a smaller tunnel which divided the current and received them. Down-stream the tunnel branched again and again, and with the lessening of the diameter was a lessening of the current’s velocity, until, in a maze of small, short passages, the invaders, content to fight and kill in the swifter tide, again attacked the caves.

But to the never-changing result: they were crushed, mangled, and cast out, the number of suicides, in this neighborhood, largely exceeding those killed by the white warriors. And yet, in spite of the large mortality among them, the attacking force was increasing. Where one died two took his place; and the reason was soon made plain—they were reproducing. A black fighter, longer than his fellows, a little sluggish of movement, as though from the restrictive pressure of a large, round protuberance in his middle, which made him resemble a snake which had swallowed an egg, was caught by a white monster and instantly embraced by a multitude of feelers. He struggled, bit, and broke in two; then the two parts escaped the grip of the astonished captor, and wriggled away, the protuberance becoming the head of the rear portion, which immediately joined the fight, snapping and biting with unmistakable jaws. This phenomenon was repeated.

And on went the battle. Illumined by the living lamps, and watched by terrified noncombatants, the horrid carnival continued with never-slacking fury and ever-changing background—past the mouths of tributary tunnels which increased the volume and velocity of the current and added to the fighting strength, on through widening archways to a repetition of the cross-currents, the thunder, and the sponge-like maze, down past the heaving walls of larger tunnels to branched passages, where, in comparative slack water, the siege of the caves was resumed. For hour after hour this went on, the invaders dying by hundreds, but increasing by thousands and ten thousands, as the geometrical progression advanced, until, with swimming-spaces nearly choked by their bodies, living and dead, there came the inevitable turn in the tide of battle. A white monster was killed.

Glutted with victims, exhausted and sluggish, he was pounced upon by hundreds, hidden from view by a living envelop of black, which pulsed and throbbed with his death-throes. A feeler reached out, to be bitten off; then another, to no avail. His strength was gone, and the assailants bit and burrowed until they reached a vital part, when the great mass assumed a spherical form and throbbed no more. They dropped off, and, as the mangled ball floated on, charged on the next enemy with renewed fury and courage born of their victory. This one died as quickly.

And as though it had been foreseen, and a policy arranged to meet it, the white army no longer fought in the open, but lined up along the walls to defend the immovable caves. They avoided the working jaws of the other kind, which certainly needed no garrison, and drifting slowly in the eddies, fought as they could, with decreasing strength and increasing death-rate. And thus it happened that our conservative noncombatant, out in midstream, found himself surrounded by a horde of black enemies who had nothing better to do than attack him.

And they did. As many as could crowd about him closed their wicked jaws in his flesh. Squirming with pain, rendered trebly strong by his terror, he killed them by twos and threes as he could reach them with his tail. He shook them off with nervous contortions, only to make room for more. He plunged, rolled, launched himself forward and back, up and down, out and in, bending himself nearly double, then with lightning rapidity throwing himself far into the reverse curve. He was fighting for his life, and knew it. When he could, he used his jaws, only once to an enemy. He saw dimly at intervals that the white monsters were watching him; but none offered to help, and he had not time to call.

He thought that he must have become the object of the war; for from all sides they swarmed, crowding about him, seeking a place on which to fasten their jaws. Little by little the large red-and-gray creatures, the noncombatants, and the phosphorescent animals were pushed aside, and he, the center of an almost solid black mass, fought, in utter darkness, with the fury of extreme fright. He had no appreciation of the passing of time, no knowledge of his distance from the wall, or the destination of this never-pausing current. But finally, after an apparently interminable period, he heard dimly, with failing consciousness, the reverberations of the thunder, and knew momentary respite as the violent cross-currents tore his assailants away. Then, still in darkness, he felt the crashing and tearing of flesh against obstructing walls and sharp corners, the repetition of thunder and the roar of the current which told him he was once more in a large tunnel. An instant of light from a venturesome torch showed him to his enemies, and again he fought, like a whale in his last flurry, slowly dying from exhaustion and pain, but still potential to kill—terrible in his agony. There was no counting of scalps in that day’s work; but perhaps no devouring white monster in all the defensive army could have shown a death-list equal to this. From the surging black cloud there was a steady outflow of the dead, pushed back by the living.

Weaker and weaker, while they mangled his flesh, and still in darkness, he fought them down through branching passages to another network of small tunnels, where he caught a momentary view of the walls and the stolid white guard, thence on to what he knew was open space. And here he felt that he could fight no more. They had covered him completely, and, try as he might with his failing strength, he could not dislodge them. So he ceased his struggles; and numb with pain, dazed with despair, he awaited the end.

But it did not come. He was too exhausted to feel surprise or joy when they suddenly dropped away from him; but the instinct of self-preservation was still in force, and he swam toward the wall. The small creatures paid him no attention; they scurried this way and that, busy with troubles of their own, while he crept stupidly and painfully between two white sentries floating in the eddies,—one of whom considerately made room for him,—and anchored to a projection, luckily choosing a harbor that was not hostile.

“Any port in a storm, eh, neighbor?” said the one who had given him room, and who seemed to notice his dazed condition. “You’ll feel better soon. My, but you put up a good fight, that’s what you did!”

He could not answer, and the friendly guard resumed his vigil. In a few moments, however, he could take cognizance of what was going on in the stream. There was a new army in the fight, and reinforcements were still coming. A short distance above him was a huge rent in the wall, and the caves around it, crushed and distorted, were grinding fiercely. Protruding through the rent and extending half-way across the tunnel was a huge mass of some strange substance, roughly shaped to a cylindrical form. It was hollow, and out of it, by thousands and hundred thousands, was pouring the auxiliary army, from which the black fighters were now fleeing for dear life.

The newcomers, though resembling in general form the creatures they pursued, were much larger and of two distinct types. Both were light brown in color; but while one showed huge development of head and jaw, with small flippers, the other kind reversed these attributes, their heads being small, but their flippers long and powerful. They ran their quarry down in the open, and seized them with outreaching tentacles. No mistakes were made—no feints or false motions; and there was no resistance by the victims. Where one was noticed he was doomed. The tentacles gathered him in—to a murderous bite or a murderous embrace.

At last, when the inflow had ceased,—when there must have been millions of the brown killers in the tunnel,—the great hollow cylinder turned slowly on its axis and backed out through the rent in the wall, which immediately closed, with a crushing and scattering of fragments. Though the allies were far down-stream now, the war was practically ended; for the white defenders remained near the walls, and the black invaders were in wildest panic, each one, as the resistless current rushed him past, swimming against the stream, to put distance between himself and the destroyer below. But before long an advance-guard of the brown enemy shot out from the tributaries above, and the tide of retreat swung backward. Then came thousands of them, and the massacre was resumed.

“Hot stuff, eh?” said his friendly neighbor to him.

“Y-y-y-es—I guess so,” he answered, rather vacantly; “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it. I never saw such doings. What is it all for? What does it mean?”

“Oh, this is nothing; it’s all in a lifetime. Still, I admit it might ha’ been serious for us—and you, too—if we hadn’t got help.”

“But who are they, and what? They all seem of a family, and are killing each other.”

“Immortal shade of Darwin!” exclaimed the other sentry, who had not spoken before. “Where were you brought up? Don’t you know that variations from type are the deadliest enemies of the parent stock? These two brown breeds are the hundredth or two-hundredth cousins of the black kind. When they’ve killed off their common relative, and get to competing for grub, they’ll exterminate each other, and we’ll be rid of ’em all. Law of nature. Understand?”

“Oh, y-yes, I understand, of course; but what did the black kind attack me for? And what do they want, anyway?”

“To follow out their destiny, I s’pose. They’re the kind of folks who have missions. Reformers, we call ’em—who want to enforce their peculiar ideas and habits on other people. Sometimes we call them expansionists—fond of colonizing territory that doesn’t belong to them. They wanted to get through the cells to the lymph-passages, thence on to the brain and spinal marrow. Know what that means? Hydrophobia.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, say, now! You’re too easy.”

“Come, come,” said the other, good-naturedly; “don’t guy him. He never had our advantages. You see, neighbor, we get these points from the subjective brain, which knows all things and gives us our instructions. We’re the white corpuscles,—phagocytes, the scientists call us,—and our work is to police the blood-vessels, and kill off invaders that make trouble. Those red-and-gray chumps can’t take care of themselves, and we must protect ’em. Understand? But this invasion was too much for us, and we had to have help from outside. You must have come in with the first crowd—think I saw you—in at the bite. Second crowd came in through an inoculation tube, and just in time to pull you through.”

“I don’t know,” answered our bewildered friend. “In at the bite? What bite? I was swimming round comfortable-like, and there was a big noise, and then I was alongside of a big white wall, and then—”

“Exactly; the dog’s tooth. You got into bad company, friend, and you’re well out of it. That first gang is the microbe of rabies, not very well known yet, because a little too small to be seen by most microscopes. All the scientists seem to have learned about ’em is that a colony a few hundred generations old—which they call a culture, or serum—is death on the original bird; and that’s what they sent in to help out. Pasteur’s dead, worse luck, but sometime old Koch’ll find out what we’ve known all along—that it’s only variation from type.”

“Koch!” he answered eagerly and proudly. “Oh, I know Koch; I’ve met him. And I know about microscopes, too. Why, Koch had me under his microscope once. He discovered my family, and named us—the comma bacilli—the Spirilli of Asiatic Cholera.”

In silent horror they drew away from him, and then conversed together. Other white warriors drifting along stopped and joined the conference, and when a hundred or more were massed before him, they spread out to a semi-spherical formation and closed in.

“What’s the matter?” he asked nervously. “What’s wrong? What are you going to do? I haven’t done anything, have I?”

“It’s not what you’ve done, stranger,” said his quondam friend, “or what we’re going to do. It’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to die. Don’t see how you got past quarantine, anyhow?”

“What—why—I don’t want to die. I’ve done nothing. All I want is peace and quiet, and a place to swim where it isn’t too light nor too dark. I mind my own affairs. Let me alone—you hear me—let me alone!”

They answered him not. Slowly and irresistibly the hollow formation contracted—individuals slipping out when necessary—until he was pushed, still protesting, into the nearest movable cave. The walls crashed together and his life went out. When he was cast forth he was in five pieces.

And so our gentle, conservative, non-combative cholera microbe, who only wanted to be left alone to mind his own affairs, met this violent death, a martyr to prejudice and an unsympathetic environment.

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Extract from hospital record of the case of John Anderson:

August 18. As period of incubation for both cholera and hydrophobia has passed and no initial symptoms of either disease have been noticed, patient is this day discharged, cured.

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A DILEMMA
By S. WEIR MITCHELL

I was just thirty-seven when my Uncle Philip died. A week before that event he sent for me; and here let me say that I had never set eyes on him. He hated my mother, but I do not know why. She told me long before his last illness that I need expect nothing from my father’s brother. He was an inventor, an able and ingenious mechanical engineer, and had made much money by his improvement in turbine-wheels. He was a bachelor; lived alone, cooked his own meals, and collected precious stones, especially rubies and pearls. From the time he made his first money he had this mania. As he grew richer, the desire to possess rare and costly gems became stronger. When he bought a new stone, he carried it in his pocket for a month and now and then took it out and looked at it. Then it was added to the collection in his safe at the trust company.

At the time he sent for me I was a clerk, and poor enough. Remembering my mother’s words, his message gave me, his sole relative, no new hopes; but I thought it best to go.

When I sat down by his bedside, he began, with a malicious grin:

“I suppose you think me queer. I will explain.” What he said was certainly queer enough. “I have been living on an annuity into which I put my fortune. In other words, I have been, as to money, concentric half of my life to enable me to be as eccentric as I pleased the rest of it. Now I repent of my wickedness to you all, and desire to live in the memory of at least one of my family. You think I am poor and have only my annuity. You will be profitably surprised. I have never parted with my precious stones; they will be yours. You are my sole heir. I shall carry with me to the other world the satisfaction of making one man happy.

“No doubt you have always had expectations, and I desire that you should continue to expect. My jewels are in my safe. There is nothing else left.”

When I thanked him he grinned all over his lean face, and said:

“You will have to pay for my funeral.”

I must say that I never looked forward to any expenditure with more pleasure than to what it would cost me to put him away in the earth. As I rose to go, he said:

“The rubies are valuable. They are in my safe at the trust company. Before you unlock the box, be very careful to read a letter which lies on top of it; and be sure not to shake the box.” I thought this odd. “Don’t come back. It won’t hasten things.”

He died that day week, and was handsomely buried. The day after, his will was found, leaving me his heir. I opened his safe and found in it nothing but an iron box, evidently of his own making, for he was a skilled workman and very ingenious. The box was heavy and strong, about ten inches long, eight inches wide and ten inches high. On it lay a letter to me. It ran thus:

“Dear Tom: This box contains a large number of very fine pigeon-blood rubies and a fair lot of diamonds; one is blue—a beauty. There are hundreds of pearls—one the famous green pearl and a necklace of blue pearls, for which any woman would sell her soul—or her affections.” I thought of Susan. “I wish you to continue to have expectations and continuously to remember your dear uncle. I would have left these stones to some charity, but I hate the poor as much as I hate your mother’s son,—yes, rather more.

“The box contains an interesting mechanism, which will act with certainty as you unlock it, and explode ten ounces of my improved, supersensitive dynamite—no, to be accurate, there are only nine and a half ounces. Doubt me, and open it, and you will be blown to atoms. Believe me, and you will continue to nourish expectations which will never be fulfilled. As a considerate man, I counsel extreme care in handling the box. Don’t forget your affectionate

“Uncle.”

I stood appalled, the key in my hand. Was it true? Was it a lie? I had spent all my savings on the funeral, and was poorer than ever.

Remembering the old man’s oddity, his malice, his cleverness in mechanic arts, and the patent explosive which had helped to make him rich, I began to feel how very likely it was that he had told the truth in this cruel letter.

I carried the iron box away to my lodgings, set it down with care in a closet, laid the key on it, and locked the closet.

Then I sat down, as yet hopeful, and began to exert my ingenuity upon ways of opening the box without being killed. There must be a way.

After a week of vain thinking I bethought me, one day, that it would be easy to explode the box by unlocking it at a safe distance, and I arranged a plan with wires, which seemed as if it would answer. But when I reflected on what would happen when the dynamite scattered the rubies, I knew that I should be none the richer. For hours at a time I sat looking at that box and handling the key.

At last I hung the key on my watch-guard; but then it occurred to me that it might be lost or stolen. Dreading this, I hid it, fearful that some one might use it to open the box. This state of doubt and fear lasted for weeks, until I became nervous and began to dread that some accident might happen to that box. A burglar might come and boldly carry it away and force it open and find it was a wicked fraud of my uncle’s. Even the rumble and vibration caused by the heavy vans in the street became at last a terror.

Worst of all, my salary was reduced, and I saw that marriage was out of the question.

In my despair I consulted Professor Clinch about my dilemma, and as to some safe way of getting at the rubies. He said that, if my uncle had not lied, there was none that would not ruin the stones, especially the pearls, but that it was a silly tale and altogether incredible. I offered him the biggest ruby if he wished to test his opinion. He did not desire to do so.

Dr. Schaff, my uncle’s doctor, believed the old man’s letter, and added a caution, which was entirely useless, for by this time I was afraid to be in the room with that terrible box.

At last the doctor kindly warned me that I was in danger of losing my mind with too much thought about my rubies. In fact, I did nothing else but contrive wild plans to get at them safely. I spent all my spare hours at one of the great libraries reading about dynamite. Indeed, I talked of it until the library attendants, believing me a lunatic or a dynamite fiend, declined to humor me, and spoke to the police. I suspect that for a while I was “shadowed” as a suspicious, and possibly criminal, character. I gave up the libraries, and, becoming more and more fearful, set my precious box on a down pillow, for fear of its being shaken; for at this time even the absurd possibility of its being disturbed by an earthquake troubled me. I tried to calculate the amount of shake needful to explode my box.

The old doctor, when I saw him again, begged me to give up all thought of the matter, and, as I felt how completely I was the slave of one despotic idea, I tried to take the good advice thus given me.

Unhappily, I found, soon after, between the leaves of my uncle’s Bible, a numbered list of the stones with their cost and much beside. It was dated two years before my uncle’s death. Many of the stones were well known, and their enormous value amazed me.

Several of the rubies were described with care, and curious histories of them were given in detail. One was said to be the famous “Sunset ruby,” which had belonged to the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa. One was called the “Blood ruby,” not, as was explained, because of the color, but on account of the murders it had occasioned. Now, as I read, it seemed again to threaten death.

The pearls were described with care as an unequalled collection. Concerning two of them my uncle had written what I might call biographies,—for, indeed, they seemed to have done much evil and some good. One, a black pearl, was mentioned in an old bill of sale as—She—which seemed queer to me.

It was maddening. Here, guarded by a vision of sudden death, was wealth “beyond the dreams of avarice.” I am not a clever or ingenious man; I know little beyond how to keep a ledger, and so I was, and am, no doubt, absurd about many of my notions as to how to solve this riddle.

At one time I thought of finding a man who would take the risk of unlocking the box, but what right had I to subject any one else to the trial I dared not face? I could easily drop the box from a height somewhere, and if it did not explode could then safely unlock it; but if it did blow up when it fell, good-by to my rubies. Mine, indeed! I was rich, and I was not. I grew thin and morbid, and so miserable that, being a good Catholic, I at last carried my troubles to my father confessor. He thought it simply a cruel jest of my uncle’s, but was not so eager for another world as to be willing to open my box. He, too, counselled me to cease thinking about it. Good heavens! I dreamed about it. Not to think about it was impossible. Neither my own thought nor science nor religion had been able to assist me.

Two years have gone by, and I am one of the richest men in the city, and have no more money than will keep me alive.

Susan said I was half cracked like Uncle Philip, and broke off her engagement. In my despair I have advertised in the “Journal of Science,” and have had absurd schemes sent me by the dozen. At last, as I talked too much about it, the thing became so well known that when I put the horror in a safe, in bank, I was promptly desired to withdraw it. I was in constant fear of burglars, and my landlady gave me notice to leave, because no one would stay in the house with that box. I am now advised to print my story and await advice from the ingenuity of the American mind.

I have moved into the suburbs and hidden the box and changed my name and my occupation. This I did to escape the curiosity of the reporters. I ought to say that when the government officials came to hear of my inheritance, they very reasonably desired to collect the succession tax on my uncle’s estate.

I was delighted to assist them. I told the collector my story, and showed him Uncle Philip’s letter. Then I offered him the key, and asked for time to get half a mile away. That man said he would think it over and come back later.

This is all I have to say. I have made a will and left my rubies and pearls to the Society for the Prevention of Human Vivisection. If any man thinks this account a joke or an invention, let him coldly imagine the situation:

Given an iron box, known to contain wealth, said to contain dynamite, arranged to explode when the key is used to unlock it—what would any sane man do? What would he advise?

---

THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE[^[8]]
By A. CONAN DOYLE

[8]. By permission of Harper & Brothers.

I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year, and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman, with fiery red hair. With an apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw when Holmes pulled me abruptly into the room and closed the door behind me.

“You could not possibly have come at a better time, my dear Watson,” he said, cordially.

“I was afraid that you were engaged.”

“So I am. Very much so.”

“Then I can wait in the next room.”

“Not at all. This gentleman, Mr. Wilson, has been my partner and helper in many of my most successful cases, and I have no doubt that he will be of the utmost use to me in yours also.”

The stout gentleman half rose from his chair and gave a bob of greeting, with a quick, little, questioning glance from his small, fat-encircled eyes.

“Try the settee,” said Holmes, relapsing into his arm-chair and putting his finger-tips together, as was his custom when in judicial moods. “I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life. You have shown your relish for it by the enthusiasm which has prompted you to chronicle, and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish so many of my own little adventures.”

“Your cases have indeed been of the greatest interest to me,” I observed.

“You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”

“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”

“You did, doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you, until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right. Now, Mr. Jabez Wilson here has been good enough to call upon me this morning, and to begin a narrative which promises to be one of the most singular which I have listened to for some time. You have heard me remark that the strangest and most unique things are very often connected not with the larger but with the smaller crimes, and occasionally, indeed, where there is room for doubt whether any positive crime has been committed. As far as I have heard it is impossible for me to say whether the present case is an instance of crime or not, but the course of events is certainly among the most singular that I have ever listened to. Perhaps, Mr. Wilson, you would have the great kindness to recommence your narrative. I ask you, not merely because my friend Dr. Watson has not heard the opening part, but also because the peculiar nature of the story makes me anxious to have every possible detail from your lips. As a rule, when I have heard some slight indication of the course of events, I am able to guide myself by the thousands of other similar cases which occur to my memory. In the present instance I am forced to admit that the facts are, to the best of my belief, unique.”

The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of some little pride, and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the inside pocket of his great-coat. As he glanced down the advertisement column, with his head thrust forward, and the paper flattened out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man, and endeavored, after the fashion of my companion, to read the indications which might be presented by his dress or appearance.

I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy gray shepherd’s check trousers, a not over-clean black frock-coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed top-hat and a faded brown overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside him. Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man save his blazing red head, and the expression of extreme chagrin and discontent upon his features.

Sherlock Holmes’s quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. “Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labor, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.

“How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?” he asked. “How did you know, for example, that I did manual labor? It’s as true as gospel, for I began as a ship’s carpenter.”

“Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger than your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more developed.”

“Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?”

“I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that, especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use an arc-and-compass breastpin.”

“Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?”

“What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for five inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the elbow where you rest it upon the desk?”

“Well, but China?”

“The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks, and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes’ scales a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the matter becomes even more simple.”

Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. “Well, I never!” said he. “I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all.”

“I begin to think, Watson,” said Holmes, “that I make a mistake in explaining. ‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico,’ you know, and my poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid. Can you not find the advertisement, Mr. Wilson?”

“Yes, I have got it now,” he answered, with his thick, red finger planted half-way down the column. “Here it is. This is what began it all. You just read it for yourself, sir.”

I took the paper from him, and read as follows:

“To the Red-headed League: On account of the bequest of the late Ezekiah Hopkins, of Lebanon, Pa., U.S.A., there is now another vacancy open which entitles a member of the League to a salary of £4 a week for purely nominal services. All red-headed men who are sound in body and mind, and above the age of twenty-one years, are eligible. Apply in person on Monday, at eleven o’clock, to Duncan Ross, at the offices of the League, 7 Pope’s Court, Fleet Street.”

“What on earth does this mean?” I ejaculated, after I had twice read over the extraordinary announcement.

Holmes chuckled, and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit when in high spirits. “It is a little off the beaten track, isn’t it?” said he. “And now, Mr. Wilson, off you go at scratch, and tell us all about yourself, your household, and the effect which this advertisement had upon your fortunes. You will first make a note, doctor, of the paper and the date.”

“It is The Morning Chronicle, of April 27, 1890. Just two months ago.”

“Very good. Now, Mr. Wilson?”

“Well, it is just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead; “I have a small pawnbroker’s business at Coburg Square, near the city. It’s not a very large affair, and of late years it has not done more than just give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants, but now I only keep one; and I would have a job to pay him, but that he is willing to come for half wages, so as to learn the business.”

“What is the name of this obliging youth?” asked Sherlock Holmes.

“His name is Vincent Spaulding, and he’s not such a youth, either. It’s hard to say his age. I should not wish a smarter assistant, Mr. Holmes; and I know very well that he could better himself, and earn twice what I am able to give him. But, after all, if he is satisfied, why should I put ideas in his head?”

“Why, indeed? You seem most fortunate in having an employé who comes under the full market price. It is not a common experience among employers in this age. I don’t know that your assistant is not as remarkable as your advertisement.”

“Oh, he has his faults, too,” said Mr. Wilson. “Never was such a fellow for photography. Snapping away with a camera when he ought to be improving his mind, and then diving down into the cellar like a rabbit into its hole to develop his pictures. That is his main fault; but, on the whole, he’s a good worker. There’s no vice in him.”

“He is still with you, I presume?”

“Yes, sir. He and a girl of fourteen, who does a bit of simple cooking, and keeps the place clean—that’s all I have in the house, for I am a widower, and never had any family. We live very quietly, sir, the three of us; and we keep a roof over our heads, and pay our debts, if we do nothing more.

“The first thing that put us out was that advertisement. Spaulding, he came down into the office just this day eight weeks, with this very paper in his hand, and he says:

“‘I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a red-headed man.’

“‘Why that?’ I asks.

“‘Why,’ says he, ‘here’s another vacancy in the League of the Red-headed Men. It’s worth quite a little fortune to any man who gets it, and I understand that there are more vacancies than there are men, so that the trustees are at their wits’ end what to do with the money. If my hair would only change color, here’s a nice little crib all ready for me to step into.’

“‘Why, what is it, then?’ I asked. You see, Mr. Holmes, I am a very stay-at-home man, and as my business came to me instead of my having to go to it, I was often weeks on end without putting my foot over the door-mat. In that way I didn’t know much of what was going on outside, and I was always glad of a bit of news.

“‘Have you never heard of the League of the Red-headed Men?’ he asked, with his eyes open.

“‘Never.’

“‘Why, I wonder at that, for you are eligible yourself for one of the vacancies.’

“‘And what are they worth?’ I asked.

“‘Oh, merely a couple of hundred a year, but the work is slight, and it need not interfere very much with one’s other occupations.’

“Well, you can easily think that that made me prick up my ears, for the business has not been over-good for some years, and an extra couple of hundred would have been very handy.

“‘Tell me all about it,’ said I.

“‘Well,’ said he, showing me the advertisement, ‘you can see for yourself that the League has a vacancy, and there is the address where you should apply for particulars. As far as I can make out, the League was founded by an American millionaire, Ezekiah Hopkins, who was very peculiar in his ways. He was himself red-headed, and he had a great sympathy for all red-headed men; so, when he died, it was found that he had left his enormous fortune in the hands of trustees, with instructions to apply the interest to the providing of easy berths to men whose hair is of that color. From all I hear it is splendid pay, and very little to do.’

“‘But,’ said I, ‘there would be millions of red-headed men who would apply.’

“‘Not so many as you might think,’ he answered. ‘You see it is really confined to Londoners, and to grown men. This American had started from London when he was young, and he wanted to do the old town a good turn. Then, again, I have heard it is no use your applying if your hair is light red, or dark red, or anything but real bright, blazing, fiery red. Now, if you cared to apply, Mr. Wilson, you would just walk in; but perhaps it would hardly be worth your while to put yourself out of the way for the sake of a few hundred pounds.’

“Now, it is a fact, gentlemen, as you may see for yourselves, that my hair is of a very full and rich tint, so that it seemed to me that, if there was to be any competition in the matter, I stood as good a chance as any man that I had ever met. Vincent Spaulding seemed to know so much about it that I thought he might prove useful, so I just ordered him to put up the shutters for the day, and to come right away with me. He was very willing to have a holiday, so we shut the business up, and started off for the address that was given us in the advertisement.

“I never hope to see such a sight as that again, Mr. Holmes. From north, south, east, and west every man who had a shade of red in his hair had tramped into the city to answer the advertisement. Fleet Street was choked with red-headed folk, and Pope’s Court looked like a coster’s orange barrow. I should not have thought there were so many in the whole country as were brought together by that single advertisement. Every shade of color they were—straw, lemon, orange, brick, Irish-setter, liver, clay; but, as Spaulding said, there were not many who had the real vivid flame-colored tint. When I saw how many were waiting, I would have given it up in despair; but Spaulding would not hear of it. How he did it I could not imagine, but he pushed and pulled and butted until he got me through the crowd, and right up to the steps which led to the office. There was a double stream upon the stair, some going up in hope, and some coming back dejected; but we wedged in as well as we could, and soon found ourselves in the office.”

“Your experience has been a most entertaining one,” remarked Holmes, as his client paused and refreshed his memory with a huge pinch of snuff. “Pray continue your very interesting statement.”

“There was nothing in the office but a couple of wooden chairs and a deal table, behind which sat a small man, with a head that was even redder than mine. He said a few words to each candidate as he came up, and then he always managed to find some fault in them which would disqualify them. Getting a vacancy did not seem to be such a very easy matter, after all. However, when our turn came, the little man was much more favorable to me than to any of the others, and he closed the door as we entered, so that he might have a private word with us.

“‘This is Mr. Jabez Wilson,’ said my assistant, ‘and he is willing to fill a vacancy in the League.’

“‘And he is admirably suited for it,’ the other answered. ‘He has every requirement. I cannot recall when I have seen anything so fine.’ He took a step backward, cocked his head on one side, and gazed at my hair until I felt quite bashful. Then suddenly he plunged forward, wrung my hand, and congratulated me warmly on my success.

“‘It would be injustice to hesitate,’ said he. ‘You will, however, I am sure, excuse me for taking an obvious precaution.’ With that he seized my hair in both his hands, and tugged until I yelled with the pain. ‘There is water in your eyes,’ said he, as he released me. ‘I perceive that all is as it should be. But we have to be careful, for we have twice been deceived by wigs and once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler’s wax which would disgust you with human nature.’ He stepped over to the window, and shouted through it at the top of his voice that the vacancy was filled. A groan of disappointment came up from below, and the folk all trooped away in different directions, until there was not a red head to be seen except my own and that of the manager.

“‘My name,’ said he, ‘is Mr. Duncan Ross, and I am myself one of the pensioners upon the fund left by our noble benefactor. Are you a married man, Mr. Wilson? Have you a family?’

“I answered that I had not.

“His face fell immediately.

“‘Dear me!’ he said, gravely, ‘that is very serious indeed! I am sorry to hear you say that. The fund was, of course, for the propagation and spread of the red-heads as well as for their maintenance. It is exceedingly unfortunate that you should be a bachelor.’

“My face lengthened at this, Mr. Holmes, for I thought that I was not to have the vacancy after all; but, after thinking it over for a few minutes, he said that it would be all right.

“‘In the case of another,’ said he, ‘the objection might be fatal, but we must stretch a point in favor of a man with such a head of hair as yours. When shall you be able to enter upon your new duties?’

“‘Well, it is a little awkward, for I have a business already,’ said I.

“‘Oh, never mind about that, Mr. Wilson!’ said Vincent Spaulding. ‘I shall be able to look after that for you.’

“‘What would be the hours?’ I asked.

“‘Ten to two.’

“Now a pawnbroker’s business is mostly done of an evening, Mr. Holmes, especially Thursday and Friday evening, which is just before pay-day; so it would suit me very well to earn a little in the mornings. Besides, I knew that my assistant was a good man, and that he would see to anything that turned up.

“‘That would suit me very well,’ said I. ‘And the pay?’

“‘Is £4 a week.’

“‘And the work?’

“‘Is purely nominal.’

“‘What do you call purely nominal?’

“‘Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in the building, the whole time. If you leave, you forfeit your whole position forever. The will is very clear upon that point. You don’t comply with the conditions if you budge from the office during that time.’

“‘It’s only four hours a day, and I should not think of leaving,’ said I.

“‘No excuse will avail,’ said Mr. Duncan Ross; ‘neither sickness nor business nor anything else. There you must stay, or you lose your billet.’

“‘And the work?’

“‘Is to copy out the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” There is the first volume of it in that press. You must find your own ink, pens, and blotting-paper, but we provide this table and chair. Will you be ready to-morrow?’

“‘Certainly,’ I answered.

“‘Then, good-bye, Mr. Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate you once more on the important position which you have been fortunate enough to gain.’ He bowed me out of the room, and I went home with my assistant, hardly knowing what to say or do, I was so pleased at my own good fortune.

“Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by evening I was in low spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the whole affair must be some great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past belief that any one could make such a will, or that they would pay such a sum for doing anything so simple as copying out the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’ Vincent Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, but by bedtime I had reasoned myself out of the whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a quill-pen, and seven sheets of foolscap paper, I started off for Pope’s Court.

“Well, to my surprise and delight, everything was as right as possible. The table was set out ready for me, and Mr. Duncan Ross was there to see that I got fairly to work. He started me off upon the letter A, and then he left me; but he would drop in from time to time to see that all was right with me. At two o’clock he bade me good-day, complimented me upon the amount that I had written, and locked the door of the office after me.

“This went on day after day, Mr. Holmes, and on Saturday the manager came in and planked down four golden sovereigns for my week’s work. It was the same next week, and the same the week after. Every morning I was there at ten, and every afternoon I left at two. By degrees Mr. Duncan Ross took to coming in only once of a morning, and then, after a time, he did not come in at all. Still, of course, I never dared to leave the room for an instant, for I was not sure when he might come, and the billet was such a good one, and suited me so well, that I would not risk the loss of it.

“Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about Abbots and Archery and Armor and Architecture and Attica, and hoped with diligence that I might get on to the B’s before very long. It cost me something in foolscap, and I had pretty nearly filled a shelf with my writings. And then suddenly the whole business came to an end.”

“To an end?”

“Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I went to my work as usual at ten o’clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square of card-board hammered on to the middle of the panel with a tack. Here it is, and you can read for yourself.”

He held up a piece of white card-board about the size of a sheet of note-paper. It read in this fashion:

“The Red-headed League

is

Dissolved.

October 9, 1890.”

Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped every other consideration that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.

“I cannot see that there is anything very funny,” cried our client, flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. “If you can do nothing better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere.”

“No, no,” cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from which he had half risen. “I really wouldn’t miss your case for the world. It is most refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you will excuse my saying so, something just a little funny about it. Pray what steps did you take when you found the card upon the door?”

“I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called at the offices round, but none of them seemed to know anything about it. Finally, I went to the landlord, who is an accountant living on the ground-floor, and I asked him if he could tell me what had become of the Red-headed League. He said that he had never heard of any such body. Then I asked him who Mr. Duncan Ross was. He answered that the name was new to him.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘the gentleman at No. 4.’

“‘What, the red-headed man?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Oh,’ said he, ‘his name was William Morris. He was a solicitor, and was using my room as a temporary convenience until his new premises were ready. He moved out yesterday.’

“‘Where could I find him?’

“‘Oh, at his new offices. He did tell me the address. Yes, 17 King Edward Street, near St. Paul’s.’

“I started off, Mr. Holmes, but when I got to that address it was a manufactory of artificial knee-caps, and no one in it had ever heard of either Mr. William Morris or Mr. Duncan Ross.”

“And what did you do then?” asked Holmes.

“I went home to Saxe-Coburg Square, and I took the advice of my assistant. But he could not help me in any way. He could only say that if I waited I should hear by post. But that was not quite good enough, Mr. Holmes. I did not wish to lose such a place without a struggle, so, as I had heard that you were good enough to give advice to poor folk who were in need of it, I came right away to you.”

“And you did very wisely,” said Holmes. “Your case is an exceedingly remarkable one, and I shall be happy to look into it. From what you have told me I think that it is possible that graver issues hang from it than might at first sight appear.”

“Grave enough!” said Mr. Jabez Wilson. “Why, I have lost four pound a week.”

“As far as you are personally concerned,” remarked Holmes, “I do not see that you have any grievance against this extraordinary league. On the contrary, you are, as I understand, richer by some £30, to say nothing of the minute knowledge which you have gained on every subject which comes under the letter A. You have lost nothing by them.”

“No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are, and what their object was in playing this prank—if it was a prank—upon me. It was a pretty expensive joke for them, for it cost them two and thirty pounds.”

“We shall endeavor to clear up these points for you. And, first, one or two questions, Mr. Wilson. This assistant of yours who first called your attention to the advertisement—how long had he been with you?”

“About a month then.”

“How did he come?”

“In answer to an advertisement.”

“Was he the only applicant?”

“No, I had a dozen.”

“Why did you pick him?”

“Because he was handy, and would come cheap.”

“At half wages, in fact.”

“Yes.”

“What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?”

“Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face, though he’s not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon his forehead.”

Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. “I thought as much,” said he. “Have you ever observed that his ears are pierced for earrings?”

“Yes, sir. He told me that a gypsy had done it for him when he was a lad.”

“Hum!” said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought. “He is still with you?”

“Oh, yes, sir; I have only just left him.”

“And has your business been attended to in your absence?”

“Nothing to complain of, sir. There’s never very much to do of a morning.”

“That will do, Mr. Wilson. I shall be happy to give you an opinion upon the subject in the course of a day or two. To-day is Saturday, and I hope that by Monday we may come to a conclusion.”

“Well, Watson,” said Holmes, when our visitor had left us, “what do you make of it all?”

“I make nothing of it,” I answered, frankly. “It is a most mysterious business.”

“As a rule,” said Holmes, “the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this matter.”

“What are you going to do, then?” I asked.

“To smoke,” he answered. “It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.” He curled himself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird. I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his mind, and put his pipe down upon the mantel-piece.

“Sarasate plays at the St. James’s Hall this afternoon,” he remarked. “What do you think, Watson? Could your patients spare you for a few hours?”

“I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never very absorbing.”

“Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the city first, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the program which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect. Come along!”

We travelled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short walk took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular story which we had listened to in the morning. It was a pokey, little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurel-bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with “Jabez Wilson” in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the place where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side, and looked it all over, with his eyes shining brightly between puckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the street, and then down again to the corner, still looking keenly at the houses. Finally he returned to the pawnbroker’s, and, having thumped vigorously upon the pavement with his stick two or three times, he went up to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a bright-looking, clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to step in.

“Thank you,” said Holmes, “I only wished to ask you how you would go from here to the Strand.”

“Third right, fourth left,” answered the assistant, promptly, closing the door.

“Smart fellow, that,” observed Holmes, as we walked away. “He is, in my judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have known something of him before.”

“Evidently,” said I, “Mr. Wilson’s assistant counts for a good deal in this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your way merely in order that you might see him.”

“Not him.”

“What then?”

“The knees of his trousers.”

“And what did you see?”

“What I expected to see.”

“Why did you beat the pavement?”

“My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We are spies in an enemy’s country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square. Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it.”

The road in which we found ourselves as we turned round the corner from the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as great a contrast to it as the front of a picture does to the back. It was one of the main arteries which convey the traffic of the city to the north and west. The roadway was blocked with the immense stream of commerce flowing in a double tide inward and outward, while the foot-paths were black with the hurrying swarm of pedestrians. It was difficult to realize as we looked at the line of fine shops and stately business premises that they really abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square which we had just quitted.

“Let me see,” said Holmes, standing at the corner, and glancing along the line, “I should like just to remember the order of the houses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is Mortimer’s, the tobacconist, the little newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane’s carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the other block. And now, doctor, we’ve done our work, so it’s time we had some play. A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums.”

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer, but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes, the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his arm-chair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James’s Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.

“You want to go home, no doubt, doctor,” he remarked, as we emerged.

“Yes, it would be as well.”

“And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This business at Coburg Square is serious.”

“Why serious?”

“A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to believe that we shall be in time to stop it. But to-day being Saturday rather complicates matters. I shall want your help to-night.”

“At what time?”

“Ten will be early enough.”

“I shall be at Baker Street at ten.”

“Very well. And, I say, doctor, there may be some little danger, so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket.” He waved his hand, turned on his heel, and disappeared in an instant among the crowd.

I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened, but what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and grotesque. As I drove home to my house in Kensington I thought over it all, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed copier of the “Encyclopædia” down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker’s assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set the matter aside until night should bring an explanation.

It was a quarter past nine when I started from home and made my way across the Park, and so through Oxford Street to Baker Street. Two hansoms were standing at the door, and, as I entered the passage, I heard the sound of voices from above. On entering his room I found Holmes in animated conversation with two men, one of whom I recognized as Peter Jones, the official police agent, while the other was a long, thin, sad-faced man, with a very shiny hat and oppressively respectable frock-coat.

“Ha! our party is complete,” said Holmes, buttoning up his pea-jacket, and taking his heavy hunting crop from the rack. “Watson, I think you know Mr. Jones, of Scotland Yard? Let me introduce you to Mr. Merryweather, who is to be our companion in to-night’s adventure.”

“We’re hunting in couples again, doctor, you see,” said Jones, in his consequential way. “Our friend here is a wonderful man for starting a chase. All he wants is an old dog to help him to do the running down.”

“I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of our chase,” observed Mr. Merryweather, gloomily.

“You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir,” said the police agent, loftily. “He has his own little methods, which are, if he won’t mind my saying so, just a little too theoretical and fantastic, but he has the makings of a detective in him. It is not too much to say that once or twice, as in that business of the Sholto murder and the Agra treasure, he has been more nearly correct than the official force.”

“Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right,” said the stranger, with deference. “Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. It is the first Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my rubber.”

“I think you will find,” said Sherlock Holmes, “that you will play for a higher stake to-night than you have ever done yet, and that the play will be more exciting. For you, Mr. Merryweather, the stake will be some £30,000, and for you, Jones, it will be the man upon whom you wish to lay your hands.”

“John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He’s a young man, Mr. Merryweather, but he is at the head of his profession, and I would rather have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in London. He’s a remarkable man, is young John Clay. His grandfather was a royal duke, and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as his fingers, and though we meet signs of him at every turn, we never know where to find the man himself. He’ll crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next. I’ve been on his track for years, and have never set eyes on him yet.”

“I hope that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to-night. I’ve had one or two little turns also with Mr. John Clay, and I agree with you that he is at the head of his profession. It is past ten, however, and quite time that we started. If you two will take the first hansom, Watson and I will follow in the second.”

Sherlock Holmes was not very communicative during the long drive, and lay back in the cab humming the tunes which he had heard in the afternoon. We rattled through an endless labyrinth of gas-lit streets until we emerged into Farringdon Street.

“We are close there now,” my friend remarked. “This fellow Merryweather is a bank director, and personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bull-dog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon any one. Here we are, and they are waiting for us.”

We had reached the same crowded thoroughfare in which we had found ourselves in the morning. Our cabs were dismissed, and, following the guidance of Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a narrow passage and through a side door, which he opened for us. Within there was a small corridor, which ended in a very massive iron gate. This also was opened, and led down a flight of winding stone steps, which terminated at another formidable gate. Mr. Merryweather stopped to light a lantern, and then conducted us down a dark, earth-smelling passage, and so, after opening a third door, into a huge vault or cellar, which was piled all round with crates and massive boxes.

“You are not very vulnerable from above,” Holmes remarked, as he held up the lantern and gazed about him.

“Nor from below,” said Mr. Merryweather, striking his stick upon the flags which lined the floor. “Why, dear me, it sounds quite hollow!” he remarked, looking up in surprise.

“I must really ask you to be a little more quiet,” said Holmes, severely. “You have already imperilled the whole success of our expedition. Might I beg that you would have the goodness to sit down upon one of those boxes, and not to interfere?”

The solemn Mr. Merryweather perched himself upon a crate, with a very injured expression upon his face, while Holmes fell upon his knees upon the floor, and, with the lantern and a magnifying lens, began to examine minutely the cracks between the stones. A few seconds sufficed to satisfy him, for he sprang to his feet again, and put his glass in his pocket.

“We have at least an hour before us,” he remarked; “for they can hardly take any steps until the good pawnbroker is safely in bed. Then they will not lose a minute, for the sooner they do their work the longer time they will have for their escape. We are at present, doctor—as no doubt you have divined—in the cellar of the city branch of one of the principal London banks. Mr. Merryweather is the chairman of directors, and he will explain to you that there are reasons why the more daring criminals of London should take a considerable interest in this cellar at present.”

“It is our French gold,” whispered the director. “We have had several warnings that an attempt might be made upon it.”

“Your French gold?”

“Yes. We had occasion some months ago to strengthen our resources, and borrowed, for that purpose, 30,000 napoleons from the Bank of France. It has become known that we have never had occasion to unpack the money, and that it is still lying in our cellar. The crate upon which I sit contains 2000 napoleons packed between layers of lead foil. Our reserve of bullion is much larger at present than is usually kept in a single branch office, and the directors have had misgivings upon the subject.”

“Which were very well justified,” observed Holmes. “And now it is time that we arranged our little plans. I expect that within an hour matters will come to a head. In the mean time, Mr. Merryweather, we must put the screen over that dark lantern.”

“And sit in the dark?”

“I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and I thought that, as we were a partie carrée, you might have your rubber after all. But I see that the enemy’s preparations have gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, first of all, we must choose our positions. These are daring men, and though we shall take them at a disadvantage, they may do us some harm unless we are careful. I shall stand behind this crate, and do you conceal yourselves behind those. Then, when I flash a light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson, have no compunction about shooting them down.”

I placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case behind which I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front of his lantern, and left us in pitch darkness—such an absolute darkness as I have never before experienced. The smell of hot metal remained to assure us that the light was still there, ready to flash out at a moment’s notice. To me, with my nerves worked up to a pitch of expectancy, there was something depressing and subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold, dank air of the vault.

“They have but one retreat,” whispered Holmes. “That is back through the house into Saxe-Coburg Square. I hope that you have done what I asked you, Jones?”

“I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door.”

“Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we must be silent and wait.”

What a time it seemed! From comparing notes afterwards it was but an hour and a quarter, yet it appeared to me that the night must have almost gone, and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs were weary and stiff, for I feared to change my position; yet my nerves were worked up to the highest pitch of tension, and my hearing was so acute that I could not only hear the gentle breathing of my companions, but I could distinguish the deeper, heavier in-breath of the bulky Jones from the thin, sighing note of the bank director. From my position I could look over the case in the direction of the floor. Suddenly my eyes caught the glint of a light.

At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then it lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared; a white, almost womanly hand, which felt about in the center of the little area of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark which marked a chink between the stones.

Its disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending, tearing sound, one of the broad, white stones turned over upon its side, and left a square, gaping hole, through which streamed the light of a lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut, boyish face, which looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand on either side of the aperture, drew itself shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee rested upon the edge. In another instant he stood at the side of the hole, and was hauling after him a companion, lithe and small like himself, with a pale face and a shock of very red hair.

“It’s all clear,” he whispered. “Have you the chisel and the bags? Great Scott! Jump, Archie, jump, and I’ll swing for it!”

Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the collar. The other dived down the hole, and I heard the sound of rending cloth as Jones clutched at his skirts. The light flashed upon the barrel of a revolver, but Holmes’s hunting crop came down on the man’s wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone floor.

“It’s no use, John Clay,” said Holmes, blandly. “You have no chance at all.”

“So I see,” the other answered, with the utmost coolness. “I fancy that my pal is all right, though I see you have got his coat-tails.”

“There are three men waiting for him at the door,” said Holmes.

“Oh, indeed! You seem to have done the thing very completely. I must compliment you.”

“And I you,” Holmes answered. “Your red-headed idea was very new and effective.”

“You’ll see your pal again presently,” said Jones. “He’s quicker at climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the derbies.”

“I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands,” remarked our prisoner, as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists. “You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness, also, when you address me always to say ‘sir’ and ‘please.’”

“All right,” said Jones, with a stare and a snigger. “Well, would you please, sir, march up-stairs, where we can get a cab to carry your highness to the police-station?”

“That is better,” said John Clay, serenely. He made a sweeping bow to the three of us, and walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.

“Really Mr. Holmes,” said Mr. Merryweather, as we followed them from the cellar, “I do not know how the bank can thank you or repay you. There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most complete manner one of the most determined attempts at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience.”

“I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John Clay,” said Holmes. “I have been at some small expense over this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I am amply repaid by having had an experience which is in many ways unique, and by hearing the very remarkable narrative of the Red-headed League.”

---

“You see, Watson,” he explained, in the early hours of the morning, as we sat over a glass of whiskey-and-soda in Baker Street, “it was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of the League, and the copying of the ‘Encyclopædia,’ must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of hours every day. It was a curious way of managing it, but, really, it would be difficult to suggest a better. The method was no doubt suggested to Clay’s ingenious mind by the color of his accomplice’s hair. The £4 a week was a lure which must draw him, and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands? They put in the advertisement, one rogue has the temporary office, the other rogue incites the man to apply for it, and together they manage to secure his absence every morning in the week. From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive for securing the situation.”

“But how could you guess what the motive was?”

“Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The man’s business was a small one, and there was nothing in his house which could account for such elaborate preparations, and such an expenditure as they were at. It must, then, be something out of the house. What could it be? I thought of the assistant’s fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the cellar. The cellar! There was the end of this tangled clue. Then I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant, and found that I had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in London. He was doing something in the cellar—something which took many hours a day for months on end. What could it be, once more? I could think of nothing save that he was running a tunnel to some other building.

“So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action. I surprised you by beating upon the pavement with my stick. I was ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind. It was not in front. Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the assistant answered it. We have had some skirmishes, but we had never set eyes upon each other before. I hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I wished to see. You must yourself have remarked how worn, wrinkled, and stained they were. They spoke of those hours of burrowing. The only remaining point was what they were burrowing for. I walked round the corner, saw that the City and Suburban Bank abutted on our friend’s premises, and felt that I had solved my problem. When you drove home after the concert I called upon Scotland Yard, and upon the chairman of the bank directors, with the result that you have seen.”

“And how could you tell that they would make their attempt to-night?” I asked.

“Well, when they closed their League offices that was a sign that they cared no longer about Mr. Jabez Wilson’s presence—in other words, that they had completed their tunnel. But it was essential that they should use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the bullion might be removed. Saturday would suit them better than any other day, as it would give them two days for their escape. For all these reasons I expected them to come to-night.”

“You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed, in unfeigned admiration. “It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.”

“It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning. “Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”

“And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use,” he remarked. “‘L’homme c’est rien—l’œuvre c’est tout,’ as Gustave Flaubert wrote to Georges Sand.”

---

ONE HUNDRED IN THE DARK
By Owen Johnson

They were discussing languidly, as such groups do, seeking from each topic a peg on which to hang a few epigrams that might be retold in the lip currency of the club—Steingall, the painter, florid of gesture, and effete, foreign in type, with black-rimmed glasses and trailing ribbon of black silk that cut across his cropped beard and cavalry mustaches; De Gollyer, a critic, who preferred to be known as a man about town, short, feverish, incisive, who slew platitudes with one adjective and tagged a reputation with three; Rankin, the architect, always in a defensive, explanatory attitude, who held his elbows on the table, his hands before his long sliding nose, and gestured with his fingers; Quinny, the illustrator, long and gaunt, with a predatory eloquence that charged irresistibly down on any subject, cut it off, surrounded it, and raked it with enfilading wit and satire; and Peters, whose methods of existence were a mystery, a young man of fifty, who had done nothing and who knew every one by his first name, the club postman, who carried the tittle-tattle, the bon mots and the news of the day, who drew up a petition a week and pursued the house committee with a daily grievance.

About the latticed porch, which ran around the sanded yard with its feeble fountain and futile evergreens, other groups were eying one another, or engaging in desultory conversation, oppressed with the heaviness of the night.

At the round table, Quinny alone, absorbing energy as he devoured the conversation, having routed Steingall on the Germans and archæology and Rankin on the origins of the Lord’s Prayer, had seized a chance remark of De Gollyer’s to say:

“There are only half a dozen stories in the world. Like everything that’s true it isn’t true.” He waved his long, gouty fingers in the direction of Steingall, who, having been silenced, was regarding him with a look of sleepy indifference. “What is more to the point, is the small number of human relations that are so simple and yet so fundamental that they can be eternally played upon, redressed, and reinterpreted in every language, in every age, and yet remain inexhaustible in the possibility of variations.”

“By George, that is so,” said Steingall, waking up. “Every art does go back to three or four notes. In composition it is the same thing. Nothing new—nothing new since a thousand years. By George, that is true! We invent nothing, nothing!”

“Take the eternal triangle,” said Quinny hurriedly, not to surrender his advantage, while Rankin and De Gollyer in a bored way continued to gaze dreamily at a vagrant star or two. “Two men and a woman, or two women and a man. Obviously it should be classified as the first of the great original parent themes. Its variations extend into the thousands. By the way, Rankin, excellent opportunity, eh, for some of our modern, painstaking, unemployed jackasses to analyze and classify.”

“Quite right,” said Rankin without perceiving the satirical note. “Now there’s De Maupassant’s Fort comme la Mort—quite the most interesting variation—shows the turn a genius can give. There the triangle is the man of middle age, the mother he has loved in his youth and the daughter he comes to love. It forms, you might say, the head of a whole subdivision of modern continental literature.”

“Quite wrong, Rankin, quite wrong,” said Quinny, who would have stated the other side quite as imperiously. “What you cite is a variation of quite another theme, the Faust theme—old age longing for youth, the man who has loved longing for the love of his youth, which is youth itself. The triangle is the theme of jealousy, the most destructive and, therefore, the most dramatic of human passions. The Faust theme is the most fundamental and inevitable of all human experiences, the tragedy of life itself. Quite a different thing.”

Rankin, who never agreed with Quinny unless Quinny maliciously took advantage of his prior announcement to agree with him, continued to combat this idea.

“You believe then,” said De Gollyer after a certain moment had been consumed in hair splitting, “that the origin of all dramatic themes is simply the expression of some human emotion. In other words, there can exist no more parent themes than there are human emotions.”

“I thank you, sir, very well put,” said Quinny with a generous wave of his hand. “Why is the Three Musketeers a basic theme? Simply the interpretation of comradeship, the emotion one man feels for another, vital because it is the one peculiarly masculine emotion. Look at Du Maurier and Trilby, Kipling in Soldiers Three—simply the Three Musketeers.”

“The Vie de Bohème?” suggested Steingall.

“In the real Vie de Bohème, yes,” said Quinny viciously. “Not in the concocted sentimentalities that we now have served up to us by athletic tenors and consumptive elephants!”

Rankin, who had been silently deliberating on what had been left behind, now said cunningly and with evident purpose:

“All the same, I don’t agree with you men at all. I believe there are situations, original situations, that are independent of your human emotions, that exist just because they are situations, accidental and nothing else.”

“As for instance?” said Quinny, preparing to attack.

“Well, I’ll just cite an ordinary one that happens to come to my mind,” said Rankin, who had carefully selected his test. “In a group of seven or eight, such as we are here, a theft takes place; one man is the thief—which one? I’d like to know what emotion that interprets, and yet it certainly is an original theme, at the bottom of a whole literature.”

This challenge was like a bomb.

“Not the same thing.”

“Detective stories, bah!”

“Oh, I say, Rankin, that’s literary melodrama.”

Rankin, satisfied, smiled and winked victoriously over to Tommers, who was listening from an adjacent table.

“Of course your suggestion is out of order, my dear man, to this extent,” said Quinny, who never surrendered, “in that I am talking of fundamentals and you are citing details. Nevertheless, I could answer that the situation you give, as well as the whole school it belongs to, can be traced back to the commonest of human emotions, curiosity; and that the story of Bluebeard and The Moonstone are to all purposes identically the same.”

At this Steingall, who had waited hopefully, gasped and made as though to leave the table.

“I shall take up your contention,” said Quinny without pause for breath, “first, because you have opened up one of my pet topics, and, second, because it gives me a chance to talk.” He gave a sidelong glance at Steingall and winked at De Gollyer. “What is the peculiar fascination that the detective problem exercises over the human mind? You will say curiosity. Yes and no. Admit at once that the whole art of a detective story consists in the statement of the problem. Any one can do it. I can do it. Steingall even can do it. The solution doesn’t count. It is usually banal; it should be prohibited. What interests us is, can we guess it? Just as an able-minded man will sit down for hours and fiddle over the puzzle column in a Sunday balderdash. Same idea. There you have it, the problem—the detective story. Now why the fascination? I’ll tell you. It appeals to our curiosity, yes—but deeper to a sort of intellectual vanity. Here are six matches, arrange them to make four squares; five men present, a theft takes place—who’s the thief? Who will guess it first? Whose brain will show its superior cleverness—see? That’s all—that’s all there is to it.”

“Out of all of which,” said De Gollyer, “the interesting thing is that Rankin has supplied the reason why the supply of detective fiction is inexhaustible. It does all come down to the simplest terms. Seven possibilities, one answer. It is a formula, ludicrously simple, mechanical, and yet we will always pursue it to the end. The marvel is that writers should seek for any other formula when here is one so safe, that can never fail. Be George, I could start up a factory on it.”

“The reason is,” said Rankin, “that the situation does constantly occur. It’s a situation that any of us might get into any time. As a matter of fact, now, I personally know two such occasions when I was of the party; and very uncomfortable it was too.”

“What happened?” said Steingall.

“Why, there is no story to it particularly. Once a mistake had been made, and the other time the real thief was detected by accident a year later. In both cases only one or two of us knew what had happened.”

De Gollyer had a similar incident to recall. Steingall, after reflection, related another that had happened to a friend.

“Of course, of course, my dear gentlemen,” said Quinny impatiently, for he had been silent too long, “you are glorifying commonplaces. Every crime, I tell you, expresses itself in the terms of the picture puzzle that you feed to your six-year-old. It’s only the variation that is interesting. Now quite the most remarkable turn of the complexities that can be developed is, of course, the well-known instance of the visitor at a club and the rare coin. Of course every one knows that? What?”

Rankin smiled in a bored, superior way, but the others protested their ignorance.

“Why, it’s very well known,” said Quinny lightly. “A distinguished visitor is brought into a club—dozen men, say, present, at dinner, long table. Conversation finally veers around to curiosities and relics. One of the members present then takes from his pocket what he announces as one of the rarest coins in existence—passes it around the table. Coin travels back and forth, every one examining it, and the conversation goes to another topic, say the influence of the automobile on domestic infelicity, or some other such asininely intellectual club topic—you know? All at once the owner calls for his coin.

“The coin is nowhere to be found. Every one looks at every one else. First, they suspect a joke. Then it becomes serious—the coin is immensely valuable. Who has taken it?

“The owner is a gentleman—does the gentlemanly idiotic thing, of course, laughs, says he knows some one is playing a practical joke on him and that the coin will be returned to-morrow. The others refuse to leave the situation so. One man proposes that they all submit to a search. Every one gives his assent until it comes to the stranger. He refuses, curtly, roughly, without giving any reason. Uncomfortable silence—the man is a guest. No one knows him particularly well—but still he is a guest. One member tries to make him understand that no offense is offered, that the suggestion was simply to clear the atmosphere, and all that sort of bally rot, you know.

“‘I refuse to allow my person to be searched,’ says the stranger, very firm, very proud, very English, you know, ‘and I refuse to give my reason for my action.’

“Another silence. The men eye him and then glance at one another. What’s to be done? Nothing. There is etiquette—that magnificent inflated balloon. The visitor evidently has the coin—but he is their guest and etiquette protects him. Nice situation, eh?

“The table is cleared. A waiter removes a dish of fruit and there under the ledge of the plate where it had been pushed—is the coin. Banal explanation, eh? Of course. Solutions always should be. At once every one in profouse apologies! Whereupon the visitor rises and says:

“‘Now I can give you the reason for my refusal to be searched. There are only two known specimens of the coin in existence, and the second happens to be here in my waistcoat pocket.’”

“Of course,” said Quinny with a shrug of his shoulders, “the story is well invented, but the turn to it is very nice—very nice indeed.”

“I did know the story,” said Steingall, to be disagreeable; “the ending, though, is too obvious to be invented. The visitor should have had on him not another coin, but something absolutely different, something destructive, say, of a woman’s reputation, and a great tragedy should have been threatened by the casual misplacing of the coin.”

“I have heard the same story told in a dozen different ways,” said Rankin.

“It has happened a hundred times. It must be continually happening,” said Steingall.

“I know one extraordinary instance,” said Peters, who up to the present, secure in his climax, had waited with a professional smile until the big guns had been silenced. “In fact, the most extraordinary instance of this sort I have ever heard.”

“Peters, you little rascal,” said Quinny with a sidelong glance, “I perceive you have quietly been letting us dress the stage for you.”

“It is not a story that will please every one,” said Peters, to whet their appetite.

“Why not?”

“Because you will want to know what no one can ever know.”

“It has no conclusion then?”

“Yes and no. As far as it concerns a woman, quite the most remarkable woman I have ever met, the story is complete. As for the rest, it is what it is, because it is one example where literature can do nothing better than record.”

“Do I know the woman?” asked De Gollyer, who flattered himself on passing through every class of society.

“Possibly, but no more than any one else.”

“An actress?”

“What she has been in the past I don’t know—a promoter would better describe her. Undoubtedly she has been behind the scenes in many an untold intrigue of the business world. A very feminine woman, and yet, as you shall see, with an unusual instantaneous masculine power of decision.”

“Peters,” said Quinny, waving a warning finger, “you are destroying your story. Your preface will bring an anti-climax.”

“You shall judge,” said Peters, who waited until his audience was in strained attention before opening his story. “The names are, of course, disguises.”

---

Mrs. Rita Kildair inhabited a charming bachelor-girl studio, very elegant, of the duplex pattern, in one of the buildings just off Central Park West. She knew pretty nearly every one in that indescribable society in New York that is drawn from all levels, and that imposes but one condition for membership—to be amusing. She knew every one and no one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest rumors her history or her means. No one had ever heard of a Mr. Kildair. There was always about her a certain defensive reserve the moment the limits of acquaintanceship had been reached. She had a certain amount of money, she knew a certain number of men in Wall Street affairs, and her studio was furnished with taste and even distinction. She was of any age. She might have suffered everything or nothing at all. In this mingled society her invitations were eagerly sought, her dinners were spontaneous, and the discussions, though gay and usually daring, were invariably under the control of wit and good taste.

On the Sunday night of this adventure she had, according to her invariable custom, sent away her Japanese butler and invited to an informal chafing-dish supper seven of her more congenial friends, all of whom, as much as could be said of any one, were habitués of the studio.

At seven o’clock, having finished dressing, she put in order her bedroom, which formed a sort of free passage between the studio and a small dining room to the kitchen beyond. Then, going into the studio, she lit a wax taper and was in the act of touching off the brass candlesticks that lighted the room when three knocks sounded on the door and a Mr. Flanders, a broker, compact, nervously alive, well groomed, entered with the informality of assured acquaintance.

“You are early,” said Mrs. Kildair, in surprise.

“On the contrary, you are late,” said the broker, glancing at his watch.

“Then be a good boy and help me with the candles,” she said, giving him a smile and a quick pressure of her fingers.

He obeyed, asking nonchalantly:

“I say, dear lady, who’s to be here to-night?”

“The Enos Jacksons.”

“I thought they were separated.”

“Not yet.”

“Very interesting! Only you, dear lady, would have thought of serving us a couple on the verge.”

“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“Assuredly. Where did you know Jackson?”

“Through the Warings. Jackson’s a rather doubtful person, isn’t he?”

“Let’s call him a very sharp lawyer,” said Flanders defensively. “They tell me, though, he is on the wrong side of the market—in deep.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I? I’m a bachelor,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “and if I come a cropper it makes no difference.”

“Is that possible?” she said, looking at him quickly.

“Probable even. And who else is coming?”

“Maude Lille—you know her?”

“I think not.”

“You met her here—a journalist.”

“Quite so, a strange career.”

“Mr. Harris, a clubman, is coming, and the Stanley Cheevers.”

“The Stanley Cheevers!” said Flanders with some surprise. “Are we going to gamble?”

“You believe in that scandal about bridge?”

“Certainly not,” said Flanders, smiling. “You see I was present. The Cheevers play a good game, a well united game, and have an unusual system of makes. By-the-way it’s Jackson who is very attentive to Mrs. Cheever, isn’t it?”

“Quite right.”

“What a charming party,” said Flanders flippantly. “And where does Maude Lille come in?”

“Don’t joke. She is in a desperate way,” said Mrs. Kildair, with a little sadness in her eyes.

“And Harris?”

“Oh, he is to make the salad and cream the chicken.”

“Ah, I see the whole party. I, of course, am to add the element of respectability.”

“Of what?”

She looked at him steadily until he turned away, dropping his glance.

“Don’t be an ass with me, my dear Flanders.”

“By George, if this were Europe I’d wager you were in the secret service, Mrs. Kildair.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled appreciatively and moved about the studio, giving the finishing touches. The Stanley Cheevers entered, a short fat man with a vacant fat face and a slow-moving eye, and his wife, voluble, nervous, overdressed and pretty. Mr. Harris came with Maude Lille, a woman, straight, dark, Indian, with great masses of somber hair held in a little too loosely for neatness, with thick, quick lips and eyes that rolled away from the person who was talking to her. The Enos Jacksons were late and still agitated as they entered. His forehead had not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn. He was of the type that never lost his temper, but caused others to lose theirs, immovable in his opinions, with a prowling walk, a studied antagonism in his manner, and an impudent look that fastened itself unerringly on the weakness in the person to whom he spoke. Mrs. Jackson, who seemed fastened to her husband by an invisible leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate dash, which she assumed rather than felt in her attitude toward life. One looked at her curiously and wondered what such a nature would do in a crisis, with a lurking sense of a woman who carried with her her own impending tragedy.

As soon as the company had been completed and the incongruity of the selection had been perceived, a smile of malicious anticipation ran the rounds, which the hostess cut short by saying:

“Well, now that every one is here, this is the order of the night: You can quarrel all you want, you can whisper all the gossip you can think of about one another, but every one is to be amusing! Also every one is to help with the dinner—nothing formal and nothing serious. We may all be bankrupt to-morrow, divorced or dead, but to-night we will be gay—that is the invariable rule of the house!”

Immediately a nervous laughter broke out and the company, chattering, began to scatter through the rooms.

Mrs. Kildair, stopping in her bedroom, donned a Watteaulike cooking apron, and slipping her rings from her fingers fixed the three on her pincushion with a hatpin.

“Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful,” said the low voice of Maude Lille, who, with Harris and Mrs. Cheever, was in the room.

“There’s only one that is very valuable,” said Mrs. Kildair, touching with her thin fingers the ring that lay uppermost, two large diamonds, flanking a magnificent sapphire.

“It is beautiful—very beautiful,” said the journalist, her eyes fastened to it with an uncontrollable fascination. She put out her fingers and let them rest caressingly on the sapphire, withdrawing them quickly as though the contact had burned them.

“It must be very valuable,” she said, her breath catching a little. Mrs. Cheever, moving forward, suddenly looked at the ring.

“It cost five thousand six years ago,” said Mrs. Kildair, glancing down at it. “It has been my talisman ever since. For the moment, however, I am cook; Maude Lille, you are scullery maid; Harris is the chef, and we are under his orders. Mrs. Cheever, did you ever peel onions?”

“Good Heavens, no!” said Mrs. Cheever, recoiling.

“Well, there are no onions to peel,” said Mrs. Kildair, laughing. “All you’ll have to do is to help set the table. On to the kitchen!”

Under their hostess’s gay guidance the seven guests began to circulate busily through the rooms, laying the table, grouping the chairs, opening bottles, and preparing the material for the chafing dishes. Mrs. Kildair, in the kitchen, ransacked the ice box, and with her own hands chopped the fines herbes, shredded the chicken and measured the cream.

“Flanders, carry this in carefully,” she said, her hands in a towel. “Cheever, stop watching your wife and put the salad bowl on the table. Everything ready, Harris? All right. Every one sit down. I’ll be right in.”

She went into her bedroom, and divesting herself of her apron hung it in the closet. Then going to her dressing table she drew the hatpin from the pincushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her fingers. All at once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand. Only two rings were there, the third ring, the one with the sapphire and the two diamonds, was missing.

“Stupid,” she said to herself, and returned to her dressing table. All at once she stopped. She remembered quite clearly putting the pin through the three rings.

She made no attempt to search further, but remained without moving, her fingers drumming slowly on the table, her head to one side, her lip drawn in a little between her teeth, listening with a frown to the babble from the outer room. Who had taken the ring? Each of her guests had had a dozen opportunities in the course of the time she had been busy in the kitchen.

“Too much time before the mirror, dear lady,” called out Flanders gaily, who from where he was seated could see her.

“It is not he,” she said quickly. Then she reconsidered. “Why not? He is clever—who knows? Let me think.”

To gain time she walked back slowly into the kitchen, her head bowed, her thumb between her teeth.

“Who has taken it?”

She ran over the characters of her guests and their situations as she knew them. Strangely enough, at each her mind stopped upon some reason that might explain a sudden temptation.

“I shall find out nothing this way,” she said to herself after a moment’s deliberation; “that is not the important thing to me just now. The important thing is to get the ring back.”

And slowly, deliberately, she began to walk back and forth, her clenched hand beating the deliberate rhythmic measure of her journey.

Five minutes later, as Harris, installed en maître over the chafing dish, was giving directions, spoon in the air, Mrs. Kildair came into the room like a lengthening shadow. Her entrance had been made with scarcely a perceptible sound, and yet each guest was aware of it at the same moment, with a little nervous start.

“Heavens, dear lady,” exclaimed Flanders, “you come in on us like a Greek tragedy! What is it you have for us, a surprise?”

As he spoke she turned her swift glance on him, drawing her forehead together until the eyebrows ran in a straight line.

“I have something to say to you,” she said in a sharp, businesslike manner, watching the company with penetrating eagerness.

There was no mistaking the seriousness of her voice. Mr. Harris extinguished the oil lamp, covering the chafing dish clumsily with a discordant, disagreeable sound. Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Enos Jackson swung about abruptly, Maude Lille rose a little from her seat, while the men imitated these movements of expectancy with a clumsy shuffling of the feet.

“Mr. Enos Jackson?”

“Yes, Mrs. Kildair.”

“Kindly do as I ask you.”

“Certainly.”

She had spoken his name with a peremptory positiveness that was almost an accusation. He rose calmly, raising his eyebrows a little in surprise.

“Go to the door,” she continued, shifting her glance from him to the others. “Are you there? Lock it. Bring me the key.”

He executed the order without bungling, and returning stood before her, tendering the key.

“You’ve locked it?” she said, making the words an excuse to bury her glance in his.

“As you wished me to.”

“Thanks.”

She took from him the key and, shifting slightly, likewise locked the door into her bedroom through which she had come.

Then transferring the keys to her left hand, seemingly unaware of Jackson, who still awaited her further commands, her eyes studied a moment the possibilities of the apartment.

“Mr. Cheever?” she said in a low voice.

“Yes, Mrs. Kildair.”

“Blow out all the candles except the candelabrum on the table.”

“Put out the lights, Mrs. Kildair?”

“At once.”

Mr. Cheever, in rising, met the glance of his wife, and the look of questioning and wonder that passed did not escape the hostess.

“But, my dear Mrs. Kildair,” said Mrs. Jackson with a little nervous catch of her breath, “what is it? I’m getting terribly worked up! My nerves—”

“Miss Lille?” said the voice of command.

“Yes.”

The journalist, calmer than the rest, had watched the proceedings without surprise, as though fore-warned by professional instinct that something of importance was about to take place. Now she rose quietly with an almost stealthy motion.

“Put the candelabrum on this table—here,” said Mrs. Kildair, indicating a large round table on which a few books were grouped. “No, wait. Mr. Jackson, first clear off the table. I want nothing on it.”

“But, Mrs. Kildair—” began Mrs. Jackson’s shrill voice again.

“That’s it. Now put down the candelabrum.”

In a moment, as Mr. Cheever proceeded methodically on his errand, the brilliant crossfire of lights dropped in the studio, only a few smoldering wicks winking on the walls, while the high room seemed to grow more distant as it came under the sole dominion of the three candles bracketed in silver at the head of the bare mahogany table.

“Now listen!” said Mrs. Kildair, and her voice had in it a cold note. “My sapphire ring has just been stolen.”

She said it suddenly, hurling the news among them and waiting ferret-like for some indications in the chorus that broke out.

“Stolen!”

“Oh, my dear Mrs. Kildair!”

“Stolen—by Jove!”

“You don’t mean it!”

“What! Stolen here—to-night?”

“The ring has been taken within the last twenty minutes,” continued Mrs. Kildair in the same determined, chiseled tone. “I am not going to mince words. The ring has been taken and the thief is among you.”

For a moment nothing was heard but an indescribable gasp and a sudden turning and searching, then suddenly Cheever’s deep bass broke out:

“Stolen! But, Mrs. Kildair, is it possible?”

“Exactly. There is not the slightest doubt,” said Mrs. Kildair. “Three of you were in my bedroom when I placed my rings on the pincushion. Each of you has passed through there a dozen times since. My sapphire ring is gone, and one of you has taken it.”

Mrs. Jackson gave a little scream, and reached heavily for a glass of water. Mrs. Cheever said something inarticulate in the outburst of masculine exclamation. Only Maude Lille’s calm voice could be heard saying:

“Quite true. I was in the room when you took them off. The sapphire ring was on top.”

“Now listen!” said Mrs. Kildair, her eyes on Maude Lille’s eyes. “I am not going to mince words. I am not going to stand on ceremony. I’m going to have that ring back. Listen to me carefully. I’m going to have that ring back, and until I do, not a soul shall leave this room.” She tapped on the table with her nervous knuckles. “Who has taken it I do not care to know. All I want is my ring. Now I’m going to make it possible for whoever took it to restore it without possibility of detection. The doors are locked and will stay locked. I am going to put out the lights, and I am going to count one hundred slowly. You will be in absolute darkness; no one will know or see what is done. But if at the end of that time the ring is not here on this table I shall telephone the police and have every one in this room searched. Am I quite clear?”

Suddenly she cut short the nervous outbreak of suggestions and in the same firm voice continued:

“Every one take his place about the table. That’s it. That will do.”

The women, with the exception of the inscrutable Maude Lille, gazed hysterically from face to face; while the men, compressing their fingers, locking them or grasping their chins, looked straight ahead fixedly at their hostess.

Mrs. Kildair, having calmly assured herself that all were ranged as she wished, blew out two of the three candles.

“I shall count one hundred, no more, no less,” she said. “Either I get back that ring or every one in this room is to be searched, remember.”

Leaning over, she blew out the remaining candle and snuffed it.

“One, two, three, four, five—”

She began to count with the inexorable regularity of a clock’s ticking.

In the room every sound was distinct, the rustle of a dress, the grinding of a shoe, the deep, slightly asthmatic breathing of a man.

“Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—”

She continued to count, while in the methodic unvarying note of her voice there was a rasping reiteration that began to affect the company. A slight gasping breath, uncontrollable, almost on the verge of hysterics, was heard, and a man nervously clearing his throat.

“Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven—”

Still nothing had happened. Mrs. Kildair did not vary her measure the slightest, only the sound became more metallic.

“Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine and seventy—”

Some one had sighed.

“Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven—”

All at once, clear, unmistakable, on the resounding plane of the table was heard a slight metallic note.

“The ring!”

It was Maude Lille’s quick voice that had spoken. Mrs. Kildair continued to count.

“Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one—”

The tension became unbearable. Two or three voices protested against the needless prolonging of the torture.

“Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine and one hundred.”

A match sputtered in Mrs. Kildair’s hand and on the instant the company craned forward. In the center of the table was the sparkling sapphire and diamond ring. Candles were lit, flaring up like searchlights on the white accusing faces.

“Mr. Cheever, you may give it to me,” said Mrs. Kildair. She held out her hand without trembling, a smile of triumph on her face, which had in it for a moment an expression of positive cruelty.

Immediately she changed, contemplating with amusement the horror of her guests, staring blindly from one to another, seeing the indefinable glance of interrogation that passed from Cheever to Mrs. Cheever, from Mrs. Jackson to her husband, and then without emotion she said:

“Now that that is over we can have a very gay little supper.”

---

When Peters had pushed back his chair, satisfied as only a trained raconteur can be by the silence of a difficult audience, and had busied himself with a cigar, there was an instant outcry.

“I say, Peters, old boy, that is not all!”

“Absolutely.”

“The story ends there?”

“That ends the story.”

“But who took the ring?”

Peters extended his hands in an empty gesture.

“What! It was never found out?”

“Never.”

“No clue?”

“None.”

“I don’t like the story,” said De Gollyer.

“It’s no story at all,” said Steingall.

“Permit me,” said Quinny in a didactic way; “it is a story, and it is complete. In fact, I consider it unique because it has none of the banalities of a solution and leaves the problem even more confused than at the start.”

“I don’t see—” began Rankin.

“Of course you don’t, my dear man,” said Quinny crushingly. “You do not see that any solution would be commonplace, whereas no solution leaves an extraordinary intellectual problem.”

“How so?”

“In the first place,” said Quinny, preparing to annex the topic, “whether the situation actually happened or not, which is in itself a mere triviality, Peters has constructed it in a masterly way, the proof of which is that he has made me listen. Observe, each person present might have taken the ring—Flanders, a broker, just come a cropper; Maude Lille, a woman on the ragged side of life in desperate means; either Mr. and Mrs. Cheever, suspected of being card sharps—very good touch that, Peters, when the husband and wife glanced involuntarily at each other at the end—Mr. Enos Jackson, a sharp lawyer, or his wife about to be divorced; even Harris, concerning whom, very cleverly, Peters has said nothing at all to make him quite the most suspicious of all. There are, therefore, seven solutions, all possible and all logical. But beyond this is left a great intellectual problem.”

“How so?”

“Was it a feminine or a masculine action to restore the ring when threatened with a search, knowing that Mrs. Kildair’s clever expedient of throwing the room into darkness made detection impossible? Was it a woman who lacked the necessary courage to continue, or was it a man who repented his first impulse? Is a man or is a woman the greater natural criminal?”

“A woman took it, of course,” said Rankin.

“On the contrary, it was a man,” said Steingall, “for the second action was more difficult than the first.”

“A man, certainly,” said De Gollyer. “The restoration of the ring was a logical decision.”

“You see,” said Quinny triumphantly, “personally I incline to a woman for the reason that a weaker feminine nature is peculiarly susceptible to the domination of her own sex. There you are. We could meet and debate the subject year in and year out and never agree.”

“I recognize most of the characters,” said De Gollyer with a little confidential smile toward Peters. “Mrs. Kildair, of course, is all you say of her—an extraordinary woman. The story is quite characteristic of her. Flanders, I am not sure of, but I think I know him.”

“Did it really happen?” asked Rankin, who always took the commonplace point of view.

“Exactly as I have told it,” said Peters.

“The only one I don’t recognize is Harris,” said De Gollyer pensively.

“Your humble servant,” said Peters, smiling.

The four looked up suddenly with a little start.

“What!” said Quinny, abruptly confused. “You—you were there?”

“I was there.”

The four continued to look at him without speaking, each absorbed in his own thoughts, with a sudden ill ease.

A club attendant, with a telephone slip on a tray, stopped by Peters’ side. He excused himself and went along the porch, nodding from table to table.

“Curious chap,” said De Gollyer musingly.

“Extraordinary.”

The word was like a murmur in the group of four, who continued watching Peters’ trim, disappearing figure in silence, without looking at one another—with a certain ill ease.

---

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION[^[9]]
By O. HENRY

[9]. From Roads of Destiny. Published by permission of the publishers. Copyright, 1909, by Doubleday, Page & Co.

A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He had served nearly ten months of a four-year sentence. He had expected to stay only about three months, at the longest. When a man with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the “stir” it is hardly worth while to cut his hair.

“Now, Valentine,” said the warden, “you’ll go out in the morning. Brace up, and make a man of yourself. You’re not a bad fellow at heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight.”

“Me?” said Jimmy, in surprise. “Why, I never cracked a safe in my life.”

“Oh, no,” laughed the warden. “Of course not. Let’s see, now. How was it you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job? Was it because you wouldn’t prove an alibi for fear of compromising somebody in extremely high-toned society? Or was it simply a case of a mean old jury that had it in for you? It’s always one or the other with you innocent victims.”

“Me?” said Jimmy, still blankly virtuous. “Why, warden, I never was in Springfield in my life!”

“Take him back, Cronin,” smiled the warden, “and fix him up with outgoing clothes. Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him come to the bull-pen. Better think over my advice, Valentine.”

At a quarter past seven on the next morning Jimmy stood in the warden’s outer office. He had on a suit of the villainously fitting, ready-made clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky shoes that the state furnishes to its discharged compulsory guests.

The clerk handed him a railroad ticket and the five-dollar bill with which the law expected him to rehabilitate himself into good citizenship and prosperity. The warden gave him a cigar, and shook hands. Valentine, 9762, was chronicled on the books “Pardoned by Governor,” and Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine.

Disregarding the song of the birds, the waving green trees, and the smell of the flowers, Jimmy headed straight for a restaurant. There he tasted the first sweet joys of liberty in the shape of a broiled chicken and a bottle of white wine—followed by a cigar a grade better than the one the warden had given him. From there he proceeded leisurely to the depot. He tossed a quarter into the hat of a blind man sitting by the door, and boarded his train. Three hours set him down in a little town near the state line. He went to the café of one Mike Dolan and shook hands with Mike, who was alone behind the bar.

“Sorry we couldn’t make it sooner, Jimmy, me boy,” said Mike. “But we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the governor nearly balked. Feeling all right?”

“Fine,” said Jimmy. “Got my key?”

He got his key and went up-stairs, unlocking the door of a room at the rear. Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor was still Ben Price’s collar-button that had been torn from that eminent detective’s shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to arrest him.

Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suit-case. He opened this and gazed fondly at the finest set of burglar’s tools in the East. It was a complete set, made of specially tempered steel, the latest design in drills, punches, braces and bits, jimmies, clamps, and augers, with two or three novelties, invented by Jimmy himself, in which he took pride. Over nine hundred dollars they had cost him to have made at ——, a place where they make such things for the profession.

In half an hour Jimmy went down stairs and through the café. He was now dressed in tasteful and well-fitting clothes, and carried his dusted and cleaned suit-case in his hand.

“Got anything on?” asked Mike Dolan, genially.

“Me?” said Jimmy, in a puzzled tone. “I don’t understand. I’m representing the New York Amalgamated Short Snap Biscuit Cracker and Frazzled Wheat Company.”

This statement delighted Mike to such an extent that Jimmy had to take a seltzer-and-milk on the spot. He never touched “hard” drinks.

A week after the release of Valentine, 9762, there was a neat job of safe-burglary done in Richmond, Indiana, with no clue to the author. A scant eight hundred dollars was all that was secured. Two weeks after that a patented, improved, burglar-proof safe in Logansport was opened like a cheese to the tune of fifteen hundred dollars, currency; securities and silver untouched. That began to interest the rogue-catchers. Then an old-fashioned bank-safe in Jefferson City became active and threw out of its crater an eruption of bank-notes amounting to five thousand dollars. The losses were now high enough to bring the matter up into Ben Price’s class of work. By comparing notes, a remarkable similarity in the methods of the burglaries was noticed. Ben Price investigated the scenes of the robberies, and was heard to remark:

“That’s Dandy Jim Valentine’s autograph. He’s resumed business. Look at that combination knob—jerked out as easy as pulling up a radish in wet weather. He’s got the only clamps that can do it. And look how clean those tumblers were punched out! Jimmy never has to drill but one hole. Yes, I guess I want Mr. Valentine. He’ll do his bit next time without any short-time or clemency foolishness.”

Ben Price knew Jimmy’s habits. He had learned them while working up the Springfield case. Long jumps, quick get-aways, no confederates, and a taste for good society—these ways had helped Mr. Valentine to become noted as a successful dodger of retribution. It was given out that Ben Price had taken up the trail of the elusive cracksman, and other people with burglar-proof safes felt more at ease.

One afternoon Jimmy Valentine and his suit-case climbed out of the mail-hack in Elmore, a little town five miles off the railroad down in the black-jack country of Arkansas. Jimmy, looking like an athletic young senior just home from college, went down the board side-walk toward the hotel.

A young lady crossed the street, passed him at the corner and entered a door over which was the sign “The Elmore Bank.” Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became another man. She lowered her eyes and colored slightly. Young men of Jimmy’s style and looks were scarce in Elmore.

Jimmy collared a boy that was loafing on the steps of the bank as if he were one of the stockholders, and began to question him about the town, feeding him dimes at intervals. By and by the young lady came out, looking royally unconscious of the young man with the suit-case, and went her way.

“Isn’t that young lady Miss Polly Simpson?” asked Jimmy, with specious guile.

“Naw,” said the boy. “She’s Annabel Adams. Her pa owns this bank. What’d you come to Elmore for? Is that a gold watch-chain? I’m going to get a bulldog. Got any more dimes?”

Jimmy went to the Planters’ Hotel, registered as Ralph D. Spencer, and engaged a room. He leaned on the desk and declared his platform to the clerk. He said he had come to Elmore to look for a location to go into business. How was the shoe business, now, in the town? He had thought of the shoe business. Was there an opening?

The clerk was impressed by the clothes and manner of Jimmy. He, himself, was something of a pattern of fashion to the thinly gilded youth of Elmore, but he now perceived his shortcomings. While trying to figure out Jimmy’s manner of tying his four-in-hand he cordially gave information.

Yes, there ought to be a good opening in the shoe line. There wasn’t an exclusive shoe-store in the place. The dry-goods and general stores handled them. Business in all lines was fairly good. Hoped Mr. Spencer would decide to locate in Elmore. He would find it a pleasant town to live in, and the people very sociable.

Mr. Spencer thought he would stop over in the town a few days and look over the situation. No, the clerk needn’t call the boy. He would carry up his suit-case, himself; it was rather heavy.

Mr. Ralph Spencer, the phœnix that arose from Jimmy Valentine’s ashes—ashes left by the flame of a sudden and alterative attack of love—remained in Elmore, and prospered. He opened a shoe-store and secured a good run of trade.

Socially he was also a success, and made many friends. And he accomplished the wish of his heart. He met Miss Annabel Adams, and became more and more captivated by her charms.

At the end of a year the situation of Mr. Ralph Spencer was this: he had won the respect of the community, his shoe-store was flourishing, and he and Annabel were engaged to be married in two weeks. Mr. Adams, the typical, plodding, country banker, approved of Spencer. Annabel’s pride in him almost equalled her affection. He was as much at home in the family of Mr. Adams and that of Annabel’s married sister as if he were already a member.

One day Jimmy sat down in his room and wrote this letter, which he mailed to the safe address of one of his old friends in St. Louis:

Dear Old Pal:

I want you to be at Sullivan’s place, in Little Rock, next Wednesday night, at nine o’clock. I want you to wind up some little matters for me. And, also, I want to make you a present of my kit of tools. I know you’ll be glad to get them—you couldn’t duplicate the lot for a thousand dollars. Say, Billy, I’ve quit the old business—a year ago. I’ve got a nice store. I’m making an honest living, and I’m going to marry the finest girl on earth two weeks from now. It’s the only life, Billy—the straight one. I wouldn’t touch a dollar of another man’s money now for a million. After I get married I’m going to sell out and go West, where there won’t be so much danger of having old scores brought up against me. I tell you, Billy, she’s an angel. She believes in me; and I wouldn’t do another crooked thing for the whole world. Be sure to be at Sully’s, for I must see you. I’ll bring the tools with me.

Your old friend,

Jimmy.

On the Monday night after Jimmy wrote this letter, Ben Price jogged unobtrusively into Elmore in a livery buggy. He lounged about town in his quiet way until he found out what he wanted to know. From the drug-store across the street from Spencer’s shoe-store he got a good look at Ralph D. Spencer.

“Going to marry the banker’s daughter are you, Jimmy?” said Ben to himself, softly. “Well, I don’t know!”

The next morning Jimmy took breakfast at the Adamses. He was going to Little Rock that day to order his wedding-suit and buy something nice for Annabel. That would be the first time he had left town since he came to Elmore. It had been more than a year now since those last professional “jobs,” and he thought he could safely venture out.

After breakfast quite a family party went downtown together—Mr. Adams, Annabel, Jimmy, and Annabel’s married sister with her two little girls, aged five and nine. They came by the hotel where Jimmy still boarded, and he ran up to his room and brought along his suit-case. Then they went on to the bank. There stood Jimmy’s horse and buggy and Dolph Gibson, who was going to drive him over to the railroad station.

All went inside the high, carved oak railings into the banking-room—Jimmy included, for Mr. Adams’s future son-in-law was welcome anywhere. The clerks were pleased to be greeted by the good-looking, agreeable young man who was going to marry Miss Annabel. Jimmy set his suit-case down. Annabel, whose heart was bubbling with lively youth, put on Jimmy’s hat, and picked up the suit-case. “Wouldn’t I make a nice drummer?” said Annabel. “My! Ralph, how heavy it is? Feels like it was full of gold bricks.”

“Lot of nickel-plated shoe-horns in there,” said Jimmy, coolly, “that I’m going to return. Thought I’d save express charges by taking them up. I’m getting awfully economical.”

The Elmore Bank had just put in a new safe and vault. Mr. Adams was very proud of it, and insisted on an inspection by every one. The vault was a small one, but it had a new, patented door. It fastened with three solid steel bolts thrown simultaneously with a single handle, and had a time-lock. Mr. Adams beamingly explained its workings to Mr. Spencer, who showed a courteous but not too intelligent interest. The two children, May and Agatha, were delighted by the shining metal and funny clock and knobs.

While they were thus engaged Ben Price sauntered in and leaned on his elbow, looking casually inside between the railings. He told the teller that he didn’t want anything; he was just waiting for a man he knew.

Suddenly there was a scream or two from the women, and a commotion. Unperceived by the elders, May, the nine-year-old girl, in a spirit of play, had shut Agatha in the vault. She had then shot the bolts and turned the knob of the combination as she had seen Mr. Adams do.

The old banker sprang to the handle and tugged at it for a moment. “The door can’t be opened,” he groaned. “The clock hasn’t been wound nor the combination set.”

Agatha’s mother screamed again, hysterically.

“Hush!” said Mr. Adams, raising his trembling hand. “All be quiet for a moment. Agatha!” he called as loudly as he could. “Listen to me.” During the following silence they could just hear the faint sound of the child wildly shrieking in the dark vault in a panic of terror.

“My precious darling!” wailed the mother. “She will die of fright! Open the door! Oh, break it open! Can’t you men do something?”

“There isn’t a man nearer than Little Rock who can open that door,” said Mr. Adams, in a shaky voice. “My God! Spencer, what shall we do? That child—she can’t stand it long in there. There isn’t enough air, and, besides, she’ll go into convulsions from fright.”

Agatha’s mother, frantic now, beat the door of the vault with her hands. Somebody wildly suggested dynamite. Annabel turned to Jimmy, her large eyes full of anguish, but not yet despairing. To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.

“Can’t you do something, Ralph—try, won’t you?”

He looked at her with a queer, soft smile on his lips and in his keen eyes.

“Annabel,” he said, “give me that rose you are wearing, will you?”

Hardly believing that she heard him aright, she unpinned the bud from the bosom of her dress, and placed it in his hand. Jimmy stuffed it into his vest-pocket, threw off his coat and pulled up his shirt-sleeves. With that act Ralph D. Spencer passed away and Jimmy Valentine took his place.

“Get away from the door, all of you,” he commanded, shortly.

He set his suit-case on the table, and opened it out flat. From that time on he seemed to be unconscious of the presence of any one else. He laid out the shining, queer implements swiftly and orderly, whistling softly to himself as he always did when at work. In a deep silence and immovable, the others watched him as if under a spell.

In a minute Jimmy’s pet drill was biting smoothly into the steel door. In ten minutes—breaking his own burglarious record—he threw back the bolts and opened the door.

Agatha, almost collapsed, but safe, was gathered into her mother’s arms.

Jimmy Valentine put on his coat, and walked outside the railings toward the front door. As he went he thought he heard a far-away voice that he once knew call “Ralph!” But he never hesitated.

At the door a big man stood somewhat in his way.

“Hello, Ben!” said Jimmy, still with his strange smile “Got around at last, have you? Well, let’s go. I don’t know that it makes much difference, now.”

And then Ben Price acted rather strangely.

“Guess you’re mistaken, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “Don’t believe I recognize you. You’re buggy’s waiting for you, ain’t it?”

And Ben Price turned and strolled down the street.

---

BROTHER LEO
By PHYLLIS BOTTOME

It was a sunny morning, and I was on my way to Torcello. Venice lay behind us a dazzling line, with towers of gold against the blue lagoon. All at once a breeze sprang up from the sea; the small, feathery islands seemed to shake and quiver, and, like leaves driven before a gale, those flocks of colored butterflies, the fishing-boats, ran in before the storm. Far away to our left stood the ancient tower of Altinum, with the island of Burano a bright pink beneath the towering clouds. To our right, and much nearer, was a small cypress-covered islet. One large umbrella-pine hung close to the sea, and behind it rose the tower of the convent church. The two gondoliers consulted together in hoarse cries and decided to make for it.

“It is San Francesco del Deserto,” the elder explained to me. “It belongs to the little brown brothers, who take no money and are very kind. One would hardly believe these ones had any religion, they are such a simple people, and they live on fish and the vegetables they grow in their garden.”

We fought the crooked little waves in silence after that; only the high prow rebelled openly against its sudden twistings and turnings. The arrowy-shaped gondola is not a structure made for the rough jostling of waves, and the gondoliers put forth all their strength and skill to reach the tiny haven under the convent wall. As we did so, the black bars of cloud rushed down upon us in a perfect deluge of rain, and we ran speechless and half drowned across the tossed field of grass and forget-me-nots to the convent door. A shivering beggar sprang up from nowhere and insisted on ringing the bell for us.

The door opened, and I saw before me a young brown brother with the merriest eyes I have ever seen. They were unshadowed, like a child’s, dancing and eager, and yet there was a strange gentleness and patience about him, too, as if there was no hurry even about his eagerness.

He was very poorly dressed and looked thin. I think he was charmed to see us, though a little shy, like a hospitable country hostess anxious to give pleasure, but afraid that she has not much to offer citizens of a larger world.

“What a tempest!” he exclaimed. “You have come at a good hour. Enter, enter, Signore! And your men, will they not come in?”

We found ourselves in a very small rose-red cloister; in the middle of it was an old well under the open sky, but above us was a sheltering roof spanned by slender arches. The young monk hesitated for a moment, smiling from me to the two gondoliers. I think it occurred to him that we should like different entertainment, for he said at last:

“You men would perhaps like to sit in the porter’s lodge for a while? Our Brother Lorenzo is there; he is our chief fisherman, with a great knowledge of the lagoons; and he could light a fire for you to dry yourselves by—Signori. And you, if I mistake not, are English, are you not, Signore? It is probable that you would like to see our chapel. It is not much. We are very proud of it, but that, you know, is because it was founded by our blessed father, Saint Francis. He believed in poverty, and we also believe in it, but it does not give much for people to see. That is a misfortune, to come all this way and to see nothing.” Brother Leo looked at me a little wistfully. I think he feared that I should be disappointed. Then he passed before me with swift, eager feet toward the little chapel.

It was a very little chapel and quite bare; behind the altar some monks were chanting an office. It was clean, and there were no pictures or images, only, as I knelt there, I felt as if the little island in its desert of waters had indeed secreted some vast treasure, and as if the chapel, empty as it had seemed at first, was full of invisible possessions. As for Brother Leo, he had stood beside me nervously for a moment; but on seeing that I was prepared to kneel, he started, like a bird set free, toward the altar steps, where his lithe young impetuosity sank into sudden peace. He knelt there so still, so rapt, so incased in his listening silence, that he might have been part of the stone pavement. Yet his earthly senses were alive, for the moment I rose he was at my side again, as patient and courteous as ever, though I felt as if his inner ear were listening still to some unheard melody.

We stood again in the pink cloister. “There is little to see,” he repeated. “We are poverelli; it has been like this for seven hundred years.” He smiled as if that age-long, simple service of poverty were a light matter, an excuse, perhaps, in the eyes of the citizen of a larger world for their having nothing to show. Only the citizen, as he looked at Brother Leo, had a sudden doubt as to the size of the world outside. Was it as large, half as large, even, as the eager young heart beside him which had chosen poverty as a bride?

The rain fell monotonously against the stones of the tiny cloister.

“What a tempest!” said Brother Leo, smiling contentedly at the sky. “You must come in and see our father. I sent word by the porter of your arrival, and I am sure he will receive you; that will be a pleasure for him, for he is of the great world, too. A very learnèd man, our father; he knows the French and the English tongue. Once he went to Rome; also he has been several times to Venice. He has been a great traveler.”

“And you,” I asked—“have you also traveled?”

Brother Leo shook his head.

“I have sometimes looked at Venice,” he said, “across the water, and once I went to Burano with the marketing brother; otherwise, no, I have not traveled. But being a guest-brother, you see, I meet often with those who have, like your Excellency, for instance, and that is a great education.”

We reached the door of the monastery, and I felt sorry when another brother opened to us, and Brother Leo, with the most cordial of farewell smiles, turned back across the cloister to the chapel door.

“Even if he does not hurry, he will still find prayer there,” said a quiet voice beside me.

I turned to look at the speaker. He was a tall old man with white hair and eyes like small blue flowers, very bright and innocent, with the same look of almost superb contentment in them that I had seen in Brother Leo’s eyes.

“But what will you have?” he added with a twinkle. “The young are always afraid of losing time; it is, perhaps, because they have so much. But enter, Signore! If you will be so kind as to excuse the refectory, it will give me much pleasure to bring you a little refreshment. You will pardon that we have not much to offer?”

The father—for I found out afterward that he was the superior himself—brought me bread and wine, made in the convent, and waited on me with his own hands. Then he sat down on a narrow bench opposite to watch me smoke. I offered him one of my cigarettes, but he shook his head, smiling.

“I used to smoke once,” he said. “I was very particular about my tobacco. I think it was similar to yours—at least the aroma, which I enjoy very much, reminds me of it. It is curious, is it not, the pleasure we derive from remembering what we once had? But perhaps it is not altogether a pleasure unless one is glad that one has not got it now. Here one is free from things. I sometimes fear one may be a little indulgent about one’s liberty. Space, solitude, and love—it is all very intoxicating.”

There was nothing in the refectory except the two narrow benches on which we sat, and a long trestled board which formed the table; the walls were white-washed and bare, the floor was stone. I found out later that the brothers ate and drank nothing except bread and wine and their own vegetables in season, a little macaroni sometimes in winter, and in summer figs out of their own garden. They slept on bare boards, with one thin blanket winter and summer alike. The fish they caught they sold at Burano or gave to the poor. There was no doubt that they enjoyed very great freedom from “things.”

It was a strange experience to meet a man who never had heard of a flying-machine and who could not understand why it was important to save time by using the telephone or the wireless-telegraphy system; but despite the fact that the father seemed very little impressed by our modern urgencies, I never have met a more intelligent listener or one who seized more quickly on all that was essential in an explanation.

“You must not think we do nothing at all, we lazy ones who follow old paths,” he said in answer to one of my questions. “There are only eight of us brothers, and there is the garden, fishing, cleaning, and praying. We are sent for, too, from Burano to go and talk a little with the people there, or from some island on the lagoons which perhaps no priest can reach in the winter. It is easy for us, with our little boat and no cares.”

“But Brother Leo told me he had been to Burano only once,” I said. “That seems strange when you are so near.”

“Yes he went only once, said the father, and for a moment or two he was silent, and I found his blue eyes on mine, as if he were weighing me.

“Brother Leo,” said the superior at last, “is our youngest. He is very young, younger perhaps than his years; but we have brought him up altogether, you see. His parents died of cholera within a few days of each other. As there were no relatives, we took him, and when he was seventeen he decided to join our order. He has always been happy with us, but one cannot say that he has seen much of the world.” He paused again, and once more I felt his blue eyes searching mine. “Who knows?” he said finally. “Perhaps you were sent here to help me. I have prayed for two years on the subject, and that seems very likely. The storm is increasing, and you will not be able to return until to-morrow. This evening, if you will allow me, we will speak more on this matter. Meanwhile I will show you our spare room. Brother Lorenzo will see that you are made as comfortable as we can manage. It is a great privilege for us to have this opportunity; believe me, we are not ungrateful.”

It would have been of no use to try to explain to him that it was for us to feel gratitude. It was apparent that none of the brothers had ever learned that important lesson of the worldly respectable—that duty is what other people ought to do. They were so busy thinking of their own obligations as to overlook entirely the obligations of others. It was not that they did not think of others. I think they thought only of one another, but they thought without a shadow of judgment, with that bright, spontaneous love of little children, too interested to point a moral. Indeed, they seemed to me very like a family of happy children listening to a fairy-story and knowing that the tale is true.

After supper the superior took me to his office. The rain had ceased, but the wind howled and shrieked across the lagoons, and I could hear the waves breaking heavily against the island. There was a candle on the desk, and the tiny, shadowy cell looked like a picture by Rembrandt.

“The rain has ceased now,” the father said quietly, “and to-morrow the waves will have gone down, and you, Signore, will have left us. It is in your power to do us all a great favor. I have thought much whether I shall ask it of you, and even now I hesitate; but Scripture nowhere tells us that the kingdom of heaven was taken by precaution, nor do I imagine that in this world things come oftenest to those who refrain from asking.

“All of us,” he continued, “have come here after seeing something of the outside world; some of us even had great possessions. Leo alone knows nothing of it, and has possessed nothing, nor did he ever wish to; he has been willing that nothing should be his own, not a flower in the garden, not anything but his prayers, and even these I think he has oftenest shared. But the visit to Burano put an idea in his head. It is, perhaps you know, a factory town where they make lace, and the people live there with good wages, many of them, but also much poverty. There is a poverty which is a grace, but there is also a poverty which is a great misery, and this Leo never had seen before. He did not know that poverty could be a pain. It filled him with a great horror, and in his heart there was a certain rebellion. It seemed to him that in a world with so much money no one should suffer for the lack of it.

“It was useless for me to point out to him that in a world where there is so much health God has permitted sickness; where there is so much beauty, ugliness; where there is so much holiness, sin. It is not that there is any lack in the gifts of God; all are there, and in abundance, but He has left their distribution to the soul of man. It is easy for me to believe this. I have known what money can buy and what it cannot buy; but Brother Leo, who never has owned a penny, how should he know anything of the ways of pennies?

“I saw that he could not be contented with my answer; and then this other idea came to him—the idea that is, I think, the blessèd hope of youth: that this thing being wrong, he, Leo, must protest against it, must resist it! Surely, if money can do wonders, we who set ourselves to work the will of God should have more control of this wonder-working power? He fretted against his rule. He did not permit himself to believe that our blessèd father, Saint Francis, was wrong, but it was a hardship for him to refuse alms from our kindly visitors. He thought the beggars’ rags would be made whole by gold; he wanted to give them more than bread, he wanted, poverino! to buy happiness for the whole world.”

The father paused, and his dark, thought-lined face lighted up with a sudden, beautiful smile till every feature seemed as young as his eyes.

“I do not think the human being ever has lived who has not thought that he ought to have happiness,” he said. “We begin at once to get ready for heaven; but heaven is a long way off. We make haste slowly. It takes us all our lives, and perhaps purgatory, to get to the bottom of our own hearts. That is the last place in which we look for heaven, but I think it is the first in which we shall find it.”

“But it seems to me extraordinary that, if Brother Leo has this thing so much on his mind, he should look so happy,” I exclaimed. “That is the first thing I noticed about him.”

“Yes, it is not for himself that he is searching,” said the superior. “If it were, I should not wish him to go out into the world, because I should not expect him to find anything there. His heart is utterly at rest; but though he is personally happy, this thing troubles him. His prayers are eating into his soul like flame, and in time this fire of pity and sorrow will become a serious menace to his peace. Besides, I see in Leo a great power of sympathy and understanding. He has in him the gift of ruling other souls. He is very young to rule his own soul, and yet he rules it. When I die, it is probable that he will be called to take my place, and for that it is necessary he should have seen clearly that our rule is right. At present he accepts it in obedience, but he must have more than obedience in order to teach it to others; he must have a personal light.

“This, then, is the favor I have to ask of you, Signore. I should like to have you take Brother Leo to Venice to-morrow, and, if you have the time at your disposal, I should like you to show him the towers, the churches, the palaces, and the poor who are still so poor. I wish him to see how people spend money, both the good and the bad. I wish him to see the world. Perhaps then it will come to him as it came to me—that money is neither a curse nor a blessing in itself, but only one of God’s mysteries, like the dust in a sunbeam.”

“I will take him very gladly; but will one day be enough?” I answered.

The superior arose and smiled again.

“Ah, we slow worms of earth,” he said, “are quick about some things! You have learned to save time by flying-machines; we, too, have certain methods of flight. Brother Leo learns all his lessons that way. I hardly see him start before he arrives. You must not think I am so myself. No, no. I am an old man who has lived a long life learning nothing, but I have seen Leo grow like a flower in a tropic night. I thank you, my friend, for this great favor. I think God will reward you.”

Brother Lorenzo took me to my bedroom; he was a talkative old man, very anxious for my comfort. He told me that there was an office in the chapel at two o’clock, and one at five to begin the day, but he hoped that I should sleep through them.

“They are all very well for us,” he explained, “but for a stranger, what cold, what disturbance, and what a difficulty to arrange the right thoughts in the head during chapel! Even for me it is a great temptation. I find my mind running on coffee in the morning, a thing we have only on great feast-days. I may say that I have fought this thought for seven years, but though a small devil, perhaps, it is a very strong one. Now, if you should hear our bell in the night, as a favor pray that I may not think about coffee. Such an imperfection! I say to myself, the sin of Esau! But he, you know, had some excuse; he had been hunting. Now, I ask you—one has not much chance of that on this little island; one has only one’s sins to hunt, and, alas! they don’t run away as fast as one could wish! I am afraid they are tame, these ones. May your Excellency sleep like the blessèd saints, only a trifle longer!”

I did sleep a trifle longer; indeed, I was quite unable to assist Brother Lorenzo to resist his coffee devil during chapel-time. I did not wake till my tiny cell was flooded with sunshine and full of the sound of St. Francis’s birds. Through my window I could see the fishing-boats pass by. First came one with a pair of lemon-yellow sails, like floating primroses; then a boat as scarlet as a dancing flame, and half a dozen others painted some with jokes and some with incidents in the lives of patron saints, all gliding out over the blue lagoon to meet the golden day.

I rose, and from my window I saw Brother Leo in the garden. He was standing under St. Francis’s tree—the old gnarled umbrella-pine which hung over the convent-wall above the water by the island’s edge. His back was toward me, and he was looking out over the blue stretch of lagoon into the distance, where Venice lay like a moving cloud at the horizon’s edge; but a mist hid her from his eyes, and while I watched him he turned back to the garden-bed and began pulling out weeds. The gondoliers were already at the tiny pier when I came out.

“Per Bacco, Signore!” the elder explained. “Let us hasten back to Venice and make up for the Lent we have had here. The brothers gave us all they had, the holy ones—a little wine, a little bread, cheese that couldn’t fatten one’s grandmother, and no macaroni—not so much as would go round a baby’s tongue! For my part, I shall wait till I get to heaven to fast, and pay some attention to my stomach while I have one.” And he spat on his hands and looked toward Venice.

“And not an image in the chapel!” agreed the younger man. “Why, there is nothing to pray to but the Signore Dio Himself! Veramente, Signore, you are a witness that I speak nothing but the truth.”

The father superior and Leo appeared at this moment down the path between the cypresses. The father gave me thanks and spoke in a friendly way to the gondoliers, who for their part expressed a very pretty gratitude in their broad Venetian patois, one of them saying that the hospitality of the monks had been like paradise itself, and the other hasting to agree with him.

The two monks did not speak to each other, but as the gondolier turned the huge prow toward Venice, a long look passed between them—such a look as a father and son might exchange if the son were going out to war, while his father, remembering old campaigns, was yet bound to stay at home.

It was a glorious day in early June; the last traces of the storm had vanished from the serene, still waters; a vague curtain of heat and mist hung and shimmered between ourselves and Venice; far away lay the little islands in the lagoon, growing out of the water like strange sea-flowers. Behind us stood San Francesco del Deserto, with long reflections of its one pink tower and arrowy, straight cypresses, soft under the blue water.

The father superior walked slowly back to the convent, his brown-clad figure a shining shadow between the two black rows of cypresses. Brother Leo waited till he had disappeared, then turned his eager eyes toward Venice.

He was looking out over the blue stretch of lagoon into the distance where Venice lay

As we approached the city the milky sea of mist retreated, and her towers sprang up to greet us. I saw a look in Brother Leo’s eyes that was not fear or wholly pleasure; yet there was in it a certain awe and a strange, tentative joy, as if something in him stretched out to greet the world. He muttered half to himself:

“What a great world, and how many children il Signore Dio has!”

When we reached the piazzetta, and he looked up at the amazing splendor of the ducal palace, that building of soft yellow, with its pointed arches and double loggias of white marble, he spread out both hands in an ecstasy.

“But what a miracle!” he cried. “What a joy to God and to His angels! How I wish my brothers could see this! Do you not imagine that some good man was taken to paradise to see this great building and brought back here to copy it?”

“Chi lo sa?” I replied guardedly, and we landed by the column of the Lion of St. Mark’s. That noble beast, astride on his pedestal, with wings outstretched, delighted the young monk, who walked round and round him.

“What a tribute to the saint!” he exclaimed. “Look, they have his wings, too. Is not that faith?”

“Come,” I said, “let us go on to Saint Mark’s. I think you would like to go there first; it is the right way to begin our pilgrimage.”

The piazza was not very full at that hour of the morning, and its emptiness increased the feeling of space and size. The pigeons wheeled and circled to and fro, a dazzle of soft plumage, and the cluster of golden domes and sparkling minarets glittered in the sunshine like flames. Every image and statue on St. Mark’s wavered in great lines of light like a living pageant in a sea of gold.

Brother Leo said nothing as he stood in front of the three great doorways that lead into the church. He stood quite still for a while, and then his eyes fell on a beggar beside the pink and cream of the new campanile, and I saw the wistfulness in his eyes suddenly grow as deep as pain.

“Have you money, Signore?” he asked me. That seemed to him the only question. I gave the man something, but I explained to Brother Leo that he was probably not so poor as he looked.

“They live in rags,” I explained, “because they wish to arouse pity. Many of them need not beg at all.”

“Is it possible?” asked Brother Leo, gravely; then he followed me under the brilliant doorways of mosaic which lead into the richer dimness of St. Mark’s.

When he found himself within that great incrusted jewel, he fell on his knees. I think he hardly saw the golden roof, the jeweled walls, and the five lifted domes full of sunshine and old gold, or the dark altars, with their mysterious, rich shimmering. All these seemed to pass away beyond the sense of sight; even I felt somehow as if those great walls of St. Mark’s were not so great as I had fancied. Something greater was kneeling there in an old habit and with bare feet, half broken-hearted because a beggar had lied.

I found myself regretting the responsibility laid on my shoulders. Why should I have been compelled to take this strangely innocent, sheltered boy, with his fantastic third-century ideals, out into the shoddy, decorative, unhappy world? I even felt a kind of anger at the simplicity of his soul. I wished he were more like other people; I suppose because he had made me wish for a moment that I was less like them.

“What do you think of Saint Mark’s?” I asked him as we stood once more in the hot sunshine outside, with the strutting pigeons at our feet and wheeling over our heads.

Brother Leo did not answer for a moment, then he said:

“I think Saint Mark would feel it a little strange. You see, I do not think he was a great man in the world, and the great in paradise—” He stooped and lifted a pigeon with a broken foot nearer to some corn a passer-by was throwing for the birds. “I cannot think,” he finished gravely, “that they care very much for palaces in paradise; I should think every one had them there or else—nobody.”

I was surprised to see the pigeons that wheeled away at my approach allow the monk to handle them, but they seemed unaware of his touch.

“Poverino!” he said to the one with the broken foot. “Thank God that He has given you wings!”

Brother Leo spoke to every child he met, and they all answered him as if there was a secret freemasonry between them; but the grown-up people he passed with troubled eyes.

“It seems strange to me,” he said at last, “not to speak to these brothers and sisters of ours, and yet I see all about me that they do not salute one another.”

“They are many, and they are all strangers,” I tried to explain.

“Yes, they are very many,” he said a little sadly. “I had not known that there were so many people in the world, and I thought that in a Christian country they would not be strangers.”

I took another gondola by the nearest bridge, and we rowed to the Frari. I hardly knew what effect that great church, with its famous Titian, would have upon him. A group of tourists surrounded the picture. I heard a young lady exclaiming:

“My! but I’d like her veil! Ain’t she cute, looking round it that way?”

Brother Leo did not pause; he passed as if by instinct toward the chapel on the right which holds the softest, tenderest of Bellinis. There, before the Madonna with her four saints and two small attendant cherubs, he knelt again, and his eyes filled with tears. I do not think he heard the return of the tourists, who were rather startled at seeing him there. The elder lady remarked that he might have some infectious disease, and the younger that she did not think much of Bellini, anyway.

He knelt for some time, and I had not the heart to disturb him; indeed, I had no wish to, either, for Bellini’s “Madonna” is my favorite picture, and that morning I saw in it more than I had ever seen before. It seemed to me as if that triumphant, mellow glow of the great master was an eternal thing, and as if the saints and their gracious Lady, with the stalwart, standing Child upon her knee, were more real than flesh and blood, and would still be more real when flesh and blood had ceased to be. I never have recaptured the feeling; perhaps there was something infectious about Brother Leo, after all. He made no comment on the Madonna, nor did I expect one, for we do not need to assert that we find the object of our worship beautiful; but I was amused at his calm refusal to look upon the great Titian as a Madonna at all.

“No, no,” he said firmly. “This one is no doubt some good and gracious lady, but the Madonna! Signore, you jest. Or, if the painter thought so, he was deceived by the devil. Yes, that is very possible. The father has often told us that artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.”

I said no more, and we passed out into the street again. I felt ashamed to say that I wanted my luncheon, but I did say so, and it did not seem in the least surprising to Brother Leo; he merely drew out a small wallet and offered me some bread, which he said the father had given him for our needs.

I told him that he must not dream of eating that; he was to come and dine with me at my hotel. He replied that he would go wherever I liked, but that really he would prefer to eat his bread unless indeed we were so fortunate as to find a beggar who would like it. However, we were not so fortunate, and I was compelled to eat my exceedingly substantial five-course luncheon while my companion sat opposite me and ate his half-loaf of black bread with what appeared to be appetite and satisfaction.

He asked me a great many questions about what everything in the room was used for and what everything cost, and appeared very much surprised at my answers.

“This, then,” he said, “is not like all the other houses in Venice? Is it a special house—perhaps for the English only?”

I explained to him that most houses contained tables and chairs; that this, being a hotel, was in some ways even less furnished than a private house, though doubtless it was larger and was arranged with a special eye to foreign requirements.

“But the poor—they do not live like this?” Leo asked. I had to own that the poor did not. “But the people here are rich?” Leo persisted.

“Well, yes, I suppose so, tolerably well off,” I admitted.

“How miserable they must be!” exclaimed Leo, compassionately. “Are they not allowed to give away their money?”

This seemed hardly the way to approach the question of the rich and the poor, and I do not know that I made it any better by an after-dinner exposition upon capital and labor. I finished, of course, by saying that if the rich gave to the poor to-day, there would still be rich and poor to-morrow. It did not sound very convincing to me, and it did nothing whatever to convince Brother Leo.

“That is perhaps true,” he said at last. “One would not wish, however, to give all into unready hands like that poor beggar this morning who knew no better than to pretend in order to get more money. No, that would be the gift of a madman. But could not the rich use their money in trust for the poor, and help and teach them little by little till they learned how to share their labor and their wealth? But you know how ignorant am I who speak to you. It is probable that this is what is already being done even here now in Venice and all over the world. It would not be left to a little one like me to think of it. What an idea for the brothers at home to laugh at!”

“Some people do think these things,” I admitted.

“But do not all?” asked Brother Leo, incredulously.

“No, not all,” I confessed.

“Andiamo!” said Leo, rising resolutely. “Let us pray to the Madonna. What a vexation it must be to her and to all the blessèd saints to watch the earth! It needs the patience of the Blessèd One Himself, to bear it.”

In the Palazzo Giovanelli there is one of the loveliest of Giorgiones. It is called “His Family,” and it represents a beautiful nude woman with her child and her lover. It seemed to me an outrage that this young brother should know nothing of the world, of life. I was determined that he should see this picture. I think I expected Brother Leo to be shocked when he saw it. I know I was surprised that he looked at it—at the serene content of earth, its exquisite ultimate satisfaction—a long time. Then he said in an awed voice:

“It is so beautiful that it is strange any one in all the world can doubt the love of God who gave it.”

“Have you ever seen anything more beautiful; do you believe there is anything more beautiful?” I asked rather cruelly.

“Yes,” said Brother Leo, very quietly; “the love of God is more beautiful, only that cannot be painted.”

After that I showed him no more pictures, nor did I try to make him understand life. I had an idea that he understood it already rather better than I did.

When I took him back to the piazza, it was getting on toward sunset, and we sat at one of the little tables at Florian’s, where I drank coffee. We heard the band and watched the slow-moving, good-natured Venetian crowd, and the pigeons winging their perpetual flight.

All the light of the gathered day seemed to fall on the great golden church at the end of the piazza. Brother Leo did not look at it very much; his attention was taken up completely in watching the faces of the crowd, and as he watched them I thought to read in his face what he had learned in that one day in Venice—whether my mission had been a success or a failure; but, though I looked long at that simple and childlike face, I learned nothing.

What is so mysterious as the eyes of a child?

But I was not destined to part from Brother Leo wholly in ignorance. It was as if, in his open kindliness of nature, he would not leave me with any unspoken puzzle between us. I had been his friend and he told me, because it was the way things seemed to him, that I had been his teacher.

We stood on the piazzetta. I had hired a gondola with two men to row him back; the water was like beaten gold, and the horizon the softest shade of pink.

“This day I shall remember all my life,” he said, “and you in my prayers with all the world—always, always. Only I should like to tell you that that little idea of mine, which the father told me he had spoken to you about, I see now that it is too large for me. I am only a very poor monk. I should think I must be the poorest monk God has in all His family of monks. If He can be patient, surely I can. And it came over me while we were looking at all those wonderful things, that if money had been the way to save the world, Christ himself would have been rich. It was stupid of me. I did not remember that when he wanted to feed the multitude, he did not empty the great granaries that were all his, too; he took only five loaves and two small fishes; but they were enough.

“We little ones can pray, and God can change His world. Speriamo!” He smiled as he gave me his hand—a smile which seemed to me as beautiful as anything we had seen that day in Venice. Then the high-prowed, black gondola glided swiftly out over the golden waters with the little brown figure seated in the smallest seat. He turned often to wave to me, but I noticed that he sat with his face away from Venice.

He had turned back to San Francesco del Deserto, and I knew as I looked at his face that he carried no single small regret in his eager heart.

---

A FIGHT WITH DEATH[^[10]]
By IAN MACLAREN

[10]. From Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. Copyright, 1894, by Dodd, Mead & Company.

When Drumsheugh’s grieve was brought to the gates of death by fever, caught, as was supposed, on an adventurous visit to Glasgow, the London doctor at Lord Kilspindie’s shooting lodge looked in on his way from the moor, and declared it impossible for Saunders to live through the night.

“I give him six hours, more or less; it is only a question of time,” said the oracle, buttoning his gloves and getting into the brake. “Tell your parish doctor that I was sorry not to have met him.”

Bell heard this verdict from behind the door, and gave way utterly, but Drumsheugh declined to accept it as final, and devoted himself to consolation.

“Dinna greet like that, Bell, wumman, sae lang as Saunders is still livin’; a’ll never give up houp, for ma pairt, till oor ain man says the word.

“A’ the doctors in the land dinna ken as muckle aboot us as Weelum MacLure, an’ he’s ill tae beat when he’s tryin’ tae save a man’s life.”

MacLure, on his coming, would say nothing, either weal or woe, till he had examined Saunders. Suddenly his face turned into iron before their eyes, and he looked like one encountering a merciless foe. For there was a feud between MacLure and a certain mighty power which had lasted for forty years in Drumtochty.

“The London doctor said that Saunders wud sough awa’ afore mornin’, did he? Weel, he’s an’ authority on fevers an’ sic like diseases, an’ ought tae ken.

“It’s may be presumptuous o’ me tae differ frae him, and it wudna be verra respectfu’ o’ Saunders tae live aifter this opeenion. But Saunders wes aye thraun an’ ill tae drive, an’ he’s as like as no tae gang his ain gait.

“A’m no meanin’ tae reflect on sae clever a man, but he didna ken the seetuation. He can read fevers like a buik, but he never cam’ across sic a thing as the Drumtochty constitution a’ his days.

“Ye see, when onybody gets as low as puir Saunders here, it’s a juist a hand-to-hand wrastle atween the fever and his constitution, an’ of coorse, if he hed been a shilpit, stuntit, feckless effeegy o’ a cratur, fed on tea an’ made dishes and pushioned wi’ bad air, Saunders wud hae nae chance; he wes boond tae gae oot like the snuff o’ a candle.

“But Saunders has been fillin’ his lungs for five and thirty year wi’ strong Drumtochty air, an’ eatin’ naethin’ but kirny aitmeal, and drinkin’ naethin’ but fresh milk frae the coo, an’ followin’ the ploo through the new-turned, sweet-smellin’ earth, an’ swingin’ the scythe in haytime and harvest, till the legs an’ airms o’ him were iron, an’ his chest wes like the cuttin’ o’ an oak tree.

“He’s a waesome sicht the nicht, but Saunders wes a buirdly man aince, and wull never lat his life be taken lichtly frae him. Na, na; he hesna sinned against Nature, and Nature ’ill stand by him noo in his oor o’ distress.

“A’ daurna say yea, Bell, muckle as a’ wud like, for this is an evil disease, cunnin’ an’ treacherous as the deevil himsel’, but a’ winna say nay, sae keep yir hert frae despair.

“It wull be a sair fecht, but it ’ill be settled one wy or anither by six o’clock the morn’s morn. Nae man can prophecee hoo it ’ill end, but ae thing is certain, a’ll no see Deith tak a Drumtochty man afore his time if a’ can help it.

“Noo, Bell, ma wumman, yir near deid wi’ tire, an’ nae wonder. Ye’ve dune a’ ye cud for yir man an’ ye ’ill lippen (trust) him the nicht tae Drumsheugh an’ me; we ’ill no fail him or you.

“Lie doon an’ rest, an’ if it be the wull o’ the Almichty a’ll wauken ye in the mornin’ tae see a livin’, conscious man, an’ if it be itherwise a’ll come for ye the suner, Bell,” and the big red hand went out to the anxious wife. “A’ gie ye ma word.”

Bell leant over the bed, and at the sight of Saunders’ face a superstitious dread seized her.

“See, doctor, the shadow of deith is on him that never lifts. A’ve seen it afore, on ma father an’ mither. A’ canna leave him; a’ canna leave him!”

“It’s hoverin’, Bell, but it hesna fallen; please God it never wull. Gang but and get some sleep, for it’s time we were at oor wark.

“The doctors in the toons hae nurses an’ a’ kinds o’ handy apparatus,” said MacLure to Drumsheugh when Bell had gone, “but you an’ me ’ill need tae be nurse the nicht, an’ use sic things as we hev.

“It ’ill be a lang nicht and anxious wark, but a’ wud raither hae ye, auld freend, wi’ me than ony man in the Glen. Ye’re no feared tae gie a hand?”

“Me feared? No likely. Man, Saunders cam’ tae me a haflin, an’ hes been on Drumsheugh for twenty years, an’ though he be a dour chiel, he’s a faithfu’ servant as ever lived. It’s waesome tae see him lyin’ there moanin’ like some dumb animal frae mornin’ to nicht, an’ no able tae answer his ain wife when she speaks.

“Div ye think, Weelum, he hes a chance?”

“That he hes, at ony rate, and it ’ill no be your blame or mine if he hesna mair.”

While he was speaking, MacLure took off his coat and waistcoat and hung them on the back of the door. Then he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and laid bare two arms that were nothing but bone and muscle.

“It gar’d ma very blood rin faster tae the end of ma fingers juist tae look at him,” Drumsheugh expatiated afterwards to Hillocks, “for a’ saw noo that there was tae be a stand-up fecht atween him an’ Deith for Saunders, and when a’ thocht o’ Bell an’ her bairns, a’ kent wha wud win.

“‘Aff wi’ yir coat, Drumsheugh,’ said MacLure; ‘ye ’ill need tae bend yir back the nicht; gither a’ the pails in the hoose and fill them at the spring, an’ a’ll come doon tae help ye wi’ the carryin’.’”

It was a wonderful ascent up the steep pathway from the spring to the cottage on its little knoll, the two men in single file, bareheaded, silent, solemn, each with a pail of water in either hand, MacLure limping painfully in front, Drumsheugh blowing behind; and when they laid down their burden in the sick room, where the bits of furniture had been put to a side and a large tub held the centre, Drumsheugh looked curiously at the doctor.

“No, a’m no daft; ye needna be feared; but yir tae get yir first lesson in medicine the nicht, an’ if we win the battle ye can set up for yersel’ in the Glen.

“There’s twa dangers—that Saunders’ strength fails, an’ that the force o’ the fever grows; and we have juist twa weapons.

“Yon milk on the drawers’ head an’ the bottle of whisky is tae keep up the strength, and this cool caller water is tae keep doon the fever.

“We ’ill cast oot the fever by the virtue o’ the earth an’ the water.”

“Div ye mean tae pit Saunders in the tub?”

“Ye hiv it noo, Drumsheugh, and that’s hoo a’ need yir help.”

“Man, Hillocks,” Drumsheugh used to moralise, as often as he remembered that critical night, “it wes humblin’ tae see how low sickness can bring a pooerfu’ man, an’ ocht tae keep us frae pride.

“A month syne there wesna a stronger man in the Glen than Saunders, an’ noo he wes juist a bundle o’ skin and bone, that naither saw nor heard, nor moved nor felt, that kent naethin’ that was dune tae him.

“Hillocks, a’ wudna hae wished ony man tae hev seen Saunders—for it wull never pass frae before ma een as long as a’ live—but a’ wish a’ the Glen hed stude by MacLure kneelin’ on the floor wi’ his sleeves up tae his oxters and waitin’ on Saunders.

“Yon big man wes as pitifu’ an’ gentle as a wumman, and when he laid the puir fallow in his bed again, he happit him ower as a mither dis her bairn.”

Thrice it was done, Drumsheugh ever bringing up colder water from the spring, and twice MacLure was silent; but after the third time there was a gleam in his eye.

“We’re haudin’ oor ain; we’re no bein’ maistered, at ony rate; mair a’ canna say for three oors.

“We ’ill no need the water again, Drumsheugh; gae oot and tak a breath o’ air; a’m on gaird masel’.”

It was the hour before daybreak, and Drumsheugh wandered through the fields he had trodden since childhood. The cattle lay sleeping in the pastures; their shadowy forms, with a patch of whiteness here and there, having a weird suggestion of death. He heard the burn running over the stones; fifty years ago he had made a dam that lasted till winter. The hooting of an owl made him start; one had frightened him as a boy so that he ran home to his mother—she died thirty years ago. The smell of ripe corn filled the air; it would soon be cut and garnered. He could see the dim outlines of his house, all dark and cold; no one he loved was beneath the roof. The lighted window in Saunders’ cottage told where a man hung between life and death, but love was in that home. The futility of life arose before this lonely man, and overcame his heart with an indescribable sadness. What a vanity was all human labor; what a mystery all human life!

But while he stood, a subtle change came over the night, and the air trembled round him as if one had whispered. Drumsheugh lifted his head and looked eastward. A faint gray stole over the distant horizon, and suddenly a cloud reddened before his eyes. The sun was not in sight, but was rising, and sending forerunners before his face. The cattle began to stir, a blackbird burst into song, and before Drumsheugh crossed the threshold of Saunders’ house, the first ray of the sun had broken on a peak of the Grampians.

MacLure left the bedside, and as the light of the candle fell on the doctor’s face, Drumsheugh could see that it was going well with Saunders.

“He’s nae waur; an’ it’s half six noo; it’s ower sune tae say mair, but a’m houpin’ for the best. Sit doon and take a sleep, for ye’re needin’ ’t, Drumsheugh, an’, man, ye hae worked for it.”

As he dozed off, the last thing Drumsheugh saw was the doctor sitting erect in his chair, a clenched fist resting on the bed, and his eyes already bright with the vision of victory.

He awoke with a start to find the room flooded with the morning sunshine, and every trace of last night’s work removed.

The doctor was bending over the bed, and speaking to Saunders.

“It’s me, Saunders; Doctor MacLure, ye ken; dinna try tae speak or move; juist let this drap milk slip ower—ye ’ill be needin’ yir breakfast, lad—and gang tae sleep again.”

Five minutes, and Saunders had fallen into a deep, healthy sleep, all tossing and moaning come to an end. Then MacLure stepped softly across the floor, picked up his coat and waistcoat, and went out at the door.

Drumsheugh arose and followed him without a word. They passed through the little garden, sparkling with dew, and beside the byre, where Hawkie rattled her chain, impatient for Bell’s coming, and by Saunders’ little strip of corn ready for the scythe, till they reached an open field. There they came to a halt, and Dr. MacLure for once allowed himself to go.

His coat he flung east and his waistcoat west, as far as he could hurl them, and it was plain he would have shouted had he been a complete mile from Saunders’ room. Any less distance was useless for adequate expression. He struck Drumsheugh a mighty blow that well-nigh levelled that substantial man in the dust, and then the doctor of Drumtochty issued his bulletin.

“Saunders wesna tae live through the nicht, but he’s livin’ this meenut, an’ like to live.

“He’s got by the warst clean and fair, and wi’ him that’s as good as cure.

“It ’ill be a graund waukenin’ for Bell; she ’ill no be a weedow yet, nor the bairnies fatherless.

“There’s nae use glowerin’ at me, Drumsheugh, for a body’s daft at a time, an’ a’ canna contain masel’, and a’m no gaein’ tae try.”

Then it dawned upon Drumsheugh that the doctor was attempting the Highland fling.

“He’s ill made, tae begin wi’,” Drumsheugh explained in the kirkyard next Sabbath, “and ye ken he’s been terrible mishannelled by accidents, sae ye may think what like it wes, but, as sure as deith, o’ a’ the Hielan’ flings a’ ever saw yon wes the bonniest.

“A’ hevna shaken ma ain legs for thirty years, but a’ confess tae a turn masel’. Ye may lauch an’ ye like, neeburs, but the thocht o’ Bell an’ the news that wes waitin’ her got the better o’ me.”

Drumtochty did not laugh. Drumtochty looked as if it could have done quite otherwise for joy.

“A’ wud hae made a third gin a’ hed been there,” announced Hillocks aggressively.

“Come on, Drumsheugh,” said Jamie Soutar, “gie’s the end o’t; it wes a michty mornin’.”

“‘We’re twa auld fules,’ says MacLure tae me, as he gaithers up his claithes. ‘It wud set us better tae be tellin’ Bell.’

“She was sleepin’ on the top o’ her bed wrapped in a plaid, fair worn oot wi’ three weeks’ nursin’ o’ Saunders, but at the first touch she was oot upon the floor.

“‘Is Saunders deein’, doctor?’ she cries. ‘Ye promised tae wauken me; dinna tell me it’s a’ ower.’

“There’s nae deein’ aboot him, Bell; ye’re no tae lose yir man this time, sae far as a’ can see. Come ben an’ jidge for yersel’."

“Bell lookit at Saunders, and the tears of joy fell on the bed like rain.

“‘The shadow’s lifted,’ she said; ‘he’s come back frae the mooth o’ the tomb.

“‘A’ prayed last nicht that the Lord wud leave Saunders till the laddies cud dae for themselves, an’ thae words came intae ma mind, “Weepin’ may endure for a nicht, but joy cometh in the mornin’.”

“‘The Lord heard ma prayer, and joy hes come in the mornin’,’ an’ she gripped the doctor’s hand.

“‘Ye’ve been the instrument, Doctor MacLure. Ye wudna gie him up, and ye did what nae ither cud for him, an’ a’ve ma man the day, and the bairns hae their father.’

“An’ afore MacLure kent what she was daein’, Bell lifted his hand to her lips an’ kissed it.”

“Did she, though?” cried Jamie. “Wha wud hae thocht there wes as muckle spunk in Bell?”

“MacLure, of coorse, was clean scandalised,” continued Drumsheugh, “an’ pooed awa’ his hand as if it hed been burned.

“Nae man can thole that kind o’ fraikin’, and a’ never heard o’ sic a thing in the parish, but we maun excuse Bell, neeburs; it wes an occasion by ordinar,” and Drumsheugh made Bell’s apology to Drumtochty for such an excess of feeling.

“A’ see naethin’ tae excuse,” insisted Jamie, who was in great fettle that Sabbath; “the doctor hes never been burdened wi’ fees, and a’m judgin’ he coonted a wumman’s gratitude that he saved frae weedowhood the best he ever got.”

“A’ gaed up tae the Manse last nicht,” concluded Drumsheugh, “an’ telt the minister hoo the doctor focht aucht oors for Saunders’ life, an’ won, an’ ye never saw a man sae carried. He walkit up an’ doon the room a’ the time, and every other meenut he blew his nose like a trumpet.

“‘I’ve a cold in my head to-night, Drumsheugh,’ says he; ‘never mind me.’”

“A’ve hed the same masel’ in sic circumstances; they come on sudden,” said Jamie.

“A’ wager there ’ill be a new bit in the laist prayer the day, an’ somethin’ worth hearin’.”

And the fathers went into kirk in great expectation.

“We beseech Thee for such as be sick, that Thy hand may be on them for good, and that Thou wouldst restore them again to health and strength,” was the familiar petition of every Sabbath.

The congregation waited in a silence that might be heard, and were not disappointed that morning, for the minister continued:

“Especially we tender Thee hearty thanks that Thou didst spare Thy servant who was brought down into the dust of death, and hast given him back to his wife and children, and unto that end didst wonderfully bless the skill of him who goes out and in amongst us, the beloved physician of this parish and adjacent districts.”

“Didna a’ tell ye, neeburs?” said Jamie, as they stood at the kirkyard gate before dispersing, “there’s no a man in the coonty cud hae dune it better. ‘Beloved physician,’ an’ his ‘skill,’ tae, an’ bringing in ‘adjacent districts’; that’s Glen Urtach; it wes handsome, and the doctor earned it, ay, every word.

“It’s an awfu’ peety he didna hear yon; but dear knows whar he is the day, maist likely up——”

Jamie stopped suddenly at the sound of a horse’s feet, and there, coming down the avenue of beech trees that made a long vista from the kirk gate, they saw the doctor and Jess.

One thought flashed through the minds of the fathers of the commonwealth.

It ought to be done as he passed, and it would be done if it were not Sabbath. Of course it was out of the question on Sabbath.

The doctor is now distinctly visible, riding after his fashion.

There was never such a chance, if it were only Saturday; and each man read his own regret in his neighbour’s face.

The doctor is nearing them rapidly; they can imagine the shepherd’s tartan.

Sabbath or no Sabbath, the Glen cannot let him pass without some tribute of their pride.

Jess has recognised friends, and the doctor is drawing rein.

“It hes tae be dune,” said Jamie desperately, “say what ye like.” Then they all looked towards him, and Jamie led.

“Hurrah!” swinging his Sabbath hat in the air, “hurrah!” and once more, “hurrah!” Whinnie Knowe, Drumsheugh, and Hillocks joining lustily, but Tammas Mitchell carrying all before him, for he had found at last an expression for his feelings that rendered speech unnecessary.

It was a solitary experience for horse and rider, and Jess bolted without delay. But the sound followed and surrounded them, and as they passed the corner of the kirkyard, a figure waved his college cap over the wall and gave a cheer on his own account.

“God bless you, doctor, and well done!”

“If it isna the minister,” cried Drumsheugh, “in his goon an’ bans; tae think o’ that; but a’ respeck him for it.”

Then Drumtochty became self-conscious and went home in confusion of face and unbroken silence, except Jamie Soutar, who faced his neighbours at the parting of the ways without shame.

“A’ wud dae it a’ ower again if a’ hed the chance; he got naethin’ but his due.”

It was two miles before Jess composed her mind, and the doctor and she could discuss it quietly together.

“A’ can hardly believe me ears, Jess, an’ the Sabbath tae; their verra jidgment hes gane frae the fouk o’ Drumtochty.

“They’ve heard about Saunders, a’m thinkin’, wumman, and they’re pleased we brocht him roond; he’s fairly on the mend, ye ken, noo.

“A’ never expeckit the like o’ this, though, and it wes juist a wee thingie mair than a’ cud hae stude.

“Ye hev yir share in’t tae, lass; we’ve hed mony a hard nicht and day thegither, an’ yon wes oor reward. No mony men in this warld ’ill ever get a better, for it cam’ from the hert o’ honest fouk.”

---

THE DÀN-NAN-RÒN[^[11]]
By FIONA MACLEOD

[11]. From The Dominion of Dreams, Under the Dark Star. By permission of Mrs. William Sharp. Copyright, 1910, by Duffield & Company.

When Anne Gillespie, that was my friend in Eilanmore, left the island after the death of her uncle, the old man Robert Achanna, it was to go far west.

Among the men of the Outer Isles who for three summers past had been at the fishing off Eilanmore there was one named Mànus MacCodrum. He was a fine lad to see, but though most of the fisher-folk of the Lews and North Uist are fair, either with reddish hair and grey eyes, or blue-eyed and yellow-haired, he was of a brown skin with dark hair and dusky brown eyes. He was, however, as unlike to the dark Celts of Arran and the Inner Hebrides as to the northmen. He came of his people, sure enough. All the MacCodrums of North Uist had been brown-skinned and brown-haired and brown-eyed: and herein may have lain the reason why, in by-gone days, this small clan of Uist was known throughout the Western Isles as the Sliochd non Ròn, the offspring of the Seals.

Not so tall as most of the men of North Uist and the Lews, Mànus MacCodrum was of a fair height, and supple and strong. No man was a better fisherman than he, and he was well liked of his fellows, for all the morose gloom that was upon him at times. He had a voice as sweet as a woman’s when he sang, and he sang often, and knew all the old runes of the islands, from the Obb of Harris to the Head of Mingulay. Often, too, he chanted the beautiful orain spioradail of the Catholic priests and Christian Brothers of South Uist and Barra, though where he lived in North Uist he was the sole man who adhered to the ancient faith.

It may have been because Anne was a Catholic too, though, sure, the Achannas were so also, notwithstanding that their forebears and kindred in Galloway were Protestant (and this because of old Robert Achanna’s love for his wife, who was of the old Faith, so it is said)—it may have been for this reason, though I think her lover’s admiring eyes and soft speech and sweet singing had more to do with it, that she pledged her troth to Mànus. It was a south wind for him as the saying is; for with her rippling brown hair and soft, grey eyes and cream-white skin, there was no comelier lass in the isles.

So when Achanna was laid to his long rest, and there was none left upon Eilanmore save only his three youngest sons, Mànus MacCodrum sailed northeastward across the Minch to take home his bride. Of the four eldest sons, Alasdair had left Eilanmore some months before his father died, and sailed westward, though no one knew whither or for what end or for how long, and no word had been brought from him, nor was he ever seen again in the island which had come to be called Eilan-nan-Allmharachain, the Isle of the Strangers; Allan and William had been drowned in a wild gale in the Minch; and Robert had died of the white fever, that deadly wasting disease which is the scourge of the isles. Marcus was now “Eilanmore,” and lived there with Gloom and Seumas, all three unmarried, though it was rumoured among the neighbouring islanders that each loved Marsail nic Ailpean,[^[12]] in Eilean-Rona of the Summer Isles hard by the coast of Sutherland.

[12]. Marsail nic Ailpean is the Gaelic of which an English translation would be Marjory MacAlpine. Nic is a contraction for nighean mhic, “daughter of the line of.”

When Mànus asked Anne to go with him she agreed. The three brothers were ill-pleased at this, for apart from their not wishing their cousin to go so far away, they did not want to lose her, as she not only cooked for them and did all that a woman does, including spinning and weaving, but was most sweet and fair to see, and in the long winter nights sang by the hour together, while Gloom played strange wild airs upon his feadan, a kind of oaten pipe or flute.

She loved him, I know; but there was this reason also for her going, that she was afraid of Gloom. Often upon the moor or on the hill she turned and hastened home, because she heard the lilt and fall of that feadan. It was an eerie thing to her, to be going through the twilight when she thought the three men were in the house, smoking after their supper, and suddenly to hear beyond and coming toward her the shrill song of that oaten flute, playing “The Dance of the Dead,” or “The Flow and Ebb,” or “The Shadow-Reel.”

That, sometimes at least, he knew she was there was clear to her, because, as she stole rapidly through the tangled fern and gale, she would hear a mocking laugh follow her like a leaping thing.

Mànus was not there on the night when she told Marcus and his brothers that she was going. He was in the haven on board the Luath, with his two mates, he singing in the moonshine as all three sat mending their fishing gear.

After the supper was done, the three brothers sat smoking and talking over an offer that had been made about some Shetland sheep. For a time, Anne watched them in silence. They were not like brothers, she thought. Marcus, tall, broad-shouldered, with yellow hair and strangely dark blue-black eyes and black eyebrows; stern, with a weary look on his sun-brown face. The light from the peats glinted upon the tawny curve of thick hair that trailed from his upper lip, for he had the caisean-feusag of the Northmen. Gloom, slighter of build, dark of hue and hair, but with hairless face; with thin, white, long-fingered hands that had ever a nervous motion, as though they were tide-wrack. There was always a frown on the centre of his forehead, even when he smiled with his thin lips and dusky, unbetraying eyes. He looked what he was, the brain of the Achannas. Not only did he have the English as though native to that tongue, but could and did read strange unnecessary books. Moreover, he was the only son of Robert Achanna to whom the old man had imparted his store of learning, for Achanna had been a school-master in his youth, in Galloway, and he had intended Gloom for the priesthood. His voice, too, was low and clear, but cold as pale-green water running under ice. As for Seumas, he was more like Marcus than Gloom, though not so fair. He had the same brown hair and shadowy hazel eyes, the same pale and smooth face, with something of the same intent look which characterised the long-time missing, and probably dead, eldest brother, Alasdair. He, too, was tall and gaunt. On Seumas’s face there was that indescribable, as to some of course imperceptible, look which is indicated by the phrase “the dusk of the shadow,” though few there are who know what they mean by that, or, knowing, are fain to say.

Suddenly, and without any word or reason for it, Gloom turned and spoke to her.

“Well, Anne, and what is it?”

“I did not speak, Gloom.”

“True for you, mo cailinn. But it’s about to speak you were.”

“Well, and that is true. Marcus, and you Gloom, and you Seumas, I have that to tell which you will not be altogether glad for the hearing. ’Tis about—about—me and—and Mànus.”

There was no reply at first. The three brothers sat looking at her like the kye at a stranger on the moorland. There was a deepening of the frown on Gloom’s brow, but when Anne looked at him his eyes fell and dwelt in the shadow at his feet. Then Marcus spoke in a low voice:

“Is it Mànus MacCodrum you will be meaning?”

“Ay, sure.”

Again silence. Gloom did not lift his eyes, and Seumas was now staring at the peats. Marcus shifted uneasily.

“And what will Mànus MacCodrum be wanting?”

“Sure, Marcus, you know well what I mean. Why do you make this thing hard for me? There is but one thing he would come here wanting. And he has asked me if I will go with him; and I have said yes; and if you are not willing that he come again with the minister, or that we go across to the kirk in Berneray of Uist in the Sound of Harris, then I will not stay under this roof another night, but will go away from Eilanmore at sunrise in the Luath, that is now in the haven. And that is for the hearing and knowing, Marcus and Gloom and Seumas!”

Once more, silence followed her speaking. It was broken in a strange way. Gloom slipped his feadan into his hands, and so to his mouth. The clear, cold notes of the flute filled the flame-lit room. It was as though white polar birds were drifting before the coming of snow.

The notes slid in to a wild, remote air: cold moonlight on the dark o’ the sea, it was. It was the Dàn-nan-Ròn.

Anne flushed, trembled, and then abruptly rose. As she leaned on her clenched right hand upon the table, the light of the peats showed that her eyes were aflame.

“Why do you play that, Gloom Achanna?”

The man finished the bar, then blew into the oaten pipe, before, just glancing at the girl, he replied:

“And what harm will there be in that, Anna-ban?”

“Do you know why Gloom played the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’?”

“Ay, and what then, Anna-ban?”

“What then? Are you thinking I don’t know what you mean by playing the ‘Song o’ the Seals’?”

With an abrupt gesture Gloom put the feadan aside. As he did so, he rose.

“See here, Anne,” he began roughly, when Marcus intervened.

“That will do just now, Gloom. Anne-à-ghraidh, do you mean that you are going to do this thing?”

“Ay, sure.”

“Do you know why Gloom played the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’?”

“It was a cruel thing.”

“You know what is said in the isles about—about—this or that man, who is under gheasan, who is spell-bound and—and—about the seals—”

“Yes, Marcus, it is knowing it that I am: ‘Tha iad a’ cantuinn gur h-e daoine fo gheasan a th’ anns no roin.’”

“‘They say that seals,’” he repeated slowly. “‘They say that seals are men under magic spells.’ And have you ever pondered that thing, Anne, my cousin?”

“I am knowing well what you mean.”

“Then you will know that the MacCodrums of North Uist are called the Sliochd-nan-Ròn?”

“I have heard.”

“And would you be for marrying a man that is of the race of the beasts, and himself knowing what that geas means, and who may any day go back to his people?”

“Ah, now, Marcus, sure it is making a mock of me you are. Neither you nor any here believe that foolish thing. How can a man born of a woman be a seal, even though his sinnsear were the offspring of the sea-people, which is not a saying I am believing either, though it may be; and not that it matters much, whatever, about the far-back forebears.”

Marcus frowned darkly, and at first made no response. At last he answered, speaking sullenly:

“You may be believing this or you may be believing that, Anna-nic-Gilleasbuig, but two things are as well known as that the east wind brings the blight and the west wind the rain. And one is this: that long ago a Seal-man wedded a woman of North Uist, and that he or his son was called Neil MacCodrum; and that the sea-fever of the seal was in the blood of his line ever after. And this is the other: that twice within the memory of living folk, a MacCodrum has taken upon himself the form of a seal, and has so met his death, once Neil MacCodrum of Ru’ Tormaid, and once Anndra MacCodrum of Berneray in the Sound. There’s talk of others, but these are known of us all. And you will not be forgetting now that Neildonn was the grandfather, and that Anndra was the brother of the father of Mànus MacCodrum?”

“I am not caring what you say, Marcus. It is all foam of the sea.”

“There’s no foam without wind or tide, Anne, an’ it’s a dark tide that will be bearing you away to Uist, and a black wind that will be blowing far away behind the East, the wind that will be carrying his death-cry to your ears.”

The girl shuddered. The brave spirit in her, however, did not quail.

“Well, so be it. To each his fate. But, seal or no seal, I am going to wed Mànus MacCodrum, who is a man as good as any here, and a true man at that, and the man I love, and that will be my man, God willing, the praise be His!”

Again Gloom took up the feadan, and sent a few cold, white notes floating through the hot room, breaking, suddenly, into the wild, fantastic, opening air of the “Dàn-nan-Ròn.”

With a low cry and passionate gesture Anne sprang forward, snatched the oat-flute from his grasp, and would have thrown it in the fire. Marcus held her in an iron grip, however.

“Don’t you be minding Gloom, Anne,” he said quietly, as he took the feadan from her hand and handed it to his brother: “sure he’s only telling you in his way what I am telling you in mine.”

She shook herself free, and moved to the other side of the table. On the opposite wall hung the dirk which had belonged to old Achanna. This she unfastened. Holding it in her right hand, she faced the three men.—

“On the cross of the dirk I swear I will be the woman of Mànus MacCodrum.”

The brothers made no response. They looked at her fixedly.

“And by the cross of the dirk I swear that if any man come between me and Mànus, this dirk will be for his remembering in a certain hour of the day of the days.”

As she spoke, she looked meaningly at Gloom, whom she feared more than Marcus or Seumas.

“And by the cross of the dirk I swear that if evil come to Mànus, this dirk will have another sheath, and that will be my milkless breast; and by that token I now throw the old sheath in the fire.”

As she finished, she threw the sheath on to the burning peats. Gloom quietly lifted it, brushed off the sparks of flame as though they were dust, and put it in his pocket.

“And by the same token, Anne,” he said, “your oaths will come to nought.”

Rising, he made a sign to his brothers to follow. When they were outside he told Seumas to return, and to keep Anne within, by peace if possible, by force if not. Briefly they discussed their plans, and then separated. While Seumas went back, Marcus and Gloom made their way to the haven.

Their black figures were visible in the moonlight, but at first they were not noticed by the men on board the Luath, for Mànus was singing.

When the islesman stopped abruptly, one of his companions asked him jokingly if his song had brought a seal alongside, and bid him beware lest it was a woman of the sea-people.

His face darkened, but he made no reply. When the others listened they heard the wild strain of the “Dàn-nan-Ròn” stealing through the moonshine. Staring against the shore, they could discern the two brothers.

“What will be the meaning of that?” asked one of the men, uneasily.

“When a man comes instead of a woman,” answered Mànus, slowly, “the young corbies are astir in the nest.”

So, it meant blood. Aulay MacNeil and Donull Macdonull put down their gear, rose, and stood waiting for what Mànus would do.

“Ho, there!” he cried.

“Ho-ro!”

“What will you be wanting, Eilanmore?”

“We are wanting a word of you, Mànus MacCodrum. Will you come ashore?”

“If you want a word of me, you can come to me.”

“There is no boat here.”

“I’ll send the bàta-beag.”

When he had spoken, Mànus asked Donull, the younger of his mates, a lad of seventeen, to row to the shore.

“And bring back no more than one man,” he added, “whether it be Eilanmore himself or Gloom-mhic-Achanna.”

The rope of the small boat was unfastened, and Donull rowed it swiftly through the moonshine. The passing of a cloud dusked the shore, but they saw him throw a rope for the guiding of the boat alongside the ledge of the landing place; then the sudden darkening obscured the vision. Donull must be talking, they thought, for two or three minutes elapsed without sign, but at last the boat put off again, and with two figures only. Doubtless the lad had had to argue against the coming of both Marcus and Gloom.

This, in truth, was what Donull had done. But while he was speaking Marcus was staring fixedly beyond him.

“Who is it that is there?” he asked, “there, in the stern?”

“There is no one there.”

“I thought I saw the shadow of a man.”

“Then it was my shadow, Eilanmore.”

Achanna turned to his brother.

“I see a man’s death there in the boat.”

Gloom quailed for a moment, then laughed low.

“I see no death of a man sitting in the boat, Marcus, but if I did I am thinking it would dance to the air of the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn,’ which is more than the wraith of you or me would do.”

“It is not a wraith I was seeing, but the death of a man.”

Gloom whispered, and his brother nodded sullenly. The next moment a heavy muffler was round Donull’s mouth; and before he could resist, or even guess what had happened, he was on his face on the shore, bound and gagged. A minute later the oars were taken by Gloom, and the boat moved swiftly out of the inner haven.

As it drew near Mànus stared at it intently.

“That is not Donull that is rowing, Aulay!”

“No: it will be Gloom Achanna, I’m thinking.”

MacCodrum started. If so, that other figure at the stern was too big for Donull. The cloud passed just as the boat came alongside. The rope was made secure, and then Marcus and Gloom sprang on board.

“Where is Donull MacDonull?” demanded Mànus sharply.

Marcus made no reply, so Gloom answered for him.

“He has gone up to the house with a message to Anne-nic-Gilleasbuig.”

“And what will that message be?”

“That Mànus MacCodrum has sailed away from Eilanmore, and will not see her again.”

MacCodrum laughed. It was a low, ugly laugh.

“Sure, Gloom Achanna, you should be taking that feadan of yours and playing the Cod-hail-nan-Pairtean, for I’m thinkin’ the crabs are gathering about the rocks down below us, an’ laughing wi’ their claws.”

“Well, and that is a true thing,” Gloom replied slowly and quietly. “Yes, for sure I might, as you say, be playing the ’meeting of the Crabs.’ Perhaps,” he added, as by a sudden afterthought, “perhaps, though it is a calm night, you will be hearing the comh-thonn. The ‘Slapping of the Waves’ is a better thing to be hearing than the ’meeting of the Crabs.’”

“If I hear the comh-thonn it is not in the way you will be meaning, Gloom-mhic-Achanna. ’Tis not the ‘Up Sail and Good-bye’ they will be saying, but ‘Home wi’ the Bride.’”

Here Marcus intervened.

“Let us be having no more words, Mànus MacCodrum. The girl Anne is not for you. Gloom is to be her man. So get you hence. If you will be going quiet, it is quiet we will be. If you have your feet on this thing, then you will be having that too which I saw in the boat.”

“And what was it you saw in the boat, Achanna?”

“The death of a man.”

“So—. And now” (this after a prolonged silence, wherein the four men stood facing each other, “is it a blood-matter if not of peace?”

“Ay. Go, if you are wise. If not, ’tis your own death you will be making.”

There was a flash as of summer lightning. A bluish flame seemed to leap through the moonshine. Marcus reeled, with a gasping cry; then, leaning back, till his face blenched in the moonlight, his knees gave way. As he fell, he turned half round. The long knife which Mànus had hurled at him had not penetrated his breast more than an inch at most, but as he fell on the deck it was driven into him up to the hilt.

In the blank silence that followed, the three men could hear a sound like the ebb-tide in sea-weed. It was the gurgling of the bloody froth in the lungs of the dead man.

The first to speak was his brother, and then only when thin reddish-white foam-bubbles began to burst from the blue lips of Marcus.

“It is murder.”

He spoke low, but it was like the surf of breakers in the ears of those who heard.

“You have said one part of a true word, Gloom Achanna. It is murder—that you and he came here for!”

“The death of Marcus Achanna is on you, Mànus MacCodrum.”

“So be it, as between yourself and me, or between all of your blood and me; though Aulay MacNeil, as well as you, can witness that though in self-defence I threw the knife at Achanna, it was his own doing that drove it into him.”

“You can whisper that to the rope when it is round your neck.”

“And what will you be doing now, Gloom-mhic-Achanna?”

For the first time Gloom shifted uneasily. A swift glance revealed to him the awkward fact that the boat trailed behind the Luath, so that he could not leap into it, while if he turned to haul it close by the rope he was at the mercy of the two men.

“I will go in peace,” he said quietly.

“Ay,” was the answer, in an equally quiet tone, “in the white peace.”

Upon this menace of death the two men stood facing each other.

Achanna broke the silence at last.

“You’ll hear the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’ the night before you die, Mànus MacCodrum, and lest you doubt it you’ll hear it again in your death-hour.”

“Ma tha sin an Dàn—if that be ordained.” Mànus spoke gravely. His very quietude, however, boded ill. There was no hope of clemency; Gloom knew that.

Suddenly he laughed scornfully. Then, pointing with his right hand as if to some one behind his two adversaries, he cried out: “Put the death-hand on them, Marcus! Give them the Grave!” Both men sprang aside, the heart of each nigh upon bursting. The death-touch of the newly slain is an awful thing to incur, for it means that the wraith can transfer all its evil to the person touched.

The next moment there was a heavy splash. Mànus realised that it was no more than a ruse, and that Gloom had escaped. With feverish haste he hauled in the small boat, leaped into it, and began at once to row so as to intercept his enemy.

Achanna rose once, between him and the Luath. MacCodrum crossed the oars in the thole-pins and seized the boat-hook.

The swimmer kept straight for him. Suddenly he dived. In a flash, Mànus knew that Gloom was going to rise under the boat, seize the keel, and upset him, and thus probably be able to grip him from above. There was time and no more to leap; and, indeed, scarce had he plunged into the sea ere the boat swung right over, Achanna clambering over it the next moment.

At first Gloom could not see where his foe was. He crouched on the upturned craft, and peered eagerly into the moonlit water. All at once a black mass shot out of the shadow between him and the smack. This black mass laughed—the same low, ugly laugh that had preceded the death of Marcus.

He who was in turn the swimmer was now close. When a fathom away he leaned back and began to tread water steadily. In his right hand he grasped the boat-hook. The man in the boat knew that to stay where he was meant certain death. He gathered himself together like a crouching cat. Mànus kept treading the water slowly, but with the hook ready so that the sharp iron spike at the end of it should transfix his foe if he came at him with a leap. Now and again he laughed. Then in his low sweet voice, but brokenly at times between his deep breathings, he began to sing:

The tide was dark, an’ heavy with the burden that it bore;

I heard it talkin’, whisperin’, upon the weedy shore;

Each wave that stirred the sea-weed was like a closing door;

’Tis closing doors they hear at last who hear no more, no more.

My Grief,

No more!

The tide was in the salt sea-weed, and like a knife it tore;

The wild sea-wind went moaning, sooing, moaning o’er and o’er;

The deep sea-heart was brooding deep upon its ancient lore—

I heard the sob, the sooing sob, the dying sob at its core,

My Grief,

Its core!

The white sea-waves were wan and gray its ashy lips before,

The yeast within its ravening mouth was red with streaming gore;

O red sea-weed, O red sea-waves, O hollow baffled roar,

Since one thou hast, O dark dim Sea, why callest thou for more,

My Grief,

For more!

In the quiet moonlight the chant, with its long, slow cadences, sung as no other man in the isles could sing it, sounded sweet and remote beyond words to tell. The glittering shine was upon the water of the haven, and moved in waving lines of fire along the stone ledges. Sometimes a fish rose, and split a ripple of pale gold; or a sea-nettle swam to the surface, and turned its blue or greenish globe of living jelly to the moon dazzle.

The man in the water made a sudden stop in his treading and listened intently. Then once more the phosphorescent light gleamed about his slow-moving shoulders. In a louder chanting voice came once again:

Each wave that stirs the sea-weed is like a closing door;

’Tis closing doors they hear at last who hear no more—no more,

My Grief,

No more!

Yes, his quick ears had caught the inland strain of a voice he knew. Soft and white as the moonshine came Anne’s singing as she passed along the corrie leading to the haven. In vain his travelling gaze sought her; she was still in the shadow, and, besides, a slow drifting cloud obscured the moonlight. When he looked back again a stifled exclamation came from his lips. There was not a sign of Gloom Achanna. He had slipped noiselessly from the boat, and was now either behind it, or had dived beneath it, or was swimming under water this way or that. If only the cloud would sail by, muttered Mànus, as he held himself in readiness for an attack from beneath or behind. As the dusk lightened, he swam slowly toward the boat, and then swiftly round it. There was no one there. He climbed on to the keel, and stood, leaning forward, as a salmon-leisterer by torchlight, with his spear-pointed boat-hook raised. Neither below nor beyond could he discern any shape. A whispered call to Aulay MacNeil showed that he, too, saw nothing. Gloom must have swooned, and sunk deep as he slipped through the water. Perhaps the dog-fish were already darting about him.

Going behind the boat Mànus guided it back to the smack. It was not long before, with MacNeil’s help, he righted the punt. One oar had drifted out of sight, but as there was a sculling-hole in the stern that did not matter.

“What shall we do with it?” he muttered, as he stood at last by the corpse of Marcus.

“This is a bad night for us, Aulay!”

“Bad it is; but let us be seeing it is not worse. I’m thinking we should have left the boat.”

“And for why that?”

“We could say that Marcus Achanna and Gloom Achanna left us again, and that we saw no more of them nor of our boat.”

MacCodrum pondered a while. The sound of voices, borne faintly across the water, decided him. Probably Anne and the lad Donull were talking. He slipped into the boat, and with a sail-knife soon ripped it here and there. It filled, and then, heavy with the weight of a great ballast-stone which Aulay had first handed to his companion, and surging with a foot-thrust from the latter, it sank.

“We’ll hide the—the man there—behind the windlass, below the spare sail, till we’re out at sea, Aulay. Quick, give me a hand!”

It did not take the two men long to lift the corpse, and do as Mànus had suggested. They had scarce accomplished this, when Anne’s voice came hailing silver-sweet across the water.

With death-white face and shaking limbs, MacCodrum stood holding the mast, while with a loud voice, so firm and strong that Aulay MacNeil smiled below his fear, he asked if the Achannas were back yet, and if so for Donull to row out at once, and she with him if she would come.

It was nearly half an hour thereafter that Anne rowed out toward the Luath. She had gone at last along the shore to a creek where one of Marcus’s boats was moored and returned with it. Having taken Donull on board, she made way with all speed, fearful lest Gloom or Marcus should intercept her.

It did not take long to explain how she had laughed at Seumas’s vain efforts to detain her, and had come down to the haven. As she approached, she heard Mànus singing, and so had herself broken into a song she knew he loved. Then, by the water-edge she had come upon Donull lying upon his back, bound and gagged. After she had released him they waited to see what would happen, but as in the moonlight they could not see any small boat come in, bound to or from the smack, she had hailed to know if Mànus were there.

On his side he said briefly that the two Achannas had come to persuade him to leave without her. On his refusal they had departed again, uttering threats against her as well as himself. He heard their quarrelling voices as they rowed into the gloom, but could not see them at last because of the obscured moonlight.

“And now, Ann-mochree,” he added, “is it coming with me you are, and just as you are? Sure, you’ll never repent it, and you’ll have all you want that I can give. Dear of my heart, say that you will be coming away this night of the nights! By the Black Stone on Icolmkill I swear it, and by the Sun, and by the Moon, and by Himself!”

“I am trusting you, Mànus dear. Sure it is not for me to be going back to that house after what has been done and said. I go with you, now and always, God save us.”

“Well, dear lass o’ my heart, it’s farewell to Eilanmore it is, for by the Blood of the Cross I’ll never land on it again!”

“And that will be no sorrow to me, Mànus, my home!”

---

And this was the way that my friend, Anne Gillespie, left Eilanmore to go to the isles of the west.

It was a fair sailing, in the white moonshine, with a whispering breeze astern. Anne leaned against Mànus, dreaming her dream. The lad Donull sat drowsing at the helm. Forward, Aulay MacNeil, with his face set against the moonshine to the west, brooded dark.

Though no longer was land in sight, and there was peace among the deeps of the quiet stars and upon the sea, the shadow of fear was upon the face of Mànus MacCodrum.

This might well have been because of the as yet unburied dead that lay beneath the spare sail by the windlass. The dead man, however, did not affright him. What went moaning in his heart, and sighing and calling in his brain, was a faint falling echo he had heard, as the Luath glided slow out of the haven. Whether from the water or from the shore he could not tell, but he heard the wild, fantastic air of the “Dàn-nan-Ròn,” as he had heard it that very night upon the feadan of Gloom Achanna.

It was his hope that his ears had played him false. When he glanced about him, and saw the sombre flame in the eyes of Aulay MacNeil, staring at him out of the dusk, he knew that which Oisìn the son of Fionn cried in his pain: “his soul swam in mist.”