THE END.
"Owen Clancy's Double Trouble; or, The Motor Wizard's Mystery," concludes the red-headed chap's series of adventures, in the midst of which we have left him at the conclusion of this story. You will find the double-trouble story in the next issue of the weekly, No. 88, out April 4th.
Chapters 4 - 6 of The Snapshot Mystery not included as the story is continued from a previous issue and continues in later issues.
THE COSSACKS.
The Cossacks are a race of freemen. The entire territory belongs to the Cossack commune and every individual has an equal right to the use of the land together with the pastures, hunting grounds, and fisheries. The Cossacks pay no taxes to the government, but in lieu of this–and here you see the connection between them and the Russian government–they are bound to perform military service. They are divided into three classes–first, the minors up to their sixteenth year; secondly, those on actual service for a period of twenty-five years; therefore, until their forty-second year; thirdly, those released from service, who remain for five years, or until their forty-seventh year in the reserve, after which period they are regarded as wholly released from service and invalided. Every Cossack is obliged to equip, clothe, and arm himself at his own expense, and to keep his horse. While on service beyond the frontiers of his own country, he receives rations of food and provender, and a small amount of pay. The artillery and train are at the charge of the government. Instead of imposing taxes on the Don Cossacks, the Russian government pays them an annual tribute, varying in peace and war, together, with grants to be distributed among the widows and orphans of those who have fallen in battle.
A SATIRICAL REWARD.
There was perhaps more satire than gratitude in the reward bestowed by a French lady on a surgeon for bleeding her–an operation in which the lancet was so clumsily used that an artery was severed and the poor woman bled to death. When she recognized that she was dying she made a will in which she left the operator a life annuity of eight hundred francs on condition "that he never again bleeds anybody as long as he lives."