So he suffered for long miserable hours. Light broke through the little round windows, and outside he could see the appalling waste of water, foaming, seething, rising to engulf him. He couldn't recall mounting to that high place where he had slept. He wondered if the callous steward would sometime come to take him down. Perhaps the steward would forget.

The man from Hartford bestirred himself and was presently shaving before the small glass. Bean looked sullenly down at him. The man was running a wicked-looking razor perilously about his restless Adam's apple. He was also lightly humming "The Holy City."

"Watkins," said Bean distinctly, recalling the name that had revealed the fictitious and Hartford origin of It.

"Adams," said the man, breaking off his song and tightening a leathery cheek for the razor.

"Adam's apple," said Bean, scornfully. "Watkins!"

The man glanced at him and painfully twisted up a corner of his mouth while he applied the razor to the other corner. But he did not speak.

"Think there's a doctor on this little old steamer?" demanded Bean.

The man from Hartford laid down his weapon and began to lave his face.

"I believe," he spluttered, "that medical attendance is provided for those still in mortal error."

"'S'at so?" demanded Bean, sullenly.

The man achieved another bar of "The Holy City," and fondly dusted his face with talcum powder, critically observing the effect.

"If you will go into the silence," he at length said, "and there hold the thought of the all-good, you will be freed from your delusion."

"Humph!" said Bean and turned his face from the Hartford man.

The latter locked his razor into a toilet-case, locked the toilet-case into a suit-case, and seemed to debate locking the suit-case into a little old steamer trunk. Deciding, however, that his valuables were sufficiently protected, and that nothing was left out to excite the cupidity of a man to whom he had not been properly introduced, the person from Hartford went forth with a final retort.

"'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he!'"

"'S'at so?" said Bean insolently to the closed door.

He roused himself and descended precariously from his shelf. Once upon his feet he was convinced that the ship was foundering. He hurriedly dressed and adjusted a life-belt from one of a number he saw behind a rack. Over the belt he put on a serviceable rain-coat. It seemed to be the coat to wear.



Outside he plunged through narrow corridors until he came to a stairway. He mounted this to be as far away from the ocean as possible. He came out upon a deck where people were strangely not excited by the impending disaster. Innocent children romped, oblivious to their fate, while callous elders walked the deck or reclined in little old steamer chairs.

He poised a moment, trying to prevent the steamer's deck from mounting by planting one foot firmly upon it. The device, sound enough in mechanical theory, proved unavailing. The vast hulk sank alternately at either end, and to fearsome depths of the sea. There would come a last plunge. He tightened the life-belt.

Then, through the compelling force of associated ideas, there seemed to come to him the faint sweet scent of lilac blossoms ... the vision of a lilac clump revolving both vertically and horizontally ... the noisome fumes of Grammer's own pipe.

"Too much for you, eh? Ha, ha, ha!" It was the scoundrel from Hartford, malignantly cheerful. He was inhaling a cubeb cigarette.

"Lumbago!" said Bean, both hands upon the life-belt.

"'As a man thinketh, so is he!' As simple as that," admonished the other.

Bean groped for the door and for ages fled down blind corridors, vainly seeking that little old stateroom. He did not find it as quickly as he should have; but he was there at last, and a deft steward quickly divested him of the life-belt and other garments for which there no longer seemed to be any need.

He lay weakly reflecting, with a sinister glee, that the boat was bound to sink in a moment. He wanted it to sink. Death was coming too slowly.

Later he knew that the flapper was there. She had come to die with him, though she was plainly not in a proper state of mind to pass on. She was saying that something was the nerviest piece of work she'd ever been up against, and that she would perfectly just fix them ... only give her a little time—they were snoop-cats!

"You'll perfectly manage; jus' leave it to you," breathed her moribund husband.

"If you'd try some fruit and two eggs," suggested the flapper.

He raised a futile hand defensively, and an expression of acute repugnance was to be seen upon his yellowed face.

"Please, please go 'way," he murmured. "Let Julia do fussing. Go way off to other end of little old steamer; stay there."

The flapper saw it was no time for woman's nursing. Sadly she went.

"Telephone to a drug-store," demanded Bean after her, but she did not hear.

He continued to die, mercifully unmolested, until the man from Hartford came in to ascertain if his locks had been tampered with.

"Hold to the all good!" urged the man at a moment when it was too poignantly, too openly certain that Bean could hold to very little indeed.

"Uh-hah!" gasped Bean.

"Go into the silence," urged the man kindly.

"You go—" retorted Bean swiftly; but he should not further be shamed by the recording of language which he lived to regret.

The Hartford man said, "Tut-tut-tut!" and went elsewhere than he had been told to go.

There ensued a dreadful time of alternating night and day, with recurrent visions of the flapper, who perfectly knew and said that he had been eating stuff out of the wrong cans.

"'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he'," affirmed the Hartford person each morning as he shaved.

And a merry party gathered in the adjoining stateroom of afternoons and sang songs of the jolly sailor's life: "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and "Sailing, Sailing Over the Bounding Main."

On the morning of the fourth day he made the momentous discovery that the image of food was not repulsive to all his better instincts. Carefully he got upon his feet and they amazingly supported him. He dressed with but slight discomfort. He would audaciously experiment upon himself with the actual sight of food. It was the luncheon hour.

Outside the door he met the flapper on one of her daily visits of inspection.

"I perfectly well knew you'd never die," exclaimed the flapper, and laid glad hands upon him.

"Where do they eat?" asked Bean.

"How jolly! We'll eat together," rejoined the flapper. "The funniest thing! They all kept up till half an hour ago. Then it got rougher and rougher and now they're all three laid out. Poor Moms says it's the smell of the rubber matting, and Granny says she had too many of those perfectly whiffy old cigarettes, and Pops says he's plain seasick. Serves 'em rippingly well right—taggers!"

She convoyed him to the dining-room, where he was welcomed by a waiter who had sorrowfully thought not to come to his notice. He greedily scanned the menu card, while the waiter, of his own initiative, placed some trifles of German delicatessen before them.

"It is a lot rougher," said the flapper. "Isn't it too close for you in here?" She was fixedly regarding on a plate before her a limp, pickled fish with one glazed eye staring aloft.

"Never felt better in my life," declared Bean. "Don't care how this little old steamer teeters now. Got my sea-legs."

"Me, too," said the flapper, but with a curious diminution of spirit. She still hung on the hypnotic eye of the pickled fish.

"Ham and cabbage!" said Bean proudly to the waiter.

The flapper pushed her chair swiftly back.

"Forgot my handkerchief," said she.

"There it is," prompted Bean ineptly.

The flapper placed it to her lips and rose to her feet.

"'S perfe'ly old rubber mattin'," she uttered through the fabric, and started toward the doorway. Bean observed that incoming diners anxiously made way for her. He followed swiftly and overtook the flapper at her door.

"Maybe if you'd try a little—" he began.

"Please go away," pleaded the flapper.

Bean returned to the ham and cabbage.

"Ought to go into the silence," he reflected. "'S all she needs. Fixed me all right."

After his hearty luncheon he ventured on deck. It was undeniably rougher, but he felt no fear. The breeze being cold, he went below for his overcoat.

Watkins of Hartford—or Adams, as he persisted in calling himself—reclined in his berth, his unlocked treasures carelessly scattered about him.

"Hold fast to the all good," counselled Bean revengefully.

"Uh—hah!" said Watkins or Adams, not doing so.

Bean fled. Everybody was getting it. The little old steamer was becoming nothing but a plague-ship.

"'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he'," he muttered, wondering if the words meant anything.

Then, in the fulness of his returned strength, he was appalled anew by the completeness of his own tragedy. He had become once more insignificant. Forever, now, he must be afraid of policemen and all earthly powers. People in crowds would dent his hat and take his new watches. He must never again carry anything but a dollar watch.

And the Breedes saw through him. He must have confessed everything back at that table when he had felt so inscrutably buoyant. Once in Paris they would have him arrested. They might even have him put in irons before the ship landed.

And back in the steam-heated apartment lay that mutilated head, a sheer fabrication of papier-mache. He wondered if Mrs. Cassidy had swept it out ... the head that had meant so much to him. There was no hope any more. If he were still free in Paris he would have one look at that tomb, and then ... well, he had had his day.

Two days later the little old steamer debarked many passengers in the harbour of Cherbourg, carelessly confiding them to a much littler and much older steamer that transported them to the actual land. Among these were a feebly exploding father, a weak but faithful mother, and the swathed wrecks of the Demon and the flapper.

Then began a five-hour train-ride to the one-time capital of a famous upstart. There was but little talk among the members of the party. Bean kept grimly to himself because the only friendly member slept. He studied her pale, drawn face. She had indeed managed well, but his own downfall had thwarted her. He was a nobody. They were doubtless right in wanting to keep him from her. Yet he would see that tomb, and at the earliest possible moment.

At eleven that night they reached the capital. A dispiriting silence was maintained to the doors of a hotel. The women drooped in chairs. Breede acquainted the reception committee of a Paris hostelry with the party's needs as to chambers.

Thereupon they discovered one of the party to be missing. No one had seen him since entering. They were excited by this, all but the flapper.

"I don't blame him," averred the flapper ... "Tagging us! You let him alone! I shall perfectly not worry if he doesn't come home all night. Do you understand? And when he does come—"

"Not safe," snapped Breede. "King of Egypt, Napoleon ... not after money, just principle of thing. Chap's nutty—talk'n' like that!"

"Good night!" snapped the flapper in her turn.



XV

He had walked quickly away while porters were collecting the bags. "Keep on the main street," he thought, plunging ahead. He did not change this plan until he discovered himself again at the door of that hotel he meant to leave. It faced a circle, and he had traversed this. He fled down a cross-street and again felt free.

For hours he walked the lighted avenues, or sat moodily on wayside benches, and at length, on a rustic seat screened by shrubbery in a little park, he dozed.

He awoke in the early light, stretched legs and arms luxuriously and again walked. He saw it was five o'clock. He was thrilled now by the morning beauty of the Corsican's city, all gray and green in the flooding sun. And the streets had filled with a voluble traffic that affected him pleasantly. Every one seemed to speak gayly to every one. Two cab-drivers exchanged swift incivilities, but in a quite perfunctory way, with evident good-will.

Walking aimlessly as yet—it was too early for tombs—he came again to that hotel on the circle. They were asleep in there. Little they'd worried—glad to be so easily rid of him.

Then he noticed at the circle's centre a lofty column wrought in bronze with infinite small detail. Surmounting that column was the figure of the Corsican. An upstart who had prevailed!

He left the circle, lest he be apprehended by the Breedes. Soon he was again in that vast avenue of the park-places where he had slept. And now, far off on this splendid highway, he descried a mighty arch. Sternly gray and beautiful it was. And when, standing under it, he looked aloft to its mighty facade, its grandeur seemed threatening to him. He knew what that arch was—another monument imposed upon the city by the imperial assassin—without royal lineage since the passing of Ram-tah.

"Some class to that upstart!" he muttered. And if Napoleon had been no one, was it not probable that Bean had not been even Napoleon. The Countess Casanova had doubtless deceived him, though perhaps unintentionally. She had seemed a kind woman, he thought, but you couldn't tell about her controls.

His mind was being washed in that wondrous sunlight.

He was himself an upstart. No doubt about it. But what of it? Here were columns and arches to commemorate the most egregious of all upstarts. Upstarts were men who believed in themselves.

He retraced his steps from the arch.

Curious thing that scoundrel Watkins had kept saying on the boat. "As a man thinketh in his own heart, so is he." Must mean something. What?

Far down that wide avenue he came to a bridge of striking magnificence, beset with golden sculpture. He supposed it to be one more tribute to the sublime Corsican who had thought in his heart, and was.

He had the meaning of those words now.

He, Bunker Bean, had believed himself to be mean, insignificant. And so he had been that. Then he had come to believe himself a king, and straightway had he been kingly. The Corsican, detecting the falsity of some Ram-tah, would have gone on believing in himself none the less. It was all that mattered. "As a man thinketh—" If you came down to that, nobody needed a Ram-tah at all.

From the centre of the bridge he raised his eyes and there, far off, high above all those gray buildings, was the golden cross that he knew to surmount the tomb. Sharply it glittered against the blue of the sky.

"Be upstart enough," it seemed to say, "and all things are yours. Believe yourself kingly, though your Ram-tah come from Hartford."

He walked vigorously toward that cross. It often eluded him as he puzzled a way through the winding gray-walled streets. More than once he was forced to turn back, to make laborious circuits. But never for long was the cross out of sight.

Constantly as he walked that new truth ran in his mind, molten, luminous. Who knew of Ram-tah's fictive origin, or even of Ram-tah at all? No one but a witty scoundrel calling himself Balthasar.

Bean had become some one through a belief in himself. Ram-tah had been a crude bit of scaffolding, and was well out of the way. The confidence he had helped to build would now endure without his help. Be an upstart. A convinced upstart. Such the world accepts.

Then he issued from the maze of narrow streets and confronted the tomb. Through the open door, even at this early hour, people went and came. The Corsican's magnetism prevailed. And he, Bunker Bean, the lowly, had that same power to magnetize, to charm, to affront the world and yet evoke monuments—if he could only believe it.

He went quickly through the iron gateway, up the long walk and took the imposing stairway in leaps. Then, standing uncovered in that wonderfully lit room, he gazed down at the upstart's mighty urn.

Long he stood under that spell of line and colour and magnitude, lost in the spaciousness of it. No Balthasar had cheated here. There lay the mighty and little man who had never lost belief in himself—who had been only a little chastened by an adversity due to the craven world's fear of his prowess.

He was quite unconscious of others beside him who paid tribute there. He thought of those last sad days on that lonely island, the spirit still unbroken. His emotion surged to his eyes, threatening to overwhelm him. He gulped twice and angrily brushed away some surprising tears.

By his side stood a white-faced young Frenchman with a flowing brown beard. He became infected with Bean's emotion. He made no pretence of brushing his tears aside. He frankly wept.

Beyond this man a stout motherly woman, with two children in hand, was flooded by the current. She sobbed comfortably and companionably. The two children widened their eyes at her a moment, then fell to weeping noisily.

Farther around the railing a distinguished looking old gentleman of soldierly bearing, who wore a tiny red ribbon in the lapel of his frock coat, loudly blew his nose and pressed a kerchief of delicate weave to his brimming eyes.

Beyond him a young woman became stricken with grief and was led out by her solicitous husband, who seemed to feel that a tomb was no place for her at that time.

The exit of this couple aroused Bean. He cast a quick glance upon the havoc he had wrought and fled, wiping his eyes.

Halfway down the steps he encountered the alleged Adams of Hartford, who had stopped to open his Badaeker at the right page before entering the tomb.

"A magnificent bit of architecture," said the Hartford man instructively.

"Pretty loud for a tomb," replied Bean judicially. He was not going to let this Watkins, or whatever his name was, know what a fool he had made of himself in there. Then he remembered something.

"Say," he ventured, "how'd you happen to think up that thing you were always getting off to me back there on the boat—about as a man thinketh is he?"

"Tut-tut-tut! Really? But that is from the Holy Scriptures, which should always be read in connection with Science and Health."

"I must get it—something in that. Funny thing," he added genially, "getting good stuff like that out of Hartford, Connecticut."

He left Watkins or Adams staring after him in some bewilderment, a forgotten finger between the leaves of the Badaeker.

He began once more to lay a course through those puzzling streets. He was going to that hotel. He was going to be an upstart and talk to his own wife.

The tomb had cleared his brain.

"I'm no king," he thought; "never was a king; more likely a guinea-pig. But I'm some one now, all right! I'll show 'em; not afraid of the whole lot put together; face 'em all."

He came out upon the river at last and presently found himself back in that circle of the hotel. He stared a while at the bronze effigy surmounting that vainglorious column. Then he drew a long breath and went into the hotel.

A capable Swiss youth responded to his demand to be shown to his room, seeming to consider it not strange that Americans in Paris should now and then return to their rooms.

At the doorway of a drawing-room that looked out upon the column the Swiss suggested coffee—perhaps?

"And fruit and fumed ... boiled eggs and toast and all that meat and stuff," supplemented Bean firmly.

He tried one of two doors that opened from the drawing-room and exposed a bedroom. His, evidently. There was the little old steamer trunk. He discovered a bathroom adjoining and was presently suffering the celestial agonies of a cold bath with no waster to coerce him.

He dressed with indignant muttering, and with occasional glances out at that supreme upstart's memorial. He chose his suit of the most legible checks. He had been a little fearful about it in New York. It was rather advanced, even for one of that Wall Street gang that had netted himself four hundred thousand dollars. Now he donned it intrepidly.

And, with no emotion whatever but a certain grim sureness of himself, he at last adjusted the entirely red cravat. He gloated upon this flagrantly. He hastily culled seven cravats of neutral tint and hurled them contemptuously into a waste-basket. Done with that kind!

He heard a waiter in the drawing-room serving his breakfast. He drew on a dark-lined waistcoat of white pique—like the one worn by the oldest director the day Ram-tah had winked—then the perfectly fitting coat of unmistakable checks, and went out to sit at the table. He was resolving at the moment that he would do everything he had ever been afraid to do. "'S only way show you're not afraid," he muttered. He was wearing a cravat he had always feared to wear, and now he would devour meat things for breakfast, whatever the flapper thought about it.

When he had a little dulled the edge of his hunger, he rang a bell.

"Find m' wife," he commanded the Swiss youth, only to be met with a look of blankness. He was considering if it might do him good to make a row about this—he had always been afraid to make rows—but the other door of the drawing-room opened. His wife was found.

"'S all for 's aft'noon," he exploded to the servitor, who seemed not displeased to withdraw from this authoritative presence. Then he engaged a slice of bacon with a ruthless fork.

"Where you been?" he demanded of the flapper. Only way to do—go at them hammer and tongs!

The flapper gazed at him from the doorway. She was still pale and there were reddened circles about her eyes. The little old rag of a morning robe she wore added to her pallor and gave her an unaccustomed look of fragility.

"Where you been all the time?" repeated her husband with the arrogance of a confirmed upstart.

The flapper seemed to be on the point of tears, but she came into the room and sat across the table from him. In spite of the blurring moisture in her eyes he could still read the old look of ownership. Time had not impaired it.

"I just perfectly wouldn't let them know I felt bad," she began. "I said I was going to sleep and wouldn't worry one bit if you perfectly never came home all night. And you never did, because I couldn't sleep and watched ... but I wouldn't let them know it for just perfectly old hundred thousand dollars. And this morning I said I'd had a bully sleep and felt fit and you had a right to go where you wanted to and they could please mind their own affairs, and I laughed so at them when they said they were going for the police—"

"Police, eh? Let 'em bring their old police. They think I'm afraid of police?" He valiantly attacked an egg.

"Of course not, stupid, but they thought you might wander off and get lost, like those people in the newspapers that wake up in Jersey City or some place and can't remember their own names or how it happened, and they wanted the police to just perfectly find you, and I wanted them to, too. I was deathly afraid—"

"I know my own name, all right. I'm little Tempest and Sunshine; that's my name.

"—but I wouldn't let them know I was afraid. And I laughed at them and told them they didn't know you at all and that you'd come home—come home."

He found he could strangely not be an upstart another moment in the presence of that flapper. He was over kneeling beside her, reaching his arms up about her, pressing her cheek down to his. The flapper held him tightly and wept.

"There, there!" he soothed her, smoothing the golden brown hair that spilled about her shoulders. "No one ever going to hurt you while I'm around. You're the just perfectly dearest, if you come right down to it. Now, now! 'S all right. Everything all right!"

"It's those perfectly old taggers," exploded the flapper, suddenly recovering her true form, "just furiously tagging."

"'S got to stop right now," declared Bean, rising. "Wipe that egg off your face, and let's get out of here."

"London," she suggested brightly. "Granny has always—"

"No London!" he broke in, visibly returning to the Corsican or upstart manner. "And no Grandma, no Pops, no Moms! You and me—us—understand what I mean? Think I'm going to have my wife sloshing around over there, voting, smashing windows, getting run in and sent to the island for thirty days. No! Not for little old George W. Me!"

"I never wanted to so very much," confessed the flapper with surprising meekness. "You tell where to go, then."

Bean debated. Baseball! Perhaps there would be a game on the home grounds that day. Paris might be playing London or St. Petersburg or Berlin or Venice.

"First we go see a ball game," he said.

The flapper astounded him.

"I don't think they have it over here—baseball," she observed.

No baseball? She must be crazy. He rang the bell.

The capable Swiss entered. In less than ten minutes he was able to convince the amazed American that baseball was positively not played on the continent of Europe. It was monstrous. It put a different aspect upon Europe.

"Makes no difference where we go, then," announced Bean. "Just any little old last year's place. We'll 'lope."

"Ripping," applauded the flapper, with brightening eyes.

"Hurry and dress. I'll get a little old car and we'll beat it before they get back. No time for trunk; take bag."

Down in the office he found they made nothing of producing little old cars for the right people. The car was there even as he was taking the precaution to secure a final assurance from the manager that Paris did not by any chance play London that day.

The two bags were installed in the ready car; then a radiant flapper beside an amateur upstart. The driver desired instructions.

"Ally, ally!" directed Bean, waving a vague but potent hand.

"We've done it," rejoiced the flapper. "Serve the perfectly old taggers good and plenty right!"

Bean lifted a final gaze to the laurel-crowned Believer. He knew that Believer's secret now.

"What a stunning tie," exclaimed the flapper. "It just perfectly does something to you."

"'S little old last year's tie," said her husband carelessly.

* * * * *

At six-thirty that evening they were resting on a balcony overlooking the garden of a hotel at Versailles. Back of them in the little parlour a waiter was setting a most companionable small table for two. Such little sounds as he made were thrilling. They liked the hotel much. Its management seemed to have been expecting them ever since the building's erection, and to have reserved precisely that nest for them.

They had been "doing" the palace. A little self-conscious, in their first free solitude, they had agreed that the palace would be instructive. Through interminable galleries they had gone, inspecting portraits of the dead who had made and marred French history ... led on by a guide whose amiable delusion it was that he spoke English. The flapper had been chiefly exercised in comparing the palace, to its disadvantage, with a certain house to be surrounded on all sides by scenery and embellished with perfectly patent laundry tubs.

The flapper sighed in contentment, now.

"We needn't ever do it again," she said. "How they ever made it in that old barn—"

Bean had occupied himself in thinking it was funny about kings. To have been born a king meant not so much after all. He still dwelt upon it as they sat looking down into the shadowed garden.

"There was that last one," he said musingly. "Born as much a king as any ... and look what they did to him. Better man than the other two before him ... they had 'habits' enough, and he was decent. But he couldn't make them believe in him. He couldn't have believed in himself very hard. His picture looks like a man I know in New York named Cassidy .. always puttering around, dead serious about something that doesn't matter at all. You got to bluff people, and this poor old dub didn't know how ... so they clipped his head off for it. Two or three times a good bluff would have saved him."

"No bath, no furnace," murmured the flapper. "That perfectly reminds me, soon as we get back—"

"Then," pursued Bean, "along comes Mr. little old George W. Napoleon Bluff and makes them eat out of his hand in about five minutes. Didn't he walk over them, though? And they haven't quit thanking him for it yet. Saw a lot of 'em snivelling over him at that tomb this morning. Think he'd died only yesterday. You know, I don't blame him so much for a lot of things he did—fighting and women and all that. He knew what they'd do to him if he ever for one minute quit bluffing. You know, he was what I call an upstart."

The flapper stole a hand into his and sighed contentedly.

"You've perfectly worked it all out, haven't you?" she said.

"—and if you come right down to it, I'm nothing but 'n upstart myself."

"Oh, splash!" said the flapper, in loving refutation.

"'S all," he persisted; "just 'n upstart. Of course I don't have to be one with you. I wouldn't be afraid to tell you anything in the world; but those others, now; every one else in the world except you; I'll show 'em who's little old George W. Upstart—old man Upstart himself, that's what!"

"You're a king," declared the flapper in a burst of frankness.

"Eh?" said Bean, a little startled.

"Just a perfectly little old king," persisted the flapper with dreamy certitude. "Never fooled little George W. Me. Knew it the very first second. Went over me just like that."

"Oh, I'm no king; never was a king; rabbit, I guess. Little old perfectly upstart rabbit, that's what!"

"What am I?" asked the flapper pointedly.

"Little old flippant flapper, that's what! But you're my Chubbins just the same; my Chubbins!" and he very softly put his hand to her cheek.

"Monsieur et Madame sont servi," said the waiter. He was in the doorway but discreetly surveyed the evening sky through an already polished wine-glass held well aloft.

* * * * *

The three perfectly taggers meeting their just due, consulted miserably as they gathered about a telephone in Paris the following morning. The Demon had answered the call.

"Says she has it all reasoned out," announced the Demon.

"'S what she said before," grunted Breede. "Tha's nothing new."

"And she says we're snoop-cats and we might as well go back home—now," continued the Demon. "Says she's got the—u-u-m-mm!—says to perfectly quit tagging."

"Nothing can matter now," said the bereaved mother.

"He's talking himself," said the Demon. "Mercy he's got a new voice ... sounds like another man. He says if we don't beat it out of here by the next boat—he can imagine nothing of less—something or other I can't hear—"

"—consequence," snapped Breede.

"Yes, that's it; and now he's laughing and telling her she's a perfectly flapper."

"Oh, my poor child," murmured the mother.

"Puzzle t' me," said Breede. "I swear I can't make out just how many kinds of a—"

"James!" said his wife sternly, and indicated the presence of several interested foreigners.

THE END