Miss Marsh sat there questioning the evidence of her coral-pink ears. She knew that she was furiously angry because she felt so cool about it. She knew that the more furious one was, the more calm and self-contained the senses become. The man meant nothing, either—one could see that by the respectful expression of his eye. Still——

"You are quite wrong," Ethel said. "You have altogether misunderstood the motif of the play. I presume you know what a motif is?"

"I think so," Chesney said humbly. "It is a word they apply in music when you don't happen to understand what the composer—especially the modern composer—is driving at."

"Oh, let it pass," Ethel said hopelessly. "You have misunderstood the gist of the play, then! 'Walter Severn' in the comedy is a man of singular points. He is a great author. Instead of being that woman's plaything, he is her merciless analyst. The great scene in the play comes when she finds this out. Now, you do not for a moment presume to put yourself on a level with 'Walter Severn,' do you?"

Chesney was bound to admit the height of his audacity. His eyes were fixed humbly on his Minerva; he was Telemachus seated at the feet of the goddess. And even yet he did not seem really cognizant of the enormity of his offence. He saw the sunlight on that sweetly serious face, he saw the beams playing with the golden meshes of her hair. No doubt he was fully conscious of his own inferiority, for he did not speak again. It was for him to wait. The silence deepened; in the heart of the wood a blackbird was piping madly on a blackthorn.

"Before you go away," Chesney hazarded, "I should very much like——"

"But I am not going away, at least not yet. Besides, I have a purpose to serve. I am waiting until those impossible people leave Goldney Park. I understand that they have already gone, but on that head I am not sure. I want to go over the house. The late owner, Mr. Mainbrace, was a great friend of my family. Before he died he was so good as to express a wish that the heir to the property should come and see us and—but that part is altogether too ridiculous. And as an only daughter——"

"I see," Chesney said reflectively. "The heir and yourself. It sounds ridiculous. Now, if you had been in the least like the romantic type of young woman, perhaps——"

"How do you know that I am not? Am I like Byron's woman: 'Seek roses in December, ice in June'? Well, perhaps you are right. After all, one doesn't find ice in June. However, the heir to the Goldney Park estate and myself never met. He let the place to those awful Gosway people for three years and went abroad. There was not even the suspicion of a romance. But I am curious to see the house, all the same."

"Nothing easier, Miss Marsh. Let us go and see it after luncheon. The Gosways have gone, you may take my word for that, and only a caretaker is in possession. Will you come with me this afternoon?"

The prospect was not displeasing. Miss Marsh poised it in her mind for a few moments. There was Chesney's education to be thought of as well. On the whole, she decided that there might be less pleasant ways of spending a hot August afternoon.

"I think I'll come," she said. "I want to see the old furniture and the pictures. I love old furniture. Perhaps if the heir to the property had gone on his knees whilst I was seated on a priceless Chippendale settee, I might——"

"You might, but I don't think you would," Chesney interrupted. "Whatever your faults may be I am sure you are not mercenary."

"Really! How good of you! The thing that we are apt to call depravity——"

"Is often another name for the promptings of poor human nature."

Miss Marsh turned and stared at the speaker. Really, his education was progressing at a most amazing rate. Without the least sign of mental distress he had delivered himself of an epigram. There was quite a flavor of Piccadilly about it. And Chesney did not appear in the least conscious of his achievement. Ethel rose and shook out the folds of her dainty muslin dress.

"Isn't it getting late?" she asked. "I'm sure it is lunch time. You can walk as far as the gate with me, and I will meet you here at three o'clock."

She passed thoughtfully across the lawn to the house, her pretty brows knitted in a thoughtful frown. Was she giving her pupil too much latitude? Certainly he had begun to show symptoms of an audacious presumption, which in the earlier days had been conspicuous by its absence. Whereupon Miss Marsh sighed three times without being in the least aware of the painful fact.

* * * * *

"This," said Chesney, "is the Norman Tower, built by John Mainbrace, who was the original founder of the family. The first two trees in the avenue of oaks that leads up to the house were planted by Queen Elizabeth. She also slept on several occasions in the house; indeed, the bedroom she occupied is intact to this day. The Virgin Queen seemed to pass most of her time, apart from affairs of state, in occupying bedrooms, so that the descendants of her courtiers might be able to boast about it afterward. Those who could not give the royal lady a shakedown had special bedrooms fitted up and lied about them. It was an innocent deception."

Miss Marsh eyed her pupil distrustfully. The educational progress was flattering, and at the same time a little disturbing. She had never seen Chesney in this gay and frivolous, not to say excited, mood before. The man was positively glib. There were distinct flashes of wit in his discourse, too. And where did he get so close and intimate a knowledge of the old house from?

He knew every nook and corner. He took her through the grand old park where the herd of fallow deer were grazing; he showed her the Dutch and Italian gardens; he knew even the history of the sundial on the terrace. And yet they had not been within the house, though the great hall door stood hospitably open. They moved at length out of the glare of the sunshine into the grateful shadows. Glint of armor and gleam of canvas were all there. Ethel walked along in an ecstasy of quiet enjoyment. Rumor had not lied as to the artistic beauties of Goldney Park. The Mainbraces must have been a tasteful family. They had it all here, from the oaken carvings of the wandering monks down through Grinling Gibbons and Pugin, and away to Chippendale and Adam, and other masters of the Georgian era. They came at length to the chamber sacred to the Virgin Queen; they contemplated the glorious view from the window in silent appreciation tinged with rapture.

"It's exquisite," Ethel said in a low voice. "If this were my house I should be very much tempted to commit an act of sacrilege. I should want this for my own room. I'm afraid I could not resist such an opportunity."

"Easily done," said Chesney. "No trouble to discover from the family archives that a mistake had been made, and that Elizabeth of blessed memory had not slept in this room. Being strong-minded she preferred a north aspect, and this is due south. You would get a reputation for sound historical knowledge as well."

Certainly the education was progressing. But Ethel let it pass. She was leaning out of the latticed windows with the creamy roses about her hair; she was falling unconsciously under the glamour of the place.

"It is exquisite," she sighed. "If this were only mine!"

"Well, it is not too late. The heir will be here before long, probably. You have only to introduce the name of Mr. Mainbrace and say who you are, and then——"

"Oh, no. If I happened to be in love with a man—what am I saying? Of course, no girl who respects herself could possibly marry a man for the sake of his position. Even 'Mrs. Dorothy Kent,' to whom you compared me this morning, was above that kind of thing. She married the man she loved after all, you know. But I forget—you did not think much of the comedy."

"I didn't. I thought it was vague and incomplete. I am certain of it now. This is the real thing; the other was merely artificial. And when the hero brought 'Dorothy Kent' to the home of his ancestors he already knew that she loved him. And I am glad to know that you would never marry a man like that because it gives me courage——"

"Gives you courage! Whatever for?"

"Why, to make a confession. You laughed at me just now when I presumed to criticize your favorite modern comedy. As a matter of fact, I have every right to criticize it. You see, I happen to be the author. I am 'John Kennedy'! I have been writing for the stage, or trying to write for the stage, for years. I got my new idea from that old wish of my uncle's that you and I should come together. It struck me as a pretty suggestion for a comedy."

"Stop, stop," Ethel cried. "One thing at a time, if you please. Positively you overwhelm me with surprise. In one breath you tell me you are 'John Kennedy,' and then, without giving a poor girl a chance, you say you are the owner of Goldney Park."

"But I didn't," Chesney protested. "I never said anything of the kind."

"No, but you inferred it. You say you got the idea from your uncle—I mean the suggestion that you and I—oh, I really cannot say it."

"I'm afraid I'm but a poor dramatist after all," Chesney said lamely. "I intended to keep that confession till after I had—but no matter. At any rate, there is no getting away from the fact that my pen name is 'John Kennedy.'"

"And you wrote 'Flies in Ointment'? And you have been laughing at me all this time? You were amused because I took you for a simple countryman, you whom men call the Sheridan of to-day! After all the pains I took with your education."

Ethel's voice rose hysterically. Points of flame stood out from the level of her memory of the past five weeks and scorched her. How this man must have been amused, how consumedly he must have laughed at her! And she had never guessed it, never once had she had an inkling of the truth.

"You have behaved disgracefully, cruelly," she said unsteadily.

"I don't think so," Chesney said coolly. "After all is said and done, we were both posing, you know. You were playing 'Mrs. Kent' to my hero. It seemed a pity to disturb so pleasant a pastoral. And no harm has been done."

Ethel was not quite so sure of that. But then for the nonce she was regarding the matter from a strictly personal point of view.

"I hardly think you were playing the game," she said.

"Why not? I come down here where nobody knows me. It is my whim to keep quiet the fact that Goldney Park belongs to me. As to my dramatic tastes, they don't concern anybody but myself. I take a cottage down here until those tenants of mine are ready to go. They are such utter bounders that I have no desire to disclose my identity to them. And so it falls about that I meet you. Then I recollect all that my uncle has said about you. I cultivate your acquaintance. It wasn't my fault that you took me for a countryman with no idea beyond riding a horse and shooting a pheasant. Your patronage was very pretty and pleasing, and I am one of those men who always laugh or cry inside. It is perhaps a misfortune that I can always joke with a grave face. But don't forget that the man who laughs inside is also the man who bleeds inside, and these feel the worst. Come, Ethel, you are not going to be angry because you have lost the game playing with your own weapons."

The education was finished, the schoolmaster was abroad—very much abroad. In his cool, masterful way Chesney had taken matters into his own hands. He was none the less handsome because he looked so stern, so sure of his ground.

"You are a man and I am a woman," she faltered.

"Of course. How could the comedy proceed otherwise? Now where shall we move these Elizabethan relics? After what you said just now they could not possibly remain here. Among the family archives I dare say——"

Chesney paused; he was conscious of the fact that two large diamond drops were stealing down Ethel's cheeks. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to cross over and take her hands in his.

"My dear child, what have I said to pain you," he said. "I am truly sorry."

"You—you take too much for granted," Ethel sobbed. "You make me feel so small and silly. And you have no right to assume that I—I could care for anybody simply because he happens to possess a p—p—place like Goldney Park."

"But, my darling, I didn't. I was delighted when you said just now that you would never marry a man you did not care for, even if he could give you Chippendale for breakfast, so to speak. I watched your face then. I am sure that you were speaking from the bottom of your heart. I have been watching you for the last five weeks, my sweetheart. And they have been the happiest weeks in my life.

"Laughing at me, I suppose! It's all the same if you do laugh inside."

"No, I don't think I laughed," Chesney said thoughtfully. "I only know that I have been very much charmed. And besides, see how useful it has been to me to be in a position to hear all the weak points in my literary armor. When I come to write my next comedy, it will be far in advance of 'Flies in Ointment.' I have learned so much of human nature, you see."

Ethel winked the tears from her lids; her eyes were all the brighter for the passing shower, like a sky in April, Chesney thought. A smile was on her face, her lips were parted. As a lover Chesney was charming. She wondered how she was playing her part. But she need not have had any anxiety. There was nothing wanting in the eyes of the man opposite, and his face said so.

"You are going to put me into it?" she asked.

"Why, of course. There is no other woman so far as I can see. Why are you pulling my roses to pieces like that? Do you know that that rose tree was planted a hundred years ago by Thomas a Becket after the battle of Agincourt? My dear, I am so happy that I could talk nonsense all day. And I say, Ethel——"

The girl broke off one of the creamy roses and handed it shyly to Chesney.

"Vae victis," she said with a flushing smile. "It is yours. You have conquered."

"Yes, but I want all the fruits of victory. I ask for a hand and you give me—a rose. Am I not going to have the hand as well as the rose, dear?"

He had the hand and the rose and the slender waist; he drew her toward him in his strong, masterful way, and his lips lay on hers in a lingering pressure. It was a long time before the girl looked up; then her eyes were full of shy happiness.



III

THE DITTY-BOX

A Pawnbroker's Story

By OWEN OLIVER

IN THE course of our dealings over the curiosities that my brother sent home from Burma, Mr. Levy and I became very good friends. When we had finished one of our deals we generally had a chat in the quaint little room behind his queer little shop in the old-world alley frequented by sailormen. On one of these occasions he mentioned that the cigar which he had given me was the brand which he always smoked; and the quality of the cigar suggested opulence.

"If you can afford cigars like this," I remarked, "you must make some pretty good bargains with your curiosities!"

"Good and bad," he said. "That's the way in business—in life, if you come to that!" He was a bit of a philosopher.

"You make more good bargains than bad ones, I'll be bound," I asserted.

"Yes," he agreed; "but it isn't so much that. The bad aren't very bad, as a rule; and some of the good are very good. That's where I get my profit."

"What was the best bargain you ever made?" I asked.

He filled his glass and pushed the decanter toward me.

"The best bargain I ever made," he said, "was over a ditty-box."

I helped myself to a little whiskey.

"A ditty-box? I thought they were ordinary sailors' chests that they keep their clothes in?"

"Not exactly chests," he corrected. "They're smallish boxes that they keep their needles and thread in, and their money, and anything else that they set store by—their letters or their sweethearts' photos, or their wives'—or other people's! There's no profit in them, and I don't deal in them in a general way. I got my gain out of this one in a roundabout fashion; but it was handsome. If you've got half an hour to spare I'll tell you about it."

This was his story:

It was eight years ago, and I'd had Isaac for seven years, and concluded that he was to be trusted. So I took it into my head to have a fortnight's holiday and leave him in charge of the shop. Everything was in order when I came back, and the books balanced to a penny. Business had been pretty good, he told me, but nothing out of the ordinary.

"Unless," he said, "I've stumbled on a good thing by accident. It's a ditty-box; rather a superior one, and a good bit bigger than usual; almost a chest; brass bound and a nice bit of poker-work on it; a girl's head. I've put it in your bedroom."

"Ah!" I said. "Ah-h!" He wouldn't make this fuss over a bit of poker-work, I knew.

"The mate of the Saucy Jane brought it here," he went on. "It belonged to the captain. George Markby, the name was; and that's poker-work on it, too. He sickened of a fever over at Rotterdam and died at sea; and they sold off his things to send the money to his widow. I gave a sovereign for it. There's a tray inside with a lock-up till. Keys all complete. Ought to fetch thirty-five shillings."

"As much as that?" I said. I knew there must be a good deal more in it than appeared, but it's no use hurrying Isaac. He likes to tell things his own way.

"I thought it might suit you to lock up your books and papers. That was all—till the day before yesterday. Then a ginger-haired sailor came in. North countryman. Wanted a ditty-box, he said. I told him we weren't marine outfitters, and he'd better try Barnard's, round the corner. He said he didn't want the ordinary sort, but something out of the common; extra large size; brass-bound; tray with a lock-up till. 'Mind if it was a trifle old?' I asked. 'Carved or cut about a bit? You know how some chaps use their knives on them, just to pass the time.' He said he didn't care for things that were hacked about, but he wouldn't object to a bit of poker-work on it. I told him I'd look through the warehouse and let him know in the morning, and he went. Byles, the dock policeman, was standing outside. I went and asked him who the chap was. He said he was cook on the Anne Traylor, just come in, and he believed he'd done time. If he hadn't I'll swear he ought to have, from the look of him.

"About half an hour afterward in walks an oldish chap with a stoop and a gray goat's beard. He wanted a ditty-box, too; something extra large and old, and strong, and a tray with a lock-up till in it. He was a fireman on the Anne Traylor, I found; a shifty sort of chap that couldn't look you in the face. He offered to go to a couple of pounds for the right thing. I told him I'd look through our stuff and let him know if we had one of the sort.

"Just as I was closing, a smart young fellow swaggered in. He was second mate of the Anne Traylor, and he'd heard of the death of her old captain on the Saucy Jane, and that we'd bought some of his effects, and he'd like to have a memento; just a matter of sentiment, he explained. I asked him what form the sentiment took, and he said a ditty-box; and if we had the one that belonged to the old man he'd give two pounds five for it. I put him off like the others.

"Two Swedish sailors came in after the shutters were up, while the door was still open. They wanted a ditty-box of the identical description. I told them I'd look for it, same as I told the rest. You always brought me up not to close too soon with a customer who was keen on a thing."

"Very good, Isaac," I said. "Very good! Go on!"

"In the evening I made inquiries at the 'Duke of Wellington,' where the dock policemen go, and the two-penny-halfpenny money lenders and such; and old Mrs. Higgins, the landlady, knows more about the crews that come here than anyone. Lots of them knew old Markby, it seemed; a very respectable old chap and a favorite with his men, but a bit of a miser, and a trifle queer in his ways. He boasted that he didn't believe in banks and such things, and he'd got his money hidden where even his wife didn't know. And the conclusion I've come to is that those chaps believe it's in the ditty-box, and they mean to have it."

"Ah!" I said. "We'll have something to say to that, Isaac! You told them we hadn't got it, of course."

"Of course," he said; "and of course they didn't believe me! I had a rare bother with the ginger-haired man yesterday morning, and had to send the boy for a policeman before he'd go. And in the afternoon the Swedes tried to sneak through the shop into the warehouse, but I jumped out of the shop parlor and hustled them off. I've put longer screws in the bars to the windows; but I'd be easier if you'd let me sleep here."

Isaac always thought that he could look after me better than I could look after myself!

"I'm all right, Isaac," I said; "but we'll have a look at the box before you go. It might be worth a bit more if it had a secret drawer, eh?"

When the shop was closed we went upstairs and laid the box on my bed, and turned it over and tapped it, and put a lamp inside, and examined every inch. We couldn't find a trace of a secret drawer, or anything scratched on it to say where the old captain had hidden his long stocking. So I concluded that the talk was the usual nonsense, and I daresay I'd have sold it and thought no more about it, if the goat's-beard man hadn't come in the first thing the next morning. He didn't beat about the bush, but said he wanted Captain Markby's ditty-box that we'd bought, and he'd give two pounds ten for it. I told him I wished I'd got it to sell, since he was so generous, but ditty-boxes weren't in my line.

The others that Isaac had spoken of came in too. I was tempted to sell it to the mate for three pounds, but I couldn't quite make up my mind, and told him to come again the next morning. That very night the two Swedes broke into the shop. The police caught them. They're always on the look-out round my place, knowing that it's a fiver to them on the quiet if they catch anyone breaking in. The Swedes got three months apiece.

That made up my mind. I showed the mate an ordinary box when he called, and he went off grumbling that it was nothing like the one he'd asked about, and I'd played the fool with him. I never saw him again, or the Swedes either; but the old man and the ginger-headed chap were always looking in the window. They seemed to have chummed up. I had an anonymous letter that I put down to them—written in red ink that I suppose they meant me to take for blood. It warned me against keeping "a ditty-box that others have a better claim to, and is like to cost you dear." D-e-r-e they spelt it, and one t in ditty.

Two days later they called to ask if the box had come my way yet. "Yes," I said, "and I'm going to keep it. It's got two blackguards three months, and it will get two others a good hiding if they don't mind. Clear out, and don't come here again." They didn't, but we often saw them hanging round, and when I went out one of them generally followed me. I didn't worry about that, for I could have settled the two of them easily if I wasn't taken unaware. I was always a bit obstinate, and I'd sooner have chopped the chest up for firewood than have been bullied into letting them have it; but I was sorry that I hadn't taken the mate's offer, for Isaac and I had measured it all over inside and out, and calculated that there wasn't space anywhere for a secret drawer.

I'd had it about three months; and then a young girl, about twenty, came into the shop one afternoon, when Isaac was at tea. She was a pale slip of a young thing, and her clothes looked as if they'd been worn all through the summer, and it was autumn then; and she hesitated as if she was half afraid of me.

"Well, little missie," I said. "What is it?" I spoke to her with the smooth side of my tongue uppermost, as a big, rough chap generally does to a girl of that sort, if there's anything decent about him.

"My father was Captain Markby," she said, and I liked the way she spoke. "He died at sea, and they sold his things here. I want to find something of his, and I thought that perhaps you might have bought it?"

I knew directly what she meant, but I looked very innocent.

"If it was anything in the curiosity line, I might have," I answered. "You see the sort of things I deal in." I waved my hand round the place.

"No," she said. "It wasn't a curiosity. It was an oak chest with brass corners. I think they call it a ditty-box."

"A ditty-box," I said. "They're too common to be curious. Was there anything special about it?"

"It had a tray in it, and he'd drawn a head on it with a red-hot iron; a girl's head. He meant it for me; but I don't expect you'd recognize me by it. I hope not!" She smiled faintly.

"I hope not," I agreed, "judging from what I've seen of such figures." I laughed, and she laughed a little, too. "And you want to buy it, if you can find it?"

"Ye-es," she said. "At least—I haven't very much money; but I would pay you as soon as I could, if—I suppose you wouldn't be so kind—so very kind—as to agree to that?"

"Umph!" I said. "I don't generally give credit; but as it was your father's, I might stretch a point for once if I should find that I have it."

"Oh, thank you!" she said with a flush. "It is a kindness that I have no right to expect. Thank you!"

"I'll have a look round among my things," I promised. "I haven't bought such a box myself; but my assistant might have; or I might be able to find it for you in some of the shops round here. I'll see what I can do." I meant to let her have it, but I wanted to find out more about it first.

"How kind you are!" she cried. "I—you see I want it very particularly, Mr. Levy."

"Being associated with your father," I said, "naturally you would. Perhaps if I don't come across the ditty-box, I might find something else of his that would do, eh?"

"No-o," she said. "It wouldn't. You see we—my mother and I—aren't well off. We knew that father had some money, but we couldn't find it, or learn anything about it; and we think it must be in the box, or a paper telling us about it."

I shook my head.

"There's no paper in any box that I have," I assured her. "We always go through the things that we buy very carefully."

"You wouldn't find it," she explained eagerly. "There was a secret place. He showed it to me when I was a little girl. I don't expect he thought I would remember, but I did. You take off the brass corners on top, and then the lower part of the lid drops out. The lid's in two pieces and you could put papers—or bank notes—in between."

I couldn't help smiling.

"Aren't you rather foolish to tell me?" I suggested.

She looked at me appealingly.

"Am I?" she asked.

"No," I said. "As it happens, you aren't; but I wouldn't tell anyone else, if I were you. They might think they'd like those bank notes for themselves. I might if—well, if you weren't a good deal younger and more in need of them than I am."

"I think you are a very good and kind man, Mr. Levy," she said solemnly.

"I'm afraid not, little missie," I told her; "but there are some a good deal worse; and some of them have an inkling of what may be in that box, if I'm not mistaken. They've been inquiring after it."

"Oh!" She started. "There were two horrid men who seemed to be watching me when I came in here. I half thought I remembered one of them: an old man with a stoop. I believe I must have seen him aboard my father's ship. I felt rather nervous—because it's such a dark alley." She looked anxiously at the door.

"It is a bit dark," I agreed. "Would you feel safer if I saw you to a main thoroughfare?"

"I should feel quite safe then," she declared, and she smiled like a child does. "I really don't know how to thank you enough for your goodness to me."

I called Isaac to look after the shop, and put on my hat and walked off with her. She was a bright little creature to talk to, and when she was excited she looked very pretty. I found that she was going to walk all the way, so I said that I would see her right to her road. She seemed pleased to have my company, and jabbered nineteen to the dozen. It was such a change to have someone to talk to, she said, because they had moved and knew nobody here. She told me that she tried to earn money by teaching music and by painting. I said that I was badly in want of a few little sketches, and she promised to bring some for me to look at.

"I would ask you to accept them," she said, with a flush, "if we weren't so poor."

"If it weren't for that," I said, "I should ask you to have some tea before I leave you, without fear that you would be too proud to accept. It would be a pleasure to me. Will you?" We were just outside a good place, and I stopped.

"It is very kind of you," she said, "but I don't think—I suppose I am foolishly proud." She laughed an uneasy laugh.

"You mustn't let your pride spoil my pleasure," I told her, and grinned at myself for talking like a book. "You can repay me when you find your fortune, if you insist; but I hope you won't."

She looked up at me quickly.

"No," she said. "I couldn't treat your kindness like that. Thank you, Mr. Levy."

So we went in, and I ordered tea and chicken and cakes. The poor little thing was positively hungry, I could see; and when she mentioned her mother the tears came into her eyes. I understood what she was thinking, and I had some meat patties put up in a package. When I left her at the corner of her road I put the package into her hands, and boarded a 'bus with a run before she had time to object. She shook her head at me when I was on top of the 'bus; but when I took off my hat she waved her hand, and laughed as if she was a great mind to cry. It's hard for an old woman and a young girl when they're left like that.

I had the corners of that ditty-box off as soon as Isaac had gone for the night. The lid was double, as she had said. Between the two boards I found a portrait of an elderly woman—her mother, no doubt—and three photos of herself; two in short frocks and one with her hair in a plait when she was about seventeen. She looked stouter and jollier then, poor girl. There was one other thing: a half sheet of note-paper. "Memo in case of accident. Money up chimney in best bedroom. Geo. Markby, sixth of April, 1897."

I started to change my clothes to go there and tell them; but just as I had taken off my waistcoat I altered my mind. The money wouldn't be in the rooms where they lived then, but in their old house; and that was probably occupied by someone else now, and even if the money was still there she would not be able to get it. It was no use raising her hopes, just to disappoint her. I would try to get the money before I spoke, I decided.

She came at eleven the next morning, and timidly produced a few little sketches, mostly copies of things. I'd like to say that they were good, but I can't. It was just schoolgirl painting, nothing else. She wanted to give me some, but I wouldn't hear of that. She had sold a few for eighteenpence apiece, she said. I said that I wanted four to frame for ships' cabins, and I'd give twelve-and-six for them, and that would leave me a fair margin. I was afraid to offer more, for fear she would suspect me; and as it was she was dubious.

"You're sure you will get a profit?" she asked.

"You ask anyone round here about me," I said. "They'll soon tell you that I look out sharp for that. They'll look very nice when they're framed; and I make a good bit out of the frames, you see. Now about this ditty-box. I've got on the track of one that might turn out right; but there's a difficulty that I'd like to put to you. Suppose that there's no money in it, only a clue to where your father hid it. Wouldn't that be likely to be somewhere where you can't get at it? On board his ship, for example? Or in your old house?

"If it's in the house," she said, "I could get in. At least it was empty a week ago. Mother heard from an old neighbor. But perhaps it would be better to get someone else to go, and say that they wanted to look at the house?" She glanced at me doubtfully.

"You mean me?" She nodded slowly. "You are afraid that I might keep some of it?"

She stared at me in sheer amazement.

"Why, of course not!" she cried. "I was only thinking that it was a long way to ask you to go; and that I must not impose on your kindness."

"Give me the address," I said, "in case I should want it any time."

She gave me an address in Andeville. Then I changed the subject. I walked part of the way home with her. Then I had my dinner and went off to Andeville.

It was about an hour by train. By the time that I had found the agent and got the key it was growing dusk. I was some time arguing with him, because he wanted to send a man with me to lock up afterward. "We've had tramps get in several times," he explained, "and they've done a lot of damage; torn up the flooring and such senseless mischief." It occurred to me directly that the tramps were some of the men who had come after the ditty-box.

I persuaded him at last that I'd lock up all right and he let me go alone. I soon spotted what would be the best bedroom. I fumbled up the chimney and lit a match or two, and found a heavy canvas bag and a smaller one that rustled like notes. I was just looking for the last time when I heard soft steps behind me. I glanced round and saw two men before the match flickered out. The light caught the face of the foremost. It was the old man with the goat's beard. Then I was struck on the head and knocked senseless.

It was about six when I came to and lit another match and looked at my watch. The bags were gone, of course. I never saw them again or the two men. It was as well for them I didn't!

It was no use telling the agent or anybody. I never thought about that, only what I was to do about the girl and her mother. I didn't think very much about the mother, if you come to that. It seemed to me that I'd made a mess of it and lost their money, and I couldn't bear to think of the girl's disappointment. What upset me most was that I knew she'd believe every word of my story, and never dream that I'd taken the money myself, as some people would. She was such a trusting little thing, and—well, I may as well own up that I liked her. If I hadn't been fifteen years older than she was, and felt sure that she'd never look at a Jew—and a much rougher chap then than I am now—I should have had serious thoughts of courting her. And so—well, I knew that a hundred pounds was what they hoped for; and it didn't make very much odds to me. I took out the paper that night and put in twenty five-pound notes, and did it up again. A bit of folly that you wouldn't have suspected me of, eh? Then you think me a bigger fool than most people do! At the same time, it was only fair and honest. I'd had her money and lost it, you see.

I was going to take the chest to their lodgings in a cab the next morning, but she called in early to ask if I had found it. I had an unhappy sort of feeling when I saw her come smiling into the shop, thinking that she wouldn't need to come any more. It's queer how a man feels over a little slip of a girl when he's knocked about all over the world and known hundreds of women and thought nothing of them!

I'd carried it down into this room, and I took her in and showed it. Her delight was pretty to see. She fidgeted about at my elbow like a child while I was taking the corners off; and when she saw the notes she danced and clapped her hands; and when I gave them to her she sat down and hugged them and laughed and cried.

"If you knew how poor we've been!" she said, wiping her eyes. "How lonely and worried and miserable! Your kindness has been the only nice thing ever since father died. Twenty times five! That's a hundred. They're real notes aren't they? I haven't seen one for ages."

"They're real enough," I told her. "I'll give you gold for them, if you like."

"I'd rather have their very selves," she said with a laugh. She studied one carefully; and suddenly she dropped them with a cry and sprang to her feet. Her face had gone white.

"Mr. Levy!" she cried. "Oh, Mr. Levy! You put them there!"

I told her a lie right out; and I'm not ashamed of it. I was a hard man of business, I said; and a Jew; and she was a silly sentimental child, or she'd never take such an idea into her head; and she needn't suppose I kept my shop for charity, and she'd know better when she was older. She heard me out. Then she put her hand on my shoulder.

"Dear kind friend," she said, "father died in May this year. The note that I looked at was dated in June!" And I stood and stared at her like a fool. I suppose I looked a bit cut up, for she stroked my arm gently.

"You dear, good fellow!" she said. She seemed to have grown from a child into a woman in a few minutes. "I can't take them, but it will help me to be a better girl, to have known someone like you!"

"Like me!" I said, and laughed. "I'm just—just a rough, money-grubbing Jew. That's all I am."

She shook her head like mad.

"You may say what you like," she told me; "but you can't alter what I think. You're good—good—good!"

Then I told her just what had happened.

"So, you see, you owe me nothing," I wound up.

She wiped her eyes and took hold of me by the sleeve.

"I will tell you what I owe you," she said. "Food when I was hungry; kindness when I was wretched; your time, your care—yes, and the risk of your life. If you had had your way you would have given me all that money. You—Mr. Levy, you say that it is just a matter of business. What profit did you expect to make?"

"I expected—to make you happy," I said; and she looked up at me suddenly; and I saw what I saw. "Little girl!" I cried. "May I try? In another way."

I held out my arms, and she dropped into them.

"My profits!" I said.

"Oh!" she cried. "I hope so. I will try—try—try!"

Mr. Levy offered me a fresh cigar and took another himself.

"It's a class of profit that's difficult to estimate," he remarked. "I had a difficulty with Isaac over the matter. You see he has 5 per cent. over the business that he introduces, but that was only meant for small transactions, I argued. He argued that there were no profits at all; not meaning any disrespect to her, but holding that there was no money in it; or, if there was, it was a loss because I'd have to keep her, and nobody knew how a wife would turn out. She held much the same, except that she was sure she was going to turn out good; but she thought I ought to find some plan of doing something for Isaac. We settled it that way. He wanted to get married, so I gave him a rise and let them have the rooms over the shop to live in; and there they are now."

"And how do you reckon the profits yourself?" I asked.

"Well," he said "in these last eight years I've cleared forty thousand pounds, though you wouldn't think it in this little shop. I reckon that I cleared a good bit more over that ditty-box. Come round to my house one evening, and I'll introduce you to her."



IV

THE YELLOW CAT

An Idyll of the Summer

By ANNIE E.P. SEARING

THE minister of Blue Mountain Church, and the minister's wife, were enjoying their first autumn fire, and the presence of the cat on the hearth between them.

"He came home this afternoon," the minister's wife was saying, "while I was picking those last peppers in the garden, and he jumped on my shoulder and purred against my ear as unconcernedly as if he'd only been for a stroll in the lower pasture, instead of gone for three months—the little wretch!"

"It does seem extraordinary"—the minister unbent his long legs and recrossed them carefully, in order to remove his foot from the way of the tawny back where it stretched out in blissful elongation—"very extraordinary, that an animal could lead that sort of double life, disappearing completely when summer comes and returning promptly with the fall. I daresay it's a reversion to the old hunting instinct. No doubt we could find him if we knew how to trail him on the mountains."

"The strangest thing about it is that this year and last he came back fat and sleek—always before, you know, he has been so gaunt and starved looking in the fall." She leaned over and stroked the cat under his chin; he purred deeply in response, and looked up into her eyes, his own like wells of unfathomed speech. "I have an eerie feeling," she said, "that if he could talk he'd have great things to tell."

The minister laughed, and puffed away at his corncob pipe. "Tales of the chase, my dear, of hecatombs of field-mice and squirrels!"

But she shook her head. "Not this summer—that cat has spent these last two summers with human beings who have treated him as a kind of fetich—just as we do!" As she rubbed his ear she murmured regretfully: "To think of all you've heard and seen and done, and you can't tell us one thing!"

The Yellow Cat's eyes narrowed to mere slits of black across two amber agates; then he shook his ears free, yawned, and gave himself up to closed lids and dreams. If he could have told it all, just as it happened, not one word of it could those good souls have comprehended—and this was the way of it.

It was near the close of a June day when the cat made his entrance into that hidden life of the summers from which his exits had been as sudden, though less dramatic. In the heart of the hills, where a mountain torrent has fretted its way for miles through a rocky gorge, there is a place where the cleft widens into a miniature valley, and the stream slips along quietly between banks of moss before it plunges again on its riotous path down the mountain. Here the charcoal-burners, half a century ago, had made a clearing, and left their dome-shaped stone kiln to cover itself with the green velvet and lace of lichen and vine. The man who was stooping over the water, cleaning trout for his supper, had found it so and made it his own one time in his wandering quest for solitude. The kiln now boasted a chimney, a door, and one wide window that looked away over the stream's next plunge, over other mountains and valleys to far horizons of the world of men. This was the hermitage to which he brought his fagged-out nerves from the cormorant city that feeds on the blood and brains of humans. Here through the brief truce of summer he found time to fish and hunt enough for his daily wants, time to read, to write, time to dream and to smoke his evening pipe, to think long thoughts, and more blessed than all—to sleep! When autumn came he would go back with renewed life and a pile of manuscript to feed to his hungry cormorant. He was chewing the cud of contentment as he bent to his fish cleaning, when, glancing to one side where the fire, between stones, was awaiting his frying-pan, he caught sight among the bushes of two gleaming eyes, and then the sleek back and lashing tail of the Yellow Cat. The man, being a cat lover was versed in their ways, so for a time he paid no attention, then began to talk softly.

"If you'd come out of that," he said, as he scraped the scales, "and not sit there watching me like a Comanche Indian, I'd invite you to supper!"

Whether it was the tone of his voice or the smell of the fish that conquered, the tawny creature was suddenly across the open with a rush and on the stooping shoulders. That was the beginning of the companionship that lasted until fall. The next season brought the animal as unexpectedly, and they took up the old relation where it had left off the previous summer. They trudged together through miles of forest, sometimes the cat on the man's shoulder, but often making side excursions on his own account and coming back with the proud burden of bird or tiny beast. Together they watched the days decline in red and gold glory from the ledge where the stream drops over the next height, or when it rained, companioned each other by the hearth in the hut. There was between them that satisfying and intimate communion of inarticulate speech only possible between man and beast.

There came a day when the man sat hour after hour over his writing, letting the hills call in vain. The cat slept himself out, and when paws in the ink and tracks over the paper proved of no avail, he jumped down and marched himself haughtily off through the door and across the clearing to the forest, tail in air. Late that afternoon the man was arrested midway of a thought rounding into phrase by the sudden darkness. There was a fierce rush of wind, as if some giant had sighed and roused himself. The door of the hut slammed shut and the blast from the window scattered the papers about the floor. As he went to pull down the sash the cat sprang in, shaking from his feet the drops of rain already slanting in a white sheet across the little valley. At the same moment there was a "halloo" outside, and a woman burst open the door, turning quickly to shut out behind her the onrush of the shower and the biting cold of the wind. She stood shaking the drops from her hair, and then she looked into the astonished face of the man and laughed.

She was as slim and straight as a young poplar, clad in white shirt-waist and khaki Turkish trousers with gaiters laced to the knee. Her hair was blown about in a red-gold snarl, and her eyes looked out as unabashed as a boy's. The two stared at each other for a time in silence, and finally it was the woman who spoke first.

"This isn't exactly what I call a warm welcome—not just what the cat led me to expect! It was really the cat who brought me—I met him over on Slide Mountain—he fled and I pursued, and now here we are!"

She made a hasty survey of the hut, and then of its owner, putting her head on one side as she looked about her with a quick, bird-like movement, he still staring in stupefaction.

"Of course you detest having me here, but you won't put me out in the rain, again, will you?"

At once he was his courteous self. With the same motion he dumped the astonished cat from the cushioned chair by the writing table, and drew it forward to the fire. Then he threw on a fresh stick of pine that flared up in a bright blaze, and with deferring gentleness took the sweater that hung from her shoulders and hung it to dry over a section of tree-trunk that served as a chimney seat.

"You are as welcome to my hut as any princess to her palace," he smiled on her, "indeed, it is yours while you choose to stay in it!"

"Don't you think," she made reply, as he drew another chair up opposite to her, "that under the circumstances we might dispense with fine speeches? It is hardly, I suppose, what one would call a usual situation, is it?"

He looked at her as she stretched her small feet comfortably to the blaze, her face quite unconcerned.

"No," he acquiesced, "it certainly is not usual—or I should hate it—the 'usual' is what I fly from!"

She threw back her head, clasping her hands behind it as she laughed. She seemed to luxuriate as frankly in the heat and the dryness as the cat between them.

"And I"—she turned the comprehension of her eyes upon him—"I cross the ocean every year in the same flight!"

The storm drove leaves and flying branches against the window, while they sat, for what seemed a long time, in contented silence. He found himself as openly absorbing her charm as if she had been a tree or a mountain sunset, while she was making further tours of inspection with her eyes about the room.

"It is entirely adorable," she smiled at him, "but it piques my curiosity!'

"Ask all the questions you wish—no secrets here."

"Then what, if you please, is the object I see swung aloft there in the dome?"

"My canvas hammock which I lower at night to climb into and go to bed, and pull up in the daytime to clear the decks."

"And the big earthen pot in the fireplace—it has gruesome suggestions of the 'Forty Thieves!'"

"Only a sort of perpetual hot-water tank. The fire never quite goes out on this domestic hearth, and proves a very acceptable companion at this high altitude. There is always the kettle on the crane, as you see it there, but limitless hot water is the fine art of housekeeping—but, perhaps you don't know the joy there is to be found in the fine art of housekeeping?"

"No, I do not," her eyes took on a whimsical expression, "but I'd like to learn—anything in the way of a new joy! In the way of small joys I am already quite a connoisseur, indeed I might call myself a collector in that line—of bibelot editions, you understand, for thus far I seem to have been unable to acquire any of the larger specimens! Would you be willing to take me on as a pupil in housekeeping?"

"It would add to my employment a crowning joy—not a bibelot!"

"Pinchbeck fine speeches again," she shrugged. "Do you stop here all the long summer quite alone?"

"All the 'short summer,'" he corrected, "save for the society of the cat, who dropped down last year from nowhere. He must have approved of the accommodations, for he has chosen me, you see, a second time for a summer resort."

"Yes—I think he was trying to protest about you being his exclusive find, when I invited myself to follow him down the mountain—leading and eluding are so much alike, one is often mistaken, is it not so?"

She was sitting forward now, chin in hands, elbows on her knees, gazing into the flames where a red banner waved above the back log. When she turned to him again the westering sun had broken through the clouds and was sending a flare of rosy light in at the window. Studying her face more fully, he saw that she was years—fully ten years—older than he had supposed. The boyish grace that sat so lightly was after all the audacious ease of a woman of the world, sure of herself.

"I, too, am living the hermit life for the summer. I am the happy possessor of a throat that demands an annual mountain-cure. Switzerland with its perpetual spectacular note gets on my nerves, so last year we found this region—I and my two faithful old servitors. Do you know the abandoned tannery in the West Branch Clove? That has been fitted up for our use, and there we live the simple life as I am able to attain it—but you have so far outdone me that you have filled my soul with discontent!"

"Alas," said the man, "you have served me the very same trick! I could almost wish—"

"That I had not come!"

"Say, rather, that you would come again!"

She stood up and reached for her sweater, waiting for him to open the door. The round of the little valley was a glittering green bowl filled with pink cloud scuds. They stepped out into a jubilant world washed clean and freshly smiling. She put out her hand in good-bye.

"I almost think I shall come again! If you were a person with whom one could be solitary—who knows!"

When she appeared the next time she found him by the noise of his chopping. They climbed to the top of the moss-covered boulder that hangs poised over the ledge where the stream leaps into the abyss. Below them the hills rolled in an infinite recession of leaf-clad peaks to the sky line, where they melted to a blur of bluish-green mist.

"Oh, these mountains of America!" she cried, "their greenness is a thing of dreams to us who know only bare icy and alps!"

"Far lovelier," he said, "to look down upon than to look up to, I think. To be a part of the height comes pretty near to being happy, for the moment."

She turned from the view to study her companion. The lines in the corners of his kind, tired eyes, the lean, strong figure, hair graying about the temples. He grew a little impatient under it before she spoke.

"Do you know," she said slowly, "I am going to like you! To like you immensely—and to trust you!"

"Thank you, I shall try to be worthy"—even his derision was gentle—"I seem to remember having been trusted before by members of your sex—even liked a little, though not perhaps 'immensely'! At any rate this certainly promises to be an experience quite by itself!"

"Quite by itself," she echoed.

"Wouldn't it be as well for you to know my name, say, as a beginning?"

"No," she nodded, "that's just what I don't want! I only want to know you. Names are extraneous things—tags, labels—let us waive them. If I tell you how I feel about this meeting of ours will you try to understand me?"

The answer was less in words than in the assent of his honest gray eyes.

"I have been surfeited all my life," she went on, "with love—I want no more of it! The one thing I do want, more than anything else, is a man friend. I have thought a great deal about such a friendship—the give and take on equal terms, the sexless companionship of mind—what it could be like!"

He brushed the twigs from the lichens between them and made no answer.

"Fate—call the power what you will"—she met the disclaimer that puckered the corners of his mouth—"fate brought us together. It was the response to my longing for such a friendship!"

"It was the Yellow Cat!"

"The Yellow Cat plus fate! While I sat there by your fire I recognized you for that friend!"

Far below over the tree tops cloud shadows and sunlight were playing some wonderful game of follow-my-leader; a hawk hung poised on tilting wings; and on the veil of mist that was the spirit of the brook where it cast itself from the ledge curved the arch of a rainbow. The man pointed to the augury.

"You might try me," he said, and they shook hands on the compact, laughing half shamefacedly at their own solemnity.

"As woman to woman," he offered.

"Let it be rather as man to man," she shrugged.

"As you like—as women we should have to begin by explaining ourselves."

"Precisely, and men companion each other on impersonal grounds."

"Then it is a man's friendship?"

"Better still," she mused, "we'll pattern it after the ideals of the disembodied! We'll make this summer, you and I together, a gem from the heart of life—I will have it so!"

So it came about that like two children they played together, worked, walked, or read and talked by the open fire when cold storms came. Every morning she came over the wood-road that led by winding ways from her valley, and at sunset she went back over the trail alone. He might go as far as the outlook half way over the mountain where the path begins to go down, but no farther; as for any fear, she seemed to know nothing of its workings, and the revolver she wore in a case that hung from her belt was a mere convention.

One morning she came with eyes dancing—it was to be an especial day—a fete—and the gods had smiled on her planning and given them perfect weather. Never such sunshine, such crystal air, such high-hung clouds! Breakfast over, they hurried about the miniature housework, and packed the kit for a long day's tramp. Then they started forth, the cat following, tail aloft. Beyond a dim peak, where the clove opens southward, by the side of a tiny lake they lunched and took their noonday rest. She watched the smoke curl up from his pipe where he lay at peace with the scheme of things.

"Do you know, Man, dear," she said, "I am glad I don't in the least guess who you are! I have no doubt you write the most delightful stories in the world—but never put me in one, please!"

He took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at her long before he replied.

"Woman, dear," he said, "I have put you in a place—your own place—and it is not in my novels!"

She scrambled to her feet laughing.

"It's very well to make stories, but it is really more diverting to live them! Come, I must lead you now with your eyes shut tight to my surprise!"

So hand in hand they went along a smooth green wood-road until she stopped him.

"Look," she cried, "now look!"

Straight away till the road narrowed to a point of light against the sky where the mountain dipped down, banks of mountain laurel rose on either side in giant hedges of rose and white, while high above them waved the elms and beeches of the forest.

"It is the gardening of the gods!"

"It is my own treasure-trove! I found it last year and I have been waiting to bring you to it on my fete—what you call birthday! And now wish me some beautiful thing—it may come true! There is a superstition in my country—but I shall not tell you—unless the wish comes true!"

He broke off a spray of the waxen buds and crowned her solemnly where she stood.

"I have already wished for you—the most beautiful thing in the world!"

She shook her head, sorrowful. "Man, dear, the only thing in all the world I still want is the impossible!"

"Only the impossible is worth while—and I have wished!"

She shook her head again, laughing a little ruefully. "It could not arrive—my impossible—and yet you almost tempt me to hope!"

"Anything—everything may arrive! You once thought that such a friendship as this of ours could not, and lo, we have achieved it!"

"I wonder"—her eyes seemed fixed on some far prospect, a world beyond the flowery way—"I wonder if we have! And I wonder why you have never made a guess about my world when you have at least let me get a peep now and then into yours?"

"I don't care a rap about your 'world,'" he smiled into her eyes, "while I have you!"

"No curiosity about my—my profession?"

"Not a bit—though it was clear enough from the first that it was the stage!"

She made an odd little outcry at his powers of divination.

"Then I must look it—before the footlights from my birth! Since you are so clever, Mr. Man, will you also be merciful when you come to weigh me in those scales you try to hide beneath the garment of your kindness? Think, when you judge me, what it is for a woman never to be herself—always to have to play a part!"

He reached and took her hand suddenly, drawing her to him with a movement that was almost rough.

"This is no play acting—this is real! No footlights—no audience—only you and me in all this world!"

But she drew away, insistently aloof. She would have none of his caresses.

"This, too," she said, as she moved apart and stood waiting for him to follow, "is a part of the play—I do not deceive myself! When I go back to my world—my trade, I shall remember this little time that you and I have snatched from the grudging grasp of life as an act—a scene only! It's a perfect pastoral, Man, dear, but unreal—absurdly unreal—and we know it ourselves while we play the game!"

Down through the flower-bordered vista the cat went stalking his prey, his sinuous body a tawny streak winding along the green path. These trivial humans, with their subtle attractions and compunctions, were as though they never had been when the chase was on—the real business and purpose of life!

For the rest of the time they were together they avoided the personal. Each felt the threat in the air and tacitly averted it. For that one perfect day there should be no past, no future, nothing but the golden present.

Swinging in his breeze-rocked hammock between door and window the man lay awake through the long watches of the night, thinking, thinking, while his heart sang. Toward dawn he fell into a deep sleep from which he was only awakened by the cat springing up to lick his face in reminder of breakfast.

It was when he came back from his plunge in the pool that he first noticed a paper pinned to his door-post. Within its folds his doom was penned!

"Even you, dear Man, could not wish me the impossible! That superstition of my country is that to come true it must be the first wish of your fete day—and by one who loves you! Alas, my old servant had already wished—that he might get me started for home to-day! Clever Friedrich—for he had also packed! When you read this I shall be far on my way. You could never find me though you searched the earth—but you will never try! It is well as it is, for you see—it was not friendship after all!"

* * * * *

And yet there was a sequel. During the following year there dropped to the man in his hard-pressed literary life, one of those errant plums from the political tree that now and then find their way to the right basket. He was named for an excellent diplomatic post. His friends congratulated him and talked a good deal about "material" and opportunities for "unique local color;" his wife chattered unceasingly about gowns and social details, while he armed himself, with the listless reticence that was become habit, to face new responsibilities and rather flavorless experiences. He had so withdrawn himself of late to the inner creative life that he moved in a kind of phantasmagoria of outer unrealities. It was the nearest to a comfortable adjustment for the mis-mating of such a marriage as his, but it was not the best of preparations for the discharge of public duties, and he walked toward his new future with reluctant feet, abstractedly. In some such mood as this, his mind bent on a problem of arrangement of fiction puppets, seeing "men as trees walking," he found himself one day making his bows at a court function. Along the line of royal highnesses and grand duchesses with his wife he moved, himself a string-pulled puppet, until—but who, in heaven's name is this?

For one mad moment, as he looked into her eyes, he thought the tightened cord he sometimes felt tugging at his tired brain had snapped, and the images of sight and memory gone hopelessly confused. She stood near the end of the line with the princesses of secondary rank, and the jewels in her hair were not more scintillant than her eyes as he bent over her hand. She went a little pale, but she greeted him bravely, and when they found themselves unobserved for a moment she spoke to him in her soft, careful English:

"You recognized me, you remember, for a play actor, and now you are come from the world's end to see me perform on my tiny stage! Alas, dear critic, since my last excursion, I am no longer letter perfect in my part!"

They met but once again. It was in the crush of guests in the great hall where her old Prince, in the splendor of his decoration-covered coat, was waiting to hand her to her carriage. There was a brief time in which to snatch the doubtful sweetness of a few hurried words. She was leaving in the early morning for the petty Balkan province where her husband held a miniature sway, over a handful of half-savage subjects. Hardly more than a renewal of greeting and a farewell, and she was gone!

As the old Prince wrapped her more carefully in her furs, and the carriage rolled away in the darkness, he spoke to her, somewhat puzzled:

"I should be sorry to think the American Ambassador has been taking too much wine—as you well know, my knowledge of the barbarous English tongue is but limited, and yet—I thought, as I joined you, he was talking some farrago of nonsense about a Yellow Cat!"

* * * * *

That year the Yellow Cat came home lean and gaunt, a chastened, humble creature, as one who has failed in a long quest, and is glad to stretch his weary length before the hearth and reap the neglected benefits of the domestic life.

"It is really very odd" said the minister, quite as if he were saying something he had never thought of saying before, "where that cat goes in the summer!"

"Isn't it?" responded the minister's wife—just as she always did. "It fires the imagination! He walks off some fine morning and completely shuts the door on our life here—as if he gave us notice not to pry into his movements. But this time"—she was leaning to stroke the tawny sides with a pitying touch—"this time you may be sure something very sad and disappointing happened to him—something in that other life went quite wrong! How I wish we could understand what it was!"



V

A COCK AND POLICEMAN

A Tale of Rural England

By RALPH KAYE ASSHETON

IT HAPPENED up in Lancashire, and the truth can be vouched for by at least half a hundred spectators. It fell in this wise: Bob O' Tims owned a game-cock which was the envy of the whole street for lustre of coloring and soundness of wind. Its owner was almost unduly proud of his possession, and would watch it admiringly as it stalked majestically about among its family of hens.

"There's a cock for you!" he would say, with a little wave of his pipe. "There's not many cocks like that one. The king himself has got nothing like it down at Windsor Castle."

Now, Jimmy Taylor had always been a rival of Bob O' Tims's. Jimmy's grandfather had fought at the Battle of Waterloo. This gave him great prestige, and it was almost universally believed, in Chellowdene, that the preeminence of the British Empire was mainly due to the battle-zeal of Jimmy's ancestry. But whenever Jimmy talked about his grandfather, Bob skilfully turned the conversation to his game-cock. This made Jimmy testy, and one day he told Bob, in contemptuous tones, that "he'd be even wi' him yet, in the matter o' game-cocks, as well as everything else."

That was one Monday evening, and the following Wednesday Bob O' Tims's cock disappeared. When Bob discovered his loss, his face went quite pale with anger. Without a word, he flung on his cap and set off for Jimmy Taylor's cottage.

When he reached it, he went still whiter. For Jimmy was sitting at the door, and up and down the yard in front of him strutted a magnificent game-cock.

Bob O' Tims stretched out his forefinger, pointed at the cock, and with a stubborn look forming about his mouth and jaw, observed:

"Yon's mine."

"It isn't," responded Jimmy. "It's mine."

"I tell thee, yon's mine. Yo've prigged it."

"It's mine! I bought it at th' fair."

"Thee never bought yon cock at any fair. It's mine, I tell thee."

Words grew high between the disputants, as the cock, in all its bronze and golden splendor, marched up and down the yard, until the argument between the two men terminated in a quarrel so violent that half-a-dozen neighbors came in to see what was the matter. It ended in Bob O' Tims insisting that he would take the matter into court. He was as good as his word, and the next time that the bench met, Bob O' Tims summoned Jimmy Taylor on a charge of having stolen his game-cock.

The magistrates listened to the witnesses on either side. Half-a-dozen people were ready to swear that the cock belonged to Bob. But Jimmy brought up a couple of witnesses to testify that they had seen him buy a similar animal at Turton Fair. The cock was then brought into court. It clucked and choked indignantly, and the partisans of Bob and Jimmy swore against each other as hard as ever they could. The bench appeared perplexed; and it was owing to their inability to come to any decision that the magistrate's clerk made his famous suggestion.

"The case appears to me impossible to prove as it stands, your worships," he said to the bench. "I would suggest, if I may be allowed, that you direct an officer of the court to take the cock to some spot at an equal distance between the houses of the plaintiff and of the defendant. If he is there placed upon the ground, and left to his own devices, he is pretty sure to make his way straight home."

The magistrates accepted the suggestion of the clerk, and gave judgment accordingly. A policeman was ordered to carry out their instructions. Now, this officer was young and raw, and had only recently been enrolled in the constabulary. He was a fat, rosy man, with an air of self-importance. He set out from the court with the cock under his arm. An excited crowd streamed after the policeman, who stalked on with no little pomposity. When he reached the common, which lay between the houses of the rival claimants, he stood still for a minute or two, grasping the cock and looking judiciously from one side of the broken land to the other.

The crowd eagerly commenced to give information.

"You're a bit nearer Bob O' Tims's than you are to Jimmy's!" cried one.

"Nay! Nay!" interposed another spectator, who was a partisan of Bob O' Tims. "There's a corner to turn afore you get to Bob's. It's not fair, not to make allowance for that."

"Stand back!" cried the policeman majestically—"Stand back, every man of you. The critter will be too much put about to go anywhere if you don't keep still tongues in your heads."

The officer still stood, with his legs wide apart, turning his head slowly from side to side. Once he made a pace in the direction of Jimmy Taylor's; then, changing his mind, he took a couple of steps toward Bob O' Tims's. Finally, he decided that he had fixed upon the exact locality commanded by the law, and with a magisterial air, he again waved back the crowd and deposited the cock upon the ground in front of him.

Everybody held their breath. The first thing that the cock did was to shake himself until he resembled nothing so much as a living mop. Then he began to smooth his feathers down again. Then he stretched his neck, flapped his wings and crowed. Finally, with a blink of his bright eyes, which almost appeared like a wink to the hushed and expectant crowd, he made two solemn steps with his slender legs in the direction of Jimmy Taylor's cottage.

"He's going to Jimmy's!" exclaimed the crowd with one voice.

"Can't you all be quiet for a moment or two," interposed the policeman, indignantly. "I tell you, if you don't keep still, you'll upset the critter's mind, and make the magistrates' decision just good for nothing."

The crowd appeared ashamed and relapsed once more into silence.

The policeman stood erect and tall, a few paces in front of them, watching the cock with great solemnity. It was standing still now, jerking its neck a little. Then it looked round, and, retracing its paces, began stepping slowly off in the opposite direction.

"It's going to Bob's!" cried the crowd.

But the cock was doing no such thing; it paused again, scratching in an imaginary dust-heap, and then, with a loud crow, stretched its wings and flew up into a small tree.

This was disconcerting. The policeman turned with anger upon the crowd.

"I told you you were not giving the critter a chance!" he exclaimed. "You'd best be off home. Come, move on! Move on!"

The crowd retreated, but it had no intention of going home. Some of those less interested strolled away, but the partisans of Bob and Jimmy remained at a little distance, eagerly watching to see what would happen next.

The cock, after jerking his head round several times, settled down comfortably among his feathers, and went to sleep in the tree.

This was altogether beyond the expectancy of the policeman. Not knowing what else to do, he sat down on a broken bit of fence under the tree and waited.

The day advanced. The cock slept on and the policeman began to doze. Now and then he awoke with a start, and looked up at the obstinate biped above his head. Presently the man got down from the fence and shook himself.

The partisans of Bob and Jimmy still remained at a discreet distance, watching the progress of events. The policeman stood still for a few moments, staring at the cock; then he approached the small, stumpy tree and clapped his hands vigorously.

The cock woke up, gurgled, and went to sleep again.

The policeman clapped his hands a second time, and then with shrill indignation the creature flew down from the tree, and set off in the direction of the distant moors.

The proceedings promptly assumed the aspect of a hunt. The cock ran along with outstretched wings and neck, and the policeman and the crowd ran after it. At last it reached a small cottage, belonging to a widow of the name of Gammer. Exerting a final effort, it flew up toward her open window and ensconced itself on the top of the good woman's tester-bed.

Now Mrs. Gammer was a woman of character. She heard the noise outside; and when the breathless policeman arrived at the door of her kitchen, she was wiping the soapsuds off her plump red arms, ready for any dispute or fray. She stood with her arms held akimbo, as the man in blue explained his errand. When he had finished his recital she looked at him defiantly.

"And I should like to know what you call yourself, policeman or no policeman, to be chasing a poor harmless critter across 'em blazing commons on a day like this! You want to go and poke him down from my tester-bed, do you? Well, you can just go back and tell the magistrates as Mrs. Gammer's got him, and if they want him they must come for him themselves."

This was direct defiance of the law, and the policeman commenced a remonstrance. His remarks were, however, cut short by Mrs. Gammer.

"I have always said as magistrates was as ignorant as babies, and I only wish that they was as harmless," she persisted, in open contempt of the government of her country. "You can go back, and tell 'em as Mrs. Gammer says so. My house is my house, magistrate or no magistrate, and I won't have any policeman messing about on the top of my tester-bed."

The policeman was not certain whether the authority which had been entrusted to him in the matter would justify his making a deliberate prisoner of Mrs. Gammer. And, as she showed every sign of resorting to violence, should he attempt to pass the door, which she barred with her stout figure, he decided upon beating a retreat. He went outside again and reasserted his shattered dignity by once more driving away the crowd; then, not knowing what else to do, he returned to the police station and reported the matter to the chief constable.

The chief laughed, and so did everybody else who heard the story. The policeman was directed to return to Mrs. Gammer's cottage later in the day, and serve her with an order requiring her to give up the cock immediately. But when he handed Mrs. Gammer the official paper, she laughed in his face.

"You can look round the house for the cock now if you like," she said contemptuously, slapping down the order upon the table, "and you can see if you can find him."

"Is he still on the top of your tester-bed?" demanded the policeman.

"Go and look," responded Mrs. Gammer, with a snort. "You can take the turk's-head brush and brush him down!"

So, armed with the turk's-head brush, the policeman ascended Mrs. Gammer's small, steep staircase. When he reached her bedroom, he poked into every cranny and corner with the handle of his brush. But no cock was to be found.

He descended the stairs, and stood again in the little kitchen. A savory smell of cooking arose from a stew-pan on the fire.

"Where's the critter gone to?" he demanded.

"How should I know?" replied Mrs. Gammer testily.

The policeman, still standing in the kitchen, wished that Mrs. Gammer would give him an invitation to supper. The widow glanced up sharply at him and saw what was in his mind.

"You'd like some supper, I make no doubt, after your wild-goose chase," she said. "Sit down at t' table and take a bit o' stew."

The policeman seated himself with alacrity. The stew which Mrs. Gammer placed before him consisted of a mixture of barley, onions and some white meat. He ate a hearty supper, and when he stood up he drew his hands across his mouth.

"Thank you kindly," he said. "I must be off now, and see where that cock has gone to."

Then it was that Mrs. Gammer gave a short and derisive laugh. She began to pile up the empty plates and to put the spoons and forks in the basin by the sink.

"If you go a-chasing of that cock until you are black and blue in the face," she said, "you'll never find him. And the reason why, is that you have just helped to eat him up."

"I have eat him up!" he gasped.

"Aye," responded Mrs. Gammer, with brevity. "I made him into soup!"

The policeman remained open-mouthed, staring at the impenitent widow.

"You'd no business ever to do such a thing," he said. "The cock belonged to the Law."

"I care nowt for your Law," retorted Mrs. Gammer. "Anyway you've helped to eat him!"

A vague sense of cannibalism was haunting the policeman's mind; he felt almost as dismayed as if he had made a hearty supper off the magistrate's clerk himself.

"You're a very wicked woman," he said to Mrs. Gammer. "And—and——"

He broke off, entirely nonplussed by the situation in which he found himself. Mrs. Gammer continued to wash up the spoons and forks with utter indifference to his consternation.

"The cock's eat up, and there's an end of it," she said. "You'd best go and tell the magistrates all about it."

Sheepish and disconcerted, the policeman slunk home. The next morning the chief asked him if he had served the order on Mrs. Gammer.

"I—served it," said he, scratching his head.

"And did you get the bird given up?" demanded his superior officer.

"No, I can't say as I did," replied the policeman.

"Was it still on the top of the tester-bed?" pursued his awkward questioner.

"No. It was not on the tester-bed," replied the policeman.

"Then where was it?" insisted the chief.

For several seconds the policeman was silent, then he told a lie.

"I canna say," he answered, "it war gone."

The chief shrugged his shoulders, and sent the man about the business of the day. The next time that the magistrates met, the question of Bob O' Tims's cock was again brought into court. The magistrate's clerk demanded if the case were settled.

To the great relief of the policeman, who was waiting in attendance, Bob O' Tims spoke up from the spot where he stood.

"Jim hadna stolen my cock after all, sir," he said, "for it came home the next morning."

"Then what happened to the cock that was brought into court on Tuesday?" demanded the magistrate's clerk. But nobody seemed to know.

Only, people used to wonder why Widow Gammer almost always gave a peculiar kind of snort when she spoke of Police Constable X, and why that worthy officer avoided her cottage ever after, and invariably turned down a side street if he saw the widow within speaking distance of him.



VI

PRISONERS IN THE TOWER

An Episode of Travel

By LUCY COPINGER

"IN THE words of Macaulay this, ladies and gentleman, is the saddest spot on earth." The white-haired old Tower guard in charge of the little chapel of Saint Peter waved his hand impressively toward the open door. "Through that door"—the heads of the American tourists who were doing the Tower all turned in unison—"you may see the block upon which many a royal head has rested, and beneath these very stones lie buried two dukes between two queens—Dukes of Northumberland and of Somerset, with the Queens Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard—all beheaded."

The chapel was a crypt-like place, windowless, dark, and musty, and at this mournful climax one of the tourists who was nervous moved suddenly off that particular stone upon which she had been standing; the school teachers out for self-improvement began to write it all in their note-books, while a stout matron evidently of good old Dutch stock looked sadly down at the flat, gray stones. "Poor things!" she murmured, "and there ain't one of them got a respectable white tombstone with a wreath carved on it." Then, in their usual two-by-two line, the party moved down the aisle wearily, but triumphant in the fact that they had succeeded in doing the Tower, the Abbey, and the Museum all in one day. Peggy Wynne, in demurely severe blue suit and jaunty panama, lagged at the end of the line while she looked critically at her compatriots.

"The animals went out two by two, The elephant and the kangaroo,"

she murmured to herself, "and I'm so tired of playing Noah's Ark or a Christian Association out for a lark," she continued in unconscious poetical despair. Then, warned by the attitude of the guard, that wonderful attitude of the haughty Briton in hopes of a tip, she opened her ridiculously tiny gold-linked purse and gave herself up to the absorbing question as to which of the pieces therein was a shilling. Having at last decided this, she presented it to the guard with a dazzling smile. It had been so long since Peggy had had an opportunity to smile at anything masculine that the smile was unusually bright.

She had already passed through the little door when she suddenly turned back. The other tourists, noses in Baedekers, were hurrying on before, the guard was busily counting his sixpences, and she slipped back into the dim chapel unperceived.

"They'll think I've gone back to those dingy lodgings," she reflected, as she groped her way between the benches into an even more shadowy corner—a little recess, with a tiny niche in the wall, that had probably been the sanctuary of some pious king. She seated herself comfortably behind the pillar in the corner and gazed pensively at the stones.

"Tombs and tombs and tombs!" she murmured mournfully, "even in Paris, instead of Maxim's and the cafes, nothing but tombs! The next time I want to see where anybody is buried I will just go out to the cemetery instead of coming across that dreadful ocean. Oh, just to have one adventure before I go home!" she continued with a long sigh, "a real adventure with a real man in it—not a horrid, womanish Frenchman or a stolid, conceited Britisher, but a nice, safe American—like—like—like—my American."

Then the dimple in her right cheek that was probably responsible for the calling her Peggy, in spite of her many protests for her rightful dignity of "Margaret," came out suddenly as it always did when she thought of her American. She had called him that from the time when, in the midst of the perplexities of the English luggage system, she had looked up and found him watching her. The cut of his gray suit and his shoes had told her his nationality at once, and they had looked for a moment at each other with that peculiar friendliness that compatriots in a strange land always feel. She had forgotten him until, leaning from a taxi-cab in the Rue de la Paix, she had met the same eyes, this time so unrefrainedly joyful in their recognition that she had suddenly blushed. When, a week later at Calais, as she stood by the rail of the departing Channel steamer she caught a glimpse of him on the dock, he had seemed like an old friend, and before she had thought she had smiled in answer to his lifted hat. She had grown so sure of seeing him that now when they had been in London a week and he had not appeared she found herself suddenly sick of tombs and tourists.

Peggy's day had been a strenuous one of trams, motor-busses, abbeys, and galleries, and though she realized an adventure might probably await her outside, it was pleasant to sit for awhile in the dimness of the quiet chapel. From her recess she could look out through the open doors upon the tragic Tower Green, where in the sunlight two sparrows were frivolously flirting. Even as she watched, the sparrows grew dim, her ridiculously tiny purse slipped from her hand, her head with its thick dark hair dropped against the pillar, and her lashes touched her cheek. After awhile a cautious footfall sounded in the chapel, then somewhere a heavy door closed, and all was still.

When Peggy sat up indignantly with the queer sensation that she had been violently shaken, darkness surrounded her, a darkness so deep that she could not see her hand as she ran it along the bench in front of her. With the movement came remembrance of her surroundings, and also a realization in strained and aching muscles that a stone pillar is not a wise choice for a head-rest.

"Oh!" she gasped painfully.

"Don't be frightened," entreated a voice quite near to her, and out of the lesser darkness a tall black figure rose suddenly.

"I am not at all frightened," said Peggy at once. In spite of the bigness of the figure there was something reassuring in the voice with its crisp, humorous note and its intonation that Peggy at once recognized as American.

"What are you doing here?" she continued, inhospitably addressing the darkness before her.

"I went to sleep" the voice explained, "on the other side of the pillar."

"How silly!" said Peggy, severely, "didn't you see me here?"

"It was a little dim," the voice apologized and, Peggy's silence still condemning, "you should have snored," it continued extenuatingly.

Peggy arose with a dignity that she hoped penetrated the darkness. Then she groped along the bench.

"My purse," she explained anxiously, "and it had a sixpence for tea and two shillings for tips," she continued with an unconscious epitome of the joys of traveling. As she groped along bench and floor she was conscious of assistance from her companion, and just as she grasped the discovered purse she felt purse and hand caught and retained in a firm grip.

"I apologize," he said at once, still however, holding on to her hand, "I thought it was the purse."

Peggy jerked her hand loose indignantly, and speechless with wrath she hurried toward the door only to find that she had mistaken her direction. In her effort to recover her bearings she become hopelessly confused, stumbled noisily over a bench, and fell headlong into the arms of her companion.

"You had better sit down again," he remarked coolly as he returned her to her seat and sat down calmly beside her. As he did so Peggy noted curiously the dim attractive silhouette of his head and the remarkably good line from ear to shoulder.

"I am going at once," she said haughtily, but without moving.

"You can't," the man beside her replied, "and if you promise not to cry or fall over any more benches I will tell you why—although I myself do not object to the latter," he continued judicially, "but for the sake of your own bones, merely."

Peggy ignored the last.

"Why can't I go?" she said defiantly.

"Because the door is locked," he explained succinctly.

"We can both scream or you can throw a bench through the window," said Peggy triumphantly.

The unseen laughed a nice laugh that Peggy liked.

"In that latter case, beside the fact that there is no window, we would surely be had up before the head-warden of this old jail. Besides, do you know what time it is?"

"About tea time," said Peggy who had lunched frugally at one of the tea-shops on a cup of tea and a jam roll.

"Just before you woke up," said her companion, "I used my last match—it always is the last in a case like this—to look at my watch. It was half-past twelve. Remember, you promised——" at a warning gurgle from Peggy.