"Would you like a close shave, Miss Bording?"

The sound of the carving-knife dropping upon the platter as Leadbury started in some sudden spasm of pain, was drowned by the silvery laughter of Miss Bording, saying,

"Oh, don't make fun of the profession of your poor cousin, Captain," and the look of disquiet upon Leadbury's face was quickly relieved and he joined heartily and almost boisterously in the merriment. A moment later, Clarissa was alarmed to find him bending upon herself a look in which suspicion, distrust, fear, and hatred all were blended.

Judge Volney Bording, ornament to the legal profession, was a hearty eater, and it was not long before he sent his plate for a second helping, and again Clarissa heard from the closed lips of Leadbury, in a voice that seemed to float up from his very feet:

"Next. Next. You're next, Miss Bording. What'll it be?"

Leadbury half rose, looking toward Clarissa with a glance of most violent anger, but whatever he would have said, was again interrupted by the silvery laugh of Miss Bording, and again Leadbury joined heartily, almost boisterously. But though he regained his self-possession and his brow became serene, Clarissa saw in his eye that which told he had a reckoning in store for her when once the guests were out of the house, but that in the meantime he would dissemble the various unpleasant emotions with which his mind was filled. The rest of the dinner passed without untoward event. The huge armchair by imperceptible degrees retired to its former position, and as Clarissa set down the dessert, she saw Asbury Fuller, with a grace unusual and not to be expected of one in such a posture, proceeding quickly and silently out of the room upon all-fours.

Mindful of her instructions, Clarissa accompanied the party when, rising from the table, they withdrew to the drawing-room. It was manifest that her presence caused Leadbury some uneasiness and he looked now at her and now at his guests with an inquiring and perturbed countenance, but in the calm faces of the judge and his daughter he could detect nothing to indicate that they thought the presence of the page at all strange, and little by little he recovered his good spirits and related some interesting anecdotes of a bulldog he once owned and of a colored person who stole a guitar from him. But though Miss Bording gave a courteous and interested attention and laughed at the anecdotes of the dog, she irked at the necessity of silence, which the garrulity of her host placed her under and was desirous of having the conversation become general and of a more entertaining, elevated and instructive character. As the narration of the episode of the colored person came to an end, she hastily exclaimed:

"Captain, you promised to show us your collection. It is nearing the time when we must go home, for father has had to-day to listen to an unparalleled amount of gabble and is very tired."

"I will show the collection to you with great pleasure," said Leadbury, and at this juncture, Clarissa, remembering her instructions, said:

"The collection of your former weapons, sir, has been placed in the first room at the left at the head of the stairs. The paperhangers and decorators have been busy." And then she proceeded to lead the way into the hall and up the broad funereal staircase that led above. Dimly burned the lights in the hall. Dimly burned a gas jet in the room whose door stood open at the left.

"Oh, yes," said Leadbury, gaily, responding to a remark of Miss Bording, as they entered the room and saw the uncertain shape of a large chair vaguely looming in the gloom; "I secured the fauteuil of Ab del Kader after we had stormed the last stronghold of that unfortunate prince. But interesting as this relic is, I put no value upon it in comparison with the weapons, for every bit of steel in the collection has been used by me in my trade."

As he said these words, he turned on the gas at full head and the light blazed forth to be shot back from an array of polished steel festooned upon the wall, a glittering rosette, but not of sabres and scimetars, yataghans, rapiers, broadswords, dirks and poniards, pistols, fusils and rifles. No! Razors and scissors! Before this array sat a great red velvet barber's chair, and near them on the wall was a board, bearing little brass hooks, upon each of which hung a green ticket.

In the unexpected revelation that had followed the flare of light, all eyes were turned upon William Leadbury, swaying back and forward with one hand clinging to the big chair, as if ready to swoon. A sickly, cringing grin played over his face, suddenly come all a-yellow, and his long tongue was flickering over his pale lips. But all at once his muscles sprang tense and a malignant anger tightened his quivering features and turning upon Clarissa, he hissed:

"You did this. You exposed me, you exposed me," and he was about to leap at the terrified girl, when a ringing voice cried, "Stop!" and there was Asbury Fuller standing in the doorway with the broad red cordon of a Commander of the Legion of Honor across his breast and a glittering rapier in his hand. Clarissa could have fallen at his feet, he looked so handsome and grand, and she could have scratched out the eyes of Eulalia Bording, whose gaze betrayed an admiration equal to her own. Asbury Fuller, yet not wearing quite his wonted appearance, for the luxuriant locks of auburn had gone and his head was covered with a short, though thick crop of chestnut.

"You exposed yourself. Harmless would all this have been, powerless to hurt you, if you had kept your self-possession and turned it off as a joke—your own. But your abashed mien, your complete confusion, your utter disconcertment, betrayed you, even if you had no longer left any question by crying out that you have been exposed. Yes, exposed, Anderson Walkley, by the sudden confronting of you with the implements of your craft, the weapons you had used in your trade, and the belief thus aroused in your guilty mind that your secret was known, that your identity had been detected."

"Asbury Fuller, what business is it of yours?" and Leadbury snatched up a large pair of hair clippers and waved them with a menacing gesture.

"Everyman to the weapons of his trade," exclaimed Asbury Fuller, and the hair clippers seemed suddenly enveloped in a mass of white flame, as the rapier played about them. Cling, clang, across the room flew the clippers, twisted from Leadbury's hand as neatly as you please.

"Asbury Fuller?" cried the Commander of the Legion of Honor. "Asbury Fuller?" and he deftly fastened beneath his nose an elegant false moustache with waxed ends.

With his hands before his eyes as if to forefend his view from some dreadful apparition, the man in the corner sank upon his knees, gibbering, "William Leadbury, come back from the dead!"

"William Leadbury, alive and well, here to claim his own from you, Anderson Walkley, outlaw and felon. Your plans were well-laid, but I am not dead. You signed the papers of the Ingar Gulbrandson in your proper person. Then as she was about to sail, I was brought aboard ostensibly drunk, but really drugged, under the name of Anderson Walkley. The Gulbrandson was found sunk. Her crew of four had utterly disappeared. Dead, of course. The records gave their names. I had become Anderson Walkley and was dead. You had seized my property and my identity. I had been in Chicago but two days and no one had become familiar enough with my appearance to make any question when you with your clean-shaven face came down on the morning after my kidnaping and told the people at the hotel that you were William Leadbury and had shaved your moustache off over night. Whatever difference they might have thought they saw, was easily explained by the change occasioned by the removal of your moustache. Had your minions been as intelligent as they were villainous, your scheme would have succeeded. It was necessary to drug me anew on the voyage, as the effects were wearing off. They did not drug me enough, and when they scuttled the old hulk and rowed ashore to flee with their blood money, the cold water rising in the sinking vessel awoke me, brought me to full consciousness, and I easily got ashore on some planking. I saw at once what the plot had been. I realized I had a desperate man to deal with. I had no money and it would take me some time to get from northern Wisconsin to Chicago. In the meantime, every one would have come to believe you William Leadbury, and who would believe me, the ragged tramp, suddenly appearing from nowhere and claiming to be the heir? You would be coached by your lawyers, have time to concoct lies, to manufacture conditions that would color your claim, and in court you would be self-possessed and on your guard. Therefore I felt that I must await the psychological moment when you could be taken off your guard, when, surprised and in confusion, you would betray yourself. I secured employment as your butler, the psychological moment came, and you stand, self-convicted, thief and would-be murderer."

"Send for the police at once," said Judge Bording.

"No," said the late captain in the Foreign Legion. "He may reform. I wish him to have another chance. That he may have the wherewithal to earn a livelihood, I present him with the contents of this room, the means of his undoing. In my uncle's library are many excellent theological works of a controversial nature, and these, too, I present to him, as a means of turning his thoughts toward better things. I will not send for the police. I will send for a dray. Judge Bording, by the recent concatenation of events, I am become the host. Let us leave Walkley here to pack his effects, and return to the drawing-room."

Clarissa preceded the others as they slowly descended, with all her ears open to hear whatsoever William Leadbury might say to Eulalia Bording, and it was so that she noted a strange little creaking above them, and looking up, saw poised upon the edge of the balustrade in the upper hall, impending over the head of William Leadbury and ready to fall, the great barber chair! With a swift leap, she pushed him to the wall, causing him to just escape the chair as it fell with a dreadful crash. But she herself was not so fortunate, for with a wicked tunk the cushioned back of the chair struck her a glancing blow that felled her senseless upon the stairs.

Judge Bording flew after the dastardly barber, who swifter still, was down the backstairs and out of the house into the darkness before the Judge could lay hands upon him.

The judge, his daughter, and William Leadbury, bent over the unconscious form of the page.

"He saved your life," said the judge. "The wood and iron part would have hit your head."

"His breath is knocked out of him," said Miss Bording.

"He saved my life. I cannot understand his strange devotion. I cannot understand it," said William Leadbury, the while opening the page's vest, tearing away his collar, and straining at his shirt, that the stunned lungs might have play and get to work again. The stiffly starched shirt resisted his efforts and he reached in under it to detach the fastenings of the studs that held the bosom together. Back came his hand as if it had encountered a serpent beneath that shirt front.

"I begin to understand," he exclaimed, and bending an enigmatical look upon the startled judge and his daughter, he picked the page up in his arms with the utmost tenderness, and bore him away.

* * * * *

The pains in Clarissa's body had left her. Indeed, they had all but gone when on Sunday morning, after a night which had been one of formless dreams where she had not known whether she slept or waked or where she was, a frowsy maid had called her from the bed where she lay beneath a blanket, fully dressed, and told her it was time she was getting back to the city. Not a sign of William Leadbury as she passed out of the great silent house. Not a word from him, no inquiry for the welfare of the little page who had come so nigh dying for him. Clarissa was too proud to do or say anything to let the frowsy maid guess that she wondered at this or cared aught for the ungrateful captain. She steeled her heart against him, but though as the days went by she succeeded in ceasing to care for one who was so unworthy of her regard, she could not stifle the poignant regret that he was thus unworthy.

It had come Friday evening, almost closing time in the great store. Slowly and heavily, Clarissa was setting her counter in order, preparing to go to her lodgings and nurse her sick heart until slumber should give respite from her pain, when there came a messenger from the dress-making department asking her presence there.

"We've just got an order for a ready-made ball-dress for a lady that is unexpectedly going to the Charity Ball to-night," said Mrs. McGuffin, head of the department. "The message says the lady is just your height and build and color—she noticed you sometime, it seems—and that we are to fit one of the dresses to you, making such alterations as would make it fit you, choosing one suitable to your complexion. When it's done, to save time, you are to go right to the person who ordered it, without stopping to change your clothes. You can do that there. It will make her late to the ball, at best. A carriage and a person to conduct you will be waiting."

It was a magnificent dress that was gradually built upon the figure of Clarissa, and when at last it was completed and she stood before the great pier glass flushed with the radiance of a pleasure she could not but feel despite her late sorrow and the fact she was but the lay figure for a more fortunate woman, one would have to search far to find a more beautiful creature.

"Whyee!" exclaimed Mrs. McGuffin. "Why, I had no idea you had such a figure. Why, I must have you in my department to show off dresses on. You will work at the cutlery counter not a day after to-morrow. But there, I am keeping you. The ball must almost have begun. Here's a bag with your things in it. I was going to say, 'your other things.'" And throwing a splendid cloak about the lovely shoulders of Miss Clarissa, Mrs. McGuffin turned her over to the messenger.

There was already somebody in the carriage into which Clarissa stepped, but as the curtain was drawn across the opposite window, she was unable to even conjecture the sex of the individual who was to be her conductor to her destination, and steeped in dreams which from pleasant ones quickly passed to bitter, she speedily forgot all about the person at her side. But presently she perceived their carriage had come into the midst of a squadron of other carriages charging down upon a brilliantly lighted entrance where men and women, brave in evening dress, were moving in.

"Why, we are going to the ball-room itself," and as she said this and realized that here on the very threshold of the entrancing gayeties she was to put off her fine plumage and see the other woman pass out of the dressing-room into the delights beyond, while she crept away in her own simple garb amid the questioning, amused, and contemptuous stares of the haughty dames who had witnessed the exchange, she broke into a piteous sob.

"Why, of course to the ball-room, my darling," breathed a voice, which low though it was, thrilled her more than the voice of an archangel, and she felt herself strained to a man's heart and her bare shoulders, which peeped from the cloak at the thrust of a pair of strong arms beneath it, came in contact with the cool, smooth surface of the bosom of a dress shirt. "Don't you remember that I engaged the second two-step at the Charity Ball?"

Clarissa, almost swooning with joy as she reclined palpitating upon the manly breast of Captain William Leadbury, said never a word, for the power of speech was not in her; the power of song, of uttering peans of joy, perhaps, but not the power of speech.

"Have I assumed too much," said Leadbury, gravely, relaxing somewhat the tightness of his embrace. "Have I, arguing from the fact that you both served me in the crisis of my career and saved my life, assumed too much in believing you love me? If so, I beg your pardon for arranging this surprise. I will release you. I——"

"Oh, no," crooned Clarissa, nestling against him with all the quivering protest of a child about to be taken from its mother. "You read my actions rightly. Oh, how I have suffered this week. No word from you. I could not understand it. Of course you could not know I was a girl. But I thought you ought to be grateful, even to a boy."

"But I did know you were a girl. When you fell, I began to open the clothes about your chest. When I discovered your sex, I carried you upstairs, placed you on a bed, threw a blanket over you and was about to call Miss Bording to take charge of you——"

"I'm glad you didn't. I don't like Miss Bording," said Clarissa.

"I had left to call her, when that poltroon of an Anderson Walkley, who had stolen back into the house after running from it, crept behind me and struck me back of the ear with a shaving mug. I dropped unconscious. In the resulting confusion, your very existence was as forgotten as your whereabouts was unknown. You lay there as I had left you until a maid found you in the morning and packed you off. It was not until Wednesday that I was able to be out. I knew you came from this store, and mousing about in there, I had no trouble in identifying the nice young page with the beautiful young woman at the cutlery counter. I could scarce wait two days, but as three had already passed, I planned this surprise, remembering our banter when I talked with you, disguised as a man of fifty, and now you are to go in with me as my affianced bride. We'd better hurry, for the driver must be wondering what we are thinking about."

It was worthy of remark that even the ladies passed many compliments upon the beauty and grace of Miss Clarissa Dawson, the young woman who came to the ball with William Leadbury, former captain in the army of the Republique Francaise, heir to the millions of the late James Leadbury, and a number of persons esteemed judges of all that pertains to the Terpsichorean art, declared that when she appeared upon the floor for the first time, which was to dance the second two-step with the gallant soldier, that such was the surpassing grace with which she revolved over the floor that one might well say she seemed to be dancing upon air.



What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Sixth Gift of the Emir.

"It is strange," said Mr. Middleton, "that after Clarissa had shown her devotion to the extent of saving his life, Captain Leadbury could have had, even for a moment, any misgivings that she loved him."

"One cannot always be sure," said the emir. "A lover, being in a highly nervous state because of his emotion, is always more or less unstrung and unable to form a sound judgment or behave rationally. It is because of this, that there are so many lovers' quarrels. But one need not be at sea as regards the question of the affection of the object of his tender passion. It is only necessary for you to wear a philter upon the forehead and you can obtain the love of any woman," and giving Mesrour some directions, the Nubian brought to his master a minute bag of silk an inch square and of wafer thinness, which, both from its appearance and the rare odor of musk which it exhaled, resembled a sachet bag.

"Wear this on your forehead," said the emir, presenting it to Mr. Middleton.

"But I would look ridiculous doing that, and excite comment," expostulated the student of law.

"Not at all," said the emir. "Put it inside the sweat-band of the front of your hat and no one will perceive it and yet it will have all its potency."

Which, accordingly, Mr. Middleton did, and having thanked the emir for his entertainment and instruction and the gift, he departed.

The close of the relation of the adventure of Miss Clarissa Dawson left Mr. Middleton in a most amorous mood. His mind was full of soft dreams of the delight William Leadbury must have experienced as he sat in the hack with Clarissa's cheek against his, pouring forth his love into her surprised ear. Before retiring for the night, he sat for some time ciphering on the back of an envelope and kept putting down "$1,000, $500, $560; $560, $500, $1,000; $500, $560, $1,000; $500, $1,000, $560," but as the result of the addition was never over $2,060, whatever way he put it, and as the stipend he received for his labors in the law offices of Brockelsby and Brockman was but $26 a month, he did not feel that he had any business to snatch the young lady of Englewood to his breast and tell her of his love and his bank account.

He went to see her on the following night. The exquisite beauty of this peerless young woman had never so impressed him as upon this night and he was gnawed by the most intense longing to call her his own. As he thought of the fortunate William Leadbury with his rich uncle, he fairly hated him, and anon he cursed Brockelsby and Brockman for refusing to raise his salary to a point commensurate with the value of his services. Surely, the young lady of Englewood, even were he to believe her gifted with only ordinary penetration, instead of being the highly intelligent and perspicacious person he knew her to be, could see how he felt and must know that it was only a question of time and more money, and assuredly, one so gracious could not, in view of the circumstances, begrudge him the advance of one kiss and one embrace pending the formal offer of himself and his fortunes. So as he stood in the doorway, bidding her good-night, right in the midst of an irrelevant remark concerning the weather, he suddenly and without warning, threw his arms about her and essayed to kiss her. But the young lady of Englewood, with a cry commingled of surprise and horror, sprang away.

"How dare you sir? What made you do that? What sort of a girl do you think I am?" she said in freezing tones.

Mr. Middleton replied, stuttering weakly in a very husky voice, "I think you are a nice girl."

"A nice girl!" quoth the young lady of Englewood fiercely. "You know no nice girl would allow it. Nice girl, indeed. You think so. You know no nice girl would let you do such a thing," and she slammed the door in his face.

Away went Mr. Middleton with his heart full of bitterness because she would not let him do such a thing, and in the hallway stood the young lady of Englewood with her heart full of bitterness because he had tried to do such a thing and because she could not let him do such a thing.

"Much good was the philter," said Mr. Middleton, remembering the emir's gift, but almost at the same time, he recalled that the philter had not been on his forehead when he attempted to embrace the young lady of Englewood, for he had held his hat in his hand.

The farther he departed from her, the more his resentment grew, and he declared to himself that he would never have anything more to do with her. She was ungrateful, cold, haughty, not at all the kind of girl he could wish as his partner for life. He would proceed to let her see that he could do without her. He would cast her image from the temple of his heart and never go near her again. For a moment, he was disturbed by the thought that perhaps she would decline to receive him, even if he should call, but he quickly banished this unpleasant reflection and fell to devising means by which he might make it clearly apparent to the young lady of Englewood that he did not care.

"I'll make her sorry. I'll show her I don't care, I'll show her I don't care."

There is a restaurant under the basement of one of the larger and more celebrated saloons of the city, where a genial Gaul provides, for the modest sum of fifty cents, a course dinner, with wine. The wine is but ordinary California claret, but the viands are excellently cooked and of themselves sufficient inducement for a wight to part with half a dollar without consideration of the wine. There are those who, in the melancholy state that follows a disappointment in love, go without food and drink, while others turn to undue indulgence in drink. There are yet others, though few observers seem to have noted them, who turn toward greater indulgence in food, seeking surcease and forgetfulness of the pains of the heart in benefactions to the stomach.

It was very seldom that Mr. Middleton spent so much as fifty cents upon a meal, but the conduct of the young lady of Englewood having deprived him of any present object for laying up money, and, moreover, the pains of the heart before alluded to demanding the vicarious offices of the stomach, he went to the little French restaurant the next evening.

It was somewhat late when he arrived and there were in the room but two diners beside himself. These were a man and a woman, who by many little obvious evidences made manifest that they were not husband and wife. They had arrived at the dessert and were eating ice cream with genteel slowness, conversing the while with great decorum. Both were tall and fair, singularly well matched as to height and the ample and shapely proportions of their figures, and both were well, though quietly and even simply, dressed. They were nearly of an age, too, he being apparently forty, and she thirty-five. Their years sat lightly upon them, however, and if upon her face there were traces left by the longing for the lover who had not yet come into her life, that was all which upon either countenance betrayed that their lives had been other than care-free and happy. Assuredly, any one would have called them a fine looking man and woman. All this Mr. Middleton observed in a glance or two and then addressed himself to the comestibles that were set before him and doubtless would not have given the couple thought again, had not the waitress at the close of the meal fluttered at his elbows, placing the vinegar cruet and Worcestershire sauce bottle within easy reach, which services caused Mr. Middleton to look up in some wonder, as he was engaged with custard pie and he had never heard of any race of men, however savage, who used vinegar and Worcestershire sauce upon custard pie. The waitress, who was a young woman of a pleasant and intelligent countenance, met this glance with another compounded of mystery and communicativeness, and bending low while she removed the vinegar and Worcestershire sauce to a new station, murmured:

"That man over there has been here seven nights running, with a different woman every time."

Mr. Middleton sitting quiet in the surprise this information caused him, she repeated what she had said, adding, "and once he was here at noon besides, different woman every time."

Eight women in seven days! Certainly this was quite a curious thing.

"Do you know who he is? Have you ever seen any of the women before?"

"Nop. Don't know anything about him except what I have seen of him here. Never saw any of the women before—nor since."

Nor since. Mr. Middleton found himself asking himself if anybody had seen any of the women since. Had the girl in this chance remark unwittingly hit upon a terrible mystery? Nor since, nor since.

The man who had so suddenly assumed an interest in Mr. Middleton's eyes, arose, and going to the window, looked out at the street above, which was spattered with a sudden shower. He began to lament that he had not brought an umbrella and said he would go after one, when the storm so increased in violence that even a person provided with an umbrella—as was Mr. Middleton—would not care to venture into it, for such was the might of the wind now filling the air with its shrieks, that the rain swept in great lateral sheets which made an umbrella a futile protection. Yet notwithstanding this fury of the elements, the man of many women went out.

A half hour went by. An hour, and the storm did not abate and the man did not return. The good-looking waitress invited Mr. Middleton to sit at ease by a table in a rear part of the room, where lolling on the opposite side, with charming unconsciousness she let her hand lie stretched more than half across the board, a rampart of crumpled newspapers concealing it from the view of the eighth guest of the mulierose man. But whatever Mr. Middleton had done on previous occasions and might do on occasions yet to come, he now wished to avoid all appearances that might cause the eighth woman to regard him as at all inclined to other than discreet and modest conduct, for he was resolved to find out what he could about the man and eight women. So affecting not to note the hand temptingly disposed, he discoursed in a voice which was plainly audible in every corner of the room, not so much because of its loudness—for he had but little raised it—as because of a distinct and precise enunciation. This very precision, which always implies a regard for the rules, proprieties and amenities of life, seemed to stamp him as a man worthy of confidence, even had not his sentiments been of the most high-minded character. He described the great flood of 1882, which wrought such havoc in Missouri, in which cataclysm his Uncle Henry Perkins had suffered great loss. He extolled the commendable conduct of his uncle in sacrificing valuable property that he might save a woman; letting a flatboat loaded with twenty-five hogs whirl away in the raging flood, in order to rescue a woman from Booneville, Missouri, the wife of a county judge, who was floating in the waste of waters upon a small red barn. The dullest could infer from the approval he gave this act of his Uncle Henry, unwisely chivalrous as it might seem in view of the fact that whoever rescued the judge's wife farther down stream, would return her to the judge, while no one would return the hogs to Mr. Perkins—the dullest could infer from his praise that he was himself a chivalrous and tender young man whom any woman could trust.

The hour was become an hour and a half and both the pretty waitress and the eighth woman had grown very fidgetty. The waitress saw she was to beguile the tedious period of emprisonment by the tempest with no dalliance with Mr. Middleton. The eighth woman was worried by the absence of her escort. Mr. Middleton stepped to her side, where she stood staring out at the wind-swept street, and addressed her.

"Madame, it would almost seem as if some accident had detained your escort. May I not offer to call a cab and see you home? I have an umbrella with me."

The lady thanked him almost eagerly, saying that she would wait fifteen minutes more and at the elapse of that time, her escort not appearing, would gladly avail herself of his kind offer.

Twenty minutes later, they were whirling away northward. Crossing the Wells Street bridge, they turned eastward only a few blocks from the river. The rain had suddenly ceased. The wind having relaxed nothing of its fierceness, it occasionally parted the scudding clouds high over head to let glimpses of the moon escape from their wrack, and Mr. Middleton saw he was in a region whence the invasion of factories and warehouses had driven the major portion of the inhabitants forth, leaving their dwellings untenanted, white for rent signs staring out of the empty casements like so many ghosts. The lady signaling the driver to stop, Mr. Middleton assisted her to alight, and glanced about him. Here the work of exile had been very thorough. Not yet had the factories come into this immediate neighborhood, but the residents had retreated before the smoke of their advancing lines, leaving a wide unoccupied space behind the rear guard. Up and down the street, in no house could he perceive a light. The moon shining forth clear and resplendent, its face unobstructed by clouds for a moment, he saw stretching away house after house with white signs that grimly told their loneliness. Indeed, quite deserted did appear the very house to whose door they splashed through the pools in the depressions of the tall flight of stone steps. The lady threw open the door and stepped briskly in, and her footfalls rang sharply upon a bare floor and resounded in a hollow echo that told it was an empty house!

An empty house! An empty house! What danger might lurk here and how easy might losels lure victims to their door! Mr. Middleton paused on the threshold, staring into the gloom, but whatever irresolute thoughts he had entertained of retreat were dispelled by the sound of a wail from the lady, and the sight of her face, white in the moonlight, as she rushed out to him.

"Oh, oh," she moaned, gibbering a gush of words which, despite their incoherence of form, in their tone proclaimed fear, consternation, and despair.

Lighting a match, Mr. Middleton stepped into the house. Standing in the little circle of dull yellow light, he saw beneath his feet windrows of dust and layers of newspapers that had rested beneath a carpet but lately removed, and beyond, dusk emptiness, and silence. He advanced, looking for a chandelier, but though he found two, the incandescent globes had been removed from them. Throwing a mass of the papers from the floor into the grate and lighting them, a bright glare brought out every corner of the room. There was nothing but the four bare walls.

"They have taken everything, everything!" cried the poor lady.

"Who?" asked Mr. Middleton, after the manner of his profession.

"Who? Would that I knew!—Thieves."

Mr. Middleton then realized she had been the victim of a form of robbery far too common, where the scoundrels come with drays and carry off the whole household equipment, in the householder's absence. That which had been done in comparatively well-populated quarters was easy of accomplishment on this deserted street.

Penetrated with compassion, he moved toward the unfortunate woman, who with an abandonment he had not expected of one so stately and reserved, threw herself upon his breast, weeping as though her heart would break.

"They have taken everything. How can I get along now! My piano is gone and how can I give lessons without it! I will have to go back to Peoria!"

Soothingly Mr. Middleton patted the weeping woman on the back. With infinite tenderness, he kissed her tear-bedewed cheeks and gently he laid her head upon his shoulder, and then with both arms clasped about her, he imparted to her statuesque figure a sort of rocking motion, crooning with each oscillation, "There, there, there, there," until the paroxysm of her grief abated and passed from weeping into gradually subsiding sobs, and he began to tell her that he would be only too happy to give his legal services to convict the villains when caught—as they surely would be. The lady by degrees becoming more cheerful and giving him a description of the stolen property, he discussed ways and means of recovering it, and to prevent her from relapsing into her former depressed condition, occasionally imprinted a consolatory salute upon her cheek, from which he had previously wiped the wet tracks of the tears that had now some time ceased gushing, for there had been a salty taste to the first osculations, which while not actually disagreeable, had not been to his liking.

At length, the lady not only ceased even to sigh, but even to talk, and yet remained leaning upon him, which was whether because she was weary, exhausted by grief, or whether because her supporter was such a good looking young man, is not evident. Doubtless it was true that at first her misery and unhappiness made her need the sympathetic caresses of any one within reach and that with the return of her equilibrium she continued to make this an excuse for enjoying without any reproach of impropriety a recreation which ordinarily the conventions of society would compel her to eschew. As for the rising light in the legal profession, he began to find the weight she leant upon him oppressive, and his occupation, delightful at first, palling and growing monotonous. The monotony he somewhat relieved by frequently kissing her, now on one velvet cheek, now on the other, and again her lips; slowly, one two, three, in waltz measure; and rapidly, one, two three, four, in two-step measure, when all at once in the midst of a sustained half note there came to him the reflection that this was no time of night for him to be there in the dark in a deserted house kissing a woman with whose social standing, whose very name, he was unacquainted. He was about to ask a few leading questions, when there was the sound of wheels in the street; a carriage stopped before the door.

Quickly extricating himself from the lady's arms, Mr. Middleton stepped to the door, only to see the carriage drive away, the sound of voices singing a solemn chant in a strange and unknown tongue floating back to him. Wondering what all this could mean, he turned to find the lady standing at his side, silently regarding him in a wrapt manner.

"The hour is late," said she, in a hollow, mournful voice, "and I ought to be seeking some shelter where I can lay my head, but where, oh, where?"

The lady made a tragic gesture as she asked this question, and there in that lonely street with this lorn woman at this late hour of the night in the eerie light of the cloud-obscured moon, with the wind, now howling and now sobbing and moaning, Mr. Middleton felt very solemn indeed. But he pulled himself together and suggested a low-priced and respectable hotel not far away, and toward this they were faring when they passed a house which, unlike most of the others of the vicinity, bore signs of habitation, and unlike any of the others, had a light showing in a window. In fact, there was a light in every window of the two upper stories and in the windows of the first floor and even in the basement. Pausing to wonder at this unusual illumination, Mr. Middleton felt his arm suddenly clutched, and a voice which he would never have believed came from the lady, if there had been any one else present, grated into his ear, "It's him."

Though startled by this enigmatical utterance, he followed when she ascended two steps of the stoop for a better view in the uncurtained window. There, with his face buried in his hands, seated on a roll of carpeting with a tack hammer and saucer of tacks at his side, sat the mulierose man!

"This house was empty at four this afternoon," said the lady. "Heavens, that's my piano in the corner! That's my center table! I believe that's my carpet! That's my watercolor painting I painted myself! He's robbed me!"

Her voice rose to a shriek, and at the sound a woman's head popped out of the window above and the mulierose man came running to the door. He was in his shirt sleeves but wore a hat.

"You've robbed me, you've robbed me!" cried the lady.

"I haven't," said the mulierose man with the utmost composure. "I can explain it all satisfactorily. Come in. My Aunt Eliza is here and tea is ready. Where were you when I went back to the restaurant? They said you had gone. Where were you?"

To Mr. Middleton's surprise, the lady immediately quieted at the words of the mulierose man and instead of berating him, coughed nervously and hung her head sheepishly.

"Where were you?" repeated the man.

"At my house."

"All this time? With this young man?" There was a tinge of hardness and jealousy in the man's voice and he looked unpleasantly at Mr. Middleton. "What did you stay in that empty house all this time for? What-were-you-doing-there?"

Mr. Middleton was at his wit's end to supply a hypothesis to answer why the mulierose man, from being a criminal and object of the lady's just wrath, should suddenly have become an inquisitor, sitting in judgment upon her conduct.

"I—I—was afraid to start right away. It was dark in there and I was afraid this young man might take liberties. Indeed, he did try to kiss me."

With a roar, the mulierose man launched himself at Mr. Middleton, who dexterously stepping aside, had the satisfaction of seeing his assailant slip and fall on the wet sidewalk. The lady thereat raised a cry of great volume, which was taken up by the woman looking out of the window above, and Mr. Middleton thinking he could derive neither pleasure nor profit from remaining longer in that locality, fled incontinently.

Upon his arrival home and preparing for bed, he found that he was wearing a stiff hat made in Kansas City, bearing on the sweat-band a silver plate inscribed "George W. Dobson." The mulierose man and he had exchanged hats at the restaurant. The mulierose man now had the love philter.

It was not until four days had elapsed that Mr. Middleton found an opportunity to visit the street where these inexplicable events took place. The house where he had comforted the eighth woman was still empty. At the house whence the mulierose man had issued, a very unprepossessing old woman, with a teapot in her right hand, was opening the front door to admit a large yellow cat whom she addressed as "Mahoney," an appellation which, while not infrequently the family name of persons of Irish birth or descent, is of very seldom application to members of the domestic cat tribe, Felis cattus.

Wondering greatly at the chain of unusual events, he went about his business. You may depend upon it that he gave much thought to an attempted solution of all these mysteries. But whether or no it was after all only a series of events commonplace in themselves, but seeming mysterious because of their fortuitous concatenation, or he really had trodden upon the hem of a web of strange and darksome, perhaps appalling, mysteries, he has never been able to say. He was minded to speak of these things to the emir and get his opinion on them. Upon reflection, remembering how the philter had not been of any avail in the case of the young lady of Englewood, he thought, despite the explanation which might be offered for this failure, that the emir might be embarrassed at hearing of the failure of the charm, and accordingly he said nothing when once more he sat in the presence of the urbane and accomplished prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Having handed him a bowl of delicately flavored sherbet, Achmed began to narrate The Unpleasant Adventure of the Faithless Woman.



The Unpleasant Adventure of the Faithless Woman.

Dr. August Moehrlein, Ph. D., was a professor of the languages and religions of India. A man of great gravity of countenance and of impressive port, he was popularly reputed to have a complete knowledge of the occult learning of the adepts of India, that nebulous and mysterious philosophy which irreducible to the laws of nature as recognized by Occidentals, is by them pronounced either magic and feared as such, or ridiculed and despised as pretentious mummery and deluding prestidigitation. There was a legend among the students of his department that he was wont to project himself into the fourth dimension and thus traveling downtown, effect a substantial saving of street-car fare. This is clearly impossible, for the yogis do not thus move about in their own persons. It is only the astral self that flies leagues through the air with the rapidity of thought, only the spiritual essence, the living man's ghost flying abroad while the living man's corpse lies inanimate at home. But even this, Dr. August Moehrlein could not do, for the yogis do not initiate men of Western nations into their mysteries. Dr. Moehrlein's knowledge of the occult of India was wholly empirical. He knew that certain things were done and could recount them, but as to how they were done, he could tell nothing. It must not be thought that of all the marvelous and awe-compelling things the yogis of India are accustomed to do, none can be assigned to any other origin than cunning legerdemain and hypnotism, or to the exercise of supernatural powers. Many of them are due to a strange and wonderful knowledge of nature which the science of the Occident has not yet reached in all its boasted advance. Yet when once explained, the Westerner understands some of these phenomena and is able to repeat them. Into this region of the penumbra of science and exact knowledge the researches of Dr. Moehrlein had taken him a little way and it was this that had gained him his reputation among his pupils as a thaumaturgist.

Along with the learning which this country has imported from Germany have come some customs to which the savants of both that country and this ascribe a certain fostering influence, if not a creative impulse, highly advantageous to the national scholarship. It is the habit of the university men of Germany to foregather of nights in the genial pursuit of drinking beer, and many of the notable theories which German scholarship has propounded are to be directly attributed to this stimulating good fellowship known as kommers. Indeed, when one has imbibed twelve or fourteen steins of beer and sat in an atmosphere of tobacco smoke for some hours, his mind attains a clarity, a sense of proportion, a power of reflection, speculation, and intuition which enables him to evolve those notable theories for which German scholarship is so famous. It is under the intellectual stimulus of the kommers, when the foam lies thick in the steins and blue clouds of tobacco smoke roll overhead, that the great classical scholars of Germany perceive that the classical epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, are but the typifying of the rolling of the clouds in the empyrean, the warfare of the foam-crested waves dashing upon the land, that the metamorphoses and amours of the gods and all the myths of the elder world, are but the mutations of the clouds and the fanciful figures they take on and the metamorphoses and hurryings of the ever-changing sea with its foam forms and the shadows that lie across its unquiet surface. Wonderful indeed is the scientific imagination that thus accounts for, classifies, and labels the imagination of the poets, which otherwise we might think a thing defying classification, an inspiration, a creative genius taking nothing from a dim suggestion of the cold clouds and sea, but weaving its tales from the suggestion of human lives and human passions. Wonderful indeed is the good sense of the rest of the world in accepting unquestioned these important discoveries of German scholars in the beer kellars, which well might be called the laboratories of the classical department of the German universities.

Dr. August Moehrlein was a staunch advocate of the advantage of the kommers as an adjunct to every thoroughly organized university. If he could not gather others for a kommers, he would hold a kommers all by himself, or perchance with the barkeeper. Needless to say that the name of Moehrlein was attached to many valuable and plausible theories which America received as the last word on the subject treated; needless to tell you that the various gods of India had been identified with the sun, moon, and more important stars, and that it was conclusively shown that the Sanskrit romancers had written their tales by merely looking at the clouds and the sea. Would that this accomplishment of the ancients had not gone from us and that the moderns might write as the ancients by merely looking at the clouds and the sea. Dr. Moehrlein was an upholder of the kommers. But his wife, though German-born, behaved like a very Philistine and objected to his constant and unwavering attendance upon these occasions of intellectual uplift. For as the doctor added to the knowledge of the world, he added to his weight. He had identified Brahma with the sun, but had drunk his face purple in the intellectual effort. In his search for the suggestions of the tale of Nala, he had acquired a paunch very like a bag. Mrs. Moehrlein was accustomed to shrink from the approach of the victim of the pursuit of knowledge. As for him, he would have liked to caress and fondle her. To him there was always present a remembrance of her early beauty and the golden mist of memory shone before his eyes and he did not see that she was a heavy, middle-aged woman with coarse features and coarse figure. Animal beauty she had once had. The beauty had utterly flown, but the animal all remained. She had a shifty and wandering eye, burned out and lusterless, that told of dreams that were of men, men who these many years had not included her husband, grotesque figure that he was, ugly as a satyr in one of the myths suggested by the clouds and the sea.

It was a pleasant day of the last of May, in the mating season of birds, when the world was warm and throbbing with young life. The eminent Asiatic scholar looked across the lunch table, regarding his wife with wistful sadness as she refreshed herself with boiled cabbage.

"Do you know the day? It is thirty years since Hilsenhoff went into the box; thirty years since we have been man and—woman."

"Ah, yes, this is the anniversary. Thirty years, thirty years. Poor young Hilsenhoff."

She said these words with a tinge of sadness that was almost regret and this did not escape the doctor.

"One might fancy you were sorry. Yet it was your own doing. I was young and handsome then. A Hercules, young, full of life, late champion swordsman of the university, a rising light in the realm of learning, as well as a figure in society. You were the beautiful wife of tutor Hilsenhoff, the buxom girl with the form of a Venus and the passion of that goddess as well, tied to a thin, pallid bookworm ten years your senior, neglecting his pouting wife with blood full of fire for the pages of the literature of Hindoostan, prating of the loves of Ganesha and Vishnu, when a goddess awaited his own neglectful arms. So when on the day when he stepped into the box, leaving us the sole repository of the secret of his whereabouts—that the mutton-headed police might not interfere with the success of his experiment by preventing what they might think practically suicide—you said to let him stay."

"I was twenty and he thirty," mused the woman. "Poor young Hilsenhoff."

"Young! I was twenty-three—and a man."

"Dead or alive, he is young Hilsenhoff to me. He was thirty when last I saw him."

"Dead or alive? What are you thinking of?"

An idea had been taking shape in the woman's mind without her realizing it. It had grown from her own words, rather than had the words sprung from the idea.

"Why, if a man be brought into a condition where all bodily functions are suspended and he is as he were dead, and remain in this condition for months and be brought out of it no more harmed than if he had slept overnight, why may it not be years, instead of months? Has any man ever proved that, in this condition, one may not live on indefinitely?" she said.

"No man has ever proved that one cannot, but what is more important, no man has ever proved that one can. No man has ever proved beyond shadow of doubt that one may not fashion wings and fly, but no man has ever demonstrated that one can. In India, only one man has ever tried to continue in a state of suspended animation for over six months, and that was the rajah who, condemned to death by the English, ostensibly died before the soldiers could come to carry out the sentence and was brought out of his tomb and restored to life three days after a new British viceroy had proclaimed a general amnesty to all past offenders. The period was eight months. If the viceroys had not been changed for a number of years, we might have learned more concerning the length of the period in which a man may continue in the semblance of death without it becoming reality. No, these twenty-five years has Hilsenhoff been bones."

"Then let us take them out and bury them."

"No, no. Then would I feel like a murderer indeed. I left him in there for you. Now let his bones rest there for sake of me."

But the woman had become possessed of an idea which in turn possessed her, a dream, for which like all mankind, she would fight harder than for any substantiality, for no reality can be so glorious as a dream.

"But there was the man at Sutlej, the man who had himself buried in a wheat field for the edification of Alexander the Great, there to remain until a wheat crop had passed through its stages from sowing until harvest."

"The man at Sutlej!" exclaimed the doctor impatiently. "That a man was thus buried, the pages of Quintus Curtius's history show, and the Macedonian armies suddenly retreating from India, he was forgotten and not one, but two thousand wheat harvests have been garnered over his burial place."

"But the article in the Revue Des Deux Mondes, telling how he had been found," objected the woman faintly.

The doctor looked at her in amazement.

"What will not people do to believe that which they wish to believe. You, you, you!—do you ask me concerning that lie in the Revue Des Deux Mondes? Oh, woman, woman! When did your memory of the details of that hoax fail you? Not longer ago than ten minutes. A lying Frenchman said he was on his way to France with a resuscitated contemporary of Alexander the Great and that a full account of the matter would be published in two or three months. Hilsenhoff left the duration of his stay in the box at my discretion, enjoining me, however, that he should not be taken out before the Frenchman had published the full account of the Sutlej case, for we would then have many interesting comparisons in his behavior and response to the restorative methods used, and the reaction and response of this man buried two thousand years to the same methods for restoring suspended animation. The Frenchman never arrived with his man. It was all a lie. Yet by following Hilsenhoff's solemn injunctions to the letter, we had an excuse to leave him as dead, and you insisted that we should do so, and I, weak and infatuated with your ripe beauty, I agreed. You said that we would leave him in his self-chosen sleep and that he should be our lodger. And so he has been and we have never called him to breakfast in all these thirty years. We have even brought him to America with us and he sleeps. Ah, no, we did not slay him. We but obeyed his commands."

"Poor young Hilsenhoff. And I am his wife and he is but thirty years old and I am fifty. Heigho!"

"Woman, you will drive me crazy," said the great annotator of the Upanishads, and he left for a kommers with the nearest barkeeper.

"As if you did not drive me crazy, you obese, misshapen wine skin! you bloated, blue-faced sot!" said the woman. "I deserted young Hilsenhoff for you, Hilsenhoff with his delicate cheeks and his soft yellow hair, and he is mine and I am his and I will let him out of the box and we will live together in love, the dear young thing. What if he does study sometimes? I shall not mind. He need not always sit with me in love's dalliance."

All at once it came home to her that if Moehrlein maintained the resuscitation of Hilsenhoff was impossible and charged her with believing it possible because she wished to believe it so, it might also be true that he did not believe it possible because he did not wish to so believe. The burned out eyes that told of dreams of men, men who these many years had not included her husband, smoldered with a sudden fire. With a song in her heart, she was up and bustling about. She filled a brazier with coals and got a frying-pan and wheat-cake batter, and a razor and a crocheting hook—ah, she knew how the process of restoring suspended animation was practised. She lumbered up into the third story with her burdens, into the room where slept the lodger. Not for fifteen years had anyone looked into that sleeping chamber. The blinds and curtains, all were drawn, the dust lay thick under foot. She let in the light of day at every window. There sat the box in the middle of the floor, hooped with bands of iron and with the great seal of the University of Bonn stamped upon the lock. She broke the seal and turned the lock and then sank down in a sudden faintness of heart. Indeed, how loath she was to put an end to the dream that had just now filled her whole being with rapture, and what else would it be but to put an end to it when she delved into that box? She would go away and let herself dream on a few days more before putting the matter to its final test, perhaps never doing so. Thus she reasoned, and yet her hand, as she sat before the box with averted face, rose as if impelled by the volition of another intelligence, over the edge of the box, down to the mass of wool and wadding, through it to the wrappings and swathings in the middle, through the wrapping, and felt—the thrill of unimaginable joy ran through her. It was not bones, it was not bones!

Into the room of the lodger came Dr. August Moehrlein. The coals of the brazier were out, the batter had been turned into cakes, the razor was covered with hair, four waxen plugs lay by the crocheting hook. The process was over. The sleeper was awake and there he stood, his delicate face yet pinched with sleep and his eyes heavy, but alive and young, young Hilsenhoff with his soft yellow hair and mild blue eyes. On the floor before him in an attitude of adoration, knelt the woman who in the view of the law, was his wife, her eyes burned out no longer, but aflash with youthful passion. But in her eyes alone was there youth. Nothing of youthful archness and coquetry was there in her gaze, only greed, the sickening fondness of an aging woman for a young man. In a daze, he stared at her and heard her clumsy compliments, her vulgar protestations of love, things which the ripe beauty of her youth might have condoned, but now were nauseating. He saw her heavy jowls and sensual lips, the thick nose and all the revenges of time upon a once beautiful body that had clothed an ugly soul. He looked at his own rusty clothing, stiff and hard and creased in a thousand wrinkles, and into the mildewed nest where the mould from the moisture of his own body grew thick and green and horrible. He gazed at Dr. Moehrlein, the one-time Adonis of Bonn, and he shuddered, and which of what he looked at, or whether all, made him do so, he could not tell.

Old men like young women, but so do old women hanker after young men. The life companion of Moehrlein embraced Hilsenhoff's knees. With smirkings and grimacings and leers that started his shudders afresh, she told him all. She confessed her crime and abased herself, but now they would begin life again, and she croaked forth a string of allurements from a throat that had known too many rich puddings. Oh, who shall describe her transports! Never before had every fiber of her being been so penetrated with joy! A young husband, oh, a young husband! By as much as Moehrlein had once surpassed him, did Hilsenhoff now surpass Moehrlein a hundred fold. And young, young, young! She was like to fall on her face in her ecstasy. The discarded and despised Moehrlein stood by and paid, if never before, the price of his villainy. There is a contempt of man for man and a contempt of woman for woman, but the contempt of woman for man——

One sleeps and is unconscious, but nonetheless by some subtle sense is aware of the passage of time, and the thirty years that he had slept, pressed upon young Hilsenhoff and his soul yearned to take up life again. He looked at the companions of his youth, that youth which was still his and had gone from them, and he looked at the place where he had lain for a third of a century, thick with damp green mould. Outside the song of birds was calling him, the rustle of green leaves and the glorious sunlight, the world renewing its life with the warm throbs of the year's youth, and putting from him forever his living grave and the woman and her paramour, he rushed into the joyous springtide.

Now why, my friend, descend into the hell of repinings and rage and heart-gnawings of that woman he left behind? Or why tell of the misery of the learned Dr. Moehrlein? She has no comfort whatsoever, but the doctor has the solace of his kommers, so let us wish that his beer may be forever flat, his wieners mildewy, and the mustard mouldy like the horrible nest of young Hilsenhoff.



What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Seventh Gift of the Emir.

"I did not know that such things were possible," said Mr. Middleton, when Prince Achmed had concluded the tale of the episode of the two Orientalists and the faithless woman. "Do I understand that the person in this condition is asleep?"

"It is not consistent with strict scientific accuracy to say the person is asleep," said the emir; "for the vital processes are entirely in abeyance and the subject is devoid of any evidence of life. The pulse is still, for the heart no longer beats and all the blood having retreated to that inmost citadel of the body, the skin has the pallor of death. Only in a little spot upon the crown is there any sign of life. Here is a place warm to the touch and the first and most important operation in restoring the suspended animation, is to send this vital warmth forth from where it still feebly simmers, coursing once more through the body's shrunken channels. This is accomplished by shaving the crown and applying thereto a succession of piping hot pancakes. The tongue has been curved back over the entrance to the throat. You reach into the mouth and with a finger pull the tongue back into place. Plugs of wax in the nostrils and ears are removed, and in a very short time the subject is as well as ever."

"It is very interesting," murmured Mr. Middleton.

"Since you find it so, let me present you with a little treatise upon the subject written by a Mohammedan hakim, or doctor of medicine, after studying several cases of the kind at Madras, which is in India," and at his bidding, Mesrour brought him a small portable writing desk from which he took a manuscript scroll inscribed in the Arabic language. "The first page," said Prince Achmed, "contains a few thoughts upon the superiority of the Moslem faith over all others and a discussion of the follies, inconsistencies, not to say evils of them all when compared with that perfect religious system declared to men by the Prophet of Mecca," and having in an orotund voice given Mr. Middleton some idea of the contents of this page by quoting a number of sentences, the prince handed him the sheet, which was inscribed upon one side only. The emir continuing to give a summary of what the hakim set forth in the remaining pages, and handing over each sheet as he finished it, Mr. Middleton wrote in short-hand upon the blank side of each preceding sheet what the emir culled from the one following, omitting, of course, the contents of the first sheet, both because he had nothing to write upon while the emir was quoting from that one, and because its theology was entirely contrary to all Mr. Middleton held, and, in his eyes, ridiculous and sacrilegious. When the emir had done, Mr. Middleton had in his possession a succinct account of the process of inducing a condition of suspended animation and of the means of restoring the subject to his normal state. It was his intention to write an article from his notes for some Sunday paper, and putting the hakim's treatise in his pocket, and thanking his host for the entertainment and instruction as well as the gift, he sought his lodgings.

Mr. Middleton had now been admitted to the bar for some time. But the firm of Brockelsby and Brockman did not therefore raise his salary. They made greater demands upon his endeavors than before, for he was now able to handle cases in court, but they did not raise his salary, nor did they employ him upon cases where he was able to distinguish himself, or learn new points of law and gain forensic ability. He was employed upon humdrum and commonplace cases that were a vexation to his spirit without any compensating advantage of pecuniary reward or experience. While he felt that his self-respect and on one hand his self-interests impelled him to resign his connection with Brockelsby and Brockman, on the other hand, the very course his employers pursued made such retirement temporarily inexpedient. For the trivial cases he handled could neither gain him reputation enough or make him friends enough to warrant him in setting up for himself, nor would they attract the attention of other firms and result in offers at an increased salary. He was in a measure forced to remain with Brockelsby and Brockman, hoping they would be moved to pay him according to his worth and dreaming of some contingency which might place in his hands the management of an important case with the resulting enhancing of his reputation.

On the morning after he had received the dissertation of the hakim, Mr. Middleton arose with the first streak of dawn, minded to seek the office and write his projected article before the time for his regular duties should arrive. As he opened the door of the main office, his ear was saluted by a low grunting sound, and there in evening dress was Mr. Augustus Alfonso Brockelsby, reclining in a big chair, asleep, if one could with propriety call the stupor in which he was sunk, sleep. The disorder of his garments, the character of his sternutations, the redness of his face, and above all, the odor he distilled upon the chill morning air, made patent to Mr. Middleton the disgusting fact that the senior member of the firm was drunk. On the table before the unconscious man was a note from Mr. Brockman informing him that he had been unexpectedly called to Lansing, Michigan, and would not be back for a week and that therefore he, Brockelsby, would have to attend to the important case of Ralston versus Hippenmeyer, all by himself. Mr. Middleton at once set about bringing his employer into a condition where he could attend to his affairs, for the case of Ralston versus Hippenmeyer was a very important one indeed, and as Mr. Middleton had briefed the case himself and had his sympathies greatly excited for Johannes Hippenmeyer, he was very anxious that their client should not lose for default of any effort he could make. But his heart was heavy as he brought towels and a basin of cold water from the wash-room, for after he had done his very best, Brockelsby would still be far from the proper form, his brain befogged, his speech thick, and the counsel for the other side would make short work of him.

Mr. Middleton had never tried to sober a drunken man, but he had an indistinct recollection of hearing that a towel wet with cold water, wrapped around the head was the best remedial agent. As he soaked the towels, he could not but compare the difference between this chill restorative and the hot cakes in the tale of the emir, and on a sudden there came to him a thought that sent all the gloom from his face. He dropped the towels, he dropped the basin, and he opened the treatise of the hakim and feverishly refreshed his memory of the details of an operation sometimes practised in India.

An hour and a half had passed when Mr. Middleton finished. Mr. Augustus Brockelsby still sat in the revolving chair, but he was no longer disturbing the air with his unseemly grunts. He was, in fact, absolutely silent, absolutely still. The keenest touch could feel no pulsation in his wrist, the keenest eye could detect no agitation of his chest, the keenest ear could hear no beating from the region of the heart. For a moment as he gazed upon the result of following the instructions set down by the hakim, Mr. Middleton felt a little clutch of fear. But he was reassured by the lifelike appearance of the learned jurisconsult and by the fact that the induction into his present state had been attended by none of the manifestations that accompany death.

"Now," said Mr. Middleton, addressing the unconscious form of Augustus Brockelsby, "now there will be no chance of you appearing in court in the case of Ralston versus Hippenmeyer. I will not restore you until it is all over. I will now have the long coveted opportunity to plead an important case and as I have studied it so carefully, I shall win. There will now be no chance that poor little Hippenmeyer will suffer from your disgraceful and bestial habits, for in spite of the best that could be done for you, you would be in no fit condition to plead a case this afternoon. And when I bring you to at fall of night, you will think you have been drunk all day. But where will I keep you in the meantime?"

This was a most perplexing problem. There were no closets in the suite of offices. There were no boxes, no desks big enough to conceal a man and Mr. Middleton's brow was beginning to contract as he struggled with the problem, when suddenly the stillness of the room was disturbed by some one smiting the door. Not a sound made he, for his heart had stopped beating as completely as Brockelsby's. What should he do, what should he do? The paralysis of fear answered for him and supplied the best present plan and he did nothing. Then came a voice, a voice calling him by name, the voice of Chauncy Stackelberg.

"Open up, old man, open up. I know you are there, for I heard you knocking around before I rapped and you dropped your handkerchief outside the door. Open up, or I'll shin right over the transom, for I must see you," and still preserving silence, Mr. Middleton heard a sound as of a man essaying to stand on the door knob and grasp the transom above. He rushed to the door, unlocked it, and opening it just enough to squeeze through, shut it behind him and thrust the key in the lock.

"Keep still, keep still. You'll wake the old man. I can't let you in."

"Was that him, slumped down in the chair? Must be tired to sleep in that position. Say, old chap, you were my best man, and now I want you again."

"Want me to draw up papers for a divorce?" said Mr. Middleton, gloomily. How was he going to get rid of this inopportune fellow?

"Shut up," said Chauncy Stackelberg. "It's a boy, and I want you to come up to the christening next Sunday and be godfather. You don't know how happy I am. Say, come on down and get a drink."

Ten minutes before, Mr. Middleton had been convinced that drink was a very great curse, but he accepted this invitation with alacrity, naming a saloon two blocks away as the one he considered best in that vicinity. He surmised that the happy father would hardly offer to come back with him from such a distance, and the surmise was correct. As he reascended to the office, with him in the elevator were two gentlemen, one of whom he recognized as Dr. Angus McAllyn, a celebrated surgeon who had two or three times come to the office to see Mr. Brockelsby and the other as Dr. Lucius Darst, a young eye and ear specialist who within the space of but a few days had established his office in the building. To neither of these gentlemen, however, was Mr. Middleton known.

"I want you to get off on this floor with me," said Dr. McAllyn to his medical confrere. "I may want your assistance a bit. You see," he went on, as they got out of the elevator and started down the corridor with Mr. Middleton just behind, "we had a banquet last night of the Society of Andrew Jackson's Wars, and my friend Brockelsby got too much aboard. He was turned over to me to take to his home, but just as we were leaving, I received an urgent call. So the best I could do was to drive by here and start him toward his office and go on. He could navigate after a fashion and doubtless spent the night all right in his office, and I would take no farther trouble with him but for the fact that he has an important case to-day. So I want to fix him up, and as I haven't much time, you can be of service to me."

"Ah, ha," said Mr. Middleton to himself, "I'll just lie low until they have given up trying to get in and have gone."

But they did not go away. To his consternation, they opened the door and walked in, for though he had put the key in the lock when he had closed the door behind him to parley with Chauncy Stackelberg, he had walked away without turning it! They would find Mr. Brockelsby! Great though Dr. McAllyn was, he would hardly be likely to recognize a condition of suspended animation. Unless Mr. Middleton confessed, there was danger that the famous forensic orator would be buried alive. And if he confessed, what would the consequences be to himself? The fact that in whatever event he would lose his place and be a marked and disgraced man, was the very least thing to consider. He was threatened with far more serious dangers than that. First, there would be the vengeance the law would take upon him for meddling with and tampering with medical matters. But even if he had been a physician, would the medical faculty look otherwise than with horror upon this rash and wanton experimenting with the strange and unholy practices of India? Even a medical man would be arrested for malpractice and for depriving a fellow being of the use of his faculties. The penitentiary stared him in the face.

He could not endure not to know what was taking place within. He must have knowledge of everything in order to know what moves to make and when to make them. He let himself through the outer door of Mr. Brockman's private office, and by taking a position by the door communicating between this office and the main office, he could hear everything in safety.

"Shall I send for an undertaker?" asked Dr. Darst.

At these chilling words, Mr. Middleton was about to open the private office door and rush in and confess all. He had begun to place the key in the lock, when a joyful thought stayed his hand. Let them bury Mr. Brockelsby. He would dig him up. He laughed noiselessly in his intense relief. But hark, what does he hear?

"Darst, this is an unusual case."

"Yes?" said Dr. Darst mildly.

"A strange, a remarkable case. Darst, if we do not examine this case, we are traitors to science. Darst, we must take him to the medical school. When we are through, we'll sew him all again and bring him back here, or leave him almost any place where he can be found easily. He will be just as good to bury then as now, nobody hurt, and the cause of science advanced. Observe, Darst, dead, absolutely dead, yet with no rigor mortis. Dead, and yet as if he slept. If need be, we will pursue to the inmost recesses of his being the secret of his demise."

Mr. Middleton was nigh to falling to the floor. The succession of hope and fear had taken from him all resolution. Of what use would it be to exhume Mr. Brockelsby after the doctors had cut him up? The impulse to rush in and confess had spent itself and he was now cravenly drifting with the tide. All judgment, all power of reflection had departed from him. He was now only a pitiable wretch with scarcely strength to stand by the door and listen, unable to originate any thought, any action.

"How are you going to get him out of here?" asked Dr. Darst.

"In a box. You don't suppose I'd carry him down and put him in a hack?"

"But suppose they get to looking for him? It is known that he came here. A box goes out of here to be taken to the medical school, a long box that might hold a man. You and I are the ones who hire the men who carry the box."

"Who said a long box that might hold a man? It will be a short, rather tall box, packing-case shape. Remember, he is as limber as you are and can be accommodated to any position. He will be put in it sitting bolt upright. It will be only half the length of a man, with nothing in its shape to suggest that it might hold a man. Who said take it to the medical school from here? I hire a drayman to take a box to the Union Depot. He dumps it there on the sidewalk near the places for in-going and out-going baggage. Ostensibly going to carry it as excess baggage. We fiddle around until he goes, then call up some other drayman in the crowd hanging about and take a box just arrived from Milwaukee, St. Paul, any place the drayman wants to think, out to the college. As for the inquiry that will be made concerning the whereabouts of Brockelsby, rest easy on that point. He frequently goes off on sprees of several days' duration and his absence from home is of such common occurrence that his wife won't begin to hunt him up until we are through with him and have got him back here, or have dumped him in front of some building with his neck broken, showing that he fell out of some story above."

All this Mr. Middleton heard as he leaned against the door jamb, swallowing, swallowing, with never a thing in his mouth since the night before, yet swallowing. He heard Dr. Darst go after a box. He heard men deposit it in the corridor outside. He heard the two doctors take it in when the men had gone. He heard it go heavily out into the corridor again after a long interval. He heard more men come, come to carry it away, and he pulled himself together with a supreme effort and followed. He saw the box loaded on a dray. With his eye constantly on it, he threaded his way through the crowd on the sidewalk, followed it on its way across the river to the Union Depot. With never a hope in his heart that anything could possibly occur to save him from a final confession and its consequences, humanlike postponing the evil hour as long as he could.

The box was dumped upon the sidewalk before the depot. The two medical men stood leaning upon it, waiting for the drayman to depart. The evil moment had arrived. Once away from the depot, in the less congested streets in the direction of the medical college, the dray would go too fast for him to follow. He approached. He must speak now. No, no. He need not follow the dray. That was not necessary. He could get to the medical school before they could have time to do injury to Mr. Brockelsby. It would be safe to let the box get out of his sight for that little time. He would tell at the medical college.

"Yes, as soon as we get him there," said Dr. McAllyn, "we'll put him in the pickle."

Mr. Middleton sprang forward and put an appealing hand upon the shoulder of either doctor. With a sudden start that caused him to start in turn, each wheeled about. For a moment, he could say nothing and stood with palsied lips while they gave back his stare. Gave back his stare? All at once his mouth came open and these were the words he heard issue forth:

"Sirs, I arrest you for stealing the body of Mr. Augustus Alfonso Brockelsby, attorney-at-law."

He who had just now been an abject, grovelling wretch, was of a sudden come to be a lord among men. The practitioners making no reply, he continued:

"Are you going to be sensible enough to make no trouble, or shall I have to call yonder officer?"

Mr. Middleton considered this quite a master stroke. By the assumption of a pretended authority over the neighboring policeman he would forestall any possibility of resistance and question as to what authority he represented. But he need have had no fears on this score. The doctors were too alarmed to do otherwise than submit to his pleasure, too thoroughly convinced that none but a detective could have had knowledge of the contents of the box. But Dr. McAllyn did attach a significance to what Mr. Middleton had said, a significance natural to one so well acquainted with the devious ways of the great city as he was.

"Well," he said, with a sardonic smile, "you needn't call in help. We stand pat. How much is it going to cost us?"

Then did Mr. Middleton perceive he was delivered from a dilemma, a dilemma unforeseen, but which even if foreseen, he could not have forearmed against. After he had arrested the doctors, how would he have disposed of them and the box containing Mr. Brockelsby? How could he have released the doctors and carried off the box in a manner that would not excite their suspicions? If he had, in pretended leniency and soft-heartedness told them they were free, the absence of any apparent motive for this action would have instantly caused them to suspect that for some unknown and probably unrighteous reason, he desired possession of the body of Mr. Brockelsby and thus would ensue a series of complications that would make the ruse of the arrest but a leap from the frying pan into the fire. But now Dr. McAllyn had supplied the motive.

"Sirs," said Mr. Middleton, with an air of virtue that was well suited to the character of the sentiments he now began to enunciate, "you deserve punishment. You have been taken in the act of committing a crime that is particularly revolting,—stealing a corpse. Dr. McAllyn, you have been apprehended in foul treason against friendship. You have stolen the body of a comrade. You have meditated cruel and shocking mutilation of this body, giving to the horror-stricken eyes of the frantic widow the mangled and defaced flesh that was once the goodly person of her husband, leaving her to waste her life in vain and terrible speculations as to where and how he encountered this awful death with its so dreadful wounds."

"It was for the sake of science," interpolated Dr. McAllyn, in no little indignation. "If from the insensible clay of the dead we may learn that which will save suffering and prolong existence for the living, well may we disregard the ancient and ridiculous sentiment regarding corpses, a relic of the ancient heathen days when it was believed that this selfsame body of this life was worn again in another world."

"I will not engage in an antiquarian discussion with you, sir, as to the origin of this sentiment. Suffice to say it exists and is one of the most powerful sentiments that rules mankind. You have attempted to violate it, to outrage it. However you may look upon your action, the penitentiary awaits you. Yet one can well hesitate to pronounce the word that condemns a fellow man to that living death. It is not the mere punishment itself. The dragging years will pass, but what will you be when they have passed? We no longer brand the persons of convicts, but none the less does the iron sear their souls and none the less does the world see with its mind's eye the scorched word 'convict' on their brows, so long as they live. In the capacity of judge, were I one, I might use such limit of discretion as the law allows in making your punishment lighter or heavier, but the disgrace of it, no one can mitigate. Therefore, that you may receive some measure of the punishment you deserve, and yet not be blasted for life, I will accept a monetary consideration and set you free."

"Oh, you will, will you?" said Dr. McAllyn. "How much lighter or heavier will you in your capacity as judge make this impost?"

"I will not take my time in replying to your slurs in kind. You, Dr. McAllyn, as the one primarily responsible, as the leader who induced Dr. Darst to enter this conspiracy, as the one most to be reproached, in that Mr. Brockelsby was your friend, as the one by far the most able to pay, you shall pay $1,200. Dr. Darst shall pay $200. This is a punishment by no means commensurate with your crime. By this forfeit, shall you escape prison and disgrace."

"Of course you know that I have no such sum as that about me," said Dr. McAllyn. "I will write you a check."

"I am not so green as I look," said Mr. Middleton, assuming an easy sitting posture upon the box containing the mortal envelope of Mr. Brockelsby. "You may dispatch Dr. Darst with a check to get the money for you and himself. You will remain here as a hostage until his return."

Accordingly, Dr. Darst departed and Mr. Middleton sat engrossed in reflection upon the chain of unpleasant circumstances that had forced upon him the unavoidable and distasteful role of a bribe-taker. Yet how else could he have carried off the part he had assumed? How else could he have obtained custody of Mr. Brockelsby? And surely the doctors richly deserved punishment. It was not meet that they should go scot free and in no other way could he bring it about that retribution should be visited upon them.

"It is all here," said Mr. Middleton, when he had counted the bills brought by Dr. Darst. "I shall now see that Mr. Brockelsby is taken back to the office whence you took him."

"Pardon me," said Dr. Darst, "how in the world did you know we took him from his office? How did you ferret it all out?"

"I cannot tell you that," said Mr. Middleton. "I shall take him back to the office. He will be found there later in the day, just as you found him. You are wise enough to make no inquiries concerning him, to watch for no news of developments. Indeed, to make in some measure an alibi, should it be needed, you had better leave town by next train for the rest of the day. If it were known you were with Mr. Brockelsby at any time, might it not be thought that you were responsible for the condition he was found in?"

The doctors boarded the very next train, and Mr. Middleton, serene in the knowledge that no one would disturb him now, had the box taken back and set up in the main office. A slight thump in the box as it was ended up against the wall, caused Mr. Middleton to believe that Mr. Brockelsby was now resting on his head, but he resolved to allow this unavoidable circumstance to occasion him no disquiet. Going to a large department store where a sale of portieres was in progress, he purchased some portieres and a number of other things. The portieres he draped over the box, concealing its bare pine with shimmering cardinal velvet and turning it into the semblance of a cabinet. Lest any inquisitive hand tear it away, he placed six volumes of Chitty and a bust of Daniel Webster upon the top and tacked two photographs of Mr. Brockelsby upon the front. Confident that no one would disturb the receptacle containing his employer, he went into court and after a short but exceedingly spirited legal battle in which he displayed a forensic ability, a legal lore, and a polished eloquence which few of the older members of the Chicago bar could have equalled, he won a signal victory.

Although it was not his intention to set about restoring Mr. Brockelsby until an hour that would ensure him against likelihood of interruption, he returned to the office to see if by any untoward mischance anybody could have interfered with the box. To his surprise, he found Mrs. Brockelsby seated before that object of vertu with her eye straying abstractedly over the cardinal portieres, the photographs of Mr. Brockelsby, the bust of Daniel Webster, and the volumes of Chitty.

"Oh, Mr. Middleton," exclaimed the lady. "Mr. Brockelsby did not come home to-day and they tell me he wasn't in court."

"No, he was not in court," said Mr. Middleton.

"Oh, where, oh, where can he be!" moaned Mrs. Brockelsby.

Mr. Middleton being of the opinion that this question was merely exclamatory, ejaculatory in its nature, of the kind orators employ to garnish and embellish their discourse and which all books of rhetoric state do not expect or require an answer, accordingly made no answer. He was, nevertheless, somewhat disturbed by the poor lady's grief and wished that it were possible to restore her husband to her instantly.

"Oh, I have wanted to see him so, I have wanted him so! Oh, where can he be, Mr. Middleton! I must find him. I cannot endure it longer. I will offer a reward to anyone who will bring him home within twenty-four hours, to anyone who will find him. Oh, oh, oh, oh! I will give $200. I will give it to you, yourself, if you will find him. Write a notice to that effect and take it to the newspaper offices."

This great distress on the part of the lady was all contrary to what Dr. McAllyn had said concerning her indifference to the absence of her spouse and caused Mr. Middleton to feel very much like a guilty wretch. As he wrote out the notices for the papers, he reiterated assurances that Mr. Brockelsby would turn up before morning, while the partner of the missing barrister continued her heartbroken wailing and the cause of it all was driven well-nigh wild.

"Oh, if you only knew!" she said, as Mr. Middleton was about to depart for the newspaper offices. "Day after to-morrow, I am going to Washington to attend a meeting of the Federation of Woman's Clubs. That odious Mrs. LeBaron is going to spring a diamond necklace worth two thousand dollars more than mine. Augustus must come home in time to sign a check so I can put three thousand dollars more into mine."

A great load soared from Mr. Middleton's mind and blithe joy reigned there instead.

"Mrs. Brockelsby, I'll leave no stone unturned. I'll bring you your husband before breakfast," and escorting the lady to her carriage and handing her in with the greatest deference and most courtly gallantry, he set forth for one of the more famous of the large restaurants which are household words among the elite of Chicago. Mr. Middleton had never passed its portals, but with fourteen hundred dollars in his pocket and two hundred more in sight, he felt he could afford to give himself a good meal and break the fast he had kept since the evening before, for in the crowded events of the day, he had found time to refresh himself with nothing more substantial than an apple and a bag of peanuts, or fruit of the Arachis hypogea.

As he sat down at a table in the glittering salle-a-manger, what was his great surprise and even greater delight, to see seated opposite, just slowly finishing his dessert—a small bowl of sherbet—habited in a perfectly-fitting frock coat with a red carnation in the lapel, the urbane and accomplished prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Having exchanged mutual expressions of pleasure at this unexpected encounter, Mr. Middleton, overjoyed and elated at the successes of the day, began to pour into the ears of the prince a relation of the events that had resulted from the gift of the treatise of the learned hakim of Madras, which is in India. He told everything from the beginning to the end.