.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 48620
   :PG.Title: The Third Circle
   :PG.Released: 2015-03-31
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Frank Norris
   :DC.Title: The Third Circle
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1909
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE THIRD CIRCLE
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      THE THIRD CIRCLE

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      BY

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      FRANK NORRIS

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      AUTHOR OF "THE PIT," "THE OCTOPUS," ETC.

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      INTRODUCTION BY

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      WILL IRWIN

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      LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
      NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
      1909

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      CHEAP EDITION

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      *Printed from electrotype plates
      by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London.*

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   *TABLE OF CONTENTS*

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`The Third Circle`_
`The House With the Blinds`_
`Little Dramas of the Curbstone`_
`Shorty Stack, Pugilist`_
`The Strangest Thing`_
`A Reversion to Type`_
`"Boom"`_
`The Dis-Associated Charities`_
`Son of a Sheik`_
`A Defense of the Flag`_
`Toppan`_
`A Caged Lion`_
`"This Animal of a Buldy Jones"`_
`Dying Fires`_
`Grettir at Drangey`_
`The Guest of Honour`_

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   *Introduction*

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It used to be my duty, as sub editor of the old
San Francisco *Wave*, to "put the paper to
bed."  We were printing a Seattle edition
in those days of the Alaskan gold rush; and the
last form had to be locked up on Tuesday night,
that we might reach the news stands by Friday.
Working short-handed, as all small weeklies do,
we were everlastingly late with copy or illustrations
or advertisements; and that Tuesday usually
stretched itself out into Wednesday.  Most often,
indeed, the foreman and I pounded the last quoin
into place at four or five o'clock Wednesday
morning and went home with the milk-wagons—to
rise at noon and start next week's paper going.

For Yelton, most patient and cheerful of
foremen, those Tuesday night sessions meant steady
work.  I, for my part, had only to confer with
him now and then on a "Caption" or to run over
a late proof.  In the heavy intervals of waiting,
I killed time and gained instruction by reading
the back files of the *Wave*, and especially that
part of the files which preserved the early, prentice
work of Frank Norris.

He was a hero to us all in those days, as he
will ever remain a heroic memory—that unique
product of our Western soil, killed, for some
hidden purpose of the gods, before the time of full
blossom.  He had gone East but a year since to
publish the earliest in his succession of rugged,
virile novels—"Moran of the Lady Letty,"
"McTeague," "Blix," "A Man's Woman," "The
Octopus," and "The Pit."  The East was just
beginning to learn that he was great; we had known it
long before.  With a special interest, then, did I,
his humble cub successor as sub editor and sole
staff writer, follow that prentice work of his from
the period of his first brief sketches, through the
period of rough, brilliant short stories hewed out
of our life in the Port of Adventures, to the
period of that first serial which brought him into
his own.

It was a surpassing study of the novelist in
the making.  J. O'Hara Cosgrave, owner, editor
and burden-bearer of the *Wave*, was in his editing
more an artist than a man of business.  He loved
"good stuff"; he could not bear to delete a
distinctive piece of work just because the populace
would not understand.  Norris, then, had a free
hand.  Whatever his thought of that day, whatever
he had seen with the eye of his flash or the
eye of his imagination, he might write and print.
You began to feel him in the files of the year 1895,
by certain distinctive sketches and fragments.
You traced his writing week by week until the
sketches became "Little Stories of the Pavements."  Then
longer stories, one every week, even such
stories as "The Third Circle," "Miracle Joyeaux,"
and "The House with the Blinds"; then, finally,
a novel, written *feuilleton* fashion week by
week—"Moran of the Lady Letty."  A curious
circumstance attended the publication of "Moran" in
the *Wave*.  I discovered it myself during those
Tuesday night sessions over the files; and it
illustrates how this work was done.  He began it in
the last weeks of 1897, turning it out and sending
it straight to the printer as part of his daily stint.
The *Maine* was blown up February 14, 1898.  In
the later chapters of "Moran," he introduced the
destruction of the *Maine* as an incident! It was
this serial, brought to the attention of *McClure's
Magazine*, which finally drew Frank Norris East.

"The studio sketches of a great novelist,"
Gellett Burgess has called these ventures and
fragments.  Burgess and I, when the *Wave* finally
died of too much merit, stole into the building by
night and took away one set of old files.  A
harmless theft of sentiment, we told ourselves; for by
moral right they belonged to us, the sole survivors
in San Francisco of those who had helped make
the *Wave*.  And, indeed, by this theft we saved
them from the great fire of 1906.  When we had
them safe at home, we spent a night running over
them, marveling again at those rough creations of
blood and nerve which Norris had made out of that
city which was the first love of his wakened
intelligence, and in which, so wofully soon afterward,
he died.

I think that I remember them all, even now;
not one but a name or a phrase would bring back
to mind.  Most vividly, perhaps, remains a little
column of four sketches called "Fragments."  One
was a scene behind the barricades during the
Commune—a gay *flaneur* of a soldier playing on
a looted piano until a bullet caught him in the
midst of a note.  Another pictured an empty hotel
room after the guest had left.  Only that; but I
always remember it when I first enter my room in
a hotel.  A third was the nucleus for the
description of the "Dental Parlors" in McTeague.  A
fourth, the most daring of all, showed a sodden
workman coming home from his place of great
machines.  A fresh violet lay on the pavement.
He, the primal brute in harness, picked it up.
Dimly, the aesthetic sense woke in him.  It gave
him pleasure, a pleasure which called for some
tribute.  He put it between his great jaws and
crushed it—the only way he knew.

Here collected are the longest and most
important of his prentice products.  Even without
those shorter sketches whose interest is, after all,
mainly technical, they are an incomparable study
in the way a genius takes to find himself.  It is as
though we saw a complete collection of Rembrandt's
early sketches, say—full technique and
co-ordination not yet developed, but all the basic
force and vision there.  Admirable in themselves,
these rough-hewn tales, they are most interesting
when compared with the later work which the
world knows, and when taken as a melancholy
indication of that power of growth which was in
him and which must have led, if the masters of
fate had only spared him, to the highest
achievement in letters.

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WILL IRWIN.
March, 1909.





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.. _`The Third Circle`:

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   *The Third Circle*

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There are more things in San Francisco's
Chinatown than are dreamed of in Heaven
and earth.  In reality there are three parts
of Chinatown—the part the guides show you, the
part the guides don't show you, and the part that
no one ever hears of.  It is with the latter part
that this story has to do.  There are a good many
stories that might be written about this third circle
of Chinatown, but believe me, they never will be
written—at any rate not until the "town" has been,
as it were, drained off from the city, as one might
drain a noisome swamp, and we shall be able to see
the strange, dreadful life that wallows down there
in the lowest ooze of the place—wallows and
grovels there in the mud and in the dark.  If you
don't think this is true, ask some of the Chinese
detectives (the regular squad are not to be relied
on), ask them to tell you the story of the Lee On
Ting affair, or ask them what was done to old
Wong Sam, who thought he could break up the
trade in slave girls, or why Mr. Clarence Lowney
(he was a clergyman from Minnesota who believed
in direct methods) is now a "dangerous"
inmate of the State Asylum—ask them to tell you
why Matsokura, the Japanese dentist, went back
to his home lacking a face—ask them to tell you
why the murderers of Little Pete will never be
found, and ask them to tell you about the little
slave girl, Sing Yee, or—no, on the second
thought, don't ask for that story.

The tale I am to tell you now began some
twenty years ago in a See Yup restaurant on
Waverly Place—long since torn down—where it
will end I do not know.  I think it is still going
on.  It began when young Hillegas and Miss Ten
Eyck (they were from the East, and engaged to
be married) found their way into the restaurant
of the Seventy Moons, late in the evening of a
day in March.  (It was the year after the
downfall of Kearney and the discomfiture of the
sand-lotters.)

"What a dear, quaint, curious old place!"
exclaimed Miss Ten Eyck.

She sat down on an ebony stool with its marble
seat, and let her gloved hands fall into her lap,
looking about her at the huge hanging lanterns,
the gilded carven screens, the lacquer work, the
inlay work, the coloured glass, the dwarf oak trees
growing in Satsuma pots, the marquetry, the
painted matting, the incense jars of brass, high
as a man's head, and all the grotesque jim-crackery
of the Orient.  The restaurant was deserted at
that hour.  Young Hillegas pulled up a stool
opposite her and leaned his elbows on the table,
pushing back his hat and fumbling for a
cigarette.

"Might just as well be in China itself," he
commented.

"Might?" she retorted; "we are in China, Tom—a
little bit of China dug out and transplanted
here.  Fancy all America and the Nineteenth
Century just around the corner!  Look!  You
can even see the Palace Hotel from the window.
See out yonder, over the roof of that temple—the
Ming Yen, isn't it?—and I can actually make
out Aunt Harriett's rooms."

"I say, Harry (Miss Ten Eyck's first name
was Harriett) let's have some tea."

"Tom, you're a genius!  Won't it be fun!  Of
course we must have some tea.  What a lark!
And you can smoke if you want to."

"This is the way one ought to see places," said
Hillegas, as he lit a cigarette; "just nose around
by yourself and discover things.  Now, the guides
never brought us here."

"No, they never did.  I wonder why?  Why,
we just found it out by ourselves.  It's ours, isn't
it, Tom, dear, by right of discovery?"

At that moment Hillegas was sure that Miss
Ten Eyck was quite the most beautiful girl he
ever remembered to have seen.  There was a
daintiness about her—a certain chic trimness in
her smart tailor-made gown, and the least
perceptible tilt of her crisp hat that gave her the
last charm.  Pretty she certainly was—the fresh,
vigorous, healthful prettiness only seen in certain
types of unmixed American stock.  All at once
Hillegas reached across the table, and, taking her
hand, kissed the little crumpled round of flesh that
showed where her glove buttoned.

The China boy appeared to take their order,
and while waiting for their tea, dried almonds,
candied fruit and watermelon rinds, the pair
wandered out upon the overhanging balcony and
looked down into the darkening streets.

"There's that fortune-teller again," observed
Hillegas, presently.  "See—down there on the
steps of the joss house?"

"Where?  Oh, yes, I see."

"Let's have him up.  Shall we?  We'll have
him tell our fortunes while we're waiting."

Hillegas called and beckoned, and at last got
the fellow up into the restaurant.

"Hoh!  You're no Chinaman," said he, as the
fortune-teller came into the circle of the
lantern-light.  The other showed his brown teeth.

"Part Chinaman, part Kanaka."

"Kanaka?"

"All same Honolulu.  Sabe?  Mother Kanaka
lady—washum clothes for sailor peoples down
Kaui way," and he laughed as though it were
a huge joke.

"Well, say, Jim," said Hillegas; "we want you
to tell our fortunes.  You sabe?  Tell the lady's
fortune.  Who she going to marry, for instance."

"No fortune—tattoo."

"Tattoo?"

"Um.  All same tattoo—three, four, seven,
plenty lil birds on lady's arm.  Hey?  You want
tattoo?"

He drew a tattooing needle from his sleeve
and motioned towards Miss Ten Eyck's arm.

"Tattoo my arm?  What an idea!  But
wouldn't it be funny, Tom?  Aunt Hattie's sister
came back from Honolulu with the prettiest little
butterfly tattooed on her finger.  I've half a mind
to try.  And it would be so awfully queer and
original."

"Let him do it on your finger, then.  You never
could wear evening dress if it was on your arm."

"Of course.  He can tattoo something as though
it was a ring, and my marquise can hide it."

The Kanaka-Chinaman drew a tiny fantastic-looking
butterfly on a bit of paper with a blue
pencil, licked the drawing a couple of times, and
wrapped it about Miss Ten Eyck's little finger—the
little finger of her left hand.  The removal of
the wet paper left an imprint of the drawing.
Then he mixed his ink in a small sea-shell, dipped
his needle, and in ten minutes had finished the
tattooing of a grotesque little insect, as much butterfly
as anything else.

"There," said Hillegas, when the work was done
and the fortune-teller gone his way; "there you
are, and it will never come out.  It won't do for
you now to plan a little burglary, or forge a little
check, or slay a little baby for the coral round its
neck, 'cause you can always be identified by that
butterfly upon the little finger of your left hand."

"I'm almost sorry now I had it done.  Won't
it ever come out?  Pshaw!  Anyhow I think it's
very chic," said Harriett Ten Eyck.

"I say, though!" exclaimed Hillegas, jumping
up; "where's our tea and cakes and things?  It's
getting late.  We can't wait here all evening.  I'll
go out and jolly that chap along."

The Chinaman to whom he had given the order
was not to be found on that floor of the restaurant.
Hillegas descended the stairs to the kitchen.  The
place seemed empty of life.  On the ground floor,
however, where tea and raw silk was sold,
Hillegas found a Chinaman figuring up accounts by
means of little balls that slid to and fro upon rods.
The Chinaman was a very gorgeous-looking chap
in round horn spectacles and a costume that looked
like a man's nightgown, of quilted blue satin.

"I say, John," said Hillegas to this one, "I want
some tea.  You sabe?—up stairs—restaurant.
Give China boy order—he no come.  Get plenty
much move on.  Hey?"

The merchant turned and looked at Hillegas
over his spectacles.

"Ah," he said, calmly, "I regret that you have
been detained.  You will, no doubt, be attended
to presently.  You are a stranger in Chinatown?"

"Ahem!—well, yes—I—we are."

"Without doubt—without doubt!" murmured
the other.

"I suppose you are the proprietor?" ventured
Hillegas.

"I?  Oh, no!  My agents have a silk house
here.  I believe they sub-let the upper floors to the
See Yups.  By the way, we have just received a
consignment of India silk shawls you may be
pleased to see."

He spread a pile upon the counter, and selected
one that was particularly beautiful.

"Permit me," he remarked gravely, "to offer you
this as a present to your good lady."

Hillegas's interest in this extraordinary Oriental
was aroused.  Here was a side of the Chinese life
he had not seen, nor even suspected.  He stayed
for some little while talking to this man, whose
bearing might have been that of Cicero before the
Senate assembled, and left him with the
understanding to call upon him the next day at the
Consulate.  He returned to the restaurant to find Miss
Ten Eyck gone.  He never saw her again.  No
white man ever did.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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There is a certain friend of mine in San
Francisco who calls himself Manning.  He is a Plaza
bum—that is, he sleeps all day in the old Plaza
(that shoal where so much human jetsom has
been stranded), and during the night follows his
own devices in Chinatown, one block above.
Manning was at one time a deep-sea pearl diver
in Oahu, and, having burst his ear drums in the
business, can now blow smoke out of either ear.
This accomplishment first endeared him to me,
and latterly I found out that he knew more of
Chinatown than is meet and right for a man to
know.  The other day I found Manning in the
shade of the Stevenson ship, just rousing from the
effects of a jag on undiluted gin, and told him, or
rather recalled to him the story of Harriett Ten
Eyck.

"I remember," he said, resting on an elbow and
chewing grass.  "It made a big noise at the time,
but nothing ever came of it—nothing except a
long row and the cutting down of one of
Mr. Hillegas's Chinese detectives in Gambler's Alley.
The See Yups brought a chap over from Peking
just to do the business."

"Hatchet-man?" said I.

"No," answered Manning, spitting green; "he
was a two-knife Kai-Gingh."

"As how?"

"Two knives—one in each hand—cross your
arms and then draw 'em together, right and left,
scissor-fashion—damn near slashed his man in two.
He got five thousand for it.  After that the
detectives said they couldn't find much of a clue."

"And Miss Ten Eyck was not so much as heard
from again?"

"No," answered Manning, biting his fingernails.
"They took her to China, I guess, or may
be up to Oregon.  That sort of thing was new
twenty years ago, and that's why they raised such
a row, I suppose.  But there are plenty of
women living with Chinamen now, and nobody
thinks anything about it, and they are Canton
Chinamen, too—lowest kind of coolies.  There's
one of them up in St. Louis Place, just back of the
Chinese theatre, and she's a Sheeny.  There's a
queer team for you—the Hebrew and the
Mongolian—and they've got a kid with red, crinkly
hair, who's a rubber in a Hammam bath.  Yes,
it's a queer team, and there's three more white
women in a slave girl joint under Ah Yee's tan
room.  There's where I get my opium.  They can
talk a little English even yet.  Funny thing—one
of 'em's dumb, but if you get her drunk enough
she'll talk a little English to you.  It's a fact!
I've seen 'em do it with her often—actually get
her so drunk that she can talk.  Tell you what,"
added Manning, struggling to his feet, "I'm going
up there now to get some dope.  You can come
along, and we'll get Sadie (Sadie's her name) we'll
get Sadie full, and ask her if she ever heard about
Miss Ten Eyck.  They do a big business," said
Manning, as we went along.  "There's Ah Yeo
and these three women and a policeman named
Yank.  They get all the yen shee—that's the
cleanings of the opium pipes, you know, and make
it into pills and smuggle it into the cons over at
San Quentin prison by means of the trusties.
Why, they'll make five dollars worth of dope sell
for thirty by the time it gets into the yard over at
the Pen.  When I was over there, I saw a chap
knifed behind a jute mill for a pill as big as a
pea.  Ah Yee gets the stuff, the three women roll
it into pills, and the policeman, Yank, gets it over
to the trusties somehow.  Ah Yee is independent
rich by now, and the policeman's got a bank
account."

"And the women?'

"Lord! they're slaves—Ah Yee's slaves!  They
get the swift kick most generally."

Manning and I found Sadie and her two companions
four floors underneath the tan room, sitting
cross-legged in a room about as big as a big trunk.
I was sure they were Chinese women at first, until
my eyes got accustomed to the darkness of the place.
They were dressed in Chinese fashion, but I noted
soon that their hair was brown and the bridges of
each one's nose was high.  They were rolling pills
from a jar of yen shee that stood in the middle of
the floor, their fingers twinkling with a rapidity
that was somehow horrible to see.

Manning spoke to them briefly in Chinese while
he lit a pipe, and two of them answered with the
true Canton sing-song—all vowels and no consonants.

"That one's Sadie," said Manning, pointing to
the third one, who remained silent the while.
I turned to her.  She was smoking a cigar, and
from time to time spat through her teeth
man-fashion.  She was a dreadful-looking beast of a
woman, wrinkled like a shriveled apple, her teeth
quite black from nicotine, her hands bony and
prehensile, like a hawk's claws—but a white
woman beyond all doubt.  At first Sadie refused
to drink, but the smell of Manning's can of gin
removed her objections, and in half an hour she
was hopelessly loquacious.  What effect the alcohol
had upon the paralysed organs of her speech I
cannot say.  Sober, she was tongue-tied—drunk,
she could emit a series of faint bird-like twitterings
that sounded like a voice heard from the bottom
of a well.

"Sadie," said Manning, blowing smoke out of
his ears, "what makes you live with Chinamen?
You're a white girl.  You got people somewhere.
Why don't you get back to them?"

Sadie shook her head.

"Like um China boy better," she said, in a voice
so faint we had to stoop to listen.  "Ah Yee's
pretty good to us—plenty to eat, plenty to smoke,
and as much yen shee as we can stand.  Oh, I don't
complain."

"You know you can get out of this whenever you
want.  Why don't you make a run for it some
day when you're out?  Cut for the Mission
House on Sacramento street—they'll be good to
you there."

"Oh!" said Sadie, listlessly, rolling a pill between
her stained palms, "I been here so long I guess I'm
kind of used to it.  I've about got out of white
people's ways by now.  They wouldn't let me have
my yen shee and my cigar, and that's about all I
want nowadays.  You can't eat yen shee long and
care for much else, you know.  Pass that gin
along, will you?  I'm going to faint in a minute."

"Wait a minute," said I, my hand on Manning's
arm.  "How long have you been living with
Chinamen, Sadie?"

"Oh, I don't know.  All my life, I guess.  I
can't remember back very far—only spots here
and there.  Where's that gin you promised me?"

"Only in spots?" said I; "here a little and there
a little—is that it?  Can you remember how
you came to take up with this kind of life?"

"Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't,"
answered Sadie.  Suddenly her head rolled upon her
shoulder, her eyes closing.  Manning shook her
roughly:

"Let be! let be!" she exclaimed, rousing up;
"I'm dead sleepy.  Can't you see?"

"Wake up, and keep awake, if you can," said
Manning; "this gentleman wants to ask you something."

"Ah Yee bought her from a sailor on a junk in
the Pei Ho river," put in one of the other women.

"How about that, Sadie?" I asked.  "Were
you ever on a junk in a China river?  Hey?  Try
and think?"

"I don't know," she said.  "Sometimes I think
I was.  There's lots of things I can't explain, but
it's because I can't remember far enough back."

"Did you ever hear of a girl named Ten Eyck—Harriett
Ten Eyck—who was stolen by Chinamen
here in San Francisco a long time ago?"

There was a long silence.  Sadie looked straight
before her, wide-eyed, the other women rolled pills
industriously, Manning looked over my shoulder
at-the scene, still blowing smoke through his ears;
then Sadie's eyes began to close and her head to
loll sideways.

"My cigar's gone out," she muttered.  "You
said you'd have gin for me.  Ten Eyck!  Ten
Eyck!  No, I don't remember anybody named
that."  Her voice failed her suddenly, then she
whispered:

"Say, how did I get that on me?"

She thrust out her left hand, and I saw a butterfly
tattooed on the little finger.





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.. _`The House With the Blinds`:

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   *The House With the Blinds*

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It is a thing said and signed and implicitly
believed in by the discerning few that San
Francisco is a place wherein Things can happen.
There are some cities like this—cities that have
come to be picturesque—that offer opportunities
in the matter of background and local colour,
and are full of stories and dramas and novels,
written and unwritten.  There seems to be no adequate
explanation for this state of things, but you can't
go about the streets anywhere within a mile radius
of Lotta's fountain without realising the peculiarity,
just as you would realise the hopelessness of
making anything out of Chicago, fancy a novel
about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville,
Tennessee.  There are just three big cities in the
United States that are "story cities"—New York,
of course, New Orleans, and best of the lot, San
Francisco.

Here, if you put yourself in the way of it, you
shall see life uncloaked and bare of convention—the
raw, naked thing, that perplexes and fascinates—life
that involves death of the sudden and swift
variety, the jar and shock of unleased passions, the
friction of men foregathered from every ocean,
and you may touch upon the edge of mysteries for
which there is no explanation—little eddies on the
surface of unsounded depths, sudden outflashings
of the inexplicable—troublesome, disquieting, and
a little fearful.

About this "House With the Blinds" now.

If you go far enough afield, with your face
towards Telegraph Hill, beyond Chinatown, beyond
the Barbary Coast, beyond the Mexican quarter
and Luna's restaurant, beyond even the tamale
factory and the Red House, you will come at
length to a park in a strange, unfamiliar,
unfrequented quarter.  You will know the place by
reason of a granite stone set up there by the
Geodetic surveyors, for some longitudinal purposes
of their own, and by an enormous flagstaff erected
in the center.  Stockton street flanks it on one side
and Powell on the other.  It is an Italian quarter as
much as anything else, and the Societa Alleanza
holds dances in a big white hall hard by.  The
Russian Church, with its minarets (that look for
all the world like inverted balloons) overlook it on
one side, and at the end of certain seaward streets
you may see the masts and spars of wheat ships and
the Asiatic steamers.  The park lies in a valley
between Russian and Telegraph Hills, and in
August and early September the trades come
flogging up from the bay, overwhelming one with
sudden, bulging gusts that strike downward, blanket-wise
and bewildering.  There are certain residences
here where, I am sure, sea-captains and sailing
masters live, and on one corner is an ancient
house with windows opening door-fashion upon a
deep veranda, that was used as a custom office in
Mexican times.

I have a very good friend who is a sailing-master
aboard the "*Mary Baker*," a full-rigged
wheat ship, a Cape Horner, and the most beautiful
thing I ever remember to have seen.  Occasionally
I am invited to make a voyage with him as
supercargo, an invitation which you may be sure
I accept.  Such an invitation came to me one day
some four or five years ago, and I made the trip
with him to Calcutta and return.

The day before the "*Mary Baker*" cast off I had
been aboard (she was lying in the stream off
Meigg's wharf) attending to the stowing of my
baggage and the appointment of my stateroom.
The yawl put me ashore at three in the afternoon,
and I started home via the park I have been
speaking about.  On my way across the park I stopped
in front of that fool Geodetic stone, wondering
what it might be.  And while I stood there puzzling
about it, a nurse-maid came up and spoke to me.

The story of "The House With the Blinds" begins here.

The nurse-maid was most dreadfully drunk, her
bonnet was awry, her face red and swollen, and one
eye was blackened.  She was not at all pleasant.
In the baby carriage, which she dragged behind
her, an overgrown infant yelled like a sabbath of
witches.

"Look here," says she; "you're a gemmleman,
and I wantcher sh'd help me outen a fix.  I'm in
a fix, s'wat I am—a damn bad fix."

I got that fool stone between myself and this
object, and listened to it pouring out an incoherent
tirade against some man who had done it dirt,
b'Gawd, and with whom it was incumbent I should
fight, and she was in a fix, s'what she was, and
could I, who was evidently a perfick gemmleman,
oblige her with four bits?  All this while the baby
yelled till my ears sang again.  Well, I gave her
four bits to get rid of her, but she stuck to me
yet the closer, and confided to me that she lived in
that house over yonder, she did—the house with
the blinds, and was nurse-maid there, so she was,
b'Gawd.  But at last I got away and fled in the
direction of Stockton street.  As I was going
along, however, I reflected that the shrieking
infant was somebody's child, and no doubt popular
in the house with the blinds.  The parents ought
to know that its nurse got drunk and into fixes.
It was a duty—a dirty duty—for me to inform
upon her.

Much as I loathed to do so I turned towards the
house with the blinds.  It stood hard by the
Russian Church, a huge white-painted affair, all
the windows closely shuttered and a bit of stained
glass in the front door—quite the most pretentious
house in the row.  I had got directly opposite, and
was about to cross the street when, lo! around the
corner, marching rapidly, and with blue coats
flapping, buttons and buckles flashing, came a squad
of three, seven, nine—ten policemen.  They
marched straight upon the house with the blinds.

I am not brilliant nor adventurous, but I have
been told that I am good, and I do strive to be
respectable, and pay my taxes and pew rent.  As
a corollary to this, I loathed with, a loathing
unutterable to be involved in a mess of any kind.
The squad of policemen were about to enter the
house with the blinds, and not for worlds would
I have been found by them upon its steps.  The
nurse-girl might heave that shrieking infant over
the cliff of Telegraph Hill, it were all one with me.
So I shrank back upon the sidewalk and watched
what followed.

Fifty yards from the house the squad broke into
a run, swarmed upon the front steps, and in a
moment were thundering upon the front door till
the stained glass leaped in its leads and shivered
down upon their helmets.  And then, just at this
point, occurred an incident which, though it had no
bearing upon or connection with this yarn, is quite
queer enough to be set down.  The shutters of one
of the top-story windows opened slowly, like the
gills of a breathing fish, the sash raised some six
inches with a reluctant wail, and a hand groped
forth into the open air.  On the sill of the window
was lying a gilded Indian-club, and while I
watched, wondering, the hand closed upon it, drew
it under the sash, the window dropped guillotine-fashion,
and the shutters clapped to like the shutters
of a cuckoo clock.  Why was the Indian-club lying
on the sill?  Why, in Heaven's name, was it gilded?
Why did the owner of that mysterious groping
hand, seize upon it at the first intimation of
danger?  I don't know—I never will know.  But
I do know that the thing was eldritch and uncanny,
ghostly even, in the glare of that cheerless
afternoon's sun, in that barren park, with the trade
winds thrashing up from the seaward streets.

Suddenly the door crashed in.  The policemen
vanished inside the house.  Everything fell silent
again.  I waited for perhaps fifty seconds—waited,
watching and listening, ready for anything
that might happen, expecting I knew not
what—everything.

Not more than five minutes had elapsed when
the policemen began to reappear.  They came
slowly, and well they might, for they carried with
them the inert bodies of six gentlemen.  When I
say carried I mean it in its most literal sense, for
never in all my life have I seen six gentlemen so
completely, so thoroughly, so hopelessly and
helplessly intoxicated.  Well dressed they were, too,
one of them even in full dress.  Salvos of artillery
could not have awakened that drunken half dozen,
and I doubt if any one of them could even have
been racked into consciousness.

Three hacks appeared (note that the patrol-wagon
was conspicuously absent), the six were
loaded upon the cushions, the word was given and
one by one the hacks rattled down Stockton street
and disappeared in the direction of the city.  The
captain of the squad remained behind for a few
moments, locked the outside doors in the deserted
shuttered house, descended the steps, and went his
way across the park, softly whistling a quickstep.
In time he too vanished.  The park, the rows of
houses, the windflogged streets, resumed their
normal quiet.  The incident was closed.

Or was it closed?  Judge you now.  Next day
I was down upon the wharves, gripsack in hand,
capped and clothed for a long sea voyage.  The
"*Mary Baker's*" boat was not yet come ashore,
but the beauty lay out there in the stream, flirting
with a bustling tug that circled about her, coughing
uneasily at intervals.  Idle sailormen, 'longshoremen
and stevedores sat upon the stringpiece of the
wharf, chewing slivers and spitting reflectively into
the water.  Across the intervening stretch of bay
came the noises from the "*Mary Baker's*" decks—noises
that were small and distinct, as if heard
through a telephone, the rattle of blocks, the
straining of a windlass, the bos'n's whistle, and once the
noise of sawing.  A white cruiser sat solidly in the
waves over by Alcatraz, and while I took note of
her the flag was suddenly broken out and I heard
the strains of the ship's band.  The morning was
fine.  Tamalpais climbed out of the water like a
rousing lion.  In a few hours we would be off on a
voyage to the underside of the earth.  There was a
note of gayety in the nimble air, and one felt that
the world was young after all, and that it was good
to be young with her.

A bum-boat woman came down the wharf,
corpulent and round, with a roll in her walk that
shook first one fat cheek and then the other.  She
was peddling trinkets amongst the wharf-loungers—pocket
combs, little round mirrors, shoestrings
and collar-buttons.  She knew them all, or at least
was known to all of them, and in a few moments
she was retailing to them the latest news of the
town.  Soon I caught a name or two, and on the
instant was at some pains to listen.  The bum-boat
woman was telling the story of the house with the blinds:

"Sax of um, an' nobs ivry wan.  But that bad
wid bug-juice!  Whoo!  Niver have Oi seen the
bate!  An' divil a wan as can remimber owt for
two days by.  Bory-eyed they were; struck dumb
an' deef an' dead wid whiskey and bubble-wather.
Not a manjack av um can tell the tale, but wan av
um used his knife cruel bad.  Now which wan was
it?  Howse the coort to find out?"

It appeared that the house with the blinds was,
or had been, a gambling house, and what I had
seen had been a raid.  Then the rest of the story
came out, and the mysteries began to thicken.
That same evening, after the arrest of the six
inebriates, the house had been searched.  The police
had found evidences of a drunken debauch of a
monumental character.  But they had found more.
In a closet under the stairs the dead body of a man,
a well dressed fellow—beyond a doubt one of the
party—knifed to death by dreadful slashes in his
loins and at the base of his spine in true evil
hand-over-back fashion.

Now this is the mystery of the house with the blinds.

Beyond all doubt, one of the six drunken men
had done the murder.  Which one?  How to find
out?  So completely were they drunk that not a
single one of them could recall anything of the
previous twelve hours.  They had come out there
with their friend the day before.  They woke from
their orgie to learn that one of them had worried
him to his death by means of a short palm-broad
dagger taken from a trophy of Persian arms that
hung over a divan.

Whose hand had done it?  Which one of them
was the murdered?  I could fancy them—I think
I can see them now—sitting there in their cells,
each man apart, withdrawn from his fellow-reveler,
and each looking furtively into his fellow's face,
asking himself, "Was it you?  Was it you? or
was it I?  Which of us, in God's name, has done
this thing?"

Well, it was never known.  When I came back
to San Francisco a year or so later I asked about the
affair of the house with the blinds, and found that
it had been shelved with the other mysterious
crimes: The six men had actually been
"discharged for the want of evidence."

But for a long time the thing harassed me.
More than once since I have gone to that windy
park, with its quivering flagstaff and Geodetic
monument, and, sitting on a bench opposite the house,
asked myself again and again the bootless
questions.  Why had the drunken nurse-maid
mentioned the house to me in the first place?  And
why at that particular time?  Why had she lied to
me in telling me that she lived there?  Why was
that gilded Indian-club on the sill of the upper
window?  And whose—here's a point—whose was the
hand that drew it inside the house?  And then, of
course, last of all, the ever recurrent question,
which one of those six inebriates should have stood
upon the drop and worn the cap—which one of
the company had knifed his friend and bundled him
into that closet under the stairs?  Had he done it
during the night of the orgie, or before it?  Was his
friend drunk at the time, or sober?  I never could
answer these questions, and I suppose I shall never
know the secret of "The House With the Blinds."

A Greek family lives there now, and rent the
upper story to a man who blows the organ in the
Russian Church, and to two Japanese, who have
a photograph gallery on Stockton street.  I wonder
to what use they have put the little closet under
the stairs?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Little Dramas of the Curbstone`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Little Dramas of the Curbstone*

.. vspace:: 2

The first Little Drama had for backing the
red brick wall of the clinic at the Medical
Hospital, and the calcium light was the
feeble glimmer of a new-lighted street lamp,
though it was yet early in the evening and quite
light.  There were occasional sudden explosions of
a northeast wind at the street corners, and at long
intervals an empty cable-car trundled heavily past
with a strident whirring of jostled glass windows.
Nobody was in sight—the street was deserted.
There was the pale red wall of the clinic, severe as
that of a prison, the livid grey of the cement
sidewalk, and above the faint greenish blue of a windy
sky.  A door in the wall of the hospital opened, and
a woman and a young boy came out.  They were
dressed darkly, and at once their two black figures
detached themselves violently against the pale blue
of the background.  They made the picture.  All
the faint tones of the wall and the sky and the
grey-brown sidewalk focused immediately upon them.
They came across the street to the corner upon
which I stood, and the woman asked a direction.
She was an old woman, and poorly dressed.  The
boy, I could see, was her son.  Him I took notice
of, for she led him to the steps of the nearest
house and made him sit down upon the lowest one.
She guided all his movements, and he seemed to be
a mere figure of wax in her hands.  She stood
over him, looking at him critically, and muttering
to herself.  Then she turned to me, and her
muttering rose to a shrill, articulate plaint:

"Ah, these fool doctors—these dirty beasts of
medical students!  They impose upon us because
we're poor and rob us and tell us lies."

Upon this I asked her what her grievance was,
but she would not answer definitely, putting her
chin the air and nodding with half-shut eyes, as
if she could say a lot about that if she chose.

"Your son is sick?" said I.

"Yes—or no—not sick; but he's blind,
and—and—he's blind and he's an idiot—born that
way—blind and idiot."

Blind and an idiot!  Blind and an idiot!  Will
you think of that for a moment, you with your full
stomachs, you with your brains, you with your two
sound eyes.  Born blind and idiotic!  Do you fancy
the horror of that thing?  Perhaps you cannot, nor
perhaps could I myself have conceived of what
it meant to be blind and an idiot had I not seen that
woman's son in front of the clinic, in the empty,
windy street, where nothing stirred, and where
there was nothing green.  I looked at him as he sat
there, tall, narrow, misshapen.  His ready-made
suit, seldom worn, but put on that day because of
the weekly visit to the clinic, hung in stupid
wrinkles and folds upon him.  His cheap felt hat,
clapped upon his head by his mother with as little
unconcern as an extinguisher upon a candle, was
wrong end foremost, so that the bow of the band
came upon the right hand side.  His hands were
huge and white, and lay open and palm upward at
his side, the fingers inertly lax, like those of a
discarded glove, and his face——

When I looked at the face of him I know not
what insane desire, born of an unconquerable
disgust, came up in me to rush upon him and club
him down to the pavement with my stick and batter
in that face—that face of a blind idiot—and blot it
out from the sight of the sun for good and all.  It
was impossible to feel pity for the wretch.  I
hated him because he was blind and an idiot.  His
eyes were filmy, like those of a fish, and he never
blinked them.  His mouth hung open.

Blind and an idiot, absolute stagnation, life
as unconscious as that of the jelly-fish, an
excrescence, a parasitic fungus in the form of a man,
a creature far below the brute.  The last horror
of the business was that he never moved; he sat
there just as his mother had placed him, his motionless,
filmy eyes fixed, his jaw dropped, his hands
open at his sides, his hat on wrong side foremost.
He would sit like that, I knew, for hours—for
days, perhaps—would, if left to himself, die of
starvation, without raising a finger.  What was
going on inside of that misshapen head—behind
those fixed eyes?

I had remembered the case by now.  One of the
students had told me of it.  His mother brought
him to the clinic occasionally, so that the lecturer
might experiment upon his brain, stimulating it
with electricity.  "Heredity," the student had
commented, "father a degenerate, exhausted race,
drank himself into a sanitarium."

While I was thinking all this the mother of the
boy had gone on talking, her thin voice vibrant
with complaining and vituperation.  But indeed I
could bear with it no longer, and went away.  I
left them behind me in the deserted, darkening
street, the querulous, nagging woman and her blind,
idiotic boy, and the last impression I have of the
scene was her shrill voice ringing after me the
oft-repeated words:

"Ah, the dirty beasts of doctors—they robs us
and impose on us and tell us lies because we're
poor!"

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The second Little Drama was wrought out for
me the next day.  I was sitting in the bay window
of the club watching the world go by, when my eye
was caught by a little group on the curbstone
directly opposite.  An old woman, meanly dressed,
and two little children, both girls, the eldest about
ten, the youngest, say, six or seven.  They had been
coming slowly along, and the old woman had been
leading the youngest child by the hand.  Just as
they came opposite to where I was sitting the
younger child lurched away from the woman once
or twice, dragging limply at her hand, then its
knees wobbled and bent and the next moment it had
collapsed upon the pavement.  Some children will
do this from sheer perversity and with intent to be
carried.  But it was not perversity on this child's
part.  The poor old woman hauled the little girl
up to her feet, but she collapsed again at once after
a couple of steps and sat helplessly down upon the
sidewalk, staring vaguely about, her thumb in her
mouth.  There was something wrong with the
little child—one could see that at half a glance.
Some complaint, some disease of the muscles, some
weakness of the joints, that smote upon her like
this at inopportune moments.  Again and again
her old mother, with very painful exertion—she
was old and weak herself—raised her to her feet,
only that she might sink in a heap before she had
moved a yard.  The old woman's bonnet fell off—a
wretched, battered black bonnet, and the other
little girl picked it up and held it while she looked
on at her mother's efforts with an indifference that
could only have been born of familiarity.  Twice
the old woman tried to carry the little girl, but her
strength was not equal to it; indeed, the effort of
raising the heavy child to its feet was exhausting
her.  She looked helplessly at the street cars as
they passed, but you could see she had not enough
money to pay even three fares.  Once more she set
her little girl upon her feet, and helped her
forward half a dozen steps.  And so, little by little,
with many pauses for rest and breath, the little
group went down the street and passed out of view,
the little child staggering and falling as if from
drunkenness, her sister looking on gravely, holding
the mother's battered bonnet, and the mother herself,
patient, half-exhausted, her grey hair blowing
about her face, labouring on step by step, trying to
appear indifferent to the crowd that passed by on
either side, trying bravely to make light of the
whole matter until she should reach home.  As I
watched them I thought of this woman's husband,
the father of this paralytic little girl, and somehow
it was brought to me that none of them would ever
see him again, but that he was alive for all that.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The third Little Drama was lively, and there
was action in it, and speech, and a curious, baffling
mystery.  On a corner near a certain bank in this
city there is affixed to the lamp post a call-box that
the police use to ring up for the patrol wagon.
When an arrest is made in the neighbourhood the
offender is brought here, the wagon called for, and
he is conveyed to the City Prison.  On the
afternoon of the day of the second Little Drama, as
I came near to this corner, I was aware of a crowd
gathered about the lamp post that held the call-box,
and between the people's heads and over their
shoulders I could see the blue helmets of a couple
of officers.  I stopped and pushed up into the inner
circle of the crowd.  The two officers had in
custody a young fellow of some eighteen or nineteen
years.  And I was surprised to find that he was
as well dressed and as fine looking a lad as one
would wish to see.  I did not know what the charge
was, I don't know it now,—but the boy did not seem
capable of any great meanness.  As I got into the
midst of the crowd, and while I was noting what
was going forward, it struck me that the people
about me were unusually silent—silent as people
are who are interested and unusually observant.
Then I saw why.  The young fellow's mother was
there, and the Little Drama was enacting itself
between her, her son, and the officers who had him
in charge.  One of these latter had the key to the
call-box in his hand.  He had not yet rung for the
wagon.  An altercation was going on between the
mother and the son—she entreating him to come
home, he steadily refusing.

"It's up to you," said one of the officers, at
length; "if you don't go home with your mother,
I'll call the wagon."

"No!"

"Jimmy!" said the woman, and then, coming
close to him, she spoke to him in a low voice and
with an earnestness, an intensity, that it hurt one
to see.

"No!"

"For the last time, will you come?"

"No!  No!  No!"

The officer faced about and put the key into the
box, but the woman caught at his wrist and drew
it away.  It was a veritable situation.  It should
have occurred behind footlights and in the midst
of painted flats and flies, but instead the city
thundered about it, drays and cars went up and down in
the street, and the people on the opposite walk
passed with but an instant's glance.  The crowd
was as still as an audience, watching what next
would happen.  The crisis of the Little Drama
had arrived.

"For the last time, will you come with me?"

"No!"

She let fall her hand then and turned and went
away, crying into her handkerchief.  The officer
unlocked and opened the box, set the indicator and
opened the switch.  A few moments later, as I
went on up the street, I met the patrol-wagon
coming up on a gallop.

What was the trouble here?  Why had that
young fellow preferred going to prison rather than
home with his mother?  What was behind it all
I shall never know.  It was a mystery—a little
eddy in the tide of the city's life, come and gone
in an instant, yet reaching down to the very depths
of those things that are not meant to be seen.

And as I went along I wondered where was the
father of that young fellow who was to spend his
first night in jail, and the father of the little
paralytic girl, and the father of the blind idiot, and it
seemed to me that the chief actors in these three
Little Dramas of the Curbstone had been
somehow left out of the programme.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Shorty Stack, Pugilist`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Shorty Stack, Pugilist*

.. vspace:: 2

Over at the "Big Dipper" mine a chuck-tender
named Kelly had been in error as
regards a box of dynamite sticks, and Iowa
Hill had elected to give an "entertainment" for the
benefit of his family.

The programme, as announced upon the posters
that were stuck up in the Post Office and on the
door of the Odd Fellows' Hall, was quite an affair.
The Iowa Hill orchestra would perform, the
livery-stable keeper would play the overture to
"William Tell" upon his harmonica, and the town
doctor would read a paper on "Tuberculosis in
Cattle."  The evening was to close with a "grand
ball."

Then it was discovered that a professional
pugilist from the "Bay" was over in Forest Hill, and
someone suggested that a match could be made
between him and Shorty Stack "to enliven the
entertainment."  Shorty Stack was a bedrock
cleaner at the "Big Dipper," and handy with his
fists.  It was his boast that no man of his weight
(Shorty fought at a hundred and forty) no man
of his weight in Placer County could stand up to
him for ten rounds, and Shorty had always made
good this boast.  Shorty knew two punches, and
no more—a short-arm jab under the ribs with his
right, and a left upper-cut on the point of the chin.

The pugilist's name was McCleaverty.  He
was an out and out dub—one of the kind who
appear in four-round exhibition bouts to keep the
audience amused while the "event of the evening"
is preparing—but he had had ring experience,
and his name had been in the sporting
paragraphs of the San Francisco papers.  The dub
was a welter-weight and a professional, but he
accepted the challenge of Shorty Stack's backers
and covered their bet of fifty dollars that he could
not "stop" Shorty in four rounds.

And so it came about that extra posters were
affixed to the door of the Odd Fellows' Hall and
the walls of the Post Office to the effect that
Shorty Stack, the champion of Placer County, and
Buck McCleaverty, the Pride of Colusa, would
appear in a genteel boxing exhibition at the
entertainment given for the benefit, etc., etc.

Shorty had two weeks in which to train.  The
nature of his work in the mine had kept his
muscles hard enough, so his training was largely a
matter of dieting and boxing an imaginary foe
with a rock in each fist.  He was so vigorous in
his exercise and in the matter of what he ate and
drank that the day before the entertainment he had
got himself down to a razor-edge, and was in a
fair way of going fine.  When a man gets into
too good condition, the least little slip will spoil
him.  Shorty knew this well enough, and told
himself in consequence that he must be very careful.

The night before the entertainment Shorty went
to call on Miss Starbird.  Miss Starbird was one
of the cooks at the mine.  She was a very pretty
girl, just turned twenty, and lived with her folks
in a cabin near the superintendent's office, on the
road from the mine to Iowa Hill.  Her father
was a shift boss in the mine, and her mother did
the washing for the "office."  Shorty was
recognised by the mine as her "young man."  She was
going to the entertainment with her people, and
promised Shorty the first "walk-around" in the
"Grand Ball" that was to follow immediately after
the Genteel Glove Contest.

Shorty came into the Starbird cabin on that
particular night, his hair neatly plastered in a
beautiful curve over his left temple, and his pants
outside of his boots as a mark of esteem.  He wore no
collar, but he had encased himself in a boiled
shirt, which could mean nothing else but mute and
passionate love, and moreover, as a crowning
tribute, he refrained from spitting.

"How do you feel, Shorty?" asked Miss Starbird.

Shorty had always sedulously read the interviews
with pugilists that appeared in the San Francisco
papers immediately before their fights and knew
how to answer.

"I feel fit to fight the fight of my life," he
alliterated proudly.  "I've trained faithfully and
I mean to win."

"It ain't a regular prize fight, is it, Shorty?"
she enquired.  "Pa said he wouldn't take ma an'
me if it was.  All the women folk in the camp are
going, an' I never heard of women at a fight, it
ain't genteel."

"Well, I d'n know," answered Shorty, swallowing
his saliva.  "The committee that got the
programme up called it a genteel boxing exhibition
so's to get the women folks to stay.  I call it a four
round go with a decision."

"My, itull be exciting!" exclaimed Miss Starbird.
"I ain't never seen anything like it.  Oh,
Shorty, d'ye think you'll win?"

"I don't *think* nothun about it.  I know I will,"
returned Shorty, defiantly.  "If I once get in my
left upper cut on him, *huh*!" and he snorted
magnificently.

Shorty stayed and talked to Miss Starbird until
ten o'clock, then he rose to go.

"I gotta get to bed," he said, "I'm in training
you see."

"Oh, wait a minute," said Miss Starbird, "I
been making some potato salad for the private
dining of the office, you better have some; it's the
best I ever made."

"No, no," said Shorty, stoutly, "I don't want any."

"Hoh," sniffed Miss Starbird airily, "you don't
need to have any."

"Well, don't you see," said Shorty, "I'm in
training.  I don't dare eat any of that kinda stuff."

"Stuff!" exclaimed Miss Starbird, her chin in
the air.  "No one *else* ever called my cooking
stuff."

"Well, don't you see, don't you see."

"No, I don't see.  I guess you must be 'fraid
of getting whipped if you're so 'fraid of a little
salad."

"What!" exclaimed Shorty, indignantly.  "Why
I could come into the ring from a jag and whip
him; 'fraid! *who's* afraid.  I'll show you if I'm
afraid.  Let's have your potato salad, an' some
beer, too.  Huh!  *I'll* show you if I'm afraid."

But Miss Starbird would not immediately
consent to be appeased.

"No, you called it stuff," she said, "an' the
superintendent said I was the best cook in Placer
County."

But at last, as a great favour to Shorty, she
relented and brought the potato salad from the
kitchen and two bottles of beer.

When the town doctor had finished his paper on
"Tuberculosis in Cattle," the chairman of the
entertainment committee ducked under the ropes
of the ring and announced that: "The next would
be the event of the evening and would the
gentlemen please stop smoking."  He went on to
explain that the ladies present might remain without
fear and without reproach as the participants in
the contest would appear in gymnasium tights,
and would box with gloves and not with bare
knuckles.

"Well, don't they always fight with gloves?"
called a voice from the rear of the house.  But
the chairman ignored the interruption.

The "entertainment" was held in the Odd Fellows'
Hall.  Shorty's seconds prepared him for
the fight in a back room of the saloon, on the other
side of the street, and towards ten o'clock one of
the committeemen came running in to say:

"What's the matter?  Hurry up, you fellows,
McCleaverty's in the ring already, and the
crowd's beginning to stamp."

Shorty rose and slipped into an overcoat.

"All ready," he said.

"Now mind, Shorty," said Billy Hicks, as he
gathered up the sponges, fans and towels, "don't
mix things with him, you don't have to knock him
out, all you want's the decision."

Next, Shorty was aware that he was sitting in
a corner of the ring with his back against the ropes,
and that diagonally opposite was a huge red man
with a shaven head.  There was a noisy, murmuring
crowd somewhere below him, and there was a
glare of kerosene lights over his head.

"Buck McCleaverty, the Pride of Colusa,"
announced the master of ceremonies, standing in
the middle of the ring, one hand under the dub's
elbow.  There was a ripple of applause.  Then
the master of ceremonies came over to Shorty's
corner, and, taking him by the arm, conducted
him into the middle of the ring.

"Shorty Stack, the Champion of Placer County."  The
house roared; Shorty ducked and grinned
and returned to his corner.  He was nervous,
excited.  He had not imagined it would be exactly
like this.  There was a strangeness about it all;
an unfamiliarity that made him uneasy.

"Take it slow," said Billy Hicks, kneading the
gloves, so as to work the padding away from the
knuckles.  The gloves were laced on Shorty's hands.

"Up you go," said Billy Hicks, again.  "No,
not the fight yet, shake hands first.  Don't get
rattled."

Then ensued a vague interval, that seemed to
Shorty interminable.  He had a notion that he
shook hands with McCleaverty, and that some
one asked him if he would agree to hit with one
arm free in the breakaway.  He remembered a
glare of lights, a dim vision of rows of waiting
faces, a great murmuring noise, and he had a
momentary glimpse of someone he believed to be the
referee, a young man in shirtsleeves and turned-up
trousers.  Then everybody seemed to be getting
out of the ring and away from him, even Billy
Hicks left him after saying something he did not
understand.  Only the referee, McCleaverty and
himself were left inside the ropes.

"Time!"

Somebody, that seemed to Shorty strangely like
himself, stepped briskly out into the middle of the
ring, his left arm before him, his right fist clinched
over his breast.  The crowd, the glaring lights,
the murmuring noise, all faded away.  There only
remained the creaking of rubber soles over the
resin of the boards of the ring and the sight of
McCleaverty's shifting, twinkling eyes and his
round, close-cropped head.

"Break!"

The referee stepped between the two men and
Shorty realised that the two had clinched, and
that his right forearm had been across McCleaverty's
throat, his left clasping him about the
shoulders.

What!  Were they fighting already?  This was
the first round, of course, somebody was shouting.

"That's the stuff, Shorty."

All at once Shorty saw the flash of a red
muscled arm, he threw forward his shoulder ducking
his head behind it, the arm slid over the raised
shoulder and a bare and unprotected flank turned
towards him.

"Now," thought Shorty.  His arm shortened
and leaped forward.  There was a sudden impact.
The shock of it jarred Shorty himself, and he
heard McCleaverty grunt.  There came a roar
from the house.

"Give it to him, Shorty."

Shorty pushed his man from him, the heel of
his glove upon his face.  He was no longer
nervous.  The lights didn't bother him.

"I'll knock him out yet," he muttered to himself.

They fiddled and feinted about the ring, watching
each other's eyes.  Shorty held his right ready.
He told himself he would jab McCleaverty again
on the same spot when next he gave him an opening.

"*Break!*"

They must have clinched again, but Shorty was
not conscious of it.  A sharp pain in his upper lip
made him angry.  His right shot forward again,
struck home, and while the crowd roared and the
lights began to swim again, he knew that he was
rushing McCleaverty back, back, back, his arms
shooting out and in like piston rods, now for an
upper cut with his left on the—

"*Time!*"

Billy Hicks was talking excitedly.  The crowd
still roared.  His lips pained.  Someone was spurting
water over him, one of his seconds worked the
fans like a windmill.  He wondered what Miss
Starbird thought of him now.

"*Time!*"

He barely had a chance to duck, almost double,
while McCleaverty's right swished over his head.
The dub was swinging for a knockout already.
The round would be hot and fast.

"Stay with um, Shorty."

"That's the stuff, Shorty."

He must be setting the pace, the house plainly
told him that.  He stepped in again and cut loose
with both fists.

"*Break!*"

Shorty had not clinched.  Was it possible that
McCleaverty was clinching "to avoid punishment."  Shorty
tried again, stepping in close, his right arm
crooked and ready.

"*Break!*"

The dub was clinching.  There could be no
doubt of that.  Shorty gathered himself together
and rushed in, upper-cutting viciously; he felt
McCleaverty giving way before him.

"He's got um going."

There was exhilaration in the shout.  Shorty
swung right and left, his fist struck something that
hurt him.  Sure, he thought, that must have been
a good one.  He recovered, throwing out his left
before him.  Where was the dub? not down there
on one knee in a corner of the ring?  The house
was a pandemonium, near at hand some one was
counting, "one—two—three—four—"

Billy Hicks shouted, "Come back to your corner.
When he's up go right in to finish him.  He
ain't knocked out yet.  He's just taking his full
time.  Swing for his chin again, you got him
going.  If you can put him out, Shorty, we'll take
you to San Francisco."

"Seven—eight—nine—"

McCleaverty was up again.  Shorty rushed in.
Something caught him a fearful jar in the pit of
the stomach.  He was sick in an instant, racked
with nausea.  The lights began to dance.

"*Time!*"

There was water on his face and body again,
deliciously cool.  The fan windmills swung round
and round.  "What's the matter, what's the
matter," Billy Hicks was asking anxiously.

Something was wrong.  There was a lead-like
weight in Shorty's stomach, a taste of potato salad
came to his mouth, he was sick almost to vomiting.

"He caught you a hard one in the wind just before
the gong, did he?" said Billy Hicks.  "There's
fight in him yet.  He's got a straight arm body
blow you want to look out for.  Don't let up on
him.  Keep—"

"*Time!*"

Shorty came up bravely.  In his stomach there
was a pain that made it torture to stand erect.
Nevertheless he rushed, lashing out right and left.
He was dizzy; before he knew it he was beating
the air.  Suddenly his chin jolted backward, and
the lights began to spin; he was tiring rapidly, too,
and with every second his arms grew heavier and
heavier and his knees began to tremble more and
more.  McCleaverty gave him no rest.  Shorty
tried to clinch, but the dub sidestepped, and came
in twice with a hard right and left over the heart.
Shorty's gloves seemed made of iron; he found
time to mutter, "If I only hadn't eaten that stuff
last night."

What with the nausea and the pain, he was hard
put to it to keep from groaning.  It was the dub
who was rushing now; Shorty felt he could not
support the weight of his own arms another
instant.  What was that on his face that was warm
and tickled?  He knew that he had just strength
enough left for one more good blow; if he could
only upper-cut squarely on McCleaverty's chin it
might suffice.

"*Break!*"

The referee thrust himself between them, but
instantly McCleaverty closed again.  Would the
round *never* end?  The dub swung again, missed,
and Shorty saw his chance; he stepped in,
upper-cutting with all the strength he could summon up.
The lights swam again, and the roar of the crowd
dwindled to a couple of voices.  He smelt whisky.

"Gimme that sponge."  It was Billy Hicks
voice.  "He'll do all right now."

Shorty suddenly realised that he was lying on
his back.  In another second he would be counted
out.  He raised himself, but his hands touched
a bed quilt and not the resined floor of the ring.
He looked around him and saw that he was in
the back room of the saloon where he had dressed.
The fight was over.

"Did I win?" he asked, getting on his feet.

"Win!" exclaimed Billy Hicks.  "You were
knocked out.  He put you out after you had him
beaten.  Oh, you're a peach of a fighter, you are!"

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Half an hour later when he had dressed,
Shorty went over to the Hall.  His lip was badly
swollen and his chin had a funny shape, but
otherwise he was fairly presentable.  The Iowa Hill
orchestra had just struck into the march for the
walk around.  He pushed through the crowd of
men around the door looking for Miss Starbird.
Just after he had passed he heard a remark and
the laugh that followed it:

"Quitter, oh, what a quitter!"

Shorty turned fiercely about and would have
answered, but just at that moment he caught sight
of Miss Starbird.  She had just joined the
promenade or the walk around with some other man.
He went up to her:

"Didn't you promise to have this walk around
with me?" he said aggrievedly.

"Well, did you think I was going to wait all
night for you?" returned Miss Starbird.

As she turned from him and joined the march
Shorty's eye fell upon her partner.

It was McCleaverty.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Strangest Thing`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *The Strangest Thing*

.. vspace:: 2

The best days in the voyage from the Cape
to Southampton are those that come
immediately before and immediately after that
upon which you cross the line, when the ship is as
steady as a billiard table, and the ocean is as smooth
and shiny and coloured as the mosaic floor of a
basilica church, when the deck is covered with
awning from stem to stern, and the resin bubbles
out of the masts, and the thermometer in the
companion-way at the entrance to the dining-saloon
climbs higher and higher with every turn of the
screw.  Of course all the men people aboard must
sleep on deck these nights.  There is a pleasure in
this that you will find nowhere else.  At six your
steward wakes you up with your morning cup of
coffee, and you sit cross-legged in your pajamas on
the skylight and drink your coffee and smoke your
cigarettes and watch the sun shooting up over the
rim of that polished basilica floor, and take
pleasure in the mere fact of your existence, and talk and
talk and tell stories until it's time for bath and
breakfast.

We came back from the Cape in *The Moor*,
with a very abbreviated cabin list.  Only three of
the smaller tables in the saloon were occupied,
and those mostly by men—diamond-brokers from
Kimberly, gold-brokers from the Rand, the manager
of a war correspondent on a lecture tour, cut
short by the Ashanti war, an English captain of
twenty-two, who had been with Jameson at
Krugersdorp and somehow managed to escape, an
Australian reporter named Miller, and two or
three others of a less distinct personality.

Miller told the story that follows early one
morning, sitting on the Bull board, tailor-fashion,
and smoking pipefuls of straight perique, black as
a nigger's wool.  We were grouped around him
on the deck in pajamas and bath robes.  It was
half after six, the thermometer was at 70 degrees,
*The Moor* cut the still water with a soothing
rumble of her screw, and at intervals flushed whole
schools of flying fish.  Somehow the talk had drifted
to the inexplicable things that we had seen, and we
had been piecing out our experiences with some
really beautiful lies.  Captain Thatcher, the
Krugersdorp chap, held that the failure of the Jameson
Raid was the most inexplicable thing he had ever
experienced, but none of the rest of us could think
of anything we had seen or heard of that did not
have some stealthy, shadowy sort of explanation
sneaking after it and hunting it down.

"Well, I saw something a bit thick once,"
observed Miller, pushing down the tobacco in his
pipe bowl with the tip of a callous finger, and
in the abrupt silence that followed we heard the
noise of dishes from the direction of the galley.

"It was in Johannesburg three years back, when
I was down on me luck.  I had been rooked
properly by a Welsh gaming chap who was no end of
a bounder, and three quid was all that stood
between me and—well," he broke in, suddenly, "I
had three quid left.  I wore down me feet walking
the streets of that bally town looking for
anything that would keep me going for a while, and
give me a chance to look around and fetch breath,
and there was nothing, but I tell ye nothing, and I
was fair desperate.  One dye, and a filthy wet
dye it was, too, I had gone out to the race track,
beyond Hospital Hill, where the pony races are
run, thinking as might be I'd find a berth, handling
ponies there, but the season was too far gone,
and they turned me awye.  I came back to town
by another road—then by the waye that fetches
around by the Mahomedan burying-ground.  Well,
the pauper burying-ground used to be alongside
in those dyes, and as I came up, jolly well blown,
I tell ye, for I'd but tightened me belt by wye of
breakfast, I saw a chap diggin' a gryve.  I was
in a mind for gryves meself just then, so I pulled
up and leaned over the fence and piped him off
at his work.  Then, like the geeser I'd come to be,
I says:

"'What are ye doing there, friend?'  He
looked me over between shovelfuls a bit, and then
says:

"'Oh, just setting out early violets;' and that
shut me up properly.

"Well, I piped him digging that gryve for
perhaps five minutes, and then, s' help me, I asked
him for a job.  I did—I asked that gryve-digger
for a job—I was that low.  He leans his back
against the side of the gryve and looks me over,
then by and bye, says he:

"'All right, pardner!'

"'I'm thinking your from the Stytes,' says I.

"'Guess yes,' he says, and goes on digging.

"Well, we came to terms after a while.  He was
to give me two bob a dye for helping him at his
work, and I was to have a bunk in his 'shack', as
he called it—a box of a house built of four boards,
as I might sye, that stood just on the edge of the
gryveyard.  He was a rum 'un, was that Yankee
chap.  Over pipes that night he told me something
of himself, and do y' know, that gryve-digger
in the pauper burying-ground in Johannesburg,
South Africa, was a Harvard graduate!  Strike
me straight if I don't believe he really was.  The
man was a wreck from strong drink, but that was
the one thing he was proud of.

"'Yes, sir,' he'd say, over and over again,
looking straight ahead of him, 'Yes, sir, I was a
Harvard man once, and pulled at number five in the
boat'—the 'varsity boat, mind ye; and then he'd
go on talking half to himself.  'And now what
am I?  I'm digging gryves for hire—burying
dead people for a living, when I ought to be dead
meself.  I am dead and buried long ago.  Its just
the whiskey that keeps me alive, Miller,' he would
say; 'when I stop that I'm done for.'

"The first morning I came round for work I met
him dressed as if to go to town, and carrying a
wickered demijohn.  'Miller',' he says, 'I'm going
into town to get this filled.  You must stop here
and be ready to answer any telephone call from
the police station.'  S' help me if there wasn't a
telephone in that beastly shack.  'If a pauper cops
off they'll ring you up from town and notify you
to have the gryve ready.  If I'm awye, you'll have
to dig it.  Remember, if it's a man, you must dig
a six foot six hole; if it's a woman, five feet will
do, and if it's a kid, three an' half'll be a plenty.
S'long.'  And off he goes.

"Strike me blind but that was a long dye, that
first one.  I'd the pauper gryves for view and
me own thoughts for company.  But along about
noon, the Harvard graduate not showing up, I
found a diversion.  The graduate had started to
paint the shack at one time, but had given over
after finishing one side, but the paint pot and the
brushes were there.  I got hold of 'em and mixed
a bit o' paint and went the rounds of the gryves.
Ye know how it is in a pauper burying-ground—no
nymes at all on the headboards—naught but
numbers, and half o' them washed awye by the
rynes; so I, for a diversion, as I sye, started in to
paint all manner o' fancy nymes and epitaphs on
the headboards—any nyme that struck me fancy,
and then underneath, an appropriate epitaph, and
the dytes, of course—I didn't forget the dytes.
Ye know, that was the rarest enjoyment I ever
had.  Ye don't think so?  Try it once!  Why, Gawd
blyme me, there's a chance for imagination in it,
and genius and art—highest kind of art.  For
instance now, I'd squat down in front of a blank
headboard and think a bit, and the inspiration
would come, and I'd write like this, maybe:
'Jno. K. Boggart, of New Zealand.  Born Dec. 21, 1870;
died June 5, 1890,' and then, underneath, 'He
Rests in Peace'; or else, 'Elsie, Youngest
Daughter of Mary B. and William H. Terhune; b. May
1st, 1880; d. Nov. 25, 1889—Not Lost, but Gone
Before'; or agyne, 'Lucas, Lieutenant T. V.
Killed in Battle at Wady Halfa, Egypt, August
30, 1889; born London, England, Jan. 3, 1850—He
Lies Like a Warrior, Tyking His Rest with
His Martial Cloak Around Him'; or something
humorous, as 'Bohunkus, J. J.; born Germany;
Oct. 3d, 1880; died (by request) Cape Town,
Sept. 4, 1890'; or one that I remember as my very
best effort, that read, 'Willie, Beloved Son of Anna
and Gustave Harris; b. April 1st, 1878; d. May
5th, 1888—He was a Man Before His Mother.'  Then
I wrote me own nyme, with the epitaph,
'More Sinned Against Than Sinning;' and the
Harvard chap's too.  His motto, I remember, was
'He Pulled 5 in His 'Varsity's Boat.'

"Well, I had more sport that afternoon than I've
ever had since.  Y'know I felt as if I really were
acquainted with all those people—with John
Boggart, and Lieutenant Lucas, and Bohunkus,
and Willie and all.  Ah, that was a proper
experience.  But right in the middle of me work
here comes a telephone message from town:
'Body of dead baby found at mouth of city
sewer—prepare gryve at once.'  Well, I dug that
gryve, the first, last and only gryve I ever hope to
dig.  It came on to ryne like a water-spout, and
oh, but it was jolly tough work.  Then about
four o'clock, just as I was finishing, the Harvard
chap comes home, howling drunk.  I see him go
into the shack, and pretty soon out he comes, with
a hoe in one hand and a table leg in the other.
Soon as ever he sees me he makes a staggering
run at me, swinging the hoe and the table leg and
yelling like a Zulu indaba.  Just to make everything
agreeable and appropriate, I was down in
the gryve, and it occurred to me that the situation
was too uncommon convenient.  I scrambled out and
made a run for it, for there was murder in his eye,
and for upwards of ten minutes we two played
blindman's buff in that gryveyard, me dodging
from one headboard to another, and he at me
heels, chivying me like a fox and with intent to
kill.  All at once he trips over a headboard, and
goes down and can't get up, and at the same
minute here comes the morgue wagon over Hospital Hill.

"Now here comes the queer part of this lamentable
history.  A trap was following that morgue
wagon, a no-end swell trap, with a cob in the
shafts that was worth an independent fortune.
There was an old gent in the trap and a smart Cape
boy driving.  The old gent was the heaviest kind
of a swell, but I'd never seen him before.  The
morgue wagon drives into the yard, and I—the
Harvard chap being too far gone—points out the
gryve.  The driver of the morgue wagon chucks out
the coffin, a bit of a three-foot box, and drives back
to town.  Then up comes the trap, and the old
gent gets down—dressed up to the nines he was,
in that heartbreaking ryne—and says he, 'My
man, I would like to have that coffin opened.'  By
this time the Harvard chap had pulled himself
together.  He staggered up to the old gent and
says, 'No, can't op'n no coffin, 'tsgainst all
relugations—all regalutions, can't permit no coffin
tobeopp'n.'  I wish you would have seen the old
gent.  Excited!  The man was shaking like a
flagstaff in a gyle, talked thick and stammered, he
was so phased.  Gawd strike me, what a scene!  I
can see it now—that pauper burying ground wye
down there in South Africa—no trees, all open and
bleak.  The pelting ryne, the open gryve and the
drunken Harvard chap, and the excited old swell
arguing over a baby's coffin."

Pretty soon the old gent brings up a sovereign
and gives it to the Harvard chap.

"'Let her go,' says he then, and with that he
gives the top board of the coffin such a kick as
started it an inch or more.  With that—now
listen to what I'm telling—with that the old gent
goes down on his knees in the mud and muck, and
kneels there waiting and fair gasping with
excitement while the Harvard chap wrenches off the
topboard.  Before he had raised it four inches
me old gent plunges his hand in quick, gropes there
a second and takes out something—something shut
in the palm of his hand.

"'That's all,' says he: 'Thank you, my man,'
and gives us a quid apiece.  We stood there like
stuck swine, dotty with the queerness, the
horribleness of the thing.

"'That's all,' he says again, with a long
breath of relief, as he climbs into his trap with his
clothes all foul with mud.  'That's all, thank
Gawd.'  Then to the Cape boy: 'Drive her home,
Jim.'  Five minutes later we lost him in the blur of
the rain over Hospital Hill."

"But what was it he took out of the baby's
coffin?" said half a dozen men in a breath at this
point.  "What was it?  What could it have been?"

"Ah, what was it?" said Miller.  "I'll be
damned if I know what it was.  I never knew, I
never will know."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A Reversion to Type`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *A Reversion to Type*

.. vspace:: 2

Schuster was too damned cheeky.  He
was the floor-walker in a department store
on Kearny street, and I had opportunity to
observe his cheek upon each of the few occasions
on which I went into that store with—let us say my
cousin.  A floor-walker should let his communications
be "first aisle left," or "elevator, second floor
front," or "third counter right," for whatsoever is
more than this cometh of evil.  But Schuster used to
come up to—my cousin, and take her gently by the
hand and ask her how she did, and if she was to be
out of town much that season, and tell her, with
mild reproach in his eye, that she had been quite a
stranger of late, while I stood in the background
mumbling curses not loud but deep.

However, my cousin does not figure in this yarn,
nor myself.  Paul Schuster is the hero—Paul
Schuster, floor-walker in a department-store that
sold ribbons and lace and corsets and other things,
fancy, now!  He was hopelessly commonplace,
lived with a maiden aunt and a parrot in two
rooms, way out in the bleak streets around Lone
Mountain.  When on duty he wore a long black
cutaway coat, a white pique four-in-hand and
blue-grey "pants" that cost four dollars.  Besides this
he parted his hair on the side and entertained
ideas on culture and refinement.  His father had
been a barber in the Palace Hotel barber shop.

Paul Schuster had never heard anything of a grandfather.

Schuster came to that department-store when he
was about thirty.  Five years passed; then
ten—he was there yet—forty years old by now.
Always in a black cutaway and white tie, always with
his hair parted on one side, always with the same
damned cheek.  A floor-walker, respectable as an
English barrister, steady as an eight-day clock, a
figure known to every woman in San Francisco.
He had lived a floor-walker; as a floor-walker he
would die.  Such he was at forty.  At forty-one
he fell.  Two days and all was over.

It sometimes happens that a man will live a
sober, steady, respectable, commonplace life for
forty, fifty or even sixty years, and then,
without the least sign of warning, suddenly go counter
to every habit, to every trait of character and every
rule of conduct he has been believed to possess.
The thing only happens to intensely respectable
gentlemen, of domestic tastes and narrow
horizons, who are just preparing to become old.
Perhaps it is a last revolt of a restrained youth—the
final protest of vigorous, heady blood, too long
dammed up.  This bolting season does not last
very long.  It comes upon a man between the
ages of forty and fifty-five, and while it lasts the
man should be watched more closely than a young
fellow in his sophomore year at college.  The
vagaries of a sophomore need not be taken any
more seriously than the skittishness of a colt, but
when a fifty-year-old bolts, stand clear!

On the second of May—two months and a day
after his forty-first birthday—Paul Schuster
bolted.  It came upon him with the quickness of a
cataclysm, like the sudden, abrupt development
of latent mania.  For a week he had been feeling ill
at ease—restless; a vague discomfort hedged him
in like an ill-fitting garment; he felt the moving of
his blood in his wrists and his temples.  A
subtle desire to do something, he knew not what, bit
and nibbled at his brain like the tooth of a tiny
unfamiliar rodent.

On the second of May, at twenty minutes
after six, Schuster came out of the store at the
tail end of the little army of home-bound clerks.
He locked the door behind him, according to
custom, and stood for a moment on the asphalt, his
hands in his pockets, fumbling his month's pay.
Then he said to himself, nodding his head
resolutely:

"To-night I shall get drunk—as drunk as I
possibly can.  I shall go to the most disreputable
resorts I can find—I shall know the meaning of
wine, of street fights, of women, of gaming, of jolly
companions, of noisy mid-night suppers.  I'll do
the town, or by God, the town will do me.  Nothing
shall stop me, and I will stop at nothing.
Here goes!"

Now, if Paul Schuster had only been himself
this bolt of his would have brought him to nothing
worse than the Police Court, and would have
lasted but twenty-four hours at the outside.  But
Schuster, like all the rest of us, was not merely
himself.  He was his ancestors as well.  In him as in
you and me, were generations—countless
generations—of forefathers.  Schuster had in him the
characteristics of his father, the Palace Hotel
barber, but also, he had the unknown characteristics
of his grandfather, of whom he had never heard,
and his great-grandfather, likewise ignored.  It
is rather a serious matter to thrust yourself under
the dominion of unknown, unknowable impulses
and passions.  This is what Schuster did that
night.  Getting drunk was an impulse belonging
to himself; but who knows what "inherited tendencies,"
until then dormant, the alcohol unleashed
within him?  Something like this must have
happened to have accounted for what follows.

Schuster went straight to the Palace Hotel bar,
where he had cocktails, thence to the Poodle Dog,
where he had a French dinner and champagne,
thence to the Barbary Coast on upper Kearny
street, and drank whiskey that rasped his throat
like gulps of carpet tacks.  Then, realising that
San Francisco was his own principality and its
inhabitants his vassals, he hired a carriage and
drove to the Cliff House, and poured champagne
into the piano in the public parlor.  A waiter
remonstrated, and Paul Schuster, floor-walker and
respectable citizen, bowled him down with a catsup
bottle and stamped upon his abdomen.  At the
beginning of that evening he belonged to that
class whom policemen are paid to protect.  When
he walked out of the Cliff House he was a
free-booter seven feet tall, with a chest expansion of
fifty inches.  He paid the hack-driver a double
fare and strode away into the night and plunged
into the waste of sand dunes that stretch back from
the beach on the other side of the Park.

It never could be found out what happened to
Schuster, or what he did, during the next ten
hours.  We pick him up again in a saloon on the
waterfront about noon the next day, with thirty
dollars in his pocket and God knows what disorderly
notions in his crazed wits.  At this time he
was sober as far as the alcohol went.  It might be
supposed that now would have been the time for
reflection and repentance and return to home and
respectability.  Return home!  Not much!  Schuster
had began to wonder what kind of an ass he
had been to have walked the floor of a department-store
for the last score of years.  Something was
boiling in his veins.  B-r-r-r!  Let 'em all stand far
from him now.

That day he left San Francisco and rode the
blind baggage as far as Colfax on the Overland.
He chose Colfax because he saw the name chalked
on a freight car at the Oakland mole.  At Colfax,
within three hours after his arrival, he fought
with a restaurant man over the question of a
broken saucer, and the same evening was told to
leave the town by the sheriff.

Out of Colfax, some twenty-eight miles into the
mountains, are placer gold mines, having for
headquarters a one-street town called Iowa Hill.
Schuster went over to the Hill the same day on the
stage.  The stage got in at night and pulled up in
front of the postoffice.  Schuster went into the
postoffice, which was also a Wells-Fargo office, a
candy store, a drug store, a cigar store, and a
lounging-room, and asked about hotels.

Only the postmaster was in at that time, but as
Schuster leaned across the counter, talking to him,
a young man came in, with a huge spur on his left
boot-heel.  He and the postmaster nodded, and
the young man slid an oblong object about the size
of a brick across the counter.  The object was
wrapped in newspaper and seemed altogether too
heavy for anything but metal—metal of the
precious kind, for example.

"He?" answered the postmaster to Schuster,
when the young man had gone.  "He's the
superintendent of the Little Bear mine on the other
side of the American River, about three miles by
the trail."

For the next week Schuster set himself to work
to solve the problem of how a man might obtain a
shotgun in the vicinity of Iowa Hill without the
fact being remembered afterward and the man
identified.  It seemed good to him after a while
to steal the gun from a couple of Chinamen who
were washing gravel along the banks of the
American River about two miles below the Little
Bear.  For two days he lay in the tarweed and witch
hazel, on the side of the canyon overlooking the
cabin, noted the time when both Chinamen were
sufficiently far away, and stole the gun, together
with a saw and a handful of cartridges loaded
with buckshot.  Within the next week he sawed
off the gun-barrels sufficiently short, experimented
once or twice with the buckshot, and found occasion
to reconnoiter every step of the trail that led
from the Little Bear to Iowa Hill.  Also, he found
out at the bar of the hotel at the Hill that the
superintendent of the Little Bear amalgamated
and reported the cleanup on Sundays.  When he
had made sure of this Schuster was seen no more
about that little one-street mining town.

"He says it's Sunday," said Paul Schuster to
himself; "but that's why it's probably Saturday or
Monday.  He ain't going to have the town know
when he brings the brick over.  It might even be
Friday.  I'll make it a four-night watch."

There is a nasty bit on the trail from the Little
Bear to the Hill, steep as a staircase, narrow as a
rabbit-run, and overhung with manzanita.  The
place is trumpet-mouthed in shape, and sound
carries far.  So, on the second night of his watch,
Schuster could at last plainly hear the certain
sounds that he had been waiting for—sounds that
jarred sharply on the prolonged roll of the
Morning Star stamps, a quarter of a mile beyond the
canyon.  The sounds were those of a horse threshing
through the gravel and shallow water of the
ford in the river just below.  He heard the horse
grunt as he took the slope of the nearer bank, and
the voice of his rider speaking to him came
distinctly to his ears.  Then silence for
one—two—three minutes, while the stamp mill at the
Morning Star purred and rumbled unceasingly and
Schuster's heart pumped thickly in his throat.
Then a blackness blacker than that of the night
heaved suddenly against the grey of "the sky, close
in upon him, and a pebble clicked beneath a shod
hoof.

"Pull up!"  Schuster was in the midst of the
trail, his cheek caressing the varnished stock.

"Whoa!  Steady there!  What in hell——"

"Pull up.  You know what's wanted.  Chuck
us that brick."

The superintendent chirped sharply to the
horse, spurring with his left heel.

"Stand clear there, God damn you!  I'll ride
you down!"

The stock leaped fiercely in Schuster's arm-pit,
nearly knocking him down, and, in the light of two
parallel flashes, he saw an instantaneous picture—rugged
skyline, red-tinted manzanita bushes, the
plunging mane and head of a horse, and above it
a Face with open mouth and staring eyes,
smoke-wreathed and hatless.  The empty stirrup thrashed
across Schuster's body as the horse scraped by him.
The trail was dark in front of him.  He could
see nothing.  But soon he heard a little bubbling
noise and a hiccough.  Then all fell quiet again.

"I got you, all right!"

Thus Schuster, the ex-floor-walker, whose part
hitherto in his little life-drama had been to say,
"first aisle left," "elevator, second floor," "first
counter right."

Then he went down on his knees, groping
at the warm bundle in front of him.  But he found no
brick.  It had never occurred to him that the
superintendent might ride over to town for other
reasons than merely to ship the week's cleanup.
He struck a light and looked more closely—looked
at the man he had shot.  He could not tell whether
it was the superintendent or not, for various
reasons, but chiefly because the barrels of the gun
had been sawn off, the gun loaded with buckshot,
and both barrels fired simultaneously at close
range.

Men coming over the trail from the Hill the
next morning found the young superintendent, and
spread the report of what had befallen him.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



When the Prodigal Son became hungry he came
to himself.  So it was with Schuster.  Living on
two slices of bacon per day (eaten raw for fear of
kindling fires) is what might be called starving
under difficulties, and within a week Schuster was
remembering and longing for floor-walking and
respectability.  Within a month of his strange
disappearance he was back in San Francisco again
knocking at the door of his aunt's house on Geary
street.  A week later he was taken on again at his
old store, in his old position, his unexcused absence
being at length, and under protest, condoned by a
remembrance of "long and faithful service."

Schuster picked up his old life again precisely
where he had left it on the second of May, six
weeks previously—picked it up and stayed by it,
calmly, steadily, uneventfully.  The day before he
died he told this story to his maiden aunt, who
told it to me, with the remark that it was, of
course, an absurd lie.  Perhaps it was.

One thing, however, remains to tell.  I repeated
the absurd lie to a friend of mine who is in the
warden's office over at the prison of San Quentin.
I mentioned Schuster's name.

"Schuster!  Schuster!" he repeated; "why we
had a Schuster over here once—a long time ago,
though.  An old fellow he was, and a bad egg, too.
Commuted for life, though.  Son was a barber at
the Palace Hotel."

"What was old Schuster up for?" I asked.

"Highway robbery," said my friend.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"Boom"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   "*Boom*"

.. vspace:: 2

San Diego in Southern California, is the
largest city in the world.  If your
geographies and guide-books and encyclopædias
have told you otherwise, they have lied, or their
authors have never seen San Diego.  Why, San
Diego is nearly twenty-five miles from end to end!
Why, San Diego has more miles of sidewalk, more
leagues of street railways, more measureless lengths
of paved streets, more interminable systems of
sewer-piping, than has London or Paris or
even—even—even Chicago (and I who say so was born
in Chicago, too)!  There are statelier houses in
San Diego than in any other "of the world's great
centres," more spacious avenues, more imposing
business blocks, more delicious parks, more
overpowering public buildings, the pavements are better
laid, the electric lighting is more systematic, the
railroad and transportation facilities more
accommodating, the climate is better than the Riviera,
the days are longer, the nights shorter, the men
finer, the women prettier, the theatres more
attractive, the restaurants cheaper, the wines more
sparkling, "business opportunities" lie in wait for
the unfortunate at dark street-corners and fly at
his throat till he must fain fight them off.  Life
is one long, glad fermentation.  There is no
darkness in San Diego, nor any more night.

Incidentally corner lots are desirable.

All of this must be so, because you may read it
in the green and gold prospectus of the San Diego
Land and Improvement Company (consolidated),
sent free on application—that is, at one time
during the boom it was sent free—but to-day the
edition is out of print, and can only be seen in the
collection of bibliophiles and wealthy amateurs,
and the boom is only an echo now.  But when the
guests of the big Coronado Hotel over on the
island come across to the main land and course
jackrabbits with greyhounds in the country to the
north of the town, their horses' hoofs, as they
plunge through the sagebrush and tar weed, will
sometimes slide and clatter upon a bit of concrete
sidewalk, half sunk of its own weight into the
sand; or the jack will be started in a low square
of bricks, such as is built for frame house
foundations, and which make excellent jumping for the
horses.  There is a colony of rattlers on the shores
of a marsh to the southwest (the maps call it
Amethyst Lake) and the little half-breed Indians
catch the tarantulas and horned toads that you buy
alive in glass jars on the hotel veranda, near the
postoffice site, and everything is very gay and
pleasant and picturesque.

Why I remember it all so well is because I found
Steele in this place.  You see, Steele was a very
good friend of mine though he was Oxon, and I
only a man from Chicago.  When his wife knew
I was coming west she gave me Steele's address,
and told me I was to look him up.  Since she told
me this with much insistence and reiteration and
with tears in her voice, I made it a point to be
particular.  She had not heard from Steele in two
years.  The address she gave me was "Hon. Ralph
Truax-Steele, Elmwood avenue and One Hundred
and Eighty-eighth street, San Diego, California."

When I arrived at San Diego I found it would
be advisable to hire a horse, for 188th street,
instead of waiting for the Elmwood Avenue
electric car, and when I asked for directions a
red-headed man whose father was Irish and whose
mother was Chinese, offered to act as guide for
twenty dollars.  He said, though, he would furnish
his own outfit.  I demurred and he went away.
I was told that some eight miles out beyond the
range I would find a water-hole, and that if I held
to the southwest after leaving this hole, keeping
my horse's ears between the double peak of a
distant mountain called Little Two Top, I would
come after a while to a lamp-post with a tarantula's
nest where the lamp should have been.  It would
be hard to miss this lamp-post, they told me, as
the desert was very flat thereabouts, and the
lamp-posts could be seen for a radius of ten miles.  Also,
there might be water there—the horse would smell
it out if there was.  Also, it was a good place
to camp, because of a tiny ledge of shale
outcropping there.  I was to be particular about this
lamp-post, because it stood at the corner of
Elmwood avenue and 188th street.

When I asked about the Hon. Truax-Steele,
Oxon, information was less explicit.  They shook
their heads.  One of them seemed to recollect a
"shack" about a mile hitherward of Two Top,
a statement that was at once contradicted by
someone else.  Might have been an old Digger
"wicky-up."  Sometimes the Indians camped in the valley
on their way to ghost dances and tribal feasts.  It
wasn't a place for a white man to live, chiefly
because the climate offered so many advantages
and attractions to horned toads, tarantulas and
rattlesnakes.  Then the red-headed Chinese-Irishman
came back and said, with an accent that was
beyond all words, that a sheepherder had once
told him of a loco-man out beyond McIntyre's
waterhole, and another man said that, "Yes, that
was so; he'd passed flasks with a loco-man out that
way once last June, when he was out looking for a
strayed pony.  In fact, the loco-man lived out
there, had a son, too, leastways a kid lived with
him."  This seemed encouraging.  The
Hon. Truax-Steele, Oxon, was accredited with a
son—so his wife had said, who should know.  So I
started out, simultaneously hoping and dreading
that the loco-man and the honourable Truax might
be one flesh.

I left San Diego at four o'clock A.M. to avoid
as much as possible the heat of mid-day, and just
at sunset saw what might have been a cactus plant
standing out stark and still on the white blur of
sage and alkali like an exclamation point on a
blank page.  It was the lamp-post of the spider's
nest that marked the intersection of Elmwood
avenue and 188th street.  And then my horse
shied, with his hind legs only, in the way good
horses have, and Ralph Truax-Steele rose out
of a dried muck-hole under the bit.

I had expected a madman, but his surprise and
pleasure at seeing me were perfectly sane.  After
awhile he said: "Sorry, old boy.  It's the
hospitality of the Arab I can give you; nothing better.
A handful of dates (we call 'em caned prunes out
here), the dried flesh of a kid (Californian for
jerked beef), and a mouthful of cold water, which
the same we will thicken with forty-rod rye;
incidentally, coffee, black and unsweet, and tobacco,
which at one time I should have requested my
undergroom to discontinue."

We went to his "shack" (I observed it to be
built of discarded bricks, mortared with 'dobe
mud) and I was made acquainted with his boy,
Carrington Truax-Steele, fitting for Oxford under
tutelage of his father.

We had supper, after which the Hon. Truax,
Sr. stood forth under the kindling glory of that
desert twilight by that incongruous, reeling
lamp-post, booted, bare-headed and woolen-shirted, and
to the low swinging scimitar of the new welded
moon declaimed Creon's speech to Oedipus in
sonorous Greek.  When he was done he exclaimed,
abruptly: "Come along, I'll show you 'round."

I looked about that stricken reach of alkali, and
followed him wondering.  That evening the
Hon. Ralph Truax-Steele, Oxon, showed me his real
estate and also, unwittingly, the disordered
workings of his brain.  The rest I guessed and
afterwards confirmed.

Steele had gone mad over the real estate "boom"
that had struck the town five years previously,
when land was worth as many dollars as could
cover it, and men and women fought with each
other to buy lots around the water hole called
Amethyst Lake.  The "boom" had collapsed, and
with it Steele's reason, for to him the boom was
on the point of recommencing; sane enough on
other points, in this direction the man's grip upon
himself was gone for good.

"There," he said to me that evening as we
crushed our way through the sagebrush, indicating
a low roll on the desert surface, "there are my villa
sites, here will run a driveway, and yonder where
you see the skeleton of that steer I'm thinking of
putting up a little rustic stone chapel."

"Ralph, Ralph," I said, "come out of this.
Can't you see that the whole business is dead and
done for long since?  You're going back with me
to God's country to-morrow—going back to your
wife, you and the boy.  She sent me to fetch you."

He stared at me wonderingly.

"Why, it's bound to come within a few days,"
he said.  "Wait till next Wednesday, say, and you
won't recognise this place.  There'll be a rush
here such as there was when Oklahoma was opened.
We have everything for us—climate, temperature,
water.  Harry," he added in my ear, "look around
you.  You are standing on the site of one of the
grandest, stateliest cities of civilisation."

That night the boy Carrington and I sat late
in consultation while Steele slept.  "Nothing but
force will do it," said the lad.  "I know him well,
and I've tried it again and again.  It's no use any
other way."  So force it was.

How we got Steele back to San Diego I may not
tell.  Carrington is the only other person who
knows, and I'm sure he will say nothing.  When
Steele found himself in the heart of a real city
and began to look about him, and take stock of
his surroundings, the real collapse came.  He is in
a sanitarium now somewhere in Illinois, and his
wife and son see him on Wednesday and Sunday
afternoons from two till five.  Steele will never
come out of that sanitarium, though he now realises
that his desert city was a myth, a creation of
his own distorted wits.  He's sound enough on
that point, but a strange inversion has taken place.
It is now upon all other subjects that he is insane.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Dis-Associated Charities`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *The Dis-Associated Charities*

.. vspace:: 2

There used to be a place in feudal Paris
called the Court of Miracles, and Mister
Victor Hugo has told us all about it.  This
Court was a quarter of the town where the beggars
lived, and it was called "of the miracles", because
once across its boundaries the blind saw, the lame
walked and the poor cared not to have the gospel
preached unto them.

San Francisco has its Court of Miracles too.
It is a far cry thither, for it lies on the other side
of Chinatown and Dagotown, and blocks beyond
Luna's restaurant.  It is in the valley between
Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill, and you must
pass through it as you go down to Meigg's Wharf
where the Government tugs tie up.

One has elected to call it the Court of Miracles,
but it is not a court, and the days of miracles are
over.  It is a row of seven two-story houses, one
of them brick.  The brick house is over a saloon
kept by a Kanaka woman and called "The Eiffel
Tower."  Here San Francisco's beggars live and
have their being.  That is, a good many of them.

The doubled-up old man with the white beard
and neck-handkerchief who used to play upon a
zither and the sympathies of the public on the
corner of Sutter street has moved out, and one can
find no trace of him, and Father Elphick, the
white-headed vegetarian of Lotta's Fountain, is
dead.  But plenty of the others are left.  The
neatly dressed fellow with dark blue spectacles,
who sings the *Marseillaise*, accompanying himself
upon an infinitesimal hand organ, is here;
Mrs. McCleaverty is here, and the old bare-headed man
who sits on the street corner by the Bohemian Club,
after six o'clock in the evening and turns the crank
of a soundless organ, has here set up his
everlasting rest.

The beggars of the Seven Houses are genuine
miserables.  Perhaps they have an organisation
and a president, I don't know.  But I do know
that Leander and I came very near demoralising
the whole lot of them.

More strictly speaking, it was Leander who did
the deed, I merely looked on and laughed, but
Leander says that by laughing I lent him my
immoral support, and am therefore party to the act.

Leander and I had been dining at the "Red
House," which is a wine-shop that Gelett Burgess
discovered in an alley not far from the county
jail.  Leander and I had gone there because we
like to sit at its whittled tables and drink its *Vin
Ordinaire* (très ordinaire) out of tin gill measures;
also we like its salad and its thick slices of bread
that you eat after you have rubbed them with an
onion or a bit of garlic.  We always go there in
evening dress in order to impress the Proletariat.

On this occasion after we had dined and had
come out again into the gas and gaiety of the
Mexican quarter we caromed suddenly against
Cluness.  Cluness is connected with some sort of a
charitable institution that has a house somewhere
in the "Quarter."  He says that he likes to
alleviate distress wherever he sees it; and that after
all, the best thing in life is to make some poor
fellow happy for a few moments.

Leander and I had nothing better to do that
evening so we went around with Cluness, and
watched him as he gave a month's rent to an infirm
old lady on Stockton street, a bundle of magazines
to a whining old rascal at the top of a nigger
tenement, and some good advice to a Chinese girl who
didn't want to go to the Presbyterian Mission
House.

"That's my motto," says he, as we came away
from the Chinese girl, "alleviate misery wherever
you see it and try and make some poor fellow
happy for a few moments."

"Ah, yes," exclaimed this farceur Leander,
sanctimoniously, while I stared, "that's the only
thing worth while," and he sighed and wagged
his head.

Cluness went on to tell us about a deserving case
he had—we were going there next—in fact,
innocently enough, he described the Seven Houses
to us, never suspecting they were the beggar's
headquarters.  He said there was a poor old paralytic
woman lived there, who had developed an appetite
for creamed oysters.

"It's the only thing," said Cluness, "that she
can keep on her stomach."

"She told you so?" asked Leander.

"Yes, yes."

"Well, she ought to know."

We arrived at the Seven Houses and Cluness
paused before the tallest and dirtiest.

"Here's where she lives; I'm going up for a
few moments."

"Have a drink first," suggested Leander, fixing
his eyes upon the saloon under the brick house.

We three went in and sat down at one of the
little round zinc tables—painted to imitate
marble—and the Kanaka woman herself brought us our
drinks.  While we were drinking, one of the
beggars came in.  He was an Indian, totally blind,
and in the day time played a mouth-organ on Grant
Avenue near a fashionable department store.

"Tut, tut," said Cluness, "poor fellow, blind,
you see, what a pity, I'll give him a quarter."

"No, let me," exclaimed Leander.

As he spoke the door opened again and another
blind man groped in.  This fellow I had seen often.
He sold lavender in little envelopes on one of the
corners of Kearny street.  He was a stout, smooth-faced
chap and always kept his chin in the air.

"What misery there is in this world," sighed
Cluness as his eye fell upon this latter, "one half
the world don't know how—"

"Look, they know each other," said Leander.
The lavender man had groped his way to the
Indian's table—evidently it was their especial
table—and the two had fallen a-talking.  They ordered
a sandwich apiece and a small mug of beer.

"Let's do something for 'em," exclaimed
Cluness, with a burst of generosity.  "Let's make 'em
remember this night for years to come.  Look at
'em trying to be happy over a bit of dry bread and
a pint of flat beer.  I'm going to give 'em a dollar
each."

"No, no," protested Leander.  "Let me fix it,
I've more money than you.  Let me do a little good
now and then.  You don't want to hog all the
philanthropy, Cluness, *I'll* give 'em something.

"It would be very noble and generous of you,
indeed," cried Cluness, "and you'll feel better for
it, see if you don't.  But I must go to my paralytic.
You fellows wait for me.  I'll be down in twenty
minutes."

I frowned at Leander when Cluness was gone.
"Now what tom-foolery is it this time?" said I.

"Tom-foolery," exclaimed Leander, blankly.
"It's philanthropy.  By Jove, here's another chap
with his lamps blown out.  Look at him."

A third unfortunate, blind as the other two,
had just approached the Indian and the lavender
man.  The three were pals, one could see that at
half a glance.  No doubt they met at this table
every night for beer and sandwiches.  The last
blind man was a Dutchman.  I had seen him from
time to time on Market street, with a cigar-box
tied to his waist and a bunch of pencils in his fist.

"Eins!" called the Dutchman to the Kanaka, as
he sat down with the lavender man and the Indian.
"Eins—mit a hem sendvidge."

"Excuse me," said Leander, coming up to their
table.

What was it?  Did those three beggars, their
instinct trained by long practice, recognise the
alms-giver in the sound of Leander's voice, or in
the step.  It is hard to say, but instantly each one
of them dropped the mildly convivial and assumed
the humbly solicitous air, turning his blind head
towards Leander, listening intently.  Leander took
out his purse and made a great jingling with his
money.  Now, I knew that Leander had exactly
fifteen dollars—no more, no less—fifteen dollars,
in three five-dollar gold pieces—not a penny of
change.  Could it be possible that he was going
to give a gold piece to the three beggars?  It was,
evidently, for I heard him say:

"Excuse me.  I've often passed you fellows on
the street, in town, and I guess I've always been
too short of change, or in too much of a hurry to
remember you.  But I'm going to make up for it
now, if you'll permit me.  Here—" and he jingled
his money, "here is a five dollar gold piece that
I'd like to have you spend between the three of
you to-night, and drink my health, and—and—have
a good time, you know.  Catch on?"

They caught on.

"May God bless you, young man!" exclaimed
the old lavender man.

The Indian grunted expressively.

The Dutchman twisted about in his place and
shouted in the direction of the bar:

"Mek ut er bottle Billzner und er Gotha druffle,
mit ein *im*-borted Frankfooter bei der side on."

The Kanaka woman came up, and the Dutchman
repeated his order.  The lavender man paused
reflectively tapping his brow, then he delivered
himself: "A half spring chicken," he said with
profound gravity, "rather under done, and some
chicory salad and a bottle of white wine—put the
bottle in a little warm water for about two
minutes—and some lyonnaise potatoes with onions, and—

"Donner wetter," shouted the Dutchman, "genuch!"
smiting the table with his fist.

The other subsided.  The Kanaka woman
turned to the Indian.

"Whiskey," he grunted, "plenty whiskey, big
beefsteak, soh," and he measured off a yard on the
table.

"Leander," said I, when he rejoined me, "that
was foolishness, you've thrown away your five
dollars and these fellows are going to waste it in
riotous living.  You see the results of indiscriminate
charity."

"I've *not* thrown it away.  Cluness would say
that if it made them happier according to their
lights it was well invested.  I hate the charity that
means only medicines, clean sheets, new shoes and
sewerage.  Let 'em be happy in their own way."  There
could be no doubt that the three blind men
were happy.  They loaded their table with spring
chickens, Gotha truffles, beefsteaks, and all manner
of "alcoholic beverages," till the zinc disappeared
beneath the accumulation of plates and bottles.
They drank each other's health and they pledged
that of Leander, standing up.  The Dutchman
ordered: "Zwei Billzner more alreatty."  The
lavender man drank his warmed white wine with
gasps of infinite delight, and after the second
whiskey bottle had been opened, the Indian began to
say strange and terrible things in his own language.

Cluness came in and beamed on them.

"See how happy you've made them, Leander,"
he said gratefully.  "They'll always remember this
night."

"They always will," said Leander solemnly.

"I've got to go though," said Cluness.  I made
as if to go with him but Leander plucked my coat
under the table.  I caught his eye.

"I guess we two will stay," said I.  Cluness left,
thanking us again and again.

"I don't know what it is," said I seriously to
Leander, "but to-night you seem to me to be too
good to be wholesome."

"*I*," said Leander, blankly.  "But I suppose I
should expect to be misjudged."

Just then the Kanaka woman came over to give
us our check.

"This is on me," said Leander, but he was so
slow in fumbling for his purse that I was obliged,
in all decency, to pay.

After she left *us*, the Kanaka went over to the
blind men's table, and, check-pad in hand, ran
her eye over the truffles, beer, chicken, beefsteak,
wine and whiskey, and made out her check.

"Four dollars, six bits," she announced.

There was a silence, not one of the blind men
moved.

"Watch now," said Leander.

"Four, six bits," repeated the Kanaka, her hand
on her hip.

Still none of the blind men moved.

"Vail, den," cried the Dutchman, "vich von you
two vellars has dose money, pay oop.  Fier thalers
und sax beets."

"I haven't it," exclaimed the lavender man,
"Jim has it," he added, turning to the Indian.

"No have got, no have got," grunted the Indian.
"*You* have got, you or Charley."

I looked at Leander.

"Now, what have you done?"

For answer Leander showed me three five
dollar gold pieces in the palm of his hand.

"Each one of those chaps thinks that one of the
other two has the gold piece.  I just pretended to
give it to one of 'em, jingled my coin, and then
put it back, I didn't give 'em a cent.  Each one
thought I had given it to the other two.  How
could they tell, they were blind, don't you see."

I reached for my hat.

"I'm going to get out of here."

Leander pulled me back.

"Not just yet, wait a few moments.  Listen."

"Vail, vail," cried the Dutchman, beginning to
get red.  "You doand vants to cheats Missus
Amaloa, den berhaps—yes, Zhim," he cried to the
Indian, "pay oop, or ees ut *you* den, Meest'r
Paites, dat hab dose finf thalers?"

"No have got," gurgled the Indian, swaying in
his place as he canted the neck of the whiskey
bottle towards his lips.

"I thought you had the money," protested
Mr. Bates, the lavender man, "you or Jim."

"No have got," whooped the Indian, beginning
to get angry.  "Hug-gh!  *You* got money.  He give
you money," and he turned his face towards the
Dutchman.

"That's what *I* thought," asserted Mr. Bates.

"Tausend Teufels *no*," shouted the other.  "I
tell you *no*."

"*You, you,*" growled the Indian, plucking at
Mr. Bates' coat sleeve, "you have got."

"Yah, soh," cried the Dutchman, shaking his
finger at the lavender man, excitedly, "pay dose
finf thalers, Meest'r Paites."

"Pay yourself," exclaimed the other, "I haven't
touched them.  I'll be *any* name, I'll be *any*
name if I've touched them."

"Well, I ain't going to wait here all night,"
shrilled the Kanaka woman impatiently.  The
Dutchman shook his finger solemnly towards
where he thought the Indian was sitting.

"It's der Indyun.  It's Zhim.  Get ut vrom Zhim."

"Lie, lie," vociferated the Indian, "white man
lie.  No have got.  *You* hav got, or *you*."

"I'll turn my pockets inside out," exclaimed Mr. Bates.

"Schmarty," cried the Dutchman.  "Can I *see*
dose pocket?"

"Thief, thief," exclaimed the Indian, shaking
his long black hair.  "You steal money."

The other two turned on him savagely.

"There aint no man going to call me that."

"Vat he say, vait, und I vill his het mit der
boddle demolisch.  Who you say dat to, *mee*, or
Meest'r Bates?"

"Oh, you make me tired," cried the lavender
man, "you two.  *One* of you two, pay Missus
Amaloa and quit fooling."

"Come on," cried the Kanaka, "pay up or I'll
ring for the police."

"Vooling, vooling," shouted the Dutchman,
dancing in his rage.  "You sheats Missus Amaloa
und you gall dot vooling."

"*Who* cheats," cried the other two simultaneously.

"Vail, how do *I* know," yelled the Dutchman,
purple to the eyes.  "How do *I* know vich."

The Kanaka turned to Leander.

"Say, which of these fellows did you give that
money to?"

Leander came up.

"Ah-h, *now* we vill know," said the Dutchman.

Leander looked from one to the other.  Then
an expression of perplexity came into his face.  He
scratched an ear.

"Well, I thought it was this German gentleman."

"*Vat!*"

"Only it seems to me I had the money in my
left hand, and he, you see, is on the right hand
of the table.  It might have been him, and then
again it might have been one of the other two
gentlemen.  It's so difficult to remember.  Wasn't
it you," turning to Mr. Bates, "or no, wasn't it
*you*," to the Indian.  "But it *couldn't* have been
the Indian gentleman, and it couldn't have been
Mr. Bates here, and yet I'm sure it wasn't the
German gentleman, and, however, I *must* have
given it to one of the three.  Didn't I lay the coin
down on the table and go away and leave it."  Leander
struck his forehead.  "Yes, I think that's
what I did.  I'm sorry," he said to the Kanaka,
"that you are having any trouble, it's some
misunderstanding."

"Oh, I'll get it all right," returned the Kanaka,
confidently.  "Come on, one of you fellows dig up."

Then the quarrel broke out afresh.  The three
blind men rose to their feet, blackguarding and
vilifying one another till the room echoed.  Now
it was Mr. Bates and the Dutchman versus the
Indian, now the Indian and Dutchman versus
Mr. Bates, now the Indian and Mr. Bates versus the
Dutchman.  At every instant the combinations
varied with kaleidoscopic swiftness.  They shouted,
they danced, and they shook their fists towards
where they guessed each other's faces were.  The
Indian, who had been drinking whiskey between
intervals of the quarrel, suddenly began to rail
and howl in his own language, and at times even
the Dutchman lapsed into the vernacular.  The
Kanaka woman lost her wits altogether, and
declared that in three more minutes she would ring
for the police.

Then all at once the Dutchman swung both fists
around him and caught the Indian a tremendous
crack in the side of the head.  The Indian vented
an ear-splitting war-whoop and began pounding
Mr. Bates who stood next to him.  In the next
instant the three were fighting all over the room.
They lost each other, they struck furious blows at
the empty air, they fell over tables and chairs, or
suddenly came together with a dreadful shock
and terrible cries of rage.  The Dutchman bumped
against Leander and before he could get away
had smashed his silk hat down over his ears.  The
noise of their shouting could have been heard a
block.

"Thief, thief."

"Teef yourselluf, pay oop dose finf thalers."

"No have got, no have got."

And then the door swung in and four officers
began rounding them up like stampeded sheep.
Not until he was in the wagon could the Dutchman
believe that it was not the Indian and Mr. Bates
who had him by either arm, and even in the
wagon, as they were being driven to the precinct
station-house, the quarrel broke out from time to
time.

As we heard the rattle of the patrol-wagon's
wheels growing fainter over the cobbles, we rose
to go.  The Kanaka stood with her hands on her
hips glaring at the zinc table with its remnants of
truffle, chicken and beefsteak and its empty bottles.
Then she exclaimed, "And *I'm* shy four dollars
and six bits."

On the following Saturday night Leander and
I were coming from a Mexican dinner at Luna's.
Suddenly some one caught our arms from behind.
It was Cluness.

"I want to thank you fellows again," he
exclaimed, "for your kindness to those three blind
chaps the other night.  It was really good of
you.  I believe they had five dollars to spend
between them.  It was really fine of you, Leander."

"Oh, I don't mind five dollars," said Leander,
"if it can make a poor fellow any happier for a
few moments.  That's the only thing that's worth
while in this life."

"I'll bet you felt better and happier for doing it."

"Well, it did make me happy."

"Of course, and those three fellows will never
forget that night."

"No, I guess they won't," said Leander.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Son of a Sheik`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Son of a Sheik*

.. vspace:: 2

The smell of the warm slime on the Jeliffe
River and the sweet, heavy and sickening
odour that exhaled into the unspeakable heat
of the desert air from the bunches of dead and
scorched water-reeds are with me yet; also the sight
of the long stretch of dry mud bank, rising by
shallow and barely perceptible degrees to the edge of
the desert sands, and thus disclosed by the
shrinkage of the Jeliffe during the hot months.  The
mud banks were very broad and very black except
where they touched the desert; here the sand had
sifted over them in light transparent sprinklings.
In rapidly drying under the sun of the Sahara, they
had cracked and warped into thousands of tiny
concave cakes that looked, for all the world, like
little saucers in which Indian ink has been mixed.
(If you are an artist, as was Thévenot, you will the
better understand this.)

Then there was the reach of the desert that
drew off on either hand and rolled away, ever so
gently, toward the place where the hollow sky
dropped out of sight behind the shimmering
horizon, swelling grandly and gradually like some
mighty breast which, panting for breath in the
horrible heat, had risen in a final gasp and had
then, in the midst of it, suddenly stiffened and
become rigid.  On this colourless bosom of the
desert, where nothing stirred but the waxing light
in the morning and the waning light in the night,
lay tumbled red and gray rocks, with thin drifts
of sand in their rifts and crevices and grey-green
cacti squatting or sprawling in their blue shadows.
And there was nothing more, nothing, nothing,
except the appalling heat and the maddening silence.

And in the midst of it all,—we.

Now "we" broadly and generally speaking, were
the small right wing of General Pawtrot's division
of the African service; speaking less broadly and
less generally, "we" were the advance-guard of
said division; and, speaking in the narrowest and
most particular sense, "we" were the party of
war-correspondents, specials, extras, etc., who were
accompanying said advance-guard of said wing of
said army of said service for reasons herein to be
set forth.

As the long, black scow of the commissariat
went crawling up the torpid river with the
advance-guard straggling along upon the right, "we" lay
upon the deck under the shadow of the scow's
awning and talked and drank seltzer.

I forget now what led up to it, but Ponscarme
had said that the Arabs were patriotic, when Bab
Azzoun cut in and said something which I shall
repeat as soon as I have told you about Bab Azzoun himself.

Bab Azzoun had been born twenty-nine years
before this time, at Tlemcen, of Kabyle parents
(his father was a sheik).  He had been
transplanted to France at the age of ten, and had
flourished there in a truly remarkable manner.
He had graduated fifth from the Polytéchnique;
he had written books that had been "*couronné
par l'Académie*"; he had become naturalised; he
had been prominent in politics (no one can cut a
wide swath in Paris in anything without hitting
against *la politique*;) he had occupied important
positions in two embassies; he was a diplomat of
no mean qualities; he had influence; he dressed in
faultless French fashion; he had owned "Crusader";
he had lost money on him; he had applied
to the government for the office of "*Sous-chef-des
bureaux-Arabes dans l'Oran*," in order to recoup;
he had obtained it; he had come on with "us", and
was now on this, his first visit to his fatherland
since his tenth year, on his way to his post.

And when Ponscarme had spoken thus about
the patriotism of the Arabs, Bab Azzoun made
him answer: "The Arabs are not sufficiently
educated to be true patriots."

"Bah!" said Santander, "a man does not require
to be educated in order to be a patriot.  And,
indeed, the rudest nations have ever been the most
devotedly patriotic."

"Yes," said Bab Azzoun, "but it is a narrow
and a very selfish patriotism."

"I can't see that," put in Ponscarme; "a patriot
is like an egg—he is either good or bad.  There
is no such thing as a 'good enough egg,' there is
no such thing as a 'good enough patriot'—if a
man is one at all, he is a perfect one."

"I agree," answered Bab Azzoun; "yet patriotism
can be more or less narrow.  Listen and I
will explain"—he raised himself from the deck on
his elbow and gestured with the amber mouth-piece
of his chibouk—"Patriotism has passed
through five distinct stages; first, it was only love
of family—of parents and kindred; then, as the
family grows and expands into the tribe, it, too,
as merely a large family, becomes the object of
affection, of patriotic devotion.  This is the second
stage—the stage of the tribe, the dan.  In the
third stage, the tribe has sought protection behind
the inclosure of walls.  It is the age of cities;
patriotism is the devotion to the city; men are
Athenians ere Grecians, Romans ere Italians.  In
the next period, patriotism means affection for
the state, for the county, for the province; and
Burgundian, Norman and Fleming gave freely of
their breast-blood for Burgundy, Normandy and
Flanders; while we of to-day form the latest, but
not the last, link of the lengthening chain by
honouring, loving and serving the *country* above all
considerations, be they of tribe, or town, or tenure.
Yet I do not believe this to be the last, the highest,
the noblest form of patriotism.

"No," continued Bab Azzoun, "this development
shall go on, ever expanding, ever mounting,
until, carried upon its topmost crest, we attain to
that height from which we can look down upon
the world as our country, humanity as our countrymen,
and he shall be the best patriot who is the
least patriotic."

"Ah-h, *fichtre*!" exclaimed Santander, listlessly,
throwing a cushion at Bab Azzoun's head; "*va te
coucher*.  It's too hot to theorise; you're either a
great philosopher, Bab, or a large sized"—he
looked at him over the rim of his tin cup before
concluding—"idiot." ...

But Bab Azzoun had gone on talking in the
meanwhile, and now finishing with "and so you
must not blame me, if, looking upon them" (he
meant the Arabs) "and theirs, in this light, I find
this African campaign a sorry business for France
to be engaged in,—a vast and powerful government
terrorising into submission a horde of
half-starved fanatics," he yawned, "all of which is very
bad—very bad.  Give me some more seltzer."

We were aroused by the sudden stoppage of the
scow.  A detachment of "Zephyrs," near us upon
the right bank, scrambled together in a hollow
square.  A battalion of Coulouglis, with *haik* and
*bournous* rippling, scuttled by us at a gallop, and
the Twenty-Third Chasseurs d'Afrique in the front
line halted at an "order" on the crest of a sand
ridge, which hid the horizon from sight.  The
still, hot air of the Sahara was suddenly pervaded
with something that roused us to our feet in an
instant.  Thévenot whipped out his ever-ready
sketch-book and began blocking in the landscape
and the position of the troops, while Santander
snatched his note-book and stylograph.

Of the scene which now gathered upon us, I
can remember little, only out of that dark chaos
can I rescue a few detached and fragmentary
impressions—all the more vivid, nevertheless, from
their isolation, all the more distinct from the grey
blur of the background against which they trace
themselves.

Instantly, somewhere disquietingly near, an
event, or rather a whirl of events that rushed and
writhed themselves together into a maze of dizzying
complexity, suddenly evolved and widened like
the fierce, quick rending open of some vast scroll,
and there were zigzag hurryings to and fro and
a surging heavenward of a torrent of noises, noises
of men and noises of feet, noises of horses and
noises of arms, noises that hustled fiercely upward
above the brown mass and closed together in the
desert air, blending or jarring one with another,
joining and separating, reuniting and dividing;
noises that rattled; noises that clanked; noises that
boomed, or shrilled, or thundered, or quavered.
And then came sight of blue-grey tumulous
curtains—but whether of smoke or dust, I could not
say, rumbling and billowing, bellying out with
the hot tempest-breath of the battle-demon that
raged within, and whose outermost fringes were
torn by serrated files of flashing steel and
wavering ranks of red.

And this was all at first.  I knew we had
been attacked and that behind those boiling
smoke-billows, somewhere and somehow, men, infuriated
into beasts, were grappling and struggling, each
man, with every sinew on the strain, striving to kill
his fellow.

And now we were in the midst of a hollow
square of our soldiery, yet how we came there I
cannot recall, though I remember that the water
of the Jeliffe made my clothes heavy and
uncomfortable, although a mortal fear sat upon me of
being shot down by some of our own frenzied
soldiers.  And then came that awful rib-cracking
pressure, as, from some outward, unseen cause,
the square was thrown back upon itself.  And with
it all the smell of sweat of horses, and of men,
the odour of the powder-smoke, the blinding,
suffocating, stupefying clouds of dust, the horrible
fear, greater than all others, of being pushed down
beneath those thousands of trampling feet, the
pitch of excitement that sickens and weakens, the
momentary consciousness—vanishing as soon as
felt—that this was what men called "war," and
that we were experiencing the reality of what we
had so often read.

It was not inspiring; there was no romance, no
poetry about it; there was nothing in it but the
hideous jar, one against the other, of men drunk
with the blood-lust that eighteen hundred years
had not quenched.

I looked at Bab Azzoun; he was standing at the
gunwale of the scow (somehow we were back on
the scow again) with an unloaded pistol in his
hand.  He was watching the battle on the bank.
His nostrils quivered, and he shifted his feet
exactly like an excited thorough-bred.  On a
sudden, a trooper of the Eleventh Cuirassiers came
spinning round and round out of the brown of the
battle, gulping up blood, and pitched, wheezing,
face downwards, into the soft ooze where the river
licked at the bank, raising ruddy bubbles in the
water as he blew his life-breath in gasps into it,
and raking it into gridiron patterns as his quivering,
blue fingers closed into fists.  Instantly afterward
came a mighty rush across the river beneath
our very bows.  Forty-odd cuirassiers burst into it,
followed by eighty or a hundred Kabyles.

I can recall just how the horse-hoofs rattled on
the saucer-like cakes of dry mud and flung them
up in countless fragments behind them.  They
were a fine sight, those Kabyles, with their fierce,
red horses, their dazzling white *bournouses*, their
long, thin, murderous rifle-barrels, thundering and
splashing past, while from the whole mass of them,
from under the shadow of every white *haik*, from
every black-bearded lip, was rolling their war-cry:
"Allah, Allah-il-Allah!"

Some long dormant recollections stirred in Bab
Azzoun at this old battle-shout.  As he faced them
now, he was no longer the cold, cynical *boulevardier*
of the morning.  He looked as he must have
looked when he played, a ten year-old boy, about
the feet of the horses in his father's black tent.
He saw the long lines of the *douars* of his native
home; he saw the camels, and the caravan crawling
toward the sunset; he saw the women grinding
meal; he saw his father, the bearded sheik; he saw
the Arab horsemen riding down to battle; he saw
the palm-broad spear-points and the blue yataghans.
In an instant of time all the long years of culture
and education were stripped away as a garment.
Once more he stood and stepped the Kabyle.  And
with these recollections, his long-forgotten native
speech came rushing to his tongue, and in a long,
shrill cry, he answered his countrymen in their
own language:

"*Allah-il-Allah, Mohammed ressoul Allah.*"

He passed me at a bound, leaped from the scow
upon the back of a riderless horse, and, mingling
with the Kabyles, rode out of sight.

And that was the last I ever saw of Bab Azzoun.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A Defense of the Flag`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *A Defense of the Flag*

.. vspace:: 2

It had been the celebration of the feast of the
Holy St. Patrick, and the various Irish societies
of the city had turned out in great force—Sons
of Erin, Fenians, Cork Rebels, and all.  The
procession had formed on one of the main avenues
and had marched and countermarched up and
down through the American city; had been
reviewed by the mayor standing on the steps of the
City Hall and wearing a green sash; and had
finally disbanded in the afternoon in the business
quarter of the city.  So that now the streets in
that vicinity were full of the perspiring members
of the parade, the emerald colour flashing in and
out of the slow moving maze of the crowd, like
strands of green in the warp and woof of a loom.

There were marshals of the procession, with
batons and big green rosettes, breathing easily once
more after the long agony of sitting upon a nervous
horse that walked sideways.  There were the
occupants of the endless line of carriages, with
their green sashes, stretching their cramped and
stiffened legs.  There were the members of the
various political clubs and secret societies, in their
one good suit of ready-made clothes, cotton gloves,
and silver-fringed scarfs.  There was the little girl,
with green tassels on her boots, who had walked
by her father's side carrying a set bouquet of cut
flowers in a lace paper-holder.  There was the
little boy who wore a green high hat, with a pipe
stuck in the brim, and who carried the water for
the band; and there were the members of the
groups upon the floats, with overcoats and sacques
thrown over their costumes and spangles.

The men were in great evidence in and around
the corner saloons talking aloud, smoking, drinking,
and spitting, and calling for "Jim," or "Connors,"
or "Duffy," over the heads of the crowd,
and what with the speeches, and the beer, and the
frequent fights, and the appropriate damning of
England and the Orangemen, the day promised to
end in right spirit and proper mood.

It so came about that young Shotover, on his
way to his club, met with one of these groups near
the City Hall, and noticed that they continually
looked up towards its dome and seemed very
well pleased with what they saw there.  After he
had passed them some little distance, Shotover,
as well, looked up in that direction and saw that
the Irish flag was flying from the staff above the cupola.

Shotover was American-bred and American-born,
and his father and mother before him and
their father and mother before them, and so on
and back till one brought up in the hold of a ship
called the *Mayflower*, further back than which it
is not necessary to go.

He never voted.  He did not know enough of
the trend of national politics even to bet on the
presidential elections.  He did not know the names
of the aldermen of his city, nor how many votes
were controlled by the leaders of the Dirigo or
Comanche Clubs; but when he was told that the
Russian *moujik* or the Bulgarian serf, who had
lived for six months in America (long enough for
their votes to be worth three dollars), was as much
of an American citizen as himself, he thought of
the Shotovers who had framed the constitution in
'75, had fought for it in '13 and '64, and
wondered if this were so.  He had a strange and
stubborn conviction that whatever was American
was right and whatever was right was American,
and that somehow his country had nothing to be
ashamed of in the past, nor afraid of in the future,
for all the monstrous corruptions and abuses that
obtained at present.

But just now this belief had been rudely jarred,
and he walked on slowly to his club, the blood
gradually flushing his face up to the roots of his
hair.  Once there, he sat for a long time in the big
bay-window, looking absently out into the street,
with eyes that saw nothing, very thoughtful.  All
at once he took up his hat, clapped it upon his
head with the air of a man who has made up his
mind, and went out, turning in the direction of the City Hall.

Whence arrived there, no one noticed him, for
he made it a point to walk with a brisk, determined
air, as though he were bent upon some especially
important business, "which I am," he said to
himself as he went on and up through tessellated
corridors, between court-rooms and offices of clerks,
commissioners, and collectors.

It was a long time before he found the right
stairway, which was a circuitous, ladder-like flight
that wormed its way upward between the two walls
of the dome.  The door leading to the stairway
was in a kind of garret above the top floor of the
building proper, and was sandwiched in between
coal-bunkers, water-tanks, and gas-meters.  Shotover
tried it, and found it locked.  He swore softly
to himself, and attempted to break it open.  He
soon concluded that this would make too much
noise, and so turned about and descended to the
floor below.  A negro, with an immense goitre and
a black velvet skull-cap, was cleaning the
woodwork outside a county commissioner's door.  He
directed Shotover to the porter in the office of the
Weather Bureau, if he wished to go up in the
cupola for the view.  It was after four by this
time, and Shotover found the porter of the
Weather Bureau piling the chairs on the tables and
sweeping out after office-hours.

"Well you see," said this one, "we don't allow
nobody to go up in the cupola.  You can get a
permit from the architect's office, but I guess they'll
be shut up there by now."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Shotover; "I'm leaving
town to-morrow, and I particularly wanted to get
the view from the cupola.  They say you can see
well out into the ocean."

The porter had ignored him by this time, and
was sweeping up a great dust.  Shotover waited a
moment.  "You don't think I could arrange to get
up there this afternoon?" he went on.  The porter
did not turn around.

"We don't allow no one up there without a
permit," he answered.

"I suppose," returned Shotover, "that you have
the keys?"

No answer.

"You have the keys, haven't you—the keys to
the door there at the foot of the stairs?"

"We don't allow no one to go up there without
a permit.  Didn't you hear me before?"

Shotover took a five-dollar gold piece from his
pocket, laid it on the corner of a desk, and
contemplated it with reflective sadness.  "I'm sorry,"
he said; "I particularly wanted to see that view
before I left."

"Well, you see," said the porter, straightening
up, "there was a young feller jumped off there
once, and a woman tried to do it a little while
after, and the officers in the police station
downstairs made us shut it up; but 's long as you only
want to see the view and don't want to jump off,
I guess it'll be all right," and he leaned one hand
against the edge of the desk and coughed slightly
behind the other.

While he had been talking, Shotover had seen
between the two windows on the opposite side of
the room a very large wooden rack full of
pigeon-holes and compartments: The weather and
signal-flags were tucked away in these, but on the top
was a great folded pile of bunting.  It was sooty
and grimy, and the new patches in it showed
violently white and clean.  But Shotover saw, with a
strange and new catch at the heart, that it was
tri-coloured.

"If you will come along with me now, sir," said
the porter, "I'll open the door for you."

Shotover let him go out of the room first, then
jumped to the other side of the room, snatched the
flag down, and, hiding it as best he could, followed
him out of the room.  They went up the stairs
together.  If the porter saw anything, he was wise
enough to keep quiet about it.

"I won't bother about waiting for you," said
he, as he swung the door open.  "Just lock the
door when you come down, and leave the key
with me at the office.  If I ain't there, just give
it to the fellow at the news-stand on the first floor,
and I can get it in the morning."

"All right," answered Shotover, "I will," and
he hugged the flag close to him, going up the
narrow stairs two at a time.

After a long while he came out on the narrow
railed balcony that ran around the lantern, and
paused for breath as he looked around and below
him.  Then he turned quite giddy and sick for a
moment and clutched desperately at the hand-rail,
resisting a strong impulse to sit down and close his
eyes.

Seemingly insecure as a bubble, the great dome
rolled away from him on all sides down to the
buttresses around the drum, and below that the gulf
seemed endless, stretching down, down, down, to
the thin yellow ribbon of the street.  Underneath
him, the City Hall itself dropped away, a confused
heap of tinned roofs, domes, chimneys, and cornices,
and beyond that lay the city itself spreading
out like a great gray map.  Over it there hung a
greasy, sooty fog of a dark-brown color.  In places
the higher buildings over-topped the fog.  Here,
it was pierced by a slender church-spire.  In
another place, a dome bulged up over it, or, again,
some sky-scraping office-building shouldered itself
above its level to the purer, cleaner air.  Looking
down at the men in the streets, Shotover could see
only their feet moving back and forth underneath
their hat-brims as they walked.  The noises of the
city reached him in a subdued and steady murmur,
and the strong wind that was blowing brought him
the smell of the vegetable-gardens in the suburbs,
the odour of trees and hay from the more distant
country, and occasionally a faint whiff of salt from
the ocean.

The sight was a sort of inspiration to Shotover.
The great American city, with its riches and
resources, boiling with the life and energy of a new
people, young, enthusiastic, ambitious, and so full
of hope and promise for the future, all striving
and struggling in the fore part of the march of
empire, building a new nation, a new civilisation,
a new world, while over it all floated the Irish flag.

Shotover turned back, seized the halyards, and
brought the green banner down with a single
movement of his arm.  Then he knotted the other
bundle of bunting to the cords and ran it up.  As
it reached the top, the bundle twisted, turned on
itself, unfolded, suddenly caught the wind, and
then, in a single, long billow, rolled out into the
stars and bars of Old Glory.

Shotover shut his teeth against a cheer, and the
blood went tingling up and down through his
body to his very finger-tips.  He looked up,
leaning his hand against the mast, and felt it quiver
and thrill as the great flag tugged at it.  The sound
of the halyards rattling and snapping came to his
ears like music.

He was not ashamed then to be enthusiastic, and
did not feel in the least melodramatic or absurd.
He took off his hat, and, as the great flag grew
out stiffer and snapped and strained in the wind,
looked up at it and said over softly to himself:
"Lexington, Valley Forge, Yorktown, Mexico, the
Alamo, 1812, Gettysburg, Shiloh, the Wilderness."

Meanwhile the knot of people on the sidewalk
below, that had watched his doings, had grown
into a crowd.  The green badge was upon every
breast, and there came to his ears a sound that was
out of chord with the minor drone, the worst sound
in the human gamut, the sound of an angry mob.

The high, windy air and the excitement of the
occasion began to tell on Shotover, so that when
half an hour later there came a rush of many feet
up the stairway, and a crash upon the door that
led up to the lantern, he buttoned his coat tightly
around him, and shut his teeth and fists.

When the door finally went down and the first
man jumped in, Shotover hit him.

Terence Shannon told about this afterward.  "It
was a birdie.  Ah, but say, y' ought to of seen um.
He let go with his left, like de piston-rod of de
engine wot broke loose dat time at de power-house,
an' Duffy's had an eye like a fried egg iver since."

The crowd paused, partly through surprise and
partly because the body of Mr. Duffy lay across
their feet and barred their way.  There were about
a dozen of them, all more or less drunk.  The one
exception was Terence Shannon, who was the
candidate of the boss of his ward for a number on the
force.  In view of this fact, Shannon was trying
to preserve order.  He took advantage of the
moment of hesitation to step in between Shotover
and the crowd.

"Aw, say, youse fellows rattle me slats, sure.
Do yer think the City Hall is the place to scrap,
wid the jug only two floors below?  Ye'll be
havin' the whole shootin'-match of the force up
here in a minute.  Maybe yer would like to sober
up in the 'hole in the wall.'  Now just pipe
down quiet-like, an' swear um in reg'lar at the
station-house down-stairs.  Ye've got a straight
disturbin'-the-peace case wid um.  Ah, sure,
straight goods.  I ain't givin' yer no gee-hee."

But the crowd stood its ground and glared at
Shotover over Shannon's head.  Then Connors
yelled and drew out his revolver.  "B'yes, we've
got a right," he exclaimed.  "It's the boord av
alderman gave us the permit to show the green
flag of ould Ireland here to-day.  It's him as is
breaking the law, not we, confound you."  ("Confound
you" was not what Mr. Connors said).

"He's dead on," said Shannon, turning to Shotover.
"It's all ye kin do.  Yer're actin' agin the law."

Shotover did not answer, but breathed hard
through his nose, wondering at the state of things
that made it an offense against the American law
to protect the American flag.  But all at once
Shannon passed him and drew his knife across the
halyards, and the great flag collapsed and sank
slowly down like a wounded eagle.  The crowd
cheered, and Shannon said in Shotover's ear:
"'Twas to save yer life, me b'y.  They're out for
blood, sure."

"Now," said Connors, using several altogether
impossible nouns and adjectives, "now run up the
green flag of ould Ireland again, or ye'll be sorry,"
and he pointed his revolver at Shotover.

"Say," cried Shannon, in a low voice to
Shotover—"say, he's dead stuck on doin' you dirt.  I
can't hold um.  Aw, say, Connors, quit your foolin',
will you; put up your flashbox—put it up,
or—or—"  But just here he broke off, and catching up
the green flag, threw it out in front of Shotover,
and cried, laughing, "Ye'll not have the heart to
shoot now."

Shotover struck the flag to the ground, set his
foot on it, and catching up Old Glory again, flung
it round him and faced them, shouting:

"*Now shoot!*"

But at this, in genuine terror, Shannon flung his
hat down and ran in front of Connors himself,
fearfully excited, and crying out: "F'r Gawd's sake,
Connors, you don't dast do it.  Wake up, will yer,
it's mornin'.  Do yer want to hiv' us all jugged
for twenty years?  It's treason and rebellion, and
I don't now *what* all, for every mug in the gang,
if yer just so much as crook dat forefinger.  Put
it up, ye damned fool.  This is a cat w'at has
changed colour."

Something of the gravity of the situation had
forced its way through the clogged minds of the
others, and, as Shannon spoke the last words,
Connors's fore-arm was knocked up and he himself
was pulled back into the crowd.

You can not always foretell how one man is
going to act, but it is easy to read the intentions of
a crowd.  Shotover saw a rush in the eyes of the
circle that was contracting about him, and turned
to face the danger and to fight for the flag as the
Shotovers of the old days had so often done.

In the books, the young aristocrat invariably
thrashes the clowns who set upon him.  But somehow
Shotover had no chance with his clowns at all.
He hit out wildly into the air as they ran in, and
tried to guard against the scores of fists.  But their
way of fighting was not that which he had learned
at his athletic club.  They kicked him in the
stomach, and, when they had knocked him down,
stamped upon his face.  It is hard to feel like a
martyr and a hero when you can't draw your
breath and when your mouth is full of blood and
dust and broken teeth.  Accordingly Shotover gave
it up, and fainted away.

When the officers finally arrived, they made no
distinction between the combatants, but locked
them all up under the charge of "Drunk and Disorderly."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Toppan`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Toppan*

.. vspace:: 2

When Frederick Woodhouse Toppan
came out of Thibet and returned to the
world in general and to San Francisco
in particular, he began to know what it meant to
be famous.  As he entered street cars and hotel
elevators he remarked a sudden observant silence
on the part of the other passengers.  The
reporters became a real instead of a feigned
annoyance and the papers at large commenced speaking
of him by his last name only.  He ceased to cut
out and paste in his scrap-book, everything that
was said of him in the journals and magazines.
People composed beforehand clever little things
to say to him when they were introduced, and he
was asked to indorse new soaps and patented
cereals.  The great magazines of the country
wrote to him for more articles, and his "Through
the Highlands of Thibet", already in its fiftieth
thousand, was in everybody's hands.

And he was hardly thirty.

To people who had preconceived ideas as to
what an Asiatic explorer should be like, Toppan
was disappointing.  Where they expected to see
a "magnificent physique" in top boots and pith
helmet, flung at length upon lion skins, smoking
a nargile, they saw only a very much tanned young
gentleman, who wore a straw hat and russet
leather shoes just like any well dressed man of
the period.  They felt vaguely defrauded because
he looked ordinary and stylish and knew what to
do with his hands and feet in a drawing-room.

He had come to San Francisco for three reasons.
First because at that place he was fitting out an
expedition for Kamtchatka which was to be the
big thing of his life, and cause him to be spoken
of together with Speke, Nansen and Stanley; second
because the manager of the lecture bureau with
whom he had signed, had scheduled him to deliver
his two lectures there, as he had already done in
Boston, New York, and elsewhere; and, third
because Victoria Boyden lived there.

When Toppan got back, the rest of Victoria's
men friends shrank considerably when she
compared them with Toppan.  They were of the
type who are in the insurance offices of fathers and
uncles during the winter, and in the summer are
to be found at the fashionable resorts, where they
idle languidly on the beaches in white flannels or
play "chopsticks" with the girls on the piano in the
hotel parlors.  Here, however, was the first white
man who had ever crossed Thibet alive, who
knew what it meant to go four days without
water and who could explain to you the
difference between the insanity caused by the lack
of sleep and that brought about by a cobra-bite.
The men of Victoria's acquaintance never had
known what it was to go without two consecutive
meals, whereas Toppan at one time in the
Himalayas had lived for several weeks upon ten ounces
of camel meat per day, after the animals had died
under their burdens.  Victoria's friends led
germans, Toppan led expeditions; their only fatigue
came from dancing.  Upon one occasion on Mount
Everest, Toppan and his companions, caught in a
snow-storm where sleep meant death, had kept
themselves awake by chewing pipe-tobacco, and
rubbing the smarting juice in their eyes.  He had
had experiences, the like of which none other of
her gentlemen friends had ever known and she had
cared for him from the first.

When a man tells a girl that he loves her in a
voice that can speak in the dialects of the interior
Thibetan states around the Tengrinor lake, or
holds her hand in one that has been sunken deep
in the throat of a hunger-mad tiger, she cannot
well be otherwise than duly impressed.

To look at, Victoria was a queen.  Just the
woman you would have chosen to be mated with a
man like Toppan, five feet, eleven in her tennis
shoes, with her head flung well back on her
shoulders, and the gait of a goddess; she could look
down on most men and in general suggested figures
of Brunehilde, Boadicea, or Berenice.  But to
know her was to find her shallow as a sun-shrunken
mill-race, to discover that her brilliancy was the
cheapest glitter, and to realise that in every way
she was lamentably unsuited for the role of
Toppan's wife.  And no one saw this so well as
Toppan himself.  He knew that she did not
appreciate him at one-tenth his real value, that she
never could and never would understand him, and
that he was in every way too good for her.

As his wife he felt sure she would only be a
hindrance and a stumbling-block in the career that
he had planned for himself, if, indeed she did not
ruin it entirely.

But first impressions were strong with him, and
because when he had first known her she had
seemed to be fit consort for an emperor, he had
gone on loving her as such ever since, making
excuses for her trivialities, her petty affectations,
her lack of interest in his life work, and even at
times her unconcealed ridicule of it.  For one thing,
Victoria wanted him to postpone his expedition
for a year, in order that he might marry her, and
Toppan objected to this because he was so circumstanced
just then that to postpone meant to abandon it.

No man is stronger than his weakest point.
Toppan's weak point was Victoria Boyden, and
he acknowledged to himself with a good deal of
humiliation that he could not make up his mind
to break with her.  Perhaps he is not to be too
severely blamed for this.  Living so much apart
from women as he did and plunged for such long
periods into an atmosphere so entirely different
from that of ordinary society, he had come to feel
intensely where he felt at all, and had lost the
faculty possessed by the more conventional, of easy
and ephemeral change from one interest to
another.  Most of Victoria's admirers in a like case,
would have lit a cigarette and walked off the
passion between dawn and dark in one night.  But
Toppan could not do this.  It was the one weak
strain in his build, "the little rift within the lute."

One of the natural consequences of their
intercourse was that they were never happy together
and hailed with hardly concealed relief the advent
of a third person.  They had absolutely no
interests in common, and their meetings were made
up of trivial bickerings.  They generally parted
quarrelling, and then immediately sat down to
count the days until they should meet again.  I
have no doubt they loved each other well enough,
but somehow they were not made to be mated—and
that was all there was about it.

During the month before the Kamtchatka
expedition sailed Toppan worked hard.  He
commanded jointly with Bushby, a lieutenant in the
Civil Engineer Corps, and the two toiled from the
dawn of one morning till the dawn of the next,
perfecting the last details of their undertaking;
correcting charts, lading rifles and ammunition,
experimenting with beef extracts and pemmican,
and corresponding with geographical societies.

Through it all Toppan found time to revise his
notes for his last lecture, and to call upon Victoria
twice a week.

On one of these occasions he said; "How do
you get on with my book, Vic, pretty stupid
reading?"  He had sent her from Bombay the first
copy that his London publishers had forwarded to him.

"Not at all," she answered, "I like it very much,
do you know it has all the fascination of a novel
for me.  Your style is just as clear and strong as
can be, and your descriptions of scenery and the
strange and novel bits of human nature in such
an unfrequented corner of the globe are much more
interesting than the most imaginative and carefully
elaborated fiction; those botanical and zoological
data must be invaluable to scientific men, I should
think; but of course I can't understand them very
well.  How do you do it, Fred?  It is certainly
very wonderful.  One would think that you were
a born writer as well as explorer.  But now see
here, Freddy; I want to talk to you again about
putting off your trip to—what do you call it—for
just a year, for my sake."

After they had wrangled over this oft-mooted
question they parted coldly, and Toppan went
away feeling aroused and unhappy.

That night he and Bushby were making a chemical
analysis of a new kind of smokeless powder.
Bushby poured out a handful of saltpeter and
charcoal upon a leaf torn from a back number of
the *Scientific Weekly* and slid it across the table
towards him.  "Now when you burn this stuff,"
remarked Toppan, spreading it out upon the table
with his finger, "you get a reaction of
2KNO3+3C=CO2+CO+, I forget the rest.  Get out your
formulae in the bookcase there behind you, will
you, and look it up for me?"

While Bushby was fingering the leaves of the
volume, Toppan caught sight of his name on the
leaf of the *Scientific Weekly* which held the
mixture.  Looking closely he saw that it occurred in a
criticism of his book which he had not yet seen.
He brushed the charcoal and saltpeter to one side
and ran his eyes over the lines:

"Toppan's great work," said the writer, "is a
book not only for the scientist but for all men.
Though dealing to a great extent with the
technicalities of geography, geology, and the sister
sciences, the author has known how to throw his
thoughts and observations into a form of
remarkable lightness and brilliancy.  In Toppan's hands
the book has all the fascination of a novel.  His:
style is clear and strong, and his descriptions of
scenery, and of the weird and unusual phases of
human nature to be met with in such an unfrequented
corner of the globe are much more interesting
than most of the imaginative and carefully
elaborated romances of adventure in the present
day.  His botanical and zoological data will be
invaluable to scientific men.  It is rare we find the
born explorer a born writer as well."

As he read, Toppan's heart grew cold within his
ribs.  "She must have learnt it like a parrot," he
mused.  "I wonder if she even"—

"Equals CO2+CO+N3+KCO3," said Bushby
turning to the table again, "come on, old man,
hurry up and let's get through with this.  It's
nearly three o'clock."

The next evening Toppan was to deliver his
lecture at the Grand Opera House, but in the
afternoon he called upon Victoria with a purpose.  She
was out at the time but he determined to wait for
her, and sat down in the drawing-room until she
should come.  Presently he saw his book with its
marbled cover—familiar to him now as the face
of a child to its father,—lying conspicuously upon
the center table.  It was the copy he had mailed to
her from Bombay.  He picked it up and ran over
the leaves; not one of them had been cut.  He
replaced the book upon the table and left the
house.

That night the Grand Opera House was packed
to the doors and the street in front was full of
hoarse, over-worked policemen and wailing
coachmen.  The awning was out over the sidewalk and
the steps of the church across the street were
banked with row upon row of watching faces.  It
was known that this was to be the last lecture of
Toppan's before he plunged into the wilderness
again, and that the world would not see him for
five years.  The mayor of the city introduced him
in a speech that was too long, and then Toppan
stood up and faced the artillery of opera-glasses,
and tried not to look into the right-hand proscenium
box that held Victoria Boyden and her party.

He kept the audience spell-bound for an hour,
while he forgot his useless notes, forgot his hearers
and the circumstances of time and place, forgot
about Victoria Boyden and their mean little
squabbles and remembered only that he was Toppan, the
great explorer, who had led his men through the
interior of Thibet, and had lived to tell it to these
people now before him.  For an hour he made the
people too, forget themselves in him and his story,
till they felt something of what he had felt on those
occasions when Hope was a phantom scattering
chaff, when Resolve wore thin under friction of
disaster, when the wheels of Life ran very low and
men thanked God that they *could* die.  For an
hour he led them steadily into the heart of the
unknown: the twilight of the unseen.  Then he had
an inspiration.

He had worked himself up to a mood wherein
he was himself at his very best, when his chosen
life-work made all else seem trivial and the desire
to do great things was big within him.  In this
mood he somehow happened to remember Victoria
Boyden, which he should not have done because she
was not to be thought of in connection with great
deeds and high resolves.  But just at that moment
Toppan felt his strength and knew how great he
really was, and how small and belittled she seemed
in comparison.  She had practiced a small
deception upon him, had done him harm and would do
him more.  He suddenly resolved to break with her
at that very moment and place while he was strong
and able to do it.

He did it by cleverly working into his talk a
little story whose real meaning no one but Victoria
understood.  For the audience it was but a bright
little bit of folk-lore of upper India.  For Victoria,
he might as well have struck her across the face.
It was cruel; it was even vulgarly cruel, which is
brutal, it was vindictive and perhaps cowardly, but
the man was smarting under a long continued
bitterness and he had at last turned and with closed
eyes struck back savagely.

The exalted mood which had brought this about,
was with him during the rest of the evening, was
with him when he drove back to his rooms in his
coupe with Bushby, and was with him as he flung
himself to bed and went to sleep with a deep sigh
of relief for that it was now over and done with
forever.

But it left him during the night and he awoke
the next morning to a realisation of what he had
done and of all he had lost.  He began by
remembering Victoria as he had first known her, by
recalling only what was good in her, and by
palliating all that was bad.  From this starting point
he went on till he was in an agony of grief and
remorse and ended by lashing himself into the
belief that Victoria had been his inspiration and
had given zest and interest to every thing he had
done.  Now he bitterly regretted that he had
thrown her over.  He had never in his life before
loved her so much.  He was unfitted for work
during all that day and passed the next night in
unavailing lamentations.  His morning's mail
brought him face to face with the crisis of his life.
It came in the shape of a letter from Victoria
Boyden.

It was a very thick and a very heavy letter and
she must have spent most of the previous day in
writing it.  He was surprised that she should have
written him at all after what had passed on that
other evening, but he was deeply happy as well
because he knew precisely what the letter would be,
before he opened it.  It would be a petition for his
forgiveness and a last attempt to win him back to
her again.

And Toppan knew that she would succeed.  He
knew that in his present mood he would make any
sacrifice for her sake.  He foresaw that her appeal
would be too strong for him.  That was, if he
opened and read her letter.  Just now the question
was, should he do it?  If he read that letter he
knew that he was lost, his career would stop where
it was.  To be great he had only to throw it
unopened into the fire; yes, but to be great without
her, was it worth the while?  What would fame
and honour and greatness be, without her?  He
realised that the time had come to choose between
her and his career and that it all depended upon
the opening of her letter.  Two hours later, he
flung himself down before his table and took her
letter in his hand.  His fingers itched for the touch
of it.  Close to his elbow lay a little copper knife
with poison grooves, such as are used by the
Hill-tribes in the Kuen-Lun mountains.  Toppan kept it
for a paper cutter; just now he picked it up.  For a
long time he remained sitting, holding Victoria's
letter in one hand, the little knife in the other.
Then he put the point under the flap of the envelope
and slowly cut it open.

Two weeks later the Kamtchatka Expedition
sailed with Bushby in command.  Toppan did not
go; he was married to Victoria Boyden that Fall.

Last season I met Toppan at Coronado Beach.
The world has about forgotten him now, but he is
quite content as he is.  He is head clerk in old
Mr. Boyden's insurance office and he plays a capital
game of tennis.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A Caged Lion`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *A Caged Lion*

.. vspace:: 2

In front of the entrance a "spieler" stood on
a starch-box and beat upon a piece of tin
with a stick, and we weakly succumbed to his
frenzied appeals and went inside.  We did this, I
am sure, partly to please the "spieler," who would
have been dreadfully disappointed if we had not
done so, but partly, too, to please Toppan, who
was always interested in the great beasts and liked
to watch them.

It is possible that you may remember Toppan
as the man who married Victoria Boyden, and, in
so doing, thrust his greatness from him and became
a bank clerk instead of an explorer.  After he
married, he came to be quite ashamed of what he
had done in Thibet and Africa and other unknown
corners of the earth, and, after a while, very
seldom spoke of that part of his life at all; or,
when he did, it was only to allude to it as a passing
boyish fancy, altogether foolish and silly, like
calf-love and early attempts at poetry.

"I used to think I was going to set the world
on fire at one time," he said once; "I suppose
every young fellow has some such ideas.  I only
made an ass of myself, and I'm glad I'm well out
of it.  Victoria saved me from that."

But this was long afterward.  He died hard,
and sometimes he would have moments of strength
in his weakness, just as before he had given up his
career during a moment of weakness in his
strength.  During the first years after he had given
up his career, he thought he was content with the
way things had come to be; but it was not so, and
now and then the old feeling, the love of the old
life, the old ambition, would be stirred into activity
again by some sight, or sound, or episode in the
conventional life around him.  A chance paragraph
in a newspaper, a sight of the Arizona deserts of
sage and cactus, a momentary panic on a ferry-boat,
sometimes even fine music or a great poem
would wake the better part of him to the desire
of doing great things.  At such times the longing
grew big and troublous within him to cut loose
from it all and get back to those places of the earth
where there were neither months nor years, and
where the days of the week had no names; where
he could feel unknown winds blowing against his
face and unnamed mountains rising beneath his
feet; where he could see great, sandy, stony
stretches of desert with hot, blue shadows, and
plains of salt, and thickets of jungle-grass, broken
only by the lairs of beasts and the paths the
steinbok make when they go down to water.

The most trifling thing would recall all this to
him, just as a couple of notes have recalled to you
whole arias and overtures.  But with Toppan it
was as though one had recalled the arias and the
overtures and then was not allowed to sing them.

We went into the arena and sat down.  The
ring in the middle was fenced in by a great, circular,
iron cage.  The tiers of seats rose around this,
a band was playing in a box over the entrance,
and the whole interior was lighted by an electric
globe slung over the middle of the cage.

Inside the cage a brown bear—to me less
suggestive of a wild animal than of lap-robes and
furriers' signs—was dancing sleepily and allowing
himself to be prodded by a person whose celluloid
standing-collar showed white at the neck above
the green of his Tyrolese costume.  The bear was
mangy, and his steel muzzle had chafed him, and
Toppan said he was corrupted of moth and rust
alike, and the audience applauded but feebly when
he and his keeper withdrew.

After this we had a clown-elephant, dressed in
a bib and tucker and vast baggy breeches—like
those of a particularly big French *Turco*—who
had lunch with his keeper, and rang the bell and
drank his wine and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief
like a bed-quilt, and pulled the chair from
underneath his companion, seeming to be amused
at it all with a strange sort of suppressed
elephantine mirth.

And then, after they had both made their bow
and gone out, in bounded and tumbled the dogs,
barking and grinning all over, jumping up on their
stools and benches, wriggling and pushing one
another about, giggling and excited like so many
kindergarten children on a show-day.  I am sure
they enjoyed their performance as much as the
audience did, for they never had to be told what
to do, and seemed only too eager for their turn
to come.  The best of it all was that they were
quite unconscious of the audience and appeared to
do their tricks for the sake of the tricks themselves,
and not for the applause which followed them.
And then, after the usual programme of wicker
cylinders, hoops, and balls was over, they all
rushed off amid a furious scrattling of paws and
filliping of tails and heels.

While this was going on, we had been hearing
from time to time a great sound, half-whine,
half-rumbling guttural cough, that came from
somewhere behind the exit from the cage.  It was
repeated at rapidly decreasing intervals, and grew
lower in pitch until it ended in a short bass grunt.
It sounded cruel and menacing, and when at its
full volume the wood of the benches under us
thrilled and vibrated.

There was a little pause in the programme
while the arena was cleared and new and much
larger and heavier paraphernalia was set about,
and a gentleman in a frock coat and a very
shiny hat entered and announced "the world's
greatest lion-tamer."  Then he went away and the
tamer came in and stood expectantly by the side
of the entrance, there was another short wait and
the band struck a long minor chord.

And then they came in, one after the other, with
long, crouching, lurching strides, not at all
good-humouredly, like the dogs, or the elephant, or
even the bear, but with low-hanging heads, surly,
watchful, their eyes gleaming with the rage and
hate that burned in their hearts and that they
dared not vent.  Their loose, yellow hides rolled
and rippled over the great muscles as they moved,
and the breath coming from their hot, half-open,
mouths turned to steam as it struck the air.

A huge, blue-painted see-saw was dragged out
to the centre, and the tamer made a sharp sound
of command.  Slowly, and with twitching tails,
two of them obeyed and clambering upon the
balancing-board swung up and down, while the
music played a see-saw waltz.  And all the while
their great eyes flamed with the detestation of the
thing and their black upper lips curled away from
their long fangs in protest of this hourly renewed
humiliation and degradation.

And one of the others, while waiting his turn
to be whipped and bullied, sat up on his haunches
and faced us and looked far away beyond us over
the heads of the audience—over the continent and
ocean, as it were—as though he saw something
in that quarter that made him forget his present
surroundings.

"You grand old brute," muttered Toppan; and
then he said: "Do you know what you would see
if you were to look into his eyes now?  You
would see Africa, and unnamed mountains, and
great stony stretches of desert, with hot blue
shadows, and plains of salt, and lairs in the
jungle-grass, and lurking places near the paths the
steinbok make when they go down to water.  But now
he's hampered and caged—is there anything worse
than a caged lion?—and kept from the life he
loves and was made for"—just here the tamer
spoke sharply to him, and his eyes and crest
drooped—"and ruled over," concluded Toppan,
"by some one who is not so great as he, who has
spoiled what was best in him and has turned his
powers to trivial, resultless uses—some one weaker
than he, yet stronger.  Ah, well, old brute, it was
yours once, we will remember that."

They wheeled out a clumsy velocipede, built
expressly for him, and, while the lash whistled and
snapped about him, the conquered king heaved
himself upon it and went around and around the
ring, while the band played a quick-step, the
audience broke into applause, and the tamer smirked
and bobbed his well-oiled head.  I thought of
Samson performing for the Philistines and Thusnelda
at the triumph of Germanicus.  The great beasts,
grand though conquered, seemed to be the only
dignified ones in the whole business.  I hated the
audience who saw their shame from behind iron
bars; I hated myself for being one of them; and
I hated the smug, sniggering tamer.

This latter had been drawing out various stools
and ladders, and now arranged the lions upon
them so they should form a pyramid, with himself
on top.

Then he swung himself up among them, with
his heels upon their necks, and, taking hold of
the jaws of one, wrenched them apart with a great
show of strength, turning his head to the audience
so that all should see.

And just then the electric light above him
cackled harshly, guttered, dropped down to a
pencil of dull red, then went out, and the place was
absolutely dark.

The band stopped abruptly with a discord, and
there was an instant of silence.  Then we heard
the stools and ladders clattering as the lions leaped
down, and straightway four pairs of lambent green
spots burned out of the darkness and traveled
swiftly about here and there, crossing and
recrossing one another like the lights of steamers in
a storm.  Heretofore, the lions had been sluggish
and inert; now they were aroused and alert in an
instant, and we could hear the swift pad-pad of
their heavy feet as they swung around the arena
and the sound of their great bodies rubbing against
the bars of the cage as one and the other passed
nearer to us.

I don't the think the audience at all appreciated
the situation at first, for no one moved or seemed
excited, and one shrill voice suggested that the
band should play "When the electric lights go out."

"Keep perfectly quiet, please!" called the tamer
out of the darkness, and a certain peculiar ring in
his voice was the first intimation of a possible
danger.

But Toppan knew; and as we heard the tamer
fumbling for the catch of the gate, which he
somehow could not loose in the darkness, he said, with
a rising voice: "He wants to get that gate open
pretty quick."

But for their restless movements the lions were
quiet; they uttered no sound, which was a bad
sign.  Blinking and dazed by the garish blue
whiteness of a few moments before, they could
see perfectly now where the tamer was blind.

"Listen," said Toppan.  Near to us, and on the
inside of the cage, we could hear a sound as of
some slender body being whisked back and forth
over the surface of the floor.  In an instant I
guessed what it was; one of the lions was crouched
there, whipping his sides with his tail.

"When he stops that he'll spring," said Toppan,
excitedly.

"Bring a light, Jerry—quick!" came the tamer's
voice.

People were clambering to their feet by this
time, talking loud, and we heard a woman cry out.

"Please keep as quiet as possible, ladies and
gentlemen!" cried the tamer; "it won't do to
excite—"

From the direction of the voice came the sound
of a heavy fall and a crash that shook the iron
gratings in their sockets.

"He's got him!" shouted Toppan.

And then what a scene!  In that thick darkness
every one sprang up, stumbling over the seats and
over each other, all shouting and crying out,
suddenly stricken with a panic fear of something they
could not see.  Inside the barred death-trap every
lion suddenly gave tongue at once, until the air
shook and sang in our ears.  We could hear the
great cats hurling themselves against the bars, and
could see their eyes leaving brassy streaks against
the darkness as they leaped.  Two more sprang
as the first had done toward that quarter of the
cage from which came sounds of stamping and
struggling, and then the tamer began to scream.

I think that so long as I shall live I shall not
forget the sound of the tamer's scream.  He did
not scream as a woman would have done, from
the head, but from the chest, which sounded so
much worse that I was sick from it in a second with
that sickness that weakens one at the pit of the
stomach and along the muscles at the back of the
legs.  He did not pause for a second.  Every
breath was a scream, and every scream was alike,
and one heard through it all the long snarls of
satisfied hate and revenge, muffled by the man's
clothes and the *rip, rip* of the cruel, blunt claws.

Hearing it all in the dark, as we did, made it all
the more dreadful.  I think for a time I must have
taken leave of my senses.  I was ready to vomit
for the sickness that was upon me, and I beat my
hands raw upon the iron bars or clasped them over
my ears, against the sounds of the dreadful thing
that was doing behind them.  I remember praying
aloud that it might soon be over, so only those
screams might be stopped.

It seemed as though it had gone on for hours,
when some men rushed in with a lantern and long,
sharp irons.  A hundred voices cried: "Here he
is, over here!" and they ran around outside the
cage and threw the light of the lantern on a place
where a heap of grey, gold-laced clothes writhed
and twisted beneath three great bulks of fulvous
hide and bristling black mane.

The irons were useless.  The three furies
dragged their prey out of their reach and crouched
over it again and recommenced.  No one dared to
go into the cage, and still the man lived and
struggled and screamed.

I saw Toppan's fingers go to his mouth, and
through that medley of dreadful noises there issued
a sound that, sick as I was, made me shrink anew
and close my eyes and teeth and shudder as though
some cold slime had been poured through the
hollow of my bones where the marrow should be.
It was as the noise of the whistling of a fine
whiplash, mingled with the whirr of a locust magnified
a hundred times, and ended in an abrupt clacking
noise thrice repeated.

At once I remembered where I had heard it
before, because, having once heard the hiss of an
aroused and angry serpent, no child of Eve can
ever forget it.

The sound that now came from between Toppan's
teeth and that filled the arena from wall to
wall, was the sound that I had heard once before
in the Paris Jardin des Plantes at feeding-time—the
sound made by the great constrictors, when
their huge bodies are looped and coiled like a
*reata* for the throw that never misses, that never
relaxes, and that no beast of the field is built strong
enough to withstand.  All the filthy wickedness
and abominable malice of the centuries since the
Enemy first entered into that shape that crawls,
was concentrated in that hoarse, whistling
hiss—a hiss that was cold and piercing like an
icicle-made sound.  It was not loud, but had in it some
sort of penetrating quality that cut through the
waves of horrid sounds about us, as the
snake-carved prow of a Viking galley might have cut
its way through the tumbling eddies of a tide-rip.

At the second repetition the lions paused.  None
better than they knew what was the meaning of
that hiss.  They had heard it before in their native
hunting-grounds in the earlier days of summer,
when the first heat lay close over all the jungle like
the hollow of the palm of an angry god.  Or if
they themselves had not heard it, their sires before
them had, and the fear of the thing bred into
their bones suddenly leaped to life at the sound
and gripped them and held them close.

When for a third time the sound sung and
shrilled in their ears, their heads drew between
their shoulders, their great eyes grew small and
glittering, the hackles rose, and stiffened on their
backs, their tails drooped, and they backed slowly
to the further side of the cage and cowered there,
whining and beaten.

Toppan wiped the sweat from the inside of his
hands and went into the cage with the keepers and
gathered up the panting, broken body, with its
twitching fingers and dead, white face and ears,
and carried it out.  As they lifted it, the handful
of pitiful medals dropped from the shredded grey
coat and rattled down upon the floor.  In the
silence that had now succeeded, it was about the
only sound one heard.

.. vspace:: 2

As we sat that evening on the porch of Toppan's
house, in a fashionable suburb of the city, he said,
for the third time: "I had that trick from a
Mpongwee headman," and added: "It was while
I was at Victoria Falls, waiting to cross the
Kalahari Desert."

Then he continued, his eyes growing keener and
his manner changing: "There is some interesting
work to be done in that quarter by some one.  You
see, the Kalahari runs like this"—he drew the lines
on the ground with his cane—"coming down in
something like this shape from the Orange River
to about the twentieth parallel south.  The aneroid
gives its average elevation about six hundred feet.
I didn't cross it at the time, because we had
sickness and the porters cut.  But I made a lot of
geological observations, and from these I have
built up a theory that the Kalahari is no desert at
all, but a big, well-watered plateau, with higher
ground on the east and west.  The tribes, too,
thereabout call the place *Linoka-Noka*, and that's
the Bantu for rivers upon rivers.  They're nasty,
though, these Bantu, and gave us a lot of trouble.
They have a way of spitting little poisoned thorns
into you unawares, and your tongue swells up and
turns blue and your teeth fall out and—"

His wife Victoria came out to us in evening dress.

"Ah, Vic," said Toppan, jumping up, with a
very sweet smile, "we were just talking about your
paper-german next Tuesday, and *I* think we might
have some very pretty favours made out of white
tissue-paper—roses and butterflies, you know."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"This Animal of a Buldy Jones"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   "*This Animal of a Buldy Jones*"

.. vspace:: 2

We could always look for fine fighting at
Julien's of a Monday morning, because
at that time the model was posed for the
week and we picked out the places from which to
work.  Of course the first ten of the *esquisse* men
had first choice.  So, no matter how early you got
up and how resolutely you held to your first row
tabouret, chaps like Rounault, or Marioton, or the
little Russian, whom we nicknamed "Choubersky,"
or Haushaulder, or the big American—"This
Animal of a Buldy Jones"—all strong *esquisse* men,
could always chuck you out when they came, which
they did about ten o'clock, when everything had
quieted down.  When two particularly big,
quick-tempered, obstinate, and combative men try to
occupy, simultaneously, a space twelve inches
square, it gives rise to complications.  We used to
watch and wait for these fights (after we had been
chucked out ourselves), and make things worse, and
hasten the crises by getting upon the outskirts of
the crowd that thronged about the disputants and
shoving with all our mights.  Then one of the
disputants would be jostled rudely against the
other, who would hit him in the face, and then
there would be a wild hooroosh and a clatter of
overturned easels and the flashing of whitened
knuckles and glimpses of two fierce red faces over
the shoulders of the crowd, and everything would
be pleasant.  Then, perhaps, you would see an
allusion in the Paris edition of the next morning's
"*Herald*" to "the brutal and lawless students."

I remember particularly one fight—quite the best
I ever saw at Julien's or elsewhere, for the matter
of that.  It was between Haushaulder and Gilet.
Haushaulder was a Dane, and six feet two.  Gilet
was French, and had a waist like Virginie's.  But
Gilet had just come back from his three years'
army service, and knew all about the savate.  They
squared off at each other, Gilet spitting like a cat,
and Haushaulder grommelant under his mustache.
"This Animal of a Buldy Jones," the big American,
bellowed to separate them, for it really looked
like a massacre.  And then, all at once, Gilet spun
around, bent over till his finger-tips touched the
floor, and balancing on the toe, lashed out
backwards with his leg at Haushaulder, like any cayuse.
The heel of his boot caught the Dane on the point
of the chin.  An hour and forty minutes later,
when Haushaulder recovered consciousness and
tried to speak, we found that the tip of his tongue
had been sliced off between his teeth as if by a pair
of scissors.  It was a really unfortunate affair, and
the government very nearly closed the atelier
because of it.  But "This Animal of a Buldy Jones"
gave us all his opinion of the savate, and
announced that the next man who savated from any
cause whatever "*aurait affaire avec lui, oui, avec
lui, cre nom!*"

Heavens!  No one *aimerait avoir affaire avec
cette animal de* Buldy Jones.  He was from
Chicago (but, of course, he couldn't help that!),
and was taller than even Haushaulder, and much
broader.  The desire for art had come upon him
all of a sudden while he was studying law at
Columbia.  For "This Animal of a Buldy Jones"
had gone into law after leaving Yale.  Here we
touch his great weakness.  He was a Yale man!
Why, he was prouder of that fact than he was of
being an American, or even a Chicagoan—and that
is saying much.  Why, he couldn't talk of Yale
without his face flushing.  Why, Yale was almost
more to him than his mother.  I remember, at the
students' ball at Bulliers, he got the Americans
together, and with infinite trouble taught us all the
Yale "yell", which he swore was a transcript from
Aristophanes, and for three hours he gravely
headed a procession that went the rounds of a hall
howling "Brek!  Kek!  Kek!  Kek!  Co-ex!" and
all the rest of it.

More than that, "This Animal of a Buldy Jones"
had pitched on his Varsity baseball nine.  In his
studio—quite the swellest in the Quarter, by the
way—he had a collection of balls that he had
pitched in match games at different times, and he
used to show them to us reverently, and if we were
his especial friends, would allow us to handle them.
They were all written over with names and dates.
He would explain them to us one by one.

"This one," he would say, "I pitched in the
Princeton game, and here's two I pitched in the
Harvard game—hard game that—our catcher gave
out—guess he couldn't hold me" (with a grin of
pride), "and Harvard made it interesting for me
until the fifth inning; then I made two men fan
out one after the other, and then, just to show 'em
what I could do, filled the bases, got three balls
called on me, and then pitched two inshoots and
an outcurve, just as hard as I could deliver.  Printz
of Harvard was at the bat.  He struck at every
one of them—and fanned out.  Here's the ball I
did it with.  Yes, sir.  Oh, I can pitch a ball all right."

Now think of that!  Here was this man, "This
Animal of a Buldy Jones," a Beaux Arts man, one
of the best colour and line men on our side, who
had three *esquisses* and five figures "on the wall"
at Julien's (any Paris art student will know what
that means), and yet the one thing he was proud of,
the one thing he cared to be admired for, the one
thing he loved to talk about, was the fact that he
had pitched for the Yale 'varsity baseball nine.

All this by way of introduction.

I wonder how many Julien men there are left
who remember the *affaire* Camme?  Plenty, I make
no doubt, for the thing was a monumental character.
I heard Roubault tell it at the "Dead Rat"
just the other day.  "Choubersky" wrote to "The
Young Pretender" that he heard it away in the
interior of Morocco, where he had gone to paint
doorways, and Adler, who is now on the "Century"
staff, says it's an old story among the illustrators.
It has been bandied about so much that there is
danger of its original form being lost.  Wherefore
it is time that it should be brought to print.

Now Camme, be it understood, was a filthy
little beast—a thorough-paced, blown-in-the-bottle
blackguard with not enough self-respect to keep
him sweet through a summer's day—a rogue, a
bug—anything you like that is sufficiently insulting;
besides all this, and perhaps because of it, he was
a duelist.  He loved to have a man slap his
face—some huge, big-boned, big-hearted man, who knew
no other weapons but his knuckles.  Camme would
send him his card the next day, with a message to
the effect that it would give him great pleasure to
try and kill the gentleman in question at a certain
time and place.  Then there would be a lot of
palaver, and somehow the duel would never come off,
and Camme's reputation as a duelist would go up
another peg, and the rest of us—beastly little
rapins that we were—would hold him in increased
fear and increased horror, just as if he were a
rattler in coil.

Well, the row began one November morning—a
Monday—and, of course, it was over the allotment
of seats.  Camme had calmly rubbed out the
name of "This Animal of a Buldy Jones" from the
floor, and had chalked his own in its place.

Now, Bouguereau had placed the *esquisse* of
"This Animal of a Buldy Jones" fifth, the
precedence over Camme.

But Camme invented reasons for a different
opinion, and presented them to the whole three
ateliers at the top of his voice and with unclean
allusions.  We were all climbing up on the taller
stools by this time, and Virginie, who was the model
of the week, was making furtive signs at us to give
the crowd a push, as was our custom.

Camme was going on at a great rate.

"*Ah, farceur!  Ah, espece de volveur, crapaud,
va; c'est a moi cette place la Saligaud va te
prom'ner, va faire des copies au Louvre.*"

To be told to go and make copies in the Louvre
was in our time the last insult.  "This Animal of a
Buldy Jones," this sometime Yale pitcher, towering
above the little frog-like Frenchman, turned to the
crowd, and said, in grave concern, his forehead
puckered in great deliberation:

"I do not know, precisely, that which it is
necessary to do with this kind of a little toad of two
legs.  I do not know whether I should spank him
or administer the good kick of the boot.  I believe
I shall give him the good kick of the boot.  Hein!"

He turned Camme around, held him at arm's
length, and kicked him twice severely.  Next day,
of course, Camme sent his card, and four of us
Americans went around to the studio of "This
Animal of a Buldy Jones" to have a smoke-talk
over it.  Robinson was of the opinion to ignore the
matter.

"Now, we can't do that," said Adler; "these
beastly continentals would misunderstand.  Can
you shoot, Buldy Jones?"

"Only deer."

"Fence?"

"Not a little bit.  Oh, let's go and punch the
wadding out of him, and be done with it!"

"No!  No!  He should be humiliated."

"I tell you what—let's guy the thing."

"Get up a fake duel and make him seem ridiculous."

"You've got the choice of weapons, Buldy Jones."

"Fight him with hat-pins."

"Oh, let's go punch the wadding out of him—he
makes me tired."

"Horse" Wilson, who hadn't spoken, suddenly
broke in with:

"Now, listen to me, you other fellows.  Let me
fix this thing.  Buldy Jones, I must be one of your
seconds."

"Soit!"

"I'm going to Camme, and say like this: 'This
Animal of a Buldy Jones' has the naming of
weapons.  He comes from a strange country, near
the Mississippi, from a place called Shee-ka-go, and
there it is not considered etiquette to fight either
with a sword or pistol; it is too common.  However,
when it is necessary that balls should be
exchanged in order to satisfy honour, a curious
custom is resorted to.  Balls are exchanged, but not
from pistols.  They are very terrible balls, large as
an apple, and of adamantine hardness.  'This
Animal of a Buldy Jones,' even now has a collection.
No American gentleman of honour travels without
them.  He would gladly have you come and make
first choice of a ball while he will select one from
among those you leave.  *Sur le terrain*, you will
deliver these balls simultaneously toward each
other, repeating till one or the other adversary
drops.  Then honour can be declared satisfied."

"Yes, and do you suppose that Camme will listen
to such tommy rot as that?" remarked "This
Animal of a Buldy Jones."  "I think I'd better just
punch his head."

"Listen to it?  Of course he'll listen to it.  You've
no idea what curious ideas these continentals have
of the American duel.  You can't propose anything
so absurd in the dueling line that they won't give it
serious thought.  And besides, if Camme won't
fight this way we'll tell him that you will have a
Mexican duel."

"What's that?"

"Tie your left wrists together, and fight with
knives in your right hand.  That'll scare the tar
out of him."

And it did.  The seconds had a meeting at the
cafe of the *Moulin Rouge*, and gave Camme's
seconds the choice of the duel Yale or the duel
Mexico.  Camme had no wish to tie himself to a
man with a knife in his hand, and his seconds came
the next day and solemnly chose a league ball—one
that had been used against the Havard nine.

Will I—will any of us ever forget that duel?
Camme and his people came upon the ground
almost at the same time as we.  It was behind the
mill of Longchamps, of course.  Roubault was one
of Camme's seconds, and he carried the ball in a
lacquered Japanese tobacco-jar—gingerly as if it
were a bomb.  We were quick getting to work.
Camme and "This Animal of a Buldy Jones" were
each to take his baseball in his hand, stand back to
back, walk away from each other just the distance
between the pitcher's box and the home plate (we
had seen to that), turn on the word, and—deliver
their balls.

"How do you feel?" I whispered to our principal,
as I passed the ball into his hands.

"I feel just as if I was going into a match game,
with the bleachers full to the top and the boys
hitting her up for Yale.  We ought to give the
yell, y' know."

"How's the ball?"

"A bit soft and not quite round.  Bernard of the
Harvard nine hit the shape out of it in a drive
over our left field, but it'll do all right."

"This Animal of a Buldy Jones" bent and
gathered up a bit of dirt, rubbed the ball in it, and
ground it between his palms.  The man's arms
were veritable connecting-rods, and were strung
with tendons like particularly well-seasoned rubber.
I remembered what he said about few catchers
being able to hold him, and I recalled the pads and
masks and wadded gloves of a baseball game, and
I began to feel nervous.  If Camme was hit on the
temple or over the heart—

"Now, say, old man, go slow, you know.  We
don't want to fetch up in Mazas for this.  By the
way, what kind of ball are you going to give him?
What's the curve?"

"I don't know yet.  Maybe I'll let him have an
up-shoot.  Never make up my mind till the last
moment."

"All ready, gentlemen!" said Roubault, coming up.

Camme had removed coat, vest, and cravat.
"This Animal of a Buldy Jones" stripped to a
sleeveless undershirt.  He spat on his hands, and
rubbed a little more dirt on the ball.

"Play ball!" he muttered.

We set them back to back.  On the word they
paced from each other and paused.  "This Animal
of a Buldy Jones" shifted his ball to his right hand,
and, holding it between his fingers, slowly raised
both his arms high above his head and a little over
one shoulder.  With his toe he made a little
depression in the soil, while he slowly turned the ball
between his fingers.

"Fire!" cried "Horse" Wilson.

On the word "This Animal of a Buldy Jones"
turned abruptly about on one foot, one leg came
high off the ground till the knee nearly touched the
chest—you know the movement and position well—the
uncanny contortions of a pitcher about to deliver.

Camme threw his ball overhand—bowled it as is
done in cricket, and it went wide over our man's
shoulder.  Down came Buldy Jones' foot, and his
arm shot forward with a tremendous jerk.  Not till
the very last moment did he glance at his adversary
or measure the distance.

"It is an in-curve!" exclaimed "Horse" Wilson
in my ear.

We could hear the ball whir as it left a grey
blurred streak in the air.  Camme made as if to
dodge it with a short toss of head and neck—it was
all he had time for—and the ball, faithful to the
last twist of the pitcher's fingers, swerved sharply
inward at the same moment and in the same direction.

When we got to Camme and gathered him up, I
veritably believed that the fellow had been done
for.  For he lay as he had fallen, straight as a
ramrod and quite as stiff, and his eyes were winking
like the shutter of a kinetoscope.  But "This
Animal of a Buldy Jones," who had seen prize-fighters
knocked out by a single blow, said it was all right.
An hour later Camme woke up and began to mumble
in pain through his clenched teeth, for the ball,
hitting him on the point of the chin, had dislocated
his jaw.

The heart-breaking part of the affair came
afterward, when "This Animal of a Buldy Jones" kept
us groping in the wet grass and underbrush until
after dark looking for his confounded baseball,
which had caromed off Camme's chin, and gone—no
one knows where.

We never found it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Dying Fires`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Dying Fires*

.. vspace:: 2

Young Overbeck's father was editor and
proprietor of the county paper in Colfax,
California, and the son, so soon as his high-school
days were over, made his appearance in the
office as his father's assistant.  So abrupt was the
transition that his diploma, which was to hang over
the editorial desk, had not yet returned from the
framer's, while the first copy that he was called on
to edit was his own commencement oration on the
philosophy of Dante.  He had worn a white pique
cravat and a cutaway coat on the occasion of its
delivery, and the county commissioner, who was
the guest of honour on the platform, had
congratulated him as he handed him his sheepskin.  For
Overbeck was the youngest and the brightest
member of his class.

Colfax was a lively town in those days.  The
teaming from the valley over into the mining
country on the other side of the Indian River was at
its height then.  Colfax was the headquarters of
the business, and the teamsters—after the long
pull up from the Indian River Cañon—showed
interest in an environment made up chiefly of
saloons.

Then there were the mining camps over by Iowa
Hill, the Morning Star, the Big Dipper, and
further on, up in the Gold Run country, the Little
Providence.  There was Dutch Flat, full of
Mexican-Spanish girls and "breed" girls, where the
dance-halls were of equal number with the bars.
There was—a little way down the line—Clipper
Gap, where the mountain ranches began, and where
the mountain cow-boy lived up to the traditions of
his kind.

And this life, tumultuous, headstrong, vivid in
colour, vigorous in action, was bound together by
the railroad, which not only made a single
community out of all that part of the east slope of the
Sierras' foothills, but contributed its own life as
well—the life of oilers, engineers, switchmen,
eating-house waitresses and cashiers, "lady" operators,
conductors, and the like.

Of such a little world news-items are evolved—sometimes
even scare-head, double-leaded descriptive
articles—supplemented by interviews with
sheriffs and ante-mortem statements.  Good grist
for a county paper; good opportunities for an
unspoiled, observant, imaginative young fellow at
the formative period of his life.  Such was the
time, such the environment, such the conditions
that prevailed when young Overbeck, at the age of
twenty-one, sat down to the writing of his first novel.

He completed it in five months, and, though he
did not know the fact then, the novel was good.
It was not great—far from it, but it was not merely
clever.  Somehow, by a miracle of good fortune,
young Overbeck had got started right at the very
beginning.  He had not been influenced by a fetich
of his choice till his work was a mere replica of
some other writer's.  He was not literary.  He
had not much time for books.  He lived in the
midst of a strenuous, eager life, a little primal even
yet; a life of passions that were often elemental in
their simplicity and directness.  His schooling and
his newspaper work—it was he who must find or
ferret out the news all along the line, from Penrhyn
to Emigrant Gap—had taught him observation
without—here was the miracle—dulling the edge
of his sensitiveness.  He saw, as those few, few
people see who live close to life at the beginning
of an epoch.  He saw into the life and the heart
beneath the life; the life and the heart of Bunt
McBride, as with eight horses and much abjuration
he negotiated a load of steel "stamps" up the
sheer leap of the Indian Cañon; he saw into the
life and into the heart of Irma Tejada, who kept
case for the faro players at Dutch Flat; he saw
into the life and heart of Lizzie Toby, the
biscuit-shooter in the railway eating-house, and into the
life and heart of "Doc" Twitchel, who had degrees
from Edinburgh and Leipsic, and who, for obscure
reasons, chose to look after the measles, sprains
and rheumatisms of the countryside.

And, besides, there were others and still others,
whom young Overbeck learned to know to the
very heart's heart of them: blacksmiths, traveling
peddlers, section-bosses, miners, horse-wranglers,
cow-punchers, the stage-drivers, the storekeeper,
the hotel-keeper, the ditch-tender, the prospector,
the seamstress of the town, the postmistress, the
schoolmistress, the poetess.  Into the lives of these
and the hearts of these young Overbeck saw, and
the wonder of that sight so overpowered him that
he had no thought and no care for other people's
books.  And he was only twenty-one!  Only
twenty-one, and yet he saw clearly into the great,
complicated, confused human machine that clashed
and jarred around him.  Only twenty-one, and yet
he read the enigma that men of fifty may alone
hope to solve!  Once in a great while this thing
may happen—in such out of the way places as that
country around Colfax in Placer County,
California, where no outside influences have play,
where books are few and misprized and the reading
circle a thing unknown.  From time to time such
men are born, especially along the line of cleavage
where the furthest skirmish line of civilisation
thrusts and girds at the wilderness.  A very few
find their true profession before the fire is stamped
out of them; of these few, fewer still have the
force to make themselves heard.  Of these last the
majority die before they attain the faculty of
making their message intelligible.  Those that remain
are the world's great men.

At the time when his first little book was on its
initial journey to the Eastern publishing houses,
Overbeck was by no means a great man.  The
immaturity that was yet his, the lack of knowledge of
his tools, clogged his work and befogged his vision.
The smooth running of the cogs and the far-darting
range of vision would come in the course of the
next fifteen years of unrelenting persistence.  The
ordering and organising and controlling of his
machine he could, with patience and by taking
thought, accomplish for himself.  The original
impetus had come straight from the almighty gods.
That impetus was young yet, feeble, yet, coming
down from so far it was spent by the time it
reached the earth—at Colfax, California.  A
touch now might divert it.  Judge with what care
such a thing should be nursed and watched;
compared with the delicacy with which it unfolds, the
opening of a rosebud is an abrupt explosion.  Later
on, such insight, such undeveloped genius may
become a tremendous world-power, a thing to split a
nation in twain as the axe cleaves the block.  But at
twenty-one, a whisper—and it takes flight; a
touch—it withers; the lifting of a finger—it is gone.

The same destiny that had allowed Overbeck
to be born, and that thus far had watched over his
course, must have inspired his choice, his very first
choice, of a publisher, for the manuscript of "The
Vision of Bunt McBride" went straight as a
home-bound bird to the one man of all others who could
understand the beginnings of genius and recognise
the golden grain of truth in the chaff of unessentials.
His name was Conant, and he accepted the
manuscript by telegram.

He did more than this, and one evening Overbeck
stood on the steps of the post-office and opened
a letter in his hand, and, looking up and off, saw
the world transfigured.  His chance had come.  In
half a year of time he had accomplished what other
men—other young writers—strive for throughout
the best years of their youth.  He had been called
to New York.  Conant had offered him a minor
place on his editorial staff.

Overbeck reached the great city a fortnight
later, and the cutaway coat and pique cravat—unworn
since Commencement—served to fortify
his courage at the first interview with the man who
was to make him—so he believed—famous.

Ah, the delights, the excitement, the inspiration
of that day!  Let those judge who have striven
toward the Great City through years of deferred
hope and heart-sinkings and sacrifice daily renewed.
Overbeck's feet were set in those streets whose
names had become legendary to his imagination.
Public buildings and public squares familiar only
through the weekly prints defiled before him like a
pageant, but friendly for all that, inviting, even.
But the vast conglomerate life that roared by his
ears, like the systole and diastole of an almighty
heart, was for a moment disquieting.  Soon the
human resemblance faded.  It became as a
machine infinitely huge, infinitely formidable.
It challenged him with superb condescension.

"I must down you," he muttered, as he made his
way toward Conant's, "or you will down me."  He
saw it clearly.  There was no other alternative.
The young boy in his foolish finery of a Colfax
tailor's make, with no weapons but such wits as the
gods had given him, was pitted against the leviathan.

There was no friend nearer than his native state
on the other fringe of the continent.  He was
fearfully alone.

But he was twenty-one.  The wits that the gods
had given him were good, and the fine fire that
was within him, the radiant freshness of his
nature, stirred and leaped to life at the challenge.
Ah, he would win, he would win!  And in his
exuberance, the first dim consciousness of his power
came to him.  He could win, he had it in him; he
began to see that now.  That nameless power was
his which would enable him to grip this monstrous
life by the very throat, and bring it down on its
knee before him to listen respectfully to what he
had to say.

The interview with Conant was no less
exhilarating.  It was in the reception-room of the
great house that it took place, and while waiting
for Conant to come in, Overbeck, his heart in his
mouth, recognised, in the original drawings on
the walls, picture after picture, signed by famous
illustrators, that he had seen reproduced in
Conant's magazine.

Then Conant himself had appeared and shaken
the young author's hand a long time, and had
talked to him with the utmost kindness of his book,
of his plans for the immediate future, of the
work he would do in the editorial office and of the
next novel he wished him to write.

"We'll only need you here in the mornings,"
said the editor, "and you can put in your
afternoons on your novel.  Have you anything in mind
as good as 'Bunt McBride'?"

"I have a sort of notion for one," hazarded the
young man; and Conant had demanded to hear it.

Stammering, embarrassed, Overbeck outlined it.

"I see, I see!" Conant commented.  "Yes, there
is a good story in that.  Maybe Hastings will want
to use it in the monthly.  But we'll make a book
of it, anyway, if you work it up as well as the
McBride story."

And so the young fellow made his first step in
New York.  The very next day he began his second
novel.

In the editorial office, where he spent his
mornings reading proof and making up "front matter,"
he made the acquaintance of a middle-aged lady,
named Miss Patten, who asked him to call on her,
and later on introduced him into the "set" wherein
she herself moved.  The set called itself the "New
Bohemians," and once a week met at Miss Patten's
apartment up-town.  In a month's time Overbeck
was a fixture in "New Bohemia."

It was made up of minor poets whose opportunity
in life was the blank space on a magazine
page below the end of an article; of men past their
prime, who, because of an occasional story in a
second-rate monthly, were considered to have
"arrived"; of women who translated novels from
the Italian and Hungarian; of decayed dramatists
who could advance unimpeachable reasons for the
non-production of their plays; of novelists whose
books were declined by publishers because of
professional jealousy on the part of the "readers," or
whose ideas, stolen by false friends, had appeared
in books that sold by the hundreds of thousands.
In public the New Bohemians were fulsome in the
praise of one another's productions.  Did a sonnet
called, perhaps, "A Cryptogram is Stella's Soul"
appear in a current issue, they fell on it with eager
eyes, learned it by heart and recited lines of it
aloud; the conceit of the lover translating the
cipher by the key of love was welcomed with
transports of delight.

"Ah, one of the most exquisitely delicate
allegories I've ever heard, and so true—so 'in the
tone'!"

Did a certain one of the third-rate novelists,
reading aloud from his unpublished manuscript,
say of his heroine: "It was the native catholicity of
his temperament that lent strength and depth to her
innate womanliness," the phrase was snapped up on
the instant.

"How he understands women!"

"Such *finesse*!  More subtle than Henry James."

"Paul Bourget has gone no further," said one
of the critics of New Bohemia; "our limitations
are determined less by our renunciations than by
our sense of proportion in our conception of ethical
standards."

The set abased itself.  "Wonderful, ah, how
pitilessly you fathom our poor human nature!"  New
Bohemia saw colour in word effects.  A poet
read aloud:

   |  *The stalwart rain!*
   |  *Ah, the rush of down-toppling waters;*
   |  *The torrent!*
   |  *Merge of mist and musky air;*
   |  *The current*
   |  *Sweeps thwart my blinded sight again.*
   |

"Ah!" exclaimed one of the audience, "see, see
that bright green flash!"

Thus in public.  In private all was different.
Walking home with one or another of the set,
young Overbeck heard their confidences.

"Keppler is a good fellow right enough, but,
my goodness, he can't write verse!"

"That thing of Miss Patten's to-night!  Did
you ever hear anything so unconvincing, so
obvious?  Poor old woman!"

"I'm really sorry for Martens; awfully decent
sort, but he never should try to write novels."

By rapid degrees young Overbeck caught the
lingo of the third-raters.  He could talk about
"tendencies" and the "influence of reactions."  Such
and such a writer had a "sense of form,"
another a "feeling for word effects."  He knew all
about "tones" and "notes" and "philistinisms."  He
could tell the difference between an allegory
and a simile as far as he could see them.  An
anticlimax was the one unforgivable sin under heaven.
A mixed metaphor made him wince, and a split
infinitive hurt him like a blow.

But the great word was "convincing."  To say
a book was convincing was to give positively the
last verdict.  To be "unconvincing" was to be shut
out from the elect.  If the New Bohemian decided
that the last popular book was unconvincing, there
was no appeal.  The book was not to be mentioned
in polite conversation.

And the author of "The Vision of Bunt McBride,"
as yet new to the world as the day he was
born, with all his eager ambition and quick
sensitiveness, thought that all this was the real thing.
He had never so much as seen literary people
before.  How could he know the difference?  He
honestly believed that New Bohemia was the true
literary force of New York.  He wrote home that
the association with such people, thinkers, poets,
philosophers, was an inspiration; that he had
learned more in one week in their company than
he had learned in Colfax in a whole year.

Perhaps, too, it was the flattery he received that
helped to carry Overbeck off his feet.  The New
Bohemians made a little lion of him when "Bunt
McBride" reached its modest pinnacle of popularity.
They kotowed to him, and toadied to him,
and fagged and tooted for him, and spoke of his
book as a masterpiece.  They said he had
succeeded where Kipling had ignominiously failed.
They said there was more harmony of prose
effects in one chapter of "Bunt McBride" than in
everything that Bret Harte ever wrote.  They
told him he was a second Stevenson—only with
more refinement.

Then the women of the set, who were of those
who did not write, who called themselves "mere
dilettantes," but who "took an interest in young
writers" and liked to influence their lives and works,
began to flutter and buzz around him.  They told
him that they understood him; that they under
stood his temperament; that they could see where
his forte lay; and they undertook his education.

There was in "The Vision of Bunt McBride" a
certain sane and healthy animalism that hurt
nobody, and that, no doubt, Overbeck, in later books,
would modify.  He had taken life as he found it
to make his book; it was not his fault that the
teamsters, biscuit-shooters and "breed" girls of the
foothills were coarse in fibre.  In his sincerity he
could not do otherwise in his novel than paint life
as he saw it.  He had dealt with it honestly; he
did not dab at the edge of the business; he had
sent his fist straight through it.

But the New Bohemians could not abide this.

"Not so much *faroucherie*, you dear young
Lochinvar!" they said.  "Art must uplift.  'Look
thou not down, but up toward uses of a cup';" and
they supplemented the quotation by lines from
Walter Peter, and read to him from Ruskin and
Matthew Arnold.

Ah, the spiritual was the great thing.  We were
here to make the world brighter and better for
having lived in it.  The passions of a waitress in
a railway eating-house—how sordid the subject!
Dear boy, look for the soul, strive to rise to higher
planes!  Tread upward; every book should leave a
clean taste in the mouth, should tend to make one
happier, should elevate, not debase.

So by degrees Overbeck began to see his future
in a different light.  He began to think that he
really had succeeded where Kipling had failed;
that he really was Stevenson with more refinement,
and that the one and only thing lacking in his work
was soul.  He believed that he must strive for the
spiritual, and "let the ape and tiger die."  The
originality and unconventionally of his little book
he came to regard as crudities.

"Yes," he said one day to Miss Patten and a
couple of his friends, "I have been re-reading my
book of late.  I can see its limitations—now.  It
has a lack of form; the tonality is a little false.  It
fails somehow to convince."

Thus the first Winter passed.  In the mornings
Overbeck assiduously edited copy and made up
front matter on the top floor of the Conant
building.  In the evenings he called on Miss Patten,
or some other member of the set.  Once a week,
up-town, he fed fat on the literary delicatessen that
New Bohemia provided.  In the meantime, every
afternoon, from luncheon-time till dark, he toiled
on his second novel, "Renunciations."  The
environment of "Renunciations" was a far cry from
Colfax, California.  It was a city-bred story, with
no fresher atmosphere than that of bought flowers.
Its *dramatis personae* were all of the leisure class,
opera-goers, intriguers, riders of blood horses,
certainly more refined than Lizzie Toby, biscuit-shooter,
certainly more *spirituelle* than Irma Tejada,
case-keeper in Dog Omahone's faro joint,
certainly more elegant than Bunt McBride,
teamster of the Colfax Iowa Hill Freight
Transportation Company.

From time to time, as the novel progressed, he
read it to the dilettante women whom he knew
best among the New Bohemians.  They advised
him as to its development, and "influenced" its
outcome and dénouement.

"I think you have found your *métier*, dear boy,"
said one of them, when "Renunciations" was nearly
completed.  "To portray the concrete—is it not a
small achievement, sublimated journalese, nothing
more?  But to grasp abstractions, to analyse a
woman's soul, to evoke the spiritual essence in
humanity, as you have done in your ninth chapter
of 'Renunciations'—that is the true function of
art.  *Je vous fais mes compliments*.  'Renunciations'
is a *chef-d'oeuvre*.  Can't you see yourself
what a stride you have made, how much broader
your outlook has become, how much more catholic,
since the days of 'Bunt McBride'?"

To be sure, Overbeck could see it.  Ah, he was
growing, he was expanding.  He was mounting
higher planes.  He was more—catholic.  That, of
all words, was the one to express his mood.
Catholic, ah, yes, he was catholic!

When "Renunciations" was finished he took the
manuscript to Conant and waited a fortnight in an
agony of suspense and repressed jubilation for the
great man's verdict.  He was all the more anxious
to hear it because, every now and then, while
writing the story, doubts—distressing, perplexing—had
intruded.  At times and all of a sudden, after days
of the steadiest footing, the surest progress, the
story—the whole set and trend of the affair—would
seem, as it were, to escape from his control.
Where once, in "Bunt McBride," he had gripped,
he must now grope.  What was it?  He had been
so sure of himself, with all the stimulus of new
surroundings, the work in this second novel should
have been all the easier.  But the doubt would fade,
and for weeks he would plough on, till again, and
all unexpectedly, he would find himself in an agony
of indecision as to the outcome of some vital pivotal
episode of the story.  Of two methods of treatment,
both equally plausible, he could not say which
was the true, which the false; and he must
needs take, as it were, a leap in the dark—it was
either that or abandoning the story, trusting to
mere luck that he would, somehow, be carried
through.

A fortnight after he had delivered the manuscript
to Conant he presented himself in the publisher's
office.

"I was just about to send for you," said Conant.
"I finished your story last week."

There was a pause.  Overbeck settled himself
comfortably in his chair, but his nails were cutting
his palms.

"Hastings has read it, too—and—well, frankly,
Overbeck, we were disappointed."

"Yes?" inquired Overbeck, calmly.  "H'm—that's
too b-bad."

He could not hear, or at least could not
understand, just what the publisher said next.  Then,
after a time that seemed immeasurably long, he
caught the words:

"It would not do you a bit of good, my boy, to
have us publish it—it would harm you.  There are
a good many things I would lie about, but books
are not included.  This 'Renunciations' of yours
is—is, why, confound it, Overbeck, it's foolishness."

Overbeck went out and sat on a bench in a
square near by, looking vacantly at a fountain as
it rose and fell and rose again with an incessant
cadenced splashing.  Then he took himself home
to his hall bedroom.  He had brought the
manuscript of his novel with him, and for a long time he
sat at his table listlessly turning the leaves,
confused, stupid, all but inert.  The end, however, did
not come suddenly.  A few weeks later "Renunciations"
was published, but not by Conant.  It bore
the imprint of an obscure firm in Boston.  The
covers were of limp dressed leather, olive green,
and could be tied together by thongs, like a
portfolio.  The sale stopped after five hundred copies
had been ordered, and the real critics, those who
did not belong to New Bohemia, hardly so much
as noticed the book.

In the Autumn, when the third-raters had come
back from their vacations, the "evenings" at Miss
Patten's were resumed, and Overbeck hurried to
the very first meeting.  He wanted to talk it all over
with them.  In his chagrin and cruel disappointment
he was hungry for some word of praise, of
condolement.  He wanted to be told again, even
though he had begun to suspect many things, that
he had succeeded where Kipling had failed, that he
was Stevenson with more refinement.

But the New Bohemians, the same women and
fakirs and half-baked minor poets who had
"influenced" him and had ruined him, could hardly
find time to notice him now.  The guest of the
evening was a new little lion who had joined the
set.  A symbolist versifier who wrote over the
pseudonym of de la Houssaye, with black, oily hair
and long white hands; him the Bohemians thronged
about in crowds as before they had thronged about
Overbeck.  Only once did any one of them pay
attention to the latter.  This was the woman who
had nicknamed him "Young Lochinvar."  Yes, she
had read "Renunciations," a capital little thing, a
little thin in parts, lacking in *finesse*.  He must
strive for his true medium of expression, his true
note.  Ah, art was long!  Study of the new
symbolists would help him.  She would beg him to
read Monsieur de la Houssaye's "The Monoliths."  Such
subtlety, such delicious word-chords!  It
could not fail to inspire him.

Shouldered off, forgotten, the young fellow crept
back to his little hall bedroom and sat down to
think it over.  There in the dark of the night his
eyes were opened, and he saw, at last, what these
people had done to him; saw the Great Mistake,
and that he had wasted his substance.

The golden apples, that had been his for the
stretching of the hand, he had flung from him.
Tricked, trapped, exploited, he had prostituted the
great good thing that had been his by right divine,
for the privilege of eating husks with swine.  Now
was the day of the mighty famine, and the starved
and broken heart of him, crying out for help,
found only a farrago of empty phrases.

He tried to go back; he did in very fact go back
to the mountains and the cañons of the great
Sierras.  "He arose and went to his father," and,
with such sapped and broken strength as New
Bohemia had left him, strove to wrest some
wreckage from the dying fire.

But the ashes were cold by now.  The fire that
the gods had allowed him to snatch, because he
was humble and pure and clean and brave, had
been stamped out beneath the feet of minor and
dilettante poets, and now the gods guarded close
the brands that yet remained on the altars.

They may not be violated twice, those sacred
fires.  Once in a lifetime the very young and the
pure in heart may see the shine of them and pluck
a brand from the altar's edge.  But, once possessed,
it must be watched with a greater vigilance than
even that of the gods, for its light will live only
for him who snatched it first.  Only for him that
shields it, even with his life, from the contact of
the world does it burst into a burning and a shining
light.  Let once the touch of alien fingers disturb
it, and there remains only a little heap of bitter
ashes.





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.. _`Grettir at Drangey`:

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   *Grettir at Drangey*

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   \I

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   HOW GRETTIR CAME TO THE ISLAND

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A long slant of rain came from out the
northwest, and much fog; and the sea,
still swollen by the last of the winter
gales—now two days gone—raced by the bows of
their boat in great swells, quiet, huge.

It was cold, and the wind, like a hound at fault,
hunted along through the gorges between the wave
heads, casting back and forth swiftly in bulging,
sounding blasts that made an echo between the
walls of water.  At times the wind discovered the
boat and leaped upon it suddenly with a gush of
fierce noise, clutching at the sail and bearing it
down as the dog bears down the young elk.

The sky, a vast reach of broken grey, slid along
close overhead, sometimes even dropping flat upon
the sea, blotting the horizon and whirling about
like geyser mist or the reek and smoke from the
mouth of *jokuls*.  Then, perhaps, out of the fog
and out of the rain, suddenly great and fearful
came towering and dipping a mighty berg, the
waves breaking like surf about its base, spires of
grey ice lifting skywards, all dripping and gashed
and jagged; knobs and sharp ridges thrusting from
under beneath the water, full of danger to ships.
At such moments they must put the helm over
quickly, sheering off from the colossus before it
caught and trampled them.

But no living thing did they see through all
the day.  Sea birds there were none; no porpoises
played about the boat, no seals barked from surge
to surge.  There was nothing but the silent gallop
of the waves, the flitting of the leaden sky, the
uneven panting of the wind, and the rattle of
the rain on the half-frozen sail.  The sea was very
lonely, barren, empty of all life.

Towards the middle of the day, when Iceland
lay far behind them,—a bar of black on the ocean's
edge,—they were little by little aware of the roll
and thunder of breakers, and the cries and calls of
very many sea birds and—very faint—the bleating
of sheep.  The fog and the scud of rain and the
spindrift that the wind whipped from off the
wavetops shut out all sight beyond the cast of a spear.
But they knew that they must be driving hard upon
the island, and Grettir, from his place at the helm,
bent himself to look under the curve of the sail.
He called to Illugi, his brother, and to Noise, the
thrall, who stood peering at the bows of the boat
(their eyes made small to pierce the mist), to know
if they saw aught of the island.

"I see," answered Illugi, "only wrack and drift
of wreck and streamers of kelp, but we are close
upon it."

Then all at once Grettir threw the boat up into
the wind, and shouted aloud:

"Look overhead!  Quick!  Above there!  We
are indeed close."

And for all that the foot and mid-most part of
the island were unseen because of the mist, there,
far above them, between sea and sky, looming, as it
were, out of heaven, rose suddenly the front of the
cliff, rearing the forehead of it, high from out all
that din of surf and swirl of mist and rain, bare
to the buffet of storms, iron-strong, everlasting, a
mighty rock.

They lowered the sail and ran out the sweeps,
and for an hour skirted the edge of the island
searching for the landing-place, where the
rope-ladder hung from the cliff's edge.  When they
had found it, they turned the nose of the boat
landward, and, caught by the set of the surf, were
drawn inwards, and at last flung up on the beaches.
Waist-deep in the icy undertow, they ran the boat
up and made her fast, rejoicing that they had won
to land without ill-fortune.

The wind for an instant tore in twain the veils
of fog, and they saw the black cliff towering above
them, as well as the ladder that hung from its
summit clattering against the rock as the wind
dashed it to and fro, and as they turned from the
boat to look about them, lo, at their feet, stranded
at make of the ebb, a great walrus, crushed between
two ice-floes, lay dead, the rime of the frost
encrusting its barbels.

So Grettir Asmundson, called The Strong,
outlawed throughout Iceland, came with his brother
Illugi, and the thrall Noise, to live on the Island of
Drangey.

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   \II

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   HOW GRETTIR AND ILLUGI HIS BROTHER KEPT THE ISLAND

.. vspace:: 2

On top of the cliff (to be reached only by
climbing the rope-ladder) were sheep-walks, where the
shepherds from the mainland kept their flocks.
Grettir and Illugi took over these, for food and
for the sake of their pelts which were to make
them coverings.  They built themselves a house
out of the driftwood that came ashore at the foot
of the cliff with every tide, and throughout the
rest of the winter days lived in peace.

But in the early spring a fisherman carried the
news to the mainland that he had seen men on the
top of Drangey, and that the ladder was up.

Forthwith came the farmers and shepherds in
their boats to know if such were the truth.  They
found, indeed, the ladder up, and after calling and
shouting a long time time, brought the hero and his
brother to the cliff's edge.

"What now?" they cried.  "Give a reckoning
of our sheep.  Is it peace or war between you and
us?  Why have you come to our island?  Answer,
Grettir—outlaw."

"What I have, I hold," called Grettir.  "Outlawed
I am, indeed, and no man is there in all
Iceland that dare help me to home or hiding.  Mine
is the Island of Drangey, and mine are the sheep
and the goats."

"Robber!" shouted the shepherds, "since when
have you bought the island?  Show the title."

For answer Grettir drew his sword from its
sheath, and held it high.

"That is my title," he cried.  "When that you
shall take from me, the Island of Drangey
is yours again."

"At least render up our sheep," answered the
shepherds.

"What I have said, I have said!" cried Grettir,
and with that he and Illugi drew back from the
cliff's edge and were no more seen.

The shepherds sailed back to the mainland, and
could think of no way of ridding the island of
Grettir and his brother.

The summer waned, and finding themselves no
further along than at the beginning, they struck
hands with a certain Thorbjorn, called The Hook,
and sold him their several claims.

So it came about that Thorbjorn the Hook was
also an enemy of Grettir, for he swore that foul
or fair, ill or well, he would have the head of the
hero, and the price that was upon it, as well as the
sheepwalks and herds of Drangey.

This Thorbjorn had an old foster-mother named
Thurid, who, although the law of Christ had long
since prevailed through all the country, still made
witchcraft, and by this means promised The Hook
that he should have the island, and with it the heads
of Illugi and Grettir.  She herself was a mumbling,
fumbling carline of a sour spirit and fierce temper.
Once when The Hook and his brother were at
tail-game, she, looking over his shoulder, taunted him
because he had made a bad move.  On his answering
in surly fashion, she caught up one of the
pieces, and drove the tail of it so fiercely against
his eye that the ball had started from the socket.
He had sprung up with a mighty oath, and dealt
her so strong a blow that she had taken to her
bed a month, and thereafterward must walk with a
stick.  There was no love lost between the two.

Meanwhile, Grettir and Illugi lived in peace
upon the top of Drangey.  Illugi was younger than
the hero; a fine lad with yellow hair and blue
eyes.  The brothers loved each other, and could
not walk or sit together, but that the arm of one
was about the shoulder of the other.  The lad knew
very well that neither he nor Grettir would ever
leave Drangey alive; but in spite of that he abode
on the island, and was happy in the love and
comradeship of his older brother.  As for Grettir,
hunted and hustled from Norway to Skaptar Jokul,
he could trust Illugi only.  The thrall Noise was
meet for little but to gather driftwood to feed the
fire.  But Illugi, of all men in the world, Grettir
had chosen to stay at his side in this, the last stand
of his life, and to bear him company in the night
when he waked and was afraid.

For the weird that the Vampire had laid upon
Grettir, when he had fought with him through the
night at Thorhall-stead, lay heavy upon him.  As
the Vampire had said, his strength was never
greater than at the moment when, spent and weary
with the grapple, he had turned the monster under
him; and, moreover, as the dead man had foretold,
the eyes of him—the sightless, lightless dead eyes
of him—grew out of the darkness in the late
watches of the night, and stared at Grettir
whichever way he turned.

For a long time all went well with the two.
Bleak though it was, the brothers grew to love the
Island of Drangey.  Not all the days were so bitter
as the one that witnessed their arrival.  Throughout
the summer—when the daylight lengthened
and lengthened, till at last the sun never set at
all—the weather held fair.  The crust of soil on the
top of the great rock grew green and brilliant with
gorse and moss and manzel-wursel.  Blackberries
flourished on southern exposures and in crevices
between the bowlders, and wild thyme and heather
bloomed and billowed in the sea wind.

Day after day the brothers walked the edge of
the cliff, making the rounds of the snares they had
set for sea fowl.  Day after day, descending to the
beaches, they fished in the offing or with ready
spears crept from rock to rock, stalking the great
bull-walruses that made the land to sun themselves.
Day after day in a cloudless sky the sun shone;
day after day the sea, deep blue, coruscated and
flashed in his light; day after day the wind blew
free, the flowers spread, and the surf shouted
hoarsely on the beaches, and the sea fowl clamoured,
cried, and rose and fell in glinting hordes.
The air was full of the fine, clean aroma of the
ocean, even the perfume of the flowers was crossed
with a tang of salt, and the seaweed at low tide
threw off, under the heat of the sun, a warm, sweet
redolence of its own.

It was a brave life.  They were no man's men.
The lonely, rock-ribbed island, the grass, the
growths of green, the blue sea, and the blessed
sunlight were their friends, their helpers; they held
what of the world they saw in fief.  They made
songs to the morning, and sang them on the
cliff's edge, looking off over the sea beneath,
standing on a point of rock, the wind in their faces, the
taste of salt in their mouths, their long braids of
yellow hair streaming from their foreheads.

They made songs to their swords, and swung
the ponderous blades in cadence as they sang—wild,
unrhymed, metrical chants, monotonous, turning
upon but few notes; savage songs, full of
man-slayings and death-fights against great odds,
shouted out in deep-toned, male voices, there, far
above the world, on that airy, wind-swept, lonely
rock.  A brave life!

The end they knew must come betimes.  They
were in nowise afraid.  They made a song to their
death—the song they would sing when they had
turned Berserk in the crash of swords, when the
great grey blades were rising and falling, death,
like lightning, leaping from their edges; when
shield rasped shield, and the spears sank home and
wrenched out the life in a spurt of scarlet, and the
massive axes rang upon helmet and hauberk, and
men, heroes all, met death with a cheer, and went
out into the Dark with a shout.  A brave life!



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   \III

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   OF THE WEIRD OF THURID, FOSTER-MOTHER TO THORBJORN HOOK

.. vspace:: 2

Twice during that summer The Hook made
attempts to secure the island.  Once he sailed
over to Drangey, and standing up in the prow
of his boat near the beach, close by where
the ladder hung, talked long with Grettir, who
came to the rim of the cliff in answer to his shouts.
He promised the Outlaw (so only that he would
yield up the island) full possession of half the sheep
that yet remained and a free passage in one of his
ships to any port within fifty leagues.  But the
hero had but one answer to all persuadings.

"Drangey is mine," he said.  "There is no rede
whereby you can get me hence.  Here do I bide,
whatso may come to hand, to the day of my death
and my undoing," and The Hook must sail home
in evil mind, gnawing his nails in his fury, and
vowing that he would yet gain the island and lay
Grettir to earth, and get the best out of the bad
bargain he had made.

Another time The Hook hired a man named
Hœring, a great climber, to try, by night, to scale
the hinder side of Drangey where the cliff was not
so bold.  But halfway up the man lost either his
wits or his footing, for he fell dreadfully upon the
rocks far below, and brake the neck of him, so that
the spine drave through the skin.

And after that, certainly Grettir and Illugi were
let alone.  The fame of them and of their seizure
of Drangey and the blood feud between them and
Thorbjorn, called The Hook, went wide through
all that part of Iceland, and many the man that
put off from the mainland and sailed to the island,
just to hail the Outlaw, at the head of the ladder,
and wish him well.  Thus the summer and the next
winter passed.

At about the break-up of the winter night, The
Hook began to importune his foster-mother,
Thurid, that she should make good her promise as to
the winning of Grettir.  At last she said: "If you
are to have my rede, I must have my will.  Strike
hands with my hand then, and swear to me to do
those things that I shall say."  And The Hook
struck hands and sware the oath.

Then, though he was loath to visit the island
again, she bade him man an eight-oared boat and
flit her out to Drangey.

When they had reached the island, and after
much shouting had brought Grettir and Illugi to
the edge of the rock, Thorbjorn again renewed his
offer, saying further that if there were now but few
sheep left upon the island, he would add a bag of
silver pennies to make the difference good.

"Bootless be your quest," answered Grettir.
"Wot this well.  What I have said, I have said.
My bones shall rot upon Drangey ere I set foot on
other soil."

But at his words the carline, who till now had
sat huddled in rags and warps in the bow of the
boat, stirred herself and screamed out:

"An ill word for a fair offer.  The wits are out
of these men that they may not know the face of
their good fortune, and upon an evil time have
they put their weal from them.  Now this I cast
over thee, Grettir; that thou be left of all health
and good-hap, all good heed and wisdom, and that
the longer ye live the less shall be thy luck.  Good
hope have I, Grettir, that thy days of gladness shall
be fewer in time to come than in time gone by."

And at the words behold, Grettir the Strong,
whose might no two men could master, staggered as
though struck, and then a rage came upon him, and
plucking up a stone from the earth, he flung it at
the heap of rags in the boat, so that it fell upon
the hag's leg and brake it.

"An evil deed, brother," said Illugi.  "Surely
no good will come of that."

"Nor none from the words of that hell-cat yonder,"
answered Grettir.  "Not over-much were-gild
were paid for us, though the price should be one
carline's life."

The Hook sailed back to the mainland after this,
and sat at home while the leg of his foster-mother
mended.  But when she was able to walk again,
she bade him lead her forth upon the shore.  For
a time she hobbled up and down till she had found
a piece of driftwood to her liking.  She turned
over, now upon this side, now upon that, mumbling
to herself the while, till The Hook, puzzled, said:

"What work ye there, foster-mother?"

"The bane of Grettir," answered the witch, and
with that she crouched herself down by the log and
cut runes upon it.  Then she stood upright and
walked backwards about the log, and went widdershins
around it, and then, after carving more runes,
bade Thorbjorn cast it into the sea.

The Hook scoffed and jeered, but, mindful of his
oath, set the log adrift.  Now the flood tide made
strongly at the time, and the wind set from off the
ocean.

"It will come to shore," he said.

"Ay, that I hope," said the witch; "to the shore
of Drangey."

On the beaches, where the torn scum and froth
of the waves shuddered and tumbled to and fro in
the wind, The Hook and the old witch stood watching.
Thrice the surf flung the log landward, thrice
the undertow sucked it back.  It was carried under
the curve of a great hissing comber, disappeared,
then rose dripping on the far side.  The hag, bent
upon her crutch, her toothless jaws fumbling and
working, her gray hair streaming in the wind, fixed
a glittering eye, malevolent, iniquitous, far out to
sea where Drangey showed itself, a block of misty
blue over the horizon's edge.

"A strong spell for a strong man," she muttered,
"and an ill curse for an evil deed.  Blighted be the
breasts that sucked ye, and black and bitter the
bread ye cat.  Look thou now, foster-son," she
cried, raising her voice.

The Hook crossed himself, and his head
crouched fearfully between his shoulders.  Under
his bent brows the glance of him shot uneasily
from side to side.

"A bad business," he whispered, and he trembled
as he spoke.  For the log was riding the waves like
a skiff, headed seawards, making way against tide
and wind, veering now east, now west, but in the
main working steadily toward Drangey.  "A bad
business, and peril of thy life is toward if the deed
thou hast done this day be told of at Thingvalla."



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   \IV

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   THE NIGHT-FLITTING OF THORBJORN HOOK

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By candle-lighting time that day the storm
had reached such a pitch and so mighty was
the fury and noise raging across the top of
Drangey, that Grettir and Illugi must needs put
their lips to one another's ears when they spoke.
There was no rain as yet, and the wind that held
straight as an arrow's flight over the ocean, had
blown away all mists and clouds, so that the
atmosphere was of an ominous clearness, and the coasts
of Iceland showed livid white against the purple
black of the sky.

There were strange sounds about: the prolonged
alarums of the gale; blast trumpeting to blast all
through the hollow upper spaces of the air; the
metallic slithering of the frozen grasses, writhing
and tormented; the minute whistle of driving sand;
the majestic diapason of the breakers, and the wild
piping of bewildered sea-mews and black swans,
as, helpless in the sudden gusts, they drove past,
close overhead with slanted wings stretched tense
and taut.

Towards evening Grettir and Illugi regained the
hut, their bodies bent and inclined against the wind.
They bore between them the carcass of a slaughtered
sheep, the last on the island, for by now they
had killed and eaten all of the herd, with the
exception of one old ram, whom they had spared
because of his tameness.  This one followed the
brothers about like a dog, and each night came to
the door of the hut and butted against it till he was
allowed to come in.

Earlier in the day Grettir, foreseeing that the
weather would be hard, had sent Noise, the servant,
to gather in a greater supply of drift.  The
thrall now met the brothers at the door of the hut,
staggering under the weight of a great log.  He
threw his burden down at Grettir's feet and spoke
surlily, for he was but little pleased with his lot:

"There be that which I hold will warm you
enough.  Hew it now yourself, for I am spent with
the toil of getting it in on such a night as this."

But as Grettir heaved up the axe, Illugi sprang
forward with a hand outstretched and a warning
cry.  He had glanced at the balk of drift, and
had seen it to be one that Grettir had twice
discarded, suspicious of the runes that he saw were
cut into it.  Even Noise had been warned and
forbidden to bring it to the hut.  Doubtless on this
day the thrall had found it close by the foot of the
ladder, and being too slothful and too ill-tempered
to seek farther, had fetched it in despite of Grettir's
commands.

"Brother," cried Illugi, "have a heed what ye do!"

But he spoke too late.  Grettir hewed strong
upon the balk, and the axe flipped from it and
drave into his leg below the knee, so that the blade
hung in the bone.  Grettir flung down the axe, and
staggered into the hut and sank upon the bed.

"Ill-luck is to us-ward," he cried, "and now wot
I well that my death is upon me.  For no good
thing was this drift-timber sent thrice to us.  Noise,
evilly hast thou done, and ill hast thou served us.
Go now and draw the ladder, and let thy faithful
service henceforth make good the ill-turn thou hast
done me to-day."  And with the words the brothers
drove him out into the night.

Grumbling, the thrall made his way to the
ladder-head, and sat down cursing.

"A fine life," he muttered, "hounded like a
house-carle from dawn to dark.  Because the son
of Asmund swings awkwardly his axe and notches
the skin of him, I must be driven from house and
hearthstone on so hard a night as this.  Draw the
ladder!  Ay, draw the ladder, says he.  By God! it
were no man's deed to risk whether he could win
to the island in such a storm as this."

For all that, he made at least one attempt to
draw the ladder up.  But it was heavy, and the
wind, thrashing it to and fro, made it hard to
manage.  Noise soon gave over, and, out of spite
refusing to return to the hut, drew his cloak over
his head, and crawling in behind a bowlder
addressed himself to sleep.  He was awakened by a
blow.

He sprang up.  The night was overcast; it had
been raining; his cloak was drenched.  Men were
there; dark figures crowding together, whispering.
There was a click and clash of steel, and against
the pale blur of the sky, he saw, silhouetted, the
moving head of a spear.  Again some one struck
him.  He wrenched about terrified, and a score of
hands gripped him close, while at his throat sprang
the clutch of fingers iron-strong.  Then a voice:

"Fool, and son of a fool, and worse than a fool!
It is I, Thorbjorn, called The Hook.  Speak as he
should speak who is nigh to death, true words and
few words.  What of Grettir?"

"Sore bestead," Noise made shift to answer,
through the grip upon his throat.  "Crippled with
his own axe as he hewed upon a log of firewood but
this very day.  Down upon his back he is, and none
to stand at his side, when the need is on him, but
the boy Illugi."

"A log, say you?" whispered The Hook.  Then
turning to a comrade: "Mark you that, Hialfi
Thinbeard."

"A log cut with runes," insisted Noise.

"Ay, with runes," repeated The Hook.  "With
runes, I say, Hialfi Thinbeard.  My mind misgave
me when the carline urged this flitting to-night, and
only for my oath's sake I would have foregone it.
But an old she-goat knows the shortest path to the
byre.  As for you"—he turned to Noise: "Grettir
is mine enemy, and the feud of blood lies between
us, but he deserves a better thrall than so foul a
bird as thou."

Thereat he gave the word, and his carles set
upon Noise and beat him till no breath was left in
his body.  Then they bound him hand and foot,
and dragged him behind a rock, and left him.

Noise watched them as they drew to one side and
whispered together.  There were at least twenty of
them.  For a long moment they conferred together
in low voices, while the wind shrilled fiercely in the
cluster of their spear-blades.  Then there was a
movement.  The group broke up.  Silently and
with cautious steps the dark figures of the men
moved off in the direction of the hut.  Twice, as
The Hook gave the word, they halted to listen.
Then they moved on again.  They disappeared.  A
pebble clicked under foot, a sword struck faintly
against a rock.

There was no more sound.  The rain urged by
the wind held steadily across the top of the Island
of Drangey.  It wanted about three hours till dawn.



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   \V

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   OF THE MAN-SLAYING ON DRANGEY

.. vspace:: 2

In the hut, his head upon his brother's lap,
Grettir lay tossing with pain.  From the thigh
down the leg was useless, and from the thigh
down it throbbed with anguish, yet the Outlaw gave
no sign of his sufferings, and even to speed the
slow passing of the night had sung aloud.

It was a song of the old days, when all men were
friendly to him, when he was known as Grettir
Asmundson and not Grettir the Outlaw; and as he
sang, his mind went back through the years of all
that wild, troubled life of his, and he remembered
many things.  Back again in the old home at Biarg,
free and happy once more he saw himself as he
should have been, head of his mother's household,
his foot upon his own hearthstone, his head under
his own rooftree.  And there should be no more
foes to fight, and no more hiding and night-riding;
no noontime danger to be faced down; no enemies
that struck in the dark to be baffled.  And he
would be free again; he would be among his
fellows; he would touch the hand of friends, would
know the companionship of brave and honest men
and the love of good and honest women.  Would it
all be his again some day?  Would the old, old
times come back again?  Would there ever be a
home-coming for him?  Fighter though he was, a
hero and a warrior, and though battles and
man-slayings more than he could count had been his
portion, even though the shock of swords was music
to him, there were other things that made life glad.
The hand the sword-hilt had calloused could yet
remember the touch of a maiden's fingers, and at
times, such as this, strange thoughts grew with a
strange murmuring in his brain.  He was a young
man yet; could he but make head against his
enemies and his untoward fortune till the sentence of
outlawry was overpassed, he might yet begin his
life all new again.  A wife should be his, and a son
should be born to him—a little son to watch at play,
to love, to cherish, to boast of, to be proud of, to
laugh over, to weep over, to be held against that
mighty breast of his, to be enfolded ever so gently
in those mighty sword-scarred arms of his.  Strange
thoughts; strange, indeed, for a wounded outlaw,
on that storm-swept, barren rock in the dark, dark
hours before the dawn.

"I think," said Grettir after a while, "that now I
may sleep a little."

Illugi made him comfortable upon the sheep-pelts,
and put his rolled-up cloak under his head;
then, when Grettir had closed his eyes, put a new
log upon the fire and sat down nigh at hand.

Long time the lad sat thus watching his brother's
face as sleep smoothed from it the lines of pain; as
the lips under the long, blond mustaches relaxed a
little, and the frown went from the forehead.

It was a kindly face, after all; none of the
harshness in it, none of the fierceness in it that so
bitter a life as his should have stamped it with—a
kindly face, serious, grave even, the face of a
big-hearted, generous fellow who bore no malice, who
feared no evil, who uttered no complaint, and who
looked fate fearless between the eyes.

Something shocked heavily at the door of the
hut, and the Outlaw stirred uneasily, and his blue
eyes opened a little.

"It is only the old ram, brother," said Illugi.
"He butts hard to get in."

"Hard and over hard," muttered Grettir, and as
he spoke the door split in twain, and the firelight
flashed upon the face of Thorbjorn Hook.

Instantly Illugi was on his feet, his spear in
hand.  It had come at last, the end of everything.
Fate at last was knocking at the door.  Grettir was
to fight the Last Fight there in that narrow hut,
there on that night of storm, in the rain and under
the scudding clouds.

Behind him, as he stood facing the riven door
and the men that were crowding into the doorway,
he heard Grettir struggling to his feet.  The fire
flared and smoked in the wind, and the rain, as it
swept in from without, hissed as it fell among the
hot embers.  From far down on the beaches came
the booming of the surf.

The onset hung poised.  After that first
splintering of the door The Hook and his men made no
move.  No man spoke.  Illugi, his spear held
ready, was a statue in the midst of the hut; Grettir,
upon one knee, with his great sword in his fist, one
hand holding by Illugi's belt, did not move.  His
eyes, steady, earnest, were upon those of The
Hook, and the two men held each other's glances
for a moment that seemed immeasurably long.
Then at last:

"Who showed thee the way hither?" said Grettir
quietly.

"God showed us the way," The Hook made answer.

"Nay, nay, it was the hag, thy foster-mother."

But the sound of voices broke the spell.  In an
instant the great fight—the fight that would be told
of in Iceland for hundreds of years to come—burst
suddenly forth like the bursting of a dyke.  Illugi
had leaped forward, and through the smoke of the
weltering fire his spear-blade flashed, curving like
the curving leap of a salmon in the rapids of the
Jokulsa.  There was a cry, a rush of many feet,
a parting of the group in the doorway, and Hialti
Thinbeard's hands shut their death-grip upon the
shaft of Illugi's spear as the blade of it tore out
between his shoulders.

But now men were upon the roof—Karr, son of
Karr, thrall of Tongue-stone, Vikaar and Haldarr
of the household of Eirik of Good-dale, Hafr of
Meadness in the Fleets and Thorwald of
Hegra-ness—tearing away the thatch and thrusting madly
downward with sword and spear.  Illugi dropped
the haft of the weapon that had slain Hialfi, and
catching up another one, made as if to drive it
through the hatch.  But even as he did so the whole
roof cracked and sagged; then it gave way at one
corner, and Karr, son of Karr, fell headlong from
above.  Grettir caught him on his sword-point as
he fell, and at the same moment The Hook drave
a small boar-spear clean through Illugi's head.

And from that moment all semblance of consecutive
action was lost.  Yelling, shouting, groaning,
cursing, the men rushed together in one blurred
and furious grapple.  The wrecked hut collapsed,
crashing upon their heads; the fire, kicked and
trampled as the fight raged back and forth, caught
the thatch and sheep-pelts, and flamed up fiercely in
and around the combat.  They fought literally in
fire—in fire and thick smoke and driving rain.  The
arms that thrust with spear or hewed with sword
rose and fell all ablaze.  Those who fell, fell among
hot coals and fought their fellows—their own
friends—to make way that they might escape the
torment.

Twice Grettir, dying though he was, flung the
fight from him and rose to his full height, a
dreadful figure, alone for an instant, bloody, dripping,
charred with ashes, half naked, his clothes all
burning; and twice again they flung themselves upon him,
and bore him down, so that he disappeared beneath
their mass.  And ever and again from out the swirl
of the onset, from that unspeakable jam of men,
mad with the battle-madness that was upon them,
crawled out some horrid figure, staggering, gashed,
and maimed, or even dying, done to death by the
great Outlaw in the last fight of his life.  Thorfin,
Gamli's man, had both arms broken at the very
shoulders; Krolf of Drontheim reeled back from
the battle with a sword-thrust through his hip that
made him go on crutches the rest of his life;
Kolbein, churl of Svein, died two days later of a
spear-thrust through the bowels; Ognund, Hakon's son,
never was able to use his right arm after that night.

Hardly a man of all the twenty that did not
for all the rest of his life bear upon his body the
marks of Grettir's death-fight.  Still Grettir bore
up.  He had with one arm caught Thorir, The
Hook's stoutest house-carle, around the throat,
while his other arm, that wielded his sword, hewed
and hewed and smote and thrust as though it would
never tire.  Even above the din of the others rose
the clamour of Thorir's agony.  Once again Grettir
cleared a space around him, and stood with
dripping sword, his left arm still crushing Thorir in
that awful embrace.  Thorir was weaponless, his
face purple.  No thought of battle was left in him,
and frantic, he stretched out a hand to his fellows,
his voice a wail:

"Help me, Thorbjorn.  He is killing me.  For
Christ's sake——"

And Grettir's blade nailed the words within his
throat.  The wretch slid to the ground doubled in
a heap, the blood gushing from his mouth.

Then those that yet remained alive, drawn off a
little, panting, spent, saw a terrible sight—the
death of Grettir.

For a moment in that flicker of fire he seemed
to grow larger.  Alone, unassailable, erect among
those heaps of dead and dying enemies, his stature
seemed as it were suddenly to increase.  He
towered above them, his head in swirls of smoke, the
great bare shoulders gleaming with his blood, the
long braids of yellow hair soaked with it.  Awful,
gigantic, suddenly a demi-god, he stood colossal,
a man made more than human.  The eyes of him
fixed, wide open, looked out into the darkness
above their heads, unwinking, unafraid—looked
into the darkness and into the eyes of Death,
unafraid, unshaken.

There he stood already dead, yet still upon his
feet, rigid as iron, his back unbent, his neck proud;
while they cowered before him holding their
breaths waiting, watching.  Then, like a mighty
pine tree, stiff, unbending, he swayed slowly
forward.  Stiff as a sword-blade the great body leaned
over farther and farther; slowly at first, then with
increased momentum inclined swiftly earthward.
He fell, and they could believe that the crash
of that fall shook the earth beneath their
feet.  He died as he would have wished to die, in
battle, his harness on, his sword in his grip.  He
lay face downward amid the dead ashes of the
trampled fire and moved no more.





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.. _`The Guest of Honour`:

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   *The Guest of Honour*

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   PART ONE

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The doctor shut and locked his desk drawer
upon his memorandum book with his right
hand, and extended the left to his friend
Manning Verrill, with the remark:

"Well, Manning, how are you?"

"If I were well, Henry," answered Verrill
gravely, "I would not be here."

The doctor leaned back in his deep leather chair,
and having carefully adjusted his glasses, tilted
back his head, and looked at Verrill from beneath
them.  He waited for him to continue.

"It's my nerves—I *suppose*," began Verrill.
"Henry," he declared suddenly leaning forward,
"Henry, I'm scared; that's what's the matter with
me—I'm scared."

"Scared," echoed the doctor, "What nonsense!
What of?"

"Scared of death, Henry," broke out Verrill,
"scared *blue*!"

"It is your nerves," murmured the doctor.  "You
need travel and a bromide, my boy.  There's
nothing the matter with you.  Why, you're good for
another forty years,—yes, or even for another fifty
years.  You're sound as a nut.  You, to talk about
death!"

"I've seen thirty—twenty-nine I should say,
twenty-nine of my best friends go."

The doctor looked puzzled a moment; then—"Oh! you
mean that club of yours," said he.

"Yes," said Verrill, "Great heavens! to think
that I should be the last man after all—well, one
of us had to be the last.  And that's where the
trouble is, Henry.  It's been growing on me for
the last two years—ever since Curtice died.  He
was the twenty-sixth.  And he died only a month
before the Annual Dinner.  Arnold, Brill, Steve—Steve
Sharrett, you know, and I—just the four,—were
left then; and we sat down to that big table
alone; and when we came to the toast of 'The
Absent Ones' ... Well, Henry, we were pretty
solemn before we got through.  And we knew that
the choice of the last man,—who would face those
thirty-one empty covers and open the bottle of
wine that we all set aside at our first dinner, and
drink 'The Absent Ones,'—was narrowing down
pretty fine.

"Next year there were only Arnold and Steve,
and myself left.  Brill—well you know all about his
death.  The three of us got through dinner somehow.
The year after that we were still three, and
even the year after that.  Then poor old Steve
went down with the *Dreibund* in the bay of Biscay,
and four months afterward Arnold and I sat down
to the table at the Annual, alone.  I'm not going
to forget that evening in a hurry.  Why,
Henry—oh! never mind.  Then—"

"Well," prompted the doctor as his friend paused:

"Arnold died three months ago.  And the day
of our Annual—I mean my—the club's," Verrill
changed his position.  "The date of the dinner,
the Annual Dinner, is next month, and I'm the only
one left."

"And, of course, you'll not go," declared the
doctor.

"Oh, yes," said Verrill.  "Yes, I will go, of
course.  But—"  He shook his head with a long
sigh.  "When the Last Man Club was organised,"
he went on, "in '68, we were all more or less
young.  It was a great idea, at least I felt that way
about it, but I didn't believe that thirty young men
would persist in anything—of that sort very long.
But no member of the club died for the first five
years, and the club met every year and had its
dinner without much thought of—of consequences,
and of the inevitable.  We met just to be sociable."

"Hold on," interrupted the doctor, "you are
speaking now of thirty.  A while ago you said
thirty-one."

"Yes, I know," assented Verrill, "There were
thirty in the club, but we always placed an extra
cover—for—for the Guest of Honour."

The doctor made a movement of impatience.
Then in a moment, "Well," he said, resignedly, "go on."

"That's about the essentials," answered Verrill.
"The first death was in '73.  And from that year
on the vacant places at the table have steadily
increased.  Little by little the original bravado of
the thing dropped out of it all for me; and of late
years—well I have told you how it is.  I've seen
so many of them die, and die so fast, so regularly—one
a year you might say,—that I've kept saying
'who next, who next, who's to go this year?'
... And as they went, one by one, and still I was
left ... I tell you, Henry, the suspense was,
... the suspense is ... You see I'm the last now, and
ever since Curtice died, I've felt this thing weighing
on me.  *By God, Henry, I'm afraid; I'm afraid
of Death!  It's horrible!*  It's as though I were
on the list of 'condemned' and were listening to
hear my name called every minute."

"Well, so are all of us, if you come to that,"
observed the doctor.

"Oh, I know, I know," cried Verrill, "it is
morbid and all that.  But that don't help me any.
Can you imagine me one month from to-morrow
night.  Think now.  I'm alone, absolutely, and
there is the long empty table, with the thirty places
set, and the extra place, and those places are where
all my old friends used to sit.  And at twelve
I get up and give first 'The Absent Ones,' and then
'The Guest of the Evening.'  I gave those toasts
last year, but there were two of us, then, and
the year before there were three.  But ever since
Curtice died and we were narrowed down to four,
this thing has been weighing on me—this idea of
death, and I've conceived a horror of it—a—a
dread.  And now I am the last.  I had no idea
this would ever happen to me; or if it did, that it
would be like this.  I'm shaken, Henry, shaken.
I've not slept for three nights.  So I've come to
you.  You must help me."

"So I will, by advising you.  You give up the
idiocy.  Cut out the dinner this year; yes, and for always."

"You don't understand," replied Verrill, calmly.
"It is impossible.  I could not keep away.  I *must*
be there."

"But it's simple lunacy," expostulated the doctor.
"Man, you've worked upon your nerves over this
fool club and dinner, till I won't be responsible for
you if you carry out this notion.  Come, promise
me you will take the train for, say Florida,
tomorrow, and *I'll* give you stuff that will make you
sleep.  St. Augustine is heaven at this time of year,
and I hear the tarpon have come in.  Shall—"

Verrill shook his head.

"You don't understand," he repeated.  "You
simply don't understand.  No, I shall go to the
dinner.  But of course I'm—I'm nervous—a little.
Did I say I was scared?  I didn't mean that.  Oh,
I'm all right; I just want you to prescribe for me,
something for the nerves.  Henry, death is a
terrible thing,—to see 'em all struck down,
twenty-nine of 'em—splendid boys.  Henry, I'm not a
coward.  There's a difference between cowardice
and fear.  For hours last night I was trying to
work it out.  Cowardice—that's just turning tail
and running; but I shall go through that Annual
Dinner, and that's ordeal enough, believe me.  But
fear,—it's just death in the abstract that unmans
me.  *That's* the thing to fear.  To think that
we all go along living and working and fussing
from day to day, when we *know* that this great
Monster, this Horror, is walking up and down the
streets, and that sooner or later he'll catch us,—that
we can't escape.  Isn't it the greatest curse in
the world!  We're so used to it we don't realise
the Thing.  But suppose one could eliminate the
Monster altogether.  *Then* we'd realise how sweet
life was, and we'd look back at the old days with
horror—just as I do now."

"Oh, but this is rubbish," cried the doctor,
"simple drivel.  Manning, I'm ashamed of you.  I'll
prescribe for you, I suppose I've got to.  But a
good rough fishing-and-hunting-trip would do more
for you than a gallon of drugs.  If you won't go
to Florida, get out of town, if it's only over Sunday.
Here's your prescription, and *do* take a
Friday-to-Monday trip.  Tramp in the woods, get tired, and
*don't go to that dinner*!"

"You don't understand," repeated Verrill, as the
two stood up.  He put the prescription into his
pocket-book.  "You don't understand.  I couldn't
keep away.  It's a duty, and besides—well I
couldn't make you see.  Good-by.  This stuff will
make me sleep, eh?  And do my nerves good, too,
you say?  I see.  I'll come back to you if it don't
work.  Good-by again.  *This* door, is it?  Not
through the waiting-room, eh?  Yes, I remember....
Henry, did you ever—did you ever face
death yourself—I mean—"

"Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense," cried the doctor.
But Verrill persisted.  His back to the closed
door, he continued:

"*I* did.  *I* faced death once,—so you see I should
know.  It was when I was a lad of twenty.  My
father had a line of New Orleans packets and I
often used to make the trip as super-cargo.  One
October day we were caught in the equinox off
Hatteras, and before we knew it we were wondering if
she would last another half-hour.  Along in the
afternoon there came a sea aboard, and caught me
unawares.  I lost my hold and felt myself going,
going....  I was sure for ten seconds that it was
the end,—*and I saw death then, face to face*!

"And I've never forgotten it.  I've only to shut
my eyes to see it all, hear it all—the naked spars
rocking against the grey-blue of the sky, the wrench
and creak of the ship, the threshing of rope ends,
the wilderness of pale-green water, the sound of
rain and scud....  No, no, I'll not forget it.
And death was a horrid specter in that glimpse I
got of him.  I—I don't care to see him again.
Well, good-by once more."

"Good-by, Manning, and believe me, this is all
hypochondria.  Go and catch fish.  Go shoot
something, and in twenty-four hours you'll believe
there's no such thing as death."

The door closed.  Verrill was gone.

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   PART TWO

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The banquet hall was in the top story of one of
the loftiest sky-scrapers of the city.  Along the
eastern wall was a row of windows reaching from
ceiling to floor, and as the extreme height of the
building made it unnecessary to draw the curtains
whoever was at the table could look out and over
the entire city in that direction.  Thus it was that
Manning Verrill, on a certain night some four
weeks after his interview with the doctor, sat there
at his walnuts and black coffee and, absorbed,
abstracted, looked out over the panorama beneath
him, where the Life of a great nation centered and
throbbed.

To the unenlightened the hall would have
presented a strange spectacle.  Down its center
extended the long table.  The chairs were drawn up,
the covers laid.  But the chairs were empty, the
covers untouched; and but for the presence of the
one man the hall was empty, deserted.

At the head of the table Verrill, in evening dress,
a gardenia in his lapel, his napkin across his lap,
an unlighted cigar in his fingers, sat motionless,
looking out over the city with unseeing eyes.  Of
thirty places around the table, none was distinctive,
none varied.  But at Verrill's right hand the
thirty-first place, the place of honour, differed from all
the rest.  The chair was large, massive.  The oak
of which it was made was black, while instead of
the usual array of silver and porcelain, one saw
but two vessels,—an unopened bottle of wine and a
large silver cup heavily chased.

From far below in the city's streets eleven o'clock
struck.  The sounds broke in upon Verrill's reverie
and he stirred, glanced about the room and then,
rising, went to the window and stood there for
some time looking out.

At his feet, far beneath lay the city, twinkling
with lights.  In the business quarter all was dark,
but from the district of theatres and restaurants
there arose a glare into the night, ruddy, vibrating,
with here and there a ganglion of electric bulbs
upon a "fire sign" emphasising itself in a whiter
radiance.  Cable-cars and cabs threaded the streets
with little starring eyes of coloured lights, while
underneath all this blur of illumination, the people,
debouching from the theatres, filled the sidewalks
with tiny ant-like swarms, minute, bustling.

Farther on in the residence district, occasional
lighted windows watched with the street-lamps
gazing blankly into the darkness.  In particular one
house was all ablaze.  Every window glowed.  No
doubt a great festivity was in progress and Verrill
could almost fancy that he heard the strains of the
music, the rustle of the silks.

Then nearer at hand, but more to the eastward,
where the office buildings rose in tower-like clusters
and somber groups, Verrill could see a vista of open
water—the harbour.  Lights were moving here,
green and red, as the great hoarse-voiced freighters
stood out with the tide.

And beyond this was the sea itself, and more
lights, very, very faint where the ships rolled
leisurely in the ground swells; ships bound to and
from all ports of the earth,—ships that united the
nations, that brought the whole world of living
men under the view of the lonely watcher in the
empty Banquet Hall.

Verrill raised the window.  At once a subdued
murmur, prolonged, monotonous,—the same murmur
as that which disengages itself from forests,
from the sea, and from sleeping armies,—rose to
meet him.  It was the mingling of all the night
noises into one great note that came simultaneously
from all quarters of the horizon, infinitely vast,
infinitely deep,—a steady diapason strain like the
undermost bourdon of a great organ as the wind
begins to thrill the pipes.

It was the stir of life, the breathing of the
Colossus, the push of the nethermost basic force,
old as the world, wide as the world, the murmur
of the primeval energy, coeval with the centuries,
blood-brother to that spirit which in the brooding
darkness before creation, moved upon the face of
the waters.

And besides this, as Verrill stood there looking
out, the night wind brought to him, along with the
taint of the sea, the odour of the heaped-up fruit
in the city's markets and even the suggestion of the
vegetable gardens in the suburbs.

Across his face, like the passing of a long breath,
he felt the abrupt sensation of life, indestructible,
persistent.

But absorbed in other things, Verrill, unmoved,
and only dimly comprehending, closed the window
and turned back into the room.  At his place stood
an unopened bottle and a glass as yet dry.  He
removed the foil from the neck of the bottle, but
after looking at his watch, set it down again
without drawing the cork.  It lacked some fifteen
minutes to midnight.

Once again, as he had already done so many
times that evening, Verrill wiped the moisture from
his forehead.  He shut his teeth against the slow
thick labouring of his heart.  He was alone.  The
sense of isolation, of abandonment, weighed down
upon him intolerably as he looked up and down the
the empty table.  Alone, alone; all the rest were
gone, and he stood there, in the solitude of that
midnight; he, last of all that company whom he
had known and loved.  Over and over again he muttered:

"All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."  Then
slowly Verrill began to make the circuit of the
table, reading, as if from a roll call, the names
written on the cards which lay upon the
place-plates.  "Anderson, ... Evans, ... Copeland,—dear
old 'crooked-face' Copeland, his camp companion
in those Maine fishing-trips of the old days,
dead now these ten years....  Stryker,—'Buff'
Stryker they had called him, dead,—he had
forgotten how long,—drowned in his yacht off the
Massachusetts coast; Harris, died of typhoid
somewhere in Italy; Dick Herndon, killed in a mine
accident in Mexico; Rice, old 'Whitey Rice' a suicide
in a California cattle town; Curtice, carried off by
fever in Durban, South Africa."  Thus around the
whole table he moved, telling the bead-roll of
death, following in the footsteps of the Monster
who never relented, who never tired, who never,
never,—never forgot.

His own turn would come some day.  Verrill,
sunken into his chair, put his hands over his eyes.
Yes his own turn would come.  There was no
escape.  That dreadful face would rise again
before his eyes.  He would bow his back to the
scourge of nations, he would roll helpless beneath
the wheels of the great car.  How to face that
prospect with fortitude!  How to look into those
terrible grey eyes with calm!  Oh, the terror of
that gorgon face, oh, the horror of those sightless,
lightless grey eyes!

But suddenly midnight struck.  He heard the
strokes come booming upward from the city streets.
His vigil was all but over.

Verrill opened the bottle of wine, breaking the
seal that had been affixed to the cork on the night
of the first meeting of the club.  Filling his glass,
he rose in his place.  His eyes swept the table, and
while for the last time the memories came thronging
back, his lips formed the words:

"To the Absent Ones: to you, Curtice, Anderson,
Brill, to you, Copeland, to you, Stryker, to
you, Arnold, to you all, my old comrades, all you
old familiar faces who are absent to-night."

He emptied the glass, but immediately filled it
again.  The last toast was to be drunk, the last of
all.  Verrill, the glass raised, straightened himself.

But even as he stood there, glass in hand, he
shivered slightly.  He made note of it for the
moment, yet his emotions had so shaken him during
all that evening that he could well understand the
little shudder that passed over him for a moment.

But he caught himself glancing at the windows.
All were shut.  The doors of the hall were closed,
the flames of the chandeliers were steady.  Whence
came then this certain sense of coolness that so
suddenly had invaded the air?  The coolness was
not disagreeable, but none the less the temperature
of the room had been lowered, at least so he
could fancy.  Yet already he was dismissing the
matter from his mind.  No doubt the weather had
changed suddenly.

In the next second, however, another peculiar
circumstance forced itself upon his attention.  The
stillness of the Banquet Hall, placed as it was, at
the top of one of the highest buildings in the city
was no matter of comment to Verrill.  He was
long since familiar with it.  But for all that, even
through the closed windows, and through the
medium of steel and brick and marble that composed
the building the indefinite murmur of the city's
streets had always made itself felt in the hall.  It
was faint, yet it was distinct.  That bourdon of
life to which he had listened that very evening was
not wholly to be shut out, yet now, even in this
supreme moment of the occasion it was impossible
for Verrill to ignore the fancy that an unusual
stillness had all at once widened about him, like the
widening of unseen ripples.  There was not a
sound, and he told himself that stillness such as this
was only the portion of the deaf.  No faintest
tremor of noise rose from the streets.  The vast
building itself had suddenly grown as soundless as
the unplumbed depth of the sea.  But Verrill shook
himself; all evening fancies such as these had
besieged him, even now they were prolonging the
ordeal.  Once this last toast drunk and he was
released from his duty: He raised his glass again,
and then in a loud clear voice he said:

"*Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the evening.*"  And
as he emptied the glass, a quick, light footstep
sounded in the corridor outside the door.

Verrill looked up in great annoyance.  The
corridor led to but one place, the door of the
Banquet Hall, and any one coming down the corridor
at so brisk a pace could have but one intention—that
of entering the hall.  Verrill frowned at the
idea of an intruder.  His orders had been of the
strictest.  That a stranger should thrust himself
upon his company at this of all moments was exasperating.

But the footsteps drew nearer, and as Verrill
stood frowning at the door at the far end of the
hall, it opened.

A gentleman came in, closed the door, behind
him, and faced about.  Verrill scrutinised him with
an intent eye.

He was faultlessly dressed, and just by his
manner of carrying himself in his evening clothes
Verrill knew that here was breeding, distinction.
The newcomer was tall, slim.  Also he was young;
Verrill, though he could not have placed his age
with any degree of accuracy, would none the less
have disposed of the question by setting him down
as a young man.  But Verrill further observed that
the gentleman was very pale, even his lips lacked
colour.  However, as he looked closer, he discovered
that this pallor was hardly the result of any present
emotion, but was rather constitutional.

There was a moment's silence as the two looked
at each other the length of the Hall; then with a
peculiarly pleasant smile the stranger came forward
drawing off his white glove and extending his hand.
He seemed so at home, so perfectly at his ease, and
at the same time so much of what Verrill was wont
to call a "thoroughbred fellow" that the latter
found it impossible to cherish any resentment.  He
preferred to believe that the stranger had made
some readily explained mistake which would be
rectified in their first spoken words.  Thus it was
that he was all the more non-plussed when the
stranger took him by the hand with words: "This
is Mr. Manning Verrill, of course.  I am very glad
to meet you again, sir.  Two such as you and I
who have once been so intimate, should never
forget each other."

Verrill had it upon his lips to inform the other
that he had something the advantage of him; but at
the last moment he was unable to utter the words.
The newcomer's pleasure in the meeting was so
hearty, so spontaneous, that he could not quite
bring himself to jeopardise it—at the outset at
least—by a confession of implied unfriendliness; so
instead he clumsily assumed the other's manner,
and, though deeply perplexed, managed to attain
a certain heartiness as he exclaimed: "But you have
come very late.  I have already dined, and by the
way, let me explain why you find me here alone,
in a deserted Banquet Hall with covers laid for so
many."

"Indeed, you need not explain," replied the
stranger.  "I am a member of your club, you know."

A member of the club, this total stranger!  Verrill
could not hide a frown of renewed perplexity;
surely this face was not one of any friend he ever
had.  "A charter member, you might say," the
other continued; "but singularly enough, I have
never been able to attend one of the meetings until
now.  Of us all I think I have been the busiest—and
the one most widely traveled.  Such must be
my excuses."

At the moment an explanation occurred to Verrill.
It was within the range of the possible that
the newcomer was an old member of the club, some
sojourner in a foreign country, whose death had
been falsely reported.  Possibly Verrill had lost
track of him.  It was not always easy to "place"
at once every one of the thirty.  The two sat down,
but almost immediately Verrill exclaimed:

"Pardon me, but—that chair.  The omen would
be so portentous!  You have taken the wrong
place.  You who are a member of the club!  You
must remember that we reserved that chair—the
one you are occupying."

But the stranger smiled calmly.

"I defy augury, and I snap my fingers at the
portent.  Here is my place and here I choose to
remain."

"As you will," answered Verrill, "but it is a
singular choice.  It is not conducive to appetite."

"My dear Verrill," answered the other, "I shall
not dine, if you will permit me to say so.  It is very
late and my time is limited.  I can stay but a
short while at best.  I have much to do to-night
after I leave you,—much good I hope, much good.
For which," he added rather sadly, "I shall
receive no thanks, only abuse, only abuse, my dear
Verrill."  Verrill was only half listening.  He was
looking at the other's face, and as he looked, he
wondered; for the brow was of the kind fitted for
crowns, and from beneath glowed the glance of a
King.  The mouth seemed to have been shaped
by the utterance of the commands of Empire.
The whole face was astonishing, full of power
tempered by a great kindliness.  Verrill could not
keep his gaze from those wonderful, calm grey
eyes.  Who was this extraordinary man met under
such strange circumstances, alone and in the night,
in the midst of so many dead memories, and
surrounded by that inexplicable stillness, that sudden,
profound peace?  And what was the subtle
magnetism that upon sight, drew him so powerfully to
the stranger?  Kingly he was, but Verrill seemed
to feel that he was more than that.  He was—could
be—a friend, such a friend as in all their
circle of dead companions he had never known.
In his company he knew he need never be ashamed
of weakness, human, natural, ordained weakness,
need not be ashamed because of the certainty of
being perfectly and thoroughly understood.  Thus
it was that when the stranger had spoken the
words"—only abuse, only abuse, my dear
Verrill."  Verrill, starting from his muse, answered
quickly: "What, abuse, you! in return for good!
You astonish me."

"'Abuse' is the mildest treatment I dare expect;
it will no doubt be curses.  Of all personages,
I am the one most cruelly misunderstood.  My
friends are few, few,—oh, so pitiably few."  "Of
whom may I be one?" exclaimed Verrill.  "I
hope," said the stranger gravely, "we shall be the
best of friends.  When we met before I am afraid,
my appearance was too abrupt and—what shall I
say—unpleasant to win your good will."  Verrill
in some embarrassment, framed a lame reply; but
the other continued:

"You do not remember, as I can easily understand.
My manner at that time was against me.
It was a whim, but I chose to be most forbidding
on that occasion.  I am a very Harlequin in my
moods; Harlequin did I say, my dear fellow I am
the Prince of Masqueraders."

"But a Prince in all events," murmured Verrill,
half to himself.

"Prince and Slave," returned the other, "slave
to circumstance."

"Are we not all—," began Verrill, but the
stranger continued:

"Slave to circumstance, slave to time, slave to
natural laws, none so abject as I, in my servility.
When the meanest, the lowest, the very weakest
calls, I must obey.  On the other hand, none so
despotic as I, none so absolute.  When I summon,
the strongest must respond; when I command, the
most powerful must obey.  My profession, my
dear Verrill, is an arduous one."

"Your profession is, I take it," observed Verrill,
"that of a physician."

"You may say so," replied the other, "and you
may also say an efficient one.  But I am always
the last to be summoned.  I am a last resource;
my remedy is a heroic one.  But it prevails—inevitably.
No pain, my dear Verrill, so sharp that
I cannot allay, no anguish so great that I cannot
soothe."

"Then perhaps you may prescribe for me," said
Verrill.  "Of late I have been perturbed.  I have
lived under a certain strain, certain contingencies
threaten, which, no doubt unreasonably, I have
come to dread.  I am shaken, nervous, fearful.
My own doctor has been unable to help me.  Perhaps
you—"

The stranger had already opened the bottle of
wine which stood by his plate, and filled the silver
cup.  He handed it to Verrill.

"Drink," he said.

Verrill hesitated:

"But this wine," he protested: "This cup—pardon
me, it was reserved—"

"Drink," repeated the stranger.  "Trust me."

He took Verrill's glass in which he had drunk
the toasts and which yet contained a little wine.
He pressed the silver cup into Verrill's hands.

"Drink," he urged for the third time.

Verrill took the cup, and the stranger raised his
glass.

"To our better acquaintance," he said.

But Verrill, at length at the end of all
conjecture, cried out, the cup still in his hand:

"Your toast is most appropriate, sir.  A better
acquaintance with you, I assure you, would be most
pleasing to me.  But I must ask your pardon for
my stupidity.  Where have we met before?  Who
are you, and what is your name?"

The stranger did not immediately reply, but
fixed his grave grey eyes upon Verrill's.  For a
moment he held his gaze in his own.  Then as the
seconds slipped by, the first indefinite sense of
suspicion flashed across Verrill's mind, flashed and
faded, returned once more, faded again, and left
him wondering.  Then as the stranger said:

"Do you remember,—it was long ago.  Do you
remember the sight of naked spars rocking against
a grey torn sky, a ship wrenching and creaking,
wrestling with the wind, a world of pale green
surges, the gale singing through the cordage, and
then as the sea swept the decks—ah, you do remember."

For Verrill had started suddenly, and with the
movement, full recognition, complete, unequivocal,
gleamed suddenly in his eyes.  There was a long
silence while he returned the gaze of the other,
now no longer a stranger.  At length Verrill spoke,
drawing a long breath.

"Ah ... it is you ... at last."

"Well!"

Verrill smiled:

"It *is* well, I had imagined it would be so
different,—when you did come.  But as it is—," he
extended his hand, "I am very glad to meet you."

"Did I not tell you," said the other, "that of
all the world, I am the most cruelly misunderstood?"

"But you confessed to the masquerade."

"Oh, blind, blind, not to see behind the foolish
masque.  Come, we have not yet drunk."

He placed the cup in Verrill's hands, and once
again raised the glass.

"To our better acquaintance," he said.

"To our better acquaintance," echoed Verrill.
He drained the cup.

"The lees were bitter," he observed.

"But the effect?"

"Yes, it is calming—already, exquisitely so.  It
is not—as I have imagined for so long, deadening,
on the contrary, it is invigorating, revivifying.  I
feel born again."

The other rose: "Then there is no need," he
said, "to stay here any longer.  Come, shall we be
going?"

"Yes, yes, I am ready," answered Verrill.
"Look," he exclaimed, pointing to the windows.
"Look—it is morning."

Low in the east, the dawn was rising over the
city.  A new day was coming; the stars were
paling, the night was over.

"That is true," said Verrill's new friend.
"Another day is coming.  It is time we went out to
meet it."

They rose and passed down the length of the
Banquet Hall.  He who had called himself the
great Physician, the Servant of the Humble, the
Master of Kings, the Prince of Masqueraders,
held open the door for Verrill to pass.  But when
the man had gone out, the Prince paused a
moment, and looked back upon the deserted Banquet
Hall, lit partly by the steady electrics, partly by
the pale light of morning, that now began with
ever-increasing radiance to stream through the
eastern windows.  Then he stretched forth his
hand and laid his touch upon a button in the wall.
Instantly the lights sank, vanished; for a moment
the hall seemed dark.

He went out quietly, shutting the door behind him.

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And the Banquet Hall remained deserted,
lonely, empty, yet it was neither dark nor lifeless.
Stronger and stronger grew the flood of light that
burned roseate toward the zenith as the sun came
up.  It penetrated to every corner of the room, and
the drops of wine left in the bottom of the glasses
flashed like jewels in the radiance.  From without,
from the city's streets, came the murmur of
increasing activity.  Through the night it had
droned on, like the low-pitched diapason of some
vast organ, but now as the sun rose, it swelled in
volume.  Louder it grew and ever louder.  Its
sound-waves beat upon the windows of the hall.
They invaded the hall itself.

It was the symphony of energy, the vast
orchestration of force, the pæan of an indestructible
life, coeval with the centuries, renascent, ordained,
eternal.

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