Great short stories, Volume III (of 3)

"The Carbonari!" I exclaimed; "God help him indeed!"

"Amen!" said Northmour. "And now, look here: I have said that we are in a fix; and, frankly, I shall be glad of your help. If I can't save Huddlestone, I want at least to save the girl. Come and stay in the pavilion; and, there's my hand on it, I shall act as your friend until the old man is either clear or dead. But," he added, "once that is settled, you become my rival once again, and I warn you—mind yourself."

"Done!" said I; and we shook hands.

"And now let us go directly to the fort," said Northmour; and he began to lead the way through the rain.

VI

Tells of my Introduction to the Tall Man

We were admitted to the pavilion by Clara, and I was surprised by the completeness and security of the defenses. A barricade of great strength, and yet easy to displace, supported the door against any violence from without; and the shutters of the dining-room, into which I was led directly, and which was feebly illuminated by a lamp, were even more elaborately fortified. The panels were strengthened by bars and cross-bars; and these, in their turn, were kept in position by a system of braces and struts, some abutting on the floor, some on the roof, and others, in fine, against the opposite wall of the apartment. It was at once a solid and well-designed piece of carpentry; and I did not seek to conceal my admiration.

"I am the engineer," said Northmour. "You remember the planks in the garden? Behold them!"

"I did not know you had so many talents," said I.

"Are you armed?" he continued, pointing to an array of guns and pistols, all in admirable order, which stood in line against the wall or were displayed upon the sideboard.

"Thank you," I returned; "I have gone armed since our last encounter. But, to tell you the truth, I have had nothing to eat since early yesterday evening."

Northmour produced some cold meat, to which I eagerly set myself, and a bottle of good Burgundy, by which, wet as I was, I did not scruple to profit. I have always been an extreme temperance man on principle; but it is useless to push principle to excess, and on this occasion I believe that I finished three-quarters of the bottle. As I ate, I still continued to admire the preparations for defense.

"We could stand a siege," I said at length.

"Ye—es," drawled Northmour; "a very little one, per—haps. It is not so much the strength of the pavilion I misdoubt; it is the double danger that kills me. If we get to shooting, wild as the country is, some one is sure to hear it, and then—why then it's the same thing, only different, as they say: caged by law, or killed by Carbonari. There's the choice. It is a devilish bad thing to have the law against you in this world, and so I tell the old gentleman upstairs. He is quite of my way of thinking."

"Speaking of that," said I, "what kind of person is he?"

"Oh, he!" cried the other; "he's a rancid fellow, as far as he goes. I should like to have his neck wrung to-morrow by all the devils in Italy. I am not in this affair for him. You take me? I made a bargain for Missy's hand, and I mean to have it, too."

"That, by the way," said I. "I understand. But how will Mr. Huddlestone take my intrusion?"

"Leave that to Clara," returned Northmour.

I could have struck him in the face for this coarse familiarity; but I respected the truce, as, I am bound to say, did Northmour, and so long as the danger continued not a cloud arose in our relation. I bear him this testimony with the most unfeigned satisfaction; nor am I without pride when I look back upon my own behavior. For surely no two men were ever left in a position so invidious and irritating.

As soon as I had done eating, we proceeded to inspect the lower floor. Window by window we tried the different supports, now and then making an inconsiderable change; and the strokes of the hammer sounded with startling loudness through the house. I proposed, I remember, to make loopholes; but he told me they were already made in the windows of the upper story. It was an anxious business this inspection, and left me down-hearted. There were two doors and five windows to protect, and, counting Clara, only four of us to defend them against an unknown number of foes. I communicated my doubts to Northmour, who assured me, with unmoved composure, that he entirely shared them.

"Before morning," said he, "we shall all be butchered and buried in Graden Floe. For me, that is written."

I could not help shuddering at the mention of the quicksands, but reminded Northmour that our enemies had spared me in the wood.

"Do not flatter yourself," said he. "Then you were not in the same boat with the old gentleman; now you are. It's the floe for all of us, mark my words."

I trembled for Clara; and just then her dear voice was heard calling us to come upstairs. Northmour showed me the way, and, when he had reached the landing, knocked at the door of what used to be called My Uncle's Bedroom, as the founder of the pavilion had designed it especially for himself.

"Come in, Northmour; come in, dear Mr. Cassilis," said a voice from within.

Pushing open the door, Northmour admitted me before him into the apartment. As I came in I could see the daughter slipping out by the side door into the study, which had been prepared as her bedroom. In the bed, which was drawn back against the wall, instead of standing, as I had last seen it, boldly across the window, sat Bernard Huddlestone, the defaulting banker. Little as I had seen of him by the shifting light of the lantern on the links, I had no difficulty in recognizing him for the same. He had a long and sallow countenance, surrounded by a long red beard and side-whiskers. His broken nose and high cheekbones gave him somewhat the air of a Kalmuck, and his light eyes shone with the excitement of a high fever. He wore a skullcap of black silk; a huge Bible lay open before him on the bed, with a pair of gold spectacles in the place, and a pile of other books lay on the stand by his side. The green curtains lent a cadaverous shade to his cheek; and, as he sat propped on pillows, his great stature was painfully hunched, and his head protruded till it overhung his knees. I believe if he had not died otherwise, he must have fallen a victim to consumption in the course of but a very few weeks.

He held out to me a hand, long, thin, and disagreeably hairy.

"Come in, come in, Mr. Cassilis," said he. "Another protector—ahem! —another protector. Always welcome as a friend of my daughter's, Mr. Cassilis. How they have rallied about me, my daughter's friends! May God in heaven bless and reward them for it!"

I gave him my hand, of course, because I could not help it; but the sympathy I had been prepared to feel for Clara's father was immediately soured by his appearance, and the wheedling, unreal tones in which he spoke.

"Cassilis is a good man," said Northmour; "worth ten."

"So I hear," cried Mr. Huddlestone eagerly; "so my girl tells me. Ah, Mr. Cassilis, my sin has found me out, you see! I am very low, very low; but I hope equally penitent. We must all come to the throne of grace at last, Mr. Cassilis. For my part, I come late indeed; but with unfeigned humility. I trust."

"Fiddle-de-dee!" said Northmour roughly.

"No, no, dear Northmour!" cried the banker. "You must not say that; you must not try to shake me. You forget, my dear, good boy, you forget I may be called this very night before my Maker."

His excitement was pitiful to behold; and I felt myself grow indignant with Northmour, whose infidel opinions I well knew and heartily derided, as he continued to taunt the poor sinner out of his humor of repentance.

"Pooh, my dear Huddlestone!" said he. "You do yourself injustice. You are a man of the world inside and out, and were up to all kinds of mischief before I was born. Your conscience is tanned like South American leather—only you forgot to tan your liver, and that, if you will believe me, is the seat of the annoyance."

"Rogue, rogue! bad boy!" said Mr. Huddlestone, shaking his finger. "I am no precisian, if you come to that; I always hated a precisian; but I never lost hold of something better through it all. I have been a bad boy, Mr. Cassilis; I do not seek to deny that; but it was after my wife's death, and you know, with a widower, it's a different thing: sinful—I won't say no; but there is a gradation, we shall hope. And talking of that—Hark!" he broke out suddenly, his hand raised, his fingers spread, his face racked with interest and terror. "Only the rain, bless God!" he added, after a pause, and with indescribable relief.

For some seconds he lay back among the pillows like a man near to fainting; then he gathered himself together, and, in somewhat tremulous tones, began once more to thank me for the share I was prepared to take in his defense.

"One question, sir," said I, when he had paused. "Is it true that you have money with you?"

He seemed annoyed by the question, but admitted with reluctance that he had a little.

"Well," I continued, "it is their money they are after, is it not? Why not give it up to them?"

"Ah!" replied he, shaking his head, "I have tried that already, Mr. Cassilis; and alas that it should be so! but it is blood they want."

"Huddlestone, that's a little less than fair," said Northmour. "You should mention that what you offered them was upward of two hundred thousand short. The deficit is worth a reference; it is for what they call a cool sum, Frank. Then, you see, the fellows reason in their clear Italian way; and it seems to them, as indeed it seems to me, that they may just as well have both while they're about it—money and blood together, by George, and no more trouble for the extra pleasure."

"Is it in the pavilion?" I asked.

"It is; and I wish it were in the bottom of the sea instead," said Northmour; and then suddenly—"What are you making faces at me for?" he cried to Mr. Huddlestone, on whom I had unconsciously turned my back. "Do you think Cassilis would sell you?"

Mr. Huddlestone protested that nothing had been further from his mind.

"It is a good thing," retorted Northmour in his ugliest manner. "You might end by wearying us. What were you going to say?" he added, turning to me.

"I was going to propose an occupation for the afternoon," said I. "Let us carry that money out, piece by piece, and lay it down before the pavilion door. If the Carbonari come, why, it's theirs at any rate."

"No, no," cried Mr. Huddlestone; "it does not, it can not belong to them! It should be distributed pro rata among all my creditors."

"Come now, Huddlestone," said Northmour, "none of that."

"Well, but my daughter," moaned the wretched man.

"Your daughter will do well enough. Here are two suitors, Cassilis and I, neither of us beggars, between whom she has to choose. And as for yourself, to make an end of arguments, you have no right to a farthing, and, unless I'm much mistaken, you are going to die."

It was certainly very cruelly said; but Mr. Huddlestone was a man who attracted little sympathy; and, although I saw him wince and shudder, I mentally indorsed the rebuke; nay, I added a contribution of my own.

"Northmour and I," I said, "are willing enough to help you to save your life, but not to escape with stolen property."

He struggled for a while with himself, as though he were on the point of giving way to anger, but prudence had the best of the controversy.

"My dear boys," he said, "do with me or my money what you will. I leave all in your hands. Let me compose myself."

And so we left him, gladly enough I am sure. The last that I saw, he had once more taken up his great Bible, and with tremulous hands was adjusting his spectacles to read.

VII

Tells How a Word was Cried, through the Pavilion Window

The recollection of that afternoon will always be graven on my mind. Northmour and I were persuaded that an attack was imminent; and if it had been in our power to alter in any way the order of events, that power would have been used to precipitate rather than delay the critical moment. The worst was to be anticipated, yet we could conceive no extremity so miserable as the suspense we were now suffering. I have never been an eager, though always a great, reader; but I never knew books so insipid as those which I took up and cast aside that afternoon in the pavilion. Even talk became impossible, as the hours went on. One or other was always listening for some sound or peering from an upstairs' window over the links. And yet not a sign indicated the presence of our foes.

We debated over and over again my proposal with regard to the money; and had we been in complete possession of our faculties, I am sure we should have condemned it as unwise; but we were flustered with alarm, grasped at a straw, and determined, although it was as much as advertising Mr. Huddlestone's presence in the pavilion, to carry my proposal into effect.

The sum was part in specie, part in bank paper, and part in circular notes payable to the name of James Gregory. We took it out, counted it, enclosed it once more in a despatch-box belonging to Northmour, and prepared a letter in Italian which he tied to the handle. It was signed by both of us under oath, and declared that this was all the money which had escaped the failure of the house of Huddlestone. This was, perhaps, the maddest action ever perpetrated by two persons professing to be sane. Had the despatch-box fallen into other hands than those for which it was intended, we stood criminally convicted on our own written testimony; but, as I have said, we were neither of us in a condition to judge soberly, and had a thirst for action that drove us to do something, right or wrong, rather than endure the agony of waiting. Moreover, as we were both convinced that the hollows of the links were alive with hidden spies upon our movements, we hoped that our appearance with the box might lead to a parley, and, perhaps, a compromise.

It was nearly three when we issued from the pavilion. The rain had taken off; the sun shone quite cheerfully. I have never seen the gulls fly so close about the house or approach so fearlessly to human beings. On the very doorstep one flapped heavily past our heads, and uttered its wild cry in my very ear.

"There is an omen for you," said Northmour, who like all freethinkers was much under the influence of superstition. "They think we are already dead."

I made some light rejoinder, but it was with half my heart; for the circumstance had impressed me.

A yard or two before the gate, on a patch of smooth turf, we set down the despatch-box; and Northmour waved a white handkerchief over his head. Nothing replied. We raised our voices, and cried aloud in Italian that we were there as ambassadors to arrange the quarrel; but the stillness remained unbroken save by the sea-gulls and the surf. I had a weight at my heart when we desisted; and I saw that even Northmour was unusually pale. He looked over his shoulder nervously, as though he feared that some one had crept between him and the pavilion door.

"By God," he said in a whisper, "this is too much for me!"

I replied in the same key: "Suppose there should be none, after all!"

"Look there," he returned, nodding with his head, as though he had been afraid to point.

I glanced in the direction indicated; and there, from the northern quarter of the Sea-Wood, beheld a thin column of smoke rising steadily against the now cloudless sky.

"Northmour," I said (we still continued to talk in whispers), "it is not possible to endure this suspense. I prefer death fifty times over. Stay you here to watch the pavilion; I will go forward and make sure, if I have to walk right into their camp."

He looked once again all round him with puckered eyes, and then nodded assentingly to my proposal.

My heart beat like a sledge-hammer as I set out walking rapidly in the direction of the smoke; and, though up to that moment I had felt chill and shivering, I was suddenly conscious of a glow of heat over all my body. The ground in this direction was very uneven; a hundred men might have lain hidden in as many square yards about my path. But I had not practised the business in vain, chose such routes as cut at the very root of concealment, and, by keeping along the most convenient ridges, commanded several hollows at a time. It was not long before I was rewarded for my caution. Coming suddenly on to a mound somewhat more elevated than the surrounding hummocks, I saw, not thirty yards away, a man bent almost double, and running as fast as his attitude permitted, along the bottom of a gully. I had dislodged one of the spies from his ambush. As soon as I sighted him, I called loudly both in English and Italian; and he, seeing concealment was no longer possible, straightened himself out, leaped from the gully, and made off as straight as an arrow for the borders of the wood.

It was none of my business to pursue; I had learned what I wanted—that we were beleaguered and watched in the pavilion; and I returned at once, walking as nearly as possible in my old footsteps, to where Northmour awaited me beside the despatch-box. He was even paler than when I had left him, and his voice shook a little.

"Could you see what he was like?" he asked.

"He kept his back turned," I replied.

"Let us get into the house, Frank. I don't think I'm a coward, but I can stand no more of this," he whispered.

All was still and sunshiny about the pavilion as we turned to reenter it; even the gulls had flown in a wider circuit, and were seen flickering along the beach and sand-hills; and this loneliness terrified me more than a regiment under arms. It was not until the door was barricaded that I could draw a full inspiration and relieve the weight that lay upon my bosom. Northmour and I exchanged a steady glance; and I suppose each made his own reflections on the white and startled aspect of the other.

"You were right," I said. "All is over. Shake hands, old man, for the last time."

"Yes," replied he, "I will shake hands; for, as sure as I am here, I bear no malice. But, remember, if, by some impossible accident, we should give the slip to these blackguards, I'll take the upper hand of you by fair or foul."

"Oh," said I, "you weary me!"

He seemed hurt, and walked away in silence to the foot of the stairs, where he paused.

"You do not understand," said he. "I am not a swindler, and I guard myself; that is all. It may weary you or not, Mr. Cassilis, I do not care a rush; I speak for my own satisfaction, and not for your amusement. You had better go upstairs and court the girl; for my part, I stay here."

"And I stay with you," I returned. "Do you think I would steal a march, even with your permission?"

"Frank," he said, smiling, "it's a pity you are an ass, for you have the makings of a man. I think I must be fey to-day; you can not irritate me even when you try. Do you know," he continued softly, "I think we are the two most miserable men in England, you and I? we have got on to thirty without wife or child, or so much as a shop to look after—poor, pitiful, lost devils, both! And now we clash about a girl! As if there were not several millions in the United Kingdom! Ah, Frank, Frank, the one who loses this throw, be it you or me, he has my pity! It were better for him—how does the Bible say? —that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depths of the sea. Let us take a drink," he concluded suddenly, but without any levity of tone.

I was touched by his words, and consented. He sat down on the table in the dining-room, and held up the glass of sherry to his eye.

"If you beat me, Frank," he said, "I shall take to drink. What will you do, if it goes the other way?"

"God knows," I returned.

"Well," said he, "here is a toast in the meantime: 'Italia irredenta!'"

The remainder of the day was passed in the same dreadful tedium and suspense. I laid the table for dinner, while Northmour and Clara prepared the meal together in the kitchen. I could hear their talk as I went to and fro, and was surprised to find it ran all the time upon myself. Northmour again bracketed us together, and rallied Clara on a choice of husbands; but he continued to speak of me with some feeling, and uttered nothing to my prejudice unless he included himself in the condemnation. This awakened a sense of gratitude in my heart, which combined with the immediateness of our peril to fill my eyes with tears. After all, I thought—and perhaps the thought was laughably vain—we were here three very noble human beings to perish in defense of a thieving banker.

Before we sat down to table, I looked forth from an upstairs window. The day was beginning to decline; the links were utterly deserted; the despatch-box still lay untouched where we had left it hours before.

Mr. Huddlestone, in a long yellow dressing-gown, took one end of the table, Clara the other; while Northmour and I faced each other from the sides. The lamp was brightly trimmed; the wine was good; the viands, although mostly cold, excellent of their sort. We seemed to have agreed tacitly; all reference to the impending catastrophe was carefully avoided; and, considering our tragic circumstances, we made a merrier party than could have been expected. From time to time, it is true, Northmour or I would rise from the table and make a round of the defenses; and, on each of these occasions, Mr. Huddlestone was recalled to a sense of his tragic predicament, glanced up with ghastly eyes, and bore for an instant on his countenance the stamp of terror. But he hastened to empty his glass, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and joined again in the conversation.

I was astonished at the wit and information he displayed. Mr. Huddlestone's was certainly no ordinary character; he had read and observed for himself; his gifts were sound; and, though I could never have learned to love the man, I began to understand his success in business, and the great respect in which he had been held before his failure. He had, above all, the talent of society; and though I never heard him speak but on this one and most unfavorable occasion, I set him down among the most brilliant conversationalists I ever met.

He was relating with great gusto, and seemingly no feeling of shame, the maneuvres of a scoundrelly commission merchant whom he had known and studied in his youth, and we were all listening with an odd mixture of mirth and embarrassment, when our little party was brought abruptly to an end in the most startling manner.

A noise like that of a wet finger on the window-pane interrupted Mr. Huddlestone's tale; and in an instant we were all four as white as paper, and sat tongue-tied and motionless around the table.

"A snail," I said at last; for I had heard that these animals make a noise somewhat similar in character.

"Snail be d—d!" said Northmour. "Hush!"

The same sound was repeated twice at regular intervals; and then a formidable voice shouted through the shutters the Italian word "Traditore!"

Mr. Huddlestone threw his head in the air; his eyelids quivered; next moment he fell insensible below the table. Northmour and I had each run to the armory and seized a gun. Clara was on her feet with her hand at her throat.

So we stood waiting, for we thought the hour of attack was certainly come; but second passed after second, and all but the surf remained silent in the neighborhood of the pavilion.

"Quick," said Northmour; "upstairs with him before they come."

VIII

Tells the Last of the Tall Man

Somehow or other, by hook and crook, and between the three of us, we got Bernard Huddlestone bundled upstairs and laid upon the bed in My Uncle's Room. During the whole process, which was rough enough, he gave no sign of consciousness, and he remained, as we had thrown him, without changing the position of a finger. His daughter opened his shirt and began to wet his head and bosom; while Northmour and I ran to the window. The weather continued clear; the moon, which was now about full, had risen and shed a very clear light upon the links; yet, strain our eyes as we might, we could distinguish nothing moving. A few dark spots, more or less, on the uneven expanse were not to be identified; they might be crouching men, they might be shadows; it was impossible to be sure.

"Thank God," said Northmour, "Aggie is not coming to-night."

Aggie was the name of the old nurse; he had not thought of her till now; but that he should think of her at all was a trait that surprised me in the man.

We were again reduced to waiting. Northmour went to the fireplace and spread his hands before the red embers, as if he were cold. I followed him mechanically with my eyes, and in so doing turned my back upon the window. At that moment a very faint report was audible from without, and a ball shivered a pane of glass, and buried itself in the shutter two inches from my head. I heard Clara scream; and though I whipped instantly out of range and into a corner, she was there, so to speak, before me, beseeching to know if I were hurt. I felt that I could stand to be shot at every day and all day long, with such marks of solicitude for a reward; and I continued to reassure her with the tenderest caresses and in complete forgetfulness of our situation till the voice of Northmour recalled me to myself.

"An air-gun," he said. "They wish to make no noise."

I put Clara aside and looked at him. He was standing with his back to the fire and his hands clasped behind him; and I knew by the black look on his face that passion was boiling within. I had seen just such a look before he attacked me, that March night, in the adjoining chamber; and, though I could make every allowance for his anger, I confess I trembled for the consequences. He gazed straight before him; but he could see us with the tail of his eye, and his temper kept rising like a gale of wind. With regular battle awaiting us outside, this prospect of an internecine strife within the walls began to daunt me.

Suddenly, as I was thus closely watching his expression and prepared against the worst, I saw a change, a flash, a look of relief, upon his face. He took up the lamp which stood beside him on the table, and turned to us with an air of some excitement.

"There is one point that we must know," said he. "Are they going to butcher the lot of us, or only Huddlestone? Did they take you for him, or fire at you for your own beaux yeux?"

"They took me for him, for certain," I replied. "I am near as tall, and my head is fair."

"I am going to make sure," returned Northmour; and he stepped up to the window, holding the lamp above his head, and stood there, quietly affronting death, for half a minute.

Clara sought to rush forward and pull him from the place of danger; but I had the pardonable selfishness to hold her back by force.

"Yes," said Northmour, turning coolly from the window; "it's only Huddlestone they want."

"Oh, Mr. Northmour!" cried Clara; but found no more to add; the temerity she had just witnessed seeming beyond the reach of words.

He, on his part, looked at me, cocking his head with a fire of triumph in his eyes; and I understood at once that he had thus hazarded his life merely to attract Clara's notice, and depose me from my position as the hero of the hour. He snapped his fingers.

"The fire is only beginning," said he. "When they warm up to their work, they won't be so particular."

A voice was now heard hailing us from the entrance. From the window we could see the figure of a man in the moonlight; he stood motionless, his face uplifted to ours, and a rag of something white on his extended arm; and as we looked right down upon him, though he was a good many yards distant on the links, we could see the moonlight glitter on his eyes.

He opened his lips again, and spoke for some minutes on end, in a key so loud that he might have been heard in every corner of the pavilion, and as far away as the borders of the wood. It was the same voice that had already shouted "Traditore!" through the shutters of the dining-room; this time it made a complete and clear statement. If the traitor "Oddlestone" were given up, all others should be spared; if not, no one should escape to tell the tale.

"Well, Huddlestone, what do you say to that?" asked Northmour, turning to the bed.

Up to that moment the banker had given no sign of life, and I, at least, had supposed him to be still lying in a faint; but he replied at once, and in such tones as I have never heard elsewhere, save from a delirious patient, adjured and besought us not to desert him. It was the most hideous and abject performance that my imagination can conceive.

"Enough," cried Northmour; and then he threw open the window, leaned out into the night, and in a tone of exultation, and with a total forgetfulness of what was due to the presence of a lady, poured out upon the ambassador a string of the most abominable raillery both in English and Italian, and bade him begone where he had come from. I believe that nothing so delighted Northmour at that moment as the thought that we must all infallibly perish before the night was out.

Meantime the Italian put his flag of truce into his pocket, and disappeared, at a leisurely pace, among the sand-hills.

"They make honorable war," said Northmour. "They are all gentlemen and soldiers. For the credit of the thing, I wish we could change sides—you and I, Frank, and you too, missy, my darling—and leave that being on the bed to some one else. Tut! Don't look shocked! We are all going post to what they call eternity, and may as well be aboveboard while there's time. As far as I'm concerned, if I could first strangle Huddlestone and then get Clara in my arms, I could die with some pride and satisfaction. And as it is, by God, I'll have a kiss!"

Before I could do anything to interfere, he had rudely embraced and repeatedly kissed the resisting girl. Next moment I had pulled him away with fury, and flung him heavily against the wall. He laughed loud and long, and I feared his wits had given way under the strain; for even in the best of days he had been a sparing and a quiet laugher.

"Now, Frank," said he, when his mirth was somewhat appeased, "it's your turn. Here's my hand. Good-by; farewell!" Then, seeing me stand rigid and indignant, and holding Clara to my side—"Man!" he broke out, "are you angry? Did you think we were going to die with all the airs and graces of society? I took a kiss; I'm glad I had it; and now you can take another if you like, and square accounts."

I turned from him with a feeling of contempt which I did not seek to dissemble.

"As you please," said he. "You've been a prig in life; a prig you'll die."

And with that he sat down in a chair, a rifle over his knee, and amused himself with snapping the lock; but I could see that his ebullition of light spirits (the only one I ever knew him to display) had already come to an end, and was succeeded by a sullen, scowling humor.

All this time our assailants might have been entering the house, and we been none the wiser; we had in truth almost forgotten the danger that so imminently overhung our days. But just then Mr. Huddlestone uttered a cry, and leaped from the bed.

I asked him what was wrong.

"Fire!" he cried. "They have set the house on fire!"

Northmour was on his feet in an instant, and he and I ran through the door of communication with the study. The room was illuminated by a red and angry light. Almost at the moment of our entrance, a tower of flame arose in front of the window, and, with a tingling report, a pane fell inward on the carpet. They had set fire to the lean-to outhouse, where Northmour used to nurse his negatives.

"Hot work," said Northmour. "Let us try in your old room."

We ran thither in a breath, threw up the casement, and looked forth. Along the whole back wall of the pavilion piles of fuel had been arranged and kindled; and it is probable they had been drenched with mineral oil, for, in spite of the morning's rain, they all burned bravely. The fire had taken a firm hold already on the outhouse, which blazed higher and higher every moment; the back door was in the centre of a red-hot bonfire; the eaves we could see, as we looked upward, were already smoldering, for the roof overhung, and was supported by considerable beams of wood. At the same time, hot, pungent, and choking volumes of smoke began to fill the house. There was not a human being to be seen to right or left.

"Ah, well!" said Northmour, "here's the end, thank God."

And we returned to My Uncle's Room. Mr. Huddlestone was putting on his boots, still violently trembling, but with an air of determination such as I had not hitherto observed. Clara stood close by him, with her cloak in both hands ready to throw about her shoulders, and a strange look in her eyes, as if she were half hopeful, half doubtful of her father.

"Well, boys and girl," said Northmour, "how about a sally? The oven is heating; it is not good to stay here and be baked; and, for my part, I want to come to my hands with them, and be done."

"There is nothing else left," I replied.

And both Clara and Mr. Huddlestone, though with a very different intonation, added, "Nothing."

As we went downstairs the heat was excessive, and the roaring of the fire filled our ears; and we had scarce reached the passage before the stairs window fell in, a branch of flame shot brandishing through the aperture, and the interior of the pavilion became lighted up with that dreadful and fluctuating glare. At the same moment we heard the fall of something heavy and inelastic in the upper story. The whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight like a box of matches, and now not only flamed sky-high to land and sea, but threatened with every moment to crumble and fall in about our ears.

Northmour and I cocked our revolvers. Mr. Huddlestone, who had already refused a firearm, put us behind him with a manner of command.

"Let Clara open the door," said he. "So, if they fire a volley, she will be protected. In the meantime stand behind me. I am the scapegoat; my sins have found me out."

I heard him, as I stood breathless by his shoulder, with my pistol ready, pattering off prayers in a tremulous, rapid whisper; and I confess, horrid as the thought may seem, I despised him for thinking of supplications in a moment so critical and thrilling. In the meantime, Clara, who was dead white but still possessed her faculties, had displaced the barricade from the front door. Another moment, and she had pulled it open. Firelight and moonlight illuminated the links with confused and changeful lustre, and far away against the sky we could see a long trail of glowing smoke.

Mr. Huddlestone, filled for the moment with a strength greater than his own, struck Northmour and myself a back-hander in the chest; and while we were thus for the moment incapacitated from action, lifting his arms above his head like one about to dive, he ran straight forward out of the pavilion.

"Here am I!" he cried—"Huddlestone! Kill me, and spare the others!"

His sudden appearance daunted, I suppose, our hidden enemies; for Northmour and I had time to recover, to seize Clara between us, one by each arm, and to rush forth to his assistance, ere anything further had taken place. But scarce had we passed the threshold when there came near a dozen reports and flashes from every direction among the hollows of the links. Mr. Huddlestone staggered, uttered a weird and freezing cry, threw up his arms over his head, and fell backward on the turf.

"Traditore!Traditore!" cried the invisible avengers.

And just then, a part of the roof of the pavilion fell in, so rapid was the progress of the fire. A loud, vague, and horrible noise accompanied the collapse, and a vast volume of flame went soaring up to heaven. It must have been visible at that moment from twenty miles out to sea, from the shore at Graden Wester, and far inland from the peak of Graystiel, the most eastern summit of the Caulder Hills. Bernard Huddlestone, although God knows what were his obsequies, had a fine pyre at the moment of his death.

IX

Tells how Northmour Carried out His Threat

I should have the greatest difficulty to tell you what followed next after this tragic circumstance. It is all to me, as I look back upon it, mixed, strenuous, and ineffectual, like the struggles of a sleeper in a nightmare. Clara, I remember, uttered a broken sigh and would have fallen forward to earth, had not Northmour and I supported her insensible body. I do not think we were attacked; I do not remember even to have seen an assailant; and I believe we deserted Mr. Huddlestone without a glance. I only remember running like a man in a panic, now carrying Clara altogether in my own arms, now sharing her weight with Northmour, now scuffling confusedly for the possession of that dear burden. Why we should have made for my camp in the Hemlock Den, or how we reached it, are points lost forever to my recollection. The first moment at which I became definitely sure, Clara had been suffered to fall against the outside of my little tent, Northmour and I were tumbling together on the ground, and he, with contained ferocity, was striking for my head with the butt of his revolver. He had already twice wounded me on the scalp; and it is to the consequent loss of blood that I am tempted to attribute the sudden clearness of my mind.

I caught him by the wrist.

"Northmour," I remember saying, "you can kill me afterward. Let us first attend to Clara."

He was at that moment uppermost. Scarcely had the words passed my lips, when he had leaped to his feet and ran toward the tent; and the next moment, he was straining Clara to his heart and covering her unconscious hands and face with his caresses.

"Shame!" I cried. "Shame to you, Northmour!"

And, giddy though I still was, I struck him repeatedly upon the head and shoulders.

He relinquished his grasp, and faced me in the broken moonlight.

"I had you under, and I let you go," said he; "and now you strike me! Coward!"

"You are the coward," I retorted. "Did she wish your kisses while she was still sensible of what she wanted? Not she! And now she may be dying; and you waste this precious time, and abuse her helplessness. Stand aside, and let me help her."

He confronted me for a moment, white and menacing; then suddenly he stepped aside.

"Help her then," said he.

I threw myself on my knees beside her, and loosened, as well as I was able, her dress and corset; but while I was thus engaged, a grasp descended on my shoulder.

"Keep your hands off her," said Northmour fiercely. "Do you think I have no blood in my veins."

"Northmour," I cried, "if you will neither help her yourself, nor let me do so, do you know that I shall have to kill you?"

"That is better!" he cried. "Let her die also, where's the harm? Step aside from that girl! and stand up to fight."

"You will observe," said I, half rising, "that I have not kissed her yet."

"I dare you to," he cried.

I do not know what possessed me; it was one of the things I am most ashamed of in my life, though, as my wife used to say, I knew that my kisses would be always welcome were she dead or living; down I fell again upon my knees, parted the hair from her forehead, and, with the dearest respect, laid my lips for a moment on that cold brow. It was such a caress as a father might have given; it was such a one as was not unbecoming from a man soon to die to a woman already dead.

"And now," said I, "I am at your service, Mr. Northmour."

But I saw, to my surprise, that he had turned his back upon me.

"Do you hear?" I asked.

"Yes," said he, "I do. If you wish to fight, I am ready. If not, go on and save Clara. All is one to me."

I did not wait to be twice bidden; but, stooping again over Clara, continued my efforts to revive her. She still lay white and lifeless; I began to fear that her sweet spirit had indeed fled beyond recall, and horror and a sense of utter desolation seized upon my heart. I called her by name with the most endearing inflections; I chafed and beat her hands; and now I laid her head low, now supported it against my knee; but all seemed to be in vain, and the lids still lay heavy on her eyes.

"Northmour," I said, "there is my hat. For God's sake bring some water from the spring."

Almost in a moment he was by my side with the water.

"I have brought it in my own," he said. "You do not grudge me the privilege?"

"Northmour," I was beginning to say, as I laved her head and breast; but he interrupted me savagely.

"Oh, you hush up!" he said. "The best thing you can do is to say nothing."

I had certainly no desire to talk, my mind being swallowed up in concern for my dear love and her condition; so I continued in silence to do my best toward her recovery, and, when the hat was empty, returned it to him, with one word—"More." He had, perhaps, gone several times upon this errand, when Clara reopened her eyes.

"Now," said he, "since she is better, you can spare me, can you not? I wish you a good-night, Mr. Cassilis."

And with that he was gone among the thicket. I made a fire, for I had now no fear of the Italians, who had even spared all the little possessions left in my encampment; and, broken as she was by the excitement and the hideous catastrophe of the evening, I managed, in one way or another—by persuasion, encouragement, warmth, and such simple remedies as I could lay my hand on—to bring her back to some composure of mind and strength of body.

Day had already come, when a sharp "Hist!" sounded from the thicket. I started from the ground; but the voice of Northmour was heard adding, in the most tranquil tones: "Come here, Cassilis, and alone; I want to show you something."

I consulted Clara with my eyes, and, receiving her tacit permission, left her alone, and clambered out of the den. At some distance off I saw Northmour leaning against an elder; and, as soon as he perceived me, he began walking seaward. I had almost overtaken him as he reached the outskirts of the wood.

"Look," said he, pausing.

A couple of steps more brought me out of the foliage. The light of the morning lay cold and clear over that well-known scene. The pavilion was but a blackened wreck; the roof had fallen in, one of the gables had fallen out; and, far and near, the face of the links was cicatrized with little patches of burned furze. Thick smoke still went straight upward in the windless air of the morning, and a great pile of ardent cinders filled the bare walls of the house, like coals in an open grate. Close by the islet a schooner yacht lay to, and a well-manned boat was pulling vigorously for the shore.

"The 'Red Earl!' " I cried. "The 'Red Earl,' twelve hours too late!"

"Feel in your pocket, Frank. Are you armed?" asked Northmour.

I obeyed him, and I think I must have become deadly pale. My revolver had been taken from me.

"You see I have you in my power," he continued. "I disarmed you last night while you were nursing Clara; but this morning—here—take your pistol. No thanks!" he cried, holding up his hand. "I do not like them; that is the only way you can annoy me now."

He began to walk forward across the links to meet the boat, and I followed a step or two behind. In front of the pavilion I paused to see where Mr. Huddlestone had fallen; but there was no sign of him, nor so much as a trace of blood.

"Graden Floe," said Northmour.

He continued to advance till we had come to the head of the beach.

"No further, please," said he. "Would you like to take her to Graden House?"

"Thank you," replied I; "I shall try to get her to the minister's at Graden Wester."

The prow of the boat here grated on the beach, and a sailor jumped ashore with a line in his hand.

"Wait a minute, lads!" cried Northmour; and then lower and to my private ear: "You had better say nothing of all this to her," he added.

"On the contrary," I broke out, "she shall know everything that I can tell."

"You do not understand," he returned, with an air of great dignity. "It will be nothing to her; she expects it of me. Good-by!" he added, with a nod.

I offered him my hand.

"Excuse me," said he. "It's small, I know; but I can't push things quite so far as that. I don't wish any sentimental business, to sit by your hearth a white-haired wanderer, and all that. Quite the contrary: I hope to God I shall never again clap eyes on either one of you."

"Well, God bless you, Northmour!" I said heartily.

"Oh, yes," he returned.

He walked down the beach; and the man who was ashore gave him an arm on board, and then shoved off and leaped into the bows himself. Northmour took the tiller; the boat rose to the waves, and the oars between the thole-pins sounded crisp and measured in the morning air.

They were not yet half-way to the "Red Earl," and I was still watching their progress, when the sun rose out of the sea.

One word more, and my story is done. Years after, Northmour was killed fighting under the colors of Garibaldi for the liberation of the Tyrol.

THE PRISONERS

BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, a French novelist, was born in 1850, and died, insane, in 1893.He served a long apprenticeship under the instruction of Flaubert (his godfather), before publishing any of his writings.When his first story, "Boule de Suif," appeared in the collection entitled "Les Soirées de Médan," in 1880, he was greeted as a master.Notwithstanding his pessimism, he is one of the most highly esteemed French story-writers of the Nineteenth Century.

THE PRISONERS

By GUY DE MAUPASSANT

There was no sound in the forest except the slight rustle of the snow as it fell upon the trees. It had been falling, small and fine, since midday; it powdered the branches with a frosty moss, cast a silver veil over the dead leaves in the hollow, and spread upon the pathways a great, soft, white carpet that thickened the immeasurable silence amid this ocean of trees.

Before the door of the keeper's lodge stood a bare-armed young woman, chopping wood with an ax upon a stone. She was tall, thin and strong—a child of the forest, a daughter and wife of gamekeepers.

A voice called from within the house: "Come in, Berthine; we are alone to-night, and it is getting dark. There may be Prussians or wolves about."

She who was chopping wood replied by splitting another block; her bosom rose and fell with the heavy blows, each time she lifted her arm.

"I have finished, mother. I'm here. There's nothing to be frightened at; it isn't dark yet."

Then she brought in her fagots and her logs, and piled them up at the chimney-side, went out again to close the shutters—enormous shutters of solid oak—and then, when she again came in, pushed the heavy bolts of the door.

Her mother was spinning by the fire, a wrinkled old woman who had grown timorous with age.

"I don't like father to be out," said she. "Two women have no strength."

The younger answered: "Oh, I could very well kill a wolf or a Prussian, I can tell you." And she turned her eyes to a large revolver hanging over the fireplace. Her husband had been put into the army at the beginning of the Prussian invasion, and the two women had remained alone with her father, the old gamekeeper, Nicholas Pichou, who had obstinately refused to leave his home and go into the town.

The nearest town was Rethel, an old fortress perched on a rock. It was a patriotic place, and the townspeople had resolved to resist the invaders, to close their gates and stand a siege, according to the traditions of the city. Twice before, under Henry IV and under Louis XIV, the inhabitants of Rethel had won fame by heroic defenses. They would do the same this time; by Heaven, they would, or they would be burned within their walls.

So they had bought cannons and rifles, and equipped a force, and formed battalions and companies, and they drilled all day long in the Place d'Armes. All of them—bakers, grocers, butchers, notaries, attorneys, carpenters, booksellers, even the chemists—went through their maneuvres in due rotation at regular hours, under the orders of M. Lavigne, who had once been a non-commissioned officer in the dragoons, and now was a draper, having married the daughter and inherited the shop of old M. Ravaudan.

He had taken the rank of major in command of the place, and all the young men having gone to join the army, he enrolled all the others who were eager for resistance. The stout men now walked the streets at the pace of professional pedestrians, in order to bring down their fat, and to lengthen their breath; the weak ones carried burdens, in order to strengthen their muscles.

The Prussians were expected. But the Prussians did not appear. Yet they were not far off; for their scouts had already twice pushed across the forest as far as Nicholas Pichou's lodge.

The old keeper, who could run like a fox, had gone to warn the town. The guns had been pointed, but the enemy had not shown.

The keeper's lodge served as a kind of outpost in the forest of Aveline. Twice a week the man went for provisions, and carried to the citizens news from the outlying country.

He had gone that day to announce that a small detachment of German infantry had stopped at his house, the day before, about two in the afternoon, and had gone away again almost directly. The subaltern in command spoke French.

When the old man went on such errands he took with him his two dogs—two great beasts with the jaws of lions—because of the wolves who were beginning to get fierce; and he left his two women, advising them to lock themselves into the house as soon as night began to fall.

The young one was afraid of nothing, but the old one kept on trembling and repeating:

"It will turn out badly, all this sort of thing. You'll see, it will turn out badly."

This evening she was more anxious even than usual.

"Do you know what time your father will come back?" said she.

"Oh, not before eleven for certain. When he dines with the Major he is always late."

She was hanging her saucepan over the fire to make the soup, when she stopped short, listened to a vague sound which had reached her by way of the chimney, and murmured:

"There's some one walking in the wood—seven or eight men at least."

Her mother, alarmed, stopped her wheel and muttered: "Oh, good Lord! And father not here!"

She had not finished speaking when violent blows shook the door.

The women made no answer, and a loud guttural voice called out: "Open the door."

Then, after a pause, the same voice repeated: "Open the door, or I'll break it in."

Then Berthine slipped into her pocket the big revolver from over the mantelpiece, and, having put her ear to the crack of the door, asked: "Who are you?"

The voice answered: "I am the detachment that came the other day."

The woman asked again: "What do you want?"

"I have lost my way, ever since the morning, in the forest, with my detachment. Open the door, or I will break it in."

The keeper's wife had no choice; she promptly drew the great bolt, and pulling back the door she beheld six men in the pale snow-shadows—six Prussian men, the same who had come the day before. She said in a firm tone: "What do you want here at this time of night?"

The officer answered: "I had lost my way, lost it completely; I recognized the house. I have had nothing to eat since the morning, nor my men either."

Berthine replied: "But I am all alone with mother, this evening."

The soldier, who seemed a good sort of fellow, answered: "That makes no difference. I shall not do any harm; but you must give us something to eat. We are faint and tired to death."

The keeper's wife stepped back.

"Come in," said she.

They came in, powdered with snow and with a sort of mossy cream on their helmets that made them look like meringues. They seemed tired, worn out.

The young woman pointed to the wooden benches on each side of the big table.

"Sit down," said she, "and I'll make you some soup. You do look quite knocked up."

Then she bolted the door again.

She poured some more water into her saucepan, threw in more butter and potatoes; then, unhooking a piece of bacon that hung in the chimney, she cut off half, and added that also to the stew. The eyes of the six men followed her every movement with an air of awakened hunger. They had set their guns and helmets in a corner, and sat waiting on their benches, like well-behaved school children. The mother had begun to spin again, but she threw terrified glances at the invading soldiers. There was no sound except the slight purring of the wheel, the crackle of the fire, and the bubbling of the water as it grew hot.

But all at once a strange noise made them all start—something like a horse breathing at the door, the breathing of an animal, deep and snorting.

One of the Germans had sprung toward the guns. The woman with a movement and a smile stopped him.

"It is the wolves," said she. "They are like you; they are wandering about, hungry."

The man would hardly believe, he wanted to see for himself; and as soon as the door was opened, he perceived two great gray beasts making off at a quick, long trot.

He came back to his seat, murmuring: "I should not have believed it."

And he sat waiting for his meal.

They ate voraciously; their mouths opened from ear to ear to take the largest of gulps; their round eyes opened sympathetically with their jaws, and their swallowing was like the gurgle of rain in a water-pipe.

The two silent women watched the rapid movements of the great red beards; the potatoes seemed to melt away into these moving fleeces.

Then, as they were thirsty, the keeper's wife went down into the cellar to draw cider for them. She was a long time gone; it was a little vaulted cellar, said to have served both as prison and hiding-place in the days of the Revolution. The way down was by a narrow winding stair, shut in by a trap-door at the end of the kitchen.

When Berthine came back, she was laughing, laughing slyly to herself. She gave the Germans her pitcher of drink. Then she, too, had her supper, with her mother, at the other end of the kitchen.

The soldiers had finished eating and were falling asleep, all six, around the table. From time to time, a head would fall heavily on the board, then the man, starting awake, would sit up.

Berthine said to the officer: "You may just as well lie down here before the fire. There's plenty of room for six. I'm going up to my room with my mother."

The two women went to the upper floor. They were heard to lock their door and to walk about for a little while, then they made no further sound.

The Prussians stretched themselves on the stone floor, their feet to the fire, their heads on their rolled-up cloaks, and soon all six were snoring on six different notes, sharp or deep, but all sustained and alarming.

They had certainly been asleep for a considerable time when a shot sounded, and so loud that it seemed to be fired close against the walls of the house. The soldiers sat up instantly. There were two more shots, and then three more.

The door of the staircase opened hastily, and the keeper's wife appeared, barefooted, a short petticoat over her night-dress, a candle in her hand, and a face of terror. She whispered: "Here are the French—two hundred of them at least. If they find you here, they will burn the house. Go down, quick, into the cellar, and don't make a noise. If you make a noise, we are lost." The officer, scared, murmured: "I will, I will. Which way do we go down?"

The young woman hurriedly raised the narrow square trap-door, and the men disappeared by the winding stair, one after another going underground, backward, so as to feel the steps with their feet. But when the point of the last helmet had disappeared, Berthine, shutting down the heavy oaken plank, thick as a wall, and hard as steel, kept in place by clamps and a padlock, turned the key twice, slowly, and then began to laugh with a laugh of silent rapture, and with a wild desire to dance over the heads of her prisoners.

They made no noise, shut in as if they were in a stone box, only getting air through a grating.

Berthine at once relighted her fire, put on her saucepan once more, and made more soup, murmuring: "Father will be tired to-night."

Then she sat down and waited. Nothing but the deep-toned pendulum of the clock went to and fro with its regular tick in the silence. From time to time, the young woman cast a look at the dial—an impatient look, which seemed to say: "How slowly it goes!"

Presently she thought she heard a murmur under her feet; low, confused words reached her through the vaulted masonry of the cellar. The Prussians were beginning to guess her trick, and soon the officer came up the little stair, and thumped the trap-door with his fist. Once more he cried: "Open the door."

She rose, drew near, and imitating his accent, asked: "What do you want?"

"Open the door!"

"I shall not open it."

The man grew angry.

"Open the door, or I'll break it in."

She began to laugh.

"Break away, my man; break away."

Then he began to beat, with the butt end of his gun, upon the oaken trap-door closed over his head; but it would have resisted a battering-ram.

The keeper's wife heard him go down again. Then, one after another, the soldiers came up to try their strength and inspect the fastenings. But, concluding no doubt that their efforts were in vain, they all went back into the cellar and began to talk again.

The young woman listened to them; then she went to open the outer door, and stood straining her ears for a sound.

A distant barking reached her. She began to whistle like a huntsman, and almost immediately two immense dogs loomed through the shadows and jumped upon her with signs of joy. She held them by the neck, to keep them from running away, and called with all her might: "Halloa, father!"

A voice, still very distant, answered: "Halloa, Berthine!"

She waited some moments, then called again: "Halloa, father!"

The voice repeated, nearer: "Halloa, Berthine!"

The keeper's wife returned: "Don't pass in front of the grating. There are Prussians in the cellar."

All at once the black outline of the man showed on the left, where he had paused between two tree-trunks. He asked, uneasily: "Prussians in the cellar! What are they doing there?"

The young woman began to laugh.

"It is those that came yesterday. They got lost in the forest ever since the morning; I put them in the cellar to keep cool."

And she related the whole adventure; how she had frightened them with shots of the revolver, and shut them up in the cellar.

The old man, still grave, asked: "What do you expect me to do with them at this time of night?"

She answered: "Go and fetch M. Lavigne and his men. He'll take them prisoners; and won't he be pleased!"

Then Father Pichou smiled: "Yes; he will be pleased."

His daughter resumed: "Here's some soup for you; eat it quick and go off again."

The old keeper sat down and began to eat his soup, after having put down two plates full for his dogs.

The Prussians, hearing voices, had become silent.

A quarter of an hour later, Pichou started again. Berthine, with her head in her hands, waited.

The prisoners were moving about again. They shouted and called, and beat continually with their guns on the immovable trap-door of the cellar.

Then they began to fire their guns through the grating, hoping, no doubt, to be heard if any German detachment were passing in the neighborhood.

The keeper's wife did not stir; but all this noise tried her nerves, and irritated her. An evil anger awoke in her; she would have liked to kill them, the wretches, to keep them quiet.

Then, as her impatience increased, she began to look at the clock and count the minutes.

At last the hands marked the time which she had fixed for their coming.

She opened the door once more to listen for them. She perceived a shadow moving cautiously. She was frightened and screamed.

It was her father.

He said: "They sent me to see if there's any change."

"No, nothing."

Then he in his turn gave a long, strident whistle into the darkness. And soon, something brown was seen coming slowly through the trees—the advance guard composed of ten men.

The old man kept repeating: "Don't pass before the grating."

And the first comers pointed out the formidable grating to those who followed.

Finally, the main body appeared, two hundred men in all, each with two hundred cartridges.

M. Lavigne, trembling with excitement, posted them so as to surround the house on all sides, leaving, however, a wide, free space round the little black hole, level with the earth, which admitted air to the cellar.

Then he entered the dwelling and inquired into the strength and position of the enemy, now so silent that it might be thought to have disappeared, flown away, or evaporated through the grating. M. Lavigne stamped his foot on the trap-door and called: "Mr. Prussian officer!"

The German did not reply.

The Major repeated: "Mr. Prussian officer!"

It was in vain. For a whole twenty minutes he summoned this silent officer to capitulate with arms and baggage, promising him life and military honors for himself and his soldiers. But he obtained no sign of consent or of hostility. The situation was becoming difficult.

The soldier-citizens were stamping their feet and striking wide-armed blows upon their chests, as coachmen do for warmth, and they were looking at the grating with an ever-growing childish desire to pass in front of it. At last one of them risked it, a very nimble fellow called Potdevin. He took a start and ran past like a stag. The attempt succeeded. The prisoners seemed dead.

A voice called out: "There's nobody there."

Another soldier crossed the space before the dangerous opening. Then it became a game. Every minute, a man ran out, passing from one troop to the other as children at play do, and raising showers of snow behind him with the quick movement of his feet. They had lighted fires of dead branches to keep themselves warm, and the flying profile of each Garde-National showed in a bright illumination as he passed over to the camp on the left.

Some one called out: "Your turn, Maloison."

Maloison was a big baker whom his comrades laughed at, because he was so fat.

He hesitated. They teased him. Then, making up his mind, he started at a regular breathless trot which shook his stout person. All the detachment laughed till they cried. They called out: "Bravo, Maloison!" to encourage him.

He had gone about two-thirds of the distance when a long flame, rapid and red, leaped from the grating. A report followed, and the big baker fell upon his nose with a frightful shriek.

No one ran to help him. Then they saw him drag himself on all fours across the snow, moaning, and when he was beyond that terrible passage he fainted. He had a bullet high up in the flesh of the thigh.

After the first surprise and alarm there was more laughter.

Major Lavigne appeared upon the threshold of the keeper's lodge. He had just framed his plan of attack, and gave his word of command in a ringing voice: "Plumber Planchet and his men!"

Three men drew near.

"Unfasten the gutters of the house."

In a quarter of an hour some twenty yards of leaden gutter-pipe were brought to the Major.

Then, with innumerable prudent precautions, he had a little round hole bored in the edge of the trap-door, and having laid out an aqueduct from the pump to this opening, announced with an air of satisfaction: "We are going to give these German gentlemen something to drink." A wild cheer of admiration burst forth, followed by shouts of delight and roars of laughter. The Major organized gangs of workers, who were to be employed in relays of five minutes. Then he commanded: "Pump!"

And the iron handle having been put in motion, a little sound rustled along the pipes and slipped into the cellar, falling from step to step with the tinkle of a waterfall, suggestive of rocks and little red fishes.

They waited.

An hour passed; then two, then three.

The Major walked about the kitchen in a fever, putting his ear to the floor from time to time, trying to guess what the enemy was doing and whether it would soon capitulate.

The enemy was moving now. Sounds of rattling, of speaking, of splashing, could be heard. Then toward eight in the morning a voice issued from the grating: "I want to speak to the French officer."

Lavigne answered from the window, without putting out his head too far: "Do you surrender?"

"I surrender."

"Then pass out your guns."

A weapon was immediately seen to appear out of the hole and fall into the snow; then a second, a third—all; and the same voice declared: "I have no more. Make haste. I am drowned."

The Major commanded: "Stop."

And the handle of the pump fell motionless.

Then, having filled the kitchen with soldiers, all standing armed, he slowly lifted the trap-door.

Six drenched heads appeared, six fair heads with long light hair, and the six Germans were seen issuing forth one by one, shivering, dripping, scared.

They were seized and bound. Then, as a surprise was apprehended, the troops set out in two parties, one in charge of the prisoners, the other in charge of Maloison, on a mattress, carried on poles.

Rethel was entered in triumph.

M. Lavigne received a decoration for having taken prisoner a Prussian advance-guard; and the fat baker had the military medal for wounds received in face of the enemy.

THE SIEGE OF BERLIN

BY ALPHONSE DAUDET

Alphonse Daudet (born 1840, died 1897) has been reckoned for such of his novels as "Sapho," "Sidonie," "Numa Roumestan," etc., as a stern censor, unsparing in his exposition and satire of the weakness and hypocrisy of human nature.In the present selection, however, he shows us the warm, sympathetic side of his nature.The story is a political as well as a human document in that it is a moving protest against Germany's annexation of Alsace and Lorraine.

THE SIEGE OF BERLIN*

By ALPHONSE DAUDET

* Translated for "Great Short Stories" by Mrs. I. L. Meyer.

We were going up the Champs Elysées with Doctor V——, gathering from the walls pierced by shells, and from the pavements broken by grape-shot, the story of Paris under siege. Just before we came to the Place de l'Etoile, the Doctor halted, and, pointing to one of the great corner houses grouped around the Arch of Triumph, "Do you see those four closed windows?" he asked. "One of the first days of August—the terrible month of August of last year, so full of anguish and disaster—I was called there to a case of apoplexy.

"Colonel Jouve, a cuirassier of the First Empire (a stubborn fellow, bristling with glory and with patriotism), had leased that flat with the balcony looking on the Champs Elysées. He had come there at the beginning of the war (1870-71). Guess for what purpose. To be present at the triumphal entry of our troops! Poor old man! The news from Wissembourg arrived one day just as he arose from table; he read the name of the Napoleon at the foot of the bulletin, of our defeat, and dropped as if felled by a sledgehammer. I found the old fellow stretched at full length upon the carpet, livid, apparently dead. He must have been very tall. As he lay there he looked gigantic—with fine, clear-cut features, fair teeth, and curling white hair. Eighty years old! but he did not look sixty. His granddaughter, a beautiful young girl, knelt close to him, weeping. She resembled him. Seeing the two faces together you might have thought them two fine Greek medals of the same impression, one an antique dimmed by age, somewhat worn around the edges; the other resplendent in all the velvet gloss of its pristine days. I was touched by the child's grief; later I became her ally and devoted friend. She was the daughter and grand-daughter of soldiers. Her father was on MacMahon's staff; and the man before her, lying, to all appearances, dead, must have suggested to her mind another equally terrible possibility. I did my best to give her courage. I had very little hope. It was an unquestionable hemiplegia, and men eighty years old never come out of that. The sick man lay in a stupor three days. During that time the news from Reichshofen reached Paris. You remember how it reached us! Until that night we had believed it a great victory—twenty thousand Prussians killed, the Prince Royal a prisoner.... I do not know by what miracle or stirred by what magnetic current an echo of the national joy reached the numb brain and thrilled the paralyzed limbs of my unconscious patient; but when I approached his bed I found him another man. His eyes were almost clear, his tongue less thick; he found strength to smile and to stammer the words: 'Vic-to-ry! Vic-to-ry!' "

"'Yes, Colonel,' I answered, 'a great victory!' In measure as I gave him the details of our triumph, his features softened and his whole face brightened. When I went out the granddaughter was waiting for me. She was very pale. I took her hand in mine. 'Do not weep,' I said, 'your grandfather is better; he will recover.' And then she told me the true story of Reichshofen—MacMahon in flight, the army crushed! We stood there face to face, speechless. She was thinking of her father. I own that all my thoughts were with her grandfather. I trembled for him! What could I do? To tell him the truth would kill him! But what right had I to leave him to the delusive joy that had called him back from the grave?

"'I can not help it,' said the heroic girl, 'I must tell a lie!' and drying her eyes, radiant, smiling, she entered the sick room.

"At first it was not so hard; the old fellow was very weak, and as easily deceived as a child. But as he gained strength our difficulties increased; his brain cleared; he was impatient for news; he insisted upon following the movements of the army; and his granddaughter was forced to sit by his bed and invent bulletins from the conquered country. It was piteous! The beautiful, tired child forced to bend over the map of Germany, marking the imaginary progress of the army with little flags—Bazaine in command in Berlin, Froissart in Bavaria, MacMahon on the Baltic!

"In her ignorance she came to me for all her details; and I—almost as ignorant—did what I could for her. But now our best aid came from the grandfather. He helped us at every point in our imaginary invasion. He had conquered Germany so many times under the First Empire he knew the way. He could tell just what was coming.

"'Can you see what they are doing?' he cried. 'They are here! They turn right here, where I place this pin!' As far as the route was concerned, all that he predicted came true, and when we told him so he gloried in it. Unhappily for us we could not work fast enough for him. We might well take cities, win battles, pursue flying armies—he was insatiable! Every day as soon as I entered the sick room I was told of new triumphs.

"'Doctor,' cried the young girl, hurrying into the room and facing me, to bar my progress—'Doctor, we have taken Mayence!' And I cried as gaily, 'I know it! I heard it this morning!' Sometimes her joyful voice cried the news to me through the closed door.

"'We are getting on! We are getting on!' laughed the invalid. 'In less than eight days we shall enter Berlin!'

"We knew that the Prussians were coming, and, as they neared Paris, we wondered if it would not be safer to get the old man into the country. But we dared not do it; once out of the house he would look around him; he would question; he would see and hear. He was too weak, too numb from his great shock to bear the truth! We decided to stay where we were. The first day of the investment I went upstairs with a heavy heart, I remember. I had come through the deserted streets of Paris, past the ramparts. The troops were dragging up their cannon. All our suburbs were frontiers. I found my old fellow sitting up in bed, jubilant and proud.

"'Well,' said he, 'at last the siege is begun!'

"I was stupefied; I stared at him. His granddaughter cried out: 'Yes, Doctor, we have had great news! The siege of Berlin is begun!'

"She said it so pleasantly, threading her needle and taking her little stitches so calmly! How could he doubt her? He could not hear the guns; they were too far away. And Paris, wretched, tortured, sinister under the icy sky. What could he know of that! Sitting propped up in his bed he could see nothing but a corner of the Arch of Triumph. In his room everything was of the epoch of the Empire. Even the bric-à-brac was well fitted to foster his illusions. Portraits of field-marshals, pictures of battles, the king of Rome in his cradle; and the stiff consoles ornamented with brass trophies, and laden with Imperial relics! Medals, bronzes, the rock of St. Helena under a glass shade, and miniatures (all portraits of the same pretty woman with curling hair, dressed for a ball, in a yellow high-necked robe with leg-of-mutton sleeves, and wide belt, in the stiff fashion of 1806).

"Brave and faithful soldier of Napoleon! his relics formed an influence stronger for his deception than all our well-meant lies. He had lived for years in an atmosphere of conquest, and that atmosphere had prepared him for his dream of Berlin.

"From the beginning of the siege our military movements were simple; to take Berlin was merely an affair of time. When the old man was too tired of his enforced idleness, his granddaughter read him letters from his son—imaginary letters, of course, as nothing was permitted to enter Paris. Since the battle of Sedan the Colonel's son, MacMahon's aide, had been ordered to a German fortress.

"You may imagine the anguish of the poor man, separated from his family, knowing them to be prisoners in Paris, deprived of everything, possibly sick. Conscious as we were of his sorrow, it was not easy to pretend that he had written merry letters. Well, we did our best. The letters were vivacious, somewhat brief. Naturally, a soldier in the field—nay, more than that, a soldier always on the march in a conquered country! —could not write long letters. Sometimes the poor grandchild's heart failed her; try as she might she could not write; then, for weeks there was no news. But the old man watched for it; and when we saw that the news must come, the little one ran into the room, letter in hand. Naturally, our strategic combinations were chimerical, difficult, even for their authors, to understand; but the old colonel invented explanations; it was all practical to him; he listened, smiled knowingly, criticized, approved. He was admirable when he answered his letters.

"'Never forget that thou art French,' dictated the vibrating voice. 'Be generous to the vanquished. Poor people! do not make them feel that they have lost! do not bear too heavy in this invasion.'

"Then followed advice oft-repeated, tender and touching little lay sermons, admonitions calculated to stimulate the young soldier to every military virtue. Truly, one could find in all that a code of honor—specially compiled for the use of conquerors; and scattered here and there throughout the letter were a few general reflections on politics, the preliminaries of peace, etc.

"'What must be done before the signing of the treaty?' The old man was not quite decided on the point; he 'must consider' before he could be sure; he was not exigeant: 'The indemnity of war—nothing more. Why should we take their provinces? What could we do with them? Could we ever make France out of Germany?' He dictated it all so firmly, in so strong a voice, and there was such truth, such candor, such patriotic zeal in his words, that it was impossible to listen to him unmoved.

"All that time the siege was in progress; but alas, it was not the siege of Berlin! It was just at that time of the year when Paris is bitter cold. The Prussians were shelling the city, and we were shut in there with epidemics and with famine. But surrounded by our indefatigable tenderness the old soldier lacked nothing. Even to the last I was able to provide him with fresh meat and with white bread. There was no white bread for us. I can not think of anything more touching than those dinners, so innocently, so ignorantly selfish! There he was, sitting in his bed fresh and smiling, his napkin under his chin, and his granddaughter, pale from privation, close to him, guiding his hand from his plate to his mouth, and holding his glass while he sipped his drinks with childlike satisfaction! Animated by the repast and by the calming influence of the warm room, he looked out on the winter: the tiled roofs; the snow whirling against the window-pane; and he thought of the far North, and for the hundredth time told us of the retreat from Russia when they had had nothing to eat but frozen biscuit and horse-meat.

"Horse-meat!

"'Can you imagine that, little one?'

"You may believe she could imagine that! For two months she had eaten no other meat. Our task was growing hard. In measure, as his strength returned, the numbness of all his senses—our chief aid to deception—was decreasing. Two or three times the volleys fired at the Porte Maillot had reached his ears, and he had lifted his head with ears pricked like the ears of a retriever. The last lie must be told, the last victory reported. Bazaine at Berlin! We told him that the shot that had startled him had been fired from the Invalides in honor of the victory.

"Another day they rolled his bed close to the window (I think that it was the Thursday of Buzenval), and he saw, distinctly, the National Guards massing on the Avenue de la Grande Armée.

"'What troops are those?' he asked sharply. Then he grumbled under his breath: 'Badly drilled! Very badly drilled! The whole outfit is slovenly!'

"Nothing came of it, but it was a warning. We had been warned before and we had taken precautions; but unfortunately they had fallen short.

"One day, when I arrived, the granddaughter ran to meet me, pale and anxious. 'They will enter the city to-morrow,' she murmured.

"Was the door of the sick-room open? As I think of it to-night, it seems to me that there was a strange expression on the fine, old face. It is probable that he had overheard his granddaughter.

"We had been speaking of the Prussians, but the old man could think of nothing but the French and their triumphal entry; MacMahon descending the Avenue in a shower of flowers, to the music of the fanfares. His son would be riding with the Marshal; and he, the Colonel, on the balcony, in full uniform, as he was at Lutzen, saluting the torn flags and the French eagles, dimmed by all the powder of the war!

"Poor old Jouve! Probably he believed that we had kept the good news to ourselves, fearing to excite him unduly. He did not say one word to any one; but the day following, when the victorious battalions of Prussia timidly entered the long road leading from the Porte Maillot to the Tuileries, the window was cautiously opened, and the Colonel appeared on the balcony, with his casque, his lance, and all the faded glory of the ex-cuirassier of Milhaud. I have often wondered what subconscious effort of the will, what sudden fanning of the vital flame, put the old man on his feet and into harness! What is sure is, that he was there, on foot, erect, looking with wild eyes over Paris—Paris in her mourning! —the wide, silent streets, the iron blinds drawn down. Paris, as sinister as a dead-house! He saw flags everywhere—white flags crossed with red! And not a soul to greet the returning army! For an instant he thought that he was dreaming. But, no! from away down there, below the Arch of Triumph, came a confused, metallic rattling, then a black line, advancing under the rising sun; then the gleaming combs of brazen helmets. The little drums of Jena rolled; and through the Arch of the Star of France, the day-star of the world, rhythmed by the heavy tread of the German sections, rang the triumphal march of Schubert!...

"Then the mournful silence of the Place de l'Etoile was broken by a cry:

"'To arms!To arms!The Prussians!' and the four Uhlans of the vanguard, looking up to the balcony, saw a tall, old man throw his arms above his head, waver, and fall backward.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

"And this time Colonel Jouve was really dead."

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

The question as to which is Kipling's greatest short story is one that brings different answers according to the temperament of the person to whom the question is addressed.Many of those who prefer sentiment in a story select "Without Benefit of Clergy"—those who prefer a strong study of character under most unusual circumstances are apt to say "The Man Who Would be King."

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

By RUDYARD KIPLING

Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom—army, law-courts, revenue, and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated traveling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.

My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached Nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for whisky. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days' food. "If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it isn't seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying—it's seven hundred millions," said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed to agree with him. We talked politics—the politics of Loaferdom that sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster are not smoothed off—and we talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, which is the turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward. My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury, there were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any way.

"We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick," said my friend, "but that'd mean inquiries for you and for me, and I've got my hands full these days. Did you say you are traveling back along this line within any days?"

"Within ten," I said.

"Can't you make it eight?" said he. "Mine is rather urgent business."

"I can send your telegram within ten days if that will serve you," I said.

"I couldn't trust the wire to fetch him, now I think of it. It's this way. He leaves Delhi on the 23d for Bombay. That means he'll be running through Ajmir about the night of the 23d."

"But I'm going into the Indian Desert," I explained.

"Well and good," said he. "You'll be changing at Marwar Junction to get into Jodhpore territory—you must do that—and he'll be coming through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? 'Twon't be inconveniencing you, because I know that there's precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the 'Backwoodsman.' "

"Have you ever tried that trick?" I asked.

"Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then you get escorted to the Border before you've time to get your knife into them. But about my friend here. I must give him a word o' mouth to tell him what's come to me, or else he won't know where to go. I would take it more than kind of you if you was to come out of Central India in time to catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to him: 'He has gone South for the week.' He'll know what that means. He's a big man with a red beard, and a great swell he is. You'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round him in a Second-class compartment. But don't you be afraid. Slip down the window, and say: 'He has gone South for the week,' and he'll tumble. It's only cutting your time to stay in those parts by two days. I ask you as a stranger—going to the West," he said with emphasis.

"Where have you come from?" said I.

"From the East," said he, "and I am hoping that you will give him the message on the Square—for the sake of my Mother as well as your own."

Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers, but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, I saw fit to agree.

"It's more than a little matter," said he, "and that's why I ask you to do it—and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A Second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in it. You'll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want."

"I'll give the message if I catch him," I said, "and for the sake of your Mother as well as mine I'll give you a word of advice. Don't try to run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the 'Backwoodsman.' There's a real one knocking about here, and it might lead to trouble."

"Thank you," said he simply, "and when will the swine be gone? I can't starve because he's ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the Degumber Rajah down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump."

"What did he do to his father's widow, then?"

"Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung from a beam. I found that out myself, and I'm the only man that would dare going into the State to get hush-money for it. They'll try to poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there. But you'll give the man at Marwar Junction my message?"

He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard, more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die with great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome horror of English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. Native States were created by Providence in order to supply picturesque scenery, tigers, and tall-writing. They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from a plate made of a flapjack, and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny little happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face.

"Tickets again?" said he.

"No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He is gone South for the week!"

The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. "He has gone South for the week!" he repeated. "Now that's just like his impidence. Did he say that I was to give you anything? 'Cause I won't."

"He didn't," I said, and dropped away and watched the red lights die out in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off the sands. I climbed into my own train—not an Intermediate Carriage this time—and went to sleep.

If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as a memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having done my duty was my only reward.

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they foregathered and personated Correspondents of newspapers, and might, if they "stuck up" one of the little rat-trap states of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe them as accurately as I could remember to people who would be interested in deporting them: and succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them headed back from the Degumber borders.

Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were no Kings and no incidents except the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible village; Colonels who have been overpassed for commands sit down and sketch the outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on Seniority versus Selection; missionaries wish to know why they have not been permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse and swear at a brother-missionary under special patronage of the editorial We; stranded theatrical companies troop up to explain that they can not pay for their advertisements, but on their return from New Zealand or Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent punkah-pulling machines, carriage couplings, and unbreakable swords and axle-trees call with specifications in their pockets and hours at their disposal; tea-companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the office pens; secretaries of ball-committees clamor to have the glories of their last dance more fully expounded; strange ladies rustle in and say: "I want a hundred lady's cards printed at once, please," which is manifestly part of an Editor's duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to ask for employment as a proof-reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell is ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires are saying, "You're another," and Mister Gladstone is calling down brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the little black copy-boys are whining, "kaa-pi chay-ha-yeh" ("copy wanted"), like tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as Modred's shield.

But that is the amusing part of the year. There are other six months wherein none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch up to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above reading-light, and the press machines are red-hot of touch, and nobody writes anything but accounts of amusements in the Hill-stations or obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes a tinkling terror, because it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew intimately, and the prickly-heat covers you as with a garment, and you sit down and write: "A slight increase of sickness is reported from the Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic in its nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the District authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret we record the death," etc.

Then the sickness really breaks out, and the less recording and reporting the better for the peace of the subscribers. But the Empires and the Kings continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before, and the Foreman thinks that a daily paper really ought to come out once in twenty-four hours, and all the people at the Hill-stations in the middle of their amusements say: "Good gracious! Why can't the paper be sparkling? I'm sure there's plenty going on up here."

That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements say, "must be experienced to be appreciated."

It was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper began running the last issue of the week on Saturday night, which is to say Sunday morning, after the custom of a London paper. This was a great convenience, for immediately after the paper was put to bed, the dawn would lower the thermometer from 96° to almost 84° for half an hour, and in that chill—you have no idea how cold is 84° on the glass until you begin to pray for it—a very tired man could set off to sleep ere the heat roused him.

One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed alone. A King or courtier or a courtezan or a community was going to die or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram. It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretense. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back, whatever it was, would not come off, though the loo dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man, or struggling people, was aware of the inconvenience the delay was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make tension, but as the clock-hands crept up to three o'clock and the machines spun their flywheels two or three times to see that all was in order, before I said the word that would set them off, I could have shrieked aloud.

Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of me. The first one said: "It's him!" The second said: "So it is!" And they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and mopped their foreheads. "We see there was a light burning across the road and we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I said to my friend here, 'The office is open. Let's come along and speak to him as turned us back from the Degumber State,'" said the smaller of the two. He was the man I had met in the Mhow train, and his fellow was the red-bearded man of Marwar Junction. There was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the beard of the other.

I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with loafers. "What do you want?" I asked.

"Half an hour's talk with you cool and comfortable, in the office," said the red-bearded man. "We'd like some drink—the Contrack doesn't begin yet, Peachey, so you needn't look—but what we really want is advice. We don't want money. We ask you as a favor, because you did us a bad turn about Degumber."

I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. "That's something like," said he. "This was the proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me introduce to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's him, and Brother Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less said about our professions the better, for we have been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and correspondents of the 'Backwoodsman' when we thought the paper wanted one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first and see that's sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We'll take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall see us light."

I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid peg.

"Well and good," said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from his mustache. "Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over India, mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn't big enough for such as us."

They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot's beard seemed to fill half the room and Carnehan's shoulders the other half, as they sat on the big table. Carnehan continued: "The country isn't half worked out because they that governs it won't let you touch it. They spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you can't lift a spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the Government saying: 'Leave it alone and let us govern.' Therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where a man isn't crowded and can come to his own. We are not little men, and there is nothing that we are afraid of except Drink, and we have signed a Contrack on that. Therefore, we are going away to be Kings."

"Kings in our own right," muttered Dravot.

"Yes, of course," I said. "You've been tramping in the sun, and it's a very warm night, and hadn't you better sleep over the notion? Come to-morrow."

"Neither drunk nor sunstruck," said Dravot. "We have slept over the notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we have decided that there is only one place now in the world that two strong men can Sar-a-whack. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning it's the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from Peshawar. They have two and thirty heathen idols there, and we'll be the thirty-third. It's a mountainous country, and the women of those parts are very beautiful."

"But that is provided against in the Contrack," said Carnehan. "Neither Women nor Liqu-or, Daniel."

"And that's all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find: 'D'you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dy-nasty."

"You'll be cut to pieces before you're fifty miles across the Border," I said. "You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country. It's one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has been through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached them you couldn't do anything."

"That's more like," said Carnehan. "If you could think us a little more mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about this country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to tell us that we are fools and to show us your books." He turned to the book-cases.

"Are you at all in earnest?" I said.

"A little," said Dravot sweetly. "As big a map as you have got, even if it's all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you've got. We can read, though we aren't very educated."

I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and two smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and the men consulted them.

"See here!" said Dravot, his thumb on the map. "Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me know the road. We was there with Roberts's Army. We'll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then we get among the hills—fourteen thousand feet—fifteen thousand—it will be cold work there, but it don't look very far on the map."

I handed him Wood on the Sources of the Oxus. Carnehan was deep in the Encyclopædia.

"They're a mixed lot," said Dravot reflectively; "and it won't help us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the more they'll fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang. H'mm!"

"But all the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be," I protested. "No one knows anything about it really. Here's the file of the United Services' Institute. Read what Bellew says."

"Blow Bellew!" said Carnehan. "Dan, they're an all-fired lot of heathens, but this book here says they think they're related to us English."

I smoked while the men pored over Raverty, Wood, the maps, and the Encyclopædia.

"There is no use your waiting," said Dravot politely. "It's about four o'clock now. We'll go before six o'clock if you want to sleep, and we won't steal any of the papers. Don't you sit up. We're two harmless lunatics, and if you come, to-morrow evening, down to the Serai we'll say good-by to you."

"You are two fools," I answered. "You'll be turned back at the Frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want any money or a recommendation down-country? I can help you to the chance of work next week."

"Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you," said Dravot. "It isn't so easy being a King as it looks. When we've got our Kingdom in going order we'll let you know, and you can come up and help us to govern it."

"Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that?" said Carnehan, with subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper on which was written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a curiosity:

This Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name of God—Amen and so forth.

(One) That me and you will settle this matter together: i.e. , to be Kings of Kafiristan.

(Two) That you and me will not, while this matter is being settled, look at any Liquor, nor any Woman black, white, or brown, so as to get mixed up with one or the other harmful.

(Three) That we conduct ourselves with dignity and discretion, and if one of us gets into trouble the other will stay by him.

Signed by you and me this day,
    Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.
    Daniel Dravot.
    Both Gentlemen at Large.

"There was no need for the last article," said Carnehan, blushing modestly; "but it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that loafers are—we are loafers, Dan, until we get out of India—and do you think that we would sign a Contrack like that unless we was in earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life worth having."

"You won't enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this idiotic adventure. Don't set the office on fire," I said, "and go away before nine o'clock."

I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of the "Contrack." "Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow," were their parting words.

The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square sink of humanity where the strings of camels and horses from the North load and unload. All the nationalities of Central Asia may be found there, and most of the folk of India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bombay, and try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoises, Persian pussy-cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the Kumharsen Serai, and get many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went down there to see whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying about drunk.

A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me, gravely twisting a child's paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant, bending under the load of a crate of mud toys. The two were loading up two camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai watched them with shrieks of laughter.

"The priest is mad," said a horse-dealer to me. "He is going up to Kabul to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honor or have his head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been behaving madly ever since."

"The witless are under the protection of God," stammered a flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. "They foretell future events."

"Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut up by the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the Pass!" grunted the Eusufzai agent of a Rajputana trading-house, whose goods had been feloniously diverted into the hands of other robbers just across the Border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazaar. "Ohe, priest, whence come you and whither do you go?"

"From Roum have I come," shouted the priest, waving his whirligig; "from Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! Oh, thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and perjurers! Who will take the Protected of God to the North to sell charms that are never still to the Amir? The camels shall not gall, the sons shall not fall sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while they are away, of the men who give me place in their caravan. Who will assist me to slipper the King of the Roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel? The protection of Pir Khan be upon his labors!" He spread out the skirts of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines of tethered horses.

"There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty days, Huzrut," said the Eusufzai trader. "My camels go therewith. Do thou also go and bring us good luck."

"I will go even now!" shouted the priest. "I will depart upon my winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a day! Ho! Hazar Mir Khan," he yelled to his servant, "drive out the camels, but let me first mount my own."

He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to me, cried: "Come thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell thee a charm—an amulet that shall make thee King of Kafiristan."

Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out of the Serai till we reached open road and the priest halted.

"What d'you think o' that?" said he in English. "Carnehan can't talk their patter, so I've made him my servant. He makes a handsome servant. 'Tisn't for nothing that I've been knocking about the country for fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jagdallak, and then we'll see if we can get donkeys for our camels, and strike into Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the Amir, O Lord! Put your hand under the camel bags and tell me what you feel."

I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.

"Twenty of 'em," said Dravot placidly. "Twenty of 'em, and ammunition to correspond, under the whirligigs and the mud dolls."

"Heaven help you if you are caught with those things!" I said. "A Martini is worth her weight in silver among the Pathans."

"Fifteen hundred rupees of capital—every rupee we could beg, borrow, or steal—are invested on these two camels," said Dravot. "We won't get caught. We're going through the Khaiber with a regular caravan. Who'd touch a poor mad priest?"

"Have you got everything you want?" I asked, overcome with astonishment.

"Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a memento of your kindness, Brother. You did me a service yesterday, and that time in Marwar. Half my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying is." I slipped a small charm compass from my watch-chain and handed it up to the priest.

"Good-by," said Dravot, giving me his hand cautiously. "It's the last time we'll shake hands with an Englishman these many days. Shake hands with him, Carnehan," he cried, as the second camel passed me.

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai attested that they were complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore, that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wander through Afghanistan without detection. But, beyond, they would find death, certain and awful death.

Ten days later a native friend of mine, giving me the news of the day from Peshawar, wound up his letter with: "There has been much laughter here on account of a certain mad priest who is going in his estimation to sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he ascribes as great charms to H. H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through Peshawar and associated himself to the Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The merchants are pleased, because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows bring good fortune."

The two, then, were beyond the Border. I would have prayed for them, but, that night, a real King died in Europe, and demanded an obituary notice.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again. The daily paper continued and I with it, and upon the third summer there fell a hot night, a night-issue, and a strained waiting for something to be telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened before. A few great men had died in the past two years, the machines worked with more clatter, and some of the trees in the office garden were a few feet taller. But that was all the difference.

I passed over to the pressroom, and went through just such a scene as I have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than it had been two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At three o'clock I cried, "Print off," and turned to go, when there crept to my chair what was left of a man. He was bent into a circle, his head was sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or crawled—this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he was come back. "Can you give me a drink?" he whimpered. "For the Lord's sake, give me a drink!"

I went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain, and I turned up the lamp.

"Don't you know me?" he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he turned his drawn face, surmounted by a shock of gray hair, to the light.

I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen eyebrows that met over the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me I could not tell where.

"I don't know you," I said, handing him the whisky. "What can I do for you?"

He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the suffocating heat.

"I've come back," he repeated; "and I was the King of Kafiristan—me and Dravot—crowned Kings we was! In this office we settled it—you setting there and giving us the books. I am Peachey—Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan, and you've been setting here ever since—O Lord!"

I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings accordingly.

"It's true," said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which were wrapped in rags. "True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our heads—me and Dravot—poor Dan—oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take advice, not though I begged of him!"

"Take the whisky," I said, "and take your own time. Tell me all you can recollect of everything from beginning to end. You got across the border on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. Do you remember that?"

"I ain't mad—yet, but I shall be that way soon. Of course I remember. Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. Keep looking at me in my eyes and don't say anything."

I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as I could. He dropped one hand upon the table and I grasped it by the wrist. It was twisted like a bird's claw, and upon the back was a ragged, red, diamond-shaped scar.

"No, don't look there. Look at me," said Carnehan.

"That comes afterward, but for the Lord's sake don't distrack me. We left with that caravan, me and Dravot playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people we were with. Dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings when all the people was cooking their dinners—cooking their dinners, and ... what did they do then? They lit little fires with sparks that went into Dravot's beard, and we all laughed—fit to die. Little red fires they was, going into Dravot's big red beard—so funny." His eyes left mine and he smiled foolishly.

"You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan," I said at a venture, "after you had lit those fires. To Jagdallak, where you turned off to try to get into Kafiristan."

"No, we didn't neither. What are you talking about? We turned off before Jagdallak, because we heard the roads was good. But they wasn't good enough for our two camels—mine and Dravot's. When we left the caravan, Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, and said we would be heathen, because the Kaffirs didn't allow Mohammedans to talk to them. So we dressed betwixt and between, and such a sight as Daniel Dravot I never saw yet nor expect to see again. He burned half his beard, and slung a sheep-skin over his shoulder, and shaved his head into patterns. He shaved mine, too, and made me wear outrageous things to look like a heathen. That was in a most mountainous country, and our camels couldn't go along any more because of the mountains. They were tall and black, and coming home I saw them fight like wild goats—there are lots of goats in Kafiristan. And these mountains, they never keep still, no more than the goats. Always fighting they are, and don't let you sleep at night."

"Take some more whisky," I said very slowly. "What did you and Daniel Dravot do when the camels could go no further because of the rough roads that led into Kafiristan?"

"What did which do? There was a party called Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He died out there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir. No; they was two for three ha'pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful sore. And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot: 'For the Lord's sake, let's get out of this before our heads are chopped off,' and with that they killed the camels all among the mountains, not having anything in particular to eat, but first they took off the boxes with the guns and the ammunition, till two men came along driving four mules. Dravot up and dances in front of them, singing: 'Sell me four mules.' Says the first man: 'If you are rich enough to buy, you are rich enough to rob;' but before ever he could put his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that was taken off the camels, and together we starts forward into those bitter cold mountainous parts, and never a road broader than the back of your hand."

He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could remember the nature of the country through which he had journeyed.

"I am telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn't as good as it might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better how Dravot died. The country was mountainous and the mules were most contrary, and the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up and up, and down and down, and that other party, Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn't sing it wasn't worth being King, and whacked the mules over the rump, and never took no heed for ten cold days. We came to a big level valley all among the mountains, and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having anything in special for them or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes, and played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted out.

"Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing twenty men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. They was fair men—fairer than you or me—with yellow hair and remarkable well built. Says Dravot, unpacking the guns—'This is the beginning of the business. We'll fight for the ten men,' and with that he fires two rifles at the twenty men, and drops one of them at two hundred yards from the rock where we was sitting. The other men began to run, but Carnehan and Dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at all ranges, up and down the valley. Then we goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too, and they fires a footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their heads and they all falls down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all round to make them friendly like. He calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and waves his hand for all the world as though he was King already. They takes the boxes and him across the valley and up the hill into a pine wood on the top, where there was half a dozen big stone idols. Dravot he goes to the biggest—a fellow they call Imbra—and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose respectful with his own nose, patting him on the head, and saluting in front of it. He turns round to the men and nods his head, and says: 'That's all right. I'm in the know too, and all these old jim-jams are my friends.' Then he opens his mouth and points down it, and when the first man brings him food, he says: 'No;' and when the second man brings him food, he says: 'No;' but when one of the old priests and the boss of the village brings him food, he says: 'Yes,' very haughtily, and eats it slow. That was how we came to our first village, without any trouble, just as though we had tumbled from the skies. But we tumbled from one of those d—d rope-bridges, you see, and you couldn't expect a man to laugh much after that."

"Take some more whisky and go on," I said. "That was the first village you came into. How did you get to the King?"

"I wasn't King," said Carnehan. "Dravot he was the King, and a handsome man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side of old Imbra, and the people came and worshiped. That was Dravot's order. Then a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan and Dravot picks them off with the rifles before they knew where they was, and runs down into the valley and up again the other side, and finds another village, same as the first one, and the people all falls down flat on their faces, and Dravot says: 'Now what is the trouble between you two villages?' and the people points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that was carried off, and Dravot takes her back to the first village and counts up the dead—eight there was. For each dead man Dravot pours a little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a whirligig and 'That's all right,' says he. Then he and Carnehan takes the big boss of each village by the arm and walks them down into the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides o' the line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and Dravot says: 'Go and dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,' which they did, though they didn't understand. Then we asks the names of things in their lingo—bread and water and fire and idols and such, and Dravot leads the priest of each village up to the idol, and says he must sit there and judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot.

"Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and told Dravot in dumb show what it was about. 'That's just the beginning,' says Dravot. 'They think we're Gods.' He and Carnehan picks out twenty good men and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and advance in line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and leaves one at one village and one at the other, and off we two goes to see what was to be done in the next valley. That was all rock, and there was a little village there, and Carnehan says: 'Send 'em to the old valley to plant,' and takes 'em there and gives 'em some land that wasn't took before. They were a poor lot, and we blooded 'em with a kid before letting 'em into the new Kingdom. That was to impress the people, and then they settled down quiet, and Carnehan went back to Dravot, who had got into another valley, all snow and ice and most mountainous. There was no people there and the Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots one of them, and goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the Army explains that unless the people wants to be killed they had better not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had matchlocks. We makes friends with the priest and I stays there alone with two of the Army, teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief comes across the snow with kettle-drums and horns twanging, because he heard there was a new God kicking about. Carnehan sights for the brown of the men half a mile across the snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a message to the Chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come and shake hands with me and leave his arms behind. The Chief comes alone first, and Carnehan shakes hands with him and whirls his arms about, same as Dravot used, and very much surprised that Chief was, and strokes my eyebrows. Then Carnehan goes alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb show if he had an enemy he hated. 'I have,' says the Chief. So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can maneuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chief's men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took that village too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat and says, 'Occupy till I come:' which was scriptural. By way of a reminder, when me and the Army was eighteen hundred yards away, I drops a bullet near him standing on the snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces. Then I sends a letter to Dravot, wherever he be, by land or by sea."

At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I interrupted: "How could you write a letter up yonder?"

"The letter? —Oh! —The letter! Keep looking at me between the eyes, please. It was a string-talk letter, that we'd learned the way of it from a blind beggar in the Punjab."

I remembered that there had once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach me his method, but failed.

"I sent that letter to Dravot," said Carnehan; "and told him to come back because this Kingdom was growing too big for me to handle, and then I struck for the first valley, to see how the priests were working. They called the village we took along with the Chief, Bashkai, and the first village we took, Er-Heb. The priests at Er-Heb was doing all right, but they had a lot of pending cases about land to show me, and some men from another village had been firing arrows at night. I went out and looked for that village and fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards. That used all the cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited for Dravot, who had been away two or three months, and I kept my people quiet. One morning I heard the devil's own noise of drums and horns, and Dan Dravot marches down the hill with his Army and a tail of hundreds of men, and, which was the most amazing—a great gold crown on his head. 'My Gord, Carnehan,' says Daniel, 'this is a tremenjus business, and we've got the whole country as far as it's worth having. I am the son of Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and you're my younger brother and a God too! It's the biggest thing we've ever seen. I've been marching and fighting for six weeks with the Army, and every footy little village for fifty miles has come in rejoiceful; and more than that, I've got the key of the whole show, as you'll see, and I've got a crown for you! I told 'em to make two of 'em at a place called Shu, where the gold lies in the rock like suet in mutton. Gold I've seen, and turquoise I've kicked out of the cliffs, and there's garnets in the sand of the river, and here's a chunk of amber that a man brought me. Call up all the priests and, here, take your crown.'

"One of the men opens a black hair bag and I slips the crown on. It was too small and too heavy, but I wore it for the glory. Hammered gold it was—five pound weight, like a hoop of a barrel.

"'Peachey,' says Dravot, 'we don't want to fight no more. The Craft's the trick, so help me!' and he brings forward that same Chief that I left at Bashkai—Billy Fish we called him afterward, because he was so like Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine at Mach on the Bolan in the old days. 'Shake hands with him,' says Dravot, and I shook hands and nearly dropped, for Billy Fish gave me the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him with the Fellow Craft Grip. He answers, all right, and I tried the Master's Grip, but that was a slip. 'A Fellow Craft he is!' I says to Dan. 'Does he know the word?' 'He does,' says Dan, 'and all the priests know. It's a miracle! The Chiefs and the priests can work a Fellow Craft Lodge in a way that's very like ours, and they've cut the marks on the rocks, but they don't know the Third Degree, and they've come to find out. It's Gord's Truth. I've known these long years that the Afghans knew up to the Fellow Craft Degree, but this is a miracle. A God and a Grand-Master of the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third Degree I will open, and we'll raise the head priests and the Chiefs of the villages.'

"'It's against all the law,' I says, 'holding a Lodge without warrant from any one; and we never held office in any Lodge.'

"'It's a masterstroke of policy,' says Dravot. 'It means running the country as easy as a four-wheeled bogie on a down grade. We can't stop to inquire now, or they'll turn against us. I've forty Chiefs at my heel, and passed and raised according to their merit they shall be. Billet these men on the villages and see that we run up a Lodge of some kind. The temple of Imbra will do for the Lodge-room. The women must make aprons as you show them. I'll hold a levee of Chiefs to-night and Lodge to-morrow.'

"I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn't such a fool as not to see what a pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests' families how to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot's apron the blue border and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took a great square stone in the temple for the Master's chair, and little stones for the officers' chairs, and painted the black pavement with white squares, and did what we could to make things regular.

"At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and me were Gods and sons of Alexander, and Past Grand-Masters in the Craft, and was come to make Kafiristan a country where every man should eat in peace and drink in quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs come round to shake hands, and they was so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends. We gave them names according as they was like men we had known in India—Billy Fish, Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan that was Bazaar-master when I was at Mhow, and so on, and so on.

"The most amazing miracle was at Lodge next night. One of the old priests was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I knew we'd have to fudge the Ritual, and I didn't know what the men knew. The old priest was a stranger come in from beyond the village of Bashkai. The minute Dravot puts on the Master's apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. 'It's all up now,' I says. 'That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant!' Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master's chair—which was to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests the Master's Mark, same as was on Dravot's apron, cut into the stone. Not even the priests of the temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old chap falls flat on his face at Dravot's feet and kisses 'em. 'Luck again,' says Dravot, across the Lodge to me, 'they say it's the missing Mark that no one could understand the why of. We're more than safe now.' Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and says: 'By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help of Peachey, I declare myself Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o' the country, and King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey!' At that he puts on his crown and I puts on mine—I was doing Senior Warden—and we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was an amazing miracle! The priests moved in Lodge through the first two degrees almost without telling, as if the memory was coming back to them. After that, Peachey and Dravot raised such as was worthy—high priests and Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish was the first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was not in any way according to Ritual, but it served our turn. We didn't raise more than ten of the biggest men because we didn't want to make the Degree common. And they was clamoring to be raised.

"'In another six months,' says Dravot, 'we'll hold another Communication and see how you are working.' Then he asks them about their villages, and learns that they was fighting one against the other and were fair sick and tired of it. And when they wasn't doing that they was fighting with the Mohammedans. 'You can fight those when they come into our country,' says Dravot. 'Tell off every tenth man of your tribes for a Frontier guard, and send two hundred at a time to this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going to be shot or speared any more so long as he does well, and I know that you won't cheat me because you're white people—sons of Alexander—and not like common black Mohammedans. You are my people and by God,' says he, running off into English at the end—'I'll make a d— fine Nation of you, or I'll die in the making!'

"I can't tell all we did for the next six months, because Dravot did a lot I couldn't see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way I never could. My work was to help the people plow, and now and again go out with some of the Army and see what the other villages were doing, and make 'em throw rope-bridges across the ravines which cut up the country horrid. Dravot was very kind to me, but when he walked up and down in the pine wood, pulling that bloody red beard of his with both fists, I knew he was thinking plans I could not advise him about, and I just waited for orders.

"But Dravot never showed me disrespect before the people. They were afraid of me and the Army, but they loved Dan. He was the best of friends with the priests and the Chiefs; but any one could come across the hills with a complaint and Dravot would hear him out fair, and call four priests together and say what was to be done. He used to call in Billy Fish from Bashkai, and Pikky Kergan from Shu, and an old Chief we called Kafuzelum—it was like enough to his real name—and hold councils with 'em when there was any fighting to be done in small villages. That was his Council of War, and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and Madora was his Privy Council. Between the lot of 'em they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that come out of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir's Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.

"I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor there the pick of my baskets for hush-money, and bribed the Colonel of the regiment some more, and, between the two and the tribes-people, we got more than a hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat Jezails that'll throw to six hundred yards, and forty man-loads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. I came back with what I had, and distributed 'em among the men that the Chiefs sent in to me to drill.

"Dravot was too busy to attend to those things, but the old Army that we first made helped me, and we turned out five hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew how to hold arms pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle to them. Dravot talked big about powder-shops and factories, walking up and down in the pine wood when the winter was coming on.

"'I won't make a Nation,' says he. 'I'll make an Empire! These men aren't niggers; they're English! Look at their eyes—look at their mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their own houses. They're the Lost Tribes, or something like it, and they've grown to be English. I'll take a census in the spring if the priests don't get frightened. There must be a fair two million of 'em in these hills. The villages are full o' little children. Two million people—two hundred and fifty thousand fighting men—and all English! They only want the rifles and a little drilling. Two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready to cut in on Russia's right flank when she tries for India! Peachey, man,' he says, chewing his beard in great hunks, 'we shall be emperors of the Earth! Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. I'll treat with the Viceroy on equal terms. I'll ask him to send me twelve picked English—twelve that I know of—to help us govern a bit. There's Mackay, Sergeant-pensioner at Segowli—many's the good dinner he's given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. There's Donkin, the Warder of Tounghoo Jail; there's hundreds that I could lay my hand on if I was in India. The Viceroy shall do it for me. I'll send a man through in the spring for those men, and I'll write for a dispensation from the Grand Lodge for what I've done as Grand-Master. That—and all the Sniders that'll be thrown out when the native troops in India take up the Martini. They'll be worn smooth, but they'll do for fighting in these hills. Twelve English, a hundred thousand Sniders run through the Amir's country in driblets—I'd be content with twenty thousand in one year—and we'd be an Empire. When everything was shipshape, I'd hand over the crown—this crown I'm wearing now—to Queen Victoria on my knees, and she'd say: "Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot." Oh, it's big! It's big, I tell you! But there's so much to be done in every place—Bashkai, Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else.'

"'What is it?' I says. 'There are no more men coming in to be drilled this autumn. Look at those fat, black clouds. They're bringing the snow.'

"'It isn't that,' says Daniel, putting his hand very hard on my shoulder; 'and I don't wish to say anything that's against you, for no other living man would have followed me and made me what I am as you have done. You're a first-class Commander-in-Chief, and the people know you; but—it's a big country, and somehow you can't help me, Peachey, in the way I want to be helped.'

"'Go to your blasted priests, then!' I said, and I was sorry when I made that remark, but it did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so superior when I'd drilled all the men, and done all he told me.

"'Don't let's quarrel, Peachey,' says Daniel without cursing. 'You're a King too, and the half of this Kingdom is yours; but can't you see, Peachey, we want cleverer men than us now—three or four of 'em, that we can scatter about for our Deputies. It's a hugeous great State, and I can't always tell the right thing to do, and I haven't time for all I want to do, and here's the winter coming on and all.' He put half his beard into his mouth, and it was as red as the gold of his crown.

"'I'm sorry, Daniel,' says I. 'I've done all I could. I've drilled the men and shown the people how to stack their oats better; and I've brought in those tinware rifles from Ghorband—but I know what you're driving at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed that way.'

"'There's another thing too,' says Dravot, walking up and down. 'The winter's coming and these people won't be giving much trouble, and if they do we can't move about. I want a wife.'

"'For Gord's sake leave the women alone!' I says. 'We've both got all the work we can do, though I am a fool. Remember the Contrack, and keep clear o' women.'

"'The Contrack only lasted till such time as we was Kings; and Kings we have been these months past,' says Dravot, weighing his crown in his hand. 'You go get a wife too, Peachey—a nice, strappin', plump girl that'll keep you warm in the winter. They're prettier than English girls, and we can take the pick of 'em. Boil 'em once or twice in hot water, and they'll come as fair as chicken and ham.'

"'Don't tempt me!' I says. 'I will not have any dealings with a woman not till we are a dam' site more settled than we are now. I've been doing the work o' two men, and you've been doing the work o' three. Let's lie off a bit, and see if we can get some better tobacco from Afghan country and run in some good liquor; but no women.'

"'Who's talking o' women?' says Dravot. 'I said wife—a Queen to breed a King's son for the King. A Queen out of the strongest tribe, that'll make them your blood-brothers, and that'll lie by your side and tell you all the people thinks about you and their own affairs. That's what I want.'

"'Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul Serai when I was a plate-layer?' says I. 'A fat lot o' good she was to me. She taught me the lingo and one or two other things; but what happened? She ran away with the Station Master's servant and half my month's pay. Then she turned up at Dadur Junction in tow of a half-caste, and had the impidence to say I was her husband—all among the drivers in the running-shed!'

"'We've done with that,' says Dravot. 'These women are whiter than you or me, and a Queen I will have for the winter months.'

"'For the last time o' asking, Dan, do not,' I says. 'It'll only bring us harm. The Bible says that Kings ain't to waste their strength on women, 'specially when they've got a new raw Kingdom to work over.'

"'For the last time of answering I will,' said Dravot, and he went away through the pine-trees looking like a big red devil. The low sun hit his crown and beard on one side, and the two blazed like hot coals.

"But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan thought. He put it before the Council, and there was no answer till Billy Fish said that he'd better ask the girls. Dravot d—d them all round. 'What's wrong with me?' he shouts, standing by the idol Imbra. 'Am I a dog or am I not enough of a man for your wenches? Haven't I put the shadow of my hand over this country? Who stopped the last Afghan raid?' It was me really, but Dravot was too angry to remember. 'Who bought your guns? Who repaired the bridges? Who's the Grand-Master of the sign cut in the stone? and he thumped his hand on the block that he used to sit on in Lodge, and at Council, which opened like Lodge always. Billy Fish said nothing and no more did the others. 'Keep your hair on, Dan,' said I; 'and ask the girls. That's how it's done at Home, and these people are quite English.'

"'The marriage of the King is a matter of state,' says Dan, in a white-hot rage, for he could feel, I hope, that he was going against his better mind. He walked out of the Council-room, and the others sat still, looking at the ground.

"'Billy Fish,' says I to the Chief of Bashkai, 'what's the difficulty here? A straight answer to a true friend.' 'You know,' says Billy Fish. 'How should a man tell you who know everything? How can daughters of men marry Gods or Devils? It's not proper.'

"I remembered something like that in the Bible; but if, after seeing us as long as they had, they still believed we were Gods, it wasn't for me to undeceive them.

"'A God can do anything,' says I. 'If the King is fond of a girl he'll not let her die.' 'She'll have to,' said Billy Fish. 'There are all sorts of Gods and Devils in these mountains, and now and again a girl marries one of them and isn't seen any more. Besides, you two know the Mark cut in the stone. Only the Gods know that. We thought you were men till you showed the sign of the Master.'

"I wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine secrets of a Master-Mason at the first go-off; but I said nothing. All that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple half-way down the hill, and I heard a girl crying fit to die. One of the priests told us that she was being prepared to marry the King.

"'I'll have no nonsense of that kind,' says Dan. 'I don't want to interfere with your customs, but I'll take my own wife.' 'The girl's a little bit afraid,' says the priest. 'She thinks she's going to die, and they are a-heartening of her up down in the temple.'

"'Hearten her very tender, then,' says Dravot, 'or I'll hearten you with the butt of a gun so that you'll never want to be heartened again.' He licked his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walking about more than half the night, thinking of the wife that he was going to get in the morning. I wasn't by any means comfortable, for I knew that dealings with a woman in foreign parts, though you was a crowned King twenty times over, could not but be risky. I got up very early in the morning while Dravot was asleep, and I saw the priests talking together in whispers, and the Chiefs talking together, too, and they looked at me out of the corners of their eyes.

"'What is up, Fish?' I says to the Bashkai man, who was wrapped up in his furs and looking splendid to behold.

"I can't rightly say,' says he; 'but if you can induce the King to drop all this nonsense about marriage you'll be doing him and me and yourself a great service.'

"'That I do believe,' says I. 'But sure, you know, Billy, as well as me, having fought against and for us, that the King and me are nothing more than two of the finest men that God Almighty ever made. Nothing more, I do assure you.'

"'That may be,' says Billy Fish, 'and yet I should be sorry if it was.' He sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks. 'King,' says he, 'be you man or God or Devil, I'll stick by you to-day. I have twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me. We'll go to Bashkai until the storm blows over.'

"A little snow had fallen in the night, and everything was white except the greasy fat clouds that blew down and down from the north. Dravot came out with his crown on his head, swinging his arms and stamping his feet, and looking more pleased than Punch.

"'For the last time, drop it, Dan,' says I in a whisper. 'Billy Fish here says that there will be a row.'

"'A row among my people!' says Dravot. 'Not much. Peachey, you're a fool not to get a wife too. Where's the girl?' says he with a voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. 'Call up all the chiefs and priests, and let the Emperor see if his wife suits him.'

"There was no need to call any one. They were all there leaning on their guns and spears round the clearing in the centre of the pine wood. A deputation of priests went down to the little empire to bring up the girl, and the horns blew up fit to wake the dead. Billy Fish saunters round and gets as close to Daniel as he could, and behind him stood his twenty men with matchlocks. Not a man of them under six feet. I was next to Dravot, and behind me was twenty men of the regular army. Up comes the girl, and a strapping wench she was, covered with silver and turquoises but white as death, and looking back every minute at the priests.

"'She'll do,' said Dan, looking her over. 'What's to be afraid of, lass? Come and kiss me.' He puts his arm round her. She shuts her eyes, gives a bit of a squeak, and down goes her face in the side of Dan's flaming red beard.

"'The slut's bitten me!' says he, clapping his hand to his neck, and, sure enough, his hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and two of his matchlock men catches hold of Dan by the shoulders and drags him into the Bashkai lot, while the priests howls in their lingo—'Neither God nor Devil, but a man!' I was all taken aback, for a priest cut at me in front, and the Army behind began firing into the Bashkai men.

"'God A-mighty!' says Dan. 'What is the meaning o' this?'

"'Come back! Come away!' says Billy Fish. 'Ruin and Mutiny is the matter. We'll break for Bashkai if we can.'

"I tried to give some sort of orders to my men—the men o' the regular army—but it was no use, so I fired into the brown of 'em with an English Martini and drilled three beggars in a line. The valley was full of shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was shrieking, 'Not a God nor a Devil, but only a man!' The Bashkai troops stuck to Billy Fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn't half as good as the Kabul breechloaders, and four of them dropped. Dan was bellowing like a bull, for he was very wrathy; and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent him running out at the crowd.

"'We can't stand,' says Billy Fish. 'Make a run for it down the valley! The whole place is against us.' The matchlock-men ran, and we went down the valley in spite of Dravot's protestations. He was swearing horribly and crying out that he was King. The priests rolled great stones on us, and the regular army fired hard, and there wasn't more than six men, not counting Dan, Billy Fish, and Me, that came down to the bottom of the valley alive.

"Then they stopped firing and the horns in the temple blew again. 'Come away—for Gord's sake come away!' says Billy Fish. 'They'll send runners out to all the villages before ever we get to Bashkai. I can protect you there, but I can't do anything now.'

"My own notion is that Dan began to go mad in his head from that hour. He stared up and down like a stuck pig. Then he was all for walking back alone and killing the priests with his bare hands; which he could have done. 'An Emperor am I,' says Daniel, 'and next year I shall be a Knight of the Queen.'

"'All right, Dan,' says I; 'but come along now while there's time.'

"'It's your fault,' says he, 'for not looking after your army better. There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn't know—you d—d engine-driving, plate-laying, missionary's-pass-hunting hound!' He sat upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that brought the smash.

"'I'm sorry, Dan,' says I, 'but there's no accounting for natives. This business is our Fifty-Seven. Maybe we'll make something out of it yet, when we've got to Bashkai.'

"'Let's get to Bashkai, then,' says Dan, 'and, by Gord, when I come back here again I'll sweep the valley so there isn't a bug in a blanket left!'

"We walked all that day, and all that night Dan was stumping up and down on the snow, chewing his beard and muttering to himself.

"'There's no hope o' getting clear,' said Billy Fish. 'The priests will have sent runners to the villages to say that you are only men. Why didn't you stick on as Gods till things was more settled? I'm a dead man,' says Billy Fish, and he throws himself down on the snow and begins to pray to his Gods.

"Next morning we was in a cruel bad country—all up and down, no level ground at all, and no food either. The six Bashkai men looked at Billy Fish hungry-wise as if they wanted to ask something, but they said never a word. At noon we came to the top of a flat mountain all covered with snow, and when we climbed up into it, behold, there was an army in position waiting in the middle!

"'The runners have been very quick,' says Billy Fish, with a little bit of a laugh. 'They are waiting for us.'

"Three or four men began to fire from the enemy's side, and a chance shot took Daniel in the calf of the leg. That brought him to his senses. He looks across the snow at the army, and sees the rifles that we had brought into the country.

"'We're done for,' says he. 'They are Englishmen, these people—and it's my blasted nonsense that has brought you to this. Get back, Billy Fish, and take your men away; you've done what you could, and now cut for it. Carnehan,' says he, 'shake hands with me and go along with Billy. Maybe they won't kill you. I'll go and meet 'em alone. It's me that did it. Me, the King!'

"'Go!' says I. 'Go to Hell, Dan. I'm with you here. Billy Fish, you clear out, and we two will meet those folk.'

"'I'm a Chief,' says Billy Fish, quite quiet. 'I stay with you. My men can go.'

"The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second word but ran off, and Dan and me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums were drumming and the horns were horning. It was cold—awful cold. I've got that cold in the back of my head now. There's a lump of it there."

The punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were blazing in the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the blotter as I leaned forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I feared that his mind might go. I wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the piteously mangled hands, and said: "What happened after that?"

The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.

"What was you pleased to say?" whined Carnehan. "They took them without any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow, not though the King knocked down the first man that set hand on him—not though old Peachey fired his last cartridge into the brown of 'em. Not a single solitary sound did those swines make. They just closed up tight, and I tell you their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us all, and they cut his throat, sir, then and there, like a pig; and the King kicks up the bloody snow and says: 'We've had a dashed fine run for our money. What's coming next?' But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell you, sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, sir. No, he didn't neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o' one of those cunning rope-bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter, sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a rope-bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen such. They prodded him behind like an ox. 'D— your eyes!' says the King. 'D'you suppose I can't die like a gentleman?' He turns to Peachey—Peachey that was crying like a child. 'I've brought you to this, Peachey,' says he. 'Brought you out of your happy life to be killed in Kafiristan, where you was late Commander-in-Chief of the Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.' 'I do,' says Peachey. 'Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.' 'Shake hands, Peachey,' says he. 'I'm going now.' Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, 'Cut, you beggars,' he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with the gold crown close beside.

"But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine-trees? They crucified him, sir, as Peachey's hand will show. They used wooden pegs for his hands and his feet; and he didn't die. He hung there and screamed, and they took him down next day, and said it was a miracle that he wasn't dead. They took him down—poor old Peachey that hadn't done them any harm—that hadn't done them any..."

He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten minutes.

"They was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they said he was more of God than old Daniel that was a man. Then they turned him out on the snow, and told him to go home, and Peachey came home in about a year, begging along the roads quite safe; for Daniel Dravot he walked before and said: 'Come along, Peachey. 'It's a big thing we're doing.' The mountains they danced at night, and the mountains they tried to fall on Peachey's head, but Dan he held up his hand, and Peachey came along, bent double. He never let go of Dan's hand, and he never let go of Dan's head. They gave it to him as a present in the temple, to remind him not to come again, and though the crown was pure gold, and Peachey was starving, never would Peachey sell the same. You knew Right Worshipful Brother Dravot! Look at him now!"

He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my table—the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun that had long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that Carnehan placed tenderly on the battered temples.

"You behold now," said Carnehan, "the Emperor in his habit as he lived—the King of Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. Poor old Daniel that was a monarch once!"

I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, I recognized the head of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. I attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. "Let me take away the whisky, and give me a little money," he gasped. "I was a King once. I'll go to the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me. I've urgent private affairs—in the south—at Marwar."

He shambled out of the office and departed in the direction of the Deputy Commissioner's house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down the blinding hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after the fashion of street-singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang through his nose, turning his head from right to left:

"The Son of Man goes forth to war,
    A golden crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar—
    Who follows in his train?"

I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch into my carriage and drove him off to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he was with me, whom he did not in the least recognize, and I left him singing it to the missionary.

Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the Superintendent of the Asylum.

"He was admitted suffering from sunstroke. He died early yesterday morning," said the Superintendent. "Is it true that he was half an hour bareheaded in the sun at midday?"

"Yes," said I, "but do you happen to know if he had anything upon him by any chance when he died?"

"Not to my knowledge," said the Superintendent.

And there the matter rests.

THE BLACK PEARL

BY VICTORIEN SARDOU

Victorien Sardou, born in 1831, is the most accomplished French playwright and dramatist.He is the author of "Divorçons," "Fédora," "Théodora," "La Tosca," "Madame Sans-Gêne," and other well-known plays, most if not all of which were written for Sarah Bernhardt.The present story is an excellent example of the author's manner in the use of dramatic material.

THE BLACK PEARL

By VICTORIEN SARDOU

I

When it rains in Amsterdam, it pours; and when the thunder takes a hand in the performance, things are pretty lively; this is what my friend Balthazar Van der Lys was saying to himself one summer night, as he ran along the Amstel on his way home to escape the storm. Unfortunately, the wind of the Zuyder Zee blew faster than he could run. A frightful gust tore along the quay, unhinging hundreds of shutters and twisting scores of signs and lamp posts. At the same moment, a number of towels and handkerchiefs which had been hung out to dry were blown pell-mell into the canal, followed by Balthazar's hat, and it is the greatest wonder in the world that he was not treated to a bath himself. Then there was another flash of lightning, a deafening roar of thunder, and the rain came down in torrents anew, literally wetting our poor friend to the skin, and causing him to redouble his speed.

On reaching the Orphelinat Straat he rushed under the awning of a shop to seek refuge from the rain; in his hurry he did not take time to look where he was going, and the next moment he found himself fairly in the arms of another man, and the two went rolling over and over together. The person thus disturbed was seated at the time in an armchair; this person was no other than our mutual friend, Cornelius Pump, who was undoubtedly one of the most noted savants of the age.

"Cornelius! what the mischief were you doing in that chair?" asked Balthazar, picking himself up.

"Look out!" exclaimed Cornelius, "or you will break the string of my kite!"

Balthazar turned around, believing that his friend was joking; but, to his surprise, he saw Cornelius busily occupied in winding up the string of a gigantic kite, which was floating above the canal at a tremendous height, and which apparently was struggling fiercely against all effort made to pull it in. Cornelius pulled away with all his might in one direction, while the kite pulled away in another. The monstrous combination of paper and sticks was ornamented with a tremendous tail, which was decorated with innumerable pieces of paper.

"A curious idea!" remarked Balthazar, "to fly a kite in such a storm."

"I am not doing so for fun, you fool," answered Cornelius with a smile; "I wish to verify the presence of nitric acid in yonder clouds, which are charged with electricity. In proof of which, behold!" and with a desperate effort the man of science succeeded in pulling down the kite, and pointed with pride to the bits of paper which had been burned a dark red.

"Oh, bah!" replied Balthazar in that tone of voice so common to those who do not understand anything of these little freaks of science. "A nice time to experiment, upon my word!"

"The best time in the world, my friend," simply answered Cornelius. "And what an observatory! you can see for yourself! there is not an obstruction in the way! a glorious horizon! ten lightning-rods in sight and all on fire! I have been keeping my weather eye open for this storm and I am delighted that it has put in an appearance at last!"

A violent thunder-clap shook the ground like an earthquake.

"Go on! grumble away as much as you please," muttered Cornelius. "I have discovered your secret and will tell it to the world."

"And what is there so interesting in all this, anyway?" asked Balthazar, who, owing to his drenching, was in anything but a good humor.

"You poor fool," replied Cornelius, with a smile of pity; "now tell me, what is that?"

"Why, a flash of lightning, of course!"

"Naturally! but what is the nature of the flash?"

"Why, I always supposed that all flashes were alike."

"That shows how much you know!" answered Cornelius, in a tone of disgust. "Now, there are several classes of lightning. For instance, lightning of the first class is generally in the form of a luminous furrow and is very crooked and forked, effecting a zigzag movement, and of a white or purple color; then, there is the lightning of the second class, an extended sheet of flame, usually red, and which embraces the entire horizon in circumference; and finally lightning of the third class, which is invariably in the form of a rebounding, rolling, spherical body; the question is whether it is really globular in shape or merely an optical illusion? This is exactly the problem I have been trying to solve! I suppose you will say that these globes of fire have been sufficiently observed by Howard, Schubler, Kamtz—"

"Oh, I don't know anything at all about such rot, so I won't venture an opinion. The rain is coming down again and I want to go home."

"Wait a moment," calmly replied Cornelius; "and as soon as I have seen a spherical or globular flash I will—"

"I haven't time to wait; besides, I would be a fool when I only have to go a hundred feet to reach my door. If you want a good fire, a good supper, a good bed and a good pipe, you will be welcome; and if you want to look at a globe, why, the globe of my lamp is at your disposal. I can say no more."

"Stop a moment; my flash will be along presently."

Balthazar, whose patience was now well-nigh exhausted, was preparing to take his departure, when suddenly the sky was lighted up by a bright flash, while the thunder burst with a loud report a short distance away.

The shock was so violent that it almost knocked Balthazar over.

"That was a spherical globe, and no mistake!" joyfully exclaimed Cornelius. "I have made a wonderful discovery: let's go to supper!" Balthazar rubbed his eyes and felt of his limbs to assure himself that he was still in the land of the living.

"The lightning struck near my house!"

"Not at all," replied Cornelius; "it was in the direction of the Hebrew quarter."

Balthazar did not stop to hear any more, but started off on a dead run; Cornelius picked up his little bits of paper and was soon following at his heels, in spite of the drenching rain.

II

An hour later the two friends, having enjoyed a bountiful supper, seated themselves in comfortable chairs, and, between the whiffs of their meerschaums, laughed at the storm which was still raging furiously outside.

"This is what I call real enjoyment," remarked Cornelius. "A good bottle of white curaçoa, a good fire, good tobacco, and a congenial friend to talk to; am I not right, Christina?"

Christina came and went; she was here, there, and everywhere at the same time, removing plates and placing fresh glasses and a huge earthen jug on the table. At the mention of her name by Cornelius she blushed a fiery red, but said nothing in reply.

Christina (it is high time that we tell you) was a young girl who had been raised out of charity, in the house of our friend Balthazar.

Shortly after the death of her husband, Madam Van der Lys, Balthazar's mother, felt some one tugging at her dress as she was kneeling at her devotions one Sunday morning. Fearing that some one was trying to pick her pocket, she grasped the hand of the supposed offender. The hand belonged to a little girl, and was as cute and small as it is possible for a hand to be. The good woman was deeply moved at this exhibition of crime in one so young, and her first thought was to let the little one go; but she finally decided to give the waif a home, like the dear, good woman that she was. Then she led little Christina out of the church and made her accompany her home, the child crying all the while with fear that her aunt would whip her. Madame Van der Lys told her not to be afraid, and succeeded at last in obtaining the information that the child's parents belonged to that class of idlers who spend their time in running about fairs and kermesses; that the child had been broken in at an early age to all the tricks adopted by strolling mountebanks; that the father had been killed while performing a dangerous feat on the horizontal bar; that the mother died in want and misery; and finally that the aunt was an old hag who used to beat her black and blue, and who was instructing her in all the branches of crime. I do not know whether you have ever met Madam Van der Lys, but she was as good a woman as her son is a good man. She therefore decided to keep the child, whom the aunt never called to reclaim. She brought her up well and had her educated by an excellent woman. It was not long before the little waif knew how to spell, read, and write, and she soon became a model of good manners and refinement. Then, when the old lady shuffled off this mortal coil, she had the satisfaction of leaving behind her, in addition to Gudule, the cook, a lass of fifteen who was as bright as a florin, and who would never permit her master's fire to go out for want of proper attention. In addition to all these good qualities, she was polite, refined, clever, and pretty; at least such was the opinion of our friend Cornelius, who had discovered in her eyes a look not at all unlike a flash of lightning of the third class. But, a truce to this! If I gossip any more I will be divulging family secrets!

I will add, however, that Christina always gave Cornelius a hearty welcome because he brought her interesting books. The young savant made a greater fuss over this little housekeeper than over all the painted beauties of the town. But it seemed as if the storm had paralyzed the young girl's tongue. She had declined to take her seat at the table, and, under the pretext of waiting on the two friends, she came and went, scarcely listening to what they had to say, replying only in monosyllables, and making the sign of the cross every time there was a flash of lightning. Shortly after their supper, Balthazar turned round to ask her a question, but she was no longer there, having retired to her room. He rose from his chair, and approaching the door of her room, listened attentively; but as all was silent he was evidently convinced that the young girl was already fast asleep, for he returned to his place and sat down beside Cornelius, who was busily engaged filling his pipe.

"What's wrong with Christina to-night?" he asked, pointing to her room.

"Oh, it's the storm," replied Balthazar; "women are so timid!"

"If it were otherwise, we would be deprived of the pleasure of protecting them as we would children—especially Christina, who is anything but strong. I really can't look at her without crying; she is so frail, so delicate!"

"Oh, ho, Master Cornelius!" exclaimed Balthazar, with a knowing smile; "you are almost as enthusiastic over Christina as you were over the lightning a little while ago!"

Cornelius blushed to the very roots of his hair as he replied: "Oh, it's not the same kind of enthusiasm, however!"

"I suppose not!" remarked Balthazar with a hearty laugh. Then taking Cornelius by the hand and looking him square in the face, he added: "Come, now, you don't imagine that I can't see what is going on? You don't only amuse yourself at flying your kite over the Amstel, overgrown boy that you are, but you also play at racquets with Christina, and your two hearts answer the place of shuttlecocks."

"What, you suppose that—" muttered the savant, evidently confused.

"For over three months I have known that it was not merely to see my beautiful countenance that you have called here twice a day—at noon, on your way to the zoölogical garden, and at four on your way home."

"But this is the shortest way," ventured Cornelius.

"Yes, I know—to the heart!"

"But—"

"Come, now, let us reason: Christina is unlike most girls of her age; she has a wise head and a loving heart, I assure you; she is certainly clever enough to admire and appreciate such a talented person as Mijnheer Cornelius Pump, who thinks nothing of lending her his rare books. You squeeze her hands, you are solicitous for her health. You read her a regular lecture on chemistry every time you see a spot on her dress, on natural history whenever you see a pot of flowers, and on anatomy whenever you see the cat! She listens to what you have to say with open ears, and a look of attention which is really charming; and yet you would pretend that love is a minor consideration in all this, especially when the man of science is only twenty-five and his pupil just eighteen?"

"Well, then, I do love her, since you will have it so!" answered Cornelius, with a look of defiance in his eyes. "So kindly tell me what you propose to do about it!"

"That's for you to say—"

"Oh, I intend to make her my wife!"

"Then, why the mischief don't you tell her so?"

"That's precisely what I intend to do."

"Then embrace me!" exclaimed Balthazar, "and drink to the health of Cupid, for I, too, am going to get married—"

"I congratulate you, my boy; and who is the fortunate one?"

"—And I am going to marry Mademoiselle Suzanne Van Miellis, the daughter of the rich banker," continued Balthazar, all in one breath.

Cornelius gave a low whistle, which, translated, means: The devil!

Balthazar continued:

"And just think of it—I have loved her for over six years! I never wanted to pop the question because I was afraid her father would tell me that it was his money and not his daughter that I was after. But my opportunity came at last. Her father died a short time ago, leaving her his sole heiress: she is one of the wealthiest girls in the town."

"The wealthiest by far," gravely interrupted Cornelius.

"One day, as we were walking together by the river she stopped for a moment, and looking into my eyes she said: 'Now, my friend, I don't want you to bear me any ill-feeling for what I am going to say; but, since the death of my father, and coming into my inheritance, I assure you that I am most unhappy. I can no longer distinguish between those who love me for my riches and those who love me for myself; there are so many who pretend to adore me that I am suspicious of them all; and I would rather throw my fortune into the Amstel than wed a man who would aspire to my hand through mercenary motives!' "

"'Ah, mademoiselle,' I sighed; 'you can understand that I was not overanxious to be mistaken for one of these fortune hunters.'

"'Oh, my dear friend,' she exclaimed; 'I know that you are not that kind of a man. Now I am going to tell you my ideal of a husband. I would never accept the love of a man who had not cared for me previous to the death of my father. Ah! I would indeed be confident of that man's love, and I would return it to him a hundred-fold!'

"'Then I am that man!' I cried out. 'I have loved you for over six long years, and I never dared to tell you so, although you must have noticed that I was slowly but surely dying for the want of your affection!' Then she looked down at the ground, and whispered: 'Maybe I have,' and she looked at me as if trying to read the truth in my eyes. It was easy to see that she wanted to believe what I said, but was afraid to do so.

"'Then you can prove the truth of your assertion,' she remarked, after a pause. 'Do you remember the first time we met, you gave me a bunch of flowers? One of these was in the shape of a little heart, with two blue wings on each side. Well, then—'

"'I know what you are going to say. Then as we were looking at this little flower together, our heads almost touched and your curls brushed against my face; as you perceived how close we were to one another, you suddenly drew back, and the flower was detached from its stem. I can still hear your little cry of disappointment ringing in my ears. Then you began to cry, and, as you were not looking, I picked up the little flower.' 'And you have it?' she asked. 'Yes, I have always kept it as a souvenir of the happiest moment in my existence. I will bring it with me the next time I call.'

"You should have seen the look of joy which spread over Suzanne's countenance at that moment! She held out her pretty hand, which I eagerly grasped and carried to my lips. 'Ah, my friend,' said she, 'this is all I wanted to know, and I am indeed happy! If you picked up that little flower it was because you loved me already at that time, and if you have preserved it, 'tis because you love me still! Bring it to-morrow; it will be the most welcome wedding gift you could possibly give me!'

"Oh, my dear old Cornelius, judge of my surprise, of my delight when I heard those words! I was tempted to do something rash; I was wild with joy. Suddenly her mother happened along. I threw my arms around the old lady's neck and kissed her on both cheeks—this cooled me off. Then I grabbed my hat and took to my heels, intending to return with the flower this very night. But this confounded storm has upset all my plans, and I will have to postpone my visit until to-morrow. There, you have the whole story of my courtship in a nutshell!"

"May Heaven be praised!" exclaimed Cornelius as he threw his arms around his friend. "Two weddings at the same time! Long live Madame Balthazar! Long live Madame Cornelius! Here's to the little Balthazars and the little Corneliuses!"

"Will you be quiet!" laughingly remarked Balthazar, placing his hand over his friend's mouth in order to silence him. "You will wake up Christina."

"Oh, I won't say another word, I promise you. And now show me your celebrated flower with its blue wings."

"I have it locked up in a little steel casket, which is hidden away with a lot of jewelry in my desk. I have had it framed in a little locket, surrounded with gold and black pearls. I was looking at it only this morning; it is charming. You can judge for yourself."

So saying, he took up the lamp, and, taking a huge bunch of keys from his pocket, he opened the door of his study. He had hardly crossed the threshold when Cornelius heard him cry out in surprise. He rose to go to his assistance, when Balthazar, pale as death, reappeared in the entrance:

"My God! Cornelius."

"What is it? what is wrong?" exclaimed the man of science.

"Great heavens! I am ruined! Come here! Look!"

And Balthazar raised his lamp so as to light up the interior of his study.

III

What Cornelius saw justified Balthazar's exclamation of surprise. The floor was literally strewn with papers of all kinds, and this profusion of documents clearly proved that something extraordinary had occurred. A large portfolio in which Balthazar kept all his private papers was torn open, notwithstanding that it had a steel lock, and was thrown carelessly on the floor, the papers it had contained being scattered far and wide.

But this was nothing when compared with that which was to follow. Balthazar now rushed up to his secrétaire. The lock had been forced. The top of the desk had been completely hacked to pieces, a great portion being reduced to splinters. The nails were twisted all out of shape, and the screws and hinges had alike received rough usage. As to the lid, it had been forced so as to permit the introduction of a hand in the pigeon-holes and private drawers.

But, strange to relate, most of the drawers containing valuable papers had not been touched by the thief, his attention evidently having been entirely absorbed in the contents of those which had contained gold and silver. About fifteen hundred ducats, two hundred florins and the little steel casket filled with jewels, of which we have heard Balthazar speak, were missing. This drawer was completely empty; everything had disappeared, gold, silver, jewels, without leaving a trace behind; and Balthazar experienced a still greater loss when, on picking up the steel casket from the floor, he perceived that the medallion had been taken along with the rest!

This discovery affected him more than the loss of all his money. Rushing to the window, he threw it open and cried out at the top of his voice:

"Help! Help! Stop thief!"

All the population turned out, and, in accordance with the custom, would have answered this call for aid with, "Fire! Here we come!" had not the first cry attracted a squad of policemen who were passing that way. They ran up to Balthazar's house, and M. Tricamp, the sergeant, realizing that a robbery had been committed, first cautioned him to make less noise, and then demanded that he and his men be admitted without further delay.

IV

The door opened noiselessly and M. Tricamp entered on tiptoe, followed by another of his men, whom he left on guard in the vestibule with orders not to permit any one either to come in or go out. It was almost twelve o'clock; the neighbors were fast asleep, and it was easy to see that Gudule, the deaf cook, and Christina, fatigued by the emotions caused by the storm, had heard nothing unusual, as both were sleeping the sleep of the just.

"And now," said the sergeant, lowering his voice; "what is it all about?"

Balthazar dragged him into the study and pointed to the torn papers and broken secrétaire.

M. Tricamp was a little man, whose legs were not big enough to support his unwieldy form; nevertheless, he was very sharp and unusually active. He had one more little peculiarity—he was frightfully near-sighted, which compelled him to look at what he was examining at very short range.

He was evidently surprised, but it was part of his stock in trade not to exhibit surprise at anything. He therefore contented himself with muttering: "Very good! Very good!" and he cast a look of contentment around the room.

"You see, Mijnheer, what has happened!" exclaimed Balthazar, with a voice choked with emotion.

"Perfectly!" replied M. Tricamp, with an air of importance. "The secrétaire has been broken open, your portfolio has been tampered with! Very well, it is superb!"

"Superb! Why, what do you mean?"

"They took all the money, I suppose?" continued the sergeant.

"Yes, all the money which was in my desk."

"Good!"

"And the jewels, and my medallion!"

"Bravo! a case of premeditated robbery! Capital! And you suspect no one?"

"No one, Mijnheer."

"So much the better. Then we will have the pleasure of discovering the criminals."

Balthazar and Cornelius looked at each other in surprise; but M. Tricamp continued in the same unconcerned manner:

"Let us examine the door!"

Balthazar pointed to the massive door of the study, which was provided with an old-fashioned brass lock, the likes of which are only found in the Netherlands at the present time.

Tricamp turned the key. Crick! Crack! It was evident that the lock had not been tampered with.

"And the window?" asked the officer, handing Balthazar the key of the study.

"The window was closed," said Cornelius; "we opened it when we called for assistance. Besides, Mijnheer, it has stout iron bars, and no one could possibly pass through there."

M. Tricamp assured himself that such was the case, and he remarked that not even a child could effect an entrance through those bars. Then he closed and bolted the window and turned his attention toward the fireplace.

Balthazar followed all of his movements without uttering a word.

M. Tricamp leaned over and examined the interior of the fireplace most minutely; but here again nothing but failure rewarded him for his trouble. A thick wall had been built there recently, allowing only enough room for a small stove-pipe.

M. Tricamp did not question for a moment whether this opening would permit the passage of a human being, for it seemed altogether too improbable; therefore, when he drew himself up, he appeared to be anything but pleased.

"Hum! Hum!" he muttered; "the devil," and he looked up at the ceiling, having replaced his eye-glass with a pair of spectacles. Then he took the lamp from Balthazar and placed it on the secrétaire, removing the shade; and this movement suddenly revealed to him a clue which had entirely escaped their attention until now.

V

An old knife, a gift from a friend in the Dutch Indies, was driven into the wainscoting, about three feet above the secrétaire and half-way between the floor and the ceiling.

Now, what was that old knife doing there?

A few hours previous to this discovery it was lying safe and snug in Balthazar's desk.

At the same moment Tricamp drew attention to the fact that the wire which was attached to the bell was twisted and broken and was fastened about the handle of the knife. He sprang upon a chair, and from there to the top of the desk, from whence he proceeded to examine this bit of fresh evidence.

Suddenly he gave a cry of triumph. He only had to raise his hand between the knife and the picture molding to ascertain that a large piece of wall paper had been cut out, together with the wood and the plastering, the whole being replaced with a care to defy the closest inspection.

This discovery was so unexpected that the young men could not withhold their admiration at the sergeant's skill. M. Tricamp remarked that the paper had been removed with the greatest skill, thus denoting the work of a professional thief. Raising himself on tiptoe, he placed his hand through the opening and assured himself that the paper in the adjoining room had been tampered with in precisely the same manner.

There was no longer any room for doubt; the thief had certainly entered the room through this aperture. M. Tricamp descended from his pedestal and proceeded to describe the movements of the malefactors from the moment of their arrival until their departure, just as if he had witnessed the whole performance.

"The manner in which that knife has been planted in the wall plainly proves that it was intended as a step to assist the thief in his descent. The wire was used as a sort of rope by which he guided himself on his way back. Now, doesn't this strike you as being rational enough?"

Balthazar and Cornelius listened to this explanation with bated breath. But the former was not the kind of man to enthuse over a description of a theft, especially when he was the loser by the operation. What he wanted to know was where his medallion had gone; now that he knew how the thief had entered, he was anxious to know how he had gone out.

"Have patience," remarked M. Tricamp, following up his clue with professional pride; "now that we know their movements, we must assure ourselves as to their temperament—"

"What nonsense! We haven't the time to bother our heads about such rot!"

"Pardon me," replied Tricamp, "but in my estimation this is very important. The study of psychology in criminals is a more important feature than all the quack examinations formerly so popular with the police."

"But, Mijnheer, while you are discussing the methods of the police the thief is running away with my money."

"Well, let him run; we will catch him fast enough!" coldly replied M. Tricamp. "I claim that it is necessary to study the nature of the game in order to run it down. Now, all robberies differ more or less and it is rarely that murders are committed in the same manner. For instance, two servant girls were accused of stealing their mistress's shawl. I discovered the criminal at the first glance. The thief had the choice of two cashmeres: one was blue and the other white; now, she stole the blue one. One of the servants was a blonde and the other had red hair. I was confident that the blonde was guilty—the red-headed girl would never have selected the blue shawl on account of the combination."

"Wonderful!" remarked Cornelius.

"Then hurry up and tell me the name of the thief, for patience is wellnigh exhausted."

"I can't do this at the start, but I claim that this is the criminal's first robbery. You will no doubt not credit this assertion, as you will probably say to yourself that it shows the workmanship of an old hand; but any child could loosen a bit of dried-up wall paper. I will say nothing regarding your portfolio, or your broken secrétaire, for that plainly bears the imprint of a novice's hand."

"Then you are sure it is the work of a novice?" interrupted Cornelius.

"Undoubtedly. I will add that he is a clumsy greenhorn. An out-and-out thief would never have left your room in such disorder; he would take more pride in his workmanship. Furthermore, the criminal is neither very strong nor very tall, otherwise he could have drawn himself up there without the aid of that knife and bit of wire."

"But it must have required considerable strength to demolish that desk in that fashion."

"Not at all; a child, or even a woman—"

"A woman?" exclaimed Balthazar.

"Since I first set my foot in this room, such has been my impression."

Balthazar and Cornelius looked at one another, in doubt as to whom he could possibly suspect.

"Now then, to sum up: it is a young woman; she must be young or she would not climb so well—petite, since she needed a wire to pull herself up with. Then, again, she must be familiar with your habits, for she took advantage of your absence to commit the felony, and she went direct to the drawer in which you kept your money, as she apparently did not bother her head about the others. In a word, if you have a young housekeeper or servant you need look no further, for she is the guilty one!"

"Christina!" exclaimed the young men in one breath.

"Ah! so there is a Christina about the premises!" remarked M. Tricamp smilingly. "Well, then, Christina is guilty!"

VI

Both Cornelius and Balthazar were pale as death. Christina! Little Christina, so good, so kind, so pretty, a thief—nonsense! And then they remembered her origin and the manner in which she was adopted. She was only a Bohemian after all! Balthazar dropped into a chair as if he had been shot, and Cornelius felt as if his heart had just been seared with a red-hot iron.

"Will you kindly send for this person?" suddenly remarked M. Tricamp, awakening them from their reverie. "Or, better still, let us visit her room."

"Her room—her room," faltered Balthazar; "why, there it is," and he pointed to the adjoining apartment.

"And it took all this time for you to make up your mind who had committed the theft!" said the sergeant with a sneer.

"But," ventured Cornelius, "she certainly must have heard us."

Tricamp picked up the lamp and, pushing open the door of the adjoining room, entered, followed by the young men. The room was empty! Simultaneously they exclaimed: "She has escaped!"

M. Tricamp felt under the mattress to see whether he could find any of the stolen property. "She has not even slept on the bed to-night," he said, after carefully inspecting the couch.

At the same moment they heard the sound of struggling outside, and the officer who had been left on guard downstairs entered the room, pushing Christina before him. The poor girl appeared more surprised than afraid.

"This young woman was attempting to escape, Mijnheer; I arrested her just as she was drawing the bolts of the back door," said the officer.

Christina looked around her with such an air of innocence that no one believed in her guilt, excepting, of course, M. Tricamp.

"But do tell me what this all means?" asked she of the officer, who locked the door after her. "Why don't you tell them who I am?" she continued, addressing Balthazar.

"Where have you been?" he demanded.

"I have been upstairs with old Gudule, who, you know, is afraid of the lightning. As I was very tired, I fell asleep in the armchair in her room. When I awoke I looked out of the window, and as the storm had ceased I came downstairs with the intention of going to bed; but I first desired to assure myself that you had bolted the door, and it was at that moment that this gentleman placed his hand on my shoulder and informed me that I was under arrest. And, I assure you, he has given me a good fright—"

"You lie!" coarsely interrupted M. Tricamp. "You were just going out when my man arrested you; and I will add that you did not go to bed, so as to avoid the trouble of dressing when the moment arrived for you to make your escape."

Christina looked a him in astonishment. "Escape? What escape?" she asked.

"Ah!" muttered M. Tricamp. "What nerve, what deceit!"

"Come here," said Balthazar, who knew not what to believe, "and I will tell you what it all means!"

He took the young girl by the arm and dragged her into the adjoining room.

"My God!" exclaimed the young woman, as she crossed the threshold and perceived the scene of devastation for the first time; "who could have done this?"

Her surprise seemed to be so sincere that Balthazar hesitated for a moment, but M. Tricamp was not so easily affected; he dragged Christina by the arm up to the secrétaire and exclaimed:

"You did it!"

"I!" cried out Christina, who did not as yet realize what it all meant.

She looked at Balthazar as if to read his thoughts, then she cast a glance at the drawer of the secrétaire, and seeing that it was empty, she realized at last the terrible meaning of their accusation. With a heartrending cry, she exclaimed:

"My God! And you say I have done this!"

But no one had the courage to answer her. Christina advanced a step closer to Balthazar, but he only lowered his eyes at her approach. Suddenly she raised her hand to her heart, as if she were suffocating—she attempted to speak—she tried to pronounce two or three words, but all she could say was:

"A thief! They say I am a thief!" and she fell backward on the floor as if dead! Cornelius precipitated himself toward her and raised her gently in his arms.

"No!" he cried; "no! it is impossible! This child is innocent!"

Then he carried the young girl into her room and laid her on the bed. Balthazar followed him, and it was easy to see that he was deeply affected. M. Tricamp, still smiling, entered immediately after them, but one of his officers motioned to him that he had something to communicate to him.

"Mijnheer, we already have obtained some information regarding this young woman."

"Well, and what do you know?"

"The baker across the way says that a little while before the storm he saw Mademoiselle Christina at the window of the ground floor. She slipped a package to a man who was standing outside; this man wore a long cloak and a slouch hat—"

"A package, eh?" muttered M. Tricamp; "excellent! Now, secure the witness and keep a sharp watch outside. In the first place, go and send the cook to me at once."

The officer withdrew, and M. Tricamp entered Christina's room.

The young woman was stretched out on the bed in a dead faint, and Cornelius was rubbing her hands. Without stopping to notice the condition of the girl, he proceeded with his examination of the premises. He started in with the bureau and overhauled all the drawers. Then he approached Balthazar with a smile of satisfaction on his face.

"After all, what proof is there that this young girl is guilty?" asked the latter as he gazed tenderly upon the unconscious woman.

"Why, this!" answered M. Tricamp, as he handed Balthazar one of the missing pearls.

"Where did you find this?"

"There," and he pointed to the top drawer of Christina's bureau.

Balthazar rushed up to the drawer and began to overhaul all of the young girl's effects, but his search did not result in his finding any more of the stolen jewels.

At this moment Christina opened her eyes, and looking around her as if to recall the situation, burst into tears as she buried her face in the pillow.

"Oh, ho!" ejaculated M. Tricamp, "tears, eh? She is going to confess"; and as he leaned over her, he added in his sweetest voice: "Come, my child, return good for evil and confess the truth. Confession is good for the soul. After all, we are not all perfect. Now, I suppose you permitted yourself to be led astray, or you allowed yourself to succumb to a passion for finery. You wanted to make yourself look pretty, eh, my dear, to please some one you love?"

"What an idea, Mijnheer!" interrupted Cornelius.

"Hush, young man! I know what I am talking about. This woman has an accomplice as sure as my name is Tricamp;" and leaning over Christina, he continued: "Am I not right, my dear?"

"Oh, why don't you kill me, instead of torturing me thus!" cried Christina with a fresh outburst of tears.

This was so unexpected that M. Tricamp started back in surprise.

"Kindly leave us alone with the girl, Mijnheer; your presence irritates her," remarked Balthazar. "If she has anything to confess she will do so to my friend and me."

M. Tricamp bowed himself out of the room.

"Oh, just as you please," he replied, "but be very careful; she is a clever minx."

VII

Cornelius almost closed the door in the sergeant's face; then the two young men approached Christina, who had assumed a sitting posture, and was staring before her into space.

"Come, my child," said Balthazar, as he held out his hand; "we are now alone; you are with friends, so you need not be afraid."

"I don't want to stay here! I want to go away! Oh, let me—let me go!"

"No, Christina, you can not leave here until you answer us," said Cornelius.

"Tell us the truth, I beg of you, Christina," added Balthazar, "and I promise you no harm will come to you—I swear it on my honor. I will forgive you, and no one will ever know of this—I swear it, Christina, I swear it before God! —don't you hear me, my child?"

"Yes!" answered Christina, who did not appear to be listening. "Oh, if I could only cry—if I could only cry!"

Cornelius seized the young girl's burning hands in his. "Christina, my child, God forgives us all, and we love you too much not to pardon you. Listen to me, I beg of you. Don't you recognize me?"

"Yes," said Christina, as her eyes filled with tears.

"Well, then, I love you, do you hear? —I love you with all my heart!"

"Oh!" said the young girl as she burst into tears; "and yet you believe that I am a thief!"

"No, no!" hastily exclaimed Cornelius, "I do not believe it, I do not believe it! But, my dear child, you must help me to justify you, you must assist me to discover the criminal, and to do this you must be frank and tell me everything."

"Yes, you are good, you alone are kind to me. You pity me and do not believe what they say! They accuse me because I am a Bohemian—because I stole when I was a child. And they call me a thief!—a thief! They call me a thief!—"

And she fell backward on the bed, sobbing as if her heart would burst.

Balthazar could stand this no longer: he fell upon his knees by the side of the bed, and exclaimed in a voice of pity, as if he himself was the accused instead of the accuser:

"Christina, my sister, my child, my daughter—look at me! I am on my knees before you! I ask your forgiveness for the wrong I have done you. No one will say anything, no one will do anything; it is all over! —do you hear? I hope you do not wish to repay all the kindness my mother and I have shown you by making me suffer all the tortures of the damned! Well, then, I beg you to tell me what has become of my little medallion—(I do not ask you where it is, you understand? —I do not wish to know that, for I do not suspect you). But if you do know where it is, I beg of you to help me find it. I implore you by the love you bore my mother, whom you called your own, I implore you to find it—this is all I want. My future happiness depends on the recovery of this jewel—give me back my medallion—please give me back my medallion."

"Oh!" answered Christina in despair, "I would give my life to be able to tell you where it is!"

"Christina!"

"But I haven't got it; I haven't got it!" she cried, wringing her hands.

Balthazar, exasperated, sprang to his feet: "But, wretched woman—"

Cornelius silenced him with a gesture, and Christina raised her hands to her forehead.

"Ah!" she said, as she burst into a loud laugh, "when I am mad, this farce will be ended, I suppose?"

And, overcome with emotion, she fell backward, hiding her face in the pillow as if determined not to utter another word.

VIII

Cornelius dragged Balthazar out of the room; he staggered as though he had been shot. In the other room they found M. Tricamp, who had not been wasting his time. He had been cross-examining the old cook, Gudule, who, most unceremoniously aroused by one of the officers, was still half asleep.

"Come, come, my good woman," remarked M. Tricamp, "control yourself, if you please!"

"Oh, my good master, my good master!" she exclaimed as Balthazar entered the room accompanied by Cornelius. "What's the matter? They dragged me out of bed, and they are asking me all kinds of questions! For mercy's sake, tell me what it is all about!"

"Don't be alarmed, my good woman," said Balthazar kindly; "you have nothing to do with all this. But I have been robbed and we are looking for the thief."

"You have been robbed?"

"Yes."

"My God! I have lived in this house for over thirty years, and not as much as a pin was ever stolen before! Oh, Mijnheer, why didn't they wait until I was dead before they began their thieving!"

"Come, come, don't give way like that, my good woman," said M. Tricamp.

"You will have to speak a little louder, Mijnheer; the woman is deaf," remarked Balthazar.

"Now, I want to know whether you were in the house when the robbery was committed?" continued M. Tricamp, raising his voice.

"But I never go out at all, Mijnheer."

"Didn't you go out at all this evening?"

"I wasn't outside the house; besides, it was very stormy, and at my age one doesn't venture out in a blinding rainstorm for fun."

"Then you were in your room?"

"No, Mijnheer, I was in the kitchen most of the day, knitting by the stove."

"And you never left the kitchen for a moment?"

"Not for a minute—until I went upstairs to bed."

"Is your eyesight good?"

"Mijnheer?" questioned Gudule, not having heard aright.

"I asked you if you had good eyes," repeated M. Tricamp.

"Oh! I can see all right, even if I am a little bit hard of hearing. And I have a good memory, too—"

"So you have a good memory, eh? Then tell me who called here to-day."

"Oh, there was the postman; and a neighbor who called to borrow a pie-plate—and Petersen who came to ask something of Christina."

"Indeed! And who is this Petersen?"

"A neighbor, Mijnheer; a night-watchman; my master knows him well."

"Yes," said Balthazar, addressing the sergeant, "he is a poor devil who lost his wife a month ago, and his two little children are both sick. We help the poor fellow from time to time."

"And this Petersen was in the house to-day?"

"No, Mijnheer," replied Gudule; "he only spoke to Christina from the sidewalk."

"And what did he tell her?"

"I did not hear, Mijnheer."

"And did no one else call after him?"

Gudule asked him to repeat the question, then she replied:

"No one at all."

"And where was Christina while you were knitting?"

"Why, the dear child was looking after the cooking for me, as I was too tired to move from my chair. She is so kind and obliging!"

"But she wasn't in the kitchen all the time?"

"No, Mijnheer, she retired to her own room toward evening."

"So you say she retired to her own room toward evening?"

"Yes, Mijnheer, to dress for supper."

"And—did she remain in her room a long time?"

"About an hour, Mijnheer."

"An hour?"

"Yes, fully an hour, Mijnheer."

"And you heard nothing during all this time?"

"I beg your pardon—"

"I asked you if you heard any noise—for instance, the sound of some one hammering wood?"

"No, Mijnheer."

"Yes, gentlemen, she is as deaf as a door-post," said M. Tricamp, turning toward the young men. Then he approached Gudule, and raising his voice he added:

"I suppose the storm was at its height at this time?"

"Oh, yes, Mijnheer; I could hear the thunder plain enough."

"She has no doubt confounded the noise made by the thief, in breaking in, with the roar of the elements," he muttered to himself. "And then?" he asked of Gudule in a louder voice.

"And then, Mijnheer, night had fallen and the storm raged furiously; master had not returned. I was terribly frightened. I got down on my knees and said my prayers. Just then Christina came down from her room; she was as white as a ghost, and was trembling all over. Then the thunder burst overhead and deafened me—"

"Ah! then you noticed that she was nervous?"

"Certainly! And so was I; the storm frightened me almost to death. Shortly after this, master knocked at the door, and Christina let him in. Now, Mijnheer, this is all I know, as sure as I am an honest woman."

"Don't cry, my good woman! I tell you that no one suspects you."