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Collier’s Weekly, March 19, 1910ARCHIBALD MEALING was one of those golfers in whom desire outruns performance. Nobody could have been more willing than Archibald. He tried, and tried hard. Every morning before he took his bath he would stand in front of his mirror and practise swings. Every night before he went to bed he would read the golden words of some master on the subject of putting, driving, or approaching. Yet on the lin

ks most of his time was spent in retrieving lost balls or replacing America. Whether it was that Archibald pressed too much or pressed too little, whether it was that his club deviated from the dotted line which joined the two points A andB in the illustrated plate of the man making the brassy shot in the “Hints on Golf”book, or whether it was that he was pursued by some malignant fate, I do not know. Archibald rather favored the last theory.The important point is that, in his thirty-first year, after six seasons of untiring effort, Archibald went in for a championship, and won it.Archibald, mark you, whose golf was a kind of blend of hockey, Swedish drill, and buck-and-wing dancing.I know the ordeal I must face when I make such a statement. I see clearly beforeme the solid phalanx of men from Missouri, some urging me to tell it to the Kin

g of Denmark, others insisting that I produce my Eskimos. Nevertheless, I do notshrink. I state once more that in his thirty-first year Archibald Mealing wentin for a golf championship, and won it. ARCHIBALD belonged to a select little golf club, the members of which lived andworked in New York, but played in Jersey. Men of substance, financially as wellas physically, they had combined their superfluous cash and with it purchased astrip of land close to the sea. This had been drained—to the huge discomfort of acolony of mosquitoes which had come to look on the place as their private property—and converted into links, which had become a sort of refuge for incompetent golfers. The members of the Cape Pleasant Club were easy-going refugees from otherand more exacting clubs, men who pottered rather than raced round the links; men, in short, who had grown tired of having to stop their game and stand aside in

order to allow perspiring experts to whiz past them. The Cape Pleasant golfers did not make themselves slaves to the game. Their language, when they foozled, was gently regretful rather than sulphurous. The moment in the day’s play which theyenjoyed most was when they were saying: “Well, here’s luck!” in the club-house.It will, therefore, readily be understood that Archibald’s inability to do a holein single figures did not handicap him at Cape Pleasant as it might have done atSt. Andrew’s. His kindly clubmates took him to their bosoms to a man, and lookedon him as a brother. Archibald’s was one of those admirable natures which prompt their possessor frequently to remark: “These are on me!” and his fellow golfers werenot slow to appreciate the fact. They all loved Archibald.Archibald was on the floor of his bedroom one afternoon, picking up the fragments of his mirror—a friend had advised him to practise the Walter J. Travis lofting-

shot—when the telephone bell rang, He took up the receiver, and was hailed by thecomfortable voice of McCay, the club secretary.“Is that Mealing?” asked McCay. “Say, Archie, I’m putting your name down for our championship competition. That’s right, isn’t it?”“Sure,” said Archibald. “When does it start?”“Next Saturday.”“That’s me.”“Good for you. Oh, Archie.”“Hello?”“A man I met to-day told me you were engaged. Is that a fact?”“Sure,” murmured Archibald blushfully.The wire hummed with McCay’s congratulations.“Thanks,” said Archibald. “Thanks, old man. What? Oh, yes. Milsom’s her name. By the way

, her family have taken a cottage at Cape Pleasant for the summer. Some distancefrom the links. Yes, very convenient, isn’t it? Good-by.”He hung up the receiver and resumed his task of gathering up the fragments.



Now McCay happened to be of a romantic and sentimental nature. He was by profession a chartered accountant, and inclined to be stout; and all rather stout chartered accountants are sentimental. McCay was the sort of man who keeps old ball programs and bundles of letters tied round with lilac ribbon. At country houses,where they lingered in the porch after dinner to watch the moonlight flooding the quiet garden, it was McCay and his colleague who lingered longest. McCay knewElla Wheeler Wilcox by heart, and could take Browning without anesthetics. It is

not to be wondered at, therefore, that Archibald’s remark about his fiance comingto live at Cape Pleasant should give him food for thought. It appealed to him.He reflected on it a good deal during the day, and, running across Sigsbee, a fellow Cape Pleasanter, after dinner that night at the Sybarites’ Club, he spoke ofthe matter to him. It so happened that both had dined excellently, and were looking on the world with a sort of cozy benevolence. They were in the mood when menpat small boys on the head and ask them if they mean to be President when theygrow up.“I called up Archie Mealing to-day,” said McCay. “Did you know he was engaged?”“I did hear something about it. Girl of the name of Wilson, or—”“Milsom. She’s going to spend the summer at Cape Pleasant, Archie tells me.”“Then she’ll have a chance of seeing him play in the championship competition.”

McCay sucked his cigar in silence for a while, watching with dreamy eyes the blue smoke as it curled ceilingward. When he spoke his voice was singularly soft.“Do you know, Sigsbee,” he said, sipping his Maraschino with a gentle melancholy—“do youknow, there is something wonderfully pathetic to me in this business. I see thewhole thing so clearly. There was a kind of quiver in poor old Archie’s voice when he said: ‘She is coming to Cape Pleasant,’ which told me more than any words couldhave done. It is a tragedy in its way, Sigsbee. We may smile at it, think it trivial; but it is none the less a tragedy. That warm-hearted, enthusiastic girl,all eagerness to see the man she loves do well—Archie, poor old Archie, all on fire to prove to her that her trust in him is not misplaced, and the end—Disillusionment—Disappointment—Unhappiness.”“He ought to keep his eye on the ball,” said the more practical Sigsbee.“Quite possibly,” continued McCay, “he has told her that he will win this championship

.”“If Archie’s mutt enough to have told her that,” said Sigsbee decidedly, “he deserves all he gets. Waiter, two Scotch highballs.” McCAY was in no mood to subscribe to this stony-hearted view.“I tell you,” he said, “I’m sorry for Archie! I’m sorry for the poor old chap. And I’m morthan sorry for the girl.”“Well, I don’t see what we can do,” said Sigsbee. “We can hardly be expected to foozle on purpose, just to let Archie show off before his girl.”McCay paused in the act of lighting his cigar, as one smitten with a great thought.“Why not?” he said. “Why not, Sigsbee? Sigsbee, you’ve hit it!”“Eh?”“You have! I tell you, Sigsbee, you’ve solved the whole thing. Archie’s such a bully good fellow, why not give him a benefit? Why not let him win this championship? You aren’t going to tell me that you care whether you win a tin medal or not?”Sigsbee’s benevolence was expanding under the influence of the Scotch highball andhis cigar. Little acts of kindness on Archie’s part, here a cigar, there a lunch,at another time seats for the theater, began to rise to the surface of his memory like rainbow-colored bubbles. He wavered.“Yes, but what about the rest of the men?” he said. “There will be a dozen or more infor the medal.”“We can square them,” said McCay confidently. “We will broach the matter to them at aseries of dinners at which we will be joint hosts. They are all white men who will be charmed to do a little thing like this for a sport like Archie.”

“How about Gossett?” asked Sigsbee. McCAY’S face clouded. Gossett was an unpopular subject with members of the Cape Pl



easant Golf Club. He was the serpent in their Eden. Nobody seemed quite to knowhow he had got in, but there, unfortunately, he was. Gossett had introduced intoCape Pleasant golf a cheerless atmosphere of the rigor of the game. It was to enable them to avoid just such golfers as Gossett that the Cape Pleasanters had founded their club. Genial courtesy rather than strict attention to the rules hadbeen the leading characteristic of their play till his arrival. Up to that timeit had been looked on as rather bad form to exact a penalty. A cheery give-and-

take system had prevailed. Then Gossett had come, full of strange rules, and created about the same stir in the community which a hawk would create in a gathering of middle-aged doves.“You can’t square Gossett,” said Sigsbee.McCay looked unhappy.“I forgot him,” he said. “Of course, nothing will stop him trying to win. I wish we could think of something. I would almost as soon see him lose as Archie win. But,after all, he does have off days sometimes.”“You need to have a very off day to be as bad as Archie.”They sat and smoked in silence.“I’ve got it,” said Sigsbee suddenly. “Gossett is a fine golfer, but nervous. If we upset his nerves enough, he will go right off his stroke. Couldn’t we think of some wa

y?”McCay reached out for his glass.“Yours is a noble nature, Sigsbee,” he said.“Oh, no,” said the paragon modestly. “Have another cigar?” IN ORDER that the reader may get that mental half-Nelson on the plot of this narrative which is so essential if a short story is to charm, elevate, and instruct, it is necessary now, for the nonce (but only for the nonce), to inspect Archibald’s past life.Archibald, as he had stated to McCay, was engaged to a Miss Milsom—Miss Margaret Milsom. How few men, dear reader, are engaged to girls with svelte figures, brownhair, and large blue eyes, now sparkling and vivacious, now dreamy and soulful,but always large and blue! How few, I say. You are, dear reader, and so am I, b

ut who else! Archibald was one of the few who happened to be.He was happy. It is true that Margaret’s mother was not, as it were, wrapped up inhim. She exhibited none of that effervescent joy at his appearance which we like to see in our mothers-in-law elect. On the contrary, she generally cried bitterly whenever she saw him, and at the end of ten minutes was apt to retire sobbing to her room, where she remained in a state of semi-coma till an advanced hour.She was by way of being a confirmed invalid, and something about Archibald seemed to get right in among her nerve centers, reducing them for the time being toa complicated hash. She did not like Archibald. She said she liked big, manly men. Behind his back she not infrequently referred to him as a “gaby”; sometimes evenas “that guffin.”She did not do this to Margaret, for Margaret, besides being blue-eyed, was alsoa shade quick-tempered. Whenever she discussed Archibald, it was with her son Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant Milsom, who thought Archibald a bit of an ass, was alwaysready to sit and listen to his mother on the subject, it being, however, an understood thing that at the conclusion of the sance she yielded one or two saffron-colored bills toward his racing debts. For Stuyvesant, having developed a habitof backing horses which either did not start at all or else sat down and thoughtin the middle of the race, could always do with ten dollars or so. His prices for these interviews worked out, as a rule, at about three cents a word. In these circumstances it was perhaps natural that Archibald and Margaret shouldprefer to meet, when they did meet, at some other spot than the Milsom home. Itsuited them both better that they should arrange a secret tryst on these occasions. Archibald preferred it because being in the same room with Mrs. Milsom alwa

ys made him feel like a murderer with particularly large feet; and Margaret preferred it because, as she told Archibald, these secret meetings lent a touch of poetry to what might otherwise have been a commonplace engagement.



Archibald thought this charming; but at the same time he could not conceal fromhimself the fact that Margaret’s passion for the poetic cut, so to speak, both ways. He admired and loved the loftiness of her soul, but, on the other hand, it was a tough job having to live up to it. For Archibald was a very ordinary young man. They had tried to inoculate him with a love of poetry at school, but it hadnot taken. Until he was thirty he had been satisfied to class all poetry (exceptthat of Mr. George Cohan) under the general heading of punk. Then he met Margar

et, and the trouble began. On the day he first met her, at a picnic, she had looked so soulful, so aloof from this world, that he had felt instinctively that here was a girl who expected more from a man than a mere statement that the weather was great. It so chanced that he knew just one quotation from the classics, towit, Tennyson’s critique of the Island-Valley of Avilion. He knew this because hehad had the passage to write out one hundred and fifty times at school, on theoccasion of his being caught smoking by one of the faculty who happened to be apassionate admirer of the “Idylls of the King.”A remark of Margaret’s that it was a splendid day for a picnic and that the country looked nice gave him his opportunity.“It reminds me,” he said, “it reminds me strongly of the Island-Valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies

deep-meadow’d, happy, fair, with orchard lawns . . .”He broke off here to squash a hornet; but Margaret had heard enough.“Are you fond of the poets, Mr. Mealing?” she said, with a far-off look.“Me?” said Archibald fervently. “Me? Why, I eat ’em alive!” AND that was how all the trouble had started. It had meant unremitting toil forArchibald. He felt that he had set himself a standard from which he must not fall. He bought every new volume of poetry which was praised in the press, and learned the reviews by heart. Every evening he read painfully a portion of the classics. He plodded through the poetry sections of Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations.” Margaret’s devotion to the various bards was so enthusiastic, and her reading so wide,that there were times when Archibald wondered if he could endure the strain. Buthe persevered heroically, and so far had not been found wanting. But the strain

was fearful. THE early stages of the Cape Pleasant golf tournament need no detailed description. The rules of match play governed the contests, and Archibald disposed of hisfirst three opponents before the twelfth hole. He had been diffident when he teed off with McCay in the first round, but, finding that he defeated the secretary with ease, he met one Butler in the second round with more confidence. Butler,too, he routed; with the result that, by the time he faced Sigsbee in round three, he was practically the conquering hero. Fortune seemed to be beaming upon him with almost insipid sweetness. When he was trapped in the bunker at the seventh hole, Sigsbee became trapped as well. When he sliced at the sixth tee, Sigsbeepulled. And Archibald, striking a brilliant vein, did the next three holes in eleven, nine, and twelve; and, romping home, qualified for the final.Gossett, that serpent, meanwhile, had beaten each of his three opponents withoutdifficulty.The final was fixed for the following Thursday morning. Gossett, who was a broker, had made some frivolous objection about the difficulty of absenting himself from Wall Street, but had been overruled. When Sigsbee pointed out that he couldeasily defeat Archibald and get to the city by lunch-time if he wished, and thatin any case his partner would be looking after things, he allowed himself to bepersuaded, though reluctantly. It was a well-known fact that Gossett was in themidst of some rather sizable deals at that time.Thursday morning suited Archibald admirably. It had occurred to him that he could bring off a double event. Margaret had arrived at Cape Pleasant on the previous evening, and he had arranged by telephone to meet her at the end of the boardw

alk, which was about a mile from the links, at one o’clock, supply her with lunch,and spend the afternoon with her on the water. If he started his match with Gossett at eleven-thirty, he would have plenty of time to have his game and be at t



he end of the board-walk at the appointed hour. He had no delusions about the respective merits of Gossett and himself as golfers. He knew that Gossett would win the necessary ten holes off the reel. It was saddening, but it was a scientific fact. There was no avoiding it. One simply had to face it.Having laid these plans, he caught his train on the Thursday morning with the consoling feeling that, however sadly the morning might begin, it was bound to endwell.

The day was fine, the sun warm, but tempered with a light breeze. One or two ofthe club had come to watch the match, among them Sigsbee.Sigsbee drew Gossett aside.“You must let me caddie for you, old man,” he said. “I know your temperament so exactly. I know how little it takes to put you off your stroke. In an ordinary game you might take one of these boys, I know, but on an important occasion like this you must not risk it. A grubby boy, probably with a squint, would almost certainly get on your nerves. He might even make comments on the game, or whistle. But Iunderstand you. You must let me carry your clubs.”“It’s very good of you,” said Gossett.“Not at all,” said Sigsbee.

ARCHIBALD was now preparing to drive off from the first tee. He did this with great care. Every one who has seen Archibald Mealing play golf knows that his teeing off is one of the most impressive sights ever witnessed on the links. He tilted his cap over his eyes, waggled his club a little, shifted his feet, waggled his club some more, gazed keenly toward the horizon for a moment, waggled his club again, and finally, with the air of a Strong Man lifting a bar of iron, raisedit slowly above his head. Then, bringing it down with a sweep, he drove the ball with a lofty slice some fifty yards. It was rarely that he failed either to slice or pull his ball. His progress from hole to hole was generally a majestic zigzag.Gossett’s drive took him well on the way to the green. He holed out in five. Archibald, mournful but not surprised, made his way to the second tee.The second hole was shorter. Gossett won it in three. The third he took in six,

the fourth in four. Archibald began to feel that he might just as well not be there. He was practically a spectator.At this point he reached in his pocket for his tobacco-pouch, to console himselfwith smoke. To his dismay he found that it was not there. He had had it in thetrain, but now it had vanished. This added to his gloom, for the pouch had beengiven to him by Margaret, and he had always thought it one more proof of the wayher nature towered over the natures of other girls, that she had not woven a monogram on it in forget-me-nots. This record pouch was missing, and Archibald mourned for the loss.His sorrows were not alleviated by the fact that Gossett won the fifth and sixthholes. IT WAS now a quarter-past twelve, and Archibald reflected with moody satisfaction that the massacre must soon be over, and that he would then be able to forgetit in the society of Margaret.As Gossett was about to drive off from the seventh tee, a telegraph boy approached the little group.“Mr. Gossett,” he said.Gossett lowered his driver, and wheeled round, but Sigsbee had snatched the envelope from the boy’s hand.“It’s all right, old man,” he said. ‘‘Go right ahead. I’ll keep it safe for you.”“Give it to me,” said Gossett anxiously. <4It may be from the office. Something mayhave happened to the market. I may be needed.”“No, no,” said Sigsbee, soothingly. “Don’t you worry about it. Better not open it. It might have something in it that would put you off your stroke. Wait till the end o

f the game.”“Give it to me. I want to see it.”Sigsbee was firm.



“No,” he said. “I’m here to see you win this championship and I won’t have you taking anyrisks. Besides, even if it was important, a few minutes won’t make any difference.”“Well, at any rate, open it and read it.”“It is probably in cipher,” said Sigsbee. “I wouldn’t understand it. Play on, old man. You’ve only a few more holes to win.”Gossett turned and addressed his ball again. Then he swung. The club tipped theball, and it rolled sluggishly for a couple of feet. Archibald approached the te

e. Now there were moments when Archibald could drive quite decently. He always applied a considerable amount of muscular force to his efforts. It was in direction that, as a rule, he erred. On this occasion, whether inspired by his rival’s failure or merely favored by chance, he connected with his ball at precisely the right moment. It flew from the tee, straight, hard, and low, struck the ground near the green, bounded on, and finally rocked to within a foot of the hole. No such long ball had been driven on the Cape Pleasant links since their foundation. That it should have taken him three strokes to hole out from this promising position was unfortunate, but not fatal, for Gossett, who seemed suddenly to have fallen off his game, only reached the green in seven. A moment later a murmur of approval signified the fact that Archibald had won his first hole.

“Mr. Gossett,” said a voice.Those murmuring approval observed that the telegraph boy was once more in theirmidst. This time he bore two missives. Sigsbee dexterously impounded both.“No,” he said with decision, “I absolutely refuse to let you look at them till the game is over. I know your temperament.”Gossett gesticulated.“But they must be important. They must come from my office. Where else would I geta stream of telegrams? Something has gone wrong. I am urgently needed.”Sigsbee nodded gravely.“That is what I fear,” he said. “That is why I can not risk having you upset. Time enough, Gossett, for bad news after the game. Play on, man, and dismiss it from your mind. Besides, you couldn’t get back to New York just yet, in any case. There are no trains. Dismiss the whole thing from your mind and just play your usual, an

d you’re sure to win.”Archibald had driven off during this conversation, but without his previous success. This time he had pulled his ball into some long grass. Gossett’s drive was, however, worse; and the subsequent movement of the pair to the hole resembled more than anything else the maneuvers of two men rolling peanuts with toothpicks asthe result of an election bet. Archibald finally took the hole in twelve afterGossett had played his fourteenth. WHEN Archibald won the next in eleven and the tenth in nine, hope began to flicker feebly in his bosom. But when he won two more holes, bringing the score to like-as-we-lie, it flamed up within him like a beacon.The ordinary golfer, whose scores per hole seldom exceed those of Colonel Bogey,does not understand the whirl of mixed sensations which the really incompetentperformer experiences on the rare occasions when he does strike a winning vein.As stroke follows stroke, and he continues to hold his opponent, a wild exhilaration surges through him, followed by a sort of awe, as if he were doing something wrong, even irreligious. Then all these yeasty emotions subside and are blended into one glorious sensation of grandeur and majesty, as if a giant among pigmies.By the time that Archibald, putting with the care of one brushing off a sleepingVenus, had holed out and won the thirteenth, he was in the full grip of this feeling. And as he walked to the fifteenth tee, after winning the fourteenth, he felt that this was Life, that till now he had been a mere mollusk.Just at that moment he happened to look at his watch, and the sight was like a douche of cold water. The hands stood at five minutes to one.

LET us pause and ponder on this point for a while. Let us not dismiss it as if it were some mere trivial, every-day difficulty. You, dear reader, play an accura



te, scientific game and beat your opponent with ease every time you go to the links, and so do I; but Archibald was not like us. This was the first occasion onwhich he had ever felt that he was playing well enough to give him a chance of defeating a really good man. True, he had beaten McCay, Sigsbee, and Butler in the earlier rounds; but they were ignoble rivals compared with Gossett. To defeatGossett, however, meant the championship. On the other hand, he was passionatelydevoted to Margaret Milsom, whom he was due to meet at the end of the boardwalk

at one sharp It was now five minutes to one, and the end of the boardwalk stilla mile away.The mental struggle was brief but keen. A sharp pang, and his mind was made up.Cost what it might, he must stay on the links. If Margaret broke off the engagement—well, it might be that Time would heal the wound, and that after many years hewould find some other girl for whom he might come to care in a wrecked, brokensort of way. But a chance like this could never come again. What is Love compared with holing out before your opponent?The excitement now became so intense that a small boy, following with the crowd,swallowed his chewing gum; for a slight improvement had become noticeable in Gossett’s play, and a slight improvement in the play of almost any one meant that itbecame vastly superior to Archibald’s. At the next hole the improvement was not m

arked enough to have its full effect, and Archibald contrived to halve. This made him two up and three to play. What the average golfer would consider a commanding lead. But Archibald was no average golfer. A commanding lead for him would have been two up and one to play.To give the public of his best, your golfer should have his mind cool and intentupon the game. Inasmuch as Gossett was worrying about the telegrams, while Archibald, strive as he might to dismiss it, was haunted bv a vision of Margaret standing alone and deserted on the boardwalk, play became, as it were, ragged. Fineputting enabled Gossett to do the sixteenth hole in twelve, and when, winning the seventeenth in nine, he brought his score level with Archibald’s the match seemed over. But just then—“Mr. Gossett!” said a familiar voice.Once more was the much-enduring telegraph boy among those present.

“Tree dis time!” he observed.Gossett sprang, but again the watchful Sigsbee was too swift.“Be brave, Gossett—be brave,” he said. “This is a crisis in the game. Keep your nerve. Play just as if nothing existed outside the links. To look at these telegrams nowwould be fatal.”Eye-witnesses of that great encounter will tell the story of the last hole to their dying day. It was one of those Titanic struggles which Time cannot efface from the memory. Archibald was fortunate in getting a good start. He only missed twice before he struck his ball on the tee. Gossett had four strokes ere he achieved the feat. Nor did Archibald’s luck desert him in the journey to the green. Hewas out of the bunker in eleven. Gossett emerged only after sixteen. Finally, when Archibald’s twenty-first stroke sent the ball trickling into the hole, Gossetthad played his thirtieth.The ball had hardly rested on the bottom of the hole before Gossett had begun totear the telegrams from their envelopes. As he read, his eyes bulged in their sockets.“Not bad news. I hope,” said a sympathetic bystander.Sigsbee took the sheaf of telegrams.The first ran: “Good luck. Hope you win. McCay.” The second also ran: “Good luck. Hopeyou win. McCay.” So, singularly enough, did the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, andseventh.“Great Scott!” said Sigsbee. “He seems to have been pretty anxious not to run any riskof missing you, Gossett.”As he spoke, Archibald, close beside him, was looking at his watch. The hands stood at a quarter to two.

MARGARET and her mother were seated in the parlor when Archibald arrived. Mrs. Milsom, who had elicited the fact that Archibald had not kept his appointment, ha



d been saying “I told you so” for some time, and this had not improved Margaret’s temper. When, therefore, Archibald, damp and disheveled, was shown in, the chill inthe air nearly gave him pneumonia. Mrs. Milsom did her celebrated imitation of the Gorgon, while Margaret, lightly humming an air, picked up a weekly paper andbecame absorbed in it.“Margaret, let me explain,” panted Archibald. Mrs. Milsom was understood to remark that she dared say Margaret’s attention was riveted by a fashion plate.

“Driving in a taximeter to the ferry this morning,” resumed Archibald, “I had an accident.”This was the net result of some rather feverish brainwork on the way from the links to the cottage.The periodical flapped to the floor.“Oh, Archie, are you hurt?”“A few scratches, nothing more; but it made me miss my train.”“What train did you catch?” asked Mrs. Milsom sepulchrally.“The one o’clock. 1 came straight on here from the station.”“Why,” said Margaret, “Stuyvesant was coming home on the one o’clock train. Did you seehim?”Archibald’s jaw dropped slightly.

“Er—no,” he said.“How curious,” said Margaret.“Very curious,” said Archibald.“Most curious,” said Mrs. Milsom.They were still reflecting on the singularity of this fact when the door opened,and the son of the house entered in person.“Thought I should find you here, Mealing,” he said. “They gave me this at the stationto give to you; you dropped it this morning when you got out of the train.”He handed Archibald the missing pouch.“Thanks,” said the latter huskily. “When you say this morning, of course you mean thisafternoon, but thanks all the same—thanks—thanks.”“No, Archibald Mealing, he does not mean this afternoon,” said Mrs. Milsom. “Stuyvesant, speak! From what train did that guf—did Mr. Mealing alight when he dropped the

tobacco-pouch?”“The ten o’clock, the fellow told me. Said he would have given it back to him then only he sprinted off in the deuce of a hurry.” SIX eyes focused themselves upon Archibald.“Margaret,” he said, “I will not try to deceive you—”“You may try,” observed Mrs. Milsom, “but you will not succeed.”“Well, Archibald?”Archibald fingered his collar.“There was no taximeter accident.”“Ah!” said Mrs. Milsom.“The fact is, I have been playing in a golf tournament.”Margaret uttered an exclamation of surprise.“Playing golf!”Archibald bowed his head with manly resignation.“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you arrange for us to meet on the links? I shouldhave loved it.”Archibald was amazed.“You take an interest in golf, Margaret? You! I thought you scorned it, consideredit an unintellectual game. I thought you considered all games unintellectual.”“Why, I play golf myself. Not very well.”“Margaret! Why didn’t you tell me?”“1 thought you might not like it. You were so spiritual, so poetic. I feared you would despise me.”Archibald took a step forward. His voice was tense and trembling.

“Margaret,” he said, “this is no time for misunderstandings. We must be open with oneanother. Our happiness is at stake. Tell me honestly, do you like poetry really?”Margaret hesitated, then answered bravely:



“No, Archibald.” she said, “it is as you suspect. 1 am not worthy of you. I did not like poetry. Ah, you shudder! You turn away! Your face grows hard and scornful!”“I don’t!” yelled Archibald. “It doesn’t! It doesn’t do anything of the sort! You’ve madenother man!”She stared, wild-eyed, astonished.“What! Do you mean that you, too—”“I should just guess I do. I tell you I hate the beastly stuff. I only pretended t

o like it because I thought you did. The hours I’ve spent learning it up! I wonderI’ve not got brain fever.”“Archie! Used you to read it up, too? Oh, if I’d only known!”“And you forgive me—this morning, I mean?”“Of course. You couldn’t leave a golf tournament. By the way, how did you get on?”Archibald coughed.“Rather well,” he said modestly. “Pretty decently. In fact, not badly. As a matter offact, I won the championship.”“The championship!” whispered Margaret. “Of America?”“Well, not absolutely of America,” said Archibald. “But, all the same, a championship.”“My hero!”“You won’t be wanting me for a while, I guess?” said Stuyvesant nonchalantly. “Think I’ll

smoke a cigarette on the porch.”And sobs from the stairs told that Mrs. Milsom was already on her way to her room.

Collier’s Weekly, May 28, 1910

HISTORIANS of the social life of the later Roman Empire speak of a certain youngman of Ariminum who would jump into rivers and swim in ’em. When his friends said: “You fish!” he would answer: “Oh. pish! Fish can’t swim like me. They’ve no vim in ’em.”Just such another was George Barnert Callender.On land, in his land clothes. George was a young man who excited little remark.He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the ordinary height.His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary amount of physical strength. And his forehead struck the happy mean between Bostonian height and Broome Street invisibility. Such was George—on shore. But remove his clothes, drape him ina bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in “The Tempest.” he “suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.” Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George’s mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. Whenhe swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.George came to Ocean City at about five o’clock one evening in July. Ocean City has a well-established reputation as a summer resort, and, while not perhaps in every respect the Paradise which the excitable writer of the local guide-book asserts it to be, on the whole it earns its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who likeit, and smooth water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are confined to j

umping up and down on a given jellyfish. At the northern end of the beach thereis a long pier. It was to this that George made his way on his arrival.It was pleasant on the pier. Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit sta



nds, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aimin life it was to sell you picture postal-cards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature. At this hour of the day the place was deserted: George had it to himself. He strolled slowly along. The water glittered under the sun rays, breaking into a flurry of whitefoam as it reached the beach. A cool breeze blew. The whole scenic arrangementswere a great improvement on the stuffy city he had left. Not that George had co

me to Ocean City with the single aim of finding an antidote to metropolitan stuffiness. There was a more important reason. In three days Ocean City was to be the scene of the production of “Fate’s Footballs,” a comedy in four acts by G. Barnert Callender. For George, though you would not have suspected it from his exterior,was one of those in whose cerebra the gray matter splashes restlessly about, producing strong curtains and crisp dialogue. The company was due at Ocean City onthe following evening for the last spasm of rehearsals.George’s mind, as he paced the pier, was divided between the beauties of Nature and the forthcoming crisis in his affairs in the ratio of one-eighth to the formerand seven-eighths to the latter. At the moment when he had left New York, thoroughly disgusted with the entire theatrical world in general and the company which was rehearsing “Fate’s Footballs” in particular, rehearsals had just reached that st

age of brisk delirium when the author toys with his bottle of poison and the stage-manager becomes icily polite. The “Pigskins,” as Arthur Mifflin, the leading juvenile in the great play, insisted on calling it, much to George’s disapproval, washis first piece. Never before had he been in one of those kitchens where many cooks prepare, and sometimes spoil, the theatrical broth. Consequently, the chaosseemed to him unique. Had he been a more experienced dramatist he would have said to himself, “’Twas ever thus.” As it was, what he said to himself, and others, was more forcible. HE WAS trying to dismiss the whole thing from his mind, a feat which had hitherto proved beyond his powers, when Fate, in an unusually kindly mood, enabled himto do so in a flash by presenting to his jaundiced gaze what, on consideration,he decided was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. When a man’s afraid, shre

wdly sings the bard, a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see. In the presentinstance, the sight acted on George like a tonic. He forgot that the lady to whom an injudicious management had assigned the role of heroine in “Fate’s Footballs” invariably—no doubt from the best motives—omitted to give the cynical roué his cue for the big speech in act three. His mind no longer dwelt on the fact that Arthur Mifflin, an estimable person in private life and one who had been a friend of his at college, preferred to deliver the impassioned lines of the great renunciationscene in a manner suggesting a small boy (and a sufferer from nasal catarrh at that) speaking a piece in the parlor. The recollection of the hideous depressionand gloom which the leading comedian had radiated in great clouds flew from himlike some grisly nightmare before the goddess of day. Every cell in his brain was occupied to the exclusion of all other thoughts by the girl swimming in the water below.She swam well. His practised eye saw that. Her strong, easy strokes carried herswiftly over the swell of the waves. He stared, transfixed. He was a well brought-up young man, and he knew how ill-bred it was to stare; but this was a specialoccasion. Ordinary rules of conventional etiquette could not apply to a case like this. He stared. More, he gaped. As the girl passed on into the shadow of thepier, he leaned further over the rail, and his neck extended in joints like a telescope.At this point the girl turned to swim on her back. Her eyes met his. Hers were deep and clear, his bulging. For what seemed an eternity to George, she continuedto look at him. Then, turning over again, she shot past under the pier.George’s neck was now at its full stretch. No power of will or muscle could add another yard to it. Realizing this, he leaned further over the rail, and further s

till. His hat slid from his head. He grabbed at it, and, overbalancing, fell with a splash into the water.Now, in ordinary circumstances, to fall twelve feet into the ocean with all his



clothes on would have inconvenienced George little. He would hardly have noticedit. He would have swum to shore with merely a feeling of amused self-reproach akin to that of the man who absent-mindedly walks into a lamp-post on the street.When, therefore, he came to the surface, he prepared without agitation to strike out in his usual bold fashion. At this moment, however, two hands, grasping him beneath his arms, lifted his head still farther from the waves, and a voice inhis ear said: “Keep still. Don’t struggle. There’s no danger.”

George did not struggle. His brain, working with the cool rapidity of a buzz-sawin an ice-box, had planned a line of action. Few things arc more difficult in this world for a young man than the securing of an introduction to the right girlunder just the right conditions. When he is looking his best, he is presented to her in the midst of a crowd and is swept away after a rapid handshake. When there is no crowd, he has toothache, or the sun has just begun to make his nose peel. Thousands of young lives have been saddened in this manner.How different was George’s case. By this simple accident, he reflected, as, helping the good work along with an occasional surreptitious leg-stroke. he was towedshoreward, there had been formed an acquaintanceship, if nothing more, which could not lightly be broken. A girl who has saved a man from drowning can not passhim by next day with a formal bow. And what a girl, too! There had been a time,

in extreme youth, when his feminine ideal was the sort of girl who has fuzzy golden hair and drops things. Indeed, in his first year at college, he had said—and written—as much to one of the type, the episode concluding with a strong little drama in which a wrathful, check-signing father had starred, supported by a subdued, misogynistic son. Which things, aided by the march of time, had turned George’stastes toward the healthy, open-air girl who did things instead of dropping them.The pleasantest functions must come to an end sooner or later; and in due seasonGeorge felt his heels grate on the sand. His preserver loosed her hold. They stood up and faced each other. George began to express his gratitude as best he could—it was not easy to find neat, convincing sentences on the spur of the moment—butshe cut him short.“Of course, it was nothing. Nothing at all,” she said, brushing the sea water from h

er eyes. “It was just lucky I happened to be there.”“It was splendid,” said the infatuated dramatist. “It was magnificent. It—”He saw that she was smiling.“You’re very wet,” she said.George glanced down at his soaked clothes. It had been a nice suit once.“Hadn’t you better hurry back and change into something dry?” LOOKING round about him, George perceived that sundry of the inquisitive were swooping down with speculation in their eyes. It was time to depart.“Have you far to go?”“Not far. I’m staying at the Beach View Hotel.”“Why, so am I. I hope we shall meet again.”“We shall,” said George confidently.“How did you happen to fall in?”“I was—er—I was looking at something in the water.”“I thought you were,” said the girl quietly.George blushed. “I know,” he said, “it was abominably rude of me to stare like that, but—”“You should learn to swim,” interrupted the girl. “I can’t understand why every boy in the country isn’t made to learn to swim before he’s ten years old. And it isn’t a bit difficult, really. I could teach you in a week.” The struggle between George and George’s conscience was brief. The conscience, weak by nature and flabby from long want of exercise, had no sort of chance from the start.

“I wish you would,” said George. And with those words he realized that he had definitely committed himself. Till that moment explanation would have been difficult,but possible. Now it was impossible.



“I will,” said the girl. “I’ll start to-morrow, if you like.”She waded into the water.“We’ll talk it over at the hotel,” she said hastily. “Here comes a crowd of horrid people. I’m going to swim out again.”She hurried into deeper water, while George turning, made his way through a growing throng of goggling spectators. Of the fifteen who got within speaking distance of him, six told him that he was wet. The other nine asked him if he had fall

en in. HER name was Vaughan, and she was visiting Ocean City in company with an aunt. So much George ascertained from the management of the hotel. Later, after dinner,meeting both ladies on the board-walk, he gleaned further information—to wit, that her first name was Mary, that her aunt was glad to make his acquaintance, liked Ocean City, but preferred Trouville, and thought it was getting a little chilly and would go indoors.The elimination of the third factor had a restorative effect upon George’s conversation, which had begun to languish. In feminine society, as a rule he was apt tobe constrained, but with Mary Vaughan it was different. Within a couple of minutes he was pouring out his troubles. The cue-withholding leading woman, the stic

k-like Mifflin, the funereal comedian—up they all came; and she, gently sympathetic, was endeavoring, not without success, to prove to him that things were not asbad as they seemed.“It’s sure to be all right on the night,” she said.How rare is the combination of beauty and intelligence! George thought he had never heard such a clear-headed, well-expressed remark.“I suppose it will,” he said. “But they were mighty bad when I left. Mifflin, for instance. He seems to think Nature intended him for a press- agent. He has a bee inhis bonnet about booming the piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. Andthe comedian. His specialty is drawing me aside and asking me to write in new scenes for him. I couldn’t stand for it any longer. I just came away and left themto fight it out among themselves.”

“I’m sure you have no need to worry. A play with such a good story is certain to succeed.”George had previously obliged with a brief description of the plot of the “Pigskins.”“Did you like the story?” he said, tenderly.“I thought it was fine.”“How sympathetic you are,” cooed George, edging a little closer. “Do you know—”“Shall we be going back to the hotel?” said the girl.Those noisome creatures, the hired murderers of “Fate’s Footballs,” descended upon Ocean City early next afternoon; and George, meeting them at the station, in reluctant pursuance of a promise given to Arthur Mifflin, felt moodily that if only they could make their acting one-half as full of color as their clothes, the playwould be one of the most pronounced successes of modern times. In the forefrontgleamed, like the white plumes of Navarre, the light flannel suit of Arthur Mifflin, the woodenest juvenile in captivity.His woodenness was, however, confined to stage rehearsals. It may be mentioned that, once the run of a piece had begun, he was sufficiently volatile. And in private life he was almost excessively so, a fact which had been noted at an earlydate by the keen-eyed faculty of his university, the discovery leading to his tearing himself away from Alma Mater by request with some suddenness. He was a long, slender youth with green eyes, jet-black hair, and a passionate fondness forthe sound of his own voice.“Well, here we are,” he said, flicking breezily at George’s leg with his cane.“I saw you,” said George, coldly, side-stepping.“The whole team,” continued Mr. Mifflin. “All bright, sassy, and trained to the minute

. By the way, the center-rush wants you to write in a new scene for him in the second act.”It was Mr. Mifflin’s whim to speak of the “Fate’s Footballs” company as a football team.



The center-rush was the comedian, and George had never denied the appropriateness of the name. HE SAID once again what he thought of the center-rush. “What happened after I left?” he asked. “Has anybody begun to act yet? Or are they waiting till the dress rehearsal?”“The rehearsals,” admitted Mr. Mifflin handsomely, “weren’t perfect; but you wait. It’ll b

e all right on the night.”George thought he had never heard such a vapid, futile remark.“Besides,” said Mr. Mifflin. “I have an idea which will make the show. Lend me your ear. Both ears. You shall have them back. Tell me what pulls people into a theater? A good play? Sometimes. But failing that, as in the present case, what? Fine acting by the leading juvenile? We have that, but it is not enough. No, my boy, advertisement is the dope. Look at all these men on the beach. Are they going toroll in of their own free wills to see a play like the ‘Pigskins’? Not on your life.About the time the curtain rises every man of them will be sitting in his own private corner of the beach—”“How many corners do you think the beach has?”“Gazing into a girl’s eyes, saying ‘Shine on, thou harvest moon,’ and telling her how hi

s boss is practically dependent on his advice. You know.”“I don’t,” said George coldly.“Unless,” proceeded Mr. Mifflin, “we advertise. And by advertise I mean advertise in the right way. We have a press-agent, but for all the good he does he might be inOshkosh, gathering in the hay. Luckily for us I am among those present. I havebrains. I have resource. What’s that?”“I said nothing.”“I thought you did. Well, I have an idea which will drag these people like a magnet. I thought it out coming down in the train.“What is it?”“I’ll tell you later. There are a few details to be worked upon first. Meanwhile, let us trickle to the sea-front and take a sail in one of those boats. I am at mybest in a boat.”

Mr. Mifflin, having remarked “Yeo-ho” in a meditative voice, seated himself at the helm, somewhat saddened by Ins failure to borrow a quid of tobacco from the OceanBeauty’s proprietor. For, as he justly observed, without properties and make-up,where were you? THE summer day had lost its oppressive heat. A fresh breeze had sprung up. George, manipulating the sheet automatically, fell into a reverie. A moment comes inthe life of every man when an inward voice whispers to him: “This is The One!” In George’s case the voice had not whispered; it had shouted. From now onward there could be but one woman in the world for him. From now onward—Mr. Mifflin uttered a startled exclamation. George woke up.“What’s the matter!” he asked.“Just like a flash,” said Mr. Mifflin complacently. “It’s always the way with me. Give me time, and the artistic idea is bound to come. Just some little thought, some little, apparently obvious, idea which stamps the man of genius. It beats me whyI didn’t think of it before. Why, of course, a costume piece with a male star is ahundred times more effective.”“What are you talking about?”“I see now,” continued Mr. Mifflin, “that there was a flaw in my original plan. My idea was this. We were talking in the train about the bathing down here, and the quarterback happened to say she could swim some, and it suddenly came to me.” THE quarterback was the leading woman, she who omitted to give cues.“I said to myself: ‘George is a sport. He will be delighted to do a little thing like that.’”

“Do what?”“Why, rescue the quarter-back.”“What!”



“She and you,” said Mr. Mifflin, “were to go in swimming together, while I waited on the sands, holding our bone-headed press-agent on a leash. About a hundred yardsfrom shore, up go her arms. Piercing scream. Agitated crowd on the beach. What is the matter? What has happened? A touch of cramp. Will she be drowned? No! G. Barnert Callender, author of ‘Fate’s Footballs,’ which opens at the Beach Theater on Monday evening next at eight-fifteen sharp, will save her. See! He has her. He isbringing her in. She is safe. How pleased her mother will be. And the public, wh

at a bit of luck for them! They will be able to see her act at eight-fifteen sharp on Monday, after all. Back you come to the shore. Cheering crowds. Weeping women. Strong situation. I unleash the press-agent, and off he shoots, in time toget the story into the evening paper. It was a bully idea, but I see now there were one or two flaws in it.”“You do, do you?” said George.“It occurs to me, on reflection, that after all you wouldn’t have stood for it. A something, I don’t know what, which is lacking in your nature, would have made you throw down the scheme.”“I’m glad that occurred to you.”“And a far greater flaw was that it was too altruistic. It boomed you, and it boomed the quarter-back, but I didn’t get a thing out of it. My revised scheme is a th

ousand times better in every way.”“Don’t say you’ve another.”“I have. And.” added Mr. Mifflin with modest pride, “it is a pippin. This time I unhesitatingly assert that I have the goods. In about one minute from now you will hear me exclaim in a clear, musical voice the single word: ‘Jump!’ That is your cue tobeat it over the side as quick as you can move, for at that precise moment thisspanking craft is going to capsize.”George spun round in his seat. Mr. Mifflin’s face was shining with kindly enthusiasm. The shore was at least two hundred yards away, and that morning he had had his first swimming lesson.“A movement of the tiller will do it. These accidents arc common objects of the seashore. I may mention that I can swim just enough to keep myself afloat, so it’s up to you. I wouldn’t do this for every one, but, seeing that we were boys together—a

re you ready?”“Stop!” cried George. “Don’t do it. Listen.”“Are you ready?”The Ocean Beauty gave a plunge.“You lunatic! Listen to me. I—”“Jump!” said Mr. Mifflin.George came to the surface some yards from the overturned boat, and, looking round for Mr. Mifflin, discovered that great thinker treading water a few feet away.“Get busy, George,” he remarked.It is not easy to shake one’s fist at a man when in deep water, but George managedit.“For five cents,” he cried, “I’d leave you to look after yourself.”“You can do better than that,” said Mr. Mifflin. “I’ll give you a dime to tow me in. Getbusy. It’s cold.”In gloomy silence George gripped him by the elbows. Mr. Mifflin looked over hisshoulder.“We shall have a good house, he said. “The orchestra chairs are full already, and the circle’s filling. Work away, George; you’re doing fine. This act is going to be ascream from start to finish.” WITH pleasant conversation he endeavored to while away the monotony of the journey; but George made no reply. He was doing some rapid thinking. With ordinary luck, he thought bitterly, all would have been well. He could have gone on splashing vigorously under his teacher’s care for a week, gradually improving till he eme

rged into a reasonably proficient swimmer. But now—! In an age of miracles he might have explained away his present performance; but how was he to— And then there came to him an idea, simple, as all great ideas are, but magnificent.



He stopped, and trod water.“Tired?” said Mr. Mifflin. “Well, take a rest,” he added kindly; “take a rest. No need tohurry.”“See here,” said George. “This piece is going to be recast. We’re going to exchange parts. You’re rescuing me. See? Never mind why. I haven’t time to explain it to you now.Do you understand?”“No,” said Mr. Mifflin.’

“I’ll get behind you and push you; but don’t forget, when we get to the shore, that you’ve done the rescuing.”Mr. Mifflin pondered.“Is this wise?” he said. “It is a strong part, the rescuer, but I’m not sure the other wouldn’t suit my style better. The silent hand-grip. The catch in the voice. You want a practised actor for that. I don’t think you’d be up to it, George.”“Never mind about me. That’s how it’s going to be.”Mr. Mifflin pondered once more.“No,” he said at length, “it wouldn’t do. You mean well, George, but it would kill the show. We’ll go on as before.”“Will we!” said George unpleasantly. “Would you like to know what I’m going to do to youthen? I’m going to hit you very hard under the jaw, and I’m going to take hold of y

our neck and squeeze it till you lose consciousness, and then I’m going to drag you to the beach and tell people I had to beat you up because you lost your head and struggled.”Mr. Mifflin pondered for the third time.“You are?” he said.“I am,” said George.“Then,” said Mr. Mifflin cordially, “say no more. I take your point. My objections areremoved. But,” he concluded, “this is the last time I come bathing with you, George.” MR. MIFFLIN’S artistic misgivings as to his colleague’s ability to handle so subtlea part as that of rescued were more than justified on their arrival. A large andinterested audience had collected by the time they reached the shore, an audien

ce to which any artist should have been glad to play: but George, forcing his way through, hurried to the hotel without attempting to satisfy them. Not a singlesilent handshake did he bestow on his rescuer. There was no catch in his voiceas he made the one remark which he did make—to a man with whiskers who asked him if the boat had upset.He had just changed his wet clothes—it seemed to him that he had been doing nothing but change his wet clothes since he had come to Ocean City—when Mr. Mifflin entered in a bathrobe.“They lent me this downstairs,” he explained, “while they dried my clothes. They woulddo anything for me. I’m the popular hero. My boy, you made the mistake of your life when you threw up the rescuer part. It has all the fat. I see that now. The rescuer plays the other man off the stage every time. I’ve just been interviewed bythe fellow on the local newspaper. He’s correspondent to a couple of New York papers. The country will ring with this thing. I’ve told them all the parts I’ve ever played and my favorite breakfast food. There’s a man coming up to take my photograph to-morrow. Pigskin stock has gone up with a run. Wait till Monday and see whatsort of a house we shall draw. By the way, the reporter fellow said one funny thing. He asked if you weren’t the same man who was rescued yesterday by a girl. Isaid of course not, that you had only come down yesterday. But he stuck to it that you were.”“He was quite right.”“What!”“I was.”Mr. Mifflin sat down on the bed.“This fellow fell off the pier and a girl brought him in.”

George nodded.“And that was you?”George nodded. “



Mr. Mifflin’s eyes opened wide.“It’s the heat,” he declared finally. “That and the worry of rehearsals. I expect a doctor could give you the technical name for it. It’s a what-do-you-call-it. An obsession. You often hear of cases. Fellows who are absolutely sane, really, but daffyon one particular subject. Some of them think they’re teapots and things. You’ve got a craving for being rescued from drowning. What happens, old man? Do you suddenly get the delusion that you can’t swim?”

George finished lacing his shoe, and looked up.“Listen,” he said. “I’ll talk slow so that you can understand. Suppose you fell off a pier, and a girl took a lot of trouble to get you to the shore, would you say: ‘Muchobliged, but you needn’t have butted in. I can swim perfectly well’?”Mr. Mifflin considered this point. Intelligence began to dawn in his face.“There is more in this than meets the eye,” he said. “Tell me all.”“This morning”—George’s voice grew dreamy—”she gave me a swimming lesson. She thought it wmy first. Don’t cackle like that. There’s nothing to laugh at.”Mr. Mifflin contradicted his assertion.“There is you,” he said simply. “This should be a lesson to you, George. Avoid deceit.In future be simple and straightforward. Take me as your model. You are young.There is still time to make a fresh start. It only needs will power. Meanwhile,

lend me something to wear. They are going to take a week drying my clothes.” THERE was a rehearsal at the Beach Theater that evening. George attended it in aspirit of resignation and left in one of elation. Three days had passed since his last sight of the company at work, and in those three days, apparently, the impossible had been achieved. There was a snap and go about the piece now. The leading woman had at length mastered that cue, and gave it out with bell-like clearness. Arthur Mifflin, as if refreshed and braced by his salt-water bath, was infusing a welcome vigor into his part. And even the comedian, George could not help admitting, showed signs of being on the eve of becoming funny.On the porch of the hotel were a number of easy-chairs. Only one was occupied. George recognised the occupant.“I’ve just come back from a rehearsal,” he said, seating himself beside her.

“Really?”“The whole thing is different,” he went on buoyantly. “They know their lines. They actas if they meant it. Arthur Mifflin’s fine. The comedian’s improved till you wouldn’tknow him. I’m tickled to death at it.”“Really?”George felt damped.“I thought you might be pleased,” he said lamely.“Of course I am glad that things are going well. Your accident this afternoon waslucky, too, in a way, was it not? It will interest people in the play.”“You heard about it?”“I have been hearing about nothing else.”“Curious it happening so soon after—”“And so soon before the production of your play. Most curious.”There was a silence. George began to feel uneasy. You could never tell with women, of course— It might be nothing— But it looked uncommonly as if—He changed the subject.“How is your aunt this evening, Miss Vaughan?”“Quite well, thank you. She went in. She found it a little chilly.” GEORGE heartily commended her good sense. A little chilly did not begin to express it.He tried again.“Will you have time to give me another lesson to-morrow?” he said.Then he found that in the dim light he had made a mistake. What he had taken forthe North Pole was really Vesuvius.

She turned on him.“Mr. Callender, don’t you think this farce has gone on long enough?”Once, in the dear dead days beyond recall, when but a happy child, George had be



en smitten unexpectedly by a sportive playmate a bare half-inch below his thirdwaistcoat button. The resulting emotions were still green in his memory. As he had felt then, so did he feel now.“Miss Vaughan! I don’t understand.”“Really?”“What have I done?”“You have forgotten how to swim.”

A warm, prickly sensation began to manifest itself around George’s forehead.“Forgotten!”“Forgotten. And in a few months. I thought I had seen you before, and today I remembered. It was just about this time last year that I saw you at Bar Harbor, swimming perfectly wonderfully. And to-day you are taking lessons. Can you explain it?”A frog-like croak was the best George could do in that line.She went on.“Business is business, I suppose, and a play has to be advertised somehow. But—”“You don’t think!” croaked George.“I should have thought it rather beneath the dignity of an author, but, of course,you know your own business best. Only I object to being a conspirator. I am sor

ry for your sake that yesterday’s episode attracted so little attention. Today Itwas much more satisfactory, wasn’t it? I am so glad.”There was a massive silence for about a hundred years.“I think I’ll go for a short stroll,” said George. SCARCELY had he disappeared when the long form of Mr. Mifflin emerged from the shadow beyond the porch.“Could you spare me a moment?”The girl looked up. The man was a stranger. She inclined her head coldly.“My name is Mifflin.” said the other, dropping comfortably into the chair which hadheld the remains of George.The girl inclined her head again, more coldly; but it took more than that to embarrass Mr. Mifflin. Dynamite might have done it, but not coldness.

“The Mifflin,” he explained, crossing his legs. “I overheard your conversation just now.”“You were listening?” said the girl scornfully.“For all I was worth,” said Mr. Mifflin. “These things are very much a matter of habit. For years I have been playing in pieces where I have had to stand concealed upstage, drinking in the private conversations of other people, and the thing hasbecome a second nature to me. However, leaving that point for a moment, what Iwished to say was that I heard you—unknowingly, of course—doing a good man a grave injustice.”“Mr. Callender could have defended himself if he had wished.”“I was not referring to George. The injustice was to myself.”“To you?”“I was the sole author of this afternoon’s little drama. I like George, but I can not permit him to pose in any way as my collaborator. George has old-fashioned ideas. He does not keep abreast of the times. He can write plays, but he needs a man with a big brain to boom them for him. So, far from being entitled to any credit for this afternoon’s work, he was actually opposed to it!”“Then why did he pretend you had saved him?” she demanded.“George’s,” said Mr. Mifflin, “is essentially a chivalrous nature. At any crisis demanding a display of the finer feelings, he is there with the goods before you can turn around. His friends frequently wrangle warmly as to whether he is most like Bayard, Lancelot, or Happy Hooligan. Some say one, some the other. It seems thatyesterday you saved him from a watery grave without giving him time to explain that he could save himself. What could he do? He said to himself ‘She must never know!’ and acted accordingly. But let us leave George, and return—”

“Thank you, Mr. Mifflin”—there was a break in her laugh—”I don’t think there is any necessy. I think I understand now. It was very clever of you.”“It was more than cleverness,” said Mr. Mifflin, rising. “It was genius.”



A WHITE form came to meet George as he reentered the porch.“Mr. Callender.”He stopped.“I’m very sorry I said such horrid things to you just now. I have been talking to Mr. Mifflin, and I want to say I think it was ever so nice and thoughtful of you.I understand everything!”

George did not by a good deal; but he understood sufficient for his needs. He shot forward as if some strong hand were behind him with a bowie-knife.“Miss Vaughan—Mary—I—”“I think I hear aunt calling,” said she.But a benevolent Providence has ordained that aunts can not call forever: and itis on record that when George entered his box on the two hundredth night of that great Broadway success, “Fate’s Footballs,” he did not enter it alone.

Collier’s Weekly, September 24, 1910THE main difficulty in writing a story is to convey to the reader clearly yet tersely the natures and dispositions of one’s leading characters. Brevity, brevity—that is the cry. Perhaps, after all, the play-bill style is the best. In this dramaof love, baseball, frenzied finance, and tainted millions, then, the principalsare as follows, in their order of entry:

Isabel Rackstraw (a peach).Clarence van Puyster (a Greek god).Old Man Van Puyster (a proud old aristocrat).Old Man Rackstraw (a tainted millionaire).More about Clarence later. For the moment let him go as a Greek god. There wereother sides, too, to Old Man Rackstraw’s character; but for the moment let him goas a Tainted Millionaire. Not that it is satisfactory. It is too mild. He was the Tainted Millionaire. The Tainted Millions of other Tainted Millionaires were as attar of roses compared with the Tainted Millions of Tainted Millionaire Rackstraw. He preferred his millions tainted. His attitude toward an untainted million was that of the sportsman toward the sitting bird. These things are purely a matter of taste. Some people like Limburger cheese.It was at a charity bazaar that Isabel and Clarence first met. Isabel was presiding over the Billiken, Teddy Bear, and Fancy Goods stall. There she stood, thatslim, radiant girl, buncoing the Younger Set out of its father’s hard-earned witha smile that alone was nearly worth the money, when she observed, approaching, the handsomest man she had ever seen. It was—this is not one of those mystery stories—it was Clarence van Puyster. Over the heads of the bevy of gilded youths who clustered round the stall their eyes met. A thrill ran through Isabel. She droppedher eyes. The next moment Clarence had bucked center; the Younger Set had shredded away like a mist; and he was leaning toward her, opening negotiations for the purchase of a yellow Teddy Bear at sixteen times its face value.He returned at intervals during the afternoon. Over the second Teddy Bear they became friendly; over the third, intimate. He proposed as she was wrapping up thefourth Golliwog, and she gave him her heart and the parcel simultaneously. At s

ix o’clock, carrying four Teddy Bears, seven photograph frames, five Golliwogs, and a Billiken, Clarence went home to tell the news to his father.



CLARENCE, when not at college, lived with his only surviving parent in an old red-brick house at the north end of Washington Square. The original Van Puyster had come over in Governor Stuyvesant’s time in one of the then fashionable ninety-four-day boats. Those were the stirring days when they were giving away chunks ofManhattan Island in exchange for trading-stamps; for the bright brain which conceived the idea that the city might possibly at some remote date extend above Liberty Street had not come into existence.. The original Van Puyster had acquired

a square mile or so in the heart of things for ten dollars cash and a quarter interest in a pedler’s outfit. “The Columbus Echo and Vespucci Intelligencer” gave him acolumn and a half under the heading: “Reckless Speculator. Prominent Citizen’s Gamble in Land.” On the proceeds of that deal his descendants had led quiet, peacefullives ever since. If any of them ever did a day’s work, the family records are silent on the point. Blood was their long suit, not Energy. They were plain, homelyfolk, with a refined distaste for wealth and vulgar hustle. They lived simply,without envy of their richer fellow citizens, on their three hundred thousand dollars a year. They asked no more. It enabled them to entertain on a modest scale; the boys could go to college, the girls buy an occasional new frock. They weresatisfied.

HAVING dressed for dinner, Clarence proceeded to the library, where he found hisfather slowly pacing the room. Silver-haired old Vansuyther van Puyster seemedwrapped in thought. And this was unusual, for he was not given to thinking. To be absolutely frank, the old man had just about enough brain to make a jay-bird fly crooked, and no more.“Ah, my boy,” he said, looking up as Clarence entered. “Let us go in to dinner. I havebeen awaiting you for some little time now. I was about to inquire as to your whereabouts. Let us be going.”Mr. Van Puyster always spoke like that. This was due to Blood.Until the servants had left them to their coffee and cigarettes, the conversation was desultory and commonplace. But when the door had closed, Mr. Van Puyster leaned forward.“My boy,” he said quietly, “we are ruined.”

Clarence looked at him inquiringly.“Ruined much?” he asked.“Paupers,” said his father. “I doubt if when all is over, I shall have much more thana bare fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year.”A lesser man would have betrayed agitation, but Clarence was a Van Puyster. He lit a cigarette.“Ah,” he said calmly. “How’s that?”Mr. Van Puyster toyed with his coffee-spoon.“I was induced to speculate—rashly, 1 fear—on the advice of a man I chanced to meet ata public dinner, in the shares of a certain mine. I did not thoroughly understand the matter, but my acquaintance appeared to be well versed in such operations, so I allowed him to—and, well, in fact, to cut a long story short, I am ruined.”“Who was the fellow?”“A man of the name of Rackstraw. Daniel Rackstraw.”“Daniel Rackstraw!”Not even Clarence’s training and traditions could prevent a slight start as he heard the name.“Daniel Rackstraw,” repeated his father. “A man, I fear, not entirely honest. In fact,it seems that he has made a very large fortune by similar transactions. Friendsof mine, acquainted with these matters, tell me his behavior toward me amountedpractically to theft. However, for myself I care little. We can rough it, we ofthe old Van Puyster stock. If there is but fifty thousand a year left, well—I must make it serve. It is for your sake that I am troubled, my poor boy. I shall becompelled to stop your allowance. I fear you will be obliged to adopt some profession.” lie hesitated for a moment. “In fact, work,” he added.

Clarence drew at his cigarette.“Work?” he echoed thoughtfully. “Well, of course, mind you, fellows do work. I met a man at the club only yesterday who knew a fellow who had met a man whose cousin w



orked.”He reflected for a while.“I shall pitch,” he said suddenly.“Pitch, my boy?”“Sign on as a professional ball player.”His father’s fine old eyebrows rose a little.“But, my boy, er— The—ah—family name. Our—shall I say noblesse oblige? Can a Van Puyster p

itch and not be defiled?”“I shall take a new name,” said Clarence. “I will call myself Brown.” He lit another cigarette. “I can get signed on in a minute. McGraw will jump at me.”This was no idle boast. Clarence had had a good college education, and was now an exceedingly fine pitcher. It was a pleasing sight to see him, poised on one foot in the attitude of a Salome dancer, with one eye on the batter, the other gazing coldly at the man who was trying to steal third, uncurl abruptly like the mainspring of a watch and sneak over a swift one. Under Clarence’s guidance a ball could do practically everything except talk. It could fly like a shot from a gun,hesitate, take the first turning to the left, go up two blocks, take the secondto the right, bound in mid-air like a jack-rabbit, and end by dropping as the gentle dew from heaven upon the plate beneath. Briefly, there was class to Claren

ce. He was the goods. SCARCELY had he uttered these momentous words when the butler entered with the announcement that he was wanted by a lady at the telephone.It was Isabel.Isabel was disturbed.“Oh, Clarence,” she cried, “my precious angel wonder-child, I don’t know how to begin.”“Begin just like that,” said Clarence approvingly. “It’s fine. You can’t beat it.”“Clarence, a terrible thing has happened. I told papa of our engagement, and he wouldn’t hear of it. He was furious. He c-called you a b-b-b—”“A what?”“A p-p-p—”“That’s a new one on me,” said Clarence, wondering.

“A b-beggarly p-pauper. I knew you weren’t well off, but I thought you had two or three millions. I told him so. But he said no, your father had lost all his money.”“It is too true, dearest,” said Clarence. “I am a pauper. But I’m going to work. Something tells me I shall be rather good at work. I am going to work with all the accumulated energy of generations of ancestors who have never done a hand’s turn. Andsome day when I—”“Good-by,” said Isabel hastily, “I hear papa coming.”The season during which Clarence van Puyster pitched for the Giants is destinedto live long in the memory of followers of baseball. Probably never in the history of the game has there been such persistent and wide-spread mortality among the more distant relatives of office-boys and junior clerks. Statisticians have estimated that if all the grandmothers alone who perished between the months of April and October that year could have been placed end to end they would have reached considerably further than Minneapolis. And it was Clarence who was responsible for this holocaust. Previous to the opening of the season skeptics had shakentheir heads over the Giants’ chances for the pennant. It had been assumed that aslittle new blood would be forthcoming as in other years, and that the fate of Our City would rest, as usual, on the shoulders of the white-haired veterans whowere boys with Lafayette. And then, like a meteor, Clarence van Puyster had flashed upon the world of fans, bugs, chewing-gum, and nuts (pea and human). In the opening game he had done horrid things to nine men from Boston; and from then onward, except for an occasional check, the Giants had never looked back.Among the spectators who thronged the bleachers to watch Clarence perform there

appeared week after week a little, gray, dried-up man, insignificant except fora certain happy choice of language in moments of emotion and an enthusiasm far surpassing that of the ordinary spectator. To the trained eye there is a subtle b



ut well-marked difference between the fan, the bug, and—the last phase—the nut of the baseball world. This man was an undoubted nut. It was writ clear across his brow. FATE had made Daniel Rackstraw—for it was he—a tainted millionaire, but at heart hewas a baseball spectator. He never missed a game. His library of baseball literature was the finest in the country. His baseball museum had but one equal, that

of Mr. Jacob Dodson of Detroit. Between them the two had cornered, at enormous expense, the curio market of the game. It was Rackstraw who had secured the gloveworn by Neal Ball, the Cleveland shortstop, when he made the only unassisted triple play in the history of the game; but it was Dodson who possessed the bat which Hans Wagner used as a boy. The two men were friends, as far as rival connoisseurs can be friends; and Mr. Dodson, when at leisure, would frequently pay a visit to Mr. Rackstraw’s country home, where he would spend hours gazing wistfully at the Neal Ball glove buoyed up only by the thought of the Wagner bat at home. ISABEL saw little of Clarence during the summer months, except from a distance.She contented herself with clipping photographs of him from the evening papers.Each was a little more unlike him than the last, and this lent variety to the co

llection. Her father marked her new-born enthusiasm for the national game with approval. It had been secretly a great grief to the old buccaneer that his only child did not know the difference between a bunt and a swat, and, more, did not seem to care to know. He felt himself drawn closer to her. An understanding, as pleasant as it was new and strange, began to spring up between parent and child.As for Clarence, how easy it would be to cut loose to practically an unlimited extent on the subject of his emotions at this time. One can figure him, after thegame is over and the gay throng has dispersed, creeping moodily—but what’s the use?Brevity. That is the cry. Brevity. Let us on. THE months sped by. August came and went, and September; and soon it was plain to even the casual follower of the game that, unless something untoward should happen, the Giants must secure the National League pennant. Those were delirious d

ays for Daniel Rackstraw. Long before the beginning of October his voice had dwindled to a husky whisper. Deep lines appeared on his forehead; for it is an awful thing for a baseball nut to be compelled to root, in the very crisis of the season, purely by means of facial expression. In this time of affliction he foundIsabel an ever-increasing comfort to him. Side by side they would sit at the Polo Grounds, and the old man’s face would lose its drawn look, and light up, as herclear young soprano pealed out above the din, urging this player to slide for second, that to knock the stitching off the ball; or describing the umpire in no uncertain voice as a reincarnation of the late Mr. Jesse James.Meanwhile, in the American League, Detroit had been heading the list with equalpertinacity; and in far-off Michigan Mr. Jacob Dodson’s enthusiasm had been everywhit as great as Mr. Rackstraw’s in New York. It was universally admitted that when the championship series came to be played, there would certainly be somethingdoing.But, alas! How truly does Epictetus observe: “We know not what awaiteth us aroundthe corner, and the hand that counteth its chickens ere they be hatched ofttimesgraspeth but a lemon.” The prophets who anticipated a struggle closer than any onrecord were destined to be proved false.It was not that their judgment of form was at fault. By every law of averages the Giants and the Tigers should have been the two most evenly matched nines in the history of the game. In fielding there was nothing to choose between them. Athitting the Tigers held a slight superiority; but this was balanced by the inspired pitching of Clarence van Puyster. Even the keenest supporters of either sidewere not confident. They argued at length, figuring out the odds with the aid of stubs of pencils and the backs of envelopes, but they were not confident. Out

of all those frenzied millions two men alone had no doubts. Mr. Daniel Rackstrawsaid that he did not desire to be unfair to Detroit. He wished it to be clearlyunderstood that in their own class the Tigers might quite possibly show to cons



iderable advantage. In some rural league down South, for instance, he did not deny that they might sweep all before them. But when it came to competing with theGiants— Here words failed Mr. Rackstraw, and he had to rush to Wall Street and collect several tainted millions before he could recover his composure.Mr. Jacob Dodson, interviewed by the Detroit “Weekly Rooter,” stated that his decision, arrived at after a close and careful study of the work of both teams, was that the Giants had rather less chance in the forthcoming tourney than a lone gum-

drop at an Eskimo tea-party. It was his carefully considered opinion that in a contest with the Avenue B Juniors the Giants might, with an effort, scrape home.But when it was a question of meeting a live team like Detroit— Here Mr. Dodson, shrugging his shoulders despairingly, sank back in his chair, and watchful secretaries brought him round with oxygen.Throughout the whole country nothing but the approaching series was discussed. Wherever civilization reigned, and in Jersey City, one question alone was on every lip: Who would win? Octogenarians mumbled it. Infants lisped it. Tired business men, trampled under foot in the rush for the West Farms express, asked it of the ambulance attendants who carried them to hospital.And then, one bright, clear morning, when all Nature seemed to smile, Clarence van Puyster developed mumps.

New York was in a ferment. I could have wished to go into details, to describe in crisp, burning sentences the panic that swept like a tornado through a millionhomes. A little encouragement, the slightest softening of the editorial austerity, and the thing would have been done. But no. Brevity. That was the cry. Brevity. Let us on. THE Tigers met the Giants at the Polo Grounds, and for five days the sweat of agony trickled unceasingly down the corrugated foreheads of the patriots who sat on the bleachers. The men from Detroit, freed from the fear of Clarence, smiled grim smiles and proceeded to knock holes through the fence. It was in vain that the home fielders skimmed like swallows around the diamond. They could not keep the score down. From start to finish the Giants were a beaten side.Broadway during that black week was a desert. Gloom gripped Lobster Square. In d

istant Harlem red-eyed wives faced silently scowling husbands at the evening meal, and the children were sent early to bed. Newsboys called the extras in a whisper.Few took the tragedy more nearly to heart than Daniel Rackstraw. Each afternoonfound him more deeply plunged in sorrow. On the last day, leaving the ground with the air of a father mourning over some prodigal son, he encountered Mr. JacobDodson of Detroit.Now, Mr. Dodson was perhaps the slightest bit shy on the finer feelings. He should have respected the grief of a fallen foe. He should have abstained from exulting. But he was in too exhilarated a condition to be magnanimous. Sighting Mr. Rackstraw, he addressed himself joyously to the task of rubbing the thing in. Mr.Rackstraw listened in silent anguish.“If we had had Brown—” he said at length.“That’s what they all say,” whooped Mr. Dodson. “Brown! Who’s Brown?”“If we had had Brown, we should have—” He paused. An idea had flashed upon his overwrought mind. “Dodson,” he said, “listen here. Wait till Brown is well again, and let usplay this thing off again for anything you like a side in my private park.” MR. DODSON reflected.“You’re on,” he said. “What side bet? A million? Two million? Three?”Mr. Rackstraw shook his head scornfully.“A million? Who wants a million? I’ll put up my Neal Ball glove against your Hans Wagner bat. The best of three games. Does that go?”“I should say it did,” said Mr. Dodson joyfully. “I’ve been wanting that glove for years. It’s like finding it in one’s Christmas stocking.”

“Very well.” said Mr. Rackstraw. “Then let’s get it fixed up.”Honestly, it is but a dog’s life, that of the short-story writer. I particularly wished at this point to introduce a description of Mr. Rackstraw’s country home and



estate, featuring the private ball park with its fringe of noble trees. It would have served a double purpose, not only charming the lover of nature, but acting as a fine stimulus to the youth of the country, showing them the sort of homethey would be able to buy some day if they worked hard and saved their money. But no. You shall have three guesses as to what was the cry. You give it up? It was “Brevity! Brevity!” Let us on.The two teams arrived at the Rackstraw house in time for lunch. Clarence, his fe

atures once more reduced to their customary finely-chiseled proportions, alighted from the automobile with a swelling heart. He could see nothing of Isabel, butthat did not disturb him. Letters had passed between the two. Clarence had warned her not to embrace him in public, as McGraw would not like it; and Isabel accordingly had arranged a tryst among the noble trees which fringed the ball-park.I will pass lightly over the meeting of the two lovers. 1 will not describe thedewy softness of their eyes, the catching of their breath, their murmured endearments. I could, mind you. It is at just such descriptions that I am particularlyhappy. But I have grown discouraged. My spirit is broken. It is enough to say that Clarence had reached a level of emotional eloquence rarely met with among pitchers of the National League, when Isabel broke from him with a startled exclamation, and vanished behind a tree; and, looking over his shoulder, Clarence obse

rved Mr. Daniel Rackstraw moving toward him. IT WAS evident from the millionaire’s demeanor that he had seen nothing. The lookon his face was anxious, but not wrathful. He sighted Clarence, and hurried up to him.“Say, Brown,” he said, “I’ve been looking for vou. I want a word with you.”“A thousand, if you wish it,” said Clarence courteously.“Now, see here,” said Mr. Rackstraw. “I want to explain to you just what this ball game means to me. Don’t run away with the idea I’ve had you fellows down to play an exhibition game just to keep me merry and bright. If the Giants win to-day, it means that I shall be able to hold up my head again and look my fellow man in the face, instead of crawling around on my stomach and feeling like thirty cents. Do you get that?”

“I am hep,” replied Clarence with simple dignity.“And not only that.” went on the millionaire. “There’s more to it. I have put up my NealBall glove against Mr. Dodson’s Wagner bat as a side-bet. You understand what that means? It means that either you win or my life is soured for keeps. See?”“I have got you,” said Clarence.“Good. Then what I wanted to say was this. To-day is your day for pitching as you’venever pitched before. Everything depends on whether you make good or not. Withyou pitching like mother used to make it, the Giants are some nine. Otherwise they are Nature’s citrons. It’s one thing or the other. It’s all up to you. Win, and there’s twenty thousand dollars waiting for you above what you share with the others.” CLARENCE waved his hand deprecatingly.“Mr. Rackstraw,” he said, “keep your dough. I care nothing for money.”“You don’t?” cried the millionaire. “Then you ought to exhibit yourself in a dime museum.”“All I ask of you,” proceeded Clarence, “is your consent to my engagement to your daughter.”Mr. Rackstraw looked sharply at him.“Repeat that,” he said. “I don’t think I quite got it.”“All I ask is your consent to my engagement to your daughter.”“Young man,” said Mr. Rackstraw, not without a touch of admiration, “you have gall.”“My friends have sometimes said so,” said Clarence.“And I admire gall. But there is a limit. That limit you have passed so farthat you’d need to look for it with a telescope.”“You refuse your consent.”

“I never said you weren’t a clever guesser.”“Why?”Mr. Rackstraw laughed. One of those nasty, sharp, metallic laughs that hit you l



ike a bullet.“How would you support my daughter?”“I was thinking that you would help to some extent.”“You were, were you?”“I was.”“Oh?”Mr. Rackstraw emitted another of those laughs.

“Well,” he said, “it’s off. You can take that as coming from an authoritative source. Nowedding-bells for you.”Clarence drew himself up, fire flashing from his eyes and a bitter smile curvinghis expressive lips.“And no Wagner bat for you!” he cried.Mr. Rackstraw started as if some strong hand had plunged an auger into him.“What!” he shouted.Clarence shrugged his superbly modeled shoulders in silence.“Say,” said Mr. Rackstraw, “you wouldn’t let a little private difference like that influence you any in a really important thing like this ball game, would you?”“I would.”“You would hold up the father of the girl you love?”

“Every time.”“Her white-haired old father?”“The color of his hair would not affect me.”“Nothing would move you?”“Nothing.”“Then, by George, you’re just the son-in-law I want. You shall marry Isabel; and I’lltake you into partnership this very day. I’ve been looking for a good, husky bandit like you for years. You make Dick Turpin look like a preliminary three-round bout. My boy, we’ll be the greatest team, you and I, that ever hit Wall Street.”“Papa!” cried Isabel, bounding happily from behind her tree.Mr. Racktsraw joined their hands, deeply moved, and spoke in low, vibrant tones:“Play ball!”

LITTLE remains to be said, but I am going to say it, if it snows. I am at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity.Four years have passed. Once more we are in the Rackstraw home. A lady is comingdown the stairs, leading by the hand her little son. It is Isabel. The years have dealt lightly with her. She is still the same stately, beautiful creature whom I would have described in detail long ago if I had been given half a chance. At the foot of the stairs the child stops and points at a small, wooden object ina glass case.“Wah?” he says.“That?” says Isabel. “That is the bat Mr. Wagner used to use when he was a little boy.”She looks at a door on the left of the hall, and puts a finger to her lip.“Hush!” she says. “We must be quiet. Daddy and grandpa are busy in there cornering wheat.”And softly mother and child go out into the sunlit garden.

Collier’s Weekly, January 28, 1911

IT WAS to Wilson, his valet, with whom he frequently chatted in airy fashion before rising of a morning, that Rollo Finch first disclosed his great idea. Wilsonwas a man of silent habit, and men of silent habit rarely escaped Rollo’s confide



nces.“Wilson,” he said one morning from the recesses of his bed, as the valet entered with his shaving-water, “have you ever been in love?”“Yes, sir,” said the valet, unperturbed.One would hardly have expected the answer to be in the affirmative. Like most valets and all chauffeurs, Wilson gave the impression of being above the softer emotions.

“What happened?” inquired Rollo.“It came to nothing, sir,” said Wilson, beginning to strop the razor with no appearance of concern.“Ah!” he said. “And I bet I know why. You didn’t go the right way to work.”“No, sir?”“Not one fellow in a hundred does. I know. I’ve thought it out. I’ve been thinking thedeuce of a lot about it lately. Most fellows haven’t a notion how to work this thing of making love. No system. No system, Wilson, old scout.”“No, sir?”“Now I have a system. And I’ll tell it to you. It may do you a bit of good next timeyou feel that impulse. You’re not dead yet. Now, my system is simply to go to itgradually, by degrees. Work by schedule. See what I mean?”

“Not entirely, sir.”“Well, I’ll give you the details. First thing, you want to find the girl.”“Just so, sir.”“Well, when you’ve found her, what do you do? You just look at her. See what I mean?”“Not entirely, sir.”“Look at her, my boy. That’s just the start. The foundation. You develop from that.But you keep away. That’s the point. I’ve thought this thing out. Mind you, I don’t claim absolutely all the credit for the idea myself. It’s by way of being based on Christian Science. Absent Treatment and all that, but most of it’s mine. All the fine work.”“Yes, sir?”“Yes. Absolutely all the fine work. Here’s the thing in a nutshell. You find the girl. Right. Of course, you’ve got to meet her once, just to establish the connection

. Then you get busy. First week, looks. Just look at her. Second week, letters.Write to her every day. Third week, flowers. Send her some every afternoon. Fourth week, presents with a bit more class to them. Bit of jewelry now and then. See what I mean? Fifth week, lunches and suppers and things. Sixth week, propose,though you can do it in the fifth week if you see a chance. You’ve got to leave that to the fellow’s judgment. Well, there you are. See what I mean?”Wilson stropped his master’s razor thoughtfully.“A trifle elaborate, sir, is it not?” he said.Rollo thumped the counterpane. “I knew you’d say that. That’s what nine fellows out often would say. They’d want to rush it. I tell you, Wilson, old scout, you can’t rush it.”Wilson brooded awhile, his mind back in the passionate past.“In Mechanicsville, sir—”“What the deuce is Mechanicsville?”“It is a small town in Minnesota, sir. I lived there until I came to New York.”“Well?”“In Mechanicsville, sir, the prevailing custom was to escort the young lady home from church, buy her a saucer of ice-cream or a soda next day, take her for a walk, and kiss her, sir.”Wilson’s voice, as he unfolded these devices of the flashing youth of Mechanicsville, Minnesota, had taken on an animation quite unsuitable to a conscientious valet. He gave the impression of a man who does not depend on idle rumor for his facts. His eye gleamed unprofessionally for a moment before resuming its habitualexpression of quiet introspection.Rollo shook his head.

“That sort of thing might go in a jay-town,” he said, “but you want something better for New York.”Rollo Finch—in the present unsatisfactory state of the Law parents may still chris



ten a child Rollo—was a youth to whom Nature had given a cheerful disposition, notmarred by any superfluity of brain. Every one liked Rollo—the great majority on sight, the rest as soon as they heard that he would be a millionaire on the deathof his uncle Andrew, the Suspender King. There is a subtle something, a sort ofnebulous charm, as it were, about young men who will be millionaires on the death of such uncles as Andrew, the Suspender King, which softens the ruggedest misanthrope.

Rollo’s mother had been a Miss Galloway of Pittsburg; and Andrew Galloway, the world-famous Suspender King, the inventor and proprietor of the inimitable Tried and Proven, was her brother. His suspenders had penetrated to every corner of theearth. Wherever Progress had set her foot, you would find men wearing Galloway’s Tried and Proven.Between Rollo and this human benefactor there had always existed friendly relations, and it was an open secret that, unless his uncle were to marry and supply the world with little Galloways as well as suspenders, the young man would come into his money. SO ROLLO moved on his way through life, popular and happy. Always merry and bright. That was Rollo. Or nearly always.

For there were moments—we all have our grayer moments—when he could have wished thatMr. Galloway had been a trifle older or a trifle less robust. The Suspender Potentate was at present passing, in excellent health, through the Indian Summer oflife. He was, moreover, by birth and residence, a Pittsburg man. And the tendency of middle-aged Pittsburg millionaires to marry chorus girls is notoriously like the homing instinct of pigeons. Something—it may be the smoke—seems to work on them like a charm.In the case of Andrew Galloway, Nature had been thwarted up till now by the accident of an unfortunate attachment in early life. The facts were not fully known,but it was generally understood that his fiancée had exercised Woman’s prerogativeand changed her mind. Also, that she had done this on the actual wedding-day, causing annoyance to all, and had clinched the matter by eloping to Jersey City with the prospective bridegroom’s own chauffeur. Whatever the facts, there was no do

ubt about their result. Mr. Galloway, having abjured Woman utterly, had flung himself with moody energy into the manufacture and propagation of his Tried and Proven Suspender, and had found consolation in it ever since.He would be strong, he told himself, like his Suspenders. Hearts might snap beneath a sudden strain. Not so the Tried and Proven. Love might tug and tug again,but never more should the pants of Passion break away from the tough, masterfulsuspenders of Self-Control.As Mr. Galloway had been in this frame of mind for a matter of eleven years, itseemed to Rollo not unreasonable to hope that he might continue in it permanently. He had the very strongest objection to his uncle marrying a chorus girl; and,as the years went on and the disaster did not happen, his hopes of playing therole of heir till the fall of the curtain grew stronger and stronger. He was oneof those young men who must be heirs or nothing.This is the age of the specialist, and, years ago, Rollo had settled on his career. Even as a boy, hardly capable of connected thought, he had been convinced that his specialty, the one thing he could do really well, was to inherit money. All he wanted was a chance. It would be bitter if Fate should withhold it from him.He did not object on principle to men marrying chorus girls. On the contrary, hewanted to marry one himself.It was this fact which had given that turn to his thoughts which had finally resulted in the Schedule. THE first intimation that Wilson had that the schedule was actually to be put into practical operation was when his employer, one Monday evening, requested him

to buy a medium-sized bunch of American Beauties and deliver them personally, with a note, to Miss Marguerite Parker at the stage-door of the Longacre Theater.Wilson received the order in his customary gravely deferential manner and was tu



rning to go, but Rollo had more to add.“Flowers, Wilson,” he said significantly.“So I understood you to say, sir. I will see to it at once.”“See what I mean? Third week, Wilson?”“Indeed, sir?”Rollo remained for a moment in what he would have called thought.“Charming girl, Wilson.”

“Indeed, sir?”“Seen the show at the Longacre?”“Not yet, sir.”“You should,” said Rollo earnestly. “Take my advice, old scout, and see it first chance you get. It’s corking. I’ve had the same seat in the middle of the front row of the orchestra chairs for two weeks.”“Indeed, sir?”“Looks,Wilson! The good old schedule.”“Have you noticed any satisfactory results, sir?”“It’s working. On Saturday night she looked at me five times. She’s a delightful girl,Wilson. Nice, quiet girl—not the usual sort. I met her first at a lunch at the Astor. She’s the last girl on the O. P. side. I’m sure you’d like her, Wilson.”

“I have every confidence in your taste, sir.”“You’ll see her for yourself this evening. Don’t let the fellow at the stage-door putyou off. Slip him a couple of dollars, and say you must see her personally. Areyou a close observer, Wilson?”“I think so, sir.”“Because I want you to notice particularly how she takes it. See that she reads the note in your presence. I’ve taken a good deal of trouble over that note, Wilson.It’s a good note. Well expressed. Watch her face while she’s reading it.”“Very good, sir. Excuse me, sir.”“Eh?” “I had almost forgotten to mention it. Mr. Galloway called up on the telephone shortly before you came in. He left a message that he was in New York for a week, a

nd would be glad if you would dine with him to-morrow at his club.”Rollo nodded. His uncle was in the habit of making short visits to the metropolis. On these occasions it was the practise of his nephew to hold himself unreservedly at his disposal. Mr. Galloway’s invitations were royal commands. Rollo was glad that the visit had happened now. In another two weeks it might have been disastrous to the schedule. THE club to which the Suspender King belonged was a richly but gloomily furnished building on Fifth Avenue, a place of soft carpets, shaded lights, and whispers. Grave, elderly men moved noiselessly to and fro, or sat in meditative silencein deep armchairs. Sometimes the visitor felt that he was in s cathedral, sometimes in a turkish bath; while now and then there was a suggestion of the waiting-room of a more than usually prosperous dentist. It was magnificent, but not exhilarating.Rollo was shown into the smoking-room, where his uncle received him. There was agood deal of Mr. Andrew Galloway. Grief, gnawing at his heart, had not sagged his ample vest, which preceded him as he moved in much the same manner as BirnamWoods preceded the army of Macduff. A well nourished hand crept round the cornerof the edifice and enveloped Rollo’s in a powerful grip.“Ah, my boy,” bellowed Mr. Galloway cheerfully His voice was always loud. “Glad you’ve come.” It would be absurd to say that Rollo looked at his uncle keenly. He was notcapable of looking keenly at any one. But certainly a puzzled expression came into his face. Whether it was the heartiness of the other’s hand-shake or the unusual cheeriness of his voice, he could not say; but something gave him the impression that a curious change had come over the Suspender King. When they had met bef

ore during the last few years, Mr. Galloway had been practically two hundred andten pounds of blood and iron—one of those stern, soured men. His attitude had been that of one for whom Life’s music had ceased. Had he then inserted another recor



d? His manner conveyed that idea.Sustained thought always gave Rollo a headache. He ceased to speculate.“Still got the same chef here, uncle?” he said. “Deuced brainy fellow. I always like dining here.”“Here!” Mr. Galloway surveyed the somnolent occupants of the room with spirited scorn. “We aren’t going to dine in this forsaken old mausoleum. I’ve sent in my resignation to-day. If I find myself wanting this sort of thing at any time, I’ll go to the

Morgue. Bunch of old dead-beats! Bah! I’ve engaged a table at Rector’s. That’s more inmy line. Get your coat, and let’s be going.”In the cab Rollo risked the headache. At whatever cost this thing must be pondered over. His uncle prattled gaily throughout the journey. Once he whooped—some weird, forgotten college yell, dragged from the misty depths of the past. It was passing strange. And in this unusual manner the two rolled into Times Square, anddrew up at Rector’s door.Mr. Galloway was a good trencherman. At a very early date he had realized that aman who wishes to make satisfactory suspenders must keep his strength up. He wanted a good deal here below, and he wanted it warm and well cooked. It was, therefore, not immediately that his dinner with Rollo became a feast of reason and aflow of soul. Indeed, the two revelers had lighted their cigars before the elde

r gave forth any remark that was not purely gastronomic.When he did jerk the conversation up into a higher plane, he jerked it hard. Hesent it shooting into the realms of the soulful with a whiz.“Rollo,” he said, blowing a smoke-ring, “do you believe in affinities?”Rollo, in the act of sipping a liqueur brandy, lowered his glass in surprise. His head was singing slightly as the result of some rather spirited Bollinger (extra sec) and he wondered if he had heard aright.Mr. Galloway continued, his voice rising as he spoke.“My boy,” he said, “I feel young to-night for the first time in years. And, hang it, I’mnot so old. Men have married at twice my age.”Strictly speaking, this was incorrect, unless one counted Methuselah; but perhaps Mr. Galloway spoke figuratively.“Three times my age,” he proceeded, leaning back and blowing smoke, thereby missing

his nephew’s agitated start. “Four times my age. Five times my age. Six . . .” HE pulled himself together in some confusion. A generous wine, that Bollinger. He must be careful.He coughed.“Are you—you aren’t—are you—?” Rollo paused. “Are you thinking of getting married, uncle?”Mr. Galloway’s gaze was still on the ceiling.“A great deal of nonsense,” he yelled severely, “is talked about men lowering themselves by marrying actresses. I was a guest at a supper party last night at which anactress was present. And a more charming, sensible girl I never wish to meet. Not one of your silly, brainless chits who don’t know the difference between lobster à la Newburg and canvas-back duck, and who prefer sweet champagne to dry. No, sir. Not one of your mincing, affected kind who pretend they never touch anythingexcept a spoonful of cold consommé. No, sir. Good, healthy appetite. Enjoyed her food, and knew why she was enjoying it. I give you my word, my boy, until I met her, I didn’t know a woman existed who could talk so damned sensibly about a bavaroise au rhum.”He suspended his striking tribute in order to relight his cigar.“She can use a chafing-dish,” he resumed, his voice vibrating with emotion. “She toldme so. She said she could fix chicken so that a man would leave home for it.”He paused, momentarily overcome.“And welsh-rarebits,” he added reverently.He puffed hard at his cigar.“Yes,” he said. “Welsh-rarebits, too. And because,” he shouted wrathfully, “because, forsooth, she earns an honest living by singing in the chorus of a comic opera, a who

le bunch of sniveling idiots will say I have made a fool of myself. Let them!” hebellowed, sitting up and glaring at Rollo. “I say, let them! I’ll show them that Andrew Galloway is not the man to—to—is not the man—” He stopped. “Well, anyway, I’ll show th



,” he concluded rather lamely.Rollo eyed him with fallen jaw. His liqueur had turned to wormwood. He had beenfearing this for years. You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but she willreturn. Blood will tell. Once a Pittsburg millionaire, always a Pittsburg millionaire. For eleven years his uncle had fought against his natural propensities, with apparent success, but Nature had won in the end. His words could have no other meaning. Andrew Galloway was going to marry a chorus girl.

Mr. Galloway rapped on the table, and ordered another kümmel.“Marguerite Parker,” he roared dreamily, rolling the words round his tongue, like port.“Marguerite Parker!” exclaimed Rollo, bounding in his chair.His uncle met his eye sternly.“That was the name I said. You seem to know it. Perhaps you have something to sayagainst the lady. Eh? Have you? Have you? I warn you to be careful. What do youknow of Miss Parker? Speak!”“Er, no, no. Oh, no. I just know the name, that’s all. I—I rather think I met her onceat lunch. Or it may have been somebody else. I know it was some one,”He plunged at his glass. His uncle’s gaze relaxed its austerity.“I hope you will meet her many more times at lunch, my boy. I hope you will come t

o look upon her as a second mother.”This was where Rollo asked if he might have a little more brandy. WHEN the restorative came, he drank it at a gulp; then looked across at his uncle. The great man still mused.“Er—when is it to be?” asked Rollo. “The wedding, and all that?”“Hardly before the fall, I think. No, not before the fall. I shall be busy till then. I have taken no steps in the matter yet.”“No steps? You mean—Haven’t you—haven’t you proposed?”“I have had no time. Be reasonable, my boy, be reasonable.”“Oh!” said Rollo.He breathed a long breath. A suspicion of silver lining had become visible through the clouds.

“I doubt,” said Mr. Galloway Meditatively, “if I shall be able to find time till the end of the week. I am very busy. Let me see. To-morrow? No. Meeting of shareholders. Thursday? Friday? No. No, it will have to stand over till Saturday. After Saturday’s matinée. That will do excellently.”There is a dramatic spectacle to be observed every day in this land of ours which, though deserving of recognition, no artist has yet pictured on canvas. We allude to the Commuter’s Sudden Flash of Speed. Every one must have seen at one timeor another a happy, bright-faced commuter strolling placidly toward the station,humming, perhaps, in his light-heartedness, some gay air. He feels secure. Fatecan not touch him, for he has left himself for once plenty of time to catch that 8.50, for which he has so often sprinted like the mustang of the prairie. As he strolls, suddenly his eye falls on the church clock. The next moment, with a passionate cry, he is endeavoring to lower his record for the ten block dash. Allthe while his watch has been fifteen minutes slow.In just such a case was Rollo Finch. He had fancied that he had plenty of time.And now, in an instant, the fact was borne in upon him that he must hurry. FOR the greater part of the night of his uncle’s dinner he lay sleepless, vainly endeavoring to find a way out of the difficulty. It was not till early morning that he faced the inevitable. He hated to abandon the Schedule. To do so meant changing a well-ordered advance into a forlorn hope. But circumstances compelled it. There are moments when Speed alone can save Love’s Commuter.On the following afternoon he acted. It was no occasion for stint. He had to condense into one day the carefully considered movements of two weeks, and to the best of his ability he did so. He bought three bouquets, a bracelet, and a gold B

illiken with ruby eyes, and sent them to the theater by messenger boy. With themwent an invitation to supper.Then, with the feeling that he had done all that was possible, he returned to hi



s apartment, and waited for the hour.He dressed with more than usual care that night. Your wise general never throwsaway a move. He was particular about his tie. As a rule Wilson selected one forhim. But there had been times when Wilson had made mistakes. One could not relyabsolutely on Wilson’s taste in ties. He did not blame him. Better men than Wilsonhad gone wrong over an evening tie. But to-night there must be no taking of chances.

“Where do we keep our ties, Wilson?” lie asked.“The closet to the right of the door, sir. The first twelve shallow shelves, counting from the top, sir. They contain a fair selection of our various cravats. Replicas in bulk are to be found in the third nest of drawers in your dressing-room, sir.”“I only want one, my good man. I’m not a convention. Ah! I stake all on this one. Not a word, Wilson. No discussion. This is the tie I wear. What’s the time?”“Eight minutes of eleven, sir.”“I must be off. I shall be late. I shan’t want you any more to-night. Don’t wait for me.”“Very good, sir.”Rollo left the room, pale but determined, and hailed a taxi.

It is a pleasant spot, the vestibule of the Knickerbocker Hotel. Glare. . . . Glitter . . . Distant music . . . Fair women . . . Brave men. But one can have toomuch of it, and as the moments pass, and she does not arrive, a chill seems tocreep into the atmosphere. We wait on, hoping against hope, and at last, just asthe house detective is about to sidle up and ask if we are a guest of this hotel we face the truth. She is not coming. Then out we crawl into cold, callous Forty-second Street, and so home. You have been through it, dear reader, and so have I.And so, at eleven-forty-five that evening, had Rollo. For a full three-quartersof an hour he waited, scanning the face of each new arrival with the anxious scrutiny of a lost dog seeking its master; but at fourteen minutes of twelve the last faint flicker of hope had died away. A girl may be a quarter of an hour latefor Supper. She may be half an hour late. But there is a limit, and to Rollo’s min

d forty-five minutes passed it. At ten minutes of twelve a uniformed official outside the Knickerbocker Hotel signaled to a taxicab, and there entered it a young man whose faith in woman was dead.Rollo meditated bitterly as he drove home. It was not so much the fact that shehad not come that stirred him. Many things may keep a girl from supper. It was the calm way in which she had ignored the invitation. When you send a girl threebouquets, a bracelet, and a gold Billiken with ruby eyes you do not expect an entire absence of recognition. Even a penny-in-the-slot machine treats you betterthan that. It may give you hairpins when you want matches, but at least it takessome notice of you.He was still deep in gloomy thought when he inserted his latch-key and opened the door of his apartment.He was aroused from his reflections by a laugh from the sitting-room. He started. It was a pleasant laugh and musical, but it sent Rollo diving, outraged, for the handle of the door. What was a woman doing in his sitting-room at this hour?Was his apartment a hotel?The advent of an unbidden guest rarely fails to produce a certain gêne. The suddenappearance of Rollo caused a dead silence.It was broken by the fall of a chair on the carpet as Wilson rose hurriedly to his feet.Rollo stood in the doorway, an impressive statue of restrained indignation. He could see the outlying portions of a girl in blue at the further end of the table, but Wilson obscured his vision.“Didn’t expect you back, sir,” said Wilson. For the first time in the history of theiracquaintance his accustomed calm seemed somewhat ruffled.

“So I should think,” said Rollo. “I believe you, by George!”“I guess you had better explain, Jim,” said a dispassionate voice from the end of the table. Wilson stepped aside.



“My wife, sir,” he said, apologetically but with pride.“Your wife!”“We were married this morning, sir.”The lady nodded cheerfully at him. She was small and slight, with an impudent nose and a mass of brown hair.“Pleased to meet you,” she said, cracking a walnut.Rollo gaped. She looked at him again.

“We’ve met, haven’t we? Oh, yes, I remember. We met at lunch once. And you sent me some flowers. It was ever so kind of you,” she said beaming.She cracked another nut. She seemed to consider that the introductions were complete and that formality could now be dispensed with once more. She appeared at peace with all men.The situation was slipping from Rollo’s grip. He continued to gape.Then he remembered his grievance.“I think you might have let me know you weren’t coming to supper.”“Supper?”“I sent a note to the theater this afternoon.”“I haven’t been to the theater to-day. They let me off because I was going to be married. I’m so sorry. I hope you didn’t wait long.”

Rollo’s resentment melted before the friendliness of her smile. “Hardly any time,” hesaid, untruthfully.“If I might explain, sir,” said Wilson.“By George, if you can, you’ll save me from a brain-storm. Cut loose, and don’t be afraid you’ll bore me. You won’t.”“Mrs. Wilson and I are old friends, sir. We come from the same town. In fact—”Rollo’s face cleared.“By George! Mechanicsville! Why, of course! Then she—?”“Just so, sir. If you recollect, you asked me once if I had ever been in love, andI replied in the affirmative.”“And it was—?”“Mrs. Wilson and I were engaged to be married before either of us came to New York. There was a misunderstanding, which was entirely my—”

“Jim! It was mine.”“No, it was all through my being a fool.”“It was not. You know it wasn’t.”Rollo intervened.“Well?”“And when you sent me with the flowers, sir—well, we talked it over again, and—that was how it came about, sir.” THE bride looked up from her walnuts.“You aren’t angry?” she smiled up at Rollo.“Angry?” he reflected. Of course, it was only reasonable that he should be a little—well, not exactly angry, but— And then for the first time it came to him that the situation was not entirely without its compensations. Until that moment he had completely forgotten Mr. Galloway.“Angry?” he said. “Great Scott, no. Mighty glad I came back in time to get a bit of the wedding breakfast. I want it, I can tell you. I’m hungry. Here we all are, eh? Let’s enjoy ourselves, Wilson, old scout: get a move on and give us your imitationof a bridegroom mixing a rye high-ball for the best man. Mrs. Wilson, if you look in at the theater tomorrow, you’ll find one or two small wedding presents waiting for you. Three bouquets—they’ll be a bit withered, I’m afraid—a bracelet, and a gold Billiken with ruby eyes. I hope he’ll bring you luck. Oh. Wilson.”“Sir?”“Touching this little business—don’t answer if it’s delicate question, but I should liketo know—I guess you didn’t try the Schedule? More the Mechanicsville Method, eh? The one you described to me?”

“On those lines, sir,” said Wilson.Rollo nodded thoughtfully.“It seems to me,” he said, “they know a thing or two down in Mechanicsville, Minnesota



.”“A very rising town, sir,” assented Wilson.

Collier’s Weekly, August 26, 1911I WANT to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It’s a most interesting story. I can’t put in any literary style and all that; but. I don’t have to, don’t you know, because it goes on its moral lesson. If you’re a man, you mustn’t miss it, becauseit’ll be a warning to you; and if you’re a woman, you won’t want to, because it’s all about how a girl made a man feel like thirty cents.Maybe you’re a recent acquaintance of Bobbie’s? If so, you’ll probably be surprised to

hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for the weakness of hismemory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who have only met Bobbie since thechange took place, have been surprised when I told them that. Yet it’s true. Believe me.In the days when I first knew him, Bobbie Cardew was about the most pronounced young bonehead between the Battery and Harlem. People have called me a silly ass,but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. He was a champion, and I was just jogging along in the preliminaries. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to mail him a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him a telegram and a phone call on the day itself, and—half an hour before thetime we’d fixed—a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct. By doing that I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town before my messenger arrived.

THE funny thing was that he wasn’t altogether a fool in other ways. Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him, once or twice, show analmost human intelligence. But to reach that stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.At least, that’s what I thought. But there was another way which hadn’t occurred tome. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul; that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he doesn’t know what’s at the end of it till he gets there. It was like that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married—with a sort of whoop, as if it were the greatest fun in the world—and then began to find out things.She wasn’t the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to get up in the air about. And yet I don’t know. What I mean is, she worked for her living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand’s turn in his life there’s undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a girl who works for her living. I was in lovemyself once with a girl called Kathryn Mae Shubrick, who worked for a firm on Fifth Avenue: and the story of how she turned me down for a bill-clerk will be recorded in my biography, if I ever write it.Bobbie’s girl’s name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she hada ton and a half of red-gold hair, gray eyes, and one of those determined chins. She worked in Bobbie’s lawyer’s office. That’s where Bobbie met her. I don’t know whather particular job was, but I bet she was good at it. She had character. BOBBIE broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he introducedme to her. I admired her. I’ve never worked myself—my name’s Pepper, by the way. Almos

t forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper. My uncle Edward was Pepper’s Safety-Razor,he left me a sizable wad—I say I’ve never worked myself, but I admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a girl. And this girl had had a rath



er unusually tough time of it.Bobbie told me about her. Her father had had money at one time, I believe, but he’d lost it all some how; and, being too proud to work, he just filled in his timedrinking. He had a habit of coming to offices where Mary had a job, and weepingon the boss’s shoulder—which had lost Mary more than one place. Also, I gathered, he got away with most of her weekly envelope. Take him for all in all, he was something of a nut.

Mary and 1 got along together fine. We don’t now, but we’ll come to that later. I’m speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she thought I wasn’t noticing. And Bobbie was crazy about her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie didn’t forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being quite happy.Well, let’s speed up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn’t really start till then. All I’ve told you up to now is only like dealing the deck. We now sit in at the game.They took an apartment at the Gargantua, and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me tobe running along as solid as you please. Sioux Falls out of sight over the horiz

on, and Reno not on the map at all. If this was marriage, I thought, I couldn’t see why fellows were so scared of it. There was a heap of worse things that couldhappen to a man.But we now come to the incident of the Quiet Dinner, and it’s just here that love’syoung dream gets a jolt, and things begin to happen.It was one of those come-right-along dinners. You know. You get talking with a man at the club or somewhere, and, when you’re through, he says: “Come right along and have a bit of dinner. My wife’ll be tickled to death to see you.” It sounds good,but it’s incomplete. It wants the word not slipped into it. Generally I side-steplike a shying horse; but, seeing that I was so much the old family friend in that particular household, I thought I should be safe in breaking my rule for once;so, like a fool, I went along.

WHEN we got to the Gargantua, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking—well, I tell you it staggered me. Her golden hair was all piled up in waves and crinkles and things, with a what-d’you-call-it of diamonds in it. And she was wearing the most perfectlycorking dress. I couldn’t begin to describe it. I can only say it was the limit.It struck me that if this was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were dining quietly at home together it was no wonder that Bobbie likeddomesticity.“Here’s old Reggie,dear,” said Bobbie. “I’ve brought him home to have a bit of dinner. I’lphone down to the kitchen and have them send it up right away.”She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned scarlet.Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.“I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper,” she said, smiling at me. AND after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She talked alot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us rag-time on the piano afterward, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Quite a jolly little party it was—not. I’m nolynx- eyed sleuth, and all that sort of thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was working the whole time, and working hard to keep herself in hand, and that she would have given that diamond what’s-its-name inher hair and everything else she possessed to have one good scream—just one. I’ve sat through some pretty tough evenings in my time, but that one had the rest lashed to the mast. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and made my getaway.Having seen what I did, I wasn’t particularly surprised to meet Bobbie at the club

next day looking about as merry and bright as a chicken at a camp-meeting.He started in right away. He seemed glad to have some one to talk to about it.“Do you know how long I’ve been married?” he said.



I didn’t exactly.“About a year, isn’t it?”“Not about a year,” he said sadly. “About nothing. Exactly a year—yesterday!”Then I got him. I saw light—a regular flash of light.“Yesterday was—?”“The anniversary of the wedding. I’d arranged to take Mary to Sherry’s, and on to theopera. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso. I had the ticket for the box in m

y pocket. Say, all through dinner I had a kind of idea that there was somethingI’d forgotten, but I couldn’t fix it.”“Till your wife mentioned it?”He nodded.“She—mentioned it,” he said thoughtfully.I didn’t ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary’s may be angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a spell, they are no pikers—they go the limit.“To be absolutely frank, old scout,” said poor old Bobbie in a broken sort of way, “I’min rather bad at home.”There didn’t seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette, and sat there. He didn’twant to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the window of our upper smoking-

room, which looks out on to the Avenue, and watched him. He walked slowly alongfor a few yards, stopped, then walked on again and finally turned into Tiffany’s—which was an instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was acertain stratum of sense. IT WAS from now on that I began to be really interested in this thing of Bobbie’smarried life. Of course, one’s always mildly interested in one’s friends’ marriages, hoping they’ll turn out well, and all that; but this was different. The average manisn’t like Bobbie, and the average girl isn’t like Mary. It was that old stunt of the immovable mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a star performerin the chump class.And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn’t be a chump. And Nature, mind you,

on Bobbie’s side. When Nature makes a chump like dear old Bobbie, she’s proud of him, and doesn’t want her handiwork disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armorto protect him against outside interference. And that armor is shortness of memory. Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I’m a chump. Well, if I had remembered halfthe things people have tried to teach me during my life, I should be a high-browof the first water. But I didn’t. I forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.For about a week, maybe a bit more, the recollection of that quiet little domestic evening kept him up on his toes. Elephants, I read somewhere, are champions at the memory thing, but they hadn’t anything on Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn’t nearly big enough. It had dented the armor, but it hadn’t made a hole in it. Pretty soon he was back at the old stunts.It was pathetic, don’t you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was scared. It was the thin end of the wedge, you see, and she knew it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he’s been married one year, will forget, at about the endof the fourth, that he’s married at all. If she meant to get him in hand ever, itwas up to her to do it now, before he began to drift away.I saw that clear enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he was by wayof putting up a hard-luck story to me one afternoon. I can’t remember what it wasthat he had forgotten the day before, but it was something she had asked him tobring home for her—it may have been a book.“It’s such a dinky thing to make a fuss about,” said Bobbie. “And she knows that it’s simply because I’ve got such an infernal memory about everything. I can’t remember anything. Never could.”

He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a ten-spot.“Oh, by the way,” he said.“What’s this for?” I asked, though I knew.



“I owe it you!”“How’s that?” I said.“Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were playing a hundred up, and 1 gave you ten bucks to five that Brown would win, and Murray beat him by twenty-odd.”“So you do remember some things?” I said.He got quite warm beneath the collar. Said that if I thought he was the sort of

cheap skate who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, I’d got another guess coming, and pulled a lot more stuff like that. I told him to cut it out, and gave him a cocktail. Then I spoke to him like a father.“You want to pull yourself together, old scout,” I said. “As things are shaping, you’redue to get yours before you know what’s hit you. You want to make an effort. Don’t say you can’t. This business of the ten-spot shows that, even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. It’s up to you to see that wedding anniversariesand so on are included in the bunch. It may be a brain-strain, but you can’t side-step it.”“I guess you’re right,” said Bobbie. “But it beats me why she thinks such a heap of these dinky little dates. What’s it matter if I forget what day we were married on orwhat day she was born on or what day the janitor’s cat had the measles? She knows

I love her just as much as if I were a memorizing freak in vaudeville.”“Women come from Missouri,” I said, “—all of them; and they want to be shown. Bear thatin mind, and you win out. Forget it, and you’re up against it.”He chewed the knob of his stick.“Women are darned queer,” he said gloomily.“You should have thought of that before you married one,” I said.Then I gave him another cocktail, and left him to think it over. I DON’T see that I could have done any more. 1 had put the whole thing in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he’d have seen the point, and that it would have made him brace up and take a hold on himself. But no. Off he went again in thesame old way. I gave up arguing with him. I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to anything when it was a question of reforming dear

old Bobbie by argument. If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After that you may get a chance. But till then there’s nothing doing. But 1 thought aheap about him. TROUBLE didn’t hit Bobbie all at once. Weeks went by, and months, and still it wasa case of all quiet along the Potomac. Now and then he’d blow into the club witha kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I’d know that there had been something doing in the home; but it wasn’t till ’way on in the spring that he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it—in the thorax.I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out over the Avenue, and watching the carriages and motors going up one way and down the other—most interesting it is. I often do it—when in rushed Bobbie, with his eyes bulgingand his face the color of an oyster, waving a piece of paper in his hand.“Reggie,” he said. “Reggie, old top, she’s gone!”“Gone!” I said. “Who?”“Mary, of course. Gone! Quit me! Gone!”“Where?” I said.Foolish question? Maybe. Anyway, dear old Bobbie nearly foamed at the mouth.“Where? How should I know where? Here, read this.”He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.“Go on,” said Bobbie. “Read it.” SO I DID. It certainly was some letter. There was not much of it, but it was allto the point.

This is what it said:“My dear Bobbie. I am going away. When you care enough about me to remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will come back. My address will be Box



341, New York ‘Morning News.’”I read it twice, then I said: “Well, why don’t you?”“Why don’t I what?”“Why don’t you wish her many happy returns? It doesn’t seem much to ask.”‘But she says on her birthday.”“Well, when is her birthday?”“Can’t you understand?” said Bobbie. “I’ve forgotten, you lunkhead.”

“Forgotten!” I said.“Yes,” said Bobbie. “Forgotten.”“How do you mean forgotten?” I said. “Forgotten whether it’s the twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?”“I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the thirty-first of December. That’s how near I get to it.”“Think.”“Think? What’s the use of saying ‘Think’? Think 1 haven’t thought? I’ve been knocking sparout of my brain ever since 1 opened that letter.”“And you can’t remember.”“No.”I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.

“Well, Bobbie,” I said, “it’s a pretty tough proposition to spring on an untrained amateur like me. I guess old Doctor Holmes himself would have sidestepped it. Supposesome one had come to him and said: ‘Mr. Holmes, here’s a case for you. When is my wife’s birthday?’ wouldn’t that have jarred Sherlock? However, I know enough about thegame to understand that a sleuth can’t unlimber his deductive theories unless youstart him off with a clue, so rouse yourself out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For instance, can’t you remember the last time she hada birthday? What sort of weather was it? That might fix the month.” BOBBIE shook his head.“It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect.”“Warm?”“Warmish.”

“Or cold?”“Well, half-way cold, perhaps. 1 can’t remember.”I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young Detective’s Manual.“You’re a great help, Bobbie,” I said. “An invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without which no home is complete.”Bobbie worked steadily down to the cherry without answering. He seemed to be thinking.“I’ve got it,” he said suddenly. “See here. I gave her a present on her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the store, hunt up the date when it was bought, andthe thing’s done.”“Sure. What did you give her?”He sagged.“I can’t remember,” he said.Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you’re right off it, on others it’s as easy asfalling off a log. I don’t suppose dear old Bobbie had ever had two ideas on thesame morning before in his life; but now he did it without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had scared up the best brainwave of the session.“I have it,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Come along and find Mary’s father.He’ll put us next.” OLD man Anthony, that prominent alcohol specialist, lived way out on Staten Island. He had been something of a problem to Bobbie for a while after the marriage,owing to his habit of blowing into the club in search of son-in-law and sheddin

g tears of pure rye in the vestibule. The club authorities had tipped Bobbie offto close down the entertainment, and after that the dead-line for father, except when he paid state visits to the apartment, was Fourteenth Street. It was Bobb



ie who had suggested Staten Island. He held the purse, and what he said went.The exile was charmed to see us, and made an automatic movement toward the ice-chest, but Bobbie stopped him, and explained that we were not there for social revelry, but strictly on business. When was Mary’s birthday? That was the burning question of the day.“Mary’s birthday?” he said. “Why, September 10, of course. Where’s your memory? I know itwas September 10 because I remember saying to my poor dear wife, now in heaven,

how strange that it should be September 10.”“Why strange?” I asked.“Why, it was the anniversary of something. I can’t for the moment recollect what, but something.”“You’re sure of it?” said Bobbie.“Certain,” said dad. “You’ll have one now, won’t you?” We said we would. Poor old Bobbie,was as pleased as if he’d found a million in his Christmas stocking. It was quitetouching to see him doing the grateful son-in-law act. The old man had two twenties off him in the first minute, and he smiled through it all.Just as we were going a thoughtful look came into father’s face.“Wait,” he said.“What’s the matter now?” said Bobbie.

“I was wrong,” said father.“Wrong?”“Yes. It wasn’t September 10. It all comes back to me now. 1 can’t think what put it into my head. Mary wasn’t born on September 10.”“When was she born, then?”“Ah!” said dad, scorning to deceive, “there you have me, my boy.”Nobody could say the old man wasn’t obliging. He did his best. He dug up April 4.For about ten minutes he went solid for April 4. Then he weakened. It might be April 4, or it might not. He rather fancied it was July 4. In another quarter ofan hour he had given up July 11and was rooting hard for January 8. And he had good reasons for all of them, mind you. They were all anniversaries of something which had slipped his memory for the moment, and he had said as much at the timeto his poor, dear wife, now in heaven. Alcohol may be a food, as the wise guys t

ell you, but you can take it from me it’s not a brain food. I led Bobbie off aftera while in what you might call an overwrought condition, and we moved back in bad order to old Manhattan.There was no yellow streak in Bobbie. He was no quitter. Up he came next day with another idea. And this time it was a corker.Do you know those little books called “When were you born?” There’s one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents, your strong points, and your weakpoints at five cents a throw. Bobbie had bought the whole twelve, and he was red-hot on the trail.“See here,” he said, “we’ll go through these and find out which month hits old Mary’s character. That’ll give us the month and narrow it down a whole heap.” IT sounded good, I admit. But when we came to go into the thing we saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right, but there wasn’t a singlemonth that didn’t have something that exactly hit off Mary. For instance, in theDecember book it said: “December people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive travelers.” Well. Mary had certainly kept her secret and she had traveled quite extensively enough for Bobbie’s needs. Then, October people were “born with original ideas” and “loved moving.” You couldn’t have summed up Mary’s little jaunt moreneatly. February people had “wonderful memories”—Mary’s specialty.Bobbie was strong for May because the book said that women born in that month were “inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a happy married life”, but I raised him with August, because August women were “apt to blunder in their first marriage, but usually do not hesitate to get a divorce.” He didn’t like that a little bit, but he owned that it seemed to him more than apt to be Mary.

After a while he tore the books up one by one, burnt them, and went home.It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, “The Soul’s Awakening”? It represents a blonde well up in t



he peacherino class rubbering in a startled sort of way into the middle distancewith a look in her eves that seems to say: “Surely, that is George’s step I hear onthe porch. Can this be love?” Well, Bobbie had a soul’s awakening too. I don’t suppose he had ever troubled to think in his life before—not really think. But now he was wearing his brain to the bone. He was saying the sort of things to himself that the football coach says to the squad when they’re eight points down at the end of the second quarter. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow human

being so thoroughly up against it, but I felt strongly that it was all for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these brain-storms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all over he might possibly become a chump of a sort again, but it would only be a pale reflection of the chump he had been. It bore out the idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he came to me for sympathy. I gave it to him too, with both hands, but I never failed to slip over the Moral Lesson when I had him weak. ONE day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see that he hadhad an idea. He looked happier than he had for weeks.

“Reggie,” he said, “I’m on the trail. This time I’m convinced that I shall win out. I’ve rembered something of vital importance.”“Yes?” I said.“I remember distinctly,” he said, “that on Mary’s last birthday we went together to seethe show at Weinstein’s. How does that hit you?”“It’s a fine bit of memorizing,” 1 said, “but how does it help?”“Why, they change the program every week there.”“Ah!” I said. “Now you are showing a flash of speed.”“And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Someone’s Terpsichorean Cats. Irecollect them distinctly because Mary said it was a shame making cats do thosestunts. Now, are we narrowing it down or aren’t we? Say, I’m going around to Weinstein’s this minute, and I’m going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out ofthem if I have to use a crowbar.”

So that got him within six days, for the management treated us like brothers, brought out the archives, and ran fat fingers over the pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.“I told you it was May,” said Bobbie: “maybe you’ll listen to me another time.”“If you’ve any sense,” I said, “there won’t be another time.”And Bobbie allowed that there wouldn’tOnce you get your memory on the run it loosens up as if it enjoyed doing it. I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone bell rang. It was Bobbie,of course. He didn’t apologize.“Reggie,” he said, “I’ve got the goods now sure. It’s just come to me. We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinée, old scout.”“Yes?” I said.“Well, don’t you sec that that brings it down to two days? It must have been eitherWednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth.”“Yes,” I said, “if they didn’t have daily matinées at Weinstein’s.”I heard him give a sort of howl.“Bobbie,” I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.“Well?”“I’ve remembered something too. It’s this. The day you went to Weinstein’s I lunched with you both at the Piazza. You had forgotten to bring your roll with you, so youwrote a check.”“But I’m always writing checks.”“Sure. But this was for a hundred dollars and made out to the hotel. Hunt up yourcheck-book and see how many checks for a hundred dollars, payable to the PiazzaHotel, you wrote out between May 5 and May 10.”

He gave a kind of gulp.“Reggie,” he said, “you’re a genius. I’ve always said so. I believe you’ve got it. Hold thline.”



PRESENTLY he came back.“Hello,” he said.“I’m here,” I said.“It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I—”“Fine,” I said. “Good night.”It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as well mak

e a night of it and finish the thing up, so I called up a hotel near WashingtonSquare.“Put me through to Mrs. Cardew,” I said.“Say, it’s pretty late,” said the man at the other end.“And getting later every minute,” I said. “Get a move on.”I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep and my feet had frozen hard, but I was past regrets.“What is the matter ?” said Mary’s voice.“My feet are cold,” I said. “But I didn’t call you up to tell you that particularly. I’vejust been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew.”“Oh! Is that Mr. Pepper?”“Yes. He’s remembered it, Mrs. Cardew.”

She gave a sort of scream. I’ve often thought how interesting it must be to be oneof those Central girls. The things they must hear, don’t you know. Bobbie’s howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie’s scream and all about my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.“He’s remembered it?” she gasped.“He’s got it pinned down for keeps,” I said.“Did you tell him?”“No.”Well, I hadn’t.“Mr. Pepper.”“Yes?”“Was he—has he been—was he very worried?”

I CHUCKLED. This was where I was scheduled to be the life and soul of the party.“Worried! He was about the most worried thing between here and San Francisco. He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has started in toworry after breakfast, and—”Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the wire and telling eachother what bully good conspirators we were, don’t you know. But I’d got just as faras this when she absolutely bit at me. I heard the snap. And then she said “Oh!” inthat choked kind of way. And when a woman says “Oh!” like that it means all the badwords she’d love to say if she only knew them.And then she cut loose.“What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and see poor dearBobbie worrying himself into a fever when a word from you would have put everything right, I can’t—”“But—”“And you call yourself his friend! His friend!” (Metallic laugh, most unpleasant.) “Itshows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a kind-hearted man.”“But, say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly—”“I thought it hateful, abominable.”“But you said it was absolutely cork—”“I said nothing of the kind. And if I did I didn’t mean it. I don’t wish to be unjust,Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to separate a husband from his wife simply in order to amuse himself by gloating over his agony—”“But—!”

“When one single word would have—”“But you made me promise not to—” I bleated.“And if I did, do you suppose I didn’t expect you to have the sense to break your pr



omise?”I was through. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the receiver andcrawled into bed. I STILL see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing invitations. I ran across Mary at the Horse Showlast week, and her eyes went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat

of butter. And as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myselftogether again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: “He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.”

Collier’s Weekly, April 30, 1912OESN’T some poet or philosopher fellow say that it’s when our intentions are best that we always make the worst breaks? I can’t put my hand on the passage, but you’llfind it in Shakespeare or somewhere, I’m pretty certain.At any rate, it’s always that way with me. And the affair of Douglas Craye is a case in point.I had dined with Duggie (a dear old pal of mine) one night at his club, and as he was seeing me out he said: “Reggie, old top”—my name’s Reggie Pepper—“Reggie, old top, Iather worried.”“Are you, Duggie, old pal?” I said.“Yes, Reggie, old fellow,” he said, “I am. It’s like this. The Booles have asked me down

to their place for the week-end, and I don’t know whether to go or not. You see,they have early breakfast, and besides that there’s a frightful risk of music after dinner. On the other hand, young Roderick Boole thinks he can play piquet.”“I should go,” I said.“But I’m not sure Roderick’s going to be there this time.”It was a problem, and I didn’t wonder poor old Dug had looked pale and tired at dinner.Then I had the idea which really started all the trouble.“Why don’t you consult a palmist?” I said.“That sounds a good idea,” said Duggie.“Go and see Dorothea in Forty-second Street. She’s a wonder. She’ll settle it for youin a second. She’ll see from your lines that you are thinking of making a journey,and she’ll either tell you to get a move on, which will mean that Roderick will be there, or else to keep away because she sees disaster.”“You seem to be next to the game all right.”“I’ve been to a good many of them. You’ll like Dorothea.”“What did you say-her name was—Dorothea? What do I do? Do I just walk in? Shan’t I feel a fearful chump? How much do I give her?”“Five bucks. You’d better write and make a date.”“All right,” said Duggie. “But I know I shall look a frightful fool.” ABOUT a week later I ran into him between the acts at the Knickerbocker. The oldboy was beaming.“Reggie,” he said, “you did me the best turn anyone’s ever done me, sending me to Mrs. Darrell.”

“Mrs. Darrell?”“You know. Dorothea. Her real name’s Darrell. She’s a widow. Her husband was in some regiment, and left her without a penny. It’s a frightfully pathetic story. Haven’t ti



me to tell you now. My boy, she’s a marvel. She had hardly looked at my hand, whenshe said: ‘You will prosper in any venture you undertake.’ And next day, by George,I went down to the Booles and separated young Roderick from seventy dollars. She’s a wonderful woman. Did you ever see just that shade of hair?”“I didn’t notice her hair.”He gaped at me in a sort of petrified astonishment.“You—didn’t—notice—her—hair!” he gasped.

I can’t fix the dates exactly, but it must have been about three weeks after thisthat I got a telegram: “Call Madison Avenue immediately—Florence Craye.”She needn’t have signed her name. I should have known who it was from by the wording. Ever since I was a kid, Duggie’s sister Florence has oppressed me to the mostfearful extent. Not that I’m the only one. Her brothers live in terror of her, I know. Especially Edwin. He’s never been able to get away from her and it’s absolutelybroken his spirit. He’s a mild, hopeless sort of chump who spends all his time athome—they live near Philadelphia—and has never been known to come to New York. He’s writing a history of the family, or something, I believe. YOU see, events have conspired, so to speak, to let Florence do pretty much as she likes with them. Originally there was old man Craye, Duggie’s father, who made

a fortune out of the Soup Trust; Duggie’s elder brother Edwin; Florence; and Duggie. Mrs. Craye has been dead some years. Then came the smash. It happened throughthe old man. Most people, if you ask them, will tell you that he ought to be inBloomingdale; and I’m not sure they’re not right. At any rate, one morning he camedown to breakfast, lifted the first cover on the sideboard, said in a sort of despairing way, “Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Curse all eggs!” and walked out of the room. Nobodythought much of it till about an hour afterward, when they found that he had packed a grip, left the house, and caught the train to New York. Next day they gota letter from him, saying that he was off to Europe, never to return, and thatall communications were to be addressed to his lawyers. And from that day none of them had seen him. He wrote occasionally, generally from Paris; and that was all.Well, directly news of this got about, down swooped a series of aunts to grab th

e helm. They didn’t stay long. Florence had them out, one after the other, in no time. If any lingering doubt remained in their minds, don’t you know, as to who wasgoing to be boss at home, it wasn’t her fault. Since then she has run the show. I WENT to Madison Avenue. It was one of the aunts’ houses. There was no sign of the aunt when I called—she had probably climbed a tree and pulled it up after her—butFlorence was there.She is a tall woman with what, I believe, is called “a presence.” Her eyes are bright and black, and have a way of getting right inside you, don’t you know, and running up and down your spine. She has a deep voice. She is about ten years older than Duggie’s brother Edwin, who is six years older than Duggie.“Good afternoon,” she said. “Sit down.”I poured myself into a chair.“Reginald,” she said, “what is this I hear about Douglas?”I said I didn’t know.“He says that you introduced him.”“Eh?”“To this woman—this Mrs. Darrell.”“Mrs. Darrell?”My memory’s pretty rocky, and the name conveyed nothing to me.She pulled out a letter.“Yes,” she said, “Mrs. Dorothy Darrell.”“Great Scott! Dorothea!”Her eyes resumed their spine drill.“Who is she?”

“Only a palmist.”“Only a palmist!” Her voice absolutely boomed. “Well, my brother Douglas is engaged tobe married to her.”



“Many happy returns of the day,” I said.I don’t know why I said it. It wasn’t what I meant to say. I’m not sure 1 meant to sayanything.She glared at me. By this time I was pure jelly. I simply flowed about the chair.“You are facetious, Reginald,” she said.“No, no, no,” I shouted. “It slipped out. I wouldn’t be facetious for worlds.”

“I am glad. It is no laughing matter. Have you any suggestions?”“Suggestions?”“You don’t imagine it can be allowed to go on? The engagement must be broken, of course. But how?”“Why don’t you tell him he mustn’t?”“1 shall naturally express my strong disapproval, but it may not be effective. When out of the reach of my personal influence, my wretched brother is self-willedto a degree.” I SAW what she meant. Good old Duggie wasn’t going to have those eyes patroling his spine if he knew it. He meant to keep away and conduct this business by letter. There was going to be no personal interview with sister, if he had to dodge ab

out America like a snipe.We sat for a long time without speaking. Then I became rather subtle. I had a brain-wave and saw my way to making things right for Dug and at the same time squaring myself with Florence. After all, I thought, the old boy couldn’t keep away from home for the rest of his life. He would have to go there sooner or later. Andmy scheme made it pleasant and easy for him.“I’ll tell you what I should do if I were you,” I said. “I’m not sure 1 didn’t read some bk or see some play somewhere or other where they tried it on, and it worked allright. Fellow got engaged to a girl, and the family didn’t like it, but, instead of kicking, they pretended to be tickled to pieces, and had the fellow and the girl down to visit them. And then, after the fellow had seen the girl with the home circle as a background, don’t you know, he came to the conclusion that it wouldn’tdo, and broke off the engagement.”

It seemed to strike her.“I hardly expected so sensible a suggestion from you, Reginald,” she said. “It is a very good plan. It shows that you really have a definite substratum of intelligence; and it is all the more deplorable that you should idle your way through the world as you do, when you might be performing some really useful work.” THAT was Florence all over. Even when she patted you on the head, she had to doit with her knuckles.“I will invite them down next week,” she went on. “You had better come, too.”“It’s awfully kind of you, but the fact is—”“Next Wednesday. Take the three-forty-seven.”I met Duggie next day. He was looking happy, but puzzled, like a man who has found a dime on the street and is wondering if there’s a string tied to it. I congratulated him on his engagement.“Reggie,” he said, “a queer thing has happened. I feel as if I’d trodden on the last step when it wasn’t there. I’ve just had a letter from my sister Florence asking me tobring Dorothy home on Wednesday. Florence doesn’t seem to object to the idea of the engagement at all; and I’d expected that I’d have to call out the police reserveswhen she heard of it. I believe there’s a catch somewhere.”I tapped him on the breastbone.“There is, Dug,” I said, “and I’ll tell you what it is. I saw her yesterday, and I can put you next to the game. She thinks that if you see Mrs. Darrell mingling with the home circle, you’ll see flaws in her which you don’t see when you don’t see her mingling with the home circle, don’t you see? Do you see now?”He laughed—heroically, don’t you know.

“I’m afraid she’ll be disappointed. Love like mine is not dependent on environment.”Which wasn’t bad, I thought, if it was his own.I said good-by to him, and toddled along, rather pleased with myself. It seemed



to me that 1 had handled his affairs in a pretty masterly manner for a chap who’ssupposed to be one of the biggest chumps in New York.Well, of course, the thing was an absolute fliver, as I ought to have guessed itwould be. Whatever could have induced me to think that a fellow like poor old Dug stood a dog’s chance against a determined female like his sister Florence, I can’t imagine. It was like expecting a rabbit to put up a show with a python. From the very start there was only one possible end to the thing. To a woman like Flor

ence, who had trained herself as tough as whalebone by years of scrapping with her father and occasional by-battles with aunts, it was as easy as killing rats with a stick.I was sorry for Mrs. Darrell. She was a really good sort and, as a matter of fact, just the kind of wife who would have done old Duggie a bit of good. And on her own ground I shouldn’t wonder if she might not have made a fight for it. But nowshe hadn’t a chance. Poor old Duggie was just like so much putty in Florence’s hands when he couldn’t get away from her. You could see the sawdust trickling out of Love’s Young Dream in a steady flow. I TOOK Mrs. Darrell for a walk one afternoon, to see if I couldn’t cheer her up abit, but it wasn’t much good. She hardly spoke a word till we were on our way home

. Then she said with a sort of jerk: “I’m going back to New York to-morrow, Mr. Pepper.”I suppose I ought to have pretended to be surprised, but I couldn’t work it.“I’m afraid you’ve had a bad time,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”She laughed.“Thank you,” she said. “It’s nice of you to be sympathetic instead of tactful. You’re rather a dear, Mr. Pepper.”1 hadn’t any remarks to make. I whacked at a nettle with my stick.“I shall break off my engagement after dinner, so that Douglas can have a good night’s rest. I’m afraid he has been brooding on the future a good deal. It will be a great relief to him.”“Oh, no,” I said.“Oh, yes. I know exactly how he feels. He thought he could carry me off, but he fi

nds he overestimated his powers. He has remembered that he is a Craye. I imaginethat the fact has been pointed out to him.”“If you ask my opinion,” I said—I was feeling pretty sore about it— “that woman Florence is an absolute cat.”“My dear Mr. Pepper, I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking your opinion on such a delicate subject. But I’m glad to have it. Thank you very much. Do I strike you as a vindictive woman, Mr. Pepper?”“I don’t think you do,” 1 said.“By nature I don’t think I am. But I’m feeling a little vindictive just at present.”She stopped suddenly.“I don’t know why I’m boring you like this, Mr. Pepper,” she said. “For goodness’ sake lete cheerful. Say something bright.”I was going to take a whirl at it, but she started in to talk, and talked all the rest of the way. She seemed to have cheered up a whole lot. SHE left next day. I gather she fired Duggie as per schedule, for the old boy looked distinctly brighter, and Florence wore an off-duty expression and was quitedecently civil. Mrs. Darrell bore up all right. She avoided Duggie, of course,and put in most of the time talking to Edwin. He evidently appreciated it, for Ihad never seen him look so nearly happy before.I went back to New York directly afterward, and I hadn’t been there much more thana week when a most remarkably queer thing happened. Turning in at Hammerstein’s for half an hour one evening, whom should I meet but brother Edwin, quite fairlyfestive, with a fat cigar in his mouth. “Hello, Reggie,” he said.“What are you doing here?” I said.

“I had to come up to New York to look up a life of Hilary de Craye at the library.‘ I believe Mister Man was a sort of ancestor.”“This isn’t the library.”



“I was beginning to guess as much. The difference is subtle but well marked.”It struck me that there was another difference that was subtle but well marked,and that was the difference between the Edwin I’d left messing about over his family history a week before and the jovial rounder who was blowing smoke in my facenow.“As a matter of fact,” he said, “the library would be all the better for a little of this sort of thing. It’s too conservative. That’s what’s the trouble with the library.

What’s the matter with having a cross-talk team and a few performing dogs there? It would brighten the place up and attract custom. Reggie, you’re looking fatigued.I’ve heard there’s a place somewhere in this city, if you can only find it, expressly designed for supplying first-aid to the fatigued. Let’s go and look for it.” I’M NOT given to thinking much as a rule, but I couldn’t help pondering over this meeting with Edwin. It’s hard to make you see the remarkableness of the whole thing,for, of course, if you look at it, in one way, there’s nothing so record-breakingin smoking a cigar and drinking a highball. But then you have never seen Edwin.There are degrees in everything, don’t you know. For Edwin to behave as he did with me that night was simply nothing more nor less than a frightful outburst, andit disturbed me. Not that I cared what Edwin did, as a rule, but I couldn’t help

feeling a sort of what d’you-call it—a presentiment, that somehow, in some way I didn’t understand, I was mixed up in it, or was soon going to be. I think the whole fearful family had got on my nerves to such an extent that the mere sight of anyof them made me jumpy.And, by George, I was perfectly right, don’t you know. In a day or two along camethe usual telegram from Florence, telling me to come to Madison Avenue.The mere idea of Madison Avenue was beginning to give me that tired feeling, andI made up my mind I wouldn’t go near the place. But of course I did. When it cameto the point, I simply hadn’t the common manly courage to keep away. FLORENCE was there as before.“Reginald,” she said, “I think I shall go raving mad.”This struck me as a mighty happy solution of everybody’s troubles, but I felt it w

as too good to be true.“Over a week ago,” she went on, “my brother Edwin came up to New York to consult a book at the library. I anticipated that this would occupy perhaps an afternoon, andwas expecting him back by an early train next day. He did not arrive. He sent an incoherent telegram. But even then I suspected nothing.” She paused. “Yesterday morning,” she* said, “I had a letter from my aunt Augusta.”She paused again. She seemed to think I ought to be impressed.Her eyes tied a bowknot in my spine.“Let me read you her letter. No, I will tell you its contents. Aunt Augusta had seen Edwin lunching at the Waldorf with a creature.”“A what?”“My aunt described her. Her hair was of a curious dull bronze tint.”“Your aunt’s?”“The woman’s. It was then that I began to suspect. How many women with dull bronze hair does Edwin know?”“Great Scott! Why ask me?” I HAD got used to being treated as a sort of “Hey, Bill!” by Florence, but I was darned if I was going to be expected to be an encyclopedia as well.“One,” she said. “That appalling Darrell woman.”She drew a deep breath.“Yesterday evening,” she said, “I saw them together in a taximeter cab. They were obviously on their way to some theatre.”She fixed me with her eye.“Reginald,” she said, “you must go and see her the first thing to-morrow.”

“What!” I cried. “Me? Why? Why me?”“Because you are responsible for the whole affair. You introduced Douglas to her.You suggested that he should bring her home. Go to her to-morrow and ascertain h



er intentions.”“But—”“The very first thing.”“But wouldn’t it be better to have a talk with Edwin?”“I have made every endeavor to see Edwin, but he deliberately avoids me. His answers to my telegrams are willfully evasive.”There was no doubt that Edwin had effected a thorough bolt. He was having quite

a pleasant little vacation: Two Weeks in Sunny New York. And from what I’d seen ofhim, he seemed to be thriving on it. I didn’t wonder Florence had got rather anxious. She’d have been more anxious if she had seen him when I did. He’d got a sort of“New-York-is-so-bracing” look about him, which meant a whole heap of trouble beforehe trotted back to the fold. WELL, I started off to interview Mrs. Darrell, and, believe me, I didn’t like theprospect. I think they ought to train A. D. T. messengers to do this sort of thing. I found her alone. The rush hour of clients hadn’t begun.“How do you do, Mr. Pepper?” she said. “How nice of you to call.”Very friendly, and all that. It made the situation darned difficult for a fellow, if you see what I mean.

“Say,” I said. “What about it, don’t you know?”“I certainly don’t,” she said. “What ought I to know about what?”“Well, about Edwin—Edwin Craye,” I said.She smiled.“Oh! So you’re an ambassador, Mr. Pepper?”“Well, as a matter of fact, I did come to see if I could find out how things wererunning. What’s going to happen?”“Are you consulting me professionally? If so, you must show me your hand. Or perhaps you would rather I showed you mine?” IT WAS subtle, but I got on to it after a bit.“Yes,” I said, “I wish you would.”“Very well. Do you remember a conversation we had, Mr. Pepper, my last afternoon a

t the Crayes’? We came to the conclusion that I was rather a vindictive woman.”“By George! You’re stringing old Edwin so as to put one over on Florence?”She flushed a little.“How very direct you are, Mr. Pepper! How do you know I’m not very fond of Mr. Craye? At any rate, I’m very sorry for him.”“He’s such a chump.”“But he’s improving every day. Have you seen him? You must notice the difference?”“There is a difference.”“He only wanted taking out of himself. I think he found his sister Florence’s influence a little oppressive sometimes.”“No, but see here,” I said, “are you going to marry him?”“I’m only a palmist. I don’t pretend to be a clairvoyant. A marriage may be indicatedin Mr. Craye’s hand, but I couldn’t say without looking at it.”“But I shall have to tell her something definite, or she won’t give me a moment’s peace.”“Tell her her brother is of age. Surely that’s definite enough?” AND I couldn’t get any more out of her. I went back to Florence and reported. Shegot pretty excited about it.“Oh, if I were a man!” she said.I didn’t see how that would have helped. I said so.“I’d go straight to Edwin and drag him away. He is staying at his club. If I were aman I could go in and find him—”“Not if you weren’t a member,” I said.“—And tell him what I thought of his conduct. As I’m only a woman, I have to wait in t

he hall while a deceitful small boy pretends to go and look for him.”It had never struck me before what a splendid institution a club was. Only a fewdays back I’d been thinking that the subscription to mine was a bit steep. But no



w I saw that the place earned every cent of the money.“Have you no influence with him, Reginald?”I said I didn’t think I had. She called me something. Invertebrate, or something.I didn’t catch it.“Then there’s only one thing to do. You must find my father and tell him all. Perhaps you may rouse him to a sense of what is right. You may make him remember thathe has duties as a parent.”

I THOUGHT it far more likely that I should make him remember that he had a foot.I hadn’t a very vivid recollection of old man Craye. I was quite a kid when he made his great speech on the Egg Question and beat it for Europe—but what I did recollect didn’t encourage me to go and chat with him about the duties of a parent.As I remember him, he was a rather large man with elephantiasis of the temper. Idistinctly recalled one occasion when I was spending a school vacation at his home, and he found me trying to shave old Duggie, then a kid of fourteen, with his razor.“I shouldn’t be able to find him,” I said.“You can get his address from his lawyers.”“He may be at the North Pole.”

“Then you must go to the North Pole.”“But say—!”“Reginald!”“Oh, all right.”I knew just what would happen. Parbury and Stevens, the lawyers, simply looked at me as if I had been caught snatching bags. At least, Stevens did. And Parburywould have done it, too, only he had been dead a good time. Finally, after drinking me in for about a quarter of an hour, Stevens said that if I desired to address a communication to his client, care of this office, it would be duly forwarded. Good morning. Good morning. Anything further? No, thanks. Good morning. Goodmorning. I handed the glad news on to Florence and left her to do what she liked about it

. She went down and interviewed Stevens. I suppose he’d had experience of her. Atany rate, he didn’t argue. He yielded up the address in level time. Old man Crayewas living in Paris, but was to arrive in New York that night, and would doubtless be at his club. IT was the same club where Edwin was hiding from Florence. I pointed this out toher.“There’s no need for me to butt in after all,” I said. “He’ll meet Edwin there, and they can fight it out in the smoking room. You’ve only to drop him a line explaining thefacts.”“I shall certainly communicate with him in writing, but, nevertheless, you must see him. I cannot explain everything in a letter.”“But doesn’t it strike you that he may think it pretty bad gall—impertinence, don’t youknow, for a comparative stranger like me to be tackling a delicate family affairlike this?”“You will explain that you are acting for me.”“It wouldn’t be better if old Duggie went along instead?”“I wish you to go, Reginald.”Well, of course, it was all right, don’t you know, but I was losing several poundsa day over the business. 1 was getting so light that I felt that, when the oldman kicked me, 1 should just soar up to the ceiling like an air balloon. THE club was one of those large clubs that look like prisons. I used to go thereto lunch with my uncle, the one who left me his money, and I always hated the place. It was one of those clubs that are all red leather and hushed whispers.

I’m bound to say, though, there wasn’t much hushed whispering when I started my interview with old man Craye. His voice was one of my childhood’s recollections.He was most extraordinarily like Florence. He had just the same eyes. I felt bon



eless from the start.“Good morning,” I said.“What?” he said. “Speak up. Don’t mumble.”I hadn’t known he was deaf. The last time we’d had any conversation—on the subject ofrazors—he had done all the talking. This seemed to me to put the lid on it.“I only said ‘Good morning,” I shouted.“Good what? Speak up. I believe you’re sucking candy. Oh, good morning? I remember y

ou now. You’re the boy who spoiled my razor.”1 didn’t half like this reopening of old wounds. I hurried on.“I came about Edwin,” I said.“Who?”“Edwin. Your son.”“What about him?”“Florence told me to see you.”“Who?”“Florence. Your daughter.”“What about her?”ALL this vaudeville team business, mind you, as if we were bellowing at each other across the street. All round the room you could see old gentlemen shooting ou

t of their chairs like rockets and dashing off at a gallop to write to the governing board about it. Thousands of waiters had appeared from nowhere, and were hanging about, dusting table legs. If ever a business wanted to be discussed privately, this seemed to me to be it. And it was just about as private as a conversation through megaphones in Longacre Square.“Didn’t she write to you?”“I got a letter from her. I tore it up. I didn’t read it.”Pleasant, was it not? It was not. I began to understand what a shipwrecked sailor must feel when he finds there’s something gone wrong with the life belt.I thought I might as well get to the point and get it over.“Edwin’s going to marry a palmist,” I said.“Who the devil’s Harry?”“Not Harry. Marry. He’s going to marry a palmist.”

About four hundred waiters noticed a speck of dust on an ash tray at the table next to ours, and swooped down on it.“Edwin is going to marry a palmist?”“Yes.”“She must be mad. Hasn’t she seen Edwin?”And just then who should stroll in but Edwin himself. I sighted him and gave hima hail. HE curveted up to us. It was amazing the way the fellow had altered. He looked like a two-year-old. Flower in his buttonhole and a six-inch grin, and all that.The old man seemed surprised, too. I didn’t wonder. The Edwin he remembered was apretty different kind of a fellow.“Hullo, dad,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here. Have a cigarette?”He shoved out his case. Old man Craye helped himself in a sort of dazed way.“You are Edwin?” he said slowly.I began to sidle out. They didn’t notice me. They had moved to a settee, and Edwinseemed to be telling his father a funny story.At least, he was talking and grinning, and the old man was making a noise like distant thunder, which I supposed was his way of chuckling. I slid out and left them.Some days later Duggie called on me. The old boy was looking scared.“Reggie,” he said, “what do doctors call it when you think you see things when you don’t? Hal-something. I’ve got it, whatever it is. It’s sometimes caused by overwork. Butit can’t be that with me, because I’ve not been doing any work. You don’t think my brain’s going or anything like that, do you?”

“What do you mean? What’s been happening?”“It’s like being haunted. I read a story somewhere of a fellow who kept thinking hesaw a battleship bearing down on him. I’ve got it, too. Four times in the last thr



ee days I could have sworn 1 saw my father and Edwin. I saw them as plainly as Isee you. And, of course, Edwin’s at home and father’s in Europe somewhere. Do you think it’s some sort of a warning? Do you think I’m going to die?”“It’s all right, old top,” I said. “As a matter of fact, they are both in New York justnow.”“You don’t mean that? Great Scott, what a relief! But, Reggie, old rox, it couldn’t have been them really. The last time was at Louis Martin’s, and the fellow I mistook

for Edwin was dancing all by himself in the middle of the floor.”I admitted it was pretty queer. I WAS away for a few days after that in the country. When I got back I found a pile of telegrams waiting for me. They were all from Florence, and they all wanted me to go to Madison Avenue. The last of the batch, which had arrived that morning, was so peremptory that I felt as if something had bitten me when 1 read it.For a moment I admit I hung back. Then I rallied. There are times in a man’s lifewhen he has got to show a flash of the old bulldog pluck, don’t you know, if he wants to preserve his self-respect. I did then. My grip was still unpacked. 1 toldmy man to put it on a cab. And in about two ticks I was bowling off to the club. I left for England next day by the Lusitania.

About three weeks later I fetched up at Nice. You can’t walk far at Nice without bumping into a casino. The one I hit my first evening was the Casino Municipale in the Place Massena. It looked more or less of a Home From Home, so I strolled in.There was quite a crowd round the boule tables, and I squashed in. And when I’d worked through into the front rank I happened to look down the table, and there was Edwin, with a green Tyrolese hat hanging over one ear, clutching out for a lotof five-franc pieces which the croupier was steering toward him at the end of arake.I was feeling lonesome, for I knew no one in the place, so 1 edged round in hisdirection.Halfway there I heard my name called, and there was Mrs. Darrell.

I SAW the whole thing in a flash. Old man Craye hadn’t done a thing to prevent it—apart from being eccentric, he was probably glad that Edwin had had the sense to pick out anybody half as good a sort—and the marriage had taken place. And here they were on their honeymoon.I wondered what Florence was thinking of it.“Well, well, well, here we all are,” I said. “I’ve just seen Edwin. He seems to be winning.”“Dear boy!” she said. “He does enjoy it so. I think he gets so much more out of life than he used to, don’t you?”“Sure thing. May 1 wish you happiness? Why didn’t you let me know and collect the silver fish-slice?”“Thank you so much, Mr. Pepper. I did write to you, but I suppose you never got the letter.”“Mr. Craye didn’t make any objections, then?”“On the contrary. He was more in favor of the marriage than anyone.”“And I’ll tell you why,” I said. “I’m rather a chump, you know, but I observe things. I bet he was most frightfully grateful to you for taking Edwin in hand and making him human.”“Why, you’re wonderful, Mr. Pepper. That is exactly what he said himself. It was that that first made us friends.”“And—er—Florence?” SHE sighed.“I’m afraid Florence has taken the thing a little badly. But I hope to win her overin time. I want all my children to love me.”

“All your what?”“I think of them as my children, you see, Mr. Pepper. I adopted them as my own when I married their father. Did you think I had married Edwin? What a funny mistak



e. I am very fond of Edwin, but not in that way. No, I married Mr. Craye. We left him at our villa to-night, as he had some letters to get off. You must come and see us, Mr. Pepper. I always feel that it was you who brought us together, youknow. I wonder if you will be seeing Florence when you get back? Will you giveher my very best love?”

Collier’s Weekly, June 29, 1912SOME time ago, when spending a delightful week end at the ancestral castle of mydear old friend the Duke of Weatherstonhope (pronounced Wop), I came across anold black-letter manuscript. It is on this that the story which follows is based. I have found it necessary to touch the thing up a little here and there, for writers in those days were weak on construction. Their idea in telling a story was to take a long breath and start droning away without any stops or dialogue till the thing was over. I have also condensed the title. In the original it ran : “‘How it came about that ye good Knight Sir Agravaine ye Dolorous of ye Table Rounddid fare forth to succor a damsel in distress and after divers journeyings and perils by flood and by field did win her for his bride and right happily did they

twain live ever afterwards,’ by Ambrose ye monk.” It was a pretty snappy title forthose times, but we have such a high standard in titles nowadays that I have felt compelled to omit a few yards of it.We may now proceed to the story. THE great tournament was in full swing. All through the afternoon boiler-platedknights on mettlesome chargers had hurled themselves on each other’s spears, to the vast contentment of all. Bright eyes shone, handkerchiefs fluttered, musicalvoices urged chosen champions to knock the cover off their brawny adversaries. The bleachers had long since become hoarse with emotion. All round the arena rosethe cries of itinerant merchants: “Ice-cold malvoisie!” “Get your score card; ye cannot tell the jousters without a score card!” All was revelry and excitement.A hush fell on the throng. From either end of the arena a mounted knight in armo

r had entered.The herald raised his hand. “Ladeez ’n gemmen! Battling Galahad and Agravaine the Dolorous. Galahad on my right. Agravaine on my left. Squires out of the ring. Time!”A speculator among the crowd offered six to one on Galahad. but found no takers.Nor was the public’s caution without reason.A moment later the two had met in a cloud of dust, and Agravaine, shooting overhis horse’s crupper, had fallen with a metallic clang. HE PICKED himself up and limped slowly from the arena. He was not unused to this sort of thing. Indeed, nothing else had happened to him in his whole joustingcareer.The truth was that Sir Agravaine the Dolorous was out of his element at King Arthur’s court, and he knew it. It was this knowledge that had given him that settledair of melancholy from which he derived his title.Until I came upon this black-letter manuscript, I had been under. the impression, like, I presume, everybody else, that every Knight of the Round Table was a model of physical strength and beauty. Mallory says nothing to suggest the contrary. Nor does Tennyson. But apparently there were exceptions, of whom Sir Agravaine the Dolorous must have been the chief. There was, it seems, nothing to mitigate this unfortunate man’s physical deficiencies. There is a place in the world forthe strong, ugly man, and there is a place for the weak, handsome man. But to fall short both in features and in muscle is to stake your all on brain. And in the days of King Arthur you did not find the populace turning out to do homage tobrain. It was a drug in the market. Agravaine was a good deal better equipped th

an his contemporaries with gray matter, hut his height in his socks was but fivefeet four; and his muscles, though he had taken three correspondence courses inphysical culture, remained distressingly flaccid. His eyes were pale and mild,



his nose snub, and his chin receded sharply from his lower lip, as if Nature, designing him, had had to leave off in a hurry anti finish the job anyhow. The upper teeth, protruding, completed the resemblance to a nervous rabbit. HANDICAPPED in this manner, it is no wonder that he should feel sad and lonely in King Arthur’s court. At heart he ached for romance; but romance passed him by. The ladies of the court ignored his existence, while as for those wandering damse

ls who came periodically to Camelot to complain of the behavior of dragons, giants, and the like, and to ask permission of the King to take a knight back with them to fight their cause (just as, nowadays, one goes out and calls a cop), he simply had no chance. Their choice always fell on Lancelot or some other popularfavorite.The tournament was followed by a feast. In those brave days almost everything was followed by a feast. The scene was gay and animated. Fair ladies, brave knights, churls, varlets, squires, scurvy knaves, men-at-arms, malapert rogues–all weremerry. All save Agravaine. He sat silent and moody. To the jests of Dagonet he turned a deaf ear. And when his neighbor, Sir Kay, arguing with Sir Percivale oncurrent form, appealed to him to back up his statement that Sir Gawain, though aworkmanlike middle-weight, lacked the punch, he did not answer, though the subj

ect was one on which he held strong views. He sat on, brooding.As he sat there, a man-at-arms entered the hall.“Your Majesty,” he cried, “a damsel in distress waits without.”There was a murmur of excitement and interest.“Show her in,” said the King, beaming.The man-at-arms retired. Around the table the knights were struggling into an upright position in their seats and twirling their mustaches. Agravaine alone madeno movement. He had been through this sort of thing so often. What were distressed damsels to him? His whole demeanor said, as plainly as if he had spoken thewords: “What’s the use ?”The crowd at the door parted, and through the opening came a figure at the sightof whom the expectant faces of the knights turned pale with consternation. Forthe newcomer was quite the plainest girl those stately halls had ever seen. Poss

ibly the only plain girl they had ever seen, for no instance is recorded in ourauthorities of the existence at that period of any such. THE knights gazed at her blankly. Those were the grand old days of Chivalry, when a thousand swords would leap from their scabbards to protect Defenseless Woman, if she were beautiful. The present seemed something in the nature of a special case, and nobody was quite certain as to the correct procedure. An awkward silence was broken by the King.“Er–yes ?” he said.The damsel halted.“Your Majesty,” she cried, “I am in distress. I crave help.” “Just so,” said the King unealy, flashing an apprehensive glance at the rows of perturbed faces before him, “Just so. What–er–what is the exact nature of the–ah-trouble? Any assistance these gallant knights can render will, I am sure, be–ah-eagerly rendered.”He looked imploringly at the silent warriors. As a rule, this speech was the signal for roars of applause. But now there was not even a murmur.“I may say enthusiastically,” he added.Not a sound.“Precisely,” said the King, ever tactful. “And now–you were saying?”“I am Yvonne, the daughter of Earl Dorm of the Hills,” said the damsel, “and my fatherhas sent me to ask protection from a gallant knight against a fiery dragon thatravages the countryside.”“A dragon, gentlemen,” said the King, aside. It was usually a safe draw. Nothing pleased the knight of that time more than a brisk bout with a dragon. But now the tempting word was received in silence.

“Fiery,” said the King.Some more silence.The King had recourse to the direct appeal. “Sir Gawain, this court would be great



“Does it!” said Agravaine thoughtfully. “Does it!”“Oh, Sir Knight, I pray you have a care.”“I will,” said Agravaine. And he had seldom said anything more fervently. The futurelooked about as bad as it could be. Any hopes he may have entertained that thisdragon might turn out to be comparatively small and inoffensive were dissipated. This was plainly no debilitated wreck of a dragon, its growth stunted by excessive fire-breathing. A body as thick as ten stout trees! He would not even have

the melancholy satisfaction of giving the creature indigestion. For all the impression he was likely to make on that vast interior, he might as well be a saltedalmond.As they were speaking, a dim mass on the sky line hegan to take shape.“Behold!” said the damsel. “My father’s castle.”And presently they were riding across the drawbridge and through the great gate,which shut behind them with a clang.As they dismounted, a man came out through a door at the farther end of the courtyard.“Father,” said Yvonne, “this is the gallant knight Sir Agravaine, who has come to–” It seemed to Agravaine that she hesitated for a moment.“To tackle our dragon?” said her father. “Excellent. Come right in.” Earl Dorm of the Hi

lls was a small, elderly man, with what Agravaine considered a distinctly furtive air about him. His eyes were too close together, and he was overlavish with aweak, cunning smile. Even Agravaine, who was in the mood to like the whole family if possible for Yvonne’s sake, could not help feeling that appearances were against this particular exhibit. He might have a heart of gold beneath the outward aspect of a confidence-trick expert, whose hobby was dog stealing, but there wasno doubt that his exterior did not inspire a genial glow of confidence.“Very good of you to come.” said the Earl.“It’s a pleasure,” said Agravaine. “I have been hearing all about the dragon.”“A great scourge,” agreed his host. “We must have a long talk about it after dinner.” IT WAS the custom in those days in the stately homes of England for the whole strength of the company to take their meals together. The guests sat at the upper

table, the ladies in a gallery above them, while the usual drove of men-at-arms, archers, malapert rogues, varlets, scurvy knaves, scullions, and plug-uglies,attached to all medieval households, squashed in near the door, wherever they could find room. The retinue of Earl Dorm was not strong numerically–the household being, to judge from appearances, one that had seen better days; but it struck Agravaine that what it lacked in numbers it made up in toughness. Among all thoseat the bottom of the room there was not one whom it would have been agreeable tomeet alone in a dark alley. Of all those foreheads not one achieved a height ofmore than one point naught four inches. A sinister collection indeed, and one which, Agravaine felt, should have been capable of handling without his assistance any dragon that ever came into the world to stimulate the asbestos industry.He was roused from his reflections by the voice of his host.“I hope you are not tired after your journey, Sir Agravaine? My little girl did not bore you, I trust? We are very quiet folk here. Country mice. But we must tryto make your visit interesting.”Agravaine felt that the dragon might be counted upon to do that. He said as much.“Ah. yes, the dragon,” said Earl Dorm. “I was forgetting the dragon. I want to have along talk with you about that dragon. Not now. Later on.” HIS eye caught Agravaine’s, and he smiled that weak, cunning smile of his, And forthe first time the knight was conscious of a curious feeling that all was not square and aboveboard in this castle. A conviction began to steal over him that in some way he was being played with, that some game was afoot which he did not understand, that–in a word–there was dirty work at the crossroads. There was a touch

of mystery in the atmosphere which made him vaguely uneasy. When a fiery dragonis ravaging the countryside to such an extent that the C. Q. D. call has been sent out to the Round Table, a knight has a right to expect the monster to be the



main theme of conversation. The tendency on his host’s part was apparently to avoid touching on the subject at all. He was vague and elusive; and the one topic onwhich an honest man is not vague and elusive is that of fiery dragons. It was not right. It was as if one should ’phone for the police and engage them, on arrival, in a discussion on the day’s football results. A WAVE of distrust swept over Agravaine. He had heard stories of robber chiefs

who lured strangers into their strongholds and then held them prisoners while the public nervously dodged their anxious friends who had formed subscription lists to make up the ransom. Could this be such a case? The man certainly had an evasive manner and a smile which would have justified any jury in returning a verdict without leaving the box. On the other hand, there was Yvonne. His reason revolted against the idea of that sweet girl being a party to any such conspiracy.No, probably it was only the Earl’s unfortunate manner. Perhaps he suffered from some muscular weakness of the face which made him smile like that.Nevertheless, he certainly wished that he had not allowed himself to be deprivedof his sword and armor. At the time it had seemed to him that the Ear1’s remark that the latter needed polishing and the former stropping betrayed only a kindlyconsideration for his guest’s well-being. Now, it had the aspect of being part of

a carefully constructed plot.On the other hand–here philosophy came to his rescue–if anybody did mean to start anything, his sword and armor might just as well not be there. Any one of those mammoth low-brows at the door could eat him, armor and all.He resumed his meal, uneasy but resigned.Dinner at Earl Dorm’s was no lunch-counter scuffle. It started early and finishedlate. It was not till an advanced hour that Agravaine was conducted to his room.The room which had been allotted to him was high up in the eastern tower. It wasa nice room, but to one in Agravaine’s state of suppressed suspicion a trifle toosolidly upholstered. The door was of the thickest oak, studded with iron nails.Iron bars formed a neat pattern across the only window.Hardly had Agravaine observed these things when the door opened, and before himstood the damsel Yvonne, pale of face and panting for breath.

She leaned against the doorpost and gulped.“Fly!” she whispered.Reader, if you had come to spend a night in the lonely castle of a perfect stranger with a shifty eye and a rogues’ gallery smile, and on retiring to your room had found the door kick_proof and the window barred, and if, immediately after your discovery of these phenomena, a white-faced young lady had plunged in upon youand urged you to immediate flight, wouldn’t that jar you?It jarred Agravaine. “Eh?” he cried.“Fly! Fly, Sir Knight!” ANOTHER footstep sounded in the passage. The damsel gave a startled look over her shoulder.“And what’s all this?”Earl Dorm appeared in the dim-lit corridor. His voice had a nasty tinkle in it. “Your–your daughter,” said Agravaine hurriedly, “was just telling me that breakfast would–”The sentence remained unfinished. A sudden movement of the Earl’s hand, and the great door banged in his face. There came the sound of a bolt shooting into its socket. A key turned in the lock. He was trapped.Outside, the Earl had seized his daughter by the wrist and was administering a paternal cross-examination.“What were you saying to him?” Yvonne did not flinch.“I was bidding him fly.”“If he wants to leave this castle,” said the Earl grimly, “he’ll have to.”“Father,” said Yvonne, “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”“I can’t.”His grip on her wrist tightened. From the other side of the door came the muffle



d sound of blows on the solid oak.“Oh!” said Earl Dorm. “You can’t, eh? Well, listen to me. You’ve got to. Do you understand? I admit he might be better-looking, but–”“Father, I love him.”He released her wrist and stared at her in the uncertain light.“You love him!”“Yes.”

“Then what–? Why–? Well, I never did understand women,” he said at last, and stumped offdown the passage. WHILE this cryptic conversation was in progress, Agravaine, his worst apprehensions realized, was trying to batter down the door. After a few moments, however,he realized the futility of his efforts, and sat down on the bed to think.At the risk of forfeiting the reader’s respect, it must be admitted that his firstemotion was one of profound relief. If he was locked up like this, it must meanthat that dragon story was fictitious, and that all danger was at an end of having to pit his inexperience against a ravening monster who had spent a lifetimedevouring knights. He had never liked the prospect, though he had been preparedto go through with it, and to feel that it was definitely canceled made up for a

good deal.In any case there was nothing to be gained by sitting up, so he went to bed, like a good philosopher.The sun was pouring through the barred window when he was awoken by the entranceof a gigantic figure bearing food and drink.He recognized him as one of the scurvy knaves who had dined at the bottom of theroom the night before–a vast, beetle-browed fellow with a squint, a mop of red hair, and a genius for silence. To Agravaine’s attempts to engage him in conversation he replied only with grunts, and in a short time left the room, closing and locking the door behind him.He was succeeded at dusk by another of about the same size and ugliness, and with even less conversational élan. This one did not even grunt.Small talk, it seemed, was not an art cultivated in any great measure by the low

er orders in the employment of Earl Dorm. THE next day passed without incident. In the morning the strabismic plug-ugly with the red hair brought him food and drink, while in the evening the nongrunterdid the honors. It was a peaceful life, but tending toward monotony, and Agravaine was soon in the frame of mind which welcomes any break in the daily round.He was fortunate enough to get it.He had composed himself for sleep that night, and was just dropping comfortablyoff when from the other side of the door he heard the sound of angry voices.It was enough to arouse him. On the previous night silence had reigned. Evidently something out of the ordinary was taking place.He listened intently and distinguished words.“Who was it I did see thee coming down the road with ?”“Who was it thou didst see me coming down the road with?”“Aye, who was it I did see thee coming down the road with?”“Who dost thou think thou art?”“Who do I think that I am?”“Aye, who doest thou think thou art?”Agravaine could make nothing of it. As a matter of fact, he was hearing the first genuine cross talk that had ever occurred in those dim, pre-music-hall days. In years to come dialogue on these lines was to be popular throughout the lengthand breadth of Great Britain. But till then it had been unknown.The voices grew angrier. To an initiated listener it would have been plain thatin a short while words would be found inadequate, and the dagger, that medievalforerunner of the slapstick, brought into play. But to Agravaine, all inexperien

ced, it came as a surprise when suddenly, with a muffled thud, two bodies fell against the door. There was a scuffling noise, some groans, and then silence. Andthen with amazement he heard the bolt shoot back and a key grate in the keyhole



ite. He understood now.“And you naturally want to get rid of me before it can happen,” he said. “I don’t wonder. I’m not vain. Well, I’ll go. I knew I had no chance. Good-by.”He turned. She stopped him with a sharp cry.“What do you mean? You cannot wish to stay now? I am saving you.”“Saving me! I have loved you since the moment you entered the Hall at Camelot,” saidAgravaine.

She drew in her breath.“You–you love me!”They looked at each other in the starlight. She held out her hands.“Agravaine!”She drooped toward him, and he gathered her into his arms. For a novice, he didit uncommonly well. IT was about six months later that Agravaine, having ridden into the forest, c

alled upon a Wise Man at his cell.In those days almost anyone who was not a perfect bonehead could set up as a Wise Man and get away with it. All you had to do was to live in a forest and grow awhite beard. This particular Wise Man, for a wonder, had a certain amount of ru

de sagacity. He listened carefully to what the knight had to say.“It has puzzled me to such an extent,” said Agravaine, “that I felt that I must consult a specialist. You see me. Take a good look at me. What do you think of my personal appearance? You needn’t hesitate. It’s worse than that. I am the ugliest man inEngland.”“Would you go so far as that?” said the Wise Man politely.“Farther. And everybody else thinks so. Everybody except my wife. She tells me that I am a model of manly beauty. You know Lancelot? Well, she says I have Lancelot whipped to a custard. What do you make of that? And here’s another thing. It isperfectly obvious to me that my wife is one of the most beautiful creatures in existence. I have seen them all, and I tell you that she stands alone. She is literally marooned in Class A, all by herself. Yet she insists that she is plain. What do you make of it?”

The Wise Man stroked his beard.“My son,” he said, “the matter is simple. True love takes no account of looks.”“No?” said Agravaine.“You two are affinities. Therefore to you the outward aspect is nothing. Put it like this. Love is a thingummybob who what-d’-you-call-its.”“I’m beginning to see,” said Agravaine.“What I meant was this. Love is a wizard greater than Merlin. He plays odd trickswith the eyesight.”“Yes?” said Agravaine.“Or put it another way. Love is a sculptor greater than Praxiteles. He takes an unsightly piece of clay and molds it into a thing divine.”“I get you,” said Agravaine. THE Wise Man began to warm to his work.

“Or shall we say–?”“I think I must be going,” said Agravaine. “I promised my wife I would be back early.”The Wise Man sighed resignedly.“Good-by, Sir Knight,” he said. “Good- by. Pay at ye desk.”And Agravaine rode on his way marveling. ~~~ The End ~~~ Collier’s Weekly, September 06, 1913WHAT this story needs to set it moving is a synopsis of preceding chapters, likethat of a serial in a dally paper; something curt and compelling; something tha

t will take you by the scruff of the neck and hurl you into the middle of it before you have time to remember that what you were really intending to read was “Howto Make a Dainty Winter Coat for Baby Out of Father’s Motor Goggles” on the next pa



ge. You are a busy man, and your time is valuable. Very well then:BEGIN TO-DAYFreddie Bingham, a young man of large, independent means, left to him—not that itmatters—by a maternal aunt, has fallen in love with, proposed to, and been accepted byMargaret, daughter ofFranklyn Bivatt, an unpleasant little millionaire with a weak digestion, a taste

for dogmatic speech, and the personal appearance of a pterodactyl. Freddie hascalled on Mr. Bivatt, told him the news, and asked for his consent.NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY MR. BIVATT looked at Freddie in silence. He belonged to the second and more offensive class of millionaire. There are only two kinds. One has a mauve face and athree-hundred-pound body, and grinds the face of the poor on a diet of champagne and lobster à la Newburg; the other—Mr. Bivatt’s type—is small and shriveled, hardly weighs anything at all, and fortifies himself, before clubbing the stuffing out of the widow and the orphan, with a light repast of hot water, triturated biscuit, and pepsin tabloids.Mr. Bivatt took another look at Freddie—a thoroughly nasty look. The fact was that

Freddie had chosen an unfortunate moment for his visit. Not only had Mr. Bivatta bad attack of indigestion, but he had received a letter that very morning from Margaret’s elder sister, who some two years ago had married the Earl of Datchet.Lord Datchet was not an ideal husband. Among other things, he was practically alunatic, which is always such a nuisance in the home. This letter was the latest of a number of dispatches from the seat of war, and the series, taken as a whole, had done much to sour Mr. Bivatt. One leisured son-in-law struck him as sufficient. He was not bitten by a craze for becoming a collector.Consequently he looked at Freddie and said: “H’m!”Freddie was somewhat disturbed. In the circumstances “H’m!” was scarcely an encouraging remark.“You mean—” he said.“I mean just this: When Margaret marries, she’s going to marry a real person, not”—his m

ind wandered to the absent Datchet—“not a pop-eyed, spindle- shanked jack rabbit, all nose and front teeth and monocle, with hair the color of butter and no chin orforehead. See?”Freddie started, and his eye moved hastily to the mirror over the mantelpiece. What he saw partly reassured him. True, he was no Apollo. He was square and bullet headed, and his nose had never really been the same since he had ducked into,instead of away from, one of his boxing instructor’s right swings, but apart fromthat he attained a pretty fair standard. Chin? If anything, he had too much. Teeth? Not at all prominent. In fact, owing to two seasons of college football, rather the reverse. Hair? Light, certainly, but what of that? No, the description puzzled him.“Am I a pop-eyed jack rabbit?” he inquired curiously.“I don’t know,” said Mr. Bivatt. “I don’t know anything about you, except that you’ve gotney you never worked for. Say, do you know the Earl of Datchet? Never heard of him? I wish I hadn’t. He’s my son-in-law, and I don’t want another one like him. His specialty is aristocratic idleness. He has never done a day’s work in his life. No Datchet ever has, apparently. The last time any of the bunch ever showed any signs of perspiring at the brow was when the first earl carried William the Conqueror’s grip down the gangway. Is that your long suit too—trembling when you see a job of work? Have you earned a cent in your life?”“No. But—”“It isn’t a case of but. There wasn’t any need for you to work, and so on. I know allthat. The point is that the man who marries Margaret has got to be capable of work. You remember Jacob?”“Jacob?”

“I mean the one in the Bible, the one who worked seven years for the girl, got the wrong one, and started in right away to do another seven years. They managed things mighty sensibly in those days. You didn’t catch them getting stung by any da



rned pop-eyed Datchets. It’s given me an idea, talking of Jacob. That’s the sort ofman I want for Margaret. See? I don’t ask him to wait seven years, let alone fourteen. But I will have him show that there’s something in him. Now, I’ll make a proposition to you. You go and hunt for a job and get it and hold it down long enoughto earn $500, and you can marry Margaret as soon as you like afterward. But let’sget this fixed right. When I say earn, I mean earn. I don’t mean sit up and beg and have it fall into your mouth. Manual work or brain work it’s got to be, one of t

he two.”“Very well.”“Easy enough to say “Very well.’ Yon won’t like it.”“I don’t suppose Jacob liked it.”“I suppose not. Good morning.”And Mr. Bivatt, swallowing another tabloid, turned his attention once more to harrying the widow and the orphan.It amazed Freddie when he set out on his pilgrimage, the difficulty of getting work. Work had always seemed to him so peculiarly unpleasant that he had supposedthat the supply must exceed the demand. The contrary appeared to be the case.Eventually, after wearing a groove in the pavement from Twenty-third Street to the Battery, he found himself, through a combination of lucky chances, in charge

of the news stand at a large hotel. Twelve dollars a week was the stipend. Working it out on a slip of paper, he perceived that his ordeal was to be a mere nineor ten months’ canter of unexacting work in quite comfortable surroundings. Datchet himself could have done it on his butter-colored head.There is always a string attached to these good things. For four days all went well. He found his duties pleasant. He liked looking at the crowds in the lobby.He enjoyed selling dollar-fifty novels to men who had meant to buy evening papers. But on the fifth day came reaction. From the moment he began work a feeling of utter loathing for this particular form of money making enveloped him as in acloud. The customers irritated him. He was hopelessly bored. THE end was in sight. It came early on the afternoon of the sixth day through the medium of one of the regular customers, a man who, even in happier moments, ha

d always got on his nerves. He was a man with a rasping voice and a peremptory manner, who demanded a daily paper or a stamp with the air of one cursing an enemy.Freddie had fallen into gloomy meditation, business being slack at the time, when this man appeared before him and shouted: “Stamp!”Freddie started, but made no reply.“Stamp!”Freddie’s gaze circled round the lobby and eventually rested on the object beforehim.“Stamp!”Freddie inspected him with frigid scorn.“I won’t,” he answered coldly.The hotel in which Freddie had found employment was a sporting hotel in the heart of the Tenderloin. Its patrons were mainly racing men, gamblers, and drummers,men of action rather than words. This particular patron was essentially the manof action. He hit Freddie in the eye. Five minutes later Freddie, panting a little and blinking to ease the pain of his injured eye, was waiting for his opponent to rise from the floor. At this point the manager entered the arena. The manager was a man with sporting blood and a sense of the proprieties. The former hadkept him an interested spectator during the late proceedings; the latter now made him step forward, tap Freddie on the shoulder, and inform him that his connection with the hotel was at an end.Freddie went out into the world with $12 and a black eye.I would enlarge on Freddie’s emotions at losing his situation were it not for thefact that two days later he found another. There was a bellboy at his late hotel

to whom he had endeared himself by allowing him to read the baseball news freeof charge—a redheaded, world-weary, prematurely aged boy, to whom New York was asan open book. He met Freddie in the street.



“Hello, you!” he said. “I been huntin’ after you. Lookin’ fer a job? My cousin runs a cafeon Fourteenth Street. He’s wantin’ a new hash slinger. I seen the card in the window yesterday. You try there and say I sent you. It’s a tough joint, though.”“All the more likely to suit me. I seem to lack polish.”“The East Side Delmonico’s is the name. I’ll tell him you’re comin’.”THE East Side Delmonico’s proved to be a dingy, though sizable, establishment at aspot where Fourteenth Street, that ex-hub of the city, wore a more than usually

tough and battered look. As is a dented derby hat, so is a street with a glorious past. It can never look the same again. Fourteenth Street has given up trying.It appeared that the bellboy, who had been deeply impressed by Freddie’s handlingof the irritable newsstand customer, had given him an excellent character in advance. Mr. “Blinky” Anderson, the proprietor, welcomed him, if not with open arms, with quite marked satisfaction. He examined the injured eye, stamped it with the seal of his approval as “some lamp,” and, having informed him that his weekly envelope would contain $5 and that his food was presented free by the management, requested him to slip out of his coat, grab an apron, and get busy.Freddie was a young man who took life as it came. He was a sociable being, and could be happy anywhere so long as he was not bored. The solitude of the news sta

nd had bored him, but at the East Side Delmonico’s life was too full of movement to permit of ennui. He soon perceived that there was more in this curious establishment than met the eye. It offered attractions to the cognoscenti other than the mere restoration of the inner man with meat and drink. On the first floor, forinstance, provided that you could convince the management of the excellence ofyour motives, you could buck the tiger. On the floor above, if you were that kind of idiot, you might play roulette. And in the basement, in a large, cellarlikeroom, lit with countless electric lights, boxing contests were held on Saturdaynights before audiences financially, if not morally, select.In fact, the East Side Delmonico’s was nothing more nor less than a den of iniquity. But nobody could call it dull, and Freddie reveled in his duties. He booked orders, served drinks, smashed plates, bullied the cook, chaffed the customers when they were merry, seized them by the neck and ran them into the street when th

ey were too merry, and in every other way comported himself like one who has atlast found his true vocation. And time rolled on. WE WILL leave time rolling for the moment and return to Mr. Bivatt, raising thecurtain at the beginning of his tête-à-tête dinner with his fellow plutocrat, T. Mortimer Dunlop. T. Mortimer was the other sort of millionaire. You could have told he was a millionaire just by looking at him. He bulged. His head was bald, his face purple, his hands red. He was accustomed to refer to himself somewhat frequently as a dead-game sport. He wheezed when he spoke.I raise the curtain on Mr. Bivatt at the beginning of dinner because it was at the beginning of dinner that he allowed Mr. Dunlop to persuade him to drink a Dawn of Hope cocktail, so called because it cheers you up. It cheered Mr. Bivatt up.Mr. Bivatt needed cheering up. That very afternoon his only son, Twombley, had struck him for $1,000 to pay a poker debt. A thousand dollars is not a large sumto a man of Mr. Bivatt’s wealth, but it is your really rich man who unbelts leastjoyously. Together with the check, Twombley had received a parental lecture. Hehad appeared to be impressed by it; but it was the doubt as to its perfect efficacy which was depressing Mr. Bivatt. There was no doubt that Twombley was a trial. It was only the awe with which he regarded his father that kept him within bounds. Mr. Bivatt sighed and took a pepsin tabloid.It was at this point that T. Mortimer Dunlop, summoning the waiter, ordered twoDawn of Hope cocktails. Mr. Bivatt weakly surrendered. He was there entirely toplease Mr. Dunlop, for there was a big deal in the air, to which Mr. Dunlop’s cooperation was essential. This was no time to think about one’s digestion or the habi

ts of a lifetime. If, to conciliate invaluable Mr. Dunlop, it was necessary to be a dead-game sport and drink a cocktail, then a dead- game sport he would be. He took the curious blend from the waiter and pecked at it like a nervous bird. H



e blinked and pecked again, less nervously this time.You, gentle reader, who simply wallow in alcoholic stimulants at every meal, will find it hard to understand the wave of emotion which surged through Mr. Bivatt’ssoul as he reached the halfway point in the magic glass. But Mr. Bivatt for thirty years had confined his potions to hot water, and the effect on him was remarkable. He no longer felt depressed. Hope, so to speak, had dawned with a jerk. Life was a thing of wonderful joy and infinite possibilities.

We, therefore, find him at the end of dinner leaning across the table, thumpingit with clenched fist, and addressing Mr. Dunlop through the smoke of the latter’scigar thus: “Dunlop, old man, how would it be to take in a show?”Mr. Dunlop snorted.“I can give you something better than a show,” he said.One thing leads to another. The curtain falls on Mr. Bivatt smoking a Turkish cigarette in a manner that can only be described as absolutely reckless.THESE things, I should mention, happened on a Saturday night. About an hour after Mr. Bivatt had lit his cigarette, Freddie, in the cafe at the East Side Delmonico’s, was aware of a thickset, short-haired, tough-looking young man settling himself at one of the tables and hammering a glass with the blade of his knife. Inthe other hand he waved the bill of fare. He was also shouting “Hey!” Taking him for

all in all, Freddie set him down as a hungry young man. He moved toward him, tominister to his needs.“Well, cully,” he said affably, “and what will you wrap yourself around?”You were supposed to unbend and be chummy with the customers if you were a waiter at “Blinky’s.” The customers expected it. If you called a patron of the East Side Delmonico’s “sir,” he scented sarcasm and was apt to throw things.The young man had a grievance.“Say, can you beat it! Me signed up to fight a guy here at a hundred and thirty-three, ring side, and starving meself for weeks to make the weight—say, I ain’t had asquare meal since Ponto was a pup—and gee! along comes word that he’s sprained a foot and will we kindly not expect him. And all I get is the forfeit money. Forfeitmoney! Keep it! It ain’t but a hundred plunks. Say, I’d have licked that guy with me eyes shut.”

HE KICKED the table leg morosely.“Your story moves me much.” said Freddie. “And now, what shall we shoot into you?”“You attending to this table?”“I am.”The young man scanned the bill of fare.“Noodle soup—bit o’ weakfish—fried chicken, Southern style— corn on the cob—bit o’ steak—fotatoes—four fried eggs, done on both sides—apple dumpling with hard sauce, and a cup custard.” he observed rapidly. “That’ll do to start with. And, say, bring all the lager beer you can find. I’ve forgotten what it tastes like.”“Sure,” said Freddie sympathetically. “Keep your strength up.”“I’ll try,” said the thickset young man. “Get a move on.”There was no doubt about the pugilist’s appetite. It gave Freddie quite a thrill of altruistic pleasure to watch him eat. He felt like a philanthropist entertaining a starving beggar. He fetched and carried assiduously for the diner, and whenat length the latter called for coffee and a cigar and sank back in his chair with a happy sigh, he nearly cheered. ON HIS way to the kitchen he encountered his employer, Mr. “Blinky” Anderson, looking depressed. Freddie gathered the reason for his gloom. He liked “Blinky” and thought respectful condolence would not be out of place.“Sorry to hear the news, sir. I hear the main event has fallen through. I have been waiting on one of the fighters upstairs.”Mr. Anderson nodded.“That would be the Tennessee Bear Cat.”

“Very possibly. He had that appearance.”Like the Bear Cat, Mr. Anderson was rendered communicative by grief. Freddie hada sympathetic manner, and many men had confided in him.



“One-Round Smith says he’s hurt his foot. Huh!” Mr. Anderson grunted satirically, butpathos succeeded satire again almost at once. “I ain’t told them about it yet,” he went on, jerking his head in the direction of the invisible audience. “The preliminaries have just started, and what those guys will say when they find there ain’t going to be a main event I don’t know. I ought to tell ’em right away, but I can’t seem to sorter brace myself to it. And I can’t get a substitute. Who’s going to offer to step up and swap punches with a terror like the Bear Cat?”

“I am,” said Freddie.Mr. Anderson stared at him with open mouth.“Eh?”“I’d fight Jack Johnson if he’d just finished the meal that guy has been having,” said Freddie simply.Mr. Anderson was not a swift thinker. He stood, blinking, and allowed the idea to soak through. It penetrated slowly, like water through a ceiling.“He’d eat you!” he said at last.“Well, I’m the only thing in this place he hasn’t eaten. Why stint him?”“But, say, have you done any fighting?”“As an amateur, a good deal.”Mr. Anderson so far forgot himself as to expectorate disgustedly.

“Amateur! Well, it’s you or nobody. I’ll give you a hundred if you last five rounds. Iguess five’ll satisfy them if you make them fast ones. I’ll go and tell the Bear Cat.”“And I’ll go and get him his coffee and the strongest cigar you keep. Every little helps.” FREDDIE entered the ring in a costume borrowed from one of the fighters in the preliminaries, and, seating himself in his corner, ran his eye over Mr. “Blinky” Anderson’s celebrated basement. Most of the light in the place was concentrated over the roped platform of the ring, and all he got was a vague impression of space. There seemed to be a great many people present.His eye was caught by a face in the first row of ring-side seats. It seemed familiar. Where had he seen it before? And then he recognized Mr. Bivatt. It was a t

ransformed Mr. Bivatt, happier-looking, excited, altogether more human. Their eyes met, but there was no recognition in the millionaire’s. FREDDIE’S attention was diverted from audience to ring by the arrival of the Tennessee Bear Cat. There was a subdued murmur of applause. The Bear Cat was an extraordinarily muscled young man. Lumps and cords protruded from him in all directions. His face wore a look of placid content and he had a general air of happy repletion, a fate-cannot-touch-me-I-have-dined-to-day expression. He was chewinggum.A shirt-sleeved gentleman of full habit climbed into the ring, puffing slightly.“Gents! Main event. Have an apology offer—behalf of the management. Was to have beenten-round bout Sam Proctor, better known as the Tennessee Bear Cat, and One-Round Smith, at one thirty-three ring side. But—seems to have been a—naccident, One-Round havin’ sustained severe injury to foot. Rend’rin’ it—impossible—appear t’night before y. Deeply regret unavoid’ble dis’pointment.”The portly man’s breath was going fast, but he still had sufficient for a brilliant flight of fancy.“Have honor, however, present t’you Jimmy Smith, brother of One-Round—stranger to thiscity—but well known on Pacific Coast—where—winner of forty-seven battles. Claimant towelterweight belt. Gents, Jimmy Smith, th’ Santa Barbara Whirlwind!” FREDDIE bowed. The speech, for some mysterious reason, had had quite a tonic effect on him. The mere thought of those forty-seven victories gave him heart. After all, who was this Tennessee Bear Cat? A mere walking repository of noodle soup, weakfish, fried chicken, eggs, corn, apple dumplings, lager beer, and cup cust

ards. A perambulating bill of fare.The introducer, however, presented him in another aspect. He had got his secondwind now, and used it.



“Gents! The Tennessee Bear Cat! You all know Sam. The toughest, huskiest, wickedest little old slugger that ever came down the pike. The boy who’s cleaned up all the lightweights around these parts, and is in a dead straight line—for—the champeenship of the woild.”He waved his hand dramatically. The Bear Cat, overwhelmed by these tributes, shifted his chewing gum to the other cheek, and simpered coyly, as who should say: “Stop your nonsense, Archibald!” And the gong clanged.

Freddie started the fight with the advantage that his plan of campaign was perfectly clear in his mind. Rapid attack was his policy. When a stout gentleman inshirt sleeves has been exhausting his scanty stock of breath calling you a whirlwind, decency forbids that you should behave like a zephyr. He shook hands, and,on the principle of beginning as you mean to go on, proceeded without delay topoke his left earnestly into the middle of the Bear Cat’s face. He then brought his right round with a thud on to what the latter probably still called his ear, astrange, shapeless growth rather like a leather cauliflower, and sprang back. The Bear Cat shifted his gum and smiled gratefully. A HEAVY swing on the part of the Bear Cat was the next event of note. Freddie avoided it with ease, and slipped in a crisp left. As he had expected, his opponen

t was too slow to be dangerous. Dangerous! He was not even making the thing interesting, thought Freddie, as he side-stepped another swing and brought his rightup to the chin. He went to his corner at the end of the round glowing with satisfaction. This was easy.But toward the middle of the second round he received a shock. Till then the curious ease with which he had reached his opponent’s head had caused him to concentrate on it. It now occurred to him that by omitting to attack the body he was, asit were, wasting the gifts of Providence. Consequently, having worked his man into an angle of the ropes with his back against a post, he feinted with his left, drew a blow, and then, ducking quickly, put all his weight into a low, straight right. THE effect was remarkable. The Bear Cat uttered a startled grunt; a look came in

to his face of mingled pain and reproach, as if his faith in human nature had been shaken, and he fell into a clinch.“Leave me stummick be, you rummy,” he hissed rapidly. “Ain’t you got no tact? “Blinky” prosed me fifty if I’d let you stay three rounds, but one more like that and I’ll forget meself and knock you through the ceiling.”Only when he reached his corner did the full meaning of the words strike Freddie. All the glow of victory left him. It was a frame-up! Blinky, to insure his patrons something resembling a fight, had induced the Bear Cat to stall during thefirst three rounds.The shock of it utterly disheartened him. So that was why he had been making such a showing! That was why his jabs and hooks had got home with such clockwork precision! Probably his opponent had been laughing at him all the time. The thought stung him. THE third round was the most spectacular of the fight. Even the regular patronsof “Blinky’s” Saturday night exhibitions threw aside their prudence and bellowed approval. Smiling wanly and clinching often, the Bear Cat fixed his mind on his $50 to buoy himself up, while Freddie, with a nasty gleam in his eyes, behaved everymoment more as a Santa Barbara Whirlwind might reasonably be expected to behave.Seldom had the Bear Cat heard sweeter music than the note of the gong terminating the round. He moved slowly to his corner, and handed his chewing gum to his second to hold for him. It was strictly business now. He thought hard thoughts ashe lay back in his chair.In the other corner Freddie also was thinking. The exhilarating exercise of thelast round had soothed him and cleared his brain; and he too, as he left his cor

ner for the fourth session, was resolved to attend strictly to business. And hisbusiness was to stay five rounds and earn that $100.Connoisseurs in the ring seats, who had been telling their friends during the pr



evious interval that Freddie had “got him going,” changed their minds and gave it astheir opinion that he had “blown up.” They were wrong. He was fighting solely on the defensive now from policy, not from fatigue. THE Bear Cat came on with a rush, head down, swinging with left and right. The change from his former attitude was remarkable, and Freddie, if he had not been prepared for it, might have been destroyed offhand. There was no standing up agai

nst such an onslaught. He covered up and ducked and slipped and side-stepped, and slipped again, and, when the gong sounded, he was still intact.Freddie came up for the fifth round, brimming over with determination. He meantto do or die. Before the end of the first half minute it was borne in upon him that he was far more likely to die than do. He was a good amateur boxer. He had been well taught, and he knew all the recognized stops for the recognized blows.But the Bear Cat had either invented a number of blows not in the regular curriculum, or else it was his manner of delivering them that gave that impression. Reason told Freddie that his opponent was not swinging left and right simultaneously, but the hard fact remained that, just as he guarded one blow, another came from the opposite point of the compass and took him squarely on the side of the head. He had a disagreeable sensation as if an automobile had run into him and th

en he was on the floor, with the stout referee sawing the air above him. THE thought of $100 is a reviving agent that makes oxygen look like a sleeping draft. No sooner had it returned to his mind than his head cleared and he rose tohis feet, as full of fight as ever. He perceived the Bear Cat slithering towardhim, and leaped to one side like a Russian dancer. The Bear Cat collided with the ropes and grunted discontentedly. PROBABLY, if Freddie had had a sizable plot of ground such as Yellowstone Park or California to maneuver in, he might have avoided his opponent for some considerable time. The ring being only twenty feet square, he was hampered. A few morewild leaps, interspersed with one or two harmless left jabs, and he found himself penned up in a corner, with the Bear Cat, smiling pleasantly again, now making

hypnotic passes before his eyes.The Bear Cat was not one of your reticent fighters. He was candor itself.“Here it comes, kid!” he remarked affably, and “it” came. Freddie’s world suddenly resolved itself into a confused jumble of pirouetting stars, chairs, shirt fronts, andelectric lights, and he fell forward in a boneless heap. There was a noise of rushing waters in his ears, and, mingled with it, the sound of voices. Some personor persons, he felt dimly, seemed to be making a good deal of an uproar. His brain was clouded, but the fighting instinct still worked within him: and almost unconsciously he groped for the lower rope, found it, and pulled himself to his feet. And then the lights went out.How long it was before he realized that the lights actually had gone out and that the abrupt darkness was not due to a repetition of “it,” he never knew. But it must have been some length of time, for when the room became suddenly light again,his head was clear, and, except for a conviction that his neck was broken, he felt tolerably well. HIS eyes having grown accustomed to the light, he saw with astonishment that remarkable changes had taken place in the room. With the exception of some half dozen persons, the audience had disappeared entirely, and each of those who remained was in the grasp of a massive policeman. Two more intelligent officers were beckoning to him to come down from the platform.The New York police force is subject to periodical attacks of sensitiveness withregard to the purity of the city. In between these spasms a certain lethargy seems to grip it, but when it does act, its energy is wonderful. The East Side Delmonico’s had been raided.

It was obvious that the purity of the city demanded that Freddie should appear in court in a less exiguous costume than his present one. The two policemen accompanied him to the dressing room.



On a chair in one corner sat the Tennessee Bear Cat, lacing his shoes. On a chair in another corner sat Mr. Franklyn Bivatt, holding his head in his hands.Fate, Mr. Bivatt considered, had not treated him well. Nor, he added mentally, had T. Mortimer Duulop. For directly the person, to be found in every gathering,who mysteriously gets to know things in advance of his fellows, had given the alarm, T. Mortimer, who knew every inch of “Blinky’s” basement and, like other dead-gamesports who frequented it, had his exits and his entrances—particularly his exits —h

ad skimmed away like a corpulent snipe and vanished, leaving Mr. Bivatt to lookafter himself. As Mr. Bivatt had failed to look after himself, the constabularywere looking after him.“Who’s the squirt?” asked the first policeman, indicating Mr. Bivatt.“I don’t know,” said the second. “I caught him trying to beat it, and held him. Keep aneye on him. I think it’s Boston Willie, the safe blower. Keep these three gooks here till I get back. I’m off upstairs.” THE door closed behind them. Presently it creaked, and was still. The remainingpoliceman was leaning against it.The Tennessee Bear Cat nodded amiably at Freddie.“Feeling better, kid? Why didn’t you duck? I told you it was coming, didn’t I?”

Mr. Bivatt groaned hollowly. Life was very gray. He was in the hands of the police, and he had indigestion and no pepsin tabloids.“Say, it ain’t so bad as all that,” said the Bear Cat. “Not if you’ve got any sugar, it ain’t.”“My doctor expressly forbids me sugar,” replied Mr. Bivatt.The Bear Cat gave a peculiar jerk of his head, indicative of the intelligent man’scontempt for the slower-witted.“Not that sort of sugar, you rummy. Gee! Do you think this is a tea party? Dough,you boob. Plunks. Getters. Feel in your pockets.” MR. BIVATT appearing to be in a sort of trance, the Bear Cat felt for him, and extracted a pocketbook.“I guess these’ll do,” he said, removing a couple of bills. He rapped on the door.

“Hey, Mike!”“Quit that,” answered a gruff voice without.“I want to speak to you. Got something to say.”The door opened.“Well?”“Say, Mike, you’ve got a kind face. Going to let us go, ain’t you?”The policeman eyed the Bear Cat stolidly.The Bear Cat’s answering glance was more friendly.“See what the fairies have brought, Mike.”The policeman’s gaze shifted to the bills.“Say,” he said severely, as he held out his hand, “you don’t reckon I’d take a bribe, I hope?”“Certainly not.” said the Rear Cat indignantly.There was a musical rustling.“Don’t mind if we say good night now, do you?” said the Bear Cat. “Mother’ll be getting anxious about us.” THE policeman with the kind face met his colleague in the basement.“Say, you know those guys in the dressing room,” he said.“Uh-huh!” said the colleague.“They overpowered me and got away.”“Divvy,” said the colleague.Having lost the Bear Cat—no difficult task, for he dived into the first saloon—Mr. Bivatt and Freddie turned their steps toward Broadway. A certain dignity which had been lacking in the dressing room had crept back into Mr. Bivatt’s manner.

“Go away,” he said. “I will not have you following me.”“I am not following you,” said Freddie. “We are walking arm in arm.”Mr. Bivatt wrenched himself free.



“Go away, or I will call a police—er—go away!”“Have you forgotten me? I was afraid you had. I won’t keep you long. I only wanted to tell you that I had nearly made that $500.” MR. BIVATT started and glared at Freddie in the light of a shop window. He gurgled speechlessly.“I haven’t added it all up yet. I have been too busy making it. Let me see. Week at

the hotel—two weeks at “Blinky’s”—a hundred for staying five rounds—I’ve got—”“Will you kindly stop this foolery and allow me to speak?” said Mr. Bivatt. “When I made our agreement, I naturally alluded to responsible, respectable work. I did not include low prizefighting and—”“You said manual work or brain work. Wasn’t mine about as manual as you could get?”“I have nothing further to say.”Freddie sighed.“Oh, well,” he said. “I suppose I shall have to start all over again. I wish you had let me know sooner. I shall try brain work this time. I shall write my experiences and try and sell them to a Sunday paper. What happened to-night ought to please some editor. The way you got us out of that dressing room! It was the smoothest thing I ever saw. There ought to be money in that. Well, good night. May I com

e and report later?”He turned away, but stopped as he heard an odd choking sound behind him.The realization of the probable behavior of his son Twombley, should he learn ofthese matters, had come home to Mr. Bivatt. HE clutched Freddie with one hand, and patted his arm affectionately with the other.“Don’t—er—don’t go away, my boy,” he said. “Come with me to the drug store while I get sompsin tabloids, and then we’ll go home and talk it over. I think we may be able toarrange something after all.”

Collier’s Weekly, September 27, 1913I THINK one of the most curious stunts I was ever mixed up with in the course ofa lifetime devoted to butting into other people’s business was that affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn’t bore you, don’t you know, for the world, butI think you ought to hear about it.We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht Circe, belonging to an old sport of thename of Marshall. Among those present were myself: my man Voules, an Englishmanwho had spent most of his time valeting earls, and looked it: Mrs. Vanderley ofWashington Square North: her daughter Stella: Mrs. Vanderley’s maid, Pilbeam, andGeorge. My name is Pepper, by the way. Reggie Pepper. My uncle was Pepper’s SafetyRazor. He left me a sizable wad.George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him into theparty. You see, George was due in Europe on business, having to meet his uncleAugustus, who was scheduled—George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday—tohand over to him a legacy left by one of George’s aunts, for which he had been trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was a date that George had been looking forward to, for, though he had a pretty fair income, an income,

after all, is only an income, whereas a chunk of dough is a pile. So, directly the great date began to loom ahead, he started in to work the cables and fix up sailing dates. Then it struck me that his quickest way was to sail with us and ha



ve his uncle meet him at Monte Carlo. Kill two birds with one stone, don’t you know. Fix up his affairs and have a pleasant vacation simultaneously.So George had tagged along, and at the time when the trouble started we were anchored in Monaco Harbor, and Uncle Augustus was due next day. LOOKING back, I may say that, as far as I was mixed up in it, the thing began atseven o’clock in the morning, when I was aroused from a dreamless sleep by the di

ckens of a spat in progress outside my stateroom door. The chief Ingredients were a female voice that sobbed and said, “Oh. Harold!” and a male voice “raised in anger,” as they say, which, after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules’s! If it hadn’t been for the aitches dropping in a heavy shower on the corridor carpet, Ishouldn’t have recognized it. In his official capacity, Voules talks exactly as you’d expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however, he evidently relaxed to some extent, and to have that sort of thing going on in my midst at that hour was too much for me.“Voules!” I yelled.Gettysburg ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing in the distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with that impassive, my-lord-the-carriage-waits look, which is what I pay him for. You wouldn’t have believ

ed he had a drop of any sort of emotion in him.“Voules,” I said, “are you under the delusion that I’m going to be Queen of the May?”“I beg your pardon, sir?”“Well, you’ve called me early, all right. It’s only just seven.”“I hunderstood you to summon me, sir.”“I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise outside.”“I howe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the ’eat of the moment I raised myvoice.”“It’s a wonder you didn’t raise the roof. Who was that with you?”“Miss Pilbeam, sir. Mrs. Vanderley’s maid.”“What was all the trouble about?”“I was breaking our hengagement, sir?”

I COULDN’T help gaping. Somehow one didn’t associate Voules with engagements. Then it struck me that I’d no right to butt in on his secret sorrows, so I switched theconversation.“I think I’ll get up,” I said.“Yes, sir.”“I can’t wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right away?”“Yes, sir.”So I had a solitary breakfast, and went up on deck to smoke. It was a lovely morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all the rest of the hippodrome.Presently the others began to trickle up. Stella Vanderley was one of the first.I thought she looked a bit pale and tired. She said she hadn’t slept well. That accounted for it. Unless you get your eight hours, where are you?”“Seen George?” I asked.I couldn’t help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly close pals. In fact, atany moment I expected George to come to me and slip his little hand in mine andwhisper: “I’ve done it, old scout. She loves muh!”“I have not seen Mr. Lattaker,” she said.I didn’t pursue the subject. George’s stock was apparently low that a. m. I wonderedwhat had been happening.The next item in the day’s program occurred a few minutes later when the morning papers arrived.Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.“The poor dear prince!” she said.

“What a shocking thing!” said old Marshall.“I knew him at Washington,” said Mrs. Vanderley. “He waltzed divinely.”Then I got at mine, and saw what they were talking about. The paper was full of



it. It seemed that late the night before his Serene Highness, the Prince of Saxburg-Liegnitz—I always wonder why they call these guys serene—had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on his way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed the habit of going about without an escort, which, I gather,princes don’t often do, and some rough neck, taking advantage of this, had lain for him and soaked it to him with considerable vim. The Prince had been found, bya passing pedestrian, lying pretty well beaten up and insensible in the street,

and had been taken back to his yacht, where he still lay unconscious.“This is going to do somebody no good,” I said. “What do you get for slugging a serenehighness? I wonder if they’ll catch the fellow.”“Later,” read old Marshall. “The pedestrian who discovered his Serene Highness provesto have been Mr. Denman Sturgis, the eminent private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services to the police, and is understood to be in possession ofa most important clue.” That’s the fellow who had charge of that kidnaping case in Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can.”About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move off to breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside.A tall, thin man came up the gangway. He looked round the group and fixed on oldMarshall as the probable owner of the yacht.

“Good morning,” he said. “I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker on board. Mr. George Lattaker.”“Sure.” said Marshall. “He’s down below. Want to see him? Who shall I say?”“He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on somewhat urgent business.”“Take a seat. He’ll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and speed him up.”I went down to George’s stateroom.“George, old top!” I shouted. NO ANSWER. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What’s more, the bunk hadn’t been slept in. I don’t know when I’ve been more surprised. It beat me.I went on deck.“He isn’t there,” I said.

“Not there!” said old Marshall. “Where is he then? Maybe he’s gone for a stroll ashore.But he’ll be back soon for breakfast. I guess you’d better wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will you join us?”The man said he would, and just then the gong went, and they trooped down, leaving me alone on deck.I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking some more, when I thought I heard somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked over my shoulder, and, by Gad, there at the top of the gangway, in evening dress, dusty to the eyebrows, without a hat, and looking generally as if he had been caught in the machinery, was dear old George.“Great Scott!” I cried.“Sh!” he whispered. “Anyone about?”“They’re all down at breakfast.”He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I regarded him with pity. The poor old boy looked all in.“Say!” I said, touching him on the shoulder. HE LEAPED out of the chair with a smothered yell.“Did you do that? What did you do it for? What’s the sense of it? How do you supposeyou can ever make yourself popular if you go about touching people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of my body this morning. Reggie.”“Yes, old top?”“I did a murder last night.”“What!”“It’s the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly Stella Vanderley brok

e off our engagement I—”“Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?”“About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn’t a stop watch. I proposed to her



at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was just going to kiss her when we heard some one coming. I went out. Coming along the corridor was that infernal—what’s her name—Mrs. Vanderley’s maid—Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love. Reggie?”“Never. I’ve been turned down dozens—”“Then you won’t understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy. I hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest thing handy. I couldn’t wait.

It might have been the ship’s cat. It wasn’t. It was Pilbeam.”“You kissed her?”“I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened, and out cameStella.”“Hell!”“Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl, not knowingthe circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It did. She broke off theengagement, and I got out the catboat and rowed off. I was mad. I didn’t care whatbecame of me. I simply wanted to forget. I went ashore. I fancy I drank nearlyeverything there was in the town. And then I don’t remember a thing, except that Ican recollect having the deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street, and somebody falling and myself beating it for all I was worth. I woke up this mornin

g in the Casino Gardens. I’ve lost my hat.” I DIVED for the paper. This was absolutely frightful, don’t you know. There couldn’tbe a doubt who the gazook was that poor old George had been swatting the coveroff.“Read,” I said. “It’s all there.”He read.“Great Scott!” he said.“You didn’t do a thing to his serene nibs, did you?”“Reggie, this is awful.”“Cheer up. They say he’ll recover.”“That doesn’t matter.”“It does to him.”

He read the paper again.“It says they’ve a clue.”“They always say that.”“But—Great Scott, my hat!”“Eh?”“My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This guy Denman Sturgis must have found it. It had my name in it!”“Say,” I said, “you mustn’t waste time. Great Scott!”He jumped a foot in the air.“Don’t do it!” he said irritably. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t bark like that. What’s the mat“The man.”“What man?”“A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you did. He’s down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted to see you on business, and wouldn’t give his name. 1 didn’t like the look of him from the first. It’s thisfellow Sturgis! It must be.”“No!”“I feel it. I’m sure of it.”“Had he a hat?”“Of course he had a hat.”“Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?”“By Jove, he was carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must get a move on. Youmust light out if you want to spend the rest of your life outside the penitentiary. Slugging a serene highness is lèse majesté. It’s worse than hitting a cop. You haven’t got a moment to waste.”

“But I haven’t any money. Reggie, old top, slip me a hundred bucks. I must get overthe frontier into Italy at once. I’ll wire my uncle to meet me in—”“Duck,” I cried. “There’s some one coming.”



actly alike? Who’s to say you aren’t Alfred if you swear you are? Your uncle will bethere to back you up that you have a brother Alfred. It’s pie.”“And Alfred will be there to call me a liar.”“He won’t. It’s not as If you had to keep it up for the rest of your life. It’s only foran hour or two, till we can get this detective guy off the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning.”At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.

“Why, I really do believe it would work,” he said.“Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole. I’ll swear Georgehadn’t one!”“And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and fixing things rightfor George. Reggie, old top, you’re a genius.”“No, no.”“You are.”“Well, it’s only sometimes. I can’t keep it up.”And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.“What the devil are you doing here, Voules?” I said.“I beg pardon, sir. I’ve ’eard all.”I looked at George. George looked at me.

“Voules is all right,” I said. “Decent Voules! Voules wouldn’t give us away, would you,Voules?”“Yes, sir.”“You would?”“Yes, sir.”“But Voules. old man.” I said, “Be sensible. What would you gain by it?”“Financially, sir, nothing.”“Whereas, by keeping quiet”—I tapped him on the chest—“by holding your tongue, Voules; bysaying nothing about it to anybody, Voules, old fellow, you might gain a considerable wad.”“Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you think thatyou can buy my self-respect?”“Oh, come,” T said.

“’Ow much?” said Voules. SO WE switched to terms. You wouldn’t believe the way the man haggled. You’d have thought a decent, faithful servant would have delighted to oblige one in a littlematter like that for a ten spot. But not Voules. By no means. It was five hundred down and the promise of another five hundred when we had got safely away before he was satisfied. But we fixed it up at last, and poor old George got down tohis stateroom and changed his clothes.He’d hardly gone when the breakfast party came on deck.“Did you meet him?” I asked.“Meet whom?” said old Marshall.“George’s twin brother. Alfred.”“I didn’t know George had a brother.”“Nor did he till yesterday. It’s a long story. He was kidnaped in infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his uncle about him yesterday.I shouldn’t wonder if that’s where George has gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime Alfred has arrived. He’s down in George’s stateroom now having a brush up. It’ll amaze you, the likeness between them. You’ll think it is George at first. Look! Here he comes.”And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at him, asif they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren’t quite certain where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.“Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board,” said George.“It’s an amazing likeness,” said old Marshall.

“Is my brother like me?” asked George amiably.“No one could tell you apart,” I said.“I suppose twins always are alike.” said George. “But if it ever came to a question of



identification, there would be one way of distinguishing us. Do you know Georgewell, Mr. Pepper?”“He’s a dear old pal of mine.”“You’ve been swimming with him perhaps?”“Every day last August.”“Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this on the backof his neck, wouldn’t you?”

He turned his back and stooped, and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it often when we were swimming together up at Bar Harbor.“Has George a mole like that?” he asked.“No,” I said. “Oh, no.”“You would have noticed it if he had?”“Yes,” I said. “Oh, yes.”“I’m glad of that,” said George. “It would be a nuisance not to be able to prove one’s ownidentity.”That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn’t get away from it. It seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think George felt the same, forwhen old Marshall asked him if he had had breakfast, he said he had not, went below and pitched into the weakfish as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

EVERYTHING went right till lunch time. George sat in the shade on the foredeck,talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the rest had startedto go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.“It’s all right,” he said. “What did I tell you?”“What did you tell me?”“Why, about Stella. Didn’t I say that Alfred would fix things for George? I told hershe looked worried, and got her to tell me what the trouble was. And then—”“You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you after knowing you for about two hours.”“Maybe I did,” said George modestly. “I had no notion, till I became him, what a persuasive sort of gink my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she told me all about it, andI started in to show her that George was a pretty good sort of Johnnie on the wh

ole who oughtn’t to be turned down for what was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point.”“And it’s all right?”“Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root.”“I guess he thinks that you’re bound to come back sooner or later, and is laying foryou.”“He’s an absolute nuisance,” said George. We were moving toward the companionway. to go below for lunch, when a boat hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.“It’s my uncle,” said George.A stout man came up the gangway.“Hello, George,” he said. “Get my letter?”“I think you are mistaking me for my brother.” said George. “My name is Alfred Lattaker.”“How’s that?”“I am George’s brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?”The stout man stared at him.“You’re very like George,” he said.“So everyone tells me.”“And you’re really Alfred?”“I am.”“I’d like to talk business with you for a moment.” He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below. At the foot of the companion steps I met Voules.“I beg pardon, sir,” said Voules. “If it would be convenient, I should be glad to ’ave the hafternoon hoff.”

I’m bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a trace of thefellow conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.I had lunch—George didn’t show up—and as I was going out I was waylaid by the girl Pil



beam. She had been crying.“I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the afternoon?”I didn’t see what business it was of hers, but she seemed all worked up about it,so I told her.“Yes, I have given him the afternoon off.”She broke down. Absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was. I’m hopeless ina situation like this. After I’d said “There, there!” which didn’t seem to help much, I

hadn’t any remarks to make.“He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings and then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for.”I suddenly remembered the spat in the small hours outside my stateroom door. I hate mysteries. 1 meant to get to the bottom of this. I couldn’t have a really first-class valet like Voules going about the place shooting himself up. Evidently the girl Pilbeam was at the bottom of the thing. I questioned her. She sobbed.I questioned her some more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the facts.Voules had seen George kiss her the night before: that was the trouble.Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview George. Therewas going to be another job for persuasive Alfred. Voules’s mind had got to be eased as Stella’s had been. 1 couldn’t afford to lose a fellow with his genius for pres

erving a trouser crease.I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says about some Johnnie’s face being sicklied o’er with the pale cast of care? George’s was like that. He looked green.“Through with your uncle?” I said.He grinned a ghostly grin.“There isn’t any uncle,” he said. “There Isn’t any Alfred. And there isn’t any money.”“Explain yourself, old top,” I said.“It won’t take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the trust money. He’s beenat it for years, ever since I was a kid. When the time came to cough up, and Iwas due to see that he did it, he went to the tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last remnant of the stuff. He had to find a way of holding me for a while and postponing the squaring of accounts while he got away, and he inve

nted this twin-brother business. He knew I should find out sooner or later, butmeanwhile be would be able to get off to South America, which he has done. He’s onhis way now.”“You let him go!”“What could I do? I can’t afford to make a fuss with that man Sturgis around. I can’tprove there’s no Alfred when my only chance of sidestepping prison is to be Alfred.”“Well, you’ve made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley, anyway,” I said, to cheer him up.“What’s the good of that now? I’ve hardly any money, and no prospects. How can I marryher?”I pondered.“It looks to me, old top,” I said at last, “as if things were in a bit of a mess.”“You’ve guessed it.” said poor old George.He didn’t seem pining to have me around at that moment—I left him. I SPENT the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is. So unlike anything else, don’t you know, if you see what I mean. Atany moment you may be strolling peacefully along, and all the time Life’s waitingaround the corner to soak it to you good. You can’t tell when you may be going toget yours. It’s all dashed puzzling. Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped, getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That’s what I asked myself. .Just Life, don’t you know. That’s all there was to it.It was close on six o’clock when our third visitor of the day arrived. There was class to this one. He was a count.

We were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening—old Marshall, Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I—when he came up. We had been talkingof George, and old Marshall was suggesting the advisability of sending out sear



ch parties. He was worried. So was Stella Vanderley. So, for that matter, were George and I, only not for the same reason.We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a well-built, stiff sort of Johnnie. He spoke with a German accent.“Mr. Marshall?” he said. “I am Count Fritz von Cöslin, equerry to his Serene Highness”—heicked his heels together and saluted— “the Prince of Saxburg- Liegnitz.” Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.

“Why, Count,” she said, “what ages since we met at Washington! You remember?”“Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well?”“Stella, you remember Count Fritz?”Stella shook hands.“And how is the poor dear Prince?” asked Mrs. Vanderley. “What a terrible thing to have happened!”“I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained consciousness, and is sitting up and taking nourishment.”“That’s good,” said old Marshall.“In a spoon only,” sighed the Count. “Mr. Marshall, with your permission, I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis.”“Mr. who?”

The gimlet-eyed sport came forward.“I am Denman Sturgis, at your service.”“The deuce you are! What are you doing here?”“Mr. Sturgis,” explained the Count, graciously volunteered his services—”“I know. But what’s he doing here?”“I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall.”“Eh?”“You have not found him?” asked the Count anxiously.“Not yet, Count. But I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like now. Thisgentleman is his twin brother. They are doubles.”“You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?” GEORGE put his foot down firmly on the suggestion. “Don’t go mixing me up with my br

other,” he said. “I am Alfred. You can tell me by my mole.”He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.The Count clicked his tongue regretfully. “I am sorry,” he said.George didn’t offer to console him.“Don’t worry,” said Sturgis. “He won’t escape me. I shall find him.”“Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young man.”“What!” shouted George.“That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life, saved my high-born master from the assassin.”George sat down suddenly.“I don’t get you,” he said feebly.“We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis,” went on the Count. “We leaped to the conclusion—was it notso?—that the owner of the hat you found was also the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have heard the story from his Serene Hlghness’s own lips. He was passing down a dark street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he had been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily. My high-born master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he lost consciousness he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing the hat you found, running swiftly toward him. The hero engaged the assassin in combat, and my high-born master remembers no more. His Serene Highness asks repeatedly: ‘Where ismy brave preserver?’ His gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young man to reward him. Ah, you should be proud of your brother, sir!”“Thanks,” said George limply.“And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker.”

“’E needn’t tyke hall thet trouble,” said a voice from the gangway.It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his head, and hewas smoking a fat cigar.



“I’ll tell you where to find George Lattaker,” he shouted.HE glared at George, who was staring at him. “Yes, look at me,” he yelled. “Look at me. You won’t be the first this hafternoon oo’s stared at the Mysterious Strynger ’oo won for two ’ours without a break. I’ll be heven with you now, Mr. Blooming Lattaker.I’ll learn you to break a poor man’s ’eart. Mr. Marshall and gents, this morning I wason deck, and I over’eard ’im plotting to put up a gyme on you. They’d spotted that gent there as a detective, and they arranged that Blooming Lattaker was to pass ’ims

elf hoff as ’is hown twin brother. And if you wanted proof, Blooming Pepper tells ’im to show them ’is mole, and ’e’d swear George ’adn’t one. Those were ’is very words. Thatan there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let ’im deny it if ’e can.”George got up.“I haven’t the least desire to deny it, Voules.”“Mister Voules, if you please.”“It’s quite true,” he said, turning to the Count. “The fact is, I had rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only remembered knocking some one down,and, like you, I jumped to the conclusion that I must have assaulted his SereneHighness.”“Then you are really George Lattaker?” asked the Count.“I am.”

“’Ere, what does hall this mean?” demanded Voules.“Merely that I saved the life of his Serene Highness the Prince of Saxburg-Liegnitz, Mr. Voules.”“It’s a swindle!” began Voules, when there was a sudden rush, and the girl Pilbeam bucked center, sending me into old Marshall’s chair, and flung herself into his arms.“Oh, Harold!” she cried, “I thought you were dead. I thought you’d shot yourself.”He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed to thinkbetter of it, and fell into the clinch. It was all dashed romantic, don’t you know, but there are limits.“Voules, you’re fired,” I said.“’Oo cares?” he said. “Think I was going to stop on now I’m a gentleman of property? Comealong, Emma, my dear. Give a month’s notice and get your ’at, and I’ll take you to dinner at Ciro’s.”

“And you, Mr. Lattaker,” said the Count, “may I conduct you to the presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his preserver.”“You sure may,” said George. “May I have my hat, Mr. Sturgis?” THERE’S just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a smoke, and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and Stella. They seemed tobe having an argument.“I’m not sure,” she was saying, “that I believe that a man can be so happy that he wantsto kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you put it.”“Don’t you?” said George. “Well, as it happens, I’m feeling just that way now.”I coughed, and he turned round.“Hello, Reggie,” he said.“Hello, George,” I said. “Lovely night.”“Beautiful,” said Stella.“The moon,” I said.“Corking.” said George.“Lovely,” said Stella.“And look at the reflection of the stars on the—!”George caught my eye. “Beat it,” he said. I beat it.



Collier’s Weekly, December 06, 1919A PLEASANT breeze played among the trees on the terrace outside the Manhooset Golf and Country Club. It ruffled the leaves and cooled the forehead of the OldestMember, who, as was his custom of a Saturday afternoon, sat in the shade on a rocking-chair, observing the younger generation as it hooked and sliced in the valley below. The eye of the Oldest Member was thoughtful and reflective. When it

looked into yours, you saw in it that perfect peace, that peace beyond understanding which comes at its maximum only to the man who has given up golf. It is thesame expression which, in a lesser degree, you see in the eyes of soldiers homefrom the wars. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had it after they emerged from the fiery furnace: and Daniel, when with a civil good-by he stepped from the lions’ den.The Oldest Member has not played golf since the rubber-cored ball superseded theold, dignified gutty. Like Mr. Vardon, he holds that the rubber core has changed the game for the worse, made it too easy—turned it, in fact, from an aristocracywhere talent reigned supreme to a republic in which everyone is as good as thenext man. And, like some exiled nobleman of an old regime, rather than accommodate himself to new conditions, he withdrew.

But as a spectator and philosopher he still finds pleasure in the pastime. He iswatching it now with keen interest. His gaze, passing from the fruit lemonade which he is sucking through a straw, rests upon the Saturday foursome which is struggling raggedly up the hill to the ninth green. Like all Saturday foursomes, it is in difficulties. One of the patients is zigzagging about the fairway like aliner pursued by submarines. Two others seem to be digging for buried treasure,unless—it is too far off to be certain—they are killing snakes. The remaining cripple, who has just foozled a mashie shot, is blaming the thing on his caddie. Hisvoice, as he upbraids the innocent child for breathing during his upswing, comesclearly up the hill.The Oldest Member sighs. His fruit lemonade gives a sympathetic gurgle. He putsit down on the table.How few men, says the Oldest Member, possess the proper golfing temperament! How

few, indeed, judging by the sights I see here on Saturday afternoons, possess any qualification at all for golf except a pair of baggy knickerbockers and enough money to enable them to sign the check at the end of the round! The ideal golfer never loses his temper. When I played, I never lost my temper. Sometimes, itis true, I may, after missing a shot, have broken my club across my knees: but Idid it in a calm and judicial spirit, because the club was obviously no good and I was going to get another one anyway. To lose one’s temper at golf is foolish.It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the spirit of Marcus Aurelius. “Whatever may befall thee,” says that, great man in his “Meditations,” “it was preordained for thee from everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.” I like to think that this noble thought came to him after he had sliced a couple of new balls into the woods and that he jotted it down on the backof his score card. For there can be no doubt that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that. Nobody who had not had a short putt stop on the rim of the cup could possibly have written the words: “That which makes the man no worse than he was makes life no worse. It has no power to harm, without or within.” Yes, Marcus Aurelius undoubtedly played golf, and all the evidence seems to indicate thathe rarely went round in under a hundred and twenty. The niblick was his club.Speaking of Marcus Aurelius and the golfing temperament recalls to my mind the case of young Mitchell Holmes. Mitchell, when I knew him first, was a promising young man with a future before him in the Paterson Dyeing and Refining Corporation, of which my old friend Alexander Paterson was the president. He had many engaging qualities—among them an unquestioned ability to imitate a bulldog quarrelingwith a Pekinese, in a way which had to be heard to be believed. It was a gift which made him much in demand at social gatherings in the neighborhood, marking hi

m off from other young men who could only almost play the mandolin or recite bits of “Gunga Din”; and no doubt it was this talent of his which first sowed the seedsof love in the heart of Millicent Boyd. Women are essentially hero worshipers,



and when a warm-hearted girl like Millicent has heard a personable young man imitating a bulldog and a Pekinese to the applause of a crowded drawing room, and has been able to detect the exact point at which the Pekinese leaves off and thebulldog begins, she can never feel quite the same to other men. In short, Mitchell and Millicent were engaged, and were only waiting to be married till the former could bite the Dyeing and Refining Corporation’s ear for a bit of extra salary.

MITCHELL HOLMES had only one fault. He lost his temper when playing golf. He seldom played a round without becoming piqued, peeved, or—in many cases—chagrined. Thecaddies on our links, it was said, could always worst other small boys in verbalargument by calling them some of the things they had heard Mitchell call his ball on discovering it in a cuppy lie. He had a great gift of language, and he used it unsparingly. I will admit that there was some excuse for the man. He had the makings of a brilliant golfer, but a combination of bad luck and inconsistentplay invariably robbed him of the fruits of his skill. He was the sort of playerwho shoots the first two holes in one below par, and then takes an eleven on the third. The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.

IT seemed hardly likely that this one kink in an otherwise admirable character would ever seriously affect his working or professional life, but it did.One evening, as I was sitting on my porch, reading Taylor on the Push Shot, Alexander Paterson was announced. A glance at his face told me that he had come to ask my advice. Rightly or wrongly, he regarded me as one capable of giving advice. It was I who had changed the whole current of his life by counseling him to leave the wood in his bag and take a driving iron off the tee; and in one or two other matters like the choice of a putter (so much more important than the choiceof a wife) I had been of assistance to him.Alexander sat down and fanned himself with his hat, for the evening was warm. Perplexity was written upon his fine face.“I don’t know what to do,” he said.“Keep the head still—slow back—don’t press—roll the forearms,” I said gravely. There is no

etter rule for a happy and successful life.He did not keep his head still. He shook it.“It’s nothing to do with golf this time,” he said. “It’s about the treasurership of my company. Old Smithers retires next week, and I’ve got to find a man to fill his place.”“That should be easy. You have simply to select the most deserving from among yourother employees.”“But which is the most deserving? That’s the point. There are two men who are capable of holding down the job quite adequately. But then I realize how little I knowof their real characters. It is the treasurership, you understand, which has tobe filled. Now, a man who was quite good at another job might easily get wrongideas into his head when he became a treasurer. He would have the handling of large sums of money. . . . In other words, a man who in ordinary circumstances hadnever been conscious of any desire to visit the more distant portions of SouthAmerica might feel the urge, so to speak, shortly after he became a treasurer. That is my difficulty. Of course, one always takes a sporting chance with any treasurer, but how am I to find out which of these two men would give me the more reasonable opportunity of keeping some of my money?”I did not hesitate a moment. I held strong views on the subject of character testing.“The only way,” I said to Alexander, “of really finding out a man’s true character is toplay golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself. I employed a lawyer for years, until one day I saw him kick his ball out of a heel mark. I removed my business from his charge next morning. He has not yet run off with any trust funds, but there is a nasty gleam in his eye, a

nd I am convinced that it is only a question of time. Golf, my dear fellow, is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies is the man



who will serve you faithfully and well. The man who can smile bravely when hisputt is diverted by one of those beastly worm casts is pure gold right through.But the man who is hasty, unbalanced, and violent on the links will display thesame qualities in the wider field of everyday life. You don’t want an unbalanced treasurer, do you?”“Not if his books are likely to catch the complaint.”“They are sure to. Statisticians estimate that the average of crime among good gol

fers is lower than in any class of the community, except possibly bishops. SinceWillie Park won the first championship at Prestwick in the year 1860, there has, I believe, been no instance of an open champion spending a day in the penitentiary. Whereas the bad golfers—and by bad I do not mean incompetent but black-souled: the men who fail to count a stroke when they miss the globe; the men who never replace a divot; the men who talk while their opponent is driving; and the menwho let their angry passions rise—these are in and out of the cooler all the time. They find jt hardly worth while to get their hair cut in their brief intervalsof liberty.” ALEXANDER was visibly impressed. “That sounds sensible, by George!” he said.“It is sensible.”

“I’ll do it! Honestly, I can’t see any other way of deciding between Holmes and Dixon.”I started. “Holmes? Not Mitchell Holmes?”“Yes. Of course you must know him? He lives here, I believe.”“And by Dixon do you mean Otis Dixon?”“That’s the man. Another neighbor of yours.”I confess that my heart sank. It was as if my ball had fallen into the pit whichmy niblick had digged. I wished heartily that I had thought of waiting to ascertain the names of the two rivals before offering my scheme. I was extremely fondof Mitchell Holmes and of the girl to whom he was engaged to be married. Indeed, it was I who had sketched out a few rough notes for the lad to use when proposing—and results had shown that he had put my stuff across big. And I had listenedmany a time with a sympathetic ear to his hopes in the matter of securing a riseof salary which would enable him to get married. Somehow, when Alexander was ta

lking, it had not occurred to me that young Holmes might be in the running for so important an office as the treasurership. Now, when it was too late, I perceived that I had been the unwitting means of laying him a stymie. I had ruined theboy’s chances. Ordeal by golf was the one test which he could not possibly undergowith success. Only a miracle could keep him from losing his temper, and I had expressly warned Alexander against such a man.When I thought of his rival, my heart sank still more. Otis Dixon was rather anunpleasant young man, but the worst of his enemies could not accuse him of not possessing the golfing temperament. From the drive off the tee to the holing of the final putt he was uniformly suave.WHEN Alexander had gone, I sat in thought for some time. I was faced with a problem. Strictly speaking, no doubt, I had no right to take sides; and, though secrecy had not been enjoined upon me in so many words, I was very well aware that Alexander was under the impression that I would keep the thing under my hat and not reveal to either party the test that awaited him. Each candidate was, of course, to remain ignorant that he was taking part in anything but a friendly game.But, when I thought of the young couple whose future depended on this ordeal, Ihesitated no longer. I put on my hat and went round to Miss Boyd’s house, where Iknew that Mitchell was to be found at this hour. The young couple were out on the porch, looking at the moon. They greeted me heartily, but their heartiness had rather a tinny sound, and I could see that on the whole they regarded me as one of those things which should not happen. But when I told my story, their attitude changed. They began to look on me in the pleasanter light of a guardian, philosopher, and friend.

“Wherever did Mr. Paterson get such a silly idea?” said Miss Boyd indignantly. I had—from the best motives—concealed the source of the scheme. “It’s ridiculous!”“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mitchell. “The old boy’s crazy about golf. It’s just the sort of



heme he would cook up. Well, it dishes me!”“Oh, come!” I said.“It’s no good saying “Oh, come!’ You know perfectly well that I’m a frank, outspoken golfer. When my darned ball goes off nor’-nor’east when I want it to go due west I can’t help expressing an opinion about it. It is a curious phenomenon which calls for comment, and I give it. Similarly, when I top my drive, I have to go on record assaying that I did not do it intentionally. And it’s just these trifles, as far as

I can make out, that are going to decide the thing.”“Couldn’t you learn to control yourself on the links, Mitchell, darling?” asked Millicent. “After all, golf is only a game!”Mitchell’s eyes met mine, and I have no doubt that mine showed just the same lookof horror which I saw in his. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don’t realize whatthey are saying.“Hush!” said Mitchell huskily, patting her hand and overcoming his emotion with a strong effort. “Hush, dearest!”Two or three days later I met Millicent coming from the post office. There was anew light of happiness in her eyes, and her face was glowing.“Such a splendid thing has happened,” she said. “After Mitchell left that night, I hap

pened to be glancing through a magazine, and I came across a wonderful advertisement. It began by saying that all the great men in history owed their success tobeing able to control themselves and that Napoleon wouldn’t have amounted to anything if he had not curbed his fiery nature, and then it said that we can all belike Napoleon if we fill out the accompanying blank order form for Professor Dwight Z. Rollitt’s wonderful book ‘Are You Your Own Master?’ absolutely free for five days and then three dollars and a half, but you must write at once because the demand is enormous and pretty soon it may be too late. I wrote at once, and luckilyI was in time, because Professor Rollitt did have a copy left, and it’s just arrived. I’ve been looking through it, and it seems splendid.”She held out a small volume. I glanced at it. There was a frontispiece showing asigned photograph of Professor Dwight Z. Rollitt controlling himself in spite of having long white whiskers, and then some reading matter, printed between wide

margins. One look at the book told me the professor’s methods. To be brief, he had simply swiped Marcus Aurelius’s best stuff, the copyright having expired some two thousand years ago, and was retailing it as his own. I did not mention this toMillicent. It was no affair of mine. Presumably, however obscure the necessity,Professor Rollitt had to live.“I’m going to start Mitchell on it to-day. Don’t you think this is good? ‘Thou seest howfew be the things which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine.’ I think it will be wonderful if Mitchell’s life flows gently on and isdivine for three and a half dollars, don’t you?” AT the clubhouse that evening I encountered Otis Dixon. He was emerging from a shower bath, and looked as pleased with himself as usual.“Just been going round with old Paterson,” he said. “He was asking after you. He’s goneback to New York in his car.”I was thrilled. So the test had begun!“How did you come out?” I asked.Otis Dixon smirked. A smirking man, wrapped In a bath towel with a wisp of wet hair over one eye, is a repellent sight.“Oh, pretty well. I brought him in six down. In spite of having poisonous luck.”I felt a gleam of hope at these last words.“Oh, you had bad luck?”“The worst. I overshot the green at the third with the best brassy shot I’ve ever made in my life—and that’s saying a lot—and lost my ball in the rough beyond it.”“And I suppose you let yourself go, eh?”“Let myself go?”

“I take it that you made some sort of demonstration?”“Oh, no. Losing your temper doesn’t get you anywhere at golf. It only spoils your next shot.”



I WENT away heavy-hearted. Dixon had plainly come through the ordeal as well asany man could have done. I expected to hear every day that the vacant treasurership had been filled, that Mitchell had not even been called upon to play his test round. I suppose, however, that Alexander Paterson felt that it would be unfair to the other competitor not to give him his chance, for the next I heard of the matter was when Mitchell Holmes called me up on the Friday and asked me if I w

ould accompany him round the links next day in the match he was playing with Alexander, and give him my moral support. “I shall need it,” he said. “I don’t mind telling you I’m pretty nervous. I wish I had hadlonger to get the stranglehold on that ‘Are You Your Own Master?’ stuff. 1 can see,of course, that it is the real tabasco from start to finish and absolutely as mother makes it, but the trouble is I’ve only had a few days to soak it into my system. It’s like trying to patch up an automobile with string. You never know when the thing will break down. Heaven knows what will happen if I sink a ball at thewater hole. And something seems to tell me I am going to do it.”“Have faith, Mitchell!” I said earnestly. “Have faith, my boy! Remember what the goodbook says!”

“What good book?”“There is only one. Vardon’s ‘Complete Golfer.’Keep your head still. Do that, and nothing can harm you.”There was silence for a moment.“Do you believe in dreams?” asked Mitchell.“Do I what?”“Believe in dreams?”“Believe in what?”“Dreams.”“What about them?”“I said. Do you believe in dreams? Because last night I dreamed that I was playingin the final of the open championship, and I got into the rough, and there wasa cow there, and suddenly—I never experienced anything so vivid—the cow looked at me

in a sad sort of way and said: ‘Why don’t you use the two-V grip instead of the interlocking?’ At the time it seemed an odd sort of thing to happen, but I’ve been thinking it over and I wonder if there isn’t something in it. These things must be sent to us for a purpose.”“You can’t change your grip on the day of an important match.”“I suppose not. The fact is, I’m a bit jumpy, or I wouldn’t have mentioned it. What sort of a game does old Paterson play? I’ve never seen him.”“A sound, deliberate game. Nothing to be afraid of.”“I’m not afraid of him. I’m afraid of myself. I don’t believe I’ve given this control stuff time to take. It doesn’t seem to have permeated my system. Oh, well! See you to-morrow at two.”THE day was bright and sunny, but a tricky cross wind was blowing when I reachedthe clubhouse. Alexander Paterson was there, practicing swings on the first tee; and almost immediately Mitchell Holmes arrived, accompanied by Millicent.“Perhaps,” said Alexander, “we had better be getting under way. Shall I take the honor?”“Certainly,” said Mitchell.Alexander teed up his ball.Alexander Paterson has always been a careful rather than a dashing player. It ishis custom, a sort of ritual, to take two measured practice swings before addressing the ball, even on the putting green. When he does address the ball, he shuffles his feet for a moment or two, then pauses and scans the horizon in a suspicious sort of way, as if he had been expecting it to play some sort of a trick on him when he was not looking. A careful inspection seems to convince him of thehorizon’s bona fides, and he turns his attention to the ball again. He shuffles h

is feet once more, then raises his club. He waggles the club smartly over the ball three times, then lays it behind the globule. At this point he suddenly peersat the horizon again, in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard. This d



one, he raises his club very slowly, brings it back very slowly till it almost touches the ball, raises it again, brings it down again, raises it once more, andbrings it down for the third time. He then stands motionless, wrapped in thought, like some Indian fakir contemplating the infinite. Then he raises his club again and replaces it behind the ball. Finally he quivers all over, swings very slowly back, and drives the ball for about a hundred and fifty yards in a dead straight line.

It is a method of procedure which proves sometimes a little exasperating to thehighly strung, and I watched Mitchell’s face anxiously to see how he was taking his first introduction to it. The unhappy lad had blenched visibly. He turned to me with the air of one in pain.“Does he always do that?” he whispered.“Always,” I replied.“Then I’m done for! No human being could play golf against a one-ring circus like that without blowing up!”I said nothing. It was, I feared, only too true. Well-poised as I am, I had longsince been compelled to give up playing with Alexander Paterson, much as I esteemed him. It was a choice between that and resigning from the Baptist Church.At this moment Millicent spoke. There was an open book in her hand. I recognized

it as the life work of Professor Rollitt.“Think on this doctrine,” she said in her soft, modulated voice, “‘that to be patient isa branch of justice and that men sin without intending it.’”Mitchell nodded briefly, and walked to the tee with a firm step.“Before you drive, darling,” said Millicent, “remember this. ‘Let no act be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished rules that govern its kind.’”The next moment Mitchell’s ball was shooting through the air, to come to rest twohundred yards down the course. It was a magnificent drive. He had followed the counsel of Marcus Aurelius to the letter. There was nothing haphazard about thatdrive, nor was it otherwise than according to the finished rules laid down to govern drives by James Braid in his “Advanced Golf.”An admirable iron shot put him in reasonable proximity to the pin, and he holedout in one below par with one of the nicest putts I have ever beheld. And when a

t the next hole, the dangerous water hole, his ball soared over the pond and laysafe, giving him par for the hole, I began for the first time to breathe freely. Every golfer has his day, and this was plainly Mitchell’s. He was playing faultless golf. If he could continue in this vein, his unfortunate failing would haveno chance to show itself. THE third hole is long and tricky.You drive over a ravine—or possibly into it. In the latter event, you breathe a prayer and call for your niblick. But, once over the ravine, there is nothing to disturb your equanimity. Par is five, and a good drive, followed by a brassy shot, will put you within easy mashie distance of the green.Mitchell cleared the ravine by a hundred and twenty yards. He strolled back to me, and watched Alexander go through his ritual with an indulgent smile. I knew just how he was feeling. Never does the world seem so sweet and fair and the foibles of our fellow human beings so little irritating as when we have just swattedthe pill right on the spot where it does most good.“I can’t see why he does it,” said Mitchell, eying Alexander with a toleration that almost amounted to affection. “If I did all those Swedish exercises before I drove,I should forget what 1 had come out for and go home.” Alexander concluded the movements, and landed a bare three yards on the other side of the ravine. “He’s what youwould call a steady performer, isn’t he! Never varies!”Mitchell won the hole comfortably. There was a jauntiness about his stance on the fourth tee which made me a little uneasy. Overconfidence at golf is almost asbad as timidity.My apprehensions were justified. Mitchell topped his ball. It rolled twenty yard

s into the rough, and nestled under a dock leaf. His mouth opened, then closed with a snap. He came over to where Millicent and I were standing.“I didn’t say it!” he said. “What on earth happened then?”



“‘Search men’s governing principles,’” said Millicent, “‘and consider the wise, what theyand what they cleave to.’”“Exactly,” I said. “You swayed your body.”“And now I’ve got to go and look for that infernal ball.”“Never mind, darling,” said Millicent. “‘Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.’”

“Besides,” I said, “you’re three up.”“I shan’t be after this hole.”He was right. Alexander won it in five, one above par, and regained the honor.Mitchell was a trifle shaken. His play no longer had its first careless vigor. He lost the next hole, halved the sixth, lost the short seventh, and then, rallying, halved the eighth.THE ninth hole, like so many on our links, can be a perfectly simple four, although the rolling nature of the green makes par always a somewhat doubtful feat; but, on the other hand, if you foozle your drive, you can easily achieve double figures. The tee is on the farther side of the pond, beyond the bridge, where thewater narrows almost to the dimensions of a brook. You drive across this waterand over a tangle of trees and undergrowth on the other bank. The distance to th

e fairway cannot be more than sixty yards, for the hazard is purely a mental one, and yet how many fair hopes have been wrecked there!Alexander cleared the obstacles comfortably with his customary short, straight drive, and Mitchell advanced to the tee.I think the loss of the honor had been preying on his mind. He seemed nervous. His upswing was shaky, and he swayed back perceptibly. He made a lunge at the ball, sliced it, and it struck a tree on the other side of the water and fell in the long grass. We crossed the bridge to look for it; and it was here that the effect of Professor Rollitt began definitely to wane.“Why on earth don’t they mow this darned stuff?” demanded Mitchell querulously as he beat about, the grass with his niblick.“You have to have rough on a course,” I ventured.“‘Whatever happens at all,’” said Millicent, “‘happens as it should. Thou wilt find this t

e if thou shouldst watch narrowly.’”“That’s all very well,” said Mitchell, watching narrowly in a clump of weeds, but seeming unconvinced. “I believe the Greens Committee run this darned club purely in the interests of the caddies. I believe they encourage lost balls and go halves with the little beasts when they find them and sell them!”Millicent and I exchanged glances. There were tears in her eyes.“Oh, Mitchell! Remember Napoleon!”“Napoleon? What’s Napoleon got to do with it? Napoleon never was expected to drive through a primeval forest! Besides, what did Napoleon ever do? Where did Napoleonget off, swelling round as if he amounted to something? Poor fish! All he everdid was to get hammered at Waterloo!”Alexander rejoined us. He had walked on to where his ball lay.“Can’t find it, eh? Nasty bit of rough, this!”“No, I can’t find it! But to-morrow some miserable chinless half-witted reptile of acaddie with popeyes and eight hundred and thirty-seven pimples will find it andwill sell it to some one for a quarter! No, it was a brand- new ball. He’ll probably get fifty cents for it. That’ll be twenty-five for himself and twenty-five forthe Greens Committee! No wonder they’re buying automobiles quicker than the makers can supply them! No wonder you see their wives going about in mink coats and pearl necklaces! . . . Oh, darn it! I’ll drop another!”“In that case,” Alexander pointed out, “you will, of course, under the rules governingmatch play, lose the hole.”“All right, then. I’ll give up the hole.”“Then that, I think, makes me one up on the first nine,” said Alexander. “Excellent! Avery pleasant, even game!”

“Pleasant! On second thoughts I don’t believe the Greens Committee let the wretchedcaddies get any of the loot. They hang around behind trees till the deal’s concluded, and then sneak out and choke it out of them!”



I saw Alexander raise his eyebrows. He walked up the hill to the clubhouse withme.“Rather a quick-tempered young fellow, Holmes!” he said thoughtfully. “I should neverhave suspected it. It just shows how little one can know of a man, only meetinghim in business hours.”I tried to defend the poor lad.“He has an excellent heart, Alexander. But the fact is—we are such old friends that

I know you will forgive my mentioning it—your style of play gets, I fancy, a little on his nerves.”“My style of play? What’s wrong with my style of play?”“Nothing is actually wrong with it, but to a young and ardent spirit there is aptto be something a trifle upsetting in being compelled to watch a man play quiteso slowly as you do. Come, now, Alexander, as one friend to another, is it necessary to take two practice swings before you putt?”“Dear, dear!” said Alexander. “You really mean to say that that upsets him? Well, I’m afraid I am too old to change my methods now.”I had nothing more to say. AS we were leaving the clubhouse to begin the second nine, I was roused from my

meditations by a hand on my arm. Millicent was standing beside me, dejection written on her face. Alexander and young Mitchell had gone on ahead of us.“Mitchell doesn’t want me to come round the rest of the way with him,” she said despondently. “He says I make him nervous.”I shook my head. “That’s bad! I was looking on you as a steadying influence.”“I thought I was too. But Mitchell says no. He says my being there keeps him fromconcentrating.”“Then perhaps it would be better for you to remain in the clubhouse till we return. There is I fear, dirty work ahead.”A choking sob escaped the unhappy girl: “I’m afraid so. There is an apple tree nearthe thirteenth hole, and Mitchell’s caddie is sure to start eating apples. And what will be the effect on the poor darling?”Her humanity thrilled me.

“Surely,” I said, “the effect cannot be injurious. Apples are quite ripe at this timeof year, and the boy will be able to digest them without inconvenience. You haveenough to worry you without troubling yourself about the digestive organs of caddies, who, after all, are merely a subspecies of humanity.”“I am not thinking about the caddie. I am thinking of what Mitchell will do when he hears the crunching when he is addressing his ball.”“That is true.”“Our only hope,” she said, holding out Professbr Rollitt’s book, “is this. Will you please read him extracts when you see him getting nervous? We went through the booklast night and marked all the passages in blue pencil which might prove helpful.You will see notes against them in the margin, showing when each is supposed tobe used.”It was a small favor to ask. I took the book and gripped her hand silently. ThenI joined Alexander and Mitchell on the tenth tee.Mitchell was still continuing his speculations regarding the Greens Committee.“The hole after this one,” he said, “used to be a short hole. There was no chance of losing a ball. Then, one day, the wife of one of the Greens Committee happened tomention that the baby needed new shoes, so now they’ve tacked on another hundredand fifty yards to it. You have to drive over the brow of a hill, and if you slice an eighth of an inch you get into a sort of No Man’s Land, full of rocks and bushes and crevices and old pots and pans. The Greens Committee practically live there in summer. You see them prowling round in groups, encouraging each other with merry cries as they fill their sacks. Well, I’m going to fool them to-day. I’m going to drive an old ball which is just hanging together by a thread. It’ll come topieces when they pick it up!”

GOLF, however, is a curious game, a game of fluctuations. One might have supposed that Mitchell, in such a frame of mind, would have continued to come to grief.



But at the beginning of the second nine he once more found his form. A perfectdrive put him in position to reach the tenth green with an iron shot, and, though the ball was several yards from the hole, he laid it dead with his approach putt and sank his second for a par four. Alexander could only achieve a five, so that they were all square again.The eleventh, the subject of Mitchell’s recent criticism, is certainly a tricky hole, and it is true that a slice does land the player in grave difficulties. To-d

ay, however, both men kept their drives straight, and found no difficulty in securing par fours.“A little more of this,” said Mitchell, beaming, “and the Greens Committee will have to give up piracy and go back to work.” He replaced his putter in his bag. “Give me my driver,” he said to his caddie. He smiled almost lovingly at the boy. “And what’s your name, sonny?” he said cheerily. “Bill? A very good name too. Well, you be a goodboy and some day you may be on the Greens Committee.”The twelfth is a long, dog-leg hole, par five. Professionals use a spoon for their second shot and put the ball boldly over the trees, cutting off the angle andsaving a stroke. Neither Alexander nor Mitchell attempted to rise to these heights. Alexander plugged steadily round the bend, holing out in six, and Mitchell,whose second shot had landed him in some long grass, was obliged to use the nib

lick. He contrived, however, to halve the hole with a nicely judged mashie shotto the edge of the green.Alexander won the thirteenth. It is a three-hundred-and-sixty-yard hole, free from bunkers. It took Alexander three strokes to reach the green, but his third laid the ball dead, while Mitchell, who was on in two, required three putts.“That reminds me,” said Alexander chattily, “of a story I heard. Friend calls out to abeginner: ‘How are you getting on, old man?’ and the beginner says: ‘Splendidly. I just made three perfect putts on the last green!’”Mitchell did not appear amused. I watched his face anxiously. He had made no remark, but the missed putt which would have saved the hole had been very short, and I feared the worst. There was a brooding look in his eye as we walked to the fourteenth tee.There are few more picturesque spots in the whole of the countryside than the ne

ighborhood of the fourteenth tee. Before you the ground slopes gently to a rugged ravine, set about with trees. Beyond the green turf rolls away, sloping sharply to the right. In the distance gleams the silver water of the bay, dotted withpleasure craft. It is a sight to charm the nature lover’s heart.But, if golf has a defect, it is that it prevents a man from being a wholehearted lover of nature. Where the layman sees waving grass and romantic tangles of undergrowth, your golfer beholds nothing but a nasty patch of rough from which hemust divert his ball. The cry of the birds, wheeling against the sky, is to thegolfer merely something that may put him off his putt. As a spectator, I am fondof the ravine at the bottom of the slope. It pleases the eye. But, as a golfer,I have frequently found it the very devil.The last hole had given Alexander the honor again. He drove even more deliberately than before. For quite half a minute he stood over his ball, pawing at it with his driving iron like a cat investigating a tortoise. Finally he dispatched itto one of the few safe spots on the hillside. The drive from this tee has to becarefully calculated, for, if it be too straight, it will catch the slope and roll down into the ravine.MITCHELL addressed his ball. He swung up, and then, just as he was beginning hisdown swing, from immediately behind him came a sudden, sharp, crunching sound.I looked quickly in the direction whence it came. Mitchell’s caddie, with a glassylook in his eyes, was gnawing a large apple. And even as I breathed a silent prayer, down came the driver, and the ball, with a terrible slice on it, hit the side of the hill, and bounded into the ravine.There was a pause, a pause in which the world stood still. Mitchell dropped hisclub and turned. His face was working horribly.

“Mitchell!” I cried. “My boy! Reflect! Be calm!”“Calm! What’s the use of being calm when people are chewing apples in thousands allround you? What is this, anyway—a golf match or a pleasant day’s outing for the chil



dren of the poor? Apples! Go on, my boy, take another bite! Take several! Enjoyyourself! Never mind if it seems to cause me a fleeting annoyance! Go on with your lunch! You probably had a light breakfast, eh, and are feeling a little peckish, yes? If you will wait here, I will run to the clubhouse and get you a sandwich and a bottle of ginger ale. Make yourself quite at home, you lovable little fellow! Sit down and have a good time!”I turned the pages of Professor Rollitt’s book feverishly. I could not find a pass

age that had been marked in blue pencil to meet this emergency. I selected one at random.“Mitchell,” I said. “One moment! ‘How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does, but only at what he does himself, to make it just andholy.’”“Well, look what I’ve done myself! I’m somewhere down at the bottom of that darned ravine, and it’ll take me a dozen strokes to get out. Do you call that just and holy?Here, give me that book for a moment!”HE snatched the little volume out of my hands. For an instant he looked at it with a curious expression of loathing, then he placed it gently on the ground andjumped on it a few times. Then he hit it with his driver. Finally, as if feelingthat the time for half measures had passed, he took a little run and kicked it

strongly into the long grass.He turned to Alexander, who had been an impassive spectator of the scene.“I’m through!” he said. “I concede the match! Good-by! You’ll find me in the bay!”“Going swimming?”“No! Drowning myself!”A gentle smile broke out over my old friend’s usually grave face. He patted Mitchell’s shoulder affectionately.“Don’t do that, my boy!” he said. “I was hoping you would stick around the office a while as treasurer of the company!”Mitchell tottered. He grasped my arm for support. Everything was very quiet. Nothing broke the stillness but the humming of the bees, the murmur of the distantwavelets, and the sound of Mitchell’s caddie going on with his apple.“What!” cried Mitchell.

“The position,” said Alexander, “will be falling vacant very shortly, as no doubt youknow. It is yours, if you care to accept it.”“You mean—you mean—you’re going to give me the job?”“Certainly. You have interpreted me exactly!”Mitchell gulped. So did his caddie. One from a spiritual, the other from a physical cause.“If you don’t mind excusing me,” said Mitchell huskily, “I think I’ll be popping back to the clubhouse. Some one I want to see!” HE disappeared through the trees, running strongly. I turned to Alexander.“What does this mean?” I asked. “I am delighted, but what becomes of the Test?”My old friend smiled gently.“The Test,” he replied, “has been eminently satisfactory. Circumstances, perhaps, havecompelled me to modify the original idea of it, but nevertheless ii has been acompletely successful test. Since we started out, I have been doing a good dealof thinking, and I have come to the conclusion that what the Paterson Dyeing andRefining Corporation really needs is a treasurer whom I can beat at golf. And Ihave discovered the ideal man. Why,” he went on, a look of holy enthusiasm on hisfine old face, “do you realize that I can always lick the stuffing out of that boy, good player as he is, simply by taking a little trouble? I can get his goat every time, simply by taking one or two extra practice swings! That is the sort of man I need for a responsible post in my office!”“But what about Otis Dixon?” I asked.He gave a gesture of distaste: “I wouldn’t trust that man! Why, when I played with him, everything went wrong and he just smiled and didn’t say a word. A man who can

do that is not the man to trust with the control of large sums of money. It wouldn’t be safe. Why, the fellow isn’t honest! He can’t be!” He paused for a moment. “Besides,” he added thoughtfully, “he brought me in six down. What’s the good of a treasurer w



ho brings the boss in six down?”

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